The Sinai Secret (5 page)

Without so much as a flicker of a smile, Witherspoon replied, "National security."

"Based on what?" the detective asked.

"I'm not at liberty to say."

"Okay, then, how did you find out about a killin' so quick?"

"Again, I'm not at liberty to say."

Morse leaned back, stroking his chin as if in thought. "Lemme see here, now. You want to know whatever we find out, you're willin' to cooperate, but you ain't answerin' none o' my questions. That about it?"

Lang fully expected the same response about lack of liberty to say.

Instead Witherspoon gave a chilly smile. "Detective, you and I will get along a lot better if you simply tell me what the bureau can do."

Morse appeared to give the matter serious thought. "For starters, you can reduce the number o' folks standin' 'round the crime scene by one. Gimme your card an' I'll call soon's I figger what else you can do."

This time Witherspoon understood. "Mind if I look around?"

"Long's you don't touch anythin' an' don' git in the way o' my folks."

The G-man turned to Lang. "What do you know about Dr. Lewis?"

Lang shrugged, about to repeat what he had told Morse.

Th' man was an internationally renowned scientist," the detective volunteered.

"Your foundation funds hospitals and medical services

in poor countries," Witherspoon said to Lang. "What made you deviate into supporting fuel research?"

Lang paused before answering, again surprised at how readily information was accessible day or night. "A friend in London suggested it, actually. He was a personal acquaintance of Dr. Lewis's. The people in charge of new grants checked him and his work out and decided that finding an alternative to fossil fuels was a worthy cause."

Witherspoon shot a quick glance to someone who was taking pictures of the wreckage. "Exactly what sort of alternative fuel was he working on?"

The question was almost a statement, without the inflection of real curiosity, as if Witherspoon either didn't care or already knew the answer.

"I'm not sure. He'd been here less than six months, so a detailed progress report wasn't due yet. If you're really interested, I can—"

The man who had been at the computer interrupted. "Detective, the hard drive's been taken, along with a dozen or so pages from his research log."

Morse's head bobbed slowly. "I'd say that eliminates the possibility of the perp bein' some junkie randomly lookin' for somethin' to steal to feed his habit."

"Don't be too sure, Detective." The man held up a plastic bag. Lang had to lean forward to see a trace of white powder.

Morse took the bag and held it up to the light. "Ain't coke. It's grainy, like crumbs from some sorta crystal." He rolled his eyes. "Don' tell me, Mr. Reilly, that your foundation's been runnin' the world's most sophisticated meth lab."

Lang shook his head. "Lewis wouldn't have needed all this equipment just to cook up methamphetamine."

"How would you know that?" Witherspoon asked.

"Mr. Reilly here does criminal defense when he ain't givin' money away to worthy causes," Morse said. I spect he done come across the process."

Actually, Lang had consistently refused to represent anyone associated with hard drugs, no matter how remotely or how high the fee. He did, however, watch the local news broadcasts that regularly showed arrests at meth labs, usually kitchens in private homes utilizing quite ordinary cookware and ingredients available at a neighborhood pharmacy.

Morse pocketed the envelope. "Whatever it is, we'll know soon's the state crime lab gits through with it."

"Our lab can test it sooner," Witherspoon proposed.

Morse slowly shook his head. "I 'preciate the offer, really do, Agent Witherspoon."

"But?"

"But a year or two ago I axed you guys fo' help in a shootin' connected to an interstate cocaine operation. Nex' thing I know, my perp is in your Witness Protection Program, off somewhere 'tween here 'n' Alaska. I done had more o' your help than I can stand."

Witherspoon's jaw muscles tightened. "That mean you're not gonna share that powder?"

"Agent Witherspoon, you're an unusually perceptive young man."

The federal agent looked around the room again, as though this time he might find an ally. "We'll see about that."

He turned and left.

Lang and Morse watched him go before Lang said, "The federal crime lab really is superior to anything the state has."

Morse nodded. "I know, but ever' time I hear somethin' 'bout 'national security; I feel like I need to duck. Somebody's throwin' a. load of bullshit."

Lang was well aware of the rivalry between the FBI and local law enforcement. The federal boys tended to do what made them look good at the expense of both the case and the locals.

He said, "As I was about to say before your man told us about the computer hard drive, someone at the foundation was monitoring Dr. Lewis's work. I'll find out exactly who, and he might be able to help you."

"I really 'predate that, Mr, Reilly. 'Fore you go, though, could you tell if anythin's missin' 'sides the computer hard drive and notebook pages, anythin'you can notice?"

Lang shook his head. "Other than the really big equipment, the stuff that costs us a lot, I really wouldn't know. What I can do, though, is provide you with an inventory of the foundation's purchases for this project and let you compare it against what's here."

As he was getting into the Porsche, Lang was thinking how very strange it was to be cooperating with Morse. Three times before, the detective had appeared on Lang's doorstep, twice in response to a violent death and once to take him to jail. If you weren't a suspect, the cop really wasn't such a bad guy.

More important, though, was the question of what relationship there was between the scientist's death and national security. What was the FBI's interest in what appeared to be a local crime? How had they found out about it almost as fast as the Atlanta police?

Lang yawned widely as he headed north on Northside Drive. For every mystery, there was a solution.

Make that
most
mysteries.

SIX

Park Place

2660 Peachtree Road

Atlanta, Georgia

The Next Morning

Grumps, the fur-bearing alarm clock, pressed his cold nose against Lang's cheek. If a dog could actually smile, this one would have laughed as his master ran a hand across his sleep-relaxed face.

