The League of Night and Fog (10 page)

I
cicle: that was how Pendleton now thought of himself. Angry, determined, identifying with his lost father, he drove his rented car along the narrow blacktop road that fronted his destination. He saw the gravel lane that led up through trees toward a sloping lawn and a mansion on a bluff above the river. Instead of turning up the lane, however, he continued along the blacktop, rounded a bend, crossed a metal bridge above the river, and five kilometers later turned left at the next intersection. Fields of knee-high corn surrounded him. Turning left twice more, completing a square, he came back to the road along which he’d first driven. This time he stopped two kilometers away from his destination, hid the car on a weed-grown lane among trees off the blacktop, and hiked overland, through woods, toward the mansion on the hill.

He wore brown outdoor clothes and woodsman’s boots purchased in a town called Milton that was along Highway 401 halfway between Toronto’s airport and this lush farming area near Kitchener. He hadn’t risked bringing a handgun through Canadian customs, nor had he attempted to buy even a rifle at a sporting goods store—Canada’s laws controlling the sale of every type of firearm were extremely strict. If this had been a
country in Europe, Africa, or South America, he could have easily retrieved a weapon from one of his many hiding places or have purchased one from a black-market contact. But he’d worked in southern Ontario only once, seven years ago, within a rigid time limit that had prevented him from establishing caches and contacts.

Still, to find his father, Icicle had to take this present risk. He shifted with greater resolution through the forest. Thick leaves shut out the sun; the pungent loamy ground absorbed his weight, making his cautious footsteps soundless. He reached the edge of the trees and stooped, concealing himself among dense bushes. Ahead, he saw a waist-high wire fence. Beyond, a well-maintained lawn led up to a tennis court and a swimming pool next to the mansion on top of the hill.

The sun was behind the mansion, descending toward the opposite side of the hill. Dusk would thicken in just a few hours. He scanned the top of the hill but saw no one. Earlier, though, when he’d driven past the entrance to the estate, he’d noticed two cars in front of the mansion, so he had to conclude that the house was not deserted. He’d also noticed that the estate was not equipped with an obvious security system. There weren’t any closed-circuit television cameras in the trees near the lane, for example, or guards, or roaming attack dogs. For that matter, there wasn’t even a decent, high, solid fence around the property, only a flimsy wire one, and the front gate had been left open.

But despite the apparent innocence of the place, Icicle had no doubt he’d found his target. Before leaving Australia, he’d gone to the safe-deposit box he and his father kept for emergencies. He’d hoped that his father, on the run perhaps, had reached the box not long before him and left a message, explaining his sudden disappearance. He’d found the weapons, money, and documents he and his father had stored there, but heart-sinkingly, there hadn’t been a message. Nonetheless, as he’d sorted through the documents, he
had
found the sheet of directions his father had been sent for what they’d assumed was a wake, but what was actually an emergency meeting, here in Canada. The directions
had been specific, complete with the name of the exit ramp from 401, the number of a side road, and a note about the silhouette of a greyhound on the mailbox outside the estate. Icicle nodded. This was the place, all right, but as he studied the grounds, he became more puzzled by the lack of obvious security.

He stared at the waist-high wire fence ahead of him. There were no glass insulators on the posts. The wires were rusty. If the fence was electrified, how could the current be conducted? Whatever security there might be, it didn’t depend on the fence.

Were there pressure-detecting grids beneath the grass
beyond
the fence? he wondered. He focused on the grass. Faint depressions from tires were evident. Tracks from a power mower, a big one, the kind a groundskeeper rode. But that kind of mower weighed more than a human would. Every time the lawn was trimmed, the alarm would have to be shut off, and that made the system worthless. All an intruder would have to do would be to enter the grounds while the caretaker was on duty. No, he decided, the only place to bury pressure-detecting wires was in a forest, and the forest would have to be within the fence, where hikers and large roaming animals wouldn’t press down on the soil with a weight sufficient to activate the system. But there wasn’t even a small band of woods within the fence. If there
were
sophisticated detectors, they hadn’t been placed down here but instead on top of the hill, around the mansion.

He would soon find out. The sun had now descended behind the hill. Dusk would deepen to night, and the night was his friend.

L
ights glowed inside the house. Two spotlights came on, at the front and side of the house. Again Icicle felt puzzled. If the house had an adequate security system, there ought to be more outside lights. On the other hand, perhaps the few outside lights were intended to deceive, to make it seem as if the mansion were unprotected.

Six of one, half a dozen of the other. He stood, emerged from the bushes, and prepared to climb the fence. But he froze when headlights blazed on the hill. A car engine droned. The headlights veered down the gravel lane toward the blacktop in front of the estate, disappearing into the night. The noise of the engine dwindled until the only sound was the screech of crickets.

But there’d been
two
cars parked at the top of the hill. He couldn’t afford to assume that the estate was now unoccupied. He climbed the fence, dropped onto the lawn, and knelt, not moving, straining to detect a threat.

He waited five minutes before creeping upward, periodically interrupting his cautious ascent to study the night. A hundred yards and thirty minutes later, he reached the edge of a tennis court on top of the hill. Wary of triggering alarms, he snuck toward a swimming pool, its placid water reflecting light from the mansion. A small structure next to the pool seemed to be a changing room. He ducked behind it, peering past a corner toward the five-stalled garage to his right, its doors all closed. He shifted his position and stared left toward the car, a dark Cadillac, in front of the mansion. Then he studied the mansion itself.

It was peaked, with chimneys and gables. On this side, a flagstone patio led to closed French doors; beyond the windows, lamps glowed in a room lined with paintings and books. He tensed as a man walked past the windows. The brief glimpse showed the man was well-built and middle-aged, dressed in a blue exercise suit—he seemed to be alone.

Icicle studied the windows in the other rooms. Most were dark. The few with lights didn’t seem occupied. Not seeing any guards, he sprinted from behind the small building near the pool, crossed the driveway, and dove below the cover of a concrete balustrade that flanked the patio, then studied the area before him. At once he realized that the patio, which went all along this side of the mansion and presumably along the other sides as well, held the only alarm system the mansion needed. An intruder couldn’t get inside unless he crossed the flagstones, but they weren’t joined by concrete. The light from the room beyond
the French doors made clear that each flagstone was rimmed by sand. The sand was sloppy, grains of it speckling the patio. But why would the owner of a million-dollar property cut costs on so minor a detail? Why this inconsistency in an otherwise carefully maintained estate? The answer was obvious. Because each stone, independent, rested upon a pressure detector. The moment an intruder stepped upon
any
stone in the patio, an alarm would sound.

He glanced to the right and left, hoping for a tree whose branches would allow him to climb through an upper window. Seeing none, he decided to look for an equipment shed where a ladder might have been stored. By setting one end of the ladder on top of the patio’s balustrade and easing the other end of the ladder onto the sill of a window in a darkened room farther along, he’d have what amounted to a bridge he could use to crawl across above the flagstones.

He began to creep backward.

“So you guessed,” a voice said.

Icicle spun.

“About the patio.” The voice was flat, thin, emotionless. It came from his left, from an open window of the Cadillac parked in front of the mansion. “I’d hoped you would. I wouldn’t want your reputation to exceed your ability.”

Icicle braced himself to run.

“I’m not your enemy.” The Cadillac’s passenger door came open. A tall gangly man stepped out. “You see. I willingly show myself. I mean you no harm.” The man stepped into the full blaze