In short, the FBI, so far, knew less that Lang and Gurt.

The matter would be handled in a professional, not an Inspector Clouseau-type, manner.

Lang got up and walked over to the window, taking in Atlanta's railroad gulch, a scar of empty space that had once been the locale of two rail terminals. The stations and tracks were long gone, leaving a spaghetti bowl of overpasses above kudzu-lined parking lots. At the far end, the Georgia Dome's canvas roof rose like a poisonous mushroom. If view were any criterion, the bureau did not rank high in the federal pecking order.

He turned as the door behind him opened and a chubby-faced young man entered with slender file under one arm.

He plopped his burden down on the table and extended a hand. "Special Agent Kurt Widner. I want to thank both of you for coming down here today."

He sat, opening his file. "Mr. Reilly, would you mind returning to the reception area?"

Lang would have been surprised if he had not been asked to retire. Basic interrogation procedure required each witness to be interviewed out of the hearing of another. In this case, the practice was reduced to form over function. He and Gurt had had plenty of time to decide what would and would not be said. Lang retraced his steps down a short corridor to the receptionist's area, a window- less room as bleak as the conference room. The picture of the president and the copy of the Constitution ubiquitous to federal offices were the only decorations. The room contained but two chairs separated by a small table of cheap laminate. Both chairs were occupied. The bureau was unusually popular this morning.

Lang looked around, uncertain of what to do.

"I can borrow a chair from the conference room," chirped the receptionist from behind her sliding plastic window.

Lang turned and saw a smiling black woman. "Thanks. If you'll unlock the door, I'll save you the trouble. I know the way."

There was a buzz as the dead bolt slid back and Lang reentered the hall he had just left. The receptionist was a new hire, he guessed. The few previous visits he had made here had been characterized by security measures far beyond what was necessary to protect whatever investigations were under way. Or Fort Knox. Locks on every door, every door locked, every visitor thoroughly vetted, scanned and escorted. The bureau either took itself very seriously or suffered mass paranoia. Or both.

One door was ajar. Not surprisingly, it bore the name of Special Agent Kurt Widner. He had not shut and locked his office, intending to go between here and the conference room as he checked facts on his computer while interviewing Gurt and Lang. A metal government-issue desk occupied most of the space, crowding a desk chair on one side and a small metal chair with a shiny vinyl seat on the other. There was hardly room for the squat iron safe in the far corner.

A small hinged frame contained picturers of an attractive woman and a child of undeterminable sex. Lang smiled. Ever since the Hoover days, the bureau had been big on just this sort of homey touch. So great had been the pressure on agents to enjoy familial bliss that Lang had heard of single or divorced agents who displayed pictures of strangers or other people's kids rather than risk the director's disfavor. Strange, considering Hoover himself had never married.

The photos shared the desktop with a computer and several files. Lang hefted the chair with the vinyl seat and was about to leave when his eye caught a label on one of the folders.

dea co-op. And in smaller letters: lamar co. ga.

Still holding the chair, Lang backed into the hall and looked both ways. Empty. He could get in big trouble, both with the fibbies and the state bar, for what he was about to do. The upside was that he was about to have some real fun.

He stepped back into the office, shut the door and began to skim the file, an outline of a joint investigation between the Drug Enforcement Agency in middle Georgia and the Atlanta FBI. Mere coincidence he had found this? No, not really. Bringing in agents both from Atlanta and a different branch of law enforcement whose faces would be unknown in Lamar County made sense. If there was luck involved, it was that Special Agent Widner had gotten careless. Lang would have liked to have taken notes, but there simply wasn't time. At some point, Agent Widner was going to come back here or the receptionist would come looking for him. He scanned the file a second time, making sure of the relevant details.

On the way back from the federal building, Gurt and Lang discussed their separate interviews. From the questions asked, it seemed clear the feds were clueless as to the identity of the would-be kidnappers. Lang gathered that, whoever they were, they were being less than cooperative when questioned. But they were in custody and would be indefinitely, hopefully long enough for Lang to discover who had sent them before they tried again.

In the meantime, Lang had to find the would-be assassins. Trying to kill him was real personal. Attempting to harm his new family was even more so.

But first, Lang would be busy with another matter.

IX.

United States District Court for the Middle District of Georgia

Macon, Georgia

A Week Later

The drive to Macon had seemed endless even though only eighty miles of interstate separated it from Atlanta, where Lang and Grumps had become indefinite guests at Francis's rectory. No one followed Lang on a few aimless excursions from the interstate. Before leaving, he had verified his still-unknown enemies were still in the custody of the feds in Atlanta. Whoever they were, they apparently did not have endless reinforcements.

Surprisingly, Gurt had offered little argument when a European vacation-bound friend of Lang's had offered the use of a cottage on the grounds of the High Hampton Inn in the mountains near Cashiers, North Carolina. She would scrupulously avoid the use of credit cards, ATMs or anything else that might leave a record of her presence there. Happily, other than homemade quilts, tacky handicrafts and overpriced junk that every roadside stand proclaimed to be "genuine mountain antiques," there was nothing to buy. The accommodations were rustic at best, the hotel's food wholesome if unappetizing. But the view was magnificent, the climate temperate as compared to Atlanta from June until September. Best of all, a number of young mothers and their broods summered there while their husbands labored during the week in Charlotte, Atlanta, Birmingham or a dozen other southeastern cities. Manfred had more playmates than he ever had and Gurt could watch for strangers who would stand out like a missing plank in a picket fence.

Francis was still trying his Vatican contacts to learn more than the names of the men in the Lear jet but so far without success. Lang got the impression the delay was more attributable to red tape than stonewalling. Not even the Holy Father was immune to bureaucracy and this one had had two millennia to become entrenched, immovable and unhelpful.

Lang eased the Porsche into a parking lot, thankful he had mended enough to manage the car's manual transmission. His two-block stroll to the courthouse reminded him he had also healed enough to resume his regularly scheduled workouts.

Sam "Dusty" Roads, the youthful United States attorney, was already in the courtroom, accompanied by an older man whom Lang recognized as a senior US attorney from the northern division. His name eluded memory's grasp. Dusty's greeting was decidedly less enthusiastic than his previous one.

"What the hell are you trying to do, Reilly?"

Lang put his slim attaché case down on counsel table and smiled. "And a good morning to you, too. What I'm trying to do is to have my client acquitted."

"What you're going to do is get yourself sanctioned," the older man growled. "Subpoenaing a federal agent, demanding sensitive FBI files… In case you didn't know, the bureau isn't involved in this case. The DEA is."