The Pegasus Secret (18 page)

During the time in Trapani, I came to realize Guillaume de Poitiers was not alone different from the poor monks with whom I had lived. All his Templar brethren lived well. Although it is hardly man’s place in God’s scheme to judge, I noted humility and poverty did not number among their attributes. They enjoyed great quantities of unwatered wine (which they were quick to condemn as inferior to the wines of other regions) and were profligate in their habits. Gaming was as common among them as prayer as was recounting stories
in which the narrator was the hero, usually a little bit more so than his predecessor.

I was to learn a number of the Holy See’s rules did not apply to this Order. This may well have carried the seeds of its fall from grace, a fall as disastrous if less spectacular than Satan’s from Heaven.

Translator’s Notes

1
. Armour shielding leg and foot

2
. Armour covering the arms, shoulders and upper body

3
. A device for throwing large rocks, like a catapult

4
. The Italian equivalent of William is Guglielmo

5
. 1091–1250

6
. Approximately 650 meters

7
. The word Pietro uses is
cycgel
, Frankish for either a short heavy club or a weapon used to beat upon an opponent. In this context, it is doubtful these people would have weapons more sophisticated than could be fashioned from readily available material.

8
. The author uses
liste
, a Frankish word which later came to include the areas used for knightly competition. Since the sport of jousting between knights was unknown at the time of Pietro’s narrative, the earlier meaning of the word is used.

9
. The hyperbole here is Pietro’s, not the translator’s.

10
. There are no consistent records as to the number of ships owned by the Templars, but it is unlikely that the entire fleet would have been at an obscure Sicilian port at once or that all the ships in port would have been theirs.

Atlanta
The same day

Morse was slouched in his chair, studying another fax, this one from the Department of Defense, Bureau of Records, St. Louis.

Reilly’s dates of service matched what Morse remembered him saying, even confirmed a bullet lodged between the seventh and eighth cervical vertebrae. If Morse understood the medical jargon correctly, the examining doctor had adopted an attitude of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Attempting surgery to cut the damn bullet out could sever some nerve with a long name. Made sense.

Morse sat up so suddenly the casters on his chair slammed against the gray carpet with a thud, causing the detective in the cubicle next to his to look up from her computer with a glare.

“C-seven and C-eight?” he said to no one in particular
before he picked up the phone and dialed the medical examiner’s number from memory.

The first person he spoke to confirmed his suspicion: There was no eighth cervical vertebra. The thoracic spine began after the seventh cervical disk.

Mistake?

Could be.

He reached into the inside pocket of the suit coat draped over the back of his chair and produced his notebook. It didn’t take long to find the number for Reilly’s office. Now, if he could just get the minimal cooperation if the lawyer’s secretary . . .

Atlanta: Offices of Arnold Krause, M.D
.

Morse hated doctors’ offices even when he was not a patient. The worn and outdated magazines and the cheap furniture were almost as bad as the receptionist’s, “The doctor’ll be right with you,” a promise uniformly and cheerfully given but rarely kept. He had a theory that there was a school somewhere that recycled lobotomy patients to work the front desks of physicians’ offices.

His badge made a difference. He hardly had time to settle in with a month-old copy of
People
before he was ushered into an office where diplomas and certificates covered more of the walls than the dark paneling.

“Arnold Krause.” A short man in a white coat entered the room right after Morse and circled him to stand behind a desk and extend his hand. “Understand you’re interested in Mr. Reilly’s records.”

Morse savored the nervousness most people exhibited around policemen. “That’s right, Doctor. There be no doctor-patient privilege in Georgia. . . .”

Krause plopped into a leather chair behind the desk and slid a manila folder and a large envelope across the polished mahogany. “As I’m well aware. Still, we don’t usually turn over medical records without a subpoena. But where a patient is subject to an investigation . . .”

Morse sat in a wing chair across the desk and began to thumb through the file. “I appreciate your not insisting on the formalities.”

“We try to cooperate with law enforcement,” the doctor said, closely watching where Morse directed his attention.

Morse read the typed notes of last fall’s physical. Reilly seemed to be in good health. Impatiently, he opened the envelope, dumping X rays onto the desk. He held them up one by one to the light from the office’s only window until he found the one he was looking for.

He handed it to the doctor. “This be the neck, right?”

Krause whirled in his chair to place the X ray on a viewer built into the wall. Fluorescent light flickered and came on. “The bottom of the cervical spine, yes. Actually, the picture is a chest X ray.”

It was obvious the doctor wanted to ask why Morse wanted to know.

Morse ignored the implicit question. “And there be no foreign objects imbedded in Mr. Reilly’s cervical spine, right?”

The doctor’s face wrinkled into a puzzled frown. “Foreign object? Like . . . ?”

“Like a bullet.”

The doctor paled visibly. “A bullet?”

Morse leaned across the desk. “What I said, a bullet. If one were there, we’d see it, right?”

Krause nodded. “I’d certainly think so. But why . . . ?”

“In your examination of Mr. Reilly, you never saw a scar, anything that would indicate he’d either been shot there or had a bullet removed?”

The doctor shook his head. “No, nothing. But why . . . ?”

Morse stood, hand extended. “You’ve been very helpful, Doc.”

Krause took the extended hand gingerly, as though he thought it might break. “You think Mr. Reilly has been shot in the neck?”

Morse turned to go. “Somebody sure does.”

