Gregg Loomis - The Coptic Secret

The door's latch buzzed open. Someone had been expecting a visitor and the electronics were as unintelligible inside as they were out.

Lang stood in a vaulted stone vestibule even taller than the door. To his right was a shallow set of marble stairs that wound around an old birdcage elevator before disappearing into darkness above. In front of him was the private interior piazza that had once contained a garden secluded from the noise and smell of the street. Rather than fountains and flowers, it was now a parking lot for tenants' cars. Over a field of Fiats and Volkswagens, Lang watched a man in coveralls emerge across the courtyard, no doubt the servants' entrance in better days.

He acceded to joints already aching and took the elevator. He feared he might have made a poor choice as the contraption groaned its way to the third floor, the fourth in the US. The door creaked open and he could see the number nine in the dim light of low-watt bulbs in sconces.

A series of knocks were fruitless. Lang inhaled deeply as he tried the lock, remembering the blood-soaked apartment in Prague. He stepped back and visually checked the lock, its bolt visible where the door had shrunk from its frame. Less than a minute's application of a credit card and there was a gratifying click. He pushed the door open.

"Father Strentenoplis?" he called.

No response other than the wheezing of an overworked window air-conditioning unit.

A sagging curtain leaked enough light from the room's only window to see two weary club chairs facing a short sofa across a plain wooden table on which rested a Compaq laptop and a stack of papers. A crucifix over the sofa was the only effort at decoration. Two steps down a short hallway a door opened into the bedroom: a single bed, a small bureau resting on three legs on which a clean clerical collar and studs waited and a curtained alcove. If the priest had slept here last night, he hadn't made up the bed. Beyond the rumpled sheets was a doorless entrance to a small bath. On the sink was an open tube of Grecian Formula.

Father Strentenoplis cared about his appearance.

And Lang was feeling more and more like a burglar.

Recrossing the room, Lang slid the curtain back. Behind it was a single rod on which several cassocks hung beside two black suits, a pair of jeans and two golf shirts. Two pair of black wingtips, one each of brown loafers and Nikes paraded across the floor in a neat line.

Lang started to close the curtain when something on the floor gleamed in the dim light. He stooped and scooped up a cross on a gold chain, a cross with a third cross member. A Greek cross. He frowned. Not something Father Strentenoplis would leave behind. With it in his hand, he walked over to the apartment's second window, one across from the bed. Closer examination showed the catch on the cross's chain still closed. The chain was broken.

Lang carefully placed the cross and chain on the bureau and crossed the short hall into a minuscule kitchen. The heel of a baguette lay on the counter next to the sink along with a chunk of hard pecorino, cheese made from ewe's milk, and a sliced pear, its edges already turning brown, a typical Italian breakfast. A coffeepot sat on one of the stove's two gas burners. It was still warm to the touch.

Father Strentenoplis hadn't impressed Lang as a man who would leave a meal prepared but uneaten and he certainly wouldn't leave a gold cross.

Lang went back into the living room and turned the computer on. Nothing but a blank screen. He tried several booting-up procedures but the screen never wavered from its unrelenting blue. Had its main drive been removed?

He was leafing through the papers when he jerked his head up. Footsteps in the hall. He slipped the.45 from his belt and cocked it. The sound receded and he eased the hammer to half cock and made certain the safety was on. Cocked and locked.

He returned to the papers, but found nothing he could read.

A broken chain, opened hair dye, unfinished breakfast. It was beginning to look like Father Strentenoplis had made an unplanned departure.

Why?

Perhaps the priest had taken another route between his apartment and the Vatican and Lang had simply missed him. Possible but Lang didn't think so. He would certainly go by the office again. There was nothing further here.

At least nothing tangible. Lang had a feeling, a gut vibe that if someone had made the good father disappear that person could still be around.

He took the stairs rather than making himself a stationary target on the elevator.

They came for him there.

Between two floors, two men were waiting on the landing. Each looked as though he might have had a career as a professional wrestler. Each carried a gun with a very visible silencer. Each held his weapon at arm's length as though fearing it might bite.

Amateurs, Lang guessed.

But it doesn't take a professional assassin's bullet.

And there wasn't anything amateurish about the footsteps Lang heard behind him. Get your quarry in a cross fire, as professional as you please.

"Ah, Mr. Reilly," said one of the men below him, speaking in accented English, "we need to speak with you."

"Throw the guns over the bannister and we'll chat all day."

The man who had spoken smiled. It wasn't a nice smile, either. "Just put up your hands where I can see them."

Lang sensed, rather than heard, whoever was at his back upstairs getting closer, closer than anyone who knew what he was doing would be if he planned to shoot. The plan was to distract him while someone grabbed him from behind. Then dispose of him in some manner honoring a saint.

Was a saint ever shot?

He was thankful he had cocked the.45. There was no time to do so now. He raised his left hand, his right brushing his back a little slower. His only defense was they had no way to know he was armed.

A soon as he felt the Colt clear his belt, he whirled as he lifted it. Over its muzzle he saw two astonished faces. One turned to crimson mush as the big gun bucked in Lang's grasp. The impact knocked the man into a spin and over the railing. There was a wet-sounding impact as he hit the floor below.

The roar of the.45, rolling up and down the stairwell like a departing thunderstorm, momentarily transfixed the men below. Someone yelled and a door slammed.

A spitting sound and something unpleasant buzzed past Lang's ear.

Using his other hand, Lang grabbed the gun arm of the remaining assailant above him on the steps and yanked him to the side as he stepped behind him.

Now he had a shield. Or so he thought.

There were the coughs of two silencers and the man went limp.

Lang was holding a lifeless body, one that had taken bullets meant for him.

The dead weight was pulling Lang off balance. He had the right gun for bluff and bluster but not marksmanship. All he could do was fill the air with lead and hope. He pointed the automatic in the general direction of the two remaining men and emptied the clip. Chips of plaster and stone filled the staircase like shrapnel. One man cursed and dropped his weapon to try to staunch a river of red coursing down his arm.

Lang would have bet the wound was inflicted by flying debris rather than accuracy with the heavy pistol.

The remaining man fled.

Lang looked around him. A stinking fog of gun smoke filled the staircase. Shell casings glittered on the stairs like a field of gold nuggets. The man he had held was stretched out headfirst, his arms reaching for a discarded weapon, a Beretta 9mm. Another dead at the bottom of the stairs. Blood made abstract patterns against the gray stone walls and stairs.

It wouldn't take the police force's resident rocket scientist to figure out what had happened and Lang was the only person left to question. He started down the steps as fast as his gimpy legs would go. The bottom was in sight when he heard the pulsating wail of sirens. From the sound of them, they would arrive at the front door about the same time he did.