The Elizabethan Secret (Lang Reilly Series Book 9) (11 page)

                                                24.

Peachtree Station

1688 Peachtree Road

Atlanta, Georgia

7:55 pm

              Built in 1918 to serve as one of several neighborhood rail stops radiating from the main Southern Railroad terminal downtown, Brookwood, as it is locally known, is the last railroad station in Atlanta. Now operated by Amtrak, it was designed by local architect Neel Reid in the Italian Renaissance style that made him famous throughout the early twentieth century south. Its purpose was to make the railroad convenient for residents of what was then the suburbs, never to serve the hundreds if not thousands who used the much larger but no-longer extant downtown facility. 

              Paladin windows gaze out on the city’s busiest street. Inside, wooden benches, as old as the station and worn smooth by nearly a century of southern derrieres, can accommodate perhaps twenty-five people, a fraction of the passengers with a great deal more time and patience than the money required for airfare or who simply prefer not to be exposed to the indignity of having their possessions rifled while being groped. Or who are disinclined to undergo the scrutiny to which airline passengers are subjected if it can otherwise be avoided. They crowd into the small space to board one of the two daily trains, one southbound for New Orleans with intermediate stops, the other in the opposite direction for New York. Never mind both obvious and hidden inconveniences such as the lack of parking space or anywhere else to remove baggage from an automobile and the dearth of either elevator or escalator to the platform some fifty or so feet below the station.

              Less visible but equally real are those problems one can expect when an arm of the octopus-like Federal government takes over what had been the province of private enterprise: Unpublished is the fact that reservations must be made ahead of time for checked baggage or the luggage will go on tomorrow’s train, arriving, if at all, a day after their owner, regardless of how much room the train’s baggage car may have available. No explanation is offered or given by the station’s staff who, instead, demonstrate the contempt for the American taxpayer endemic to some if not all Federal agencies, commissions, and bureaus. The location of the dining car (as distinguished from the club car) is a secret kept with all the fervor and skill of, say, the Central Intelligence Agency. There is a choice of only two directions on a moving train: forward or backward. But to inquire of a conductor, porter, or other employee is to elicit much the same expression and response as if one had requested the solution to Fermat’s Enigma.

              So it was on that evening two days after his arrival in the city by international air that a short man in an ill-fitting suit and of obvious Asian linage wedged his way into the station, already jammed with a cross section of the American population so diverse as to please even the most vocal of those who make a living exploiting real or perceived acts of racial injustice.

              The New York-bound train glided into the station a few minutes later, at 8:12. That was the destination on the ticket of the man in the suit. Being the only one in such formal attire might have drawn the attention of the conductor had he not been watching with some degree of entertainment the rise of an impossibly short skirt on a young lady as she lifted a leg to climb aboard. 

              Or perhaps not.

              What was certain when agents of an unnamed federal entity boarded the train upon its arrival in Penn Station some thirty plus hours later, first class seat/sleeper D-4 showed no signs of human habitation. A woman across the aisle told investigators the seat had been empty when she had boarded in Washington, DC.

              By that time, a man of Asian linage in an ill-fitting suit was already an hour into a trans-Pacific flight aboard a Korean Airline 777. He had spent the previous five plus hours on a similar aircraft operated by Delta between Charlotte and Los Angeles. His sole luggage appeared to be a very small box. Declining the offers of the flight crew to stow it for him, it would remain in his lap for the entire flight.

25.

472 Lafayette Drive

Atlanta, Georgia

6:56 That Evening

              Brian Williams concluded The NB
C
Evening New
s
with what might be the only bright spot in an otherwise depressing world: a surf boarding golden retriever. The Middle East was aflame with sectarian hatreds, the Russian president was once more exploiting the weak and irresolute American President with another land grab in Eastern Europe and California was suffering a drought that a bearded scientist proclaimed as both the worst on record and attributable to global warming.

              Never mind that studies of tree rings in what is now the Golden State depicted droughts of much longer duration going as far back as 800 AD, a fact neither Brian nor his tame climatologist did not choose to share with his audience.

              “You think Grumps could do that?” Manfred asked.

              Lang was startled. He hadn’t seen his son enter the room. “Do what?”

              The little boy pointed. “Surfboard. Bet he could!”

