The Julian Secret Page 8

  destruction 'round here, you seem to be involved, Mr. Reilly. You care to ' splain that?"

  "Lucky, I guess."

  Rouse shook his head. "Still smart-assin', I see. I swear, I'm ' plyin' for a transfer outta Homicide to Sex Crimes. You a one-man crime wave. Why wasn' I surprised that it was your car got blown up?"

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  "You're good at guessing. Maybe you should try the lottery."

  "I hit th' lottery an' I never see you agin, Mr. Reilly. Now, why don' you tell me why somebody want to blow up a ' spensive car like that with you in it."

  Lang shrugged. "Maybe I blew the doors off their SL 500 leaving a stoplight."

  Rouse looked around and chose a chair. "Sit down, Mr. Reilly. I think I'm gonna be here a while, until I gets some straight answers."

  Lang sat. "All I know is that Gurt and I were headed to dinner. I got caught in that frog-strangler of a downpour and came back to change. Gurt gave the keys to the carhop. Next thing I knew, KA-BOOM!" Lang frowned. "I don't think I even knew the poor kid in the car."

  Rouse looked at Gurt for confirmation before turning back to Lang. "Afta we went at it-las' year, I did some checkin', Mr. Reilly. You told me you were retired Navy SEAL. Turns out you were with some spook organization."

  "We spies always lie."

  Rouse sighed. "Know what I think, Mr. Reilly? I think some other spook is pissed off at you, tryin' to get even. I was you, I might tell what I knew for protection."

  "Protection from whom?"

  "Whoever blew your car up with that boy in it."

  "And by whom, those Keystone Kops the city calls police? Those same brave lads who literally dragged a hundred-and-twenty-pound woman out of her car and threw her on the pavement for parking too long at the airport's curb?

  They can't even stop people from getting shot on the street. Great as the amusement value of being protected by the Atlanta Police might be, I'm afraid the mortality rate is greater. A heartfelt and overwhelming 'no, thank you,'

  Detective. Maybe if you offered me Inspector Clousseau, I'd take you up on it. Except there isn't anything to tell. I don't have a clue."

  The detective stood, pointing a finger. ''You watch yo'sef, Mr. Reilly. You got away with somethin' las' year. Not this time. Mebbe you're thinkin' 'd be a little clearer, we go downtown."

  Lang smiled. "I don't think so, Detective. And I don't think you want to have to explain to a federal judge why you arrested me without a scintilla of probable cause."

  Rouse let himself out.

  Both Gurt and Lang were staring at the door through which he had exited.

  "If not Pegasus," Gurt said, "who?" Lang clicked the dead bolt. "The same persons who hired those two bullyboys in Seville would be a safe guess."

  "But who are they?"

  "Good question. See what the man in Heidelberg knows."

  There was no longer a question of whether to help find Don Huff's killer. The search was no longer a favor to help the child of an old friend. It had become intensely personal. Whoever had tried to reduce Lang to his composite atoms wasn't going to go away. Twice during the night, he awoke, slipped out of

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  bed, and checked the sophisticated locks on the outer door of his unit, mechanisms that would foil even an expert burglar. But it wasn't the run-of-themill felon he feared. For the first time since he could remember, Lang slept with the Sig Sauer out of the drawer and on the table bedside him.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Downtown Atlanta The next day

  Lang was sorting out the correspondence on his desk while trying to. prioritize the mound of pink callback slips when Sara buzzed him from her desk in the reception area.

  "Gurt, line one."

  Lang swiveled his chair to take in the floor-to-ceiling view of Atlanta's downtown skyline. "Yes, ma'am?"

  "I contacted Franz Blucher." For an instant, Lang was puzzled, then remembered.

  "Great. Can he help us?"

  There was a pause for a second, Gurt organizing what she was about to say. "He wouldn't talk to me. I told him I was calling for a friend of Donald Huff and the line died. I called back, and he told me to contact him again never." Lang stood, absently watching the ant4ill of pedestrian traffic below. "What did you say to him that-"

  "Just as I told you."

  "So we only know he doesn't want to help."

  "No," Gurt said, "we know who he is. I Googled him." Lang chuckled.

  "Really? Or perhaps you had 'enhanced' Google."

  "Enhanced" Google. Although implemented after Langhad become a victim of the Peace Dividend and retired from the intelligence community, he was aware of at least part of the Agency's awesome fact-gathering potential. Occasionally, a slip or intentional leak of personal information concerning a current actor on the world's stage would bring such howls of privacy invasion, the same "anonymous source" would attribute the revelation to "Web sites and search engines available to the public." Only if the public had a billion or so for a computer system, the capability of which was so immense it could never be accurately measured. Sort of like the distance to the end of the universe expressed in miles. The data that caused the ruckus usually came from global monitoring of communications. The Agency had the capability to eavesdrop on every electronic, noncable transmission in the world. Telephone, computer, everything. Enhanced Google. Its limitations were only in the manpower necessary to translate, read, and index the information. Lang had little doubt that Gurt still knew how to ascertain the passwords needed to tap into the largest single bank of personal information on earth.

