The Coptic Secret Read online

  The Egyptian Room. Jewelry, Coptic art, even a reconstruction of a chariot, its metal dully reflecting the indistinct low-wattage night-lights above. The thing was complete with reins and a quiver of javelins. Only the horses and men were missing.

  Lang slid into the room.

  The chamber reverberated with a shot and plaster inches from his head burst into shards that buzzed past like an angry swarm of bees, stinging his face.

  Lang dived under the chariot just as another shot placed his assailant at the far end of the room.

  Lang wished the Egyptians had been less efficient in constructing war machines. The cab of the chariot was barely large enough for a driver and archer or spearman. The front was mere framework. The ancient vehicle was constructed to be light and, therefore, fast. The corollary of the design was that it gave little or no cover.

  And the man with the gun knew it.

  There wasn't enough light to see the gunman but Lang could clearly hear footsteps on the marble floor, footsteps that reached the other side of Lang's scanty hiding place.

  He searched what he could see of the exhibit hail for an escape route that would not make him a clear target.

  There was none.

  He was going to have to do something and do it now.

  The footsteps paused and Lang moved.

  Rolling from under the chariot, Lang sprang to his knees and shoved. The fragile cart tipped over.

  Lang had a blurred vision of a man instinctively throwing a protective hand across his face.

  The hand had a gun in it.

  Just before the display shattered on the floor, Lang snatched at the quiver, grabbing one of the sharp-tipped spears with his left hand. After quickly transferring the weapon to his right, he drew his arm back to its full length then slung the shaft, shimmering and whining, through the air.

  The gunman had risen to his knees, leveling his weapon when the bronze tip hit him squarely in the stomach. Lang heard two things: a shocked grunt and the sound of a butcher's cleaver hacking meat from a carcass.

  The gunman dropped his pistol and staggered to his feet, using both hands to grasp the long shaft. He had an expression of total disbelief as he sank back to the floor as though in prayer before pitching forward, snapping the lance's haft with the crack of old dry wood.

  Lang made a dive for the gun, clutching it as he rolled over into darker shadows in case one of the man's companions was nearby.

  There was silence for perhaps a second.

  Then Jacob appeared, holding a curved sword with a notched tip peculiar to ancient Egypt. He looked down at the crumpled form and turned it over with his foot. "Dare say th' poor sod's the first to die from one of Pharaohs spears in the last millennium or so."

  Lang got to his feet. "Likely, but we need to find the others." He held up the gun, for the first time recognizing it as a Walther PPK, James Bond's weapon of choice. Dated and comparatively small bore but easily concealed. "At least we aren't unarmed anymore. Let's go!"

  Jacob put a cautionary hand on Lang's arm. "Don't be so bloody hasty. The odds are still in those blokes' favor."

  As quickly as caution would permit, they crossed the Egyptian exhibit and entered a large, empty room. A ceiling-high lifting door identified it as loading space. When he pushed on a smaller door under a lighted exit sign, Lang was surprised to find it unlocked.

  Perhaps the way the gunmen had entered?

  He stared out into Montague Place, the street at the rear of the museum. The sound of a car speeding away from the curb drew his attention to the outlines of the trees in Russell Square.

  It was too dark to identify the make or model, but it had its lights out.

  Lang exhaled heavily, like someone coming down from the adrenaline high of a losing race.

  "They got the sodding book," Jacob said through teeth now clenched around the forbidden pipe. "What th' bleedin' hell did they want with your friend Eon?"

  Lang turned to go back into the building. He planned to check the body on the floor for identification, even though he was certain he would find none.

  "I'm afraid we'll know soon enough," he said.

  The body was, as anticipated, bare of identity.

  Almost.

  One packet contained a small wadded bit of paper. The dead man probably was unaware it was there. Lang spread it out on the cold marble of the floor next to the body, squinting in the stingy light.

  "I suppose you found the lad's driving permit. Maybe his national health card." Jacob was peering over his shoulder.

  Lang held it up. "Too faded to read, some kind of a card. A receipt, perhaps?"