"Okay, Grumps. Just another couple of minutes, all right?"

Grumps knew the game. This time he growled deeply and began methodically removing the covers.

Lang sat up. "Okay, okay, you win, as always."

The clear victor, Grumps sat and began to casually scratch his head with a rear paw. Black, with one floppy ear and the other erect, the dog had genes that contained more breeds than there were types of rum in tropical drinks.

From his bedroom window on the twenty-fourth floor, Lang could see the morning sun tinting the glass of Midtown's buildings with gold. The older structures of downtown even glowed. Like an urban yellow brick road, Peachtree Street seemed like an arrow pointing to the heart of the city. A cloudless sky roofed the vivid green of

trees still in their early spring colors. The verdant carpet was dotted with splotches of snowdrifts that were dogwoods in full bloom above pink-and-white azaleas.

All of this natural beauty had a price that Lang would pay as soon as he exited the protective lobby of his building. Slimy yellow-green mist would color the air outside as well as every surface exposed to it. Cars became yellow, no matter their factory paint jobs. Black asphalt was tinted the same with dry rivers. Transplanted allergy sufferers cursed the day they left the relative comfort of Northern spring freezes.

Spring had come and reproductive romance was on the mind of every living plant, from mighty oak to tiny ragweed. Atlanta's pollen season was in full swing.

By the time Lang had pulled on a sweat suit and stuck bare feet into a pair of sneakers, Grumps was waiting anxiously by the door, leash in mouth. Outside, the dog made his usual methodical search for the perfect place to leave his mark for the next canine to come along. Once finished, he tugged impatiently to return. It was time for breakfast.

Back inside, Lang opened the cabinet where he stored the dog food and poured some into a bowl.

Only as he was returning the bag did he stop in midreach and stare.

He had fed Grumps last night just before he left to go to Manuel's. The dog food bag had been next to a cereal box. Now there was space for it only next to a stack of soup cans.

He carefully set the bag on the counter that separated the tiny kitchen from the living room. In three steps he was standing in front of the Thomas Elfe secretary, a masterpiece in mahogany and fruitwood inlay by one of America's premier prerevolutionary cabinetmakers and one of the few pieces of furniture he had taken when he sold the house he had shared with Dawn.

Behind the wavy handblown glass, his small collection of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century first editions seemed to be as he had left them. Below, on the writing surface, though, his few antiquities had been slightly rearranged. The time-rusted iron that had been the hilt of a Macedonian sword was now next to the Etruscan votive cup rather than the coin bearing the likeness of Augustus Caesar.

Someone had moved the objects to open the glass and look at the books. Or more likely to see if anything was concealed behind them.

Or to look through the bills aligned in the brass letter holder awaiting payment.

Five quick strides carried him into the remaining room of the small condo and in front of his bedside table. Easing its drawer open, he saw the SIG Sauer P226 was as he had left it, two extra clips loaded and right beside it.

It was one of the few things he had taken with him when the fall of the Evil Empire heralded a reduction of force across the intelligence community. The next generation would speak Arabic instead of Slavic languages and would do business in hot, dry places where scorpions were common.

Except for one potentially disastrous trip behind the Berlin Wall, Lang's duties had never taken him from his station in the grimy building across the street from the Frankfurt am Main Hauptbahnhof. He had been with the Third Directorate, intel, where he spent his days scanning newspapers from Iron Curtain countries and watching replays of government-sponsored talking heads reading the fiction that passed for news in the Marxist world.

Do not listen to the news broadcast from the imperialist . Western democracies, only that approved by the State; the life you save might be your own.

His one experience in real enemy territory had cured forever his resentment at having not been chosen for ops, Fourth Directorate, those romantic, James Bond swashbucklers of popular fiction. Truth was, they were nuts to take the chances they did.

Informational bureaucrat though he had been, he still took the weapon issued every new graduate of the Agency's training school in Virginia, the Farm.

He looked at it as he might have gazed on his high school letter jacket, a relic of a distant time... if he hadn't swapped the jacket in the backseat of a borrowed Ford for the purported chastity of...

Her name was lost to antiquity.

Other than requisite training, he had never even fired the weapon. Years after leaving the Agency, he had shot a man with the assailant's own gun, a matter of self- defense, and he had killed another, also to preserve his own life.

Ironically, neither was with the firearm he was given for the purpose.

Out of the Agency, he had applied for and been accepted to law school, viewing the profession as just one more form of the chicanery practiced by the Agency. Grateful he was separated from employment she considered dangerous no matter how many times he explained, Dawn had supported him until he graduated.

In spite of exemplary grades, he never considered working in one of the law factories. He went into practice on his own.

His shadowy government contacts steered a certain clientele his way: a Columbian importer who had helped the Agency but had been arrested for intent to distribute the cocaine surprisingly found in his coffee shipments, an officer of a foreign bank who had simply misunderstood U.S. Treasury reporting requirements by a few million dollars.

Not like it was real money, the man had explained in an interview the day of his acquittal due to the government's inability to locate a key witness. The same witness, Lang later learned, who had chosen the week of the trial to avail himself of the use of a yacht cruising the Greek Isles. Lang had no desire to know the name of the boat's owner.

His practice flourished, and he and Dawn hoped for a child until a tumor appeared on an X-ray, stabbing into her vital parts. The end was mercifully quick for her, devastating to him. Years later he never missed a holiday placement of roses on the grave on the hill under the big oak tree, a site that now included the rest of what family he had had.