  And probably the galaxy. "Was not needed," she said. "He is a professor

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  at university, has published many papers, books." An academician who didn't want to talk was an oxymoron. ''About what-what is his subject?"

  "All about the war, the Second War."

  Made sense; that was what Don had been writing about. "What else did you learn?"

  "He is retired. His father was a newspaperman, died in Berlin in 1945."

  "All that was on Google?"

  "Well, perhaps most of it."

  Something was playing around the edge of Lang's mind like a moth around a light bulb.

  "He is known to Jacob," Gurt said. "Interviewed him for a book on Auschwitz where Jacob's parents died."

  That was it, of course. Holocaust survivors, Jacob Annulewitz.

  Jacob had migrated to Israel, chosen Mossad as a profession, then moved to England and obtained British citizenship. In his retirement he had inexplicably chosen to remain in the rain and fog of the UK rather than the balmy sun of the Eastern Mediterranean. In fact, he had begun a second career, the cover for his first, a barrister in London. While he was with the Agency, Lang's path had crossed Jacob's, leaving a trail of friendship as well as professional respect. Jacob, like Gurt, had also been invaluable in Lang's struggle with Pegasus.

  "You called Jacob?" Lang asked, slightly jealous Gurt had preempted contacting his old friend.

  "I spoke to his wife, Rachel ..."

  "Who no doubt insisted whenever we're in London to come by for dinner."

  There was a question in Gurt's response. ''Yes. How did you know?"

  Rachel's cooking was notorious throughout the intelligence community. Common wisdom held that only the Geneva Conventions prevented the output of her kitchen from being used to intimidate the most tight-lipped enemy into diarrhea of the tongue. The last meal Lang had shared with her and Jacob had left him cramped with flatulence that threatened to be terminal.

  "Good guess. Is Jacob calling back?"

  "Rachel confirmed Jacob and Blucher knew each other. Not so good, but enough, perhaps. Jacob will call and see if Blucher will see us."

  CHAPTER NINE

  Atlanta, Georgia Charlie Brown/Fulton County Airport At the same time

  Burt Sanders loved his job. Airlines were being forced to count each paper napkin used by passengers or face bankruptcy. Shareholders were routinely calling for
the heads of executives. Labor unions were snarling like hyenas over the carcasses of the once-proud air-passenger industry. The companies put the number of pretzels per pack passengers were served with their watered-down and no longer complimentary cocktails ahead of retirement benefits of

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  employees.And none of that was Burt's problem.

  Not anymore.

  He had taken the airline's less-than-generous early retirement offer in what now looked like a vain hope of salvaging his pension. He had taken a job as chief pilot for the Holt Foundation, flying its big Gulfstream V and making sure it was ready to go any time, any place. Oh, the pay wasn't quite as good as the airline's, but the job security sure as hell was. The foundation had about a zillion dollars a year in income and no labor unions. And the head honcho, a lawyer named Reilly, pretty much kept his hands off the flying part of the business, unlike those big-time airline execs who thought they knew more about airplanes than the guys who flew them.

  From Burt's point of view, it was an even swap. No more worrying if the airline was going to survive, no more lying to passengers that their flight had been canceled because of weather when the plane was just too empty to make takeoff profitable, no more erosion of benefits and accompanying excuses from management.

  Of course, that meant there were times when he had nothing better to do than pretend to be checking on the bird. Truth was, he'd rather be wiping-down the leather upholstery on this Gulfstream V than sitting around the house, having his wife think up things for him to do. Besides, the boss appreciated the fact that the man who flew the plane took time to putter around it at no extra charge.

  He had just confirmed that the ice maker in the forward galley had been fixed and was descending the steps into the brightly lit and antiseptic private hangar. He was surprised to see a man in mechanic's overalls walking toward the plane. He thought he was the only one with a key to the hangar.

  "Excuse me," Burt said, unable to think of anything more original. "Can I help you?"

  The mechanic was startled. Obviously, he hadn't known Burt was there.

  "Yeah, I guess. You the one squawked the ..." he consulted a sheet of notebook paper, "the digital altimeter readout?"

  "Nope, haven't requested any repairs. And I'd be the one to do it."

  The mechanic stepped back, taking his time reading the N number along the Gulfstream's fuselage. "Oh shit, says here four-six Alpha, not six-four Alpha. Guess I got the wrong plane. Sorry."

  Burt watched him let himself out of the hangar, almost certain he had locked it on the way in. Even more puzzling was the mistake as to aircraft. There were only two other G-Ss based here at Charlie Brown, and neither had a number ending in Alpha. Must be a new guy or a transient airplane. Burt had thought he knew all the avionics repairmen.

  Strange.

  Burt shut the airplane's door and walked across the ballroom-smooth cement to the single door, being careful to lock it behind him. For him, as a pilot, a break in normal routine was disturbing. Anything not readily and satisfactorily explained was to be distrusted. Even so, he wasn't sure what made him pull into

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  an empty parking spot between the airport's exit road and the fixed-base operator's avionics repair building.

