Free The Sinai Secret by Gregg Loomis Page B

Someone hijacked the car and the driver called them. Since your flight crew reported you had gotten in it at the airport..."
    Lang extracted his hand as politely as possible. "I took a tour of the countryside. I'm fine. The Mercedes needs to go to the body and glass shops, though."
    Louis took a step back. "Who ...?"
    "Good question. I have a license plate number."
    Louis looked at a jeweled watch, the sort Of thing few American men would wear to any event other than a pimp's convention. "It is near lunch. Have you eaten?"
    Without waiting for a reply, Louis punched the intercom on his desk and rattled off a command in French.
    "I have asked that the police inspector with whom I was speaking join us. He can ask his questions over a bowl of moules as well as here, no?"
    Outside, blue was breaking through the dove gray skies. The drizzle had stopped altogether.
    The two men crossed the square and walked along one of the Lower Town's main thoroughfares, Boulevard Anspach. Lang loitered, checking behind him by use of reflections in shop windows. Unlike in most U.S. cities, lunch was not a hurried affair here. It normally consisted of an hour and a half of throngs seeking good food and pleasant company. Consequently, spotting a tail in the crowd was difficult if not impossible.
    A few blocks south, Louis stopped in front of the Eglise St-Nicolas, where a Gothic-style church marked the site of a twelfth-century marketplace. They turned left and strolled through the Galeries St-Hubert, a nineteenth- century glass-domed arcade, the location of familiar names such as Hermes and Chanel. Here it would be a lit- tle easier to discern a follower. Men hurried through; women idled in front of shop windows.
    There was still no evidence that they were under surveillance.
    An ornately decorated exit let out onto the Rue des Bouchers, in English the Street of the Butchers. The narrow alley was lined on both sides with restaurant after restaurant, each with an awning out front for al fresco dining and each featuring moules, mussels, boiled with onion, steamed with wine or beer, in sauce or butter. They were being served in the shell, in stews or cold, with horseradish, ketchup, or béarnaise sauce. Shiny, black-winged shellfish that could be prepared more ways than potatoes.
    And Lang knew from experience they were all delicious.
    Louis slid behind a small table around which four fragile chairs shouldered one another for room. He motioned Lang in beside him. The waiter had just delivered the menus when a thin man in a loosely cut suit approached.
    "Mr. Reilly?" He extended a hand. The nails were bitten to the quick.
    Lang stood, a question on his face as he shook.
    "I am Inspector Henré Vorstaat." He showed a badge and sat before an invitation could be extended. "I was speaking with M. deVille about the theft of your car."
    The man's face seemed too narrow to accommodate the mouth, his expression doleful. Lang guessed the tiny folds around his eyes came more from frowning than laughing.
    Hercule Poirot he wasn't.
    His English had the hard edge of Flemish. "I also understand Mr. Benjamin Yadish was employed by you. Having your foundation's car forcibly taken and a murder in the same week looks like a crime wave, no?"
    "More like a tsunami."
    "Oh?"
    The waiter was hovering. Both the other men ordered without looking at the menu.
    "I'll have the same," Lang said.
    He waited until the waiter had retreated before continuing. "We also had an employee killed in the States, apparently the same night as Yadish. One was a physicist, the other a physiochemist."
    The policeman was staring at him with eyes that Lang suddenly realized were colorless. The discovery was somehow disconcerting. Lang had the impression the inspector had used those eyes to intimidate more than one suspect.
    "Do you believe the two murders are related?"
    "After what happened this morning, yes."
    "Tell me."
    Lang did, omitting only any mention of his possession of a firearm.
    As Lang