              Lang clicked the remote and the predominantly doleful liturgy that was network news evaporated from the screen. He smiled, envisioning trying to get the water-loathing Grumps near the pool, let alone on a surf board.

              “Don’t you think so, Dad? We could give him a try.”

              “Er, I think we’ll have to wait until it’s warm enough for the pool.”

              Like any child, patience was not among Manfred’s virtues. “Aw, Dad! That’s
forever!”

              “Summer’ll be here before you know it” Lang said, employing that ageless adage for restive children that had probably been among the first words spoken by mankind. “Besides, I doubt Grumps is all that eager to become a surfer.”

              He went to the bar and turned on the old fashioned seventy-eight record player. A disk dropped and Harry James’s trumpet began the introductory notes of A
ll or Nothing at All
. The band leader had two distinctions besides his music: He had been married to World War II’s most popular pin-up, movie star Betty Grable, and he had hired an unknown vocalist, a skinny first-generation American kid of Italian descent from Hoboken, named Frank Sinatra. Neither relationship endured.

             
As Francis would say, ‘Sic transit gloria mundy.’

             
Lang was pouring from the Scotch bottle when Manfred asked, “Why do you drink that stuff?”

              The child had reached that hyper annoying stage of “why?” Why is the sky blue, why is it hot in the summertime and the unanswerable, why do you and Mommy lock your bedroom door if you come home in the afternoon?

              A simple answer was usually best.

              “I drink it because I like it.”

              “Why do you like it? Mommy says it tastes terrible and when you and Uncle Francis have more than one or two, you act silly.”

             
De gustibus non est disptandum.

              Gurt to the rescue as she appeared in the doorway with a mild reproof. “Manfred, you shouldn’t be repeating what I tell you.”

              “Curses!” Lang exclaimed with exaggerated melodrama, “My whole espionage system is under attack!”

              “What’s es-pin-age?”

              Gurt gave Lang a cocked you-deserved-that eyebrow. “You can explain that over A
bendessen
. It is ready.”

              “Mom, why do you say ‘dinner’ in German?”

              Lang went to the table with a ‘your turn’ smile.

              Chicken! Chicken baked with sauerkraut. Last night had also featured chicken, this time cooked in bacon drippings. The night before, another chicken dish, the specifics of which Lang could not recall.

              He had had occasional discussions with Gurt about the sameness of meals and was not likely to have another. Besides pointing out that red meat was basically unhealthy, she had invited him to assume the culinary chores should he believe he could improve the quality of the cuisine. Outdoors on the grill Lang could hold his own. Inside, the smoke alarm, rather than a meat thermometer, tended to guide him.

              Besides, no point in unnecessarily causing a conflict he couldn’t win. He had learned he rarely won a dispute with Gurt. And when he thought he had,  he subsequently learned the argument wasn’t over yet.

              He could continue to feed his red-meat cravings at lunch downtown, far from her dietary oversight. But Manfred . . .?

              He was suddenly aware Gurt had directed a question at him. “Pardon?”

              Waving Manfred silent before he could pose the inevitable question, she repeated, “Croatia. You still planning to be there next week?”

              Lang nodded as he used a napkin to wipe his lips. “Yes. The country still hasn’t recovered from the Bosnian war, what, twenty plus years ago? The foundation is planning a children’s clinic there.”

              “Exactly where?”

              “That’s why I’m going to Zagreb, to hear where the government thinks it might be most needed. Then, I’ll spend a day or two looking around the country to see for myself.”

              “Croatia is a small country. It shouldn’t take long to see most of it. But don’t you think the government knows best where a clinic might be most needed?”

              “Do you truly believe any government knows what is best for its country as opposed to what is best for its government? I suggest you think about our own.”

              “
Own
government or country?”

              “Both.”

              Gurt had no answer.

26.

Kim II Sung University

Pyongyang, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea

Two Days Later

              Sang Ja-reeb, university president, looked out of his top-floor office window. Winter’s snow had almost all disappeared from the fifteen hectare campus. Another month and the white flowers of the Kousa dogwoods and flat-topped Euodia trees would punctuate the green of the now-brown grass.

