The Bonaparte Secret (24 page)

“Obviously this exchange had some other meaning, so we alerted our asset in Haiti to watch the airport and see who arrived.”

“Whoa,” Lang interrupted. “You told me you had no assets in Haiti.”

“True, we don’t. We
had
a guy, but we haven’t heard from him nor been able to contact him for some time. I’m afraid he’s been silenced. Anyway, he e-mailed us a photo taken with a special camera we supplied of the Chinese visitor getting off a private plane. It wasn’t some bureaucrat from the trade department. It was Chin Diem.”

“Someone I should know?” Lang asked.

“Undersecretary for foreign relations. Pretty high up the food chain to be making a trip to negotiate the price of coffee.

“Anyway, Diem made one or two more trips. Our asset couldn’t find anyone around the current prez for life who knew what was up. Our guy did lay some serious bling on a waiter in a local restaurant who served Diem and the Haitian president. Seems the Haitian, guy name of duPaar, wanted something in exchange for whatever the Chinese wanted, something the Chinese seemed to be having a hard time delivering. From what he overheard, he, the waiter, was pretty sure it was a specific object. Before we could find out what, our man disappeared.”

“You’re not telling me this just for my enlightenment. What do you want?”

“To find out what duPaar wants. If we can supply it, there’d be no need for him to deal with the Chinese.”

Lang whistled. “Whew, pretty tall order, ole buddy. You telling me this is something the Agency can’t handle? You keep forgetting I’m retired.”

“Retired but incentivized. You solve the riddle, we provide the Haitian pooh-bah with whatever bauble it is he wants and the Chinese no longer have a reason to wish you ill.”

Lang shook his head as if Miles could see the gesture. “I’d say they have a hell of a reason if I’m the one responsible for screwing up their plans.”

“You and I both know that revenge, pure and simple, is not what drives the policy of any rational nation. It’s too expensive a luxury. Once a project is dead, former threats to it become irrelevant.”

True.

Lang changed the subject. “What is their interest in the Western Hemisphere’s poorest nation, anyway?”

Again, the machine asking for money. Lang scraped the last change from his pocket, depositing it to the accompaniment of what sounded like an old-fashioned cash register.

Miles cleared his throat. “We believe they aren’t interested in Haiti per se. It’s just that the country is the most likely Caribbean nation to accept Chinese on their soil. Can you imagine the boost to the local economy a few thousand Chinese with cash in their pockets could give?”

“OK. I get it. But what does China get?”

“A presence in the Caribbean, more than likely a military one, based on what you saw there. Think of it as an unsinkable aircraft carrier or missile cruiser. But until the Chinese come up with this whatchamacallit, duPaar isn’t unlocking the door, no matter how much good the deal would do his country. The Chinese will have to satisfy him before he agrees to more than the handful of troops you saw up at the old fort.”

Lang checked his watch. He was due for a motions hearing in forty minutes and this was taking far longer than he had anticipated. “Thanks for the poli-sci lesson, but I still don’t see what all this has to do with me.”

“Lang,” Miles said in a tone a teacher might use with one of his duller students, “we, the Agency, have no idea what the gizmo is duPaar wants and no way to find out, much less how or where to acquire it.”

“And I do?”

“Let’s say you’ve already established contact with our Chinese pals. They will keep in touch. Sooner or later, you’ll have a chance to find out what it is.”

“Or get killed in the meantime. Let me get this straight: Because the Chinese will keep trying to kill either (a) me or (b) my family or (c) both of the above, I am the person in the best position to find out what object it is the president of Haiti wants in exchange for allowing the Chinese to establish some sort of military presence there.”

“Makes sense to me.”

Lang hated to admit it, but the idea did present a certain twisted logic. The old baited trap. The opposition wanted to eliminate someone. The proposed victim was made to seem accessible, while covertly guarded. When the potential assassin made a move, the target’s minders moved, capturing the would-be killer, hopefully someone with knowledge of facts that led closer and closer to the information sought. That was the idea. Unfortunately, failures were usually lethal.

“And just why would I want a target painted on my back?”

