health. Not wanting to set a bad example or subject the little boy to potentially harmful secondhand smoke, they agreed they would not smoke in front of him. That proved difficult for Gurt, leading to clandestine Marlboros smoked in the yard, the odor of which was clearly detectable upon her return inside. Lang, a lover of Cuban cigars, which he had ordered specially by an indirect route, only consumed one or two a week anyway. It had been easier for him to smoke less although more difficult to conceal, since he refused to throw away a cigar only half-smoked. The things cost nearly twenty-five bucks apiece. The ultimate resolution had been for both parents to simply quit-if there was anything simple about giving up a lifetime pleasure.
“What word was that?” Gurt had returned from her turn to bathe Manfred and put him to bed.
“Our mutual smoking ban.”
She looked at her husband with mock suspicion. “A year into an agreement and you are already looking for hoop holes?” She shrugged. “It is not easy, being married to a lawyer, always the hoop holes.”
“Loopholes,” Lang corrected.
“Is one hole in an agreement not as good as another?”
For an answer, Lang poured a third glass of port and extended it to her. “At least we didn’t give up port.”
She accepted the offering with a mock curtsy. “For small favors I am thankful.”
Johnny Cash bewailed being named Sue.
Francis smiled. “Always found that song amusing. What I don’t understand, though, is your choice of music.”
“I suppose you would prefer Gregorian chants?”
“Not necessarily. What I meant was, you obviously enjoy history.” Francis pointed to the overburdened bookcases. “I see everything from Gibbon’s Decline and Fall to Will Durant’s Story of Civilization and Churchill’s Second World War. I see works by Dickens, essays by Emerson and a bunch of contemporary novels.”
“And?”
“I don’t get it: someone as obviously well-read as you likes country music?”
Lang nodded. “Yeah, I do. At least some of it. I can understand the words and it actually has a tune I can whistle. Try whistling Beethoven.”
An hour or so later, the port exhausted, Francis stood and stretched. “As always, a magnificent dinner, wonderful port and delightful company.”
Lang also stood. “You are easily amused.”
Francis sighed. “Not as easily as you think. It’s been a long time since you broke bread at the parish house.” He lowered his voice conspiratorially. “Mrs. Finnigan, my housekeeper-cook, bless her heart, is a fine woman and a good Catholic but a horrible cook. Deorum cibus non est. Food for the gods it ain’t.”
“Doesn’t sound like a fair trade-off to me,” Lang said, walking his friend to the front door. “Why not get someone who is a decent cook, then?”
Francis stopped, facing Lang. “She’s been at Immaculate Conception longer than I have. I can’t just fire her like that.”
Lang reached to open the door. “Maybe you’ll be canonized someday for your martyrdom in suffering heartburn as the price of Christian charity.”
Francis stepped around Lang to give Gurt a hug. “In addition to being a heretic, your husband is a wiseass.”
Gurt hugged him back. “Be grateful you do not have to live with him.”
“I include thanks in my daily prayers.”
They watched him pull the Toyota into the street. In following it with his eyes, Lang noticed a sedan parked at the curb to his left. The people who lived there had an ample yard in which to park cars, so the automobile was not a visitor’s nor was it one he recognized as his neighbor’s. For that matter, the humble Ford was not the type transportation preferred by the residents of affluent Ansley Park.
Its sheer ordinariness stuck out like an automotive sore thumb.
Lang took a little more time closing the door than was necessary. He thought he saw a flash of movement. Someone was in the car.
Why?
Lang thought he had a good idea.
It was then he realized he had forgotten to ask Francis about his cryptic remark at lunch the other day concerning the true occupant of Saint Mark’s tomb under the altar in Venice. Oh well, he saw the priest on a regular if purely social basis. He’d get an answer the next time.
Upstairs, Lang cut off the bathroom light and was approaching the bed where Gurt was an indistinct pile of covers.
“Who was it on the phone?” she asked as he pulled back the covers to climb in.
“Someone who wanted me to think they had a wrong number.”
“Why would someone want to do that?”
“There was a hum on the line.”
The blankets fell away as Gurt sat up. “A parabolic listening device? That could make wireless electronics like a cordless telephone hum. Someone with the thing trained on the windows to pick up the vibrations of the glass caused by the human voice. It can also pick up both sides of a telephone conversation. They were testing it.”
“That’s why I pulled down our custom-made privacy shields before I got in bed.”
In remodeling the old Ansley Park home, Gurt and Lang had spared no expense to retain its early twentieth- century charm while modernizing a number of features. One of these additions had been a security system that would shock their more conventional neighbors, and one many military bases might envy.
With the past they shared, neither wanted to risk a former enemy’s reappearance. The house contained a complete privacy system designed to thwart the most sophisticated listening devices, in addition to a number of other surprises, such as oak bolted to two-inch case-hardened steel for doors, a central control system that could remotely seal off any part of the house and real-time surveillance cameras.
Gurt turned on the light by her side of the bed. “They called to make sure their device was operational.”
“Not as good as tapping the phone but not as risky, either. And they can follow conversations anywhere within a hundred yards just by focusing the antenna.”
“But why would someone want to…?”
“To enjoy my brilliant wit?”
Gurt’s frown showed that at the moment, she wasn’t enjoying it at all. “What should we do?”
“Not much. Far as I know, there’s no law against eavesdropping as long as no wiretap or trespass is involved. I’d say someone is more interested in learning about us than doing us harm.”
Gurt nodded. “For now.”
“For now.” Lang turned to open the top drawer of the bedside table and verify his Browning HP 9 mm was where he kept it. “At some point they-whoever ‘they’ might be-are going to either find out whatever they want to know or give up. Then they’ll either go away or move to the next step.”
Gurt was crawling out from under the covers.
“Where are you going?” Lang asked.
“Downstairs to make sure all the locks are on and so are the motion and impact detectors.”
“Don’t forget the motion-activated cameras.”
Lang knew the house was as secure as modern technology could make it. He still had a hard time getting to sleep.
From the diary of Louis Etienne Saint Denis, secretary to Major General Napoleon Bonaparte Chateau Malmaison
September 22, 1799 The general will not see his wife. We arrived in Toulon ^ 1 from Egypt near a week past and hastened to Paris and then to this small palace nearly in the shadow of the grandeur that was Versailles before it was sacked by the mob. It is the news received in Egypt that lent wings to our heels, the open secret of the many affairs of the general’s wife, known to all but, it would seem, the general himself. Had not General Junot told him, all would be well . ^ 2 Now, he sulks in the upstairs of this petite palace, which he provided for Josephine, ^ 3 not allowing her to his bed despite the most piteous wailing and tears. The general married this woman but three years past and it has appeared to all close to him the marriage has been unsatisfactory from the start. The widow of an
