Gregg Loomis - The Julian secret

But they would have had trouble reaching the venerable church today. The street was filled from curb to curb by men in black robes, peaked hats, masks, and with bare feet. Most dragged wooden crosses.

"What is that-who are those volk?" Gurt asked from the backseat. "Looks like the Ku Klux Klan," Lang observed. "Except they're wearing the wrong color."

"Penitents," Sonia explained. "This is Good Friday, the Friday before Easter. This is the next-to-Last Seana Santa, Holy Week, celebration. The men in the robes seek forgiveness of sins committed the year past."

"Not hard to see where Nathan Bedford Forrest got his idea for the Invisible Empire," Lang muttered.

"Who?" Gurt wanted to know.

If there was anything Lang did not want to have to explain, Justify, or apologize for, it was a post-Civil War organization that had morphed into one of America's most famous hate groups. "Nothing. Can we edge by into the parking lot?"

An hour later, the streets were empty of those hoping to clear their souls. Lang and Gurt rode with Sonia down narrow cobblestone streets until huge wrought iron gates opened to admit them to the loveliest patio Lang had ever seen.

Lang got out on the street. "We could have walked." Sonia nodded in agreement. "I had to bring the car back."

Lang hesitated before entering the enclosure, reaching up to pick a ripe orange from one of a line of trees. He followed the Mercedes into the patio as the gates slowly swung shut, peeling the fruit as he went. The first bite brought such an explosion of sour acid into his mouth that he spat the pulp without thinking.

Sonia, unsuccessful at hiding a grin at his discomfort, said, "Anglese. We call those oranges 'English' because only the English buy them."

Lang spat again, but the bitterness remained. "The English eat them?"

Sonia could no longer suppress a laugh. "Eat them? No, Mr. Reilly, they make their beloved marmalade from the rinds."

Lang was wondering if he could ever enjoy that jam on his breakfast toast again when a tall, blond woman came out of the house. Wearing her hair pulled behind her head only emphasized the long, almost equine, face. Her height seemed to give her an awkwardness so that she appeared to walk with disjointed steps, as if her bones had not been properly attached to her body.

She extended a narrow, knobby hand. "Langford Reilly. My dad told me about you. I'm Jessica Huff." Lang took the hand. "Most likely he told you what a young idiot I was."

She gave a sad smile as she turned to Gurt, just now climbing out of the Mercedes. "And you are Lang's wife?"

Gurt shot a warning look at Lang. "No. I am Gurt Fuchs." Puzzled, Jessica shook Gurt's hand anyway, waiting for an explanation.

When she realized none was forthcoming, she gestured toward the house. "Let's go in. I appreciate your coming."

Jessica ushered them into a wood-paneled room and indicated they should sit. Lang was surprised at the comfort afforded by the uninviting chair of leather and wood carved in the Spanish fashion.

Sonia appeared with a tray of coffee cups.

"Again," Jessica said, "I appreciate your coming."

Lang accepted a cup, tried to balance it on the narrow arm of his chair, and conceded he would simply have to hold it. "Again, lowed your father big-time and we'll help any way we can. But I don't know what we can do. If Don spoke of me at all, you know I wasn't in Ops. I sure didn't learn anything about criminal investigation."

Jessica nodded, a person not surprised. "You were one of the few of my father's former, er, associates, he ever mentioned. I didn't know who else to turn to."

Gurt's head swiveled, following the conversation.

Lang took an experimental sip of the coffee. It was as bitter as the orange. "Have the local police any idea who…?" Jessica clasped her hands. Lang noticed they were red, as though she had been doing laundry in strong detergent. "That's just it. They aren't doing anything. I mean, they came to the house, poked around, asked questions. Since Dad wasn't a local, I get the impression his… his murder is permanently going on the back burner. They don't have a clue."

"And you do?"

She glanced at the heavy beams in the ceiling as though seeking inspiration. "It had to be because of the book he was writing."

Lang shifted in his chair, uncertain how long he could hold the cup in his hands. "The book-what was it about?"

"Some Nazi. His name sounded Polish or something, not German. After the war he, the Nazi, wound up in

Spain. Dad came here to do research."

Lang glanced at Gurt. She was no help. World War II was something intentionally slipping from the German national memory. She would have been more helpful with the Franco-Prussian War of 1870.

Her people won that one.

"But who…?" Lang began.

"Some group of Nazis," Jessica explained. "People who don't want that book published."

Lang finally got up and placed his half-empty cup on a small oak chest with brass edges. He spoke as he returned to his seat. "Jessica, anyone who fought in that war would be nearly or over eighty. I can't see someone that age killing anyone."

"I'm not suggesting they did it personally. Eighty years old or not, no one wants to go to jail. How often do you read in the papers that some retire«autoworker is being shipped back to Eastern Europe to stand trial for war crimes or an old man living on a beach in Florida was actually a concentration-camp guard?"

Lang had to admit she was right. Old or not, no former Nazi was going to prison if he could avoid it.

She continued. "I read about a secret Organization of SS officers," she said almost crossly. "They didn't hesitate to kill when it suited them."

"Odessa, in popular fiction of a few years back. It was fiction."

"The name was, er, fiction," Gurt said, breaking her silence, "but the group was real. Die Spinne, the spider. I remember my father of it talking. The Communists wanted such organizations destroyed as much as did the Americans. It was one of the few areas of cooperation."

Jessica was showing an interest in Gurt. "Your father?"

"He was in the East German government," Gurt said, as if that explained everything. Lang stood again. "I have no idea what I'm looking for, Jessica, but I'd like to see the room where…" She also stood and headed for a staircase. "Daddy used one of the upstairs rooms."

Lang hated talking to the back of someone's head, so he saved further questions until he, Jessica, and Gurt were on a gallery above the first floor. "Who knew about the book?"

Jessica shrugged. "Everybody, I guess. I mean, he hassled his old buddies for a chance to see the files of the old OSS. That was what the Agency was called during the war, Office of Strategic Services. I know he already had a literary agent, and I think she was negotiating with a publisher. The book wasn't a secret. Other than research in Spain and that it was about some Nazi, I didn't really know much about it." She stopped and opened a door. "This is it."

Lang walked into a room equipped as an office might be: two desks, two computers, each with a printer. Government-issue bookshelves, gray metal, lined one wall filled with stacks of papers, books, and a dinner plate with a thriving colony' of mold.

''You and Sonia have cleaned up?" Lang wanted to know.

"That's what I was doing while Sonia went to the airport." She nodded to the increasing green on the plate. "As you can see, I haven't finished. That's why I booked you into a hotel. Sonia won't come in here. She's the one who found Daddy when she came to work the day before yesterday. He was lying right here," she pointed, "partially blocking the door."

Lang took a closer look around the room. "If he was blocking the door, how…?"

"The room adjoins another," Jessica said. "In fact, almost all of the bedrooms in the house adjoin each other. It used to be a method of ventilation."