Gregg Loomis - The Coptic Secret

Manfred bowed slightly and extended a hand. "I am named Manfred Fuchs."

"Manfred Reilly," Lang corrected.

Sara's eyes widened as she hastily looked from father to son and back again. She would have been blind to miss the resemblance. "When…? Who…? How…?"

"Sometime ago, Lang and in the normal manner," Gurt said.

"But, but you were never…"

"Married?" Gurt smiled. "That is to the biological process irrelevant."

Not to Sara. Lang had often observed that years of membership in a Southern Baptist church made Sara worry too much that someone somewhere somehow was having fun. True or not, he tried not to show his amusement as her religion wrestled with her love for small children.

The latter won.

She fished a cellophane-wrapped peppermint from the bowl on her desk and extended one toward Manfred, who looked at the proffered treat and then at his mother.

Gurt apparently was willing to accept the peace offering. "What do you say?"

"Danke, er, thank you."

Sara pulled the candy back. "It comes at a price. Come give your auntie Sara a hug."

For the moment, the Gurt vs. Sara battle was over. Lang had enjoyed the mini drama long enough. He had come for a specific purpose and it wasn't to introduce his new family. He limped into his office and shut the door behind him. Ignoring two stacks of pink phone-message slips, he opened his center desk drawer and reached inside. His groping fingers found a catch and there was a click as a false back popped open. From it he extracted a worn address book. Thumbing the pages, he found what he was looking for and punched numbers into the telephone's keyboard, beginning with the 202 D.C. area code.

He knew the actual phone that he was calling could be located anywhere in the world, connected by a series of shifting random relays that would make any call from the person he was seeking totally untraceable. He waited for the third ring, after which there was only a beep. No voice, no message. He keyed in his own number and hung up.

It took about two minutes before Sara buzzed him. From the noise in the background, she, Gurt and Manfred were having a swell time. "Number one for you. Man named Berkley. Wouldn't say who he's with or what he wanted other than speaking to you. Want to take it or should I tell him you're out of the office?"

Lang was already reaching for the phone to press the button that would connect him. "I'll take it. Thanks."

He pushed the first line button. "Miles! My gatekeeper tells me you wouldn't tell her what you wanted or who you were with!"

There was a slight pause, confirming Lang's guess the call was going through multiple relays. "I coulda told her, Lang, but then I'd hafta kill her. How's it goin' with you?"

"I need a little help."

Again the pause before Miles's drawl. "Damn! An' here I was thinkin' you'd called 'cause you need my wise counsel an' sage advice."

Lang smiled. Miles Berkley was still the same bullshit artist. "Miles, about two months ago a wealthy English philanthropist, name of Eon Weatherston-Wilby, was kidnapped from the British Museum and subsequently murdered."

"I think I remember. Why do all those rich Brits have two las' names, anyway?"

"Same reason Southerners like us have two last names instead of a first and last. Langford and Miles instead of Joe and Frank."

"Damn," Miles said, "an' I'd always thought it was to cover somebody's ass when they weren't sure who the father was."

Lang chuckled. "Like I said, Miles, I need your help."

This time the pause was longer than usual.

"Lang, you know I'll do what I can, but my employer takes a real dim view of sharing information with unauthorized persons."

Or with the rest of the United States government for that matter. "Let me tell you what I need. I believe Eon was killed because of certain ancient documents he had acquired and was donating to the museum, perhaps because he knew what was in those documents. I'd like to know where he got them."

Another long pause. "A little out of my bailiwick, Lang."

"Oh, come on, Miles! You guys track large transfers of money like a hen with one chick. I recall, it was you that warned of nine-eleven because you'd noticed a transfer of cash from al Qaeda accounts."

"Shucks, weren't nuthin'."

"False modesty doesn't become you, Miles. If the powers that be had listened to you…"

"OK, OK, flattery appreciated."

Manfred walked into the room and froze, awestruck by the view provided by the floor-to-ceiling glass. Lang pointed to a helicopter making a pickup from the roof of a nearby building.

"So, Miles can you help?"

"Officially, no. But I'd like to renew the friendship, Lang. Haven't laid eyes on you in years. You and Gurt still…"

Gurt's looks were famous throughout the agency, as was the fact that Lang was the only one of the select members of that group who had ever gotten further than a refusal to do more than have lunch. His post-agency relationship with her was, he was certain, the subject of company gossip.

"We're getting along fine, Miles." He watched Manfred staring outside. "Better than you could believe. Thanks for asking. Now, about Eon Weatherston-Wilby…"

"Like I said, I'd like to keep up the relationship with an old friend. You got a cell phone number?"

Less than half an hour later, Gurt was driving the rented SUV back to the residence hotel that would serve as home for the next few days. Lang planned to move frequently until the danger was eliminated.

Gurt was thinking the same thing. "We will live in hotels for how long?"

The prospect of one set of interchangeable living quarters after another was bleak at best. It would be particularly disturbing to watch his newfound son try to understand why he was suddenly an urban gypsy. Not to mention the bribes he would pay desk clerks to take Grumps. "Until we can figure out what to do, learn enough to go after whoever is trying to kill us."

"Kill you," she corrected. "Manfred and I were not in the country even when the bomb did your condo."

"Whoever shot up the cabin wasn't making distinctions."

Gurt nodded. "Collateral damage. They didn't care."

Lang pointed to a strip center on the right side of the road. "Pull in there."

Gurt did as she was told, parked in a space perpendicular to the curb and looked up at a sign advertising the best ribs in town. "You have hunger?"

He indicated another neon sign in a window that announced, pawn! tvs! electronics! guns! "No, I have a need to be armed."

On the door, a sign informed the entrant that (a) the place was under video surveillance, (b) all firearms must be in cases or holsters and (c) Visa and Mastercard were equally welcomed.

A bell tinkled as Lang entered. A glass case displayed cheap watches and jewelry. Along one wall hung every imaginable form and shape of guitar, trumpet, trombone and several musical instruments Lang didn't recognize. Opposite was a rack of rifles and shotguns.

A man emerged from the shadows at the back of the shop. "Good mornin'! What can I-" He stopped, staring. "Langford Reilly! How have you been, Counselor?"

Lang took a very hairy hand in his own. "Pretty good, Monk. I take it you're keepin' your nose clean?"

"You bet. Not so much as a parking ticket since you got me off." He noticed Lang's difficulty in moving. "What happened to your leg?"

"That's why I've come to take you up on your offer of a favor if I needed one."

William "Monk" Vester, one of Lang's earlier clients.

Also one of the city's more entrepreneurial fences, Monk had been charged with specifying items to be stolen by a cadre of burglars. The case had been airtight with the housebreakers lining up to roll over on their compatriot in exchange for lighter sentences. Lang's only hope had been the incompetence of the Fulton County prosecutor's office. His reliance had been rewarded: somehow the exhibit numbers had become so mixed up it was impossible to ascertain with certainty which object had come from which victim or, for that matter, if the items had been stolen at all.