The Julian Secret (Lang Reilly Thrillers) by Gregg Loomis

one who wanted to go in the first place.”
    Hardly a helpful answer.
    “Keep trying what’s-his-name in Heidelberg. Let’s see what he has to say.”
    Gurt was inspecting her hemline in the mirror. “Howcan you ‘see’ what someone says? I will never completely master this language of yours.”
    You and several million Americans, Lang thought, but he said, “You do just fine.”
    In fact, she was doing better than fine; she was prospering. The American lifestyle, Lang suspected, had done more than he had to convince her to extend a two-week visit into a year’s leave of absence from the Agency. She loved the American malls and supermarkets, both of which were just now emerging in Germany. And she had made friends, finding an inexplicable commonality with several of the single women in the building. Lang mentally referred to most of them as “The Wet Cat Society,” on the theory that nothing is unhappier than a drenched feline. Divorced, these women’s raison d’être was not the job descriptions of residential real-estate salesperson or interior decorator. Instead, it was frantic man-hunting, a desperate seeking for a replacement for the husbands who had traded them in for newer models. They were intent on finding men who would relieve them of their pretense of work. As far as Lang knew, none had succeeded. Each had continued to observe as her personal Day of Infamy the day an unjust court system had upheld her prenup, leaving her only the uniformly insufficient alimony and the condominium that had been part of an unfair and unconscionable settlement.
    Lang was as much at a loss to understand Gurt’s relationships with such women as he was to understand why she could spend hours at a mall purchasing nothing. Both seemed pleasant, if pointless, activities but were part of why she was still here.
    He hoped she never went back. She represented a fresh love, the first since the death of his wife, and a chance at having children of his own. But Gurt had changed thesubject every time the question of a more permanent arrangement had come up.
    Except the one time she had made it clear that marriage presented her with more problems than she wanted. “If it is not disrepaired, fixing it does not need” was how she had characterized their relationship.
    Inertia, a powerful ally, was on her side.
    Gurt was putting on a watch. “What time are we reserved?”
    “Eight, and you recall we’re only going across the street.”
    Catty-corner across Peachtree was an undistinguished low-rise condominium. In the basement was La Grotta, a northern Italian restaurant where the service was almost as good as the food, the geniality of the proprietor as sunny as his native Tuscany, and the prices almost reasonable. The convenience was hard to beat, too. Still, Lang missed the funky surroundings, wretched food, and collegiate atmosphere of Manuel’s Tavern in Atlanta’s quirky Virginia-Highland. The gathering place of such intellectuals, real and imagined, as Atlanta had to boast, it had been there he and Francis had shared a dinner twice or so a month, a place a black priest and a white lawyer speaking in Latin went unnoticed. Gurt had liked it, and Lang was unsure why they didn’t go there anymore. It was, he supposed, just one of many inexplicable changes that take place in a man’s life when a woman enters it.
    “We are driving?” Gurt wanted to know.
    “Across the street?”
    “My new heels are not so good for walking.”
    Lang was becoming used to things like expensive footwear that were meant more for display than walking. Gurt wore clothes that emphasized the curves her heightalready magnified. Whatever the practical shortcomings of her wardrobe, entry into La Grotta would be heralded by dropped plates, spilled drinks, and women’s catty remarks.
    Lang loved it.
    He was buttoning on a shirt, having decided he would not be wearing a tie. “So try another pair of shoes. It’s a beautiful evening for a walk.”
    As they