'I know you have connections and I'm willing to pay well.'
That put a different complexion on the matter.
'How well?'
'Depends on the gun. A pistol, preferably an automatic I can carry in my belt.'
'You coma back tomorrow, meybbe…'
Lang didn't even consider returning to the Vatican unarmed. 'Today for the gun or we have no deal, Viktor. Of course, if you don't want the business…' Lang stood as* if to leave.
Viktor was on his feet with an agility surprising for his age. 'No, no! You go outside, meybbe see a church, old temple. The Colosseum. You come back…'
'In two hours,' Lang finished for him.
Outside, Lang's stomach growled loudly, a reminder it had been a long time since his last meal. At the same time, he caught the aroma of a nearby restaurant. An hour and a half later, he had enjoyed zucchini blossoms, stuffed with mozzarella and anchovies and fried in yeast batter. He hadn't had the peculiarly Roman/Jewish dish in years. Tired or not, he had permitted himself a beer, piccolo, small.
Now he needed cash, probably more than his limit at an ATM.
Crossing a little piazza, he looked around. An old woman pushing a baby pram, two priests. He entered a bank just before it closed for the afternoon hours when most businesses, museums, even churches in Rome, and most of Italy, shut down until four o'clock. It took a few minutes with personnel irritated at being detained from lunch to work his way up to someone with authority to phone the States and arrange for a cash transfer. Lang was aware the transaction was likely to be picked up by Echelon. It was unlikely, though, that a transfer this small would draw notice. Pocketing a roll of Euros, less fees, Lang checked his watch, noted that two hours and sixteen minutes had elapsed and returned to Viktor's apartment.
This time he was buzzed in on the first try.
Viktor was grinning as he handed Lang a paper bag. 'Eet is as you weesh!'
Lang nearly dropped it from the unanticipated weight. He peered inside and blinked, uncertain he was really seeing what he thought: an M1911.45 Colt, the standard US military sidearm for nearly sixty years.
'Ees automatic as you weesh!' Viktor was beaming. He held up an extra magazine. 'An' have extra boolits!'
'Yeah, but I didn't want something used by George Custer.'
'Who Custer?'
'Man who couldn't count Indians.'
The gun was as heavy as it was notoriously inaccurate. With its box clip holding only seven rounds, it was also short on firepower. On the positive side, the Colt's large caliber reputedly could stop an elephant. If the shooter could hit it. The gun was much sought by collectors but hardly by anyone whose life might depend on it.
Lang pulled the slide back, checking the barrel. At least the grooves were distinct, unworn. The thing must have been left over from the occupation of Rome in 1944 when some GI traded it for booze or sex, the two major incentives of soldiers in all wars.
'Untraceable, also,' Viktor noted.
'I don't care if it's registered to the pope,' Lang replied, knowing that touting the weapon's few attributes was a means of gaining advantage in the oncoming haggle about price. 'How much?'
'Onlies two thousand euro.'
Lang shrugged and handed the gun back to Viktor. 'Too much.'
Happily, the forger had no idea of how badly Lang needed a weapon immediately. Also in Lang's favor was the fact that Viktor's supplier would expect immediate payment, not a return. An anonymous tip to the police by the gun's former owner that Viktor possessed a prohibited firearm would be certain if the.45 wasn't sold as promised.
Viktor crossed his arms. 'I stretch my neck for you, Lang.'
'OK, fifteen hundred including the passport.'
Lang was more than willing to pay the two thousand. That was not the point. Like most Italians, Viktor admired the art of bargaining. Lang would have lost face had he simply paid the first price offered.
Fifteen minutes later, Lang felt the reassuring weight of the Colt in his belt under his shirt as he left Viktor's apartment. He had had his picture taken for a passport that would be ready about this time tomorrow.
He was returning to the Vatican by the most direct route possible. This included crossing the multilaned Lungotevere dei Tebaldi.
Even during the afternoon recess, automobiles, buses and scooters clogged the boulevard. There are unwritten rules of crossing a street in Rome: If a driver knows a pedestrian has seen him, the vehicle continues, insane speed undiminished. The wary street-crosser stays in the crosswalk, eyes down, pretending to see nothing but the pavement in front of him.
Observing the rule, Lang was about to step off the curb when an alarm went off in his head. Agency training, intuition, blind luck. Something was out of place, an aberration like an open front door in an affluent neighborhood.
There was no one behind him, nothing…
He saw them.
Two workmen, one approaching from his left, the other from his right, their gait timed so that each would reach him simultaneously. Restoration and construction is always in progress in Rome, but work sites, like businesses, closed for the first part of the afternoon and it was not likely that the two were out for a stroll in the midday heat. And their clothes, though worn, were clean, none of the city's yellow dust or grainy grime that came from working with old stone.
Street crime in Rome tends to limit itself to picking pockets or snatching purses. Neither of these two looked the
type. They lacked the furtive movements. Besides, pickpockets and purse snatchers rarely operated in tandem.
Lang's hand went to the heavy weight in his belt. No, that wouldn't work. Shots would draw the carabinieri or polizia that were never far away. Just having the gun was a serious crime, and Lang didn't enjoy the thought of being imprisoned where his enemies could easily reach him. The two workmen knew that, too. A quick stab with a knife and they would continue on their way before anyone knew what had happened.
Where the hell had they come from? A picture of the two priests flashed across Lang's mind. Like most people, when he saw a priest, a cop, a soldier, he tended to see the uniform, not the face. He had failed to notice the two priests outside the bank, two clerics dressed in full cassocks that could easily conceal the clothes he now saw.
He took a look up and down the street, busy no matter what the hour. Of course there wasn't a taxi to be seen and the nearest bus stop was a block away. A dash across the street could prove as fatal as not moving.
In Rome, there were two types of jaywalkers: the quick and the dead.
Turning slowly, the moves of a man uncertain where he was going, Lang began to limp back toward the ghetto. There, if he had to use the.45, he had a better chance of getting lost in the winding streets.
The two workmen peeled off in unison, making no effort to conceal their intent to follow.
As Lang would have said during his years with the agency, he had a tactical situation.
v.
Schlossberg
Baden-Baden, Germany
At the Same Time
Gurt had thought the hike would have tired Manfred. Perhaps it had been the conversation with Lang. For whatever reason, the child had been cross all morning. He had complained about the same breakfast he had eaten without comment every day. He grew tired of his favorite toys.
Gurt had even allowed her son a rare interlude with the television. She usually forbade more than a few minutes of sitting in front of a device she suspected rotted brain cells, as witness the women she had met in the States who sat in front of the thing all day while their husbands pursued cardiac arrest at jobs that allowed them to meet the women's demands. Usually trophy second wives who shared Lang's condo building could speak only of the morning dramas that never seemed to reach conclusions.
What were they called? Something to do with washing, although Gurt had never seen anyone bathing the two