              He sighed, wishing he could devote more time to the pen-and-ink reproduction of those and other flowers that occupied what few spare hours he had instead of meeting with the sort of people with whom he would spend some part of this morning, explaining why he, and this university, was unable to fulfill their request.

              It all had to do with the nation’s view of education in general and science specifically. In the Democratic People’s Republic, scientific research and learning had to have military, industrial, or agricultural value. A more efficient method of refining steel or growing more rice to the hectare were preferable to theories of how the universe worked. In fact, the more abstract the science, the more likely he would have to answer to the committee that oversaw the university.

              And abstract this question was.

              He turned from the view of the anonymously modern buildings across the patch of grass to frown at his desk. On it was a round, obviously very old object that could have been a pocket watch or compass had either existed in that shape in the sixteenth century. There was a post in the center that might have attached a . . . What? The odd figures spaced ninety degrees apart didn’t help, either. If he could decipher those, perhaps . . .

              In the life-sized poster that adorned every public facility, the pudgy Kim Jong-un seemed to be sneering at him from the wall behind his desk. In the Democratic People’s Republic, failure was not taken lightly; it was considered an affront to The Great Leader.

              He drew a deep breath and went to answer the knock on the door. On the other side was a man. Short, his height was visually exaggerated by the high peaked cap of his army uniform. The left breast of his jacket was paved with medals. Sang always wondered at such adornments. North Korea had seen no combat since 1953. What were the decorations awarded for?

              Surely, they weren’t all for good conduct.

              He stepped aside to let the man enter. “Comrade Kwack.”

              Kwack strode into the office as though it was his own and pointed to the desk. “You have discovered the purpose of that?”

              None of the polite inquires as to the host’s family or well-being. But then, Kwack was one of the higher-ups in the National Defense Commission, one of the many government organizations whose name had nothing to do with its function. Others included The Committee for Peaceful Unification of the Fatherland and the Korean Peace Committee. As an official of such a powerful government branch, Kwack owed no particular courtesy to a mere university president, no matter the communist dogma of equality. In practice, some were more equal than others as per Orwell’s
Animal Farm,
a book the possession of which could cost Sang his job if not his freedom.

              “I regret, comrade, that no one on the scientific staff here could decipher its use.”

              Kwack spun on the heels of his highly polished shoes. “Are you telling me, comrade, that the scientists of the decadent, imperialist Americans are superior to ours?”

              Sang had anticipated this--an accusation more than a question. Questioning someone’s opinion as the superiority of everything North Korean and the threat implicit therein was a common motivating factor in The Democratic People’s Republic.

              “Comrade, what makes you so certain the Americans know the object’s function? Our metallurgist ascertained it is quite old, four or five centuries. Part of it appears to be missing. Could it be its use has been lost in time?”

              Kwack hadn’t thought of this. “Why, then, would the Russians want it?”

              “Do they?”

              Kwack realized he had ventured beyond his authority. Like most totalitarian states, information in North Korea was hoarded for the sake of secrecy in all things. Now he was on the defensive. “I did not say that.”

              Wisely, the university president changed subjects. “The American . . .”

              “Reilly.”

“Reilly. I would think if he is the one who bought it at an antique auction, he might be aware of its purpose. You might have a better chance of getting the information from him than the Russians.”

Russia’s failure to establish itself as a dominant power in East Asia and its caution in delivering potential aid to the Democratic People’s Republic, caused the regime to drift into China’s influence more than Russia’s. The two countries maintained a somewhat strained relationship since Russia had joined those nations urging North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons.

“It is not for you, comrade president, to determine foreign policy,” Kwack said stiffly.

Now it was Sang’s turn to change tack. In this country it was unwise to suggest that an official, particularly a high one, might not know what he was doing. “Of course not, comrade. I never thought you would contact the Russians rather than simply pursuing the American and force him to tell you what you want to know.”

It did not require a man of Sang’s education to see the birth of an idea.

“That has been the plan all along, comrade president. I regret your university was unable to be of help.”

With that, the man in uniform made an abrupt turn and left.

Sang shook his head. He had hardly expected deference from an officer of the National Defense Commission, but was rudeness necessary? Ah well, he had planted an idea, perhaps one that would grow like the hybrid tuberous begonia, the Kimjongilla he so loved to draw. In any event, he would not like to be the American, Reilly.