Gregg Loomis - The Pegasus Secret

Ahead and to the right, the dome of Saint Peter's floated on a brown sea of smog, coolly serene above the mass confusion of early morning traffic. A right turn and the river was replaced by three-and four-story buildings, their worn stucco roseate in the early sunlight. He recognized the Piazza di Santa Maria di Trastavere by its Romanesque church. The small square was full of grandmothers pushing baby carriages and men unloading trucks. The neighborhood was groggy, stretching and yawning as it recovered from the previous evening. Tonight, dark would again send the older folks and children inside while jazz musicians, mimes, and the young swingers took their places. By night, this piazza was Bourbon Street, the Left Bank, anyplace funky.

The Opel dashed down an alley into which it barely fit and then came to an uncertain stop. Shabby buildings huddled around a small square paved with stones that could have been placed there centuries ago or yesterday. Shadows gave the area an ominous feeling as they stubbornly retreated from the morning.

Lang got out, paid the cabby too much and crossed the square, wondering if he could have chosen a better location. The trattoria he remembered had not yet opened but next to it the pensione was advertising a vacancy. He slammed the huge brass knocker twice against the massive panels of the door. From inside, bolts began to slide, one, two, three before the door groaned open on iron hinges.

Lang had forgotten the locks.

Either the city experienced a perpetual wave of burglaries or its citizens were fascinated with locks. It had not been unusual to have to open two or three to get into his hotel at night, another pair to access the proper floor and two or three more on each room. A guest in one of the smaller hotels, one which did not have a night clerk on duty, was weighted down by more keys than the average jailer.

"Si?"

Lang was looking at an old man, his frame so small Lang was surprised he could open the mammoth door.

"Una camera?" Lang asked. A room?

The old man inspected Lang carefully. Lang knew the look. The innkeeper was trying to guess how much he could charge for the room. Stepping aside, the old man motioned his potential guest inside. "Una camera. Si."

Lang was trying to disguise his American accent. "Con bagno?" With bath?

The old geezer had apparently decided Lang had potential above his average guests: students, the traveling poor. He shook his head, no, the room didn't come with a bath. "But come with me," he gestured.

Lang followed him up a dark staircase and down a hall to an open door. Inside, the furnishings were about what Lang would have expected of a pensione: double bed, its sheets and pillows rolled at the foot; a dresser against the wall, its imitation wood veneer scarred by cigarette burns. Above it hung a mirror in a plastic frame. An armoire, also with a mirror, matched the dresser only in age.

Lang crossed over· to the single window and was delighted to find himself looking down into a courtyard, one of those Roman surprises hidden from the noise and grime of the street. Like many such places, this one had been turned into a compact and fertile vegetable patch, an Italian specialty. Even though it was only April, round red tomatoes peeped out from lush vines. Some eggplants already bore purple fruit. There were greens Lang didn't recognize along with the basil and oregano without which no Italian garden is complete.

The old man spewed out words so fast Lang would have had a hard time understanding him even if he had been fluent in the language. Lang surmised he was describing the amenities of the room.

"Non parlo Italiano," Lang said sadly as though admitting one of his life's greater failures. "Sprechen Sie Deutsch?"

Being German would explain the edge Lang had put on what little Italian he had spoken. After years in Bonn, Frankfurt and Munich, Lang's. German was pretty good.

There were a number of other reasons to assume a German identity.

The old man shook his head, reappraising his guest. Lang guessed he might well be old enough to remember the German-Italian Axis, Hitler and Mussolini. The Italians did not find it inconsistent to recall II Duce as a builder of roads, the only man ever to make the trains run on time, while blaming the devastation of their country on Hitler. In fact, the anniversary of the collapse of the Fascista was a holiday every April, called Liberation Day. The national pretense was that the people themselves had had nothing to do with World War II. True or not, the old hotelkeeper was not likely to admit he knew the language of the country's former oppressors.

Neither historic revision of Orwellian proportions nor the more recent Common Market had reduced the awe with which the Italians regarded the German people. Teutonic trains ran to the precise second; their automobiles were reliable and their economy and government stable. Germans were not like Italians.

Even more distinct was the German's lack of interest in the haggling that was part of every Italian purchase. Lang could see the disappointment in the old man's eyes as he stepped into the hall to display what he considered the room's most salable feature: it was adjacent to the guest bath.

With a gesture, Lang declined his host's offer to inspect the facility. Lang had seen enough bagno to anticipate he would stand and use the shower hose rather than sit in a tub that might receive a weekly cleaning.

Lang nodded. He would take the room.

"Quotidano?" Would Lang pay by the day?

"Si."

The innkeeper named a number, disappointed when Lang's lack of reaction indicated he had started too low. He held out his hand for Lang's passport. Like most European countries, Italy required establishments renting rooms by the night to make records of their guests' nationality papers, information entered into a computer by the local police and checked against lists of wanted criminals and other undesirables such as suspected terrorists or couples staying together without benefit of clergy.

"Ho una ragazza," Lang said with a salacious wink. I have a girlfriend. Lang tendered several large bills in excess of the night's rent.

Lang didn't have to be fluent in the language to read the old man's mind as he inspected the cash and leered, communicating his understanding of illicit romance with a wink. This guest, he was thinking, is a German and therefore wealthy. He wants only to spend a night or two with a woman not his wife without the potential inconvenience of that fact being stored in endless government records. The question was not one of morality but of economics. How large would be the bribe to the local police to forget this minor infraction of an onerous law that did nothing but invade personal freedom anyway?

Such questions were frequent in Italian business.

Lang headed for the stairs, pretending to be leaving, before the old man grudgingly agreed to accept what had been offered. He handed Lang a ring of keys along with another incomprehensible string of Italian and left the floor, his muttering trailing up the stairs behind him like malodorous smoke from a cheap cigar.

Lang locked the door and stretched out on the bed. Through the open window, the sharp noises of traffic were smoothed into a sleepy drone. He inhaled the fragrance of freshly turned earth mixed with a bouquet of herbs.

He thought of Janet and Jeff.

In less than a minute, he was asleep.

Portugal

0827 hours the same day

Hundreds of miles away, at about the same time Langford's plane touched down, fog swirled against rippled and nearly opaque windowpanes, condensing into tiny rivers of silver that ran along the leaded edge of each piece of ancient glass. The mist, not yet dissipated by a monochromatic sun, made gray stone resemble a grainy black-and-white photograph.