The Pegasus Secret (42 page)

An hour had just passed when the computer made a sound like a gong and words appeared on the screen. The picture of an unopened envelope made understanding Italian for “you’ve got mail” unnecessary.

Name time, place, conditions.

That was all it said—brief, succinct. Obviously Pegasus hadn’t referred the question to the legal department.

Lang had previously asked Gurt and Jacob for their input in anticipation of just this question.

Church of San Clemente, Via di San Giovanni in Laterano. Rome. Triclinium of Mithras. 1530 hrs. Tues next. One person only.

Gurt had thought of the forty-eight-hour period. In that time, Lang could reach Rome from anywhere, therefore he could be anywhere when the e-mail was sent. The place
was Jacob’s idea. San Clemente was typical of Rome in that the site contained several periods of history. At street level, or actually slightly below, the simple eighteenth-century facade at the bottom of the Esquiline Hill indicated a church that had been in use since the twelfth century. Beneath the carved altar and mosaics of the drowning of Saint Clement were the ruins of a fourth-century Christian place of worship. Deeper yet were the ruins of a Temple of Mithras, a first-century male fertility cult that drifted into Rome from Persia to become popular among Rome’s military.

Lang recalled that the site had been maintained and continually excavated since the seventeenth century by an order of Irish Dominican monks. So far as he knew, they haven’t found any whisky yet.

The advantages of the site for a potentially hostile meeting were several. First, few if any tourists knew about the place. Second, the Mithran temple consisted of passages wide enough for only one person at a time. Finally, the church was at or near the bottom of a steep hill where Jacob could keep watch in secret, calling Lang on a cell phone if a trap appeared imminent. Also, Gurt and her rifle could easily cover the only entrance.

Rome, Laterano
1530 hours the next Tuesday

Churches in Rome close at half past noon on weekdays, reopening three and a half hours later. Jacob and Gurt had been in a second-story storage area of a shoe store across the Via di San Giovanni since ten o’clock. In the normal Italian manner of doing business, the shopkeeper had accepted a handful of bills without a single question in exchange
for use of the premises. After all, it was money the hated tax man would never know about and, therefore, would not take.

With punctuality uncharacteristic of Rome, a brown- robed monk opened the doors at precisely three-thirty. The sharp edges of a hammerless .38 stuck in Lang’s belt under a jacket dug into his backside as he followed the brother inside and past the ornately carved choir enclosure to their left.

The monk disappeared and Lang was alone. Approaching the altar, he noted the detailed animals and leaves depicted in the mosaics of the apse. To the right was an open door and a staircase.

The darkness into which Lang descended was interrupted by weak lightbulbs hung every twenty or so feet from the low ceiling. Somewhere below, water was rushing, a reminder that Rome is located on a number of aquifers, so many that almost all of the hundreds of fountains spout potable water. The passageway was square, wide enough for two persons to pass, and hewn through rock that the dim lights gave a reddish color. Lugubrious faces, whole and in part, stared down from pieces of frescoes, most of which had succumbed to time, neglect and moisture.

In what had been the fourth-century sanctuary, there was little other than a slightly higher ceiling that would have announced its purpose to the uninformed. Lang stood still for a moment, listening to rushing water. Anyone who says silence has no sound, he mused, has never been in a dimly lit ancient ruin, listening for the footsteps of a possible assassin.

A winding metal staircase led to the next level, some fifty feet below the streets of the modern world. What was left of the Mithran temple seemed even more poorly lit than the floor above. A narrow space separated ruined
walls that barely reached Lang’s hips. Around every turn, skeletons of steel scaffolding reached to the low vaulted ceiling. Lang wasn’t sure it was there as part of the excavation or to hold up the ancient brick above his head.

This was not a place for the claustrophobic.

Through occasional grates in the outer walls, water black as oil in the dark was visible as it raced by with an roar of anger at its confinement. At every turn, piles of brick and masonry attested to the archaeology in progress, but there was no one at work. The thought of how truly alone he was down here under centuries of ruins added to the chilly dampness that was not entirely his imagination.

At last the narrow path came to a central room. Along each side, a single long bench was carved into the stone walls. In the center was a chest-high block of white marble, the carved figures of Mithras slaying a bull standing in a bold relief caused by the shadows of the few overhead bulbs.

This was it, the triclinium, the room used for ritual banquets. Lang checked the time, squinting to see the luminous numbers on his watch. Three-thirty-seven. Sitting on one of the benches to wait, his only company was the boisterous voice of the water and spirits of feasting Romans dead two thousand years.

There was no breeze to move the string of lights, yet the darkness seemed to creep from the corners, making silhouettes of fanciful monsters on the walls. The jab of the .38 in his belt was no longer uncomfortable but reassuring.

He was about to check his watch again when he heard something other than water. Standing, he turned to get a direction as the sound became more distinct, then recognizable as footsteps on stone.

With the revolver in hand, Lang moved to the far side of the room, putting the altar between him and whoever was
approaching. He wished that Gurt had had time to secure a better weapon, a large-bore automatic with a full clip rather than the puny six shots the revolver held. But at least he had the advantage of surprise.

Or so he thought.

Although darkness hid the man’s face, Lang recognized the shining silver hair as the Templar stood at the entrance to the room. “Come, Mr. Reilly, there is no need for you to hide. If I’d wanted to harm you, you would not have lived past the first level.”

Gripping the gun’s butt with both hands, Lang placed the stubby front sight of the .38 squarely on the newcomer’s chest. A miss at this range would be unlikely. “Okay, so I’m a little paranoid. You weren’t the one who got your balls singed. Now keep your hands where I can see them and away from your body, step forward and place both palms against the altar.”

The Templar did as he was told. A quick pat-down revealed no weapons.

