Gregg Loomis: The Pegasus Secret

"Let's say it is personal. I have a friend, an old acquaintance in the States, who asked me to meet his sister, show her around Paris. She was staying with a schoolmate in number 26. Someone I had introduced her to called, said he had heard there was trouble here. So I came."

The fireman rubbed a grubby hand across his forehead. "If she was in there… Well, it will take our forensic people a few days to identify whatever's left, probably have to do it by DNA."

The security man sighed as his shoulders slumped. "I don't look forward to making that phone call." The fireman nodded sympathetically. "Give me your card. I'll personally see to it you get a copy of the report."

"Thank you." Louvere gave one final glance at the gaping cavern that only hours before had been one of the most desirable residences in Paris. Shoulders stooped as though bearing the weight of the world, he walked past the yellow fire trucks that seemed like living animals with each breath-like stroke of their pumps. A short way down the narrow street, a Peugeot was waiting at the curb.

Paris

Three days later

The driver reached over the seat to shake his passenger awake. The man in the backseat of the taxi looked even more worn than most Americans the cabby picked up at Charles de Gaulle after a transatlantic flight: clothes rumpled, shirt wrinkled, face unshaven. Once the man was awake, his eyes were the true sign of weariness. Red rimmed as though from a combination of grief and lack of sleep, they had a stare that seemed to focus on something a thousand miles away until he started counting out euros.

Stuffing the bills in his pocket, the driver watched the man enter a nondescript building across from the Place de l'Opera.

Inside, the American passed antique elevators to climb worn steps to the second floor where he turned right and stopped. In front of him was what appeared to be an unmarked old-fashioned glass door. He knew the single translucent pane was the hardest bulletproof glass available. Slowly he lifted his head to stare at the ceiling where he was sure shadows concealed a camera. Noiselessly, the door slid open and he entered a small chamber facing yet another door, this one made of steel.

"Oui?" a woman's voice asked through a speaker. "Langford Reilly to see Patrick Louvere," the man said in English. "He's expecting me."

As noiselessly as the first, the second door opened and Lang Reilly entered one of many offices of France 's security force. In front of him stood a man in a dark, Italian-cut suit. The shirt was crisp and the shoes reflected the ceiling lights. In years past, Lang and Dawn had joked that Patrick Louvere must change his clothes several times a day to look so fresh.

Louvere regarded Lang a moment through heavily lidded eyes, eyes that had always reminded Lang of a basset hound. "Langford!" he exclaimed, continuing in nearly accentless English as he embraced· his guest. "It has been, what? Ten, fifteen years? Too long for friends to be apart."

He stepped back, a hand still on each of Lang's arms. "You should have called. We could have sent a car." Lang nodded. "A cab seemed the quickest way, but thanks." The Frenchman dropped his hands. "I cannot tell you how sorry…"

"I appreciate that, Patrick, but can we get started?"

Louvere was not offended by what most of his countrymen would have considered brusqueness. Americans were famous for getting to the point. "But of course!" He turned and spoke to someone Lang could not see. "Coffee, please, Paulette. This way, Lang."

Lang followed him down a hall. It had been almost twenty years since he had last been here but other than newer carpet, as cheap and institutional as before, little had changed.

Happily, neither had his relationship with Patrick Louvere. Although their respective governments had frequent differences-the most vocal being the war with Iraq -the American and the Frenchman had remained steadfast friends. Patrick had gladly volunteered to do whatever he could for Lang's sister, Janet, during her visit with a former school chum in Paris. Since Janet was bringing her adopted son, Jeff, the Frenchman had insisted on taking the young boy into his own home daily to play with his own children while Janet and her friend prowled the shops of Rue du Faubourg St. Honoré. It had been Patrick's phone call that had shattered Lang's world for a second time.

The DGSE man ushered Lang into the same office he remembered and slid behind a desk clear of anything other than a slender file folder. Almost immediately, a middle aged woman appeared with a coffee service and began to set cups on the desk. Although he felt he had consumed a tanker load of the stuff lately, Lang was too tired to protest.

"So, you are a lawyer now?" Patrick asked, obviously making conversation until the men could be alone: "You sue the big American companies for millions of dollars, no?"

Lang shook his head. "Actually, I do white-collar criminal defense."

The Frenchman pursed his lips. "White-collar? Criminal?" He looked as distressed as if he had been forced to mention the words "Australian" and "wine" in the same sentence. "You defend criminals with white collars?"

"You know, crimes that involve business executives. Nonviolent: embezzlement, fraud, that sort of thing."

"The kind of criminal that can pay your fee."

"Exactly."

The woman left the room, closing the door behind her, and Patrick slid the folder across the polished desk top. Lang looked at it without touching it. "Still no idea who or why?" Patrick shook his head sadly. "No, none. We found strong traces of aluminum, iron oxide and a nitrogen accelerant."

"Thermite? Jesus, that's not something some nutcase cooks up in his basement like a fertilizer bomb, that's what the military uses to destroy tanks, armor, something requiring intense heat."

"Which accounts for how quickly the building burned."

Patrick was avoiding the subject of Lang's main concern. The news, therefore, was going to be bad. Lang swallowed hard. "The occupants… you found…?"

"Three, as I told you on the phone I was certain we would. Your sister, her adopted son and their hostess, Lettie Barkman."

Lang had known it was coming, but the irrational part of his mind had held a flicker of hope that somehow Janet and Jeff had not been there. It was like hearing a death sentence at the end of a trial where the result was a foregone conclusion. It just couldn't be possible, not in a sane world. Instead of Patrick across the desk, he saw Janet, her eyes twinkling in amusement at a world she refused to take seriously. And Jeff, the child his divorced sister had found in one of those fever-ridden countries south of Mexico, Jeff with the brown skin, dark eyes and profile that could have been taken from a Mayan carving. Jeff with his baseball cap turned backwards, over-sized shorts and high-top sneakers. Jeff, Lang's ten-year-old best buddy and as close as Lang would ever come to having a son.

Lang did nothing to wipe away the tears running down his cheek. "Who would want to…?"

From somewhere Patrick produced a handkerchief. "We don't know. The Barkman woman was a rich American divorcee living in Paris, but as far as we can tell, she had no ties to political extremists. In fact, we can find no one among her friends who even knows what her politics were. Your sister was a doctor, a…"

"Juvenile orthopedist," Lang supplied. "She spent a month out of every year working in third-world countries where her patients couldn't afford medical care. Jeff was orphaned by an earthquake. She brought him home."

"She also was divorced, was she not?"

Lang leaned forward to stir his coffee. It gave him something to do with hands that seemed useless in his lap. "Yeah, guy named Holt. We haven't heard from him since they split seven, eight years ago. She kept his name 'cause that's the one on her medical degree."