Atlanta: Parking deck of Piedmont Medical Center

Morse handed over a wad of bills and the gate out of the parking lot lifted. It was one of the rare times he didn’t count his change. He was too preoccupied with a wound shown by records but not by physical exam.

He had no trouble with a man making up a military career. Lots of men did that, pretended they had been in combat when they hadn’t gotten any closer to the enemy than the officers’ club. Or claimed military service when they hadn’t worn a uniform since the Boy Scouts. But he’d never seen the service itself fabricate a Purple Heart.

Why would they do that?

He fiddled with the air-conditioning in the unmarked department-issue Ford, grimacing when warm air came out of the vents. He sighed and rolled down the window.

They would do that because Mr. Reilly had never been a SEAL, probably never been in the navy, because someone preferred Mr. Reilly’s past not be subject to scrutiny.

That was the only answer Morse could come up with.

He grimaced again, this time from the thought of the can of worms that thought opened up. If some nameless, faceless bureaucrat had given Reilly a bogus past, his real past would, most likely, come under the huge and ill-defined
umbrella known as national security. In a word, Mr. Reilly had been some sort of a spook. Or still was.

And if Mr. Reilly was still in the spook business, he didn’t have to have a reason to kill Halvorson. Or throw the other guy from his balcony, either, for that matter. Somebody in Washington could have decided the doorman was actually an agent for some terrorist cell and ordered him terminated. Or that the alleged burglar was bin Laden’s brother-in-law, for that matter.

Morse slammed on the brakes, almost running a red light.

National security or not, people didn’t get away with murder, not on Morse’s watch. He’d report his suspicion to the federal boys to add to their international alert. Maybe they could pry something out of the cloak-and-dagger crowd, find out who Reilly knew in Rome, where he might be hiding.

London
The next day

The
ping
of the seat belt and “no smoking” lights woke Lang from a deep sleep. He rubbed stinging eyes and leaned across Gurt to peer out the window. A sea of dirty clouds was rising to meet the MD 880. Across the narrow aisle, a young couple of Eastern European origin were unsuccessful in comforting a howling infant. The British Airways flight attendants were scurrying to collect the last plastic drinking cups before trays were ordered back into their upright positions.

He let the seat up and ran a finger across his upper lip, making sure the moustache was still glued into place. Graying hair and thick glasses aged him a bit, Lang hoped. Bits of foam rubber stuffed into cheeks made his face match the jowly photograph of Heinrich Schneller on the German passport in his pocket.

Gurt and Lang had the picture taken at a photographer’s shop a block from the embassy. The glue on it had hardly been dry when she applied a copy of the official stamp to the blank passport.

Facial hair was a new sensation for him. He had always believed it silly to cultivate on an upper lip what grew wild elsewhere.

The ticket clerk at Milan’s Malpensa Airport had given their documents a cursory glance before wishing them a cheerful
arrivederci
. The only attention from the gray-uniformed
Policia
with their gloss polished gun belts and boots had been appreciative stares at Gurt.

A blunt-cut dark wig and a slight stoop to minimize her height were the only disguise to which she would agree. There was, after all, no reason to think They had ever seen her face. Still, she was worth the unabashed gaping for which Italian men are notorious.

Herr Schneller and his wife, the much younger-looking Freda, had departed Milan on a flight to the relatively new City Airport in Docklands just outside London. Had anyone checked with the company whose name was on the credit card paying for the tickets, Frau Schneller was accompanying her husband on a trip to price carpet-grade wool in Milan and then London, from where they would proceed to Manchester.

Lang had no idea if the address for Herr Schneller’s employer even existed, but he knew from experience the Hamburg telephone number would be answered by someone speaking credible
Hochdeutsch
and probably sitting in a room in Virginia. He also knew the passports and drivers’ licenses would pass scrutiny. Anyone attempting to verify the Visa or American Express cards would find valid accounts, although he had had to promise not to use them for anything other than identification. Gurt had called in a number of favors to get the paperwork and plastic. Making
charges to the account would overstep whatever agreements she had made.

It was comforting to have the chicanery of professionals on his side.

As the aircraft trembled, Lang cinched himself tighter into the seat, a Pavlovian response to the airlines’ implicit assurances that no problem could not be solved by a fastened seat belt. On a rational level, he knew the plane’s bucking and groaning was due to the deployment of flaps and landing gear, and that the aircraft was the consummate product of American engineering. Still, he could take little comfort from the quality of American-made parts that would litter the countryside should something go wrong.

Lang had become no fonder of flying.

The landing and subsequent taxi to the terminal were uneventful and blood began its normal circulation through Lang’s hands once he relinquished his death grip on the arm rests.

As anticipated, there were neither customs nor immigration facilities. Within minutes, Lang and Gurt were handing their bags to a smiling cabby for storage in the boot of his shiny black Austin Motors taxi. Lang gave him the destination, thankful London cab drivers were not only required to speak English but also to possess an encyclopedic knowledge of the city.

It might have been April in Italy, but winter was reluctant to release its hold on England. The sky was the color of the bottom of a cookie sheet, with burned spots for clouds. The cab’s wiper moaned across wet glass as they headed for the West End.

London had not been a favorite of Dawn’s. That had been largely Lang’s fault. He had brought her there for Christmas with visions of a Dickensesque holiday, complete with fresh snow, plum pudding and yule logs. Instead
they got fog, darkness at three-thirty in the afternoon, and runny noses from a cold induced by their hotel’s archaic heating system.