Now the aisle was blocked from the cockpit side, too.
The man who had called himself Haverly was on all fours, trying to get up. The Glock was still clutched in his right hand. Gurt brought the heel of her left shoe down on his wrist. Howling with the pain of a potentially shattered ulna, he let go of the gun only a split second before her right foot caught him under the chin at the end of a kick that would have done credit to an NFL punter.
She dived for the floor as a shot, magnified by the confines of the aircraft's cabin, rang in her ears. She had to divert any gunfire from where Manfred was wailing in fright. Glock now in her possession, she thumbed off the safety and she rolled behind a seat as the one next to it disintegrated under a hailstorm of bullets.
On her stomach, she pushed herself back into the aisle and aimed at an indistinct form blurred by a cloud of cordite-stinking smoke. The Glock jumped in her two-handed grip, her ears by now deaf to the gunfire. Somewhere toward the back of the Lear, she made out a face, its eyes crossed as if trying to focus on the neat red hole between them before it pitched forward and disappeared.
Now silence pealed in her ears, loud as the gunfire itself. Cautiously, she peered around the edge of one of the sofas. Not five feet away, Haverly and the other man who had been in the condo were looking back at her. The Glock came up and both men raised their hands. They had had enough.
But she had not. Alternating the Glock's muzzle from one man's chest to the other, she quickly stepped over to where Manfred's cries had become moans. If there was so much as a scratch on him…
Haverly read her mind. "We weren't going to hurt him, honest"
Gurt savored the fear that was emanating from her former captors as she might enjoy the bouquet of a fine wine. She had to battle the impulse that sought retribution for the ordeal her child had suffered both here and in Baden- Baden.
"Your weapons, throw them here. Left hands only!"
With shaky hands, they did as they were told.
Only then did she allow herself to move her eyes to where Manfred was on the floor, scrunched up behind a seat in a tight ball that seemed to deny the existence of a skeletal structure. He grabbed for her desperately and climbed into the open arm, the one not holding the Glock.
Other than understandably terrified, he was fine.
A sound behind her caused her to spin. The pilot, copilot, she was never sure which, with the broken nose still sat on the floor, his hands futilely trying to staunch the flow of blood. Behind him, the other crew member was reaching to open the cockpit door. His hands flew up in surrender the moment she faced him.
"Er, ma'am, someone is outside. Shall I open up?"
She heard it for the first time, a beating on the aircraft's hull along with muffled shouts.
"Ein augenblick, a moment, please." She motioned to Haverly and his man. "Your pockets, empty them there." She indicated the low table between the sofas. "Schnell, quickly!"
She allowed herself a tight smile as she watched them rush to comply. She had not been conscious of the German she tended to speak when excited.
Unlike any professional on a similar mission, these men had papers, perhaps identifying papers, on them. Even a pair of passports in a language she could not read.
She stuffed them into a pocket before turning to the crew member. "Open the door."
Lang waited nervously as the door opened. A man in a pilot's uniform was the first thing he saw, suddenly pushed aside as Manfred, a small missile, launched down the stairs and into Lang's arms.
He raised a tear-streaked face. "Vatti, I was so scared!"
VII.
Rectory
Church of the Immaculate Conception
48 Martin Luther King, Jr. Drive
Atlanta
That Evening
Exhausted, Manfred slept where he had gone to sleep on the floor of the small library, his head resting against Grumps's flank as the dog continued his nearly perpetual nap. Lang and Gurt shared a leather settee. Across from them, Francis occupied a leather wing chair. All three held glasses of scotch, varying only in degrees of dilution by ice cubes. The two men puffed on Montecristo #2's, the fat pyramidos Lang had shipped from Cuba via the French West Indies on a regular basis. The ashtray in front of Gurt displayed filters, tombstones of Marlboros. A stratus cloud of tobacco smoke hung against the ceiling.
Francis puckered his lips, ejected a shimmering blue smoke ring and watched it expand. "Must have been some kind of a scene at Charlie Brown this afternoon. Local TV news even got most of it right: Attempted kidnapping by some kind of foreign agents, maybe Islamic terrorists, ritzy airplane, woman foils plot. Never did quite explain the why of it, though."
Lang took a long sip from his glass followed by a lazy puff on the cigar. "FBI sees a motive in it."
Francis chuckled, a low warm sound. "Let me guess." He held up both hands, two fingers of each extended to make quotation marks. "Son of wealthy local philanthropist object of kidnap. Child's mother, father foil plot with quick action. One dead. Film at eleven. That about it?"
"As far as the fibbies are concerned, yeah." Lang got up and crossed the room to a small bar, helped himself and tinkled ice cubes into his glass. "They'll spin a few wheels trying to ID the real owner of that Lear jet-or what's left of it." He looked at Gurt, eyebrows arched. "Next time, try not to trash the interior of expensive aircraft."
She was reaching for the cigarette pack on a small table. She shook it, frowned and fished in her suitcase-size purse for another pack. "And you did good to the entire front end and nose gear?"
"Anyway," Lang continued, "I'm sure the plane is registered to some untraceable shell corporation. They'll never find out who those bozos really are."
Gurt looked up as she shook a cigarette out of the new pack. "But we know."
Both men stared at her.
"We do?" Lang finally managed.
She took the unlit cigarette from between her lips. She was mining that huge purse again, this time producing two passports. "I relieved our Herr Haverly and his friend of these."
Lang took them in his hand, studying the front of each. "Some kidnappers, carrying ID like that! Hardly professionals; might as well have had name tags. I don't think I've ever seen…"
Francis set down his drink and came to look over Lang's shoulder. "Those are Vatican passports."
"The pope is trying to kill us?" Gurt asked incredulously.
Francis took the documents from Lang. "Let me have these. It's a bit late to be calling Rome right now, but I can promise you I'll be burning up the line to the Vatican foreign office first thing in the morning." He put them down on the bar and turned to face Lang. "Perhaps there's something you're not telling me?"
Lang inspected the tip of his cigar. He had intentionally not told his friend about the James translation just as he had kept secret several past theological discoveries, particularly what he referred to as the Pegasus matter. Francis was a good friend and devout in his faith. Such matters would only cause him pain and doubt.
He was also a good enough friend to know when Lang wasn't being entirely candid. "Well?"
Lang took a healthy swig from his glass as though that would anesthetize his discomfort. "The Gospel of James, the Nag Hammadi book I mentioned…"
Francis ignored the growing length of his cigar ash, letting it finally fall onto the floor. "And?"
"It states that Christ reappeared to the apostles, including James, for the purpose of removing Peter as the leader of the early church. Peter got angry and killed James."