Gregg Loomis - The Coptic Secret

That priest had been the American, Langford Reilly. He was certain of it.

He fought the temptation to attempt a U-turn, aware such a move would likely be fatal even with his siren and lights hidden in the grille turned on. Instead, he pulled his cell phone from its holder on his belt and scrolled down before punching in a number. He ignored the chorus of horns behind him.

He identified himself, then, "I want you to check the immigration records for the last three months for Langford Reilly, an American. He should have entered the country recently, but more important, I want the date he entered before. Entry and exit."

He listened for a moment of protest.

"I don't care if the office is closed until 1600; the computer records aren't!"

He pushed the disconnect button among a cavalcade of more excuses.

If he were right, if Lang Reilly had been in the country when the shooting took place-and the Greek priest subsequently found dead-the American would have a lot more questions to answer.

Via Campania

An Hour Later

The safe house Jacob had managed to scrounge from his former colleagues on short notice was no more than a third-floor suite of three rooms, a bath and a tiny kitchen. Were it not for the tedious sameness shared by safe houses, Lang could have sworn this was the apartment he had shared with Jacob and Gurt for a few days during the Pegasus affair. Through a pair of grime-streaked windows, he could see just over the top of the ancient city wall, where a strip of green denoted the park of the Villa Borghese, the only thing remotely cheerful in sight.

Two chairs and a sofa that Goodwill would have rejected were placed against walls bare of any decoration other than cracks in the plaster. A wooden table, its surface scarred by cigarette burns, stood forlornly between the main room and a two-burner stove, sink and small refrigerator that seemed to be gasping its last breaths.

Lang was thankful they would be there only a few hours. Jacob seemed to be taking contentment from his pipe, which he had smoked continually since their arrival.

The place was not only dismal, now it stunk.

Jacob looked at his watch. "Suppose the inspector has made the connection by now?"

Lang tossed down a two-month-old copy of Der Spiegel." I wouldn't have wanted to hang around the hotel and find out."

Jacob gently puffed a smoke ring. It shimmered across the floor before dissolving against a table leg. "Too bad we can't be at the airport. If he's noodled out who you are, the place will be rife with coppers. Bright idea, that: making reservations on the next flight back to Atlanta."

"Should keep him busy while we attend to unfinished business. Tell me again, what time will the visiting members of the council be at the Vatican?"

"1900. I'd say give it an hour to make sure it's dark."

Piazza della Rotonda

Sole al Pantheon

At the Same Time

The two policeman stood at the desk shifting their weight from foot to foot.

Deputy Chief Police Inspector Hanaratti leaned over to put his face as close to the clerk's as possible. "Checked out? The man said he would be here a few more days!"

He looked at Manicci, who attested to the truth of the statement with a nod.

Unruffled, the desk clerk thumbed his guest ledger. "He was scheduled to stay." He shrugged, his expression saying the coming and going of guests was hardly his affair. "Then he and his friend asked for their passports and checked out unexpectedly."

"Did he say where they were going?" Hanaratti asked.

"One of them told the cabdriver to take them to the airport."

"They have not arrived there, yet," Manicci said. "I have a number of men waiting for them." He smiled the smile of a man way ahead in the game. "I ran Reilly's name through reservations lists. He has a return flight to Atlanta, Georgia, via New York this evening."

Skeptical, Hanaratti checked his watch. "They have had time to get to Flumicino." He turned back to the clerk. "Do you know this driver?"

"Of course, Inspector. The hotel would not enlist someone it did not know to serve our guests."

Or who would not pay a fee for the referral.

"Call this cabdriver. I wish to speak to him," Hanaratti ordered.

A few minutes later, he put down the phone. "The driver says the two changed their minds and instructed him to drop them off at Stazione Termini."

"They could be on a train headed almost anywhere," observed Manicci, always a spokesman for the obvious.

Hanaratti thought for a moment. "Call headquarters. Find out every train that has departed in the last hour and a half. Have the local polizia board each at the next stop."

"And how will Reilly and his companion be identified?" Manicci asked. "We have no pictures of them."

The senior inspector hadn't thought of that. "Every male passenger from twenty-five to fifty will have to show papers if it comes to it."

Manicci could only imagine the bureaucratic turf war with Ferrovie dello Stato, the Italian state railway, that would ignite.

Questure di Aventine

(Aventine Precinct Police Station)

Via di Son Teodoro

Two Hours Later

Deputy Chief Inspector Hanaratti stood behind a series of desks where computers blinked as they scrolled lists. The national railway agency had been surprising cooperative. Or at least they had not been obstructionist. It had been the local police stations that had balked. Only a connection with a higher up in the Carabiniere, the national military police, had produced the manpower to board each of more than a dozen trains. That favor would cost the deputy chief inspector dearly.

So far, the search had produced two Bulgarians who had entered the country illegally, one man with a warrant outstanding for a minor crime and a woman smuggling cigarettes. Hardly a major war against crime. Manicci's men at the airport had lingered until after the flight on which Reilly had reservations had departed.

The net was, so far, empty.

Hanaratti lit his first cigarette in three years, ignoring the signs depicting a cigarette with a red line drawn through it. The first puff made him giddy. Perhaps it was the tobacco that gave him the idea.

"Manicci," he said. "The airline reservation was intended to throw us off the trail, do you not agree?"

Unsurprisingly, the junior inspector did.

"Why, then, would not getting off at Termini also be intended to mislead?"

Manicci was not one to risk giving answers that might conflict with what a superior had in mind. "But, then how would this Reilly man and his companion leave the city? We have sent warnings to the rental car agencies."

Well, perhaps the registered ones. A number of entrepreneurs rented a selection of automobiles out of storefronts or their homes to evade the numerous and burdensome taxes.

"I was thinking," Hanaratti continued, "they might not have left Rome at all."

"Quite possible," Manicci agreed, trying not to make a show of fanning away the cigarette smoke. "But to what end?"

Hanaratti dropped the smoldering butt into a coffee cup, where it hissed angrily. "We do not yet know. The only real connection Reilly has here was the rental car."

"In which he was going to visit Hadrian's villa."

The senior inspector nodded, a teacher encouraging a not-so-bright pupil. "Perhaps, perhaps not. Perhaps he was the one who drove the car to the place it was destroyed."

"To what end? He could have been killed"

"But he wasn't."

Manicci knew better than to ask the point of his superior's rambling. He said nothing.

"Perhaps he had a reason to have the car so shot up. Or a reason to have it where it was."

"Do we know what that might be?" Manicci ventured.