The Julian Secret (Lang Reilly Thrillers) (24 page)

She disappeared behind the door.

Francis stood, smiling. “Mrs. Pratt. Been the Church
secretary forever. If she didn’t know you were in here, it’s the first thing she’s missed since Sherman left this as the only building in town he didn’t torch. I’ve got souls to save. We’ll have to finish this later.”

Outside, the Mercedes’s theft alarm had quit for the moment.

Atlanta, Georgia
Park Place, 2660 Peachtree Road
That evening

Lang sat at the breakfast bar that divided living area from the condo’s kitchen. In front of him were spread half a dozen pages from a yellow legal pad, each covered with variations of the inscription.

“Emperor Julian orders the King of the Jews indicted at the palace of the sole god?”

That left an extra verb.

“. . . The King of the Jews entombed and indicted at the palace of the one god?”

That made no sense. As Francis had noted, three hundred years too late.

The cogs of the mind, like any other wheels, turned better when oiled, and what better lubricant than a little application of single-malt scotch? Lang got down from
the bar stool and went over to the Thomas Elfe secretary, one of the few pieces that had survived Charleston’s premier cabinetmaker and even fewer that had made the cut when Lang moved after Dawn died. The bottom served as a repository for Lang’s better liquors.

As he straightened up, he noticed Grumps’s eyes following his movements. This was the first day since Lang had returned from France that the dog had not conducted a room-by-room search for Gurt. Apparently aware that she wasn’t coming back, the dog had become listless, even uninterested in his food.

Well, if not uninterested,
less
interested. He still cleaned the bowl; it just took him longer.

Maybe he could use a little company.

Lang returned to the bar and used the remote to turn on the television in hopes that the sound of a feminine voice might perk Grumps up, even if it was electronically generated. Filling a glass with ice, he poured two fingers of amber liquid and sat back down at the bar.

“. . . Now is the time, America, before it is too late.”

Lang glanced into the face of Harold Straight. His blue eyes were as hard as diamond chips and there was something mesmerizing about him that made disbelief difficult.

“If we allow the mutinationalists, the one-worlders, to continue their plan to eradicate our individuality . . .”

Lang stared a long time at the face, watching until the thirty-second ad dissolved to strains of “God Bless America.” Not only was the man spellbinding, he was . . .

What?

As an employee of the Agency, a memory for faces had been a basic survival tool, an ability created by hours spent viewing hundreds of photographs, of which only one or two were repetitive but in different settings. The students of the school had to identify not only the faces
seen before but the background as well. The woman in a hat standing outside a movie theater, a man’s profile in a car now looking full face. The woman without a hat in front of a blur. The man quarter view outside a store, now wearing a baseball cap.

Lang had seen Straight somewhere.

But where?

Lang shook his head. Unlikely. Straight had been governor of one of those states where there are only two seasons, July and winter, some ice-bound part of mid-America that Lang had never visited. Minnesota, Wisconsin, somewhere. Some rogue neuron’s spark plugs misfiring along its dendrite somewhere in the brain, the same malfunction that makes our memory certain we have been somewhere before when we know we have not.

Lang took a sip of scotch and returned to the puzzle of Julian’s inscription, oblivious to the television.

Harold Straight wouldn’t go away.

More pressing matters finally prevailed. He reached for the phone on the wall over the counter and punched in a number.

Francis answered.

Without introduction, Lang said, “Okay, I’ve given you every chance to figure this thing out so as not to embarrass you.”

“Embarrass me. What does it say?”

“Emperor Julian orders that the indictment of the King of the Jews be interred in the palace of the one god.”

There was an audible sigh. “That’s gibberish.”

“No, that’s jealousy that you didn’t properly translate. Every other preposition,
to, of, by
, et cetera, simply doesn’t work.
In
does.”

“But why would you inter an indictment?” the priest wanted to know.

“Ask your pal Greenberg. If he was right and Christ
was as much revolutionary as prophet, making such a charge would certainly have humiliated the early church he so hated. Would make a brawler out of the Prince of Peace. I gotta think Julian would have gotten some yuks outta that.”

