Gregg Loomis - The Julian secret

"True," Blucher admitted, "but in daylight, I feel safer surrounded with people."

"Let me call you a cab," Lang volunteered, reaching for the room's phone. "Write down your address so I can give it to the driver."

Blucher complied without protest. In a few minutes, he was gone.

Lang looked at Gurt, puzzled. "If it's not some Nazi group, skinheads, or something, who cares if there's a book published about people who've been dead for years?"

Gurt stubbed out her cigarette. "Perhaps no one. Perhaps it is other information the book contains, as the old man suggests."

"But what?"

She was reaching behind herself to unbutton her blouse, a move that thrust her breasts forward. Lang watched, spellbound, before he realized she had asked a question.

"I suppose we'll know tomorrow."

Gurt folded the blouse neatly and stepped out of her skirt. Although he had seen the performance nightly, it held his undivided attention.

"It is most unattractive to stare like that. I feel like a hamburger Grumps is drooling over."

"I gave up drooling last week. Besides, if you didn't want me to watch, you'd go into the bathroom."

"Who has said I did not want you to watch?"

Just as Lang was drifting off, Gurt asked, "Are you asleep?"

"Not now."

"Do you really think some organization, Die Spinne, or something like it, is what is against us?"

"What we're up against? Possible. No one, not even old men, want to go to jail or be deported, like I said. And you can bet, old or not, there are really wealthy former Nazis, rich enough to hire assassins by the bushel."

It was not a comforting thought.

Heidelberg, Germany (Hauptstrasse)

Haus zum Ritter

The next morning

Along with the breakfast of rolls, jelly, cheese, and sausage slices, the tray brought to their room included the day's Frankfurt Allegemeine Zeitung. Gurt unfolded it while Lang poured coffee.

"Mein Gott!" she gasped.

Lang didn't notice that he had spilled boiling coffee on himself as he gaped at a front page with his picture on it and a caption that translated as "Airport fugitive identified as American lawyer, businessman. ^n

Gurt's head swiveled around the room as though someone might be watching this very moment. "How did they get the picture?"

"Shit!" Lang jumped out of bed, using a linen napkin to dab at the hot coffee he had dumped in his lap. He took the paper and stared at the grainy photograph. "Could have been taken by a security camera."

"Not unless it is custom for you to pose and smile in airports," Gurt observed. ''You also look younger."

"Don't let jealousy cloud your judgment," Lang said, still staring at the newspaper. "I'd swear that's the service photo from my Agency file."

Gurt knelt on the bed to look over his shoulder. "Possible. Remember, someone managed to chop into-"

"Hack into."

"Hack into the Agency's files and get your picture last year in London."

"How would the Frankfurt cops even know the Agency had a picture of me?"

Gurt thought for a moment. "That police detective in Atlanta, the black man who does not like you very much…"

"Rouse? He loves me like a brother. We just put on a show for your benefit."

She shook her head. "For one time, be serious. From this picture you could be recognized. Rouse knows you with the Agency worked, no?"

"He knows from last year that my government service wasn't with the Navy like I told him, yes."

Gurt nodded. "Since the Frankfurt police have your name and address because you furnished to them on your luggage, it might be normal to contact the Atlanta Police."

A way of making certain the matter was either permanently misplaced or mishandled, Lang thought. But he said, ''And so?"

"This man Rouse, he would tell them you were with the Agency…"

"If he knew it, and I'm not sure he does."

Unperturbed, Gurt rushed on. "So the Frankfurt police would demand a picture for the paper to identify you." Lang was feeling a little calmer after seeing his face on the front page of a major paper. If you weren't a celebrity or politician, that ranked right up there with finding a 60 Minutes news crew waiting for you at your office in forecasting you were not likely to have a good day.

"I suppose that would be possible," he admitted, "but you know as well as I do, the Agency won't even confirm someone worked for them, let alone give out their file picture."

Deflated, Gurt nodded. "You have right, of course. But how?"

Lang brought the paper to within inches of his face. "Could be a drawing, if the cop has that good a memory. I mean, he only got a second's glimpse before he hit my elbow with his face and I was outta there. Let's hope the picture is too blurry to make a good ID. When we finish with Blucher this morning, maybe you can ask Reavers to do us another favor and change the picture on my passport to include a mustache or something."

"Me?" Gurt placed her fingers on her chest. "Why do not you ask?"

"It wasn't my blouse he was trying to look down yesterday."

An hour later, Gurt and Lang climbed the winding path up to the castle that stood guard over the city. Little more than a ruin since a lightning-induced fire in the early eighteenth century, it had been the ancestral home of the Wittlebach line of German kings and Holy Roman Electors since the thirteenth century. Consequently, an amalgam of Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, and German mannerist towers, crenellation, and buttresses combined in an architectural smorgasbord. Below, the red-roofed buildings of the town clustered around the church like chicks around a hen.

The pair found a seat under the shade of an oak that might have been as old as the courtyard it adorned. They watched a horde of Japanese tourists, led by an umbrella wielding guide, explore and photograph. A much less organized group of schoolchildren, more interested in the holiday from class than any history lesson, clambered over ruins of walls as they chattered gaily.

Lang looked at his watch. "Ten-thirty. Blucher's late." Gurt was unconcerned. "He is an old man. It will be an effort to make the climb up here."

By eleven, not even Blucher's age seemed a plausible excuse. Gurt phoned his home from her BlackBerry, getting only a recording.

Lang stood, dusting off his pants. ''You stay here, call if he shows." He pulled out his wallet and extracted a slip of paper. "I've got his address here from last night. I'll look for him there."

The professor lived in a neighborhood of semidetached, tile-roofed, two-story homes with flowers in boxes at each window. The absence of trees told him the subdivision was relatively new. At the number Lang was looking for, an old but shiny VW Beetle was parked in a driveway bordered by a manicured lawn.

He parked the rental car and rang the bell beside the door. Two more rings produced no result, so Lang rapped his knuckles against the oak and the door swung open.

Lang peered inside, a queasy feeling stirring in his stomach. Even in this quiet neighborhood, he doubted people left front doors unlocked and unlatched.

"Herr Doktor Blucher?" Lang called from the doorway. "Is anyone home?"

Only silence answered him.

Lang gently pushed the door wide and went in.

The front door entered directly onto a small living room inhabited by undistinguished furniture and an upright piano. To Lang's right was a fireplace outlined in a mantel of some dark wood. To his left, the room opened into a dining/kitchen area. Everything Lang had seen so far had an impersonal, antiseptic look about it, as though he were seeing a furnished model home.

The Herr Doktor either spent no time here or was first cousin to the Tidy Bowl Lady.

A door in the kitchen opened onto a tiny yard where freshly turned rows of dirt indicated the beginning of a vegetable garden, as did a compost pile beside the house. A wooden fence might keep out rabbits but wasn't high enough to give privacy from the second stories of the adjacent houses.