CHAPTER FORTY
Rome
The Hotel Hassler
That evening
The train ride back to Rome had provided an opportunity for thought, more so than Lang would have preferred. He was fairly certain he knew the actual mechanics of getting a sniper in place, but he had no more idea as to the reason than before. Whoever was trying to kill him seemed to be intensifying the effort the closer he came to whatever secret the Emperor Julian had left and Skorzeny may have attempted to solve.
What possible relationship was there between a fourth-century pagan Roman and a twentieth-century SS officer?
The answer kept coming back the same: None.
Except both may have discovered a document that contradicted the conventional view of Christ.
OK, come around on another tack: Don Huff had been killed because of his work, a book on unpunished war criminals, Nazis. As Franz Blucher had pointed out, it was unlikely an ever..decreasing number of old men could or would form a consortium to keep a secret over sixty years old, but such an organization had been put together sixty years ago. What if it still existed with new members?
Instead, Lang was inclined toward the theory that Skorzeny, either at Montsegur or Rome, led to a larger, older mystery, one of such theological significance that some group was willing to keep on killing to prevent its solution. To the ordinary person, such a hypothesis might rank right up there with UFO cover-ups and JFK conspiracies. But Lang wasn't ordinary, at least not in that sense. Only a year before he had uncovered what could, arguably, be called the oldest and greatest conspiracy of all time. He had also confronted one of the world's richest and most powerful entities, a name unknown to even the most sophisticated.
Religious intrigue existed, and there were undoubtedly secrets some groups would kill to keep.
Then there was Skorzeny himself, the brilliant and rarely photographed Austrian. What, if anything, did the information Hemphill had provided have to do with the necropolis? Although Lang had found proof positive, the Himmler order, that the elusive Skorzeny had, in fact, been in Rome, had he had time to explore the secret of the necropolis before returning to Berlin? Likely. Huff's pictures showed him in front of the Vatican.
And after Berlin…? The capture of the Hungarian prime minister, according to Blucher.
The takeover of the Hungarian government. Where…? Had he read something about the subject? Possibly, although modern history was of little interest to him. There was something just outside Lang's mental reach, as ephemeral as a dream and just as likely to disappear into the mist of uncertain memory.
Dh, well, the most certain way to retrieve a scrap of recollection was to put it out of conscious thought, let the old subconscious drill for it until it suddenly gushed to the mind's surface like oil from a newly discovered well.
Once back in Rome, Lang sat in his room, staring at the BlackBerry-like device Reavers had given him. Its function was similar to that of the intra-agency communicating device he had used to contact Hemphill but, apparently, more sophisticated. He pushed the three letter identifier for the Frankfurt chief of station.
'Howdy, pard'nuh!' Reavers's Texas twang came through the device as clearly as though the man were sharing the room. 'What can Ah do fer ya?'
Lang got up and stood at the window, watching the congregation of young loafers on the Spanish Steps. 'I need some fairly sophisticated equipment. You insisted on being committed to tracking down whoever killed Don and Gurt.'
'As intent as a coyote diggin' after a prairie dog. Whatta ya need?'
Lang recited Dr. Rossi's list. 'A fluoroscope, the sort of thing used to read serial numbers filed off guns. An infrared scope as well as a thirty-five millimeter camera with macro lens and both ultraviolet and infrared filters.'
'Great Sam Houston, whaddaya find, another collection of Dead Sea Scrolls?'
'Might find,' Lang corrected. 'I don't have unlimited access to the place I may need to use all that stuff. I'm hoping one more trip will do it. I don't want to need something and not have it.'
'God forbid any of us not have what we need. You remember the safe house cross the street from that church, has all the skulls and bones arranged in patterns?'
Lang didn't have to think. 'The Capuchin's Santa Maria della Concezione on the Via Veneto? There used be a couple of rooms on the third floor directly across the street.'
'That's the one. Go to the church day after tomorrow, look in the side chapel, the one with a picture of that faggy-Iooking guy…'
'St. Michael?'
'Yeah, the one puttin' his foot on the head of the bald guy crawlin' outta a hole that's on fire. Has a sword in one hand.'
'St. Michael slaying the devil. coming out of hell,' Lang supplied. 'Devil, hell. Could be some beaner tunnelin' under the border at Juarez, all I care. You know the place?'
A good spy was one who could become invisible. Like evading congressionally mandated annual ethnic, cultural, and racial sensitivity seminars.
'I know the picture. It was a specially commissioned altarpiece
…'
'Okay, n'mind the art lecture. On one 0' them benches in front of the chapel, there'll be a package. Your stuff'll be in it:'
A number of the male kids on the steps were turning to watch a fat girl in a very short skirt make her way upward. From the attention being paid a woman who resembled Miss Piggy, Lang guessed she was wearing thong underwear. Or none at all. 'Wouldn't it be just as easy to deliver the stuff to the concierge at my hotel?'
'Just as easy, pard'nuh, but not as secure. See, we can watch, make sure you're the one gets the package. Gotta go.'
The line went dead. Except there was no line, only air. Lang shook his head slowly. Agency motto: Never do openly what you can do covertly. He returned to the room's only chair, a worn club upholstered in what had once been grass green. Now the lawn had wilted somewhat.
As he knew it would, the shadow of recall on the train took on full substance. Something he had read… A newspaper story about Budapest? The details were still fuzzy around the edges.
He got up and left the room.
The man behind the desk in the lobby directed him to the hotel's business center with a look of bewilderment. Work after business hours? The actions of Americans were truly incomprehensible.
Lang sat in one of four cubicles containing computers and studied the keyboard. There were a few language keys, umlauts, acutes, inverted question mark, and the like that he recognized as peculiar to several European dialects, German, French, Spanish. Everything else looked ordinary. Turning the machine on, he followed the multi- language instructions on entering his room number, which served as his password. After two attempts, he managed to bring up the Atlanta Journal-Constitution index for the past twenty-four months. Not exactly the Times, but if he had read it in a newspaper, it would have been the one in Atlanta. During the baseball season, the Atlanta paper was, understandably, the only one with full coverage of the Braves. As long as he had the paper, Lang occasionally read news articles that caught his interest. It was the faint recollection of one of these he was looking for.
He tried the word 'Hungary' and got over a hundred references. Too broad. He tried 'Hungary' and'1944.' Thirty-two articles. Better, but still too many.
What was the gist of the article?
He tried 'Hungary,'
'1945,' and 'train.'
A single article, a feature in the Weekend section, a hodgepodge of stories that might be of interest but not necessarily current news, everything from scientific discoveries of dubious application to human interest. In short, a journalistic landfill.
Budapest (AP) Hungarian authorities have joined Jewish advocates in their demand the Austrian government return art objects allegedly taken by the occupying Nazis from Jews being sent to death camps. The articles, paintings, sculptures, even jewelry, were loaded onto a train as Russian troops approached in late 1944.
