The Nassau Secret (The Lang Reilly Series Book 8) by Gregg Loomis Page B

than six and half miles to Trafalgar Square.
                  The morning mist had lifted at least enough to make out Lord Nelson on his column as Lang turned away and took the three minute walk to the Charing Cross tube station. He stood in front of a news stand just before a shopping plaza and office towering over the Underground station. He was surrounded by a torrent of commuters like a rock amid a rushing stream as he pretended to browse the headlines of London’s tabloids, S un, Daily Star, Daily Mirror. Small suitcase in hand, he walked around the kiosk, apparently checking out the headlines of the mainline Times and Guardian while actually searching the faces surging past. He recognized none from the airport. Not a sure sign he was not being followed but a good start.
                  Turning, he retraced his steps through Trafalgar Square and westward down The Strand. He stopped in front of the Savoy Theatre, one of only three remaining in what, in Victorian times, had been the City’s entertainment district. This one had been built in the 1880’s to house the comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan. Even today, its playbills featured exclusively comedy.
                  Occasionally Lang paused in front of the window of a chemist or variety store, assuring himself from the reflection he was not being followed.
                  A short distance farther west, an iron griffin, the Temple Bar Memorial, marked the line between the municipalities of Westminster and London, the two usually lumped together under the latter’s name. Here The Strand became Fleet Street, once the center of London’s literary and news world. John Milton, Ben Johnson. Izaak Walton, Charles Lamb had all lived here or habituated its long gone taverns. Today, investment banking and law were more common than printing presses.
                  Lang wasn’t here for literary memorabilia. Pretending to study the griffin, he took a last look behind him before ducking into a narrow alley bearing the name of Middle Temple Lane. The way narrowed even more before ending in an open space, a park flanked by the ancient circular Templar church and Temple Bar, the location of the offices of nearly every barrister in London. Up a marble staircase worn by centuries of feet of those seeking possible justice and certain fees, down a dingy hall and Lang stood in front of an old fashioned half glass door on which chipped gold letters announced “Jacob Annulewicz, Barrister.”
                  The door swung open on to an anteroom of chintz covered chairs that might well have been here during the Blitz flanking a table stacked with legal papers but missing a fair amount of veneer, both on an Oriental carpet showing equal parts fabric and thread.
                  The door to the inner office flew open, revealing a little man with a fringe of white hair. He surveyed Lang through glasses perched on the end of an aquiline nose for full thirty seconds before, “Am I seeing a ghost or ‘tis it truly Langford Reilly I see before me?”
                  “’Tis I, Jacob! I didn’t know whether to disturb you or just stand here, admiring your retro décor. I mean, that is surely the last cabbage rose print in all of England.”
                  “You are now a contributor to Homes and Gardens?”
                  “You wouldn’t know if I were. When’s the last time you read one of the decorator mags?”
                  Jacob stepped up to put his hands on Lang’s shoulders. “Well, welcome you are, smart mouth and all. Can I be so optimistic as to think this is a social call, one old friend visiting another?”
                  “We’ll certainly visit.”
                  Jacob turned, leading the way into the inner office, a small room that reeked from the unlit briar pipes in a crystal ash tray on a desk from which