She raised manicured eyebrows. 'Make a call and spend the night, would you?' She swept a hand in an arc. 'Are my girls so ugly you need to call in talent?'
Lang grinned sheepishly. 'No, no. I need to speak with a friend in the States, a priest, actually.'…
Nellie laughed, a blunt coughing sound. 'A priest? We know about priests, what they do. No wonder you never wanted any of my girls.'
She said it loud enough to get the attention of several of the young women nearby. If he hadn't been so occupied with Pegasus, Lang might have blushed.
She took him by the hand to lead him into the hall she had come out of. It was lined with doors like a corridor in a hotel, except there were no numbers. They stopped in front of one while Nellie fished around in her blouse. Lang was about to make the obvious crude comment when she produced a key and unlocked the door.
'Sue Lee's room,' she explained. 'She's on the coast of Spain with a client.'
She wrinkled her nose at a faint odor Lang couldn't identify. 'Been cooking in here on her wok. Vietnamese, Japanese, something like that. You'll get used to the smell.'
She ushered him inside. 'Sure you don't want company, luv?'
The room looked like one in a girls' dorm. A vanity with light-studded mirror was built into one wall. A plain wooden chair, a metal chest of drawers and a single bed completed the furnishings. It wasn't exactly the place Lang would have imagined a high-price hooker spending her off time.
Nellie had been following his appraising look around. 'The girls don't entertain in their rooms. The traffic would make it hard for the coppers to look the other way. They use hotel rooms or have their own flats. She pointed to a door on the other side of the vanity. 'The loo. Connects with the next room. Mind that unless you want a surprise. Help yourself to the telephone.'
'Thanks.'
She started to close the door and stopped. 'Sure there's nothing I can get you?'
Lang smiled. 'Thanks, but no.'
She looked at him as though seeing him for the first time. 'On the run from the law, bet you haven't eaten. Some of the girls always get fish and chips, Chinese, some sort of take-away. No trouble to get something for you.'
The mention of food reminded him he hadn't eaten since… since Rachel's gut-cramping Indian fare the night before. He must have fully recovered because he was suddenly hungry enough to risk another had it been available. Fortunately, it wasn't.
'You talked me into it,' he said, pulling some bills out of his pocket. 'Surprise me.'
Finally alone, Lang reached for the telephone, one of those cutesy ivory-and-gold ones that is supposed to look like an antique. He picked it up, happy to hear a very contemporary dial tone. He dialed 00, international, 1 for North America, and 404, one of Atlanta's area codes, and then information. Never before had he paid particular notice to the toneless voice of the computerized information service. It had an American accent.
After a series of astral clicks and whirs, a familiar voice was on the line, words so clear they might have been spoken from across the room rather than across the Atlantic. 'Lang?'
'It's me, Francis, your favorite heretic.'
Francis's chuckle was audible an ocean away. 'Glad to hear from you, although I've been reading some pretty disturbing things in the local fish-wrapper.'
Lang was thankful the phone's cord extended to the bed. He stretched out. This was going to take awhile. 'Forno volat, Frances, rumor travels fast. Besides, you know the media: accused on page one-A, acquitted somewhere in the obituaries.'
'I suppose,' the priest said, a rueful note clearly detectable. 'They publish accusations but not the rebuttal.' 'If it bleeds, it leads,' Lang said. 'Gotta pump the ratings for the six o'clock news and sell advertising for the paper.'
'Somehow, I don't think you had your secretary have me wait for your call just so you could tell me you didn't do it.'
Lang took a deep breath and exhaled. 'No, you're right as usual.' 'You've recognized your feet are set upon the road to hell and you want me to hear your confession.'
Even the fatigue that was beginning to fog Lang's mind couldn't suppress a chuckle. 'You don't have enough time left on this earth to hear my full confession.'
'Then it's my pastoral skill and brilliant intellect you seek.'
'Don't you guys take some sort of vow of humility? But, yeah, sort of. First, listen to what I have to tell you. Pay attention. There'll be a test later.'
It took Lang the better part of twenty minutes to explain. He only paused to answer an occasional question and thank the young woman who brought him chopsticks, a box of steaming rice and another box of food, the contents of which he tried not to speculate about.
Lang finished his meal and story about the same time.
'Templars?' Francis asked skeptically. 'Over a billion dollars a year from the Vatican?'
Lang was licking his fingers, more an effort to remove the inevitable grease than because he had enjoyed the meal. 'I don't suppose you know anything about that?'
'The money from the Vatican? Not likely that sort of thing would be shared with a lowly parish priest. I know a little about the Templars and this area of France, the…'
'Languedoc.'
'The Languedoc and the castle this monk Pietro mentions, Blanchefort. Some people think the holy grail is hidden somewhere in that area.'
Lang forgot greasy fingers. 'Holy grail? Like, the cup Jesus used at the Last Supper?'
'That's what it was to Richard Wagner and Steven Spielberg. Remember the opera and the Indiana Jones movie? It was a cup in Arthurian legend, too. But it could be anything. The earliest legends describe it as a stone with mystical properties and some scholars think it relates to the ark of the Covenant which disappeared from Jerusalem a thousand years before Christ. Hitler thought it was the lance of Longinus, the spear that pierced Christ's side. No reason it couldn't be the 'vessel' your friend Pietro found in the Gnostic document.'
'But you don't think such a thing exists?' Lang asked.
Francis was just warming up. He always saved the best part of his arguments for last. 'I don't know the Church's position on the subject, guess they haven't had to address the matter in a few hundred years. Me, I say, why not? What I do know, there was a parish priest in the area we're talking about, a little town called, called Rennes-le-Chateau, I think. I'm fairly sure the man's name was Sauniere and he lived around the middle, last part of the nineteenth century.'
'You remember all this like you do your catechism? I mean, that's remarkable you could recall all that along with all the mumbo-jumbo you have to memorize.'
'I'll ignore that, although it might calm your heathen breast to know I actually went to the place a couple of year ago, was in France as part of an international Church council and I traveled around for a couple of days until I could get the cheap airfare home. Sauniere was pretty much a tourist industry. If you can keep still, I'll tell you why.'
'I'm quieted, I'm quieted.'
'He, Sauniere, was a poor priest in a poor parish. He was doing some minor restoration work in the church building himself because they couldn't afford professional help. Anyway, part of the altar came loose. Inside was a sheaf of old parchments. He seemed excited, showed them around but wouldn't let anyone read them. Not that the locals could have; they were supposedly in Latin or Hebrew or something. Maybe the Gnostic document that Templar was talking about.
'Almost immediately his little parish had funds to repair the church, build a hotel-size guest house, more money than anyone ever thought was in the whole Languedoc. A steady procession of cardinals began visiting. We're talking about the ecclesiastical equivalent of Podunk, a place those cardinals would never have heard of a year earlier. Sauniere's personal lifestyle crossed the poverty line like a rocket on the way up, too. New vestments, housekeeper, wine cellar. All of those things a true prince of the church might have.'
'Like a choice of little boys or concubines?' Lang couldn't help it. Francis was too easy a target for the church's peccadillos.
'Any more vulgarities from infidels and I'm gonna hang up and say my rosary. Anyway, Sauniere never revealed