  Jacob sniffed. "Not likely the chit from the dining room at the Dorchester." He leaned closer, taking it in his hand. "Looks like ... like part of a boarding pass."

  "A boarding pass?"

  "Yes." He turned to catch a different angle of light. "See, you can make out a date and a flight number."

  "Swell. Now all we have to do is match an airline with it. Should be no more than a thousand or so scheduled carriers to check."

  Jacob handed it back to Lang. "Your bleedin' gratitude is humbling. It's a sight better than nothing."

  But not much.

  II.

  #17 Paul Street

  Wapping

  London

  1906 Hours

  Inspector Dylan Fitzwilliam had expected the call ever since the immigration people had called him yesterday.

  The American, Langford Reilly, was back in London. Every time Mr. Reilly had visited London, some sort of mayhem followed as surely as a contrail behind a jet aircraft. That was why the inspector had a standing request to be notified when Mr. Reilly's passport was swiped through the machine at Heathrow or Gatwick or he appeared under some other name on the face-recognition technology. Admittedly, Mr. Reilly had always been cleared of any crime but he bore watching just the same.

  And now, like the bad penny, he was back.

  Someone was going to die.

  After finishing dinner and settling in front of the telly, Fitzwilliam had dared hope this once Mr. Reilly would depart the UK without coming to the attention of the police. After all, Reilly had been observed visiting some medical supply houses, no doubt on behalf of his foundation, and tonight seemed harmless enough, some affair at the British Museum. With any luck at all, the damn Yank would go back to wherever it was he came from before the bodies started piling up.

  But that faint wish had evaporated like smoke the minute the telephone clattered.

  A robbery and kidnapping?

  Two casualties, one a guard employed by the museum and the other one of the kidnappers? He was less than surprised to learn the latter had died by Reilly's hand. And Sir Eon Weatherston-Wilby was apparently kidnapped. One of the country's best-known philanthropists.

  The media would be on this like another scandal at Buckingham Palace. The difference was that Scotland Yard didn't get pressure when one of the royals acted like Euro- trash.

  The inspector felt a migraine coming on, that headache that only Langford Reilly seemed to precipitate.

  He got up with a resigned sigh and went to the hall closet. Through the Sheetrock, he could hear the Wilsons arguing again on their side of the semidetached.

  "Going out, dear?" Shandon, his wife, asked from the kitchen. "Will you be long?"

  "I doubt I'll be any shorter," he replied glumly, the hoary joke they shared.

  His mood was not improved when he had to wait a good quarter hour for Patel, his immediate assistant and driver, to pull to the curb. As usual, the man had filled the small BMW with the smell of curry. Nor did Fitzwilliam's disposition improve when the dark face broke into its perpetual grin as though the man enjoyed having his evenings interrupted.

  "The British Museum, sah?"

  Fitzwilliam swallowed a retort, realizing it would be lost on Patel. "Yes, yes. The museum."

  Two blocks of Great Russell Street and Montague Place were blocked off with yellow crime scene tap
e as was all of Russell Square. Floodlights illuminated the small park with a harsh glare, the edges of which blended into the blue and red flashes of police cars. If anyone in Bloomsbury didn't already know a crime had been committed, they had to be blind and deaf.

  Inside, the uniforms had prevented anyone from leaving, a splendid case of securing the barn door long after the horse's departure. Two policemen were seated at a small table in the great court, taking names and addresses of possible witnesses whose interviews would consume days.

  "Where's Mr. Reilly?" Fitzwilliam asked one of the constables at the door.

  The man pointed, "Right over there, sir."

  Fitzwilliam had never seen the man in person before but recognized him from his image on the cameras at Heathrow as well as at least one wanted poster from a foreign country. He watched as a short, redheaded woman in a police uniform took down whatever was being said.

  The American was not as tall as the inspector had imagined, shy of two meters. Dark hair with dove wings of silver brushed over the ears. His tuxedo had obviously been tailored; it fit him perfectly. He seemed intent on what he was saying, completely unruffled by killing a man. With a spear, if Fitzwilliam's information was correct.