“Now that you’re satisfied I’m no threat,” he said, “perhaps you’ll tell me why you wanted to meet.”

Lang motioned to one of the benches and sat so that Silver Hair was between him and the entrance. “Someone walks through that doorway and you’re history.”

The older man sighed deeply. “Again, Mr. Reilly, had we wanted you dead, you would not be here. Can we dispense with the threats and get down to whatever business you have in mind? I gather there is something you want from us or you would not have been the one to initiate contact.”

His eyes met Lang’s as he made a show of slowly reaching into his coat pocket, producing the silver case and taking out a cigarette. He broke the gaze only long enough to light it.

“You’re right,” Lang said. “You’ve been blackmailing the
church for over seven hundred years. Now it’s your turn to pay a little hush money.”

The Templar showed no surprise. In fact, Lang was certain he had been expecting it. “How much?”

Lang had given this a lot of thought. The sum should be big enough to be punitive but not enough to make it tempting to kill him and take their chances with the letter. Lang was prepared to negotiate, something he had learned well from horse-trading with the prosecution for lower sentences for his clients. But never anything this big. It was going to be like trying to get a charge of sodomy reduced to following too close.

“Half billion a year, payable to the Janet and Jeffrey Holt Foundation.”

Silver Hair lifted a gray eyebrow, either surprised or doing a good job of pretending to be. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of it.”

Lang sneezed. The cold of the stone on which they were sitting was beginning to permeate his body. Standing, he kept an eye on the entrance. “It doesn’t exist yet. Janet Holt was my sister, the one you people incinerated along with her son when you firebombed that home in Paris.”

The Templar nodded slowly. “You’ll use a foundation to channel money . . .”

“No! The foundation will be real enough.”

Lang had given this subject a lot of thought, too, ever since Jacob had convinced him that exposure of the Templar secret would do a great deal more harm than good. First he had thought of the money he could demand, the vacation homes, yachts and jets that could be his. The truth, plain and ugly, was that the idea of going the same places for every vacation was only slightly more appealing than getting seasick. His terror of flying increased in inverse proportion to the size of the aircraft involved. The Porsche was his choice of car, he lived exactly where he
wanted and already made an obscenely large income doing what he enjoyed, trying cases. The only thing missing from his life was Dawn and even the Templars couldn’t give her back.

Besides, there was no way the sort of money Lang had in mind would stay a secret. It took little imagination to conjure up the hordes of solicitors lining up to inundate him with timeshares, questionable securities, even more doubtful charities and the rest of the telemarketing inventory. He could also see the IRS salivating at the prospect of taking a large part of the money to staunch the eternal government hemorrhage. A charitable foundation both memorialized Janet and Jeff and let Lang spend a huge amount wherever he thought Janet and Jeff might have wanted, perhaps for children like Jeff in poverty-ridden countries.

Sliver Hair smiled coolly. “A true philanthropist, just like your fellow Atlantan Ted Turner.”

“Better. I didn’t marry Jane Fonda.”

It was not lost on Lang that the other man hadn’t squawked about the price, a sure indication he should have asked for more. Instead, Lang said, “One more thing . . .”

“There always is,” the Templar said, his tone bristling with sarcasm.

“You got me blamed for a murder in Atlanta and another in London. I want to read in the
London Times
and the
Atlanta Journal
that those murders have been solved, the culprit arrested.”

Silver Hair was looking around for a place to drop his cigarette. He finally ground it out on the stone floor. “That might be difficult.”

“I’m not stipulating that it has to be easy. You’ve got people who’re willing jump out of windows, you can sure as hell find somebody to take those raps.”

He gave Lang a nod, an acknowledgement this request,
too, would be met. “And for this, we get to know who has the letter?”

Lang shook his head. “I might have been born at night, pal, but not last night. The letter’s location stays with me. I’ve got too much to live for. Besides, you know I won’t go public with your secret; it would end the funding for the foundation.”

“We all die, Mr. Reilly. What happens then?”

“If the foundation is to survive me, so will your secret, a risk you’ll have to take, that I’ll make provisions not to endanger the annual funding of the charity.”

The Templar looked at Lang for a moment as if trying to make up his mind about something. “For a half billion dollars a year, Mr. Reilly, I’d think I’d be entitled to hear exactly how you found the tomb. Most of it we know. But the rest . . . I’d hate to have to be paying more money if someone else . . .”

“Fair enough,” Lang said. “You know about the Templar diary. That indicated whatever the secret was, it was located in the southwest of France. It was through the painting, or rather the picture of it, that I finally figured it out. The inscription made no sense,
ETINARCADIAEGOSUM
. One too many words. I guessed it might be a word puzzle, anagram, so I rearranged the letters.” Pulling a city map out of a pocket, Lang wrote on the margin. “I rearranged the letters like this:

Et in Arcadia Ego (Sum)

Arcam Dei Iesu Tango
.

Arcam
, tomb, objective case.

Dei
, God, dative case.

Iesu
, Jesus, possessive.

Tango
, I touch.

“ ‘I touch the tomb of God, Jesus,’ is what I made of it. As long as the Poussin is around, somebody else is just as likely as I was to figure that out.”

“Since you, er, found our secret, all copies of the painting have been destroyed. The original is in the Louvre.”

“Okay,” Lang said, “since this is question-and-answer time, I’ve got one for you. How did you, the Templars, find out about the tomb in the first place?”

Silver Hair took out another cigarette. “Very well, then. When we held Jerusalem, one of our number came across documents, ancient Hebrew, Aramaic, it’s called today, scratched on parchment, much like the Dead Sea Scrolls. A petition in which Joseph of Arimathea and Mary Magdalene asked Pilate for leave to depart for another part of the Roman Empire, taking the corpse of Jesus with them for reburial. Written across that parchment was approval in Latin.