There was what could have been another clearing of Miles’s throat or a chuckle. Lang suspected the latter. “You already have one. I’m offering you a way to remove it. Look, you know we can cover you 24-7. You can’t get better security for you, Gurt and Manfred.”

Lang thought of the private company he had already hired. Ex–Delta Force, ex–Marine Recon, ex-SEAL types already in discreet positions around his house. Bulletproof SUVs with armed drivers taking Manfred to pre-K, Gurt to the grocery store. He felt pretty damn secure. But for how long? The security people’s incentive was to do what they were hired to do: keep the Reilly family safe. The Agency’s motivation was to foil the Chinese plan to gain a foothold in the Caribbean and, possibly, end the threat to Lang as well.

Lang decided to do what any rational man would do. “I’ll talk it over with Gurt and get back to you.”

472 Lafayette Drive, Atlanta

21:26 the same day

A smile played across Gurt’s face as she watched a waterlogged Lang pour a healthy two fingers of scotch whisky. “You have had a hard time with Manfred?”

Lang contemplated and discarded a carafe of water before taking a gulp from the crystal tumbler. “What was your first clue, that I’m soaking wet?”

“That helped in the thought process, yes.”

Another swallow. “Bathing Manfred can be a problem when he gets excited. But having Grumps jump in the tub, too?”

“Perhaps you should not let the dog in the bathroom.”

Lang emptied the glass and was working on a refill. “If I shut him out, the damn dog howls and scratches the paint off the door, and Manfred is almost as bad. How do you separate them when Manfred goes to school in the morning?”

Gurt took a sip from her wineglass. “By force of will.”

Lang snorted. “More by bribe. I note you feed the dog just as you take Manfred out the door.”

Gurt picked up the book in her lap and started to read. “What is it you say, by hook and cook?”

“By hook or
crook.
”

Gurt’s face wrinkled in puzzlement. “I can understand hooking and cooking to get something, but crook?”

Unable to explain the idiom, Lang added a few drops of water to his glass this time. “I spoke to Miles at length this afternoon.”

Gurt put her book back down, suddenly alert. “And?”

He gave her a summary of the conversation.

When he had finished, she got up, crossed the room to an ice maker under the bar, removed a chilling wine bottle and refilled her glass. “This would mean traveling to where?”

“I don’t know.”

“To find what?”

“I haven’t a clue.”

“How will you find out?”

“I’m not certain.”

Gurt returned to her seat, wineglass in hand and nodding. “You and Miles have a well-planned mission.”

She might not get American idioms but she has sarcasm down cold.
Lang slumped into his favorite chair. “Wouldn’t you say our problems with the Chinese began in Venice?”

Not sure where this was going, Girt nodded uncertainly. “Yes.”

“So, it might be a fair statement that whatever it was that this guy, duPaar, wants was in that church, Saint Mark’s, right? Or at least, the Chinese believed so?”

She thought a moment. “If you assume the robbers in Venice were seeking the object duPaar wants and if you also assume that object was really in the church. Did you not tell me you and Francis had this conversation before we went to Haiti?”

“Sort of. He had a theory, or had read a book, positing that Alexander’s, not Saint Mark’s, remains were interred in the basement of the church.”

“You are telling me this man in Haiti wants someone’s bones?”

“They’re called relics, like Saint So-and-so’s toe bone being preserved in the altar of a church. In medieval times, they not only had religious significance but were a boon to local commerce. Pilgrims would travel miles to pray before the elbow of good Saint Such-and-such. The town would prosper from what we would call tourist trade.”

Gurt smiled. “I have seen everything from bones to a vial with a drop of Christ’s blood to a nail from the cross. In Rome, there is a church that displays the chains in which Peter was confined, the ones which miraculously fell away.”

Lang considered another refill but put his glass down on the table beside the chair instead. “San Pietro in Vincoli. Same one that has Michelangelo’s
Moses.
But yeah, like that. Thing is, what would duPaar want with relics, Alexander’s or Saint Mark’s?”

Gurt was looking at him over the top of her wineglass. “I suppose that is what Miles wants you to find out.”

Lang got up and surveyed the bookshelves as though looking for a volume. “We made a deal when you and Manfred came to live here: we were finished with the Agency. Neither of us would go romping off on adventures without the other’s agreement.”

