Gregg Loomis - The Pegasus Secret

Lang chose a table outside a taverna and picked up an abandoned newspaper, over the top of which he could watch the shifting crowd of tourists taking pictures, artists selling paintings and entertainers seeking tips from an appreciative audience. He hoped he looked like one more Italian, whiling away an afternoon over a cup of espresso.

Gurt was hard to miss. She turned more heads than the American Chiropractic Association. She stood nearly six feet, pale honey hair caressing shoulders bared by a well filled tube top. She approached with long regal steps, designer sunglasses reflecting the sinking sun as her head turned back and forth, searching the piazza.

As she came closer, Lang was glad to see that ten-plus years had not changed the long face, angular chin and high cheekbones. She carried an aura of untouchability that made men keep their distance. Perhaps it was a dose of the arrogance for which her countrymen are noted.

Or a desire to invade France.

Either way, Lang could see her on German travel posters.

There had been a time when his fantasies had placed her in less public places.

She lowered her glasses long enough for her blue eyes to lock onto his before she resumed what appeared to be an idle glance around the piazza. She was waiting for him to make the first move, to let her know if it was safe to acknowledge each other.

Lang vaulted out of his seat and walked over to her, unable to keep a stupid grin off his face. Without having to lean over, he kissed her cheek.

"You look great, Gurt."

She returned his kiss with somewhat less enthusiasm. "So I am told."

He took her left hand, surprised at how gratified he was not to find a ring on it, and led her back to where his coffee cup and purloined newspaper waited. He reclaimed the table with a sudden sideways move that would have done credit to an NFL running back, earning glares from an American couple who had not yet learned that in securing taxis and taverna seats, quickness and daring are everything. Gurt sat with the ease of royalty assuming a throne, dug into an oversized handbag, and placed a pack of Marlboros on the table.

"I'm surprised you still smoke," Lang said.

She tapped a cigarette from the pack and lit it with a match. "How could I not? I am brain-laundered from all the ads your tobacco companies run here because they cannot show them in the States."

Not exactly true. A number of European countries had banned tobacco ads.

"Not good for your health, Gurt."

She let a stream of smoke drift from her nostrils and once again he was reminded of the golden years of cinema. And lung cancer.

"Smoking is not as unhealthy as the business you were in when I last saw you."

"Third Directorate, Intelligence?" Lang asked. "Biggest risk was getting poisoned by the food in the cafeteria."

"Or dropping a girl like a hot… cabbage?"

"Potato."

"Potato." Those blue eyes were boring into his so hard that Lang looked away.. "I wish I could say I regretted it. I fell in serious love with Dawn."

"And with me?"

"Just-as-serious lust."

She took another puff and waited for the server to take their order before taking a new line. "If the people back at the embassy knew I was meeting with a former, er, employee who, I am sure, wants something, I'd go Tolstoy."

Go Tolstoy, being required to fill reams of paper with details of anything that didn't fit routine, usually filled with self-serving fiction.

The waiter reappeared with two glasses of Brunello. The dying sun reflected from the red wine to paint spots of blood on the tabletop while they watched people watching people. Rome's favorite pastime. A battalion of Japanese followed their tour leader, a woman holding up a furled red umbrella like a battle flag. They broke ranks to photograph the magnificent Bernini marbles.

When her glass was half empty, Gurt spoke with a nonchalance so intensely casual Lang knew she had been straining not to ask before now. "You are divorced?"

"Not exactly."

He explained about Dawn, only partially successful in trying to relate her death in an emotionless narrative. Sometimes being a man isn't easy. Gurt picked upon the still-sharp grief, her eyes shimmering. The Germans are a sentimental lot. SS guards who had joked while exterminating women and children in the morning wept at Wagner's operas the same evening.

"I'm sorry, Lang," she said, her voice husky with sympathy. "I truly am."

She put a hand over his.

He made no effort to move it. "You never married?"

She gave a disdainful snort. "Marry who? You don't meet the best people in this job. Only lunatics."

"Could be worse," Lang quipped. "What if you were working for the penal system?"

She brightened. "There is such a thing?"

"Corrections, Gurt, the U.S. prison system."

"Oh." She sighed her disappointment. "Well, my not getting married is not why you are here. I think you want something."

He told her about Janet and Jeff and the man who had broken into his condo.

"Who are these people that would kill your sister and your nephew?"

"That's what I'm trying to find out."

They were quiet while the waiter refilled glasses.

When he departed, Lang took the copy of the Polaroid from a pocket and pushed it across the table. "If someone could tell me what the significance of this picture is, I might be on the way to finding the people responsible."

She stared at the picture as though she were deciphering a code. "The police in the States, they cannot help?"

He retrieved the picture. "I don't think so. Besides, this is personal."

"You were with the Agency long enough to learn revenge is likely to get you killed."

"Never said anything about revenge, just want to identify these people. The cops can take it from there." "Uh-huh," she said, not believing a word of it. "And how do you think I can help?"

"I need an introduction to a Guiedo Marcenni – a monk, I think. Anyway, he's in the Vatican Museum. Who does the Agency know in the Vatican these days?"

Lang remembered the well-kept secret that the Vatican had its own intelligence service. The Curia, the body charged with following the Pope's directives in the actual governance of the Church, maintained a cadre of information gatherers whose main functionaries were missionaries, parish priests or any other face the Church showed the public. Even though the service had not carried out a known assassination or violent (as opposed to political) sabotage since the Middle Ages, the very number of the world's Roman Catholics, their loyalty and, most importantly, the sacrament of confession, garnered information unavailable to the spies of many nations. Like similar organizations, the Agency frequently swapped tidbits with the Holy See.

Gurt fished another cigarette from the pack. "And what am I to tell my superiors? Why do I want to introduce a former agent to this monk?"

Lang watched her light up and inhale. "Simply a favor for an old friend, a friend who has specific questions about a piece of art he wishes to ask on behalf of a client."

"I will think about it."

They ordered bean soup and eggplant sautéed in olive oil along with a full bottle of wine.

As they finished, Lang said, "Gurt, there's something else you ought to know."

She glanced up from the small mirror she was using to repair her lipstick. "That you are wanted by the American police? Close your mouth, it is most unattractive hanging open. I saw the bulletin this afternoon."

One of the duties the Agency had assumed rather than face extinction upon the demise of its original enemy was cooperation with local authorities and Interpol in locating American fugitives abroad. The FBI, sensing a turf invasion, had protested loudly but futilely.

Lang felt his dinner lurch in his stomach. "You mean the Agency knows?"