The Bonaparte Secret Read Online Free PDF

condominium had been blown up in an attempt to kill him at the beginning of what he thought of as the Coptic Affair.
    Within months of their return home, Dawn had received a death sentence from her doctor. For months Lang had sat at her bedside, making plans for a return to Italy they both knew would never happen. Years after her death, he encountered Gurt again while tracking down the deadly Pegasus organization. A stop-and-go relationship became permanent with the unintended birth of their son, Manfred.
    “Lang?”
    Gurt’s tone made him realize he had tuned out the present.
    “You do not wish a gondola ride?”
    Lang nodded toward the basilica’s doors, where a small crowd had gathered. “What’s going on now?”
    He changed his direction, giving Gurt little choice but to follow. She caught up with him as he spotted Gower and the heavily endowed Angelia.
    Lang now could see uniformed police coming and going from the church.
    “Isn’t it exciting?” Angelia cooed. “They say the priest found blood on one of the interior columns when he opened the church for early mass. Like somebody had been injured.”
    “Injured?” Lang tried to seem curious. “Do they know who?”
    “I don’t think so. He wasn’t hurt too badly to get away. The police think he might have been involved in a theft.”
    “Oh? Of what?”
    Gower interjected, “I understand some holy relic was taken from under the altar.”
    That answered the question of the need to be drilling late in the night. “Saint Mark’s bones? They’re under the altar.” Lang was perplexed. “Who would want Saint Mark’s bones?”
    “Saint who?” Angelia asked.
    At the same time, back at the costume-rental store, things were not going so well for Pietro, the proprietor, despite the windfall of being able to pocket part of the American’s deposit.
    When the man, clearly Asian, had walked in, the owner assumed he had another customer for the clown suit and another sale of the bright red rubber ball of a nose that went with it. Instead, the man had asked to see the American’s credit-card receipt, an unusual request, to say the least. When met with a polite denial, the man, the customer, had grabbed Pietro by the neck of his costume, twisting it into a choke hold.
    It didn’t take the Pietro long to realize the prior customer’s privacy or identity or whatever the Asian wanted wasn’t worth his life. Besides, the customer’s name wouldn’t be on the receipt, and all but the last four digits of the card appeared as Xs. What harm could be done with that? A great deal less than Pietro faced if he didn’t give this madman what he wanted.
    At the Piazza San Marco, the crowd was beginning to disperse when it became obvious that there was nothing more to be seen. Gurt and Lang said their good-byes to Gower and his lady friend.
    Lang glanced at his watch, noting they still had several hours before the foundation’s Gulfstream would arrive at Marco Polo International Airport to pick them up for the trip home.
    “Now what?”
    “The boat from the hotel . . . Why do we not ask the driver to take us on a tour of the canals?”
    Lang looked around at the gaudy displays of the square’s shops. “First, I need to get Manfred something. I promised him a souvenir.”
    Gurt shook her head, smiling. “You have already gotten him a puppet, a model of a gondolier and a nice leather jacket he will outgrow before spring. Do you believe another toy will diminish your guilt at leaving him at home?”
    She had hit the mark and Lang knew it. He had resigned himself to being childless until, like a miracle, Gurt reentered his life with a son he had not known existed.
    “He’s your son, too,” Lang observed defensively.
    “If you continue to smother him in gifts, he will be my spoiled son.”
    It was an argument without end or rancor. Gurt certainly loved their son but she was a no-nonsense martinet. Like so many men who had a child comparatively late in life, Lang tended