“ ‘Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.’ First Psalm. For you heretics, there isn’t a lot of hope.”
Lang sipped a cup of coffee as Francis used the edge of his fork to scrape the last of the confection from his plate. “You can have seconds, y’know.”
Francis looked up, not quite successful in hiding a smile. “I couldn’t do that to you.” He seemed to think a moment. “Back to that excitement in Venice. You know, there’s a good chance what was taken weren’t Saint Mark’s bones at all.”
Lang was debating if the extra caffeine in another cup of coffee would make him jumpy all afternoon. “Really? And whose bones might they be?”
Just then the waitress handed Lang the check for signature and member number. He scribbled both.
Lang gave his friend a look that said he knew his leg was being pulled. “OK, I’ll bite, even if I see another of those ‘who’s buried in Grant’s tomb’ jokes. Who’s buried in Saint Mark’s?”
Francis lifted his arm, checking his watch. “I’d tell you but you’d want an explanation, and I have a meeting with the bishop. Gurt was kind enough to invite me for dinner Friday night. I’ll explain then.”
Both men got up from the table, Francis reaching to shake Lang’s hand. “Thanks for the lunch. I’m a little embarrassed I can’t pick up my share of the tab here.”
Lang grinned. “Why? In all the time we’ve tossed a coin for the check, I don’t recall you ever losing. Sooner or later you will. This way, I’m spared the suspense of guessing when.”
Outside, wind was chasing trash down the sidewalk between canyon walls of glass and steel. Lang had left his overcoat at the office and was glad his walk back to work would be less than a block. Everyone else on the street seemed to share his hurry to get out of the wintry blast.
He stopped long enough to wave as Francis drove out of the parking lot in the parish’s aged Toyota, crossed Peachtree and disappeared down the ridge, the spine of which forms Atlanta’s most famous street. Turning back toward his office, he stopped. Across the street was one pedestrian who was in no hurry. His coat collar turned up concealing most of the face, the man seemed to be staring at Lang. Perhaps suddenly realizing he had been noticed, he hurried into the revolving door of a nearby hotel.
Lang’s first impulse was to follow. He took a couple of steps and stopped. Overactive imagination? Had the stranger been looking at him or simply taking in what meager sights the city had to offer? He looked around, spotting no one who showed any particular interest in him, not even a street bum. Still, ingrained paranoia wouldn’t let go, a paranoia that had saved his life more than once.
Once he was back in his office, Sara was waiting for him with another stack of messages. He soon forgot the man on the street.
Beijing Olympic Tower
267 Beisihuan Zhonglu
Haidian, Beijing
The day before
Less than a week after the end of the 2008 Summer Olympics, the space occupied in the new sixteen-story building by the committee that had organized and operated the games was vacated. The colorful posters and photographs of the athletes that had festooned the walls were replaced by officially sanctioned pictures of the holy trinity of Sun Yat-sen, Mao and Chou En-lai. China’s burgeoning bureaucracy, ever hungry for more room, now filled the building overlooking the Birdcage, the popular name for the unique Olympic stadium.
Not that the view from the fourth floor this afternoon was one that might adorn the cover of a magazine, thought Wan Ng. Beijing’s brownish haze had reduced the landmark to a mere chimera even though it was less than a quarter of a mile distant. A combination of coal-fueled industry, vehicle emissions and lethargic natural circulation rendered Beijing’s air among the most foul on earth. A system of alternating days when the massive number of government employees might drive into the city, a lottery for license plates to restrict the number of vehicles on the roads and a requirement that all autos and trucks must have an “environmentally friendly” sticker to enter past the Fifth Ring Road had done little to ameliorate the air quality. The fact a thriving black market dispensed the stickers to anyone willing to pay was only part of the problem.
Poisonous air was the least of Ng’s concerns this afternoon. The tone of the call he had gotten from Undersecretary Chin Diem summoning him here had lacked the congratulations for a job well done. True, Ng had lost the men assigned to him and had made international news for the chase through the canals of Venice. But he had brought the object of the mission back with him even though its theft had caused a worldwide uproar.
So what?
The men he had left behind could hardly be identified as Chinese nationals. Even if the Italians possessed the technology to compare their features with scans of their American passports, it would be months before the authorities realized the papers were forgeries.
Still, Diem was unhappy for some reason. Not knowing that reason made Ng nervous. One thing was certain: meeting the undersecretary here rather than in Diem’s sumptuous office with a view of Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City beyond, haze permitting, meant there would be no record of either the meeting itself or the subject to be discussed, a rarity in a society where the affairs of the lowest citizen were subject to scrutiny.
Uneasily, Ng watched a procession of three Shuanghuan CEO’s, midsized SUVs, pull up to the building’s entrance below. Four dark-suited men got out of both the leading and trailing vehicles, scanned their surroundings and nodded to the driver of the second car. Crime in Beijing was almost as nonexistent as political dissent. The number of cars in the caravan of a high-level official was more a testimony to his importance and current standing in the governmental hierarchy than his need for security. Should a bureaucrat who had formerly rated three cars appear with a single-car escort, his status was clearly waning. Decline to a lone SUV augured an immediate and involuntary retirement from government service.
Ng could see the portly figure of Diem below as one of the men held the door open. He was carrying a thin attache case.
Ng turned around, facing a double bank of elevators. The one on the far left whispered open and four black suits stepped out, followed by Diem.
The undersecretary glanced around, fixing an expressionless stare on Ng. “Follow me.”
He led the entourage down a short corridor and opened a door at the end. Motioning his men to remain in the hallway, he ushered Ng inside.
Here the walls still bore Olympic posters. A metal desk and chair faced two uncomfortable-looking seats. The office was devoid of the normal photographs of wife and the single child allowed each family, or any other personal effects. Clearly, this office had been borrowed just for this meeting.
Ng was pondering the significance of that fact as Diem rounded the desk, sat and snapped open the attache case. Wordlessly, he motioned Ng to be seated. Reaching into a jacket pocket, he produced a pack of American cigarettes-Marlboros-and then a gold lighter, a knockoff of a world-famous jeweler’s design. He shook out a cigarette and lit it without offering his guest one, not a good sign.
His head circled in blue smoke, he removed a thin folder from the attache case, opened it and began to read. Ng would have bet the undersecretary had the few pages memorized. It was a common tactic among the Party’s elite. The theatrics enforced the fact the subordinate did not rate the time it would take for his superior to read the file in advance.
From somewhere behind the desk, Diem produced an exceptionally ugly porcelain ashtray and set his smoldering cigarette down. “How did the Americans know you were in the church?”