Such questions were frequent in Italian business.

Lang headed for the stairs, pretending to be leaving, before the old man grudgingly agreed to accept what had been offered. He handed Lang a ring of keys along with another incomprehensible string of Italian and left the floor, his muttering trailing up the stairs behind him like malodorous smoke from a cheap cigar.

Lang locked the door and stretched out on the bed. Through the open window, the sharp noises of traffic were smoothed into a sleepy drone. He inhaled the fragrance of freshly turned earth mixed with a bouquet of herbs.

He thought of Janet and Jeff.

In less than a minute, he was asleep.

2

Portugal

0827 hours the same day

Hundreds of miles away, at about the same time Langford's plane touched down, fog swirled against rippled and nearly opaque windowpanes, condensing into tiny rivers of silver that ran along the leaded edge of each piece of ancient glass. The mist, not yet dissipated by a monochromatic sun, made gray stone resemble a grainy black-and-white photograph.

From a window, a light, muted into quicksilver by the moist haze, danced across the otherwise still fog. The light took on a bluish tint as a computer screen flickered alive, an event so starkly anachronistic with the hand-carved stone, battlements and turrets as to be disturbing had anyone been watching.

The man in front of the screen might also have been from another time. He wore a coarse robe with a hood, something from a medieval monastery, perhaps. Despite the chill, his feet were clad only in thong sandals. He waited impatiently for the Macintosh to boot up before typing an eight-letter password. A series of letters, five to a group, appeared. These groups were completely arbitrary to anyone without decryption software. When he was certain the message was complete, the operator touched a series of keys. The indecipherable letter blocks were replaced by a single sentence.

The man wagged his chin up and down as though agreeing with what he was reading. An unauthorized and virtually undetectable entry into worldwide airline reservation systems had revealed that Langford Reilly had flown into Rome from Miami. Similar hacking into credit card records failed to disclose hotel reservations. Presumably his whereabouts would soon be available from police computers into which his passport would have been entered. The information could be picked as easily as grapes from the vine.

The operator scowled. He didn't like to wait; that wasn't what computers were all about.

A breeze parted the fog outside like a curtain and rattled the windows in their hand-forged lead casements like a spirit seeking entry.

The man didn't notice. He reread the message as he unconsciously twisted the silver chain around his neck. From the chain hung a pendant with four triangles. He input instructions to his electronic correspondent: Find Reilly. See who his past contacts in Rome might be. The authorities will shortly be looking for him also. Before you kill him, see what he knows, who he has told.

CHAPTER THREE

1

Rome

1300 hours

Lang woke up refreshed, having made up for the sleep he had missed on the plane and the change in time zones. Outside, the hum of traffic was missing. A check of his watch told him why. Thirteen hundred hours, one o'clock, the time in the afternoon when businesses, museums and even churches close for three hours.

Lang swung his feet off the bed and unlocked the door. He stepped into the empty hall and gently rapped on the door of the communal bath. With no response, he ventured in. It was every bit as bad as he had anticipated. After washing his face in the cracked porcelain sink, he did his business before venturing out of the pensione.

Standing in the shadow of the doorway, Lang checked the piazza for anyone who didn't seem to belong. Little boys shouted as they kicked a scruffy soccer ball. Crones in black poked and sniffed the produce in a small vegetable stall. Old men sat at tables in front of the taverna across the way and drank coffee or grappa while watching with watery eyes. Those of the median ages between the very young and the very old were, Lang guessed, having lunch inside before returning to work.

As he crossed the square, he was gratified to note the trattoria next to the pensione, the one with the bad food and worse art, had few customers.

As he walked, he was surrounded by cats. The animal most symbolic of Rome wasn't really the she wolf of legend but an ordinary house tabby. They didn't seem to belong to anyone if, indeed, a cat ever does. But they all looked well fed and healthy. Maybe that's why he didn't see any rats. Small fountains, no more than cement bowls with flowing pipes, were placed on almost every block so that the cats, and the occasional dog, wouldn't go thirsty.

The only thing more numerous than cats were Gypsies, dark-haired women extending roses for sale, reaching for palms to read, or suckling infants. Or muttering curses at passersby uninterested in whatever was being offered. Gypsies, Romans believed, made their real living as pickpockets and thieves. True or not, Lang shifted his wallet to his front pocket.

It was a rare piazza that did not have its own unique church, stature or fountain. Likewise, each of those miniature neighborhoods had its own odor. Brewing cappucino might dominate one, while a block away, an open-air market would scent the air with ripe vegetables.

The smell of fresh bread stopped him cold. He was hungry, hadn't eaten since the soggy, unidentifiable mess the airline had proclaimed a meal. He made a right turn down another alley-width street, dodged a Japanese motorcycle under less than complete control by its driver, and arrived at the Osteria den Berlli, a restaurant on the Piazza San Apollonia. He hoped the Osteria still had the quality seafood he remembered.

An hour later, Lang stepped back into the sunshine, the taste of garlic octopus clinging to his palate. He strolled north, just one more Roman letting lunch settle in his stomach, until he reached the traffic-choked Via Della Concilazone, the wide boulevard that leads to the Vatican. Even in April, before the tourist season started, the sidewalks were jammed. Shops displayed religious trinkets, small busts of the Pope, cheap crucifixes. Lang would not have been surprised to see St. Peter's Basilica in a snow globe.

Before leaving Atlanta, he had made one more call to Miles, this time asking about common acquaintances in Rome.

Miles had been guarded. "You're going to Rome for a vacation and just want to renew auld lang syne, right? This doesn't have anything to do with the thermite or your sister's death, right?"

"You're overly suspicious, Miles."

"Comes with the job, remember? Besides, I'd get shit-canned, I told who the Agency people in Rome were. Maybe shot."

"They don't do that anymore," Lang had said. "Just cancel your government pension and benefits."

"Years I put in, that's worse."

"Besides," Lang said reasonably, "I didn't ask who was Agency in Rome, I asked whom we knew in Rome."

"Typical lawyer hairsplitting. Why you wanna know, anyway?" "I need an introduction at the Vatican, figured the Agency'd know whom to contact."

Miles made no effort to even sound as if he believed him. "Vatican, like where the Pope hangs? You want to fill out the forms for future canonization, right?"

"Miles, Miles, you are letting cynicism poison your otherwise bright and cheerful disposition. I simply want a brief conference with one of the Holy Father's art historians"

The phone connection did nothing to diminish the snort of derision. "Right. Like I would engage only in intellectual conversation were I alone on a desert island with Sharon Stone."