Lang stooped over and looked through the pockets of the man's windbreaker. He was not surprised to find them empty except for a full clip of ammunition.
He removed his own near-empty magazine and put it in a pocket before slamming the full one into his own gun. He was headed for the stairs when his BlackBerry beeped again.
'Yes?' he snapped.
There was the briefest of pauses before the voice of Sara, his secretary, asked, 'Am I interrupting something?'
THIRTY-FOUR
Sudbahnhof Police Station
Wiedner Gurtel
Vienna
0920 the Next Morning
In twenty-two years of service, Chief Inspector Karl Rauch had never experienced a night like the one just past. A former professor shot at the common entrance of his ransacked Sonnenfelsgasse apartment, an emergency call to the Stephansplatz, where a man had been raked with a glass bottle and two officers shot, one in serious condition.
Then, this morning, before the paperwork had been completed, a hysterical call from the sextant at the Michaelerkirche. Coffins ripped apart, the dead scattered across the crypt, and two very recently deceased among those who had reposed there for centuries. The man had been more upset about the violation of his charges' last resting place than the two additions.
More carnage than had ever taken place when Vienna had been the meeting place of East and West, the battleground of Soviet and Western spies. At least they had been tidy in their rare executions of one another.
Since the fall of communism, Vienna had been a relatively quiet place. No militant Arab emigres with their endless sectarian violence, no former African colonials demanding this and that. Oh, there were the pickpockets and the occasional fight in the Prater and problems in the nearby red-light district.
But multiple shootings?
To add to the mystery, no one had heard a single-shot-fifty-caliber shots. Rauch had not seen a fifty- caliber weapon since his mandatory military training in his youth. The two Polizei had been shot from two different guns, ballistics had told him. The two bodies in the church with a third, and the professor with yet a fourth. More slugs had been dug out of the bricks of the crypt but were too badly crushed to add a fifth gun to the melee. Handguns, judging by the several shell casings at the Stephansplatz and church crypt.
All from weapons like the two monstrous automatics found with the dead men in the crypt.
Who would want to lug around something that big?
The uniformity of weapons and the fact that no one had heard anything suggested silencers had been involved all the way around, again like the ones in the old burial ground. Professional assassins acting in concert. Professionals also judging by the total anonymity of the corpses in the church, men whose clothing had even been stripped of labels.
But to what end?
What did two professional gunmen have in common with a divorced university professor of…
Rauch pushed aside a stack of papers on his desk, sheets that included yesterday's newspaper, last week's reports, and, quite likely, the wrapper for the pastry that had been breakfast.
A tidy desk was symptomatic of a small, if not sick, mind.
He found what he was looking for on top.
A professor of chemistry, now in business as an archaeological chemist, whatever that was.
The investigating officers had found the professors apartment a wreck, obviously searched. He regarded his own office, where paper covered everything. Well, most likely searched, anyway.
For what?
The phone on his desk rang. It took two more rings for him to find the thing under-what else-a stack of papers on the credenza behind his desk. 'Ja?'
He listened carefully. He might not waste his time with useless order in his office, but his investigations were not only orderly, they were organized and thought out. Already men were at the bank denoted by check stubs at the professor's apartment to look at deposits, ascertain who had paid Hen Doktor for what lately. The fingerprint crew was working on the shell casings, and the area around the church searched for anyplace a weapon might have been dumped. Even this early, one Of his men had found what might be a clue.
The inspector took his suit jacket from where he had tossed it onto a chair and headed downstairs.
In the basement he entered a windowless room with a table and four chairs bolted to the cement floor. The room stank of stale sweat and tobacco smoke, although no one had dared light up, in view of the inspector's feelings about cigarettes. Two unter inspectors were watching a third man draw on an easel as a fourth described a face. The two policemen displayed eyes rimmed with red, and beard stubble, testimony to being roused out of bed and given assignments in the small hours.
In front of each person was a paper cup containing a brownish liquid that passed for coffee at the station. Rauch was certain it was poisonous-or, at least, not proper Viennese coffee, which amounted to the same thing.
'Am Morgen,' the younger of the two policemen murmured without enthusiasm as Rauch entered the room.
'This is Herr Jasto Schattner, the owner of the Koenig Bakery restaurant near the Stephansplatz. He knows- knew-Herr Doktor Shaffer. The professor had dinner there last night with someone.'
Rauch nodded to the drawing pad.
'That's him, according to Herr Schattner, the man who had dinner with the victim last night. He spoke only English.'
Rauch said, 'See that a copy is circulated. If he is a foreigner, I am particularly interested in your taking it to the hotels.'
Both younger inspectors slumped slightly. There must be a thousand hotels in and around the city.
Hans and Fritz, the inspector thought. The original Katzenjammer Kids, these two. Any assignment that involved leaving the meager comforts of the station house was greeted as a form of privation. 'Not so glum, lads. Antiquated as we may be, we do have a fax machine.'
The pair brightened noticeably.
'And the various Bahnhof und Flughof.'
Even though there were only a limited number of train stations and one airport, the two returned to expressions of being imposed upon like a host whose guests wouldn't go home.
Rauch turned to go, stopped, and looked over his shoulder. ' Danke, Herr Schattner.'
Rauch was relieved to depart the stench and confines of the room.
THIRTY-FIVE
Peachtree Center
227 Peachtree Street
Atlanta, Georgia
The Next Afternoon
Lang Reilly scooped up a stack of pink message slips from his secretary's desk with the hand not holding his briefcase. Without meeting Sara's eyes, he slunk into his inner office and shut the door, a warning that he was in a foul mood.
Pissed off and tired would have been a more accurate description. As he had made a hasty exit from the