  Inside, Mary Jo, the receptionist, looked up at him. With pictures of her grandchildren on her desk, she felt safe in flirting with every flyer that came her way. "Well, well, it's Burt Sanders," she cackled. "Come to take me to some deserted isle in his wonderful flying machine. Hold on just a minute, Burt. I gotta go get my contraceptive kit."

  Burt smiled sheepishly, still not used to her ribald humor. "actually, it's something a lot less fun, Mary Jo. You got a G-S based here or transient with numbers ending in four-six Alpha? Mebbe one with problems with the readout on the digital altimeter?"

  She looked at him over the top of rimless glasses. "I can tell you flat out, we got no such animal. Your§, your foundation's plane, is the only G-S we service. Other two on the field use someone else, that other FBO." She sniffed as though personally affronted, as indeed she was. "Now, about you 'n' me takin' a little trip .. ,,"

  Burt retreated as gracefully as possible. "I'll ask the boss, Mary Jo. Thanks."

  He got back into the Honda, still uncertain what, if anything, he should do. He was already turning onto I-20 when two things jumped out of his memory to hit him like a pair of mental sledgehammers: The man in the hangar had been carrying something resembling a toolbox. Sophisticated avionics weren't repaired like a car, where the mechanic climbed under the hood. The offending equipment was removed from the aircraft and repaired and tested on the bench at the repair facility. Second, the maintenance ladder, the one used during periodic inspections or repairs to reach the higher parts of the aircraft, had been moved across the hangar.

  To do what he said he'd come to do, take the altimeter out, the man would only need a couple of Phillips head screwdrivers, not a tool kit.

  So, what was in the tool kit?

  The digital altimeter was accessible from the instrument panel in the cockpit, which you entered after walking up steps and into the passenger cabin.

  So why was the ladder moved?

  When in doubt, pass the problem up the line. Burt fumbled his cell phone out of his pocket and punched in a number from memory.

  A few minutes later, Lang Reilly was staring at the telephone on his desk as though reproaching it for the problem. The chief pilot had quite possibly prevented someone from tampering with the foundation's G-5. The man had been suspicious initially, enough to return to the hangar, where he found, once again, it was unlocked after he had secured it.

  No, there had been no signs anyone had been tinkering with something. But then, an expert would hardly leave smudges of dirty fingerprints on the instrument panel.

  Lang sighed as he thumbed through a well-worn personal directory and

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  dialed the number for FAA Security at Charlie Brown. He explained what had happened to a disembodied recording and then touched the number the machine designated to speak with a flesh-and-blood representative of the FAA. The result was as predictable as it was frustrating: canned music interspersed with assurances of his call's importance and the Agency's intent to deal with the problem as soon as someone became available.

  Reilly could feel his blood pressure rise. What could he expect from a government who considered general aviation security to be a wire fence with a gate that opened by punching in four digits? Admittedly, most general aviation aircraft weren't going to bring down another World Trade Center, but the Gulfstream was nearly as large as an airliner.

  He hung up.

  Opening his center desk drawer, he reached in to release the catch on the false back and groped around until he found what he was looking for. He put it on the desk, a disk made to screw into the speaker part of most pay phone receivers. It was one of the few toys he had taken from the Agency, a random modulator that made a voice over a telephone impossible to identify, either by a listener or a voice-wave measuring device. He put it in his pocket and walked out of the office for the elevators. There were three pay phones in the building's lobby.

  Slightly less than a half hour later, Sara-stood in the doorway, clearly perplexed. "Lang, there's a man on the phone wants to speak with you, an emergency. Says he's with the Transport Safety Administration. We have any business with ... ?"

  Lang put down the file he had been reading and suppressed a grin. "I'll take it."

  The Transport Safety Administration, another of the alphabet-soup bureaus that had sprouted like weeds after 9/11. This one's principal purpose seemed to be to harass commercial air travelers while refusing to conduct politically incorrect searches of profiled persons from places that spawned terrorism. Better to let a bearded, wild-eyed mullah in flowing robes through security and frisk an eighty-year-old grandmother than risk the ire of the liberal media.

  The TSA had taken heat lately from the number of fake bombs journalists h
ad slipped by it, incursions into "restricted" areas, and items stolen from baggage.

  Like any government entity, Lang figured, this one would catapult itself into an opportunity for favorable publicity.

  "Lang Reilly," he said as he picked up the phone. "What might I do for my government today?"

  Lang was at the hangar in twenty minutes, watching a swarm of uniformed agents buzz like bees protecting a hive. Each inspection plate was carefully removed by FM-certified airframe and power-plant mechanics, and the cowling was being removed from both engines. Several ladders rested against

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  various parts of the fuselage.

  The chief pilot, Burt Sanders, saw Lang and came over, a worried expression on his face. "I hope they can get the plane back together in time for the next flight."