Gregg Loomis: The Coptic Secret

Involuntarily, Lang's hand slid into his pocket, touching the crumpled piece of paper, the half of the boarding pass if that was really what it was. He instantly decided not to mention it. Information was the capital of his former profession with the agency: once spent it became useless.

"Not a clue."

New Mermaid Inn

High Street

Rye

East Sussex

The Next Morning

Jenny Fasting never understood why someone as wealthy as Langford Reilly would choose to stay in a hotel as old as this one. The ceilings were low, the floors uneven, the doorways crooked and the mullioned windows mostly opaque. She had asked him once and he had replied that if the place had been good enough for Elizabeth Tudor, it was good enough for him. Of course, it had been a bit newer when Good Queen Bess had paid a visit to Rye to inquire about an inconsistent source of fish. That was before the river's mouth had silted up, ending Rye's place as a major harbor and fishing center. The inn had been almost new when the Queen visited, having replaced the former Mermaid Inn after the French had staged a surprise raid and burned a good part of the town as well as the hotel. Jenny was fairly certain Elizabeth I had never actually stayed here, though.

That was the thing about the Yanks: they worshiped the old, even old buildings in advanced states of dilapidation. Yanks. A word she understood her boss, Lang Reilly, did not appreciate for reasons that had to do with a dispute over there in America more than a hundred years ago. Something about a War of Northern Aggression. Whatever that was.

Another thing about the Yanks, er, Americans: they were always in a hurry. That was why she had been awakened after midnight last night by a call from London. Mr. Reilly wanted her to meet him in the small laboratory facility his foundation had set up in Rye to serve the institution's needs in the British Isles. Cheaper than London with considerably less traffic. In fact, Rye's main street was still cobblestoned with half-timbered houses just as though the Queen might return.

If he had asked her to meet him anywhere other than the laboratory, she might have been able to fantasize some sort of romantic liaison. Although Mr. Reilly had never been anything more than polite at both the meetings she had with him, he was, after all, single and quite good-looking. And rich. Not the type to show any interest in a drab lab tech like Jenny.

She ran her fingers nervously through limp hair the color of dead grass. One of these days she would replace the thick glasses with that new eye surgery. In the meantime, she would continue to look like just what she was: a lab boffin. A single lab boffin.

And there was nothing romantic about being called out of bed to put some stub of paper under an electronic microscope, read it and make a legible copy by breakfast. That was hardly her job. She dealt with the arcana of chemical biology. But Mr. Reilly was the boss and if he wanted a jillion pounds sterling worth of gadgetry used to examine a piece of paper, so be it. An airline boarding pass, at that. Seemed he could simply call the airline if he had somehow managed to damage his bleeding boarding pass.

But he was the boss.

That was why she was sitting in the dining room of the New Mermaid, sipping tea that tasted like it had been brewed sometime in the distant past, waiting for Lang Reilly.

He appeared on the dot of 8:00, disgustingly wide-awake. He slid into the seat across the table from her, wished her a good morning and ordered kippers and eggs from the innkeeper.

Jenny wondered if anyone, Lang Reilly included, really took pleasure in staring eye to eye with a smoked herring first thing in the morning. Although the dish was as English as afternoon tea, the sight and smell of a dead fish at breakfast was, well, disgusting. Why couldn't he simply have bangers and mash like a working-class sod? Even so, she could not tear her sight away as he deftly stripped the backbone and its comblike rack from the rest of the fish.

"So, what did you find out?" he asked.

Although she knew exactly what she had found, she dug in her purse and extracted an enlarged copy. "Aegean Air flight 162, seat 24-B. Either the twenty-third or twenty- fifth of last month. The paper was too badly worn to be sure."

He reached for the paper. "Any idea from where to where?"

She shook her head. "I couldn't get a real soul at Aegean Air this early, only serial recordings, but I'll be happy to…"

If Jenny had her way, the hottest place in hell would be reserved for whoever invented voice mail and those infuriating mechanical queries that only lead to another.

He smiled as he sectioned a piece of fish. "No need. You've done your job and thanks. You'll find a little gift in your next paycheck."

"Oh, Mr Reilly," she protested, "you don't have to…"

She stopped in midsentence. The man at the next table was clearly listening although he was using a copy of the day's Times as a prop to conceal his interest. What Jenny was saying sounded like… sounded like something quite different than an employer speaking to an employee. She felt herself flush at what the eavesdropper must be thinking.

Lang silenced her with a hand. "Don't deprive an old man of his pleasures."

Pleasures? Old man? She'd give anything to… The thought made her blush even more.

"Thank you," she managed.

Fifteen minutes later in his room, Lang stared without comprehension at the copy Jenny had given him. Through long mastery of the corporate telephone maze, he had reached a living, breathing person at Aegean Air. The flight in question had been an A (Airbus) 320-200 from Rhodes to Athens. No, privacy policy forbade disclosing the name of the passenger occupying that specific seat.

A quick call to the States produced a sleepy, "Yeah…?"

"Jimmy?" Lang asked.

"You're calling at fucking two o'clock in the mornin' and you're not sure you have the right person?"

If personality were his only asset, Jimmy Edge would be unemployable. Fortunately, Jimmy was a geek without peer. Unfortunately, his skills were far more useful on the wrong side of the law. Hacking into and altering bank records in his favor had proved far more lucrative than programming corporate computers. Lang had successfully negotiated a plea deal on Jimmy's behalf by which the hacker had provided a complete list of his victims in exchange for probation. The United States attorney had howled like a wounded animal at the court's leniency, but, as one of the larger financial institutions admitted, without Jimmy's help there was little chance their electronic records could be straightened out for years.

"Good morning to you, too," Lang said cheerfully. "I've got a job for you."

"Swell," Jimmy growled, recognizing Lang's voice. "Most of my clients operate during the daylight hours."

"Most of your clients don't operate well in any kind of light, day or otherwise. You got a pencil handy?"

It took less than ten minutes before Jimmy called Lang back.

"He connected from Athens to Rome. Dead end," he announced without preamble. "Passenger's name was Frangelli, address and phone number in Rome. Contact number belongs to a prepaid cell, address is on the Corso. Doesn't exist. No record of Frangelli ever having flown Aegean Air or any major carrier I could call up in a hurry and he's not on Google or any US or European credit records. I'd say you got yourself a real fictional character this time."

"Contact number in Rhodes or Athens?"

"Same cell."

Lang thought a moment. "Thanks, Jimmy. I get any more info, I'll be in touch."

"I can't wait."

Lang terminated the call on his BlackBerry, thoughtful as he put the device back into his pocket. A passenger with no name, a flight between two points so far irrelevant to anything Lang knew. Information, though, could be like a good wine: it increased both in value and quality in time.