'Have you seen his office lately?'
She chuckled. 'Heavens, no! Last time I went in there I was afraid something would fall on me. Besides, the dear man guards the place as if it were top-secret. It's his exclusive domain.'
Ten minutes later Lang squeezed out of the car. 'Exclusive domain or not, I think I'd best see what's taking so long.'
Rachel pulled the key out of the ignition. 'I'll come along.'
The old Templar temple was dark, the surrounding grounds more shadow than light. Only one or two office windows were illuminated. A single bulb on each landing showed the way upstairs. English barristers did not work the hours of their American counterparts.
The dimness of the second floor made the light from under Jacob's door all the more visible. Lang was reaching for the knob when he stopped. The voice he had just heard was not Jacob's.
Using one hand to put a finger to his lips, he used the other to gently push Rachel against the wall before putting an ear against the wood of the door. It gave slightly. Whoever had last entered hadn't pulled it completely shut.
Lang tried to recall whether the hinges had squeaked that afternoon.
He pushed it open only wide enough to put his face to the crack. Jacob was facing him, speaking to a man whose back was toward Lang, From Jacob's expression, the visitor was no friend.
'Again,' Jacob said, 'I have no bloody idea what you're talking about. You've jolly well tossed the office and haven't found whatever you're looking for…'
The man said something Lang couldn't hear and gestured with a gun in his hand.
Then Jacob saw Lang. Or at least, Lang thought he did. Not wanting to alert the intruder, he had given only the slightest twitch of an eye.
Lang shifted slightly, trying to see as much of the room as possible. His choice of action was going to vary if there was another person in the office.
'What…?' Rachel asked.
Lang made a hushing motion.
'Look,' Jacob was saying. 'You've simply made a mistake. Since it's only you, why don't you-'
He had answered Lang's question.
Jacob stepped forward. His visitor's reaction was a step backward to keep the space between them. The man motioned menacingly with his weapon. He wasn't going to retreat farther. This was as close to the door as he was going to get.
Something-a slight groan of the floorboards, a puff of air from the opening door-gave Lang away before he had reached his adversary. The man had been trained. Instead of the normal reaction of spinning around and exposing his back to Jacob, he attempted to sidestep before turning.
But not in time.
With his left hand Lang got under the other man's gun arm, shoving it upward as he cupped his chin in his right hand and simultaneously brought up a swift knee to the groin. His opponent grunted with pain and doubled over in time to take a second knee to the face.
Blood from the broken nose made abstract patterns on the papers scattered on the floor.
The two blows had taken sufficient strength from the intruder that Jacob easily wrested the gun from his hand. Before he could bring it to bear, the interloper was out the door, a bloody hand holding his crushed face. Jacob stepped outside and leveled what Lang could now see was a massive weapon.
'Jacob, dear, be more careful where you point that thing.' Rachel stood between her husband and the sound of rapidly receding footsteps. 'Whatever did you do to that poor man?'
Lang crossed the room and took the pistol from Jacob as he lowered it. 'IMI Desert Eagle.'
Jacob nodded. 'Fifty-caliber Magnum, the one designed in America and developed by the Israeli military. Bit of a cannon, that.'
Lang turned the heavy automatic over. Only seven shots in the fifty-caliber version. Short on firepower, too large and heavy for most who simply needed a firearm, but more easily concealed than a carbine with similar hitting force-no amateur's gun. The Desert Eagle's cavernous bore inflicted 'magnum flinch' on those not used to its mule kick of a recoil.
'Whoever your visitor was, he was a professional. What did he want?'
'Thanks to you, we never got specific: He just wanted to know where 'it' was.'
' 'It'?'
'Don't think I misunderstood. That's what the bloke said, 'it.''
Rachel crossed the room, taking the heavy automatic from Lang. She carried it into Jacob's office with two fingers in much the same way she might have disposed of a dead rat. 'Gentlemen, our dinner reservations won't wait all evening.'
The woman was a seasoned intelligence operative's wife. But the look she gave her husband clearly said the interrogation would begin when they were alone.
Once they were all back in the car, Lang's mind went over the last two days. Rather than risk his reservations appearing on an airline's easily hacked computer, he had shown up at the airport and paid cash for the ticket, thereby also avoiding a credit card's all too traceable charge, if guaranteeing a thorough search of him and his single suitcase by zealous airport security.
He would, of course, be on the aircraft's manifest.
The fact that he had been traced to London and followed to Jacob's office meant several things, all unsettling. First, whoever was out to end the alternate-fuel program probably had contacts in the United States. That was hardly surprising in view of the shots fired in Underground and Lewis's murder. Second, this unknown entity was well organized, able to gain information on one side of the Atlantic and use it on the other. He had surmised that if not known it.
The gun he had just held, though, told him something new: This… this unknown was composed of at least some professionals, trained men, as opposed to a band of wild fanatics. To leave such a clue was a surprise. Anonymous groups involved in violence usually took pains to use sanitized equipment, weapons like the Russian AK-47 and its progeny, the U.S. Colt. 45 automatic, or any of several Berettas, firearms of such universal use that they were no longer attributable to any particular location, country, or organization.
Either someone had gotten careless, or whomever he was opposing didn't worry about leaving clues.
He spent most of dinner trying to figure out which.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Middle Temple Inn
London
The Next Morning
Lang sat across Jacob's littered desk from the barrister. They were both sipping hot tea the color of strong coffee as Jacob thumbed through the copies Lang had given him the day before.
'Can't really say when I'll be through translating,' Jacob said. 'Not a good idea to keep them about the house. Our friend from last night might pay a call. At least here I can hide 'em in the general clutter-like a pebble on the beach.'
Lang took a tentative sip from his mug and winced at the bitterness of the brew, only increased by the wedge of lemon Jacob had offered. 'Any preliminary ideas?'
'A few. I'd say someone copied a much earlier document-copied it out in verse, like your King James Bible. Like the so-called Dead Sea Scrolls, these were likely used in synagogues rather than available to the public at large. They appear to be an effort to reduce Jewish history to the written word sometime after the Roman sack of Jerusalem in 70 a.d. This particular lot claims to be a copy of a much earlier chronicle by the scribe
Jereb. Superficially it resembles the Book of Exodus. The operative word here is resembles. The original might even predate Exodus.'
'By how much?'
