The Pegasus Secret (8 page)

Lang shut the door. “Sure. Have a seat?”

Morse shook his head. “No thanks. Crime scene crew’ll be here any minute. So, Mr. Reilly, let’s hear it.”

Lang related what had happened, omitting any reference to the pendant he had found. He didn’t want to have to surrender the only clue to what he suspected was an organization far beyond the understanding or reach of the local cops. He saw no reason to mention the early warning of the invasion, either. The last thing he wanted was to provoke further interrogation based on what would be perceived as some nut’s conspiracy fantasy.

As he finished, there was a knock at the door. Morse opened it, admitting a balding white man with futuristic- looking photographic equipment and a young black woman with a suitcase. Lang felt marveled at how quickly they made themselves at home.

As though agreeing with someone Lang hadn’t heard, Morse nodded to him. “Broke in here with two knives and winds up taking the quick way down rather’n stay in the same room with you, Mr. Reilly? That your story?”

“And I’m sticking to it.”

“Hard to believe perp’d kill hiss’sef like that rather’n take th’ collar. Way the courts work, wasn’t even facing major time. Sure you didn’t use some kinda persuasion to throw him out, jujitsu him through the glass there? You sure as hell be justified, him breakin’ in here like he did.”

Lang shook his head. “Nope, like I said, I knocked the knife outta his hand, hit him a lick on the back of the head and he dropped the other one. He jumped through the glass door.”

Morse ran a hand across the bottom half of his face. “You about the baddest ass I’ve seen. Where you do your workouts, Parris Island? Where you learn to handle a man with a knife?”

“Navy SEAL,” Lang said. The story was as verifiable as it was false.

Morse eyed him with renewed interest. “SEAL, huh? Thought them guys were career. You don’ look old enough to take retirement.”

“Was in Desert Storm in ’90, took a raghead bullet clearing Kuwait City harbor.”

Morse’s crime scene crew was poking around the room, moving objects on the secretary with pencils, inspecting the bottoms of furniture. Lang couldn’t even guess what they hoped to find. Grumps watched with declining interest.

“Lemme get this straight.” Morse was consulting his note pad. “That dog growls, you hear somebody foolin’ with th’ lock. ’Stead o’ callin’ 911 then, you jus’ wait for him to come in. Like, meybbe you want to bust him yo’seff?”

Lang straightened the rug with his foot. “I told you: there wasn’t time. If I’d been on the phone instead of ready for him, there’s a good chance the homicide would be here instead of down there.”

Morse’s eyes were searching the room again. “You got a phone in the bedroom. All you had t’ do was lock yo’seff in an’ call the police.”

Lang chuckled, although he couldn’t put much humor in it. “That’s what you’d do, put your life in the hands of the local 911 operators, same ones let a man croak of a heart attack last month while they argued about whose jurisdiction he was dying in? I’d be better off calling the San Francisco police.”

“Okay,” Morse admitted with a raised hand. “Meybbe all the bugs ain’t worked out yet.”

“Yet?” Lang asked, incredulous. “System was installed in ’96. The ‘bugs’ are the mayor’s friends, sold it to the city.”

“You own a firearm?” the detective wanted to know.

The change of subject almost caught Lang off balance just as he surmised it was supposed to. It was standard practice for the Atlanta cops to confiscate, or at least hold as long as possible, every handgun they could find on whatever excuse they could manufacture. This wasn’t a time to be unarmed.

“You got a warrant?” Lang parried.

Morse sighed. “Not only you dangerous to be around, you a smartass, too. You want a warrant, I can get one.”

He apparently intended to bluff it out.

“From whom, the Wizard of Oz? You got zip for probable cause.”

Morse gave Lang a glare. “Okay, keep your artillery. We ain’t gettin’ ennywhere thisaway. You ever see this dude before?”

Lang set the overturned chair upright and sat in it, motioning Morse to the other. “Never.”

The policeman sat as he shook his head. “You sure? Ain’t easy believein’ perp goes to all the trouble to sneak into the buildin’, come up here jus’ to kill a stranger. You tellin’ me ever’thin’?”

“Sure,” Lang said. “Least I can do to assist our law enforcement personnel.”

Morse grunted. “ ’Nough wise-assin’.” He grew serious. “You mus’ think I’m some kinda stupid, I’d believe a guy come up here t’kill a perfect stranger an’ wind up taking a long walk off a short balcony. You know somethin’ you not tellin’. You know itsa crime, lie to the police?”

Lang’s hand touched the pocket with the pendant in it. “You think I’m being less than candid?”

Morse leaned forward. “You know somethin’ you not tellin’.”

The bald photographer and the woman with the suitcase were standing by the door, their investigation complete.

Lang went to the door and opened it. “Detective, I give the police every bit of credit they’re due.” He extended a hand. “Nice to have met you, although I can’t say much for the circumstances.”

Morse’s grip was strong, consistent with what Lang would have expected of the lean body, like a runner’s. It was easy to imagine the detective winning a foot race with a fugitive.

“We may well be back.”

“Any time.”

Atlanta
Later that night

Lang was too tense to sleep. Instead his mind spun in what seemed like endless circles.

Was the pendant a clue or simply a bit of personal jewelry? Lang was unaware he was shaking his head no. A man who didn’t even carry a wallet would hardly wear an individualized item.

Unlikely Lang was dealing with a sole person. A lone individual would have a hard time conducting twenty-four- hour surveillance, a harder time planning the theft of military thermite.

And why would a reproduction of a painting by a minor artist be worth the lives of whoever possessed it? Whoever they were, they had the fanaticism of zealots, a willingness to die for something Lang did not understand.

Yet.

