"And with me?"
"Just-as-serious lust."
She took another puff and waited for the server to take their order before taking a new line. "If the people back at the embassy knew I was meeting with a former, er, employee who, I am sure, wants something, I'd go Tolstoy."
Go Tolstoy, being required to fill reams of paper with details of anything that didn't fit routine, usually filled with self-serving fiction.
The waiter reappeared with two glasses of Brunello. The dying sun reflected from the red wine to paint spots of blood on the tabletop while they watched people watching people. Rome's favorite pastime. A battalion of Japanese followed their tour leader, a woman holding up a furled red umbrella like a battle flag. They broke ranks to photograph the magnificent Bernini marbles.
When her glass was half empty, Gurt spoke with a nonchalance so intensely casual Lang knew she had been straining not to ask before now. "You are divorced?"
"Not exactly."
He explained about Dawn, only partially successful in trying to relate her death in an emotionless narrative. Sometimes being a man isn't easy. Gurt picked upon the still-sharp grief, her eyes shimmering. The Germans are a sentimental lot. SS guards who had joked while exterminating women and children in the morning wept at Wagner's operas the same evening.
"I'm sorry, Lang," she said, her voice husky with sympathy. "I truly am."
She put a hand over his.
He made no effort to move it. "You never married?"
She gave a disdainful snort. "Marry who? You don't meet the best people in this job. Only lunatics."
"Could be worse," Lang quipped. "What if you were working for the penal system?"
She brightened. "There is such a thing?"
"Corrections, Gurt, the U.S. prison system."
"Oh." She sighed her disappointment. "Well, my not getting married is not why you are here. I think you want something."
He told her about Janet and Jeff and the man who had broken into his condo.
"Who are these people that would kill your sister and your nephew?"
"That's what I'm trying to find out."
They were quiet while the waiter refilled glasses.
When he departed, Lang took the copy of the Polaroid from a pocket and pushed it across the table. "If someone could tell me what the significance of this picture is, I might be on the way to finding the people responsible."
She stared at the picture as though she were deciphering a code. "The police in the States, they cannot help?"
He retrieved the picture. "I don't think so. Besides, this is personal."
"You were with the Agency long enough to learn revenge is likely to get you killed."
"Never said anything about revenge, just want to identify these people. The cops can take it from there." "Uh-huh," she said, not believing a word of it. "And how do you think I can help?"
"I need an introduction to a Guiedo Marcenni – a monk, I think. Anyway, he's in the Vatican Museum. Who does the Agency know in the Vatican these days?"
Lang remembered the well-kept secret that the Vatican had its own intelligence service. The Curia, the body charged with following the Pope's directives in the actual governance of the Church, maintained a cadre of information gatherers whose main functionaries were missionaries, parish priests or any other face the Church showed the public. Even though the service had not carried out a known assassination or violent (as opposed to political) sabotage since the Middle Ages, the very number of the world's Roman Catholics, their loyalty and, most importantly, the sacrament of confession, garnered information unavailable to the spies of many nations. Like similar organizations, the Agency frequently swapped tidbits with the Holy See.
Gurt fished another cigarette from the pack. "And what am I to tell my superiors? Why do I want to introduce a former agent to this monk?"
Lang watched her light up and inhale. "Simply a favor for an old friend, a friend who has specific questions about a piece of art he wishes to ask on behalf of a client."
"I will think about it."
They ordered bean soup and eggplant sautéed in olive oil along with a full bottle of wine.
As they finished, Lang said, "Gurt, there's something else you ought to know."
She glanced up from the small mirror she was using to repair her lipstick. "That you are wanted by the American police? Close your mouth, it is most unattractive hanging open. I saw the bulletin this afternoon."
One of the duties the Agency had assumed rather than face extinction upon the demise of its original enemy was cooperation with local authorities and Interpol in locating American fugitives abroad. The FBI, sensing a turf invasion, had protested loudly but futilely.
Lang felt his dinner lurch in his stomach. "You mean the Agency knows?"
She checked the result of her effort, turning her head to maximize the light supplied by tabletop candles. "I doubt it. The message was misfiled. The screw up won't be discovered for a day or two."
"But why…?"
She dropped the mirror back into her bag. "I have known you a long time, Lang Reilly. A call from you after all those years made me alert. I did not think you would have called me unless you wanted something. Then I read the incoming and made a connection. I hunched right."
Her mangling of the idiom did nothing to diminish his surprise."But you could get fired…"
She stood and stretched, a motion he guessed she knew emphasized shapely breasts. "You are an old friend, one of the Komraden. I have few of those."
He looked up at her, feeling a smile beginning. "Even when I'm an international fugitive?"
"Why not? I was willing to help when you called and I knew you were a lawyer."
Everybody was into lawyer-bashing.
Lang left several bills on the table as he stood up. "A walk before I put you into a cab?'
She stepped closer. He could smell the sourness of tobacco smoke as she spoke. "Have I gotten so old I no longer interest you?"
Coquettishness had never been among Gurt's charms.
"If looks are what you mean, you've aged better than good whisky. I'd hardly call what I feel 'interest'"
"Good," she said. "Then we can take the same cab to wherever you're staying."
Being a Southerner, Lang was a little uncomfortable when he realized he was the one being seduced. Scarlett O'Hara was a steel magnolia, not a New Woman.
He took her hand. "This way, Fraulein. And by the way, the charge is murder. I'm innocent."
She slipped her bag over her shoulder. "I knew that before I came here."
Later that night, Lang lay on top of skimpy covers, sweat drying on his chest. Beside him, Gurt's breathing was deep and regular, the sound of peaceful sleep. They had made love without inhibition, a noisy performance he was fairly certain dismissed any doubts his host might have had about the reason he had not wanted his passport entered into the system.
The murder charge, he thought, could be disproved easily enough. Show Morse the bogus passport and let him check the airline's passenger manifest. The Agency would be less than happy to find a former employee was using false papers it had created, but the Agency wasn't his problem. Lang's problem was that he would have to return to Atlanta to demonstrate his alibi. That, he wasn't ready to do. Not yet, anyway.
4
Rome 1230 hours the next day
"Your Brother Marcenni isn't at the Vatican."
Lang put down his square of pizza, swallowed and asked, "Then, where is he?" Gurt had gone to work that morning and then met him at an outdoor table on the Via del Babulno in view of the Spanish Steps, a hundred yards by a hundred yards of white travertine angles, straights and terraces in their spring garb of pink azaleas. As always, the steps were the roost of hordes of young people: students and artists, who seemed to spend their days sitting, smoking, photographing each other and lazing in the sun.