Gregg Loomis - The Coptic Secret

"To know truly is to know causes; let's get to the bottom of this. First you're going to have to find out if the Knights of Malta are the ones behind your problems. As you can imagine, they are an extremely conservative bunch. Their priests, or chaplains, the ones who run the day-to-day operations, probably are somewhere to the right of the most conservative Jesuits. They wouldn't take kindly to having St. Peter, the first pope, depicted as a malcontent and murderer. Such a major change in the church wouldn't sit well at all. Whether they would go as far as murder and kidnapping, who knows?"

"Well, then," Lang said, "all I have to do is find out."

And he had a pretty good idea of how he was going to do just that.

High Hampton Inn

Cashiers, North Carolina

Two Days Later

Manfred shrieked in glee as the trout twisted on the hook like molten silver. The contagion of the child's joy had Lang laughing. Here with his son and Gurt, the uglier realities of the world had no place.

Manfred held up his wriggling trophy. "Can we keep him?"

Lang managed a serious face. "Are you going to eat him?"

The child's joy evaporated at the memory of bass from the pond in Lamar County. A lot of bass. "Ugh!"

"Then we better put him back."

"But I want to keep him!"

Lang knelt, bringing his face even with his son's. "Think how sad we would be if you were snatched up like that fish, snatched up and never came back. That little trout has a mommy and daddy, too."

The sociological implications of trout fishing had never occurred to Manfred. He shook his head slowly. "Then we better let him go."

Lang turned to where Gurt was smoking a Marlboro under an oak tree and rubbing Grumps's muzzle, to the dog's obvious delight. Lang winked.

"You could have explained he is too small to keep." She nodded toward a discreet sign the hotel had posted specifying anything under ten inches had to be thrown back. "Or told him it is forbidden to keep such a fish."

Verboten, forbidden, was something the youngest German understood.

Lang would prefer to shield his son against regulations and the arbitrary rules of the law as long as possible. There was already enough unpleasantness in the child's world, what with a kidnapping attempt still fresh in his young mind.

"I like it better my way."

Manfred had watched the exchange. "Does it hurt the fish when we catch him?"

Lang could have explained the difference between warm-and cold-blooded animals or related some arcane argument of the animal rights nuts but decided on another tack. He was ready to give the piscine population a rest for a while. "Would a sharp hook in your mouth hurt?"

Manfred looked at the trout still flopping on the line and then at his father. "Please let him go." He handed the light rod to Lang. "I don't think I want to fish anymore."

Gurt ground out her cigarette. "It is nap time anyway."

Manfred started his usual protest but stopped in midsentence with a look from his mother.

Manfred stopped on the way back to the cottage, hand behind his back. "Daddy?"

Lang leaned down. "Yes?"

With a puff, the little boy sent a cloud of dandelion seeds into his father's face and ran, laughing. In a couple of steps, Lang had him, tickling. Then Lang grabbed a pod of dandelion seeds himself, dusting his son's face with them. Then Manfred found yet another. Grumps knew only that someone was having fun without him. He barked furiously.

"It would perhaps be good for all of you children to take a nap," Gurt observed dryly.

They reached the cottage, Lang holding hands with both Gurt and his son. He could not remember the last time he had been so happy.

He had arrived yesterday. Putting the Porsche through its paces on both interstate and mountain roads had shaken anyone attempting to follow. He had just pulled the car up in front of the cottage when the door exploded open and Manfred ran out, arms outstretched to embrace… Grumps.

Trying not to show his annoyance at playing second fiddle to the dog, Lang said to Gurt, who had arrived in a somewhat more leisurely fashion than her son, "I'm delighted Manfred and Grumps get along so."

Gurt had smiled that slow, sexy smile and given him a kiss so long Manfred and Grumps were vying for attention. "And did Grumps enjoy the mountain roads as much as did you?"

The truth was the Porsche was designed for serpentine highways but the dog was not. Twice Grumps had whined so loudly at Lang's driving that Lang had had to stop to let the distressed animal get out and throw up.

Lang changed the subject. "How long till he takes a nap? We have some catching up to do."

She had rolled her eyes. "You are badly timed. He just got up. I fear we must wait a while longer."

Lang had sighed his disappointment. "I brought a few toys."

Gurt shook her head in mock disapproval. "More important you brought him Grumps. You cannot bring gifts every time you come. It will make him rotten."

"Spoiled."

"That, too."

So his arrival had gone, topped with lovemaking so vigorous that night that, upon reflection, Lang wondered they had not awakened the boy. Today had begun with a large breakfast, a walk along shaded mountain paths and a picnic lunch, which had included a few treats for the dog. The fishing idea had been inspired when Manfred noted the supplies available to hotel and cottage guests.

They entered a good imitation of a genuine log cabin, complete with hooked rugs on rough planked floors, beamed ceilings and bent wood furniture, uniformly uncomfortable.

Gurt pointed. "Manfred, go get undressed for your nap."

Obediently, he trudged into a room off the living room, reappearing with a book in his hand which he held out to Lang. "Will you read to me?"

Paternal instinct versus lust for Gurt.

Oh, well, too few kids had interest in books these days, their parents substituting TV for literature.

Lang looked at the volume in his hand. Brothers Grimm. Aptly named. Evil trolls, child-eating witches. Stuff that would be PG-13 if made into movies. No wonder the German people had a dark side.

"Don't suppose you have a copy of Hans Christian Andersen?" he called toward the master bedroom.

"Sissy!" Gurt was standing in the doorway of the bedroom, a bathrobe doing little to conceal the fact it was all she had on.

What was the Grimm brothers' shortest story?

Leonardo da Vinci International Airport

Flumicino

0650 Local Time

Two Days Later

Lang was not surprised to be picked up by a tail the minute he cleared customs. He certainly had made it as easy as possible: an international flight on an airline rather than the Gulfstream booked in advance under his own name. He couldn't bring himself to check his bag and risk spending his time waiting while the airline conducted a fruitless search for luggage that, by that time, could well be in Singapore.

He wanted company.

He was almost certain he had identified his minder, a middle-aged man who had stood behind Lang in the line at the airport's rail terminal to buy a ticket into Rome. The last time Lang had seen an international traveler in coat and tie was when John Wayne nursed his crippled Constellation aircraft across part of the Pacific in The High and the Mighty on the late, late movie on TV.

Whatever the movie, the guy behind Lang wore a suit, albeit a cheap one, making himself as conspicuous as if he had worn a tutu. Certainly another amateur. He ordered his rail ticket in Italian, smiled at Lang and went over to the coffee bar to wait. Lang almost lost sight of him in the surge of embarking passengers swimming upstream against those getting off the train. Anywhere else, those boarding would have waited for the cars to empty. Well, maybe a New York subway… Lang's tail managed to wedge himself into the same car where he smiled again and stared out of the window.