It was all too bizarre. Perhaps it involved wackos, nut- balls who had a serious if irrational grudge against that picture and anyone who had anything to do with it.

Lang had already made up his mind to find out.

If there was an organization, people other than the body on the pavement below his condominium, responsible for Janet and Jeff, he had to know or be looking over his shoulder the rest of his life. And given the murderous nature of these people, that might not be very long. Besides, if others were involved, Janet and Jeff demanded he get even.

Lang knew precious little to begin with, but he was fairly certain the answers were not in Atlanta. He was due a little vacation anyway.

Once at the office, he had Sara begin preparing requests for a leave of absence in each of his cases. He had to specify the time, so he gave himself a month. He didn’t have to state where he was going, though. Just as well. He wasn’t certain.

He wasn’t certain what he would be searching for, nor for whom. What did the painting have to do with it? Was the pendant significant?

He was certain of only one thing: The vendetta had begun.

An Account by Pietro of Sicily
Translation from the medieval Latin by Nigel Wolffe, Ph.D.

The crimson cross on his surcoat was elongated, emulating the huge sword that required both hands to wield, yet the cross he cherished was the small one of equal arms, the one in the silver circle he wore about his neck, the one described by the four equal triangles.

But I confuse my sequence in hastily composing these, my last notes. I shall commence again, this time at the beginning.

I, Pietro of Sicily, write of these things in the Year of Our Lord 1310,
¹
three years after my arrest and false accusation and the false accusation of my brethren of the Order of the Poor Knights of the Temple of Solomon and the issuance of the Papal Bull,
Pastoralis praeminentia
, which commanded any Christian monarch to seize our lands, our chattels and all other goods in the name of His Holiness Clement V.

In past years, to write of myself would have constituted pride, a sin in the eyes of God. Now I am unsure there is sin and, heaven help me for my blasphemy, if there is God at all.
The events of which I write or those that have led me to apostasy are those I set out herein, not because I, God’s humble servant, deserve note but because I have observed that the powerful write the histories and those who have caused the downfall of my brothers are powerful indeed.

Although it is not important, just as I am not important, I was born to a serf of a minor lord in Sicily in the fourth year of the reign of James II of Aragon, King of Sicily.
²
I was the youngest of six children, the one whom my mother died birthing. Unable to support his family, my father took me to a nearby house of Benedictine friars that they might succor me, raise me in the faith and benefit from such labours as they, and God, might choose for me.

Would that I had cleaved to our founder’s admonition that, to attain purity, one must “seek solitude, submit to fasting, vigils, toils, nakedness, reading and other virtues.”
³

The monastery was given largely to farming, close enough to the town to see the three towers of a new castle built on heathen ruins. Like all such institutions, it was dedicated to intercession for its patrons and the souls of its benefactors and caring for the poor.

I was taught skills beyond those known to villeins of my birth: the making and reading of letters, the understanding and speaking of Latin and Frankish and the knowledge of mathematics. It was at this last skill that I, with God’s help, became most proficient. By my twelfth summer, I kept the accounts for the cellarer:
⁴
the volume of grapes and olives harvested, the number of loaves made, the poor donations from those who sought our prayers, even the quantity of plates fired in the kiln.

It was also that summer I was to end my novitiate,
⁵
becoming a full member that fall. If only I had not succumbed to the sin of ambition, I would be there yet and would not be facing the cruel fate that awaits me.

It was in August when I saw him, Guillaume de Poitiers, a knight on a magnificent white horse and the most beautiful man I had ever seen. I had been outside the monastery walls, measuring the quantity of sheep dung to be put on the vegetable garden, when I looked up and there he was.

Despite the heat of the day, he wore full armour, including a hauberk,
⁶
underneath his flowing white surcoat which was emblazoned front and back with the blood-red cross-pattee, announcing to all that he had been to and returned from the Holy Land. His garments thereby proclaimed him to be a knight of the Order of the Poor Knights of the Temple of Solomon, the most fearsome and holy soldiers of the Church.

On his left hip was strapped a long dagger of a design foreign to me, with a curved blade wider than the hilt, which I later learned was a weapon of the heathen Saracens. On his right was a very short knife.

His esquire, mounted on an ass, led two other horses, mighty creatures far larger than the beasts I had seen. Across their backs were strapped a lance, a long, two-edged sword, and a Turkish mace, as well as a triangular body-shield which was adorned by a crimson cross also, this one squarish with perfect triangles for arms.

I followed as he rode through the open gate into the cloister, dismounted and knelt before our poor abbot as though he were paying obeisance to the pope himself. He asked for a night’s shelter and food for his man and animals. He requested these for himself last, after his horses and esquire, as was proper for men of God as were we and was he.

As he knelt in supplication, I noted his hair was long and unkempt, his armour beginning to rust and his robe and cape covered with the dust of travel. Travel he had, as I was to learn later. He had survived the fall of Acre, the last Christian city in the Holy Land, the year after my birth. With the former residents of Jaffa, Tyre, Sidon and Ascalon, he and his
remaining brethren had fled in Venetian ships along with Grand Master Theobald Gaudin who brought with them such treasure and relics as the Order had.

Guillaume had waited in Cyprus for the papal pleasure of Boniface VIII, thinking that once again it would please God to send the Knights to cleanse the infidel from Jerusalem.
⁷

When it became apparent this would not take place soon, he was ordered to return to his original monastery in Burgundy. He was on his way there when I saw him.

Risking the sin of jealousy, I managed to kneel next to him at Vespers that evening, the better to admire the accoutrements I have described. I could not but notice the sun’s dark mark on his face and a star-shaped scar at his neck, a wound his esquire told me he received from a heathen arrow and survived only by God’s grace.