Vienna
At the Same Time
Dr. Heimlich Shaffer had lived in the second-floor walk-up behind the Academy of Sciences since his divorce eight years ago. He loved the wandering, narrow streets of the Old Town. The baroque sixteenth-century facades had a soul that was sadly lacking in the faux-Vienna Woods cottages of Nussdorf, where he and Analisa had raised their two children. He didn't miss the commute by crowded U Bahn into the city, either.
He had gotten the apartment cheap-he preferred inexpensively -when a colleague at the university had retired to somewhere in the Tyrol. Bedroom, bath, small kitchen and office, the formal living room. All his. His books, his computer with only his stuff on it, his bath with no drying panty hose dangling from the shower curtain like snakeskins.
His.
He supposed he was lonely from time to time, but his work was engaging, and he had to account to no one other than those who hired him.
Which reminded him-he hadn't asked the American about his compensation for reading the translation of these remarkable documents spread before him. The dinner had been nice, but it was hardly going to pay next month's rent, no matter how enjoyable an alternative it had been to the snacklike meals he fixed for himself. The man, Reilly, surely didn't expect advice for free. That was hardly the purpose of maintaining the Web site in four languages. It Would be reasonable…
The buzzer for the street-level entrance to the building interrupted his thoughts A visitor? Unlikely. Shaffer's only visitors were his two children, and then only on occasional weekends. Someone pressing random buttons to gain entrance, then.
A year ago, thieves had gotten in this way and taken old Frau Schiller's TV set as well assorted valuables from other tenants. Some fool had pushed the button that let them in, expecting someone else. After that the landlord should have installed an intercom so residents could identify who was pressing the buzzer on the street.
The irritating noise sounded again as he got up and checked the locks on his door.
Secure.
He was returning to his reading when the annoying sound came again.
Ignore it.
But what if it were the American with more questions? He would call, though, wouldn't he?
The damned buzzer rasped again.
Reilly or thieves?
No matter. The door onto the street was heavy oak, and he wouldn't open it all the way, just peek around to see who was causing all that racket.
THITY-ONE
Michaelerplatz
Vienna
Minutes Later
There was no place to go but the church.
The main doors were closed, no doubt locked at this hour. To the right was a smaller one, one Lang hoped was kept open for parishioners with late-night spiritual needs. A dash across the small platz, a snatch on a brass handle, and he was inside.
The interior was dimly lit. The tumbling cherubs and sunbursts of the ornately carved choir loft threw sinister shadows, and the figures of the Renaissance frescoes of the fall of the angels were only malevolent hints of human figures.
Something about this church prowled the fringes of his memory, something from his last visit to Vienna years ago…
No time for a senior moment.
He turned to the door through which he had entered and lifted his eyes in thanks for a bit of luck: The entrance had both latch and dead bolt. He lowered the latch and strode quickly the length of the nave.
What was it about the Michaelerkirche?
The rattling of the locked door was followed by the thumps of silenced bullets. The old hinges wouldn't withstand an assault of that magnitude long. The whole door would fall into the entrance in seconds.
The sight of an iron railing to the right of the baroque altar sparked a memory to life. Now he recalled what he had known about this church.
In a second he was descending into the crypt. A very special crypt.
At the bottom of the stairs he ducked his head and shut an all too flimsy gate behind him.
The light from the single low-watt bulb overhead was swallowed by the uniform grayness. Gray bones were stacked in gray arches like gray firewood, the stump of a single candle melted on each brick ledge. Tibias, ribs, femurs, humeri, all clinically arranged by type. To his left he was observed by the empty sockets of countless skulls stacked in their niches like some pagan display.
Wooden caskets, gray with age, were in neat rows across the floor. Some had come open, displaying their occupants in gray funeral finery. A grinning mummy's face above a gray vest or lace collar, flesh-covered arms across the breast of a gray burial dress. A nightmare's bounty of corpses that had been entombed under the church in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and been preserved by a freak of nature: the constant temperature and dry air of this particular crypt.
Footsteps in the church overhead.
Lang glanced around and made one of the more macabre choices of his life. Moving to the edge of the light, he chose a coffin just beyond the overhead lighting's penumbra. He hoped the protesting shriek of old hand-forged nails being pried loose wasn't as loud as it seemed to him.
The corpse he dispossessed grinned up at him, black eye sockets still rimmed with bushy brows, now gray. The face had gray skin stretched over it, much like the pictures of Egyptian mummies unwrapped after millennia.
Lang dumped him on the gray stone floor. 'Sorry, old pal, but unless I'm gonna join you sooner than I'd like, I need this more than you.'
He could hear someone tugging at the gate.
He rolled the former occupant behind another casket, arms and legs seeming to disintegrate into dust as it moved.
He had time only to grasp in both hands the weapon he had taken before squeezing into the confines of the coffin. Although the weight of the gun should have prepared him, he was surprised to note he was holding another IMI Desert Eagle, identical to the one held by the intruder in Jacob's office.
Whispers at the head of the stairs told him he didn't have the time to consider the significance of his discovery, only to make sure a round was in the chamber and the safety was off. He had chosen the largest box he could find, but he couldn't straighten out his legs. No time to look for another. The best he could do was to turn the casket on its side so only the bottom was visible from the direction of the gate.
He hoped he didn't have to wait long. He thought he could see small, furtive shapes scooting along the gray floor. He could hear gentle scurrying and the occasional squeak of rats that had not feasted on a new body in two hundred years.
He heard a whispered conversation, then slow footsteps down the stone stairs.
Lang twisted his head as far as possible, giving him a limited view through a crack between the planks of the casket.
One man, gun with bulbous silencer in hand, was carefully picking his way in front of a bone-filled arch. From his constant glances to his left, Lang was certain his companion was across the room, if out of view They were setting up a cross fire. If Lang had entertained doubts he was dealing with professionals, he no longer did.
At some point they would be at the row of coffins where Lang was concealed. His protruding knees would
