Free Eden's Gate by David Hagberg Page A

do, or he can go fuck himself, and we’ll get somebody else.”
    â€œThat won’t be necessary,” Lane said. “He’ll come along.”
    â€œWe’ll see,” Speyer said. “As soon as this is settled we’re heading up to New York.”
    â€œI thought we were going to Germany,” Lane said.
    â€œNot so fast. We have a few things to take care of first.” Speyer smiled a knowing smile. “There are some other considerations as well. You’ll be told when the time comes. In the meantime we need to take your picture so that we can get you a new passport. Wouldn’t do for John Browne with an ‘e’ to be traveling on anything but bulletproof papers, now would it?”
    Â 
    Lane sat by an open window in his bedroom looking down on Avon Place while he smoked a cigarette. His door was locked and the bedside radio was playing just loudly enough to interfere with someone who might be listening in the hall when he used his phone.
    Frances answered on the first ring. “Shipley and Hughes Accounting.”
    â€œI miss you,” Lane said.
    â€œThat’s nice to know. Are you safe?”
    â€œReasonably. Anything new from the Germans?”
    â€œNothing yet. Where are you?”
    â€œAbout six blocks from home. On Avon Place, a house owned by Thomas Mann.”

    â€œWe’ll check it out. We lost you after the airport, but Tommy didn’t want to get too close.”
    â€œWe’re heading to New York soon, maybe tomorrow. Looks like we’re going after diamonds at a place called Reichsamt Seventeen, some kind of a Nazi genetic research lab where they supposedly used diamonds as a catalyst in their experiments.”
    â€œThat doesn’t make any sense,” Frances said.
    â€œIt didn’t to me either,” Lane said. “But a problem has come up that you and Tommy are going to have to help me with. Ivan Lukashin, the SUR Washington rezident , thinks he knows me and the feeling is mutual. Maybe the Rio war games, but I’m not sure.” Lane told her everything that had happened starting with the meeting at the Lincoln Memorial.
    â€œI’ll check on him.”
    â€œThey have my fingerprints, so Tommy will have to plug the leaks,” Lane said.
    â€œOkay. As I’ve already pointed out, darling, this is not rocket science. So if it looks like Lukashin is on to you, I’m ordering out the marines for a rescue mission with or without your cooperation. Capice? ”
    Lane chuckled. “I love it when you talk dirty.”
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    Frances got up and walked across the hall into Tom Hughes’s office on the third floor of what supposedly was a U.S. Navy think tank, Omnibus Projects. Most of the rest of their very small staff had long since left for the evening, though because Lane was in the field they were all on call.
    â€œHe sounded in good spirits,” Hughes said.
    â€œThe cheek. You eavesdropped. Is nothing sacred?”
    â€œNot in this place.” Hughes chuckled. He was a very large man, pushing three hundred pounds on a bad day, and he was not handsome: His face looked like an alcoholic’s with broken red and blue veins, puffy, red-rimmed eyes, and a round, pockmarked nose. But he was brilliant and he was kind. He had a Ph.D. in foreign studies from Georgetown University; he read, wrote and spoke eleven languages fluently; and his wife of twenty years, their six girls, two cats, one dog, and an assorted menagerie adored him. In his home he was benevolent king; and if the girls could eat, drink, or sleep for their father to save him the trouble they would fight amongst themselves for the honor. Uncle Bill and Aunt Frannie were family,
and nothing they could ever do or say would change that. They had been adopted.
    He had brought up Lukashin’s SVR file on his computer. “He was down in Rio at the same time William was there, which is actually a break for our side. Dear William was