The Julian Secret (Lang Reilly Thrillers) by Gregg Loomis Read Free Book Online Page A

said, “I appreciate your coming.”
    Lang accepted a cup, tried to balance it on the narrow arm of his chair, and conceded he would simply have to hold it. “Again, I owed your father big-time and we’ll help any way we can. But I don’t know what we can do. If Don spoke of me at all, you know I wasn’t in Ops. I sure didn’t learn anything about criminal investigation.”
    Jessica nodded, a person not surprised. “You were one of the few of my father’s former, er, associates, he ever mentioned. I didn’t know who else to turn to.”
    Gurt’s head swiveled, following the conversation.
    Lang took an experimental sip of the coffee. It was as bitter as the orange. “Have the local police any idea who . . . ?”
    Jessica clasped her hands. Lang noticed they were red, as though she had been doing laundry in strong detergent. “That’s just it. They aren’t doing anything. I mean, they came to the house, poked around, asked questions. Since Dad wasn’t a local, I get the impression his . . . his murder is permanently going on the back burner. They don’t have a clue.”
    “And you do?”
    She glanced at the heavy beams in the ceiling as though seeking inspiration. “It had to be because of the book he was writing.”
    Lang shifted in his chair, uncertain how long he could hold the cup in his hands. “The book—what was it about?”
    “Some Nazi. His name sounded Polish or something, not German. After the war he, the Nazi, wound up in Spain. Dad came here to do research.”
    Lang glanced at Gurt. She was no help. World War II was something intentionally slipping from the German national memory. She would have been more helpful with the Franco-Prussian War of 1870.
    Her people won that one.
    “But who . . . ?” Lang began.
    “Some group of Nazis,” Jessica explained. “People who don’t want that book published.”
    Lang finally got up and placed his half-empty cup on a small oak chest with brass edges. He spoke as he returned to his seat. “Jessica, anyone who fought in that war would be nearly or over eighty. I can’t see someone that age killing anyone.”
    “I’m not suggesting they did it personally. Eighty years old or not, no one wants to go to jail. How oftendo you read in the papers that some retired autoworker is being shipped back to Eastern Europe to stand trial for war crimes or an old man living on a beach in Florida was actually a concentration-camp guard?”
    Lang had to admit she was right. Old or not, no former Nazi was going to prison if he could avoid it.
    She continued. “I read about a secret organization of SS officers,” she said almost crossly. “They didn’t hesitate to kill when it suited them.”
    “Odessa, in popular fiction of a few years back. It
was
fiction.”
    “The name was, er, fiction,” Gurt said, breaking her silence, “but the group was real.
Die Spinne
, the spider. I remember my father of it talking. The Communists wanted such organizations destroyed as much as did the Americans. It was one of the few areas of cooperation.”
    Jessica was showing an interest in Gurt. “Your father?”
    “He was in the East German government,” Gurt said, as if that explained everything.
    Lang stood again. “I have no idea what I’m looking for, Jessica, but I’d like to see the room where . . .”
    She also stood and headed for a staircase. “Daddy used one of the upstairs rooms.”
    Lang hated talking to the back of someone’s head, so he saved further questions until he, Jessica, and Gurt were on a gallery above the first floor. “Who knew about the book?”
    Jessica shrugged. “Everybody, I guess. I mean, he hassled his old buddies for a chance to see the files of the old OSS. That was what the Agency was called during the war, Office of Strategic Services. I know he already had a literary agent, and I think she was negotiating with a publisher. The book wasn’t a secret. Other than research in Spain and that it was about some Nazi, I didn’treally know