Gregg Loomis - The Coptic Secret

Even if his curiosity was far from satisfied, Lang was glad to drop the subject that had so bothered his friend. "I understand there's a really good seafood restaurant near the Pantheon, La Rossetta. Do you get priest discounts in this town?"

His BlackBerry buzzed.

He felt uneasy when he saw it was Gurt calling. She wouldn't be phoning after speaking with him only a few hours ago unless something had come up.

"Yes?" he said curtly.

Then he listened for the next two minutes before saying, "I agree."

He ended the call.

Francis was studying his face. "Trouble?"

"Yeah, sort of."

Had it been any woman but Gurt, Lang would have been overcome with anxiety. Gurt was not exactly your typical damsel in distress. The description fit her worse than a double-A bra. A deadly shot, she had run out of fellow agency partners with whom to practice martial arts, men and women. She had caused too many injuries.

And, as she was quick to point out, she had saved Lang's ass more than once.

She certainly hadn't called to worry him, to distract him from what he was doing. That wasn't the way they both had been trained.

But the training hadn't included a small child, his child.

"What sort of trouble?" Francis asked.

"Er, a car accident, nothing serious."

"Then why do you look worried?"

Because I am, Lang said only to himself.

Real worried.

"You need to leave Rome?"

"As soon as I finish some business."

Piazza dei Calvalleri di Malta

Aventine Hill

Three Hours Later

Late every afternoon, a phenomenon takes place in Rome: As the sun edges westward, it tints otherwise ordinary buildings a color somewhere between sienna and ochre. There is no hue exactly like it elsewhere, a fact disputed by Sienna, Florence and several Tuscan and Umbrian hill towns. Their afternoons are dismissed as either too red or containing not enough yellow by any native of Rome whose opinion is sought on the subject.

Dispute notwithstanding, the two men who had one of the city's best views from the window next to them paid no attention. Instead, they listened closely to the hissing of a recording device, interrupted by voices.

"The fresco has been found," the younger man said. "I had come to believe it existed only in rumor."

The older man shook his head. "An unfortunate time. It will only encourage the American to get whatever copy he has translated if he has not already done so."

"Why else would he have gone to see the Greek priest, Strentenoplis, other than seek a translation?"

The older man thought for a moment. "See to it. See to the Greek, also. But do so without leaving a trail for the police."

"And what of the Jew, the forger?"

"See to him also. We want no path for the authorities to follow. The American no doubt wanted papers of some sort. Watch the place against the possibility the American returns there. He must be eliminated quickly by any means other than violence in the Holy City. We cannot risk the gospel's message becoming known."

"We have located the German woman and the American's bastard child. I should know shortly. If we can take them captive, we may have this Reilly come to us."

The old man stood. "You are doing God's work. In his name, bless you."

"Thank you, Grand Master," the man said, trying to suppress the resentment bubbling in his chest.

Today he had lost two good knights, one with burns that might cost him an eye, the other with a fractured skull. It had been bad enough to lose the hired help in Prague and the men in the United States who had mysteriously disappeared after finding Reilly's place south of Atlanta. But he had only a limited number of soldiers, knights, who were even remotely competent to deal with the American. Or who, for that matter, had even fired a gun.

It was easy enough to give orders; not always so simple to carry them out.

God's work or not.

The Vatican The Next Morning

Notwithstanding taking the middle of the day off, offices in Rome generally open between 9:00 and 9:30 a.m. As far as Lang could tell, the Vatican was no exception.

After showing his pass to the Swiss guard still dressed in the uniform designed by Michelangelo, he was admitted to the scavi and walked a short way down the hall to Father Strentenoplis's office. The door was closed. Lang knocked briskly, waited a moment or two and knocked again without result.

He pushed gently. Like most of the doors here, it had no lock. It swung open. The space looked the same as it had the day before. Smelled the same, too. Whatever the good father smoked, it clung to the walls like paint.

Lang considered looking through the papers on the desk and decided against it. He had the remaining copy of the gospel, so there was no need to try to retrieve the one given to the priest and the priest hadn't expected to have a translation until now.

The problem, of course, was, where was the priest?

Lang shut the door behind him, went down the hall and stopped in front of an open office where a very short nun sat on a very tall swivel chair. Her feet barely touched the floor as she pecked at a keyboard with the hesitancy of someone not entirely comfortable with the machine.

Lang stepped across the threshold. "Mi scusi, parlal' inglese?"

She spun around in the chair, bathing him in the most radiant smile he had ever gotten from a seventy-year-old. "Of course I speak English, but thank you for asking! Most of your countrymen take it for granted that everything and everybody speaks English, and, if not, the problem can be cured by progressively raising the voice. How may I be of service?"

"Father Strentenoplis, I had an appointment with him…"

She sniffed disdainfully. "You are early. He rarely is in his office before ten thirty."

Lang's suspicions about the priest's drinking habits were confirmed.

"It's really important I see him. I'm leaving Rome this afternoon…"

She turned the chair to face the monitor. "He is a visiting priest, staying in one of the apartments the Holy See keeps for such purposes. We have no phone number." She scowled at the screen as though the omission were its fault. "He must use a cell phone."

Lang shifted his weight back and forth. "Do you have an address?"

"Of course! We keep the scoop on all our visitors. Is not that what you say in America, 'the scoop'?"

Not in the last thirty years.

"Ah, here! Do you know the Via de Porta?"

"'Fraid not."

She pointed. "As you leave St. Peter's Square, turn right on Porta Cavalleggeri. It's a main drag. Then left on Via del Crocifisso. De Porta will be on your left." She wrote something down on a piece of paper. "Here. You want apartment nine at number thirty-seven. A piece of cake, as you would say!"

Lang thanked her and left, wondering how she had acquired so many outdated American idioms.

There was nothing wrong with her directions, though. Father Strentenoplis's street was one of those Roman alleys so narrow Lang doubted the sun touched it more than a few minutes each day. The building was a former palazzo converted into apartments by the high taxes of the Socialist state. A massive arched wooden door could easily have accommodated a carriage and mounted outriders. A more human-scale Judas gate had been cut into one side.

Lang surveyed the list of doorbells mounted beside the entrance. He pressed number nine with no result.

The good father was probably sleeping off the night before, in no shape to hear the buzzer. And Lang had a plane to catch.

He pushed all the buttons.

He got two garbled responses he could not have understood even if he had spoken Italian.

"Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party," he said.