Gregg Loomis - The Coptic Secret

Kneeling, he unwrapped the green tissue from two dozen roses and placed them in vases attached to the headstones.

Then he had stood, staring at the polished granite for a few moments before going back down the hill.

The train finally eased into the concrete cube that was the Prague railway station. The featureless, massive structure was reminiscent of the country's past as a Communist satellite, its capital city strewn with architecture Lang thought of as Stalinist empirical. Outside the dimly lit interior, he found a relatively undamaged Skoda, a Czech Audi knockoff. Guessing the sign on the roof meant "taxi," he opened the trunk and slid his single bag in next to what looked like the remains of a jack assembly and a spare tire that would have had a hard time even remembering treads.

In front, the driver put down a newspaper and took the last drag from a cigarette that smelled very much like silage. It also smelled very much like the cardboard tubes smoked by the Soviet Bloc defectors Lang had questioned. Cheap, odoriferous tobacco had apparently not vanished along with the Soviet Empire. The evil men do does, in fact, live after them.

"Hotel Continental," Lang said, wondering if the man understood.

They passed tired-looking warehouses with rusty steel doors before emerging onto a four-lane boulevard that followed the gentle sweep of the Vltava River. Ahead, Lang could see Prague Castle brooding on the landscape's only high point. The ebulliently Gothic spires of St. Vitus's Cathedral rose above the ramparts like a crown.

He grinned at a memory: The Defenestration.

In May of 1618, more than one hundred Protestant

nobles had marched into the palace to protest the succession of the notoriously intolerant Catholic Habsburg, Archduke Ferdinand. In the ensuing argument, Ferdinand's two governors were flung bodily out of a window, landing unharmed five stories below.

Intervention by angels, Catholics proclaimed. More likely by the inhabitants of the castle's stables, Protestants retorted. The defenstratees had landed in a huge pile of the morning's soft, still-steaming mucking. Thus began the Thirty Years' War, the only conflict Lang knew that, quite literally, began with horseshit.

Crossing a bridge, the cab came to a stop in front of a glass-and-steel building, just as ugly as the train station.

Lang handed the driver a number of kroner, unloaded his own bag and hobbled into a lobby paneled in light wood. To his left was a shop selling contemporary glassware. On his left, a cigar shop sold Cuban tobacco.

Lang joined a line of camera-toting Japanese at the reception desk. He turned sideways and watched the car in which he had arrived pick up another fare and pull away from the curb. He waited another few minutes before doing an about- face and exiting the way he had come. Trolling his bag behind him with one hand, leaning on his walking stick with the other, he headed south along Parzska. The hum of traffic faded behind him as Baroque buildings with shops on the first floor lined the street. To his right, the sharp angle of the roof of the Old-New Synagogue rose, marking the ghetto, a place that had seen centuries of pogroms long before the twentieth century and Adolf Hitler.

Within another block, he was facing the Old Town Square, a space enclosed by three- and four-story buildings with Baroque facades in fanciful, pastel colors. Lang crossed north to south. To his right was the Old Town Hall with its "new" tower, added in the mid-fourteenth century. A small crowd had already gathered, awaiting the performance of the mechanical figures of the astronomical clock.

Lang paused, a tourist taking in the sights, before selecting one of the crowded sidewalk cafes. He slid into a seat still warm from its former occupant and ordered a Plzensky, one of the slowly matured pilsner beers for which the Czechs are famous. In fact, Lang recalled, pilsner was first brewed only fifty miles away.

Taking his time, he surveyed his surroundings. The place probably looked pretty much the same when Franz Kafka wrote stories of people turning into cockroaches and trials where no accusations were made.

No one paid any particular attention to him. Slowly savoring his beer, he scanned a menu in English before ordering a salami chlebicky, an open-faced sandwich served on a baguette. He ate watching the crowd. Still no one seemed interested in him. By the time he had finished and dusted away the last of the crumbs, every table had turned at least once.

He had done what he could to make sure no one had followed him.

Still cautious, he left the square to walk around the block. He paused, seeming to admire toys in a shop window while he checked reflections of passersby. None of the faces were those he had seen earlier today. He returned to the square and entered the huge arched doorway of a blue- tinted building on the south side.

He stood in a cavernous, vaulted space he guessed had once been a stable. A sign at the back advertised a restaurant in the basement below with red, hot and blues! live american jazz and blues nightly. A stone staircase on his right led to the hotel whose small sign he had noted while he enjoyed his meal. He pushed the buzzer for an antique cage-style elevator. His mending legs could use a respite.

The place had clearly been a private home at one time. On each floor, rooms were angled from a center vestibule so that there had been no need for corridors. Yes, they had a vacancy, the English-speaking lady at the small office announced. It fronted right on the square. Would Lang like to see it?

Minutes later, Lang was in a modestly furnished, high- ceilinged room, poring over the free city map common to most European cities. All its advertisers' locations were prominently marked. Starozitnictvi Starov was not among them. Returning to the office, Lang had the proprietress run the name through her computer's city directory.

She looked up from the screen and pointed. "It is a dealer in old books. It is to be found in the Mala Strana, Little Quarter." She pointed as though Lang could see through the walls of the cramped space. "The area just on the other side of the Charles Bridge."

Piazza dei Cavatieri di Malta

Aventine Hill

Rome

At the Same Time

The older man was looking over the shoulder of the younger, squinting at the computer screen. "You have found nothing, Antonio?"

Antonio shook his head. "Nothing, Grand Master. The American lawyer, the woman, the child-even the dog- disappeared after leaving the pawnshop" He turned to look into the face of the other man. "But I can speculate, should you permit."

"Please."

"We know this man, Reilly, has access to a private jet." He paused long enough to click several keys. A photograph of Lang at the British Museum filled the screen. "We also know that jet left for Africa the day before yesterday"

"Africa? I don't-"

Antonio held up a cautionary hand. "If I may, Grand Master?"

The older nodded. "Forgive my interruption"

"The plane made a single stop en route: Munich "

"And you think this Reilly was on it."

It was Antonio's turn to nod. "I cannot know, of course, but our brothers in Germany are to obtain copies of whatever documents the aircraft submitted to the authorities. We should know before tomorrow"

"That may well be too late. Discovery of the contents of those books would mean disaster."

Antonio was silent for a moment. "We do not know there are copies."

"It is a chance we cannot risk. It is better we eliminate this American than to find we have made a mistake. Safer yet, we must silence all but us who might know of the contents of the book. That is why the Englishman died. We must continue to observe the shop from whence they came. If he has found out anything, he will come there."