“Some of the ‘adventures’ came looking for us. We certainly did not ask to be shot at in Venice or have our house broken into.” She pointed to a shuttered window. “Neither of us wish the need to have our home guarded by a security service or use our special devices forever. Soon or late, we will want to live like normal people.”

He turned away from the books, nodding agreement. “That’s why I didn’t turn down Miles’s request flat.”

“Flat?”

“On the spot. Immediately.”

He could visualize Gurt filing this Americanism away wherever she kept such things. “Speak with Francis, then with Miles again. Let us talk after you have some idea what you may be searching for and where it might be.”

Good idea.

Manuel’s Tavern

602 North Highlands Avenue, Atlanta

19:02 the next evening

For over fifty years, Manuel’s Tavern has been the gathering place for Emory University students and faculty, the local Democratic Party elite and those who would like to be either. Jimmy Carter, his hand firmly in that of the business’s founder, Manuel Maloof, smiles down from the wall behind the bar that runs along one wall. Bill Clinton’s autograph is scrawled across a photograph from the waist up. As a local wag speculated, perhaps a full-body shot had been discarded when closer scrutiny revealed the former president’s fly was unzipped.

Across from the bar, wooden booths bear the carved initials of students and fraternities as well as graffiti in Latin and Greek as well as English and other modern languages. The house specializes in political debate, funky atmosphere, generous pitchers of beer, and cuisine that is arguably the worst in any licensed food establishment in the city if not the Southeast.

When Lang and Francis had begun their friendship, it was also one of the few places where a black man in a clerical collar could share a meal with a white man in solemn lawyer garb without drawing stares of curiosity. Among the motley clientele of Manuel’s, the pair hardly drew a glance.

They entered through the back door from the parking lot.

Spurning the tables that occupied the “new” expansion to the bar that had been added nearly thirty years ago, Lang and Francis seated themselves at one of the booths that had been part of the original operation.

Francis turned to look back the way they had come. “I’ve got to say, riding in that SUV beats cramping into your Porsche.”

Lang picked up the menu, something he could have recited in his sleep. “I’ll bet you loved Max, the armed driver, too.”

Francis watched the beefy bodyguard survey the room before taking a seat at the bar. “It seems impolite not to let him join us.”

Lang lifted his eyes from the menu to look at his security escort. Just under six feet, with close-cropped hair beginning to streak with silver, the man moved with a catlike precision that would have revealed his special military background had his résumé not already done so. He constantly scanned his surroundings without being obvious about it. “His job isn’t an exercise in manners. He can’t keep an eye on the whole room sitting with us.”

“You really are concerned about you and your family’s safety. You’ve had problems like this before and you didn’t hire a security service.”

Lang put the menu down. “I didn’t have a family, either. I’m not worried about taking care of myself, but when Gurt’s busy tending to Manfred, she can’t be looking over her shoulder.”

“So, how long does this go on?”

Larry, their usual waiter, appeared, a foaming pitcher of beer in each hand. He set one on the table. “I’ll be back with your glasses. The usual, folks?”

“Unless you have something truly fit to eat for a change,” Lang muttered.

Unperturbed, Larry smiled. “Manuel’s: an Atlanta tradition you can rely on.”

“Like warm beer, lousy food and indifferent service.”

Larry turned away with a cheery “But our prices are quite reasonable.”

Both men watched him go, as did Max at the bar.

Francis repeated his question. “How long are you keeping these security guys around?”

“As long as it takes. That’s part of the reason we’re here tonight.”

“And I thought you were yearning for ecclesiastical enlightenment.”

“Maybe some other time. Right now, I need information.”

Francis reached behind himself, producing a book. “You wanted to borrow Chugg’s book, the one about Alexander’s tomb.”

Lang took it. “Yeah, that’s the one. Thanks.”

Francis looked around as though making sure no one was listening. What they would be discussing was esoteric, perhaps even too far-out even for the patrons of Manuel’s. “It’s only a theory, you know, that the Venetian merchants who thought they were stealing Saint Mark’s relics actually wound up with those of Alexander, and a pretty wild one at that.”