  The man next to him was the Jewish barrister, Annulewitz, pipe in his mouth despite the no smoking signs. Shorter, balding and going to fat. Fitzwilliam had gotten the impression the relationship between the two exceeded a professional one. It had been outside Annulewitz's flat that Reilly had once killed two anonymous thugs, although the fact was never proved. A couple of years later, Reilly had escaped from Annulewitz's law office at the Temple Bar leaving Fitzwillam's men looking foolish indeed.

  Lang was just finishing his third recitation of the evening's events when a man in a worn tweed jacket wandered over, the only man he could see without either a tux or a police uniform.

  "Inspector Dylan Fitzwilliam," the stranger introduced himself.

  Lang extended a hand. "Lang Reilly."

  The inspector glanced at the extended hand as though it might explode and stuck his own into his jacket pockets. "I'd appreciate you walking me through what happened."

  The man's tone implied he was giving an order, not asking a favor.

  "Sure." Lang pointed. "The table where those two police officers are taking names was in the room between here and the Reading Room. Eon was standing—"

  "You mean Sir Eon Weatherston-Wilby."

  What was the thing the Brits had about titles? Maybe it was the only part of their former nobility that was still noble rather than ammunition for the tabloids.

  Lang finished his narrative.

  "Perhaps you would be so kind as to take me to room four, the Egyptian exhibit."

  Again, more of an order than a request.

  A photographer was finishing up taking pictures of a chalk outline on the floor. A janitorial employee, mop in one hand, bucket in another, was waiting to remove what was now a congealed black puddle of blood. The wreckage of the chariot had already been removed, presumably to wherever the museum did restorations.

  Fitzwilliam rested an elbow in the palm of one hand while he rubbed his chin thoughtfully with the other. "You attacked an armed man with only a spear?"

  "I didn't have a lot of options."

  "Why didn't you wait for the police like everyone else?"

  Lang detected what could be a tone of accusation. "Because I didn't want them to get away with Eon. Sir Eon."

  "Just what made you think they were going to take him farther than this building?"

  Lang watched the photographer pack up his equipment. "Why would they take him from where he was otherwise?"

  "But they were armed. What did you think you could do?"

  Lang was getting irritated at what seemed pointless interrogation. "Ask the man your folks just peeled off the floor there."

  Fitzwilliam caught the edge in the reply and changed the subject as well as location. "Let's take a look at the loading door, shall we?"

  The door was wide-open, revealing several officers searching the street as well as the square.

  "These doors aren't the kind that open from the inside when locked," Fitzwilliam observed.

  Having noticed that previously, Lang said nothing.

  "That would indicate they were left unlocked, quite likely intentionally."

  Lang still said nothing.

  Fitzwilliam was scratching his chin again. "What do you make of that, Mr. Reilly?"

  "Too bad you can't ask the guard they shot."

  The inspector's hands dropped to his side. "Meaning?"

  "Meaning someone had to let them in. Killing that someone is the one sure way to make sure nobody knows who they are."

  Fitzwilliam nodded slowly. This American might cause trouble, but he didn't miss much, either. "I don't suppose you have a thought as to the identity of the dead man?"

  Involuntarily, Lang's hand slid into his pocket, touching the crumpled piece of paper, the half of the boarding pass if that was really what it was. He instantly decided not to mention it. Information was the capital of his former profession with the agency: once spent it became useless.

  "Not a clue."

  III.

  New Mermaid Inn

  High Street

  Rye

  East Sussex

  The Next Morning

  Jenny Fasting never understood why someone as wealthy as Langford Reilly would choose to stay in a hotel as old as this one. The ceilings were low, the floors uneven, the doorways crooked and the mullioned windows mostly opaque. She had asked him once and he had replied that if the place had been good enough for Elizabeth Tudor, it was good enough for him. Of course, it had been a bit newer when Good Queen Bess had paid a visit to Rye to inquire about an inconsistent source of fish. That was before the river's mouth had silted up, ending Rye's place as a major harbor and fishing center. The inn had been almost new when the Queen visited, having replaced the former Mermaid Inn after the French had staged a surprise raid and burned a good part of the town as well as the hotel. Jenny was fairly certain Elizabeth I had never actually stayed here, though.

