The interesting question was why. Answer that and you might get all sorts of helpful information.

Morse leaned back in his chair and regarded the patterns years of water stains had made on the ceiling. But where to start? Man was a lawyer, probably had more than a few people like to see him in jail. Could check the court records, see if Reilly'd lost a case or two he shouldn't have.

Nah, didn't seem right. Something told him to try Reilly's service records, one of those unexplainable, irrational hunches he had learned to trust.

Navy SEAL, the man had said. Small, elite corps. Couldn't be too many of those around. Let's see who Mr. Langford Reilly, Attorney at Law, might have pissed off in the service of his country. Morse looked around the room again, this time trying to remember who had the phone number for the military service records place in St. Louis.

Rome

1750 hours

Lang got to the Piazza Navona early, giving himself plenty of time to spot a trap if one was being set. To Lang, the Navona was the most beautiful and historic piazza in a city crammed full of beauty and history. The long elliptical shape recalled the stadium of Diocletian, which the present piazza had replaced. Ancient architecture existed harmoniously with Romanesque, Gothic and Baroque. Of Bernini's three marble fountains on the piazza, the largest was the Three Rivers in the center. It was also the easiest to locate among the mobs of tourists, artists entertainers, and natives who watched the whole scene with detached amusement.

Lang chose a table outside a taverna and picked up an abandoned newspaper, over the top of which he could watch the shifting crowd of tourists taking pictures, artists selling paintings and entertainers seeking tips from an appreciative audience. He hoped he looked like one more Italian, whiling away an afternoon over a cup of espresso.

Gurt was hard to miss. She turned more heads than the American Chiropractic Association. She stood nearly six feet, pale honey hair caressing shoulders bared by a well filled tube top. She approached with long regal steps, designer sunglasses reflecting the sinking sun as her head turned back and forth, searching the piazza.

As she came closer, Lang was glad to see that ten-plus years had not changed the long face, angular chin and high cheekbones. She carried an aura of untouchability that made men keep their distance. Perhaps it was a dose of the arrogance for which her countrymen are noted.

Or a desire to invade France.

Either way, Lang could see her on German travel posters.

There had been a time when his fantasies had placed her in less public places.

She lowered her glasses long enough for her blue eyes to lock onto his before she resumed what appeared to be an idle glance around the piazza. She was waiting for him to make the first move, to let her know if it was safe to acknowledge each other.

Lang vaulted out of his seat and walked over to her, unable to keep a stupid grin off his face. Without having to lean over, he kissed her cheek.

"You look great, Gurt."

She returned his kiss with somewhat less enthusiasm. "So I am told."

He took her left hand, surprised at how gratified he was not to find a ring on it, and led her back to where his coffee cup and purloined newspaper waited. He reclaimed the table with a sudden sideways move that would have done credit to an NFL running back, earning glares from an American couple who had not yet learned that in securing taxis and taverna seats, quickness and daring are everything. Gurt sat with the ease of royalty assuming a throne, dug into an oversized handbag, and placed a pack of Marlboros on the table.

"I'm surprised you still smoke," Lang said.

She tapped a cigarette from the pack and lit it with a match. "How could I not? I am brain-laundered from all the ads your tobacco companies run here because they cannot show them in the States."

Not exactly true. A number of European countries had banned tobacco ads.

"Not good for your health, Gurt."

She let a stream of smoke drift from her nostrils and once again he was reminded of the golden years of cinema. And lung cancer.

"Smoking is not as unhealthy as the business you were in when I last saw you."

"Third Directorate, Intelligence?" Lang asked. "Biggest risk was getting poisoned by the food in the cafeteria."

"Or dropping a girl like a hot… cabbage?"

"Potato."

"Potato." Those blue eyes were boring into his so hard that Lang looked away.. "I wish I could say I regretted it. I fell in serious love with Dawn."

"And with me?"

"Just-as-serious lust."

She took another puff and waited for the server to take their order before taking a new line. "If the people back at the embassy knew I was meeting with a former, er, employee who, I am sure, wants something, I'd go Tolstoy."

Go Tolstoy, being required to fill reams of paper with details of anything that didn't fit routine, usually filled with self-serving fiction.

The waiter reappeared with two glasses of Brunello. The dying sun reflected from the red wine to paint spots of blood on the tabletop while they watched people watching people. Rome's favorite pastime. A battalion of Japanese followed their tour leader, a woman holding up a furled red umbrella like a battle flag. They broke ranks to photograph the magnificent Bernini marbles.

When her glass was half empty, Gurt spoke with a nonchalance so intensely casual Lang knew she had been straining not to ask before now. "You are divorced?"

"Not exactly."

He explained about Dawn, only partially successful in trying to relate her death in an emotionless narrative. Sometimes being a man isn't easy. Gurt picked upon the still-sharp grief, her eyes shimmering. The Germans are a sentimental lot. SS guards who had joked while exterminating women and children in the morning wept at Wagner's operas the same evening.

"I'm sorry, Lang," she said, her voice husky with sympathy. "I truly am."

She put a hand over his.

He made no effort to move it. "You never married?"

She gave a disdainful snort. "Marry who? You don't meet the best people in this job. Only lunatics."

"Could be worse," Lang quipped. "What if you were working for the penal system?"

She brightened. "There is such a thing?"

"Corrections, Gurt, the U.S. prison system."

"Oh." She sighed her disappointment. "Well, my not getting married is not why you are here. I think you want something."

He told her about Janet and Jeff and the man who had broken into his condo.

"Who are these people that would kill your sister and your nephew?"

"That's what I'm trying to find out."

They were quiet while the waiter refilled glasses.

When he departed, Lang took the copy of the Polaroid from a pocket and pushed it across the table. "If someone could tell me what the significance of this picture is, I might be on the way to finding the people responsible."

She stared at the picture as though she were deciphering a code. "The police in the States, they cannot help?"

He retrieved the picture. "I don't think so. Besides, this is personal."

"You were with the Agency long enough to learn revenge is likely to get you killed."

"Never said anything about revenge, just want to identify these people. The cops can take it from there." "Uh-huh," she said, not believing a word of it. "And how do you think I can help?"

"I need an introduction to a Guiedo Marcenni – a monk, I think. Anyway, he's in the Vatican Museum. Who does the Agency know in the Vatican these days?"

Lang remembered the well-kept secret that the Vatican had its own intelligence service. The Curia, the body charged with following the Pope's directives in the actual governance of the Church, maintained a cadre of information gatherers whose main functionaries were missionaries, parish priests or any other face the Church showed the public. Even though the service had not carried out a known assassination or violent (as opposed to political) sabotage since the Middle Ages, the very number of the world's Roman Catholics, their loyalty and, most importantly, the sacrament of confession, garnered information unavailable to the spies of many nations. Like similar organizations, the Agency frequently swapped tidbits with the Holy See.