Free The Elizabethan Secret (Lang Reilly Series Book 9) by Gregg Loomis Page B

elements of antiquity: Fire, water, air and earth?”
                  A definite nod this time. “Perhaps. But I don’t get the other two. Looks like a tree or plant and maybe human figure. I don’t see them representing air and earth. I . . .”
                  A sound at the back of the hall.
                  Both men looked up at the tiered seating where a young woman wore collegiate sloppy: jeans and a T-shirt proclaiming, “MIT, the Georgia Tech of the North” was making her way down. Ebony, shoulder-length hair rippled with each step. Only at the last moment before she reached them did Lang note she was one of the many Asians who would be taking American education and technology out of the country upon graduation.
                  “Professor Wildstein?
                  “Ms. Kim?”
                  She proffered a manila envelope. “The sunset observations from last week.”
                  “Thanks.”     
                  She bobbed her head, gave a curious glance at Lang and started back up the stairs. 
                  “Trouble with teaching,” Wildstein muttered softly, “is dealing with the students.”  
                  “What about that object in your hand?” Lang asked.
                  The professor blinked twice, remembering the interrupted conversation. “Let me have it for a few days, run a test or two. You have a card?”
                  Lang handed him one, wondering about the wisdom of putting in his hands something the Russians wanted badly enough to rough someone up or worse for. Not to mention the United States Navy’s somewhat more gentle interest. Lang knew that could change in an instant if a certain element were given orders to retrieve it.
                  He also pondered the advisability of mentioning any of that. He decided the chance of anyone knowing the Dee object, as he had come to think of it, was here at Tech was small.
                  Instead, he shook Wildstein’s hand. “Thanks, professor. I’ll hear from you in few days?”
                  The professor pocketed the object. “If I can’t figure it out by then, there’s not a lot of hope I can at all.”

15.
    472 Lafayette Drive
    Atlanta, Georgia
    7:22 That Evening
     
                  Strains of Glenn Miller’s Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree with vocal by the Modernairs bounced across the den as Lang studied an empty fireplace. He took a sip from a glass. Ice tinkled in single malt Scotch. T.S. Elliot had never spent a March in Atlanta. March, not April, was the cruelest month. Today: Sunshine and spring-like temperatures. It could just as easily snow tomorrow.
                  Lang didn’t wear his trousers rolled, either .
                  He was trying to decide if it really was cool enough for a fire, a fire that entailed carefully arranging kindling to begin a small blaze and then adding the larger logs progressively. Both he and Gurt distained the artificiality of both gas logs and gas starters. Lang, in particular, took pride in his ability to arrange twigs and logs in such a manner that a single match produced a roaring fire. He supposed laying in a fire was one of the few pioneering skills left since it was no longer practical to hunt down dinner nor were there any marauding savages against whom the home need be protected. Well, no Native American savages, anyway.
                  “You could join the twentieth century if not the twenty-first and install a gas starter.” Father Francis, dinner guest, reading his mind.
                  The priest, in blue jeans, turtle neck, and dog collar also held a glass.
                  “I like playing Boy Scout and building my own fires. Acti labors iucundi.”
                  “ Vel caeco aoareat .