  That was the thing about the Yanks: they worshiped the old, even old buildings in advanced states of dilapidation. Yanks. A word she understood her boss, Lang Reilly, did not appreciate for reasons that had to do with a dispute over there in America more than a hundred years ago. Something about a War of Northern Aggression. Whatever that was.

  Another thing about the Yanks, er, Americans: they were always in a hurry. That was why she had been awakened after midnight last night by a call from London. Mr. Reilly wanted her to meet him in the small laboratory facility his foundation had set up in Rye to serve the institution's needs in the British Isles. Cheaper than London with considerably less traffic. In fact, Rye's main street was still cobblestoned with half-timbered houses just as though the Queen might return.

  If he had asked her to meet him anywhere other than the laboratory, she might have been able to fantasize some sort of romantic liaison. Although Mr. Reilly had never been anything more than polite at both the meetings she had with him, he was, after all, single and quite good-looking. And rich. Not the type to show any interest in a drab lab tech like Jenny.

  She ran her fingers nervously through limp hair the color of dead grass. One of these days she would replace the thick glasses with that new eye surgery. In the meantime, she would continue to look like just what she was: a lab boffin. A single lab boffin.

  And there was nothing romantic about being called out of bed to put some stub of paper under an electronic microscope, read it and make a legible copy by breakfast. That was hardly her job. She dealt with the arcana of chemical biology. But Mr. Reilly was the boss and if he wanted a jillion pounds sterling worth of gadgetry used to examine a piece of paper, so be it. An airline boarding pass, at that. Seemed he could simply call the airline if he had somehow managed to damage his bleeding boarding pass.

  But he was the boss.

  Th
at was why she was sitting in the dining room of the New Mermaid, sipping tea that tasted like it had been brewed sometime in the distant past, waiting for Lang Reilly.

  He appeared on the dot of 8:00, disgustingly wide-awake. He slid into the seat across the table from her, wished her a good morning and ordered kippers and eggs from the innkeeper.

  Jenny wondered if anyone, Lang Reilly included, really took pleasure in staring eye to eye with a smoked herring first thing in the morning. Although the dish was as English as afternoon tea, the sight and smell of a dead fish at breakfast was, well, disgusting. Why couldn't he simply have bangers and mash like a working-class sod? Even so, she could not tear her sight away as he deftly stripped the backbone and its comblike rack from the rest of the fish.

  "So, what did you find out?" he asked.

  Although she knew exactly what she had found, she dug in her purse and extracted an enlarged copy. "Aegean Air flight 162, seat 24-B. Either the twenty-third or twenty- fifth of last month. The paper was too badly worn to be sure."

  He reached for the paper. "Any idea from where to where?"

  She shook her head. "I couldn't get a real soul at Aegean Air this early, only serial recordings, but I'll be happy to..."

  If Jenny had her way, the hottest place in hell would be reserved for whoever invented voice mail and those infuriating mechanical queries that only lead to another.

  He smiled as he sectioned a piece of fish. "No need. You've done your job and thanks. You'll find a little gift in your next paycheck."

  "Oh, Mr Reilly," she protested, "you don't have to ..."

  She stopped in midsentence. The man at the next table was clearly listening although he was using a copy of the day's Times as a prop to conceal his interest. What Jenny was saying sounded like ... sounded like something quite different than an employer speaking to an employee. She felt herself flush at what the eavesdropper must be thinking.

  Lang silenced her with a hand. "Don't deprive an old man of his pleasures."

  Pleasures? Old man? She'd give anything to... The thought made her blush even more.

  "Thank you," she managed.

  Fifteen minutes later in his room, Lang stared without comprehension at the copy Jenny had given him. Through long mastery of the corporate telephone maze, he had reached a living, breathing person at Aegean Air. The flight in question had been an A (Airbus) 320-200 from Rhodes to Athens. No, privacy policy forbade disclosing the name of the passenger occupying that specific seat.