“Okay,” Francis said slowly, “but burying it doesn’t seem a way to have the word get around. If putting the church down was your man Julian’s gig, burying such a document makes no sense.”

Both men were quiet for a moment before Lang said, “That would depend on how and where it was buried.”

“Which brings us to the palace of the one god,” Francis said.

Lang picked up his glass and took a generous swallow before asking, “Any ideas where that might be?”

“The temple at Jerusalem comes to mind,” Francis’s disembodied voice said. “Trouble is, the temple was leveled long before Julian came along.”

“What about the Vatican?” Lang asked. “Constantine built a papal palace there before Julian came to power.”

There was a brief silence. Lang visualized Francis rubbing his chin in thought. Then: “Could be.”

“But where? I mean, Constantine’s palace, or what was left of it, was allowed to fall into near ruin, then rebuilt in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The indictment, if there really was one, wouldn’t be something the church would display in the papal museum. It probably crumbled to dust a thousand years ago.”

Francis said, “If so, somebody’s going to a lot of trouble for dust. Were I you, I’d consider searching whatever part of the present Vatican predates the reconstruction.”

Lang had never considered that possibility. “You know more about the Papal State than I do.”

There was an audible sigh. “Okay. Make yourself comfortable while I instruct the ignorant heathen.

“Being an ancient-history freak, I’m sure you know the Romans liked to build their circuses at the bottom of inclines. Originally, the Vatican was just the name of one of the city’s seven hills, like the Aventina, Laterail, Esquiline, and so forth. The Circus Maximus was at the foot of another. The slope provided natural grandstands for the thousands who turned out for chariot races. This particular circus, the Vatican, was well outside the ancient city’s walls and was in a swampy marsh, complete with snakes and malaria until it became a place of entertainment. Since the land was unusable for most purposes, the hill was used to build tombs, a use that continued even after the Circus was built.”

“Fascinating, but
Quicade praecipie esto brevis
.”

“Hush or I’ll send you to the principal’s office. The Apostle Peter was brought to Rome, Nero’s Circus located at the base of Vatican Hill, for public execution. You may recall he insisted on being crucified upside down, the honor of dying like Christ being too great for him. The Romans accommodated his request.

“Legend has it that Peter was buried among the scattered tombs on the hillside, and that years later when the Emperor Constantine made Christianity Rome’s official religion, he built the first papal palace on the place Peter was supposedly buried.

“Within fifty years of Peter’s death, the area became a necropolis, a city of tombs for the dead. A number of the tombs became the outside wall of the original Pope’s palace, unmovable without bringing down the entire structure.

“If your guy Julian was as big a joker as you say, what better laugh than to have something potentially embarrassing to the Church actually buried, or entombed, in a support wall?”

The remainder of Lang’s scotch sat at his elbow, untouched. “This necropolis—is it open to the public? Dawn and I spent an entire day at the Vatican and I don’t recall it. Is it in that lower level where the Popes are buried?”

“Below that, I think. The necropolis is open, but only by reservation with the Vatican Archaeological Office.”

“Use your influence—see how soon you can get me in.”

“I understand all admittance is by guided tour. You’re not going to have a chance to explore on your own.”

Lang grinned. “You take care of getting me in. I’ll take care of any unauthorized exploration. If I can find the indictment, whatever it is, I may find out why somebody is willing to kill to keep me from it. I’ll see how quick I can get to Rome.”

The room was featureless. Only a door marked the four gray walls. Brilliant overhead lights sanitized shadows from the corners. The only furnishings were a metal desk and office chair, the latter filled by the room’s sole occupant, a man intent on a series of monitors.

A sequence of letters marched across one screen, an electronic transcript of the words coming through the man’s headset at the same time: “I may find out why somebody is willing to kill . . .”

Without looking away from the procession of words, he picked up the receiver of a surprisingly ordinary-looking phone. “He’s planning on going, all right.”

“All as planned,” came the reply.

Law Offices of Langford Reilly
229 Peachtree Street
The next morning

Lang sat, his back to his desk, facing the window with a view of the street below, a view of which he was unaware at the moment. Instead, he saw a face, the face he had dreamed of last night. Or, at least, he thought he’d dreamed it.

Either way, he had awakened as suddenly as a cork’s pop from a champagne bottle. He had jerked to a sitting position in bed, uncertain exactly what had roused him so abruptly. Then he remembered the question in his mind earlier that evening. His subconscious had evidently retained the query, resolving it suddenly, like a flash, remembering where you left the car keys or an errand temporarily forgotten.

But the answer at best made no sense, and at worse
was downright insane. Still, Lang had trusted even less rational impulses and been thankful for it.

Scowling at his inability to simply forget the matter, Lang reached for the phone and dialed a number from memory.

“Yeah?” The answer was characteristically abrupt.

“Charlie?” Lang asked. “You doing anything in the next day or two?”

Charlie Clough. Disbarred lawyer, thrice divorced, total failure in everything. Except getting information that most people assumed didn’t exist. Shortly after the State Bar of Georgia had seen fit to remove Attorney Charles M. Clough from its rolls, Charlie had visited nearly every criminal lawyer in the Atlanta area, seeking work as an investigator. More from sympathy than expectation, Lang had given Charlie the task of locating a witness in an upcoming trial who had successfully evaded service of a subpoena. Predictably, the county sheriff’s department had given up after one halfhearted attempt. They were, after all, far too underpaid and overworked to do anything not related to raising pay and lowering hours. The firm Lang normally used to locate reluctant witnesses spent a week and an inordinate amount of his client’s money before coming up empty.

Charlie found the man, followed his car, and handed him the subpoena at a stoplight.

“Of course I’m doing something,” Charlie growled. “You think I’m some rich lawyer, can afford to sit around on my ass?”

And what an ass. At over three hundred pounds, Charlie had his suits made specially, probably by Omar the Tent-Maker. Airlines insisted he buy two seats, an added expense since he refused to fly any way but first class.

“I got a job for you. Airfare, expenses, a grand a day.”

“I gotta kill who?”

“Not that difficult. I want some public records examined.”

Charlie was instantly skeptical. “Public records? Most states, you can call ‘em up on your computer.”

Lang nodded to the unseen Charlie. “That’s the point. I have reason to believe the public part of these records may have been altered. I want you to sniff around, take a look at the actual hard copies, see if there’s anything suspicious.”

There was a sigh. “Lemme get something to write on. Okay, shoot.”

Lang told him.

“You nuts? You think I can find anything hasn’t already been looked at, examined, and generally gone over?”

“A grand a day, Charlie.”

“Can’t get on it till next week,” the investigator said crossly.

“That’s fine.”

It was only after he hung up that Lang realized Charlie hadn’t even asked to whom he was speaking.

Lang had come to the office an hour sooner than usual to make sure he arrived before Sara, his secretary, ostensibly to see what needed to be handled before he left. The earliness of his arrival was confirmed by the fact that the daily phalanx of aggressive panhandlers were still asleep in doorways, in bus stop booths, and on park benches. The city evidently believed the streets, doorways, and parks belonged equally to all, but those who slept, drank, and relieved themselves there were more equal than others.

Gratified he had succeeded in arriving before Sara, Lang reached into his center desk drawer. His fingers fumbled until there was a click and the false back came
out in his hand. Reaching back into the drawer, Lang removed what could have passed for an ordinary cell phone. He had taken the device, along with the Sig Sauer, when he left the Agency. The IACD, intra-agency communicating device, was actually a radio using the Agency’s exclusive satellite to reach, with the push of a single button, the person represented by a three-letter identifier no matter where on the globe their location. All conversations were automatically scrambled and sorted out on the other end. Although ordinary by today’s rapidly changing technology, the thing had been a marvel fifteen years ago. It still had the advantage of allowing Lang to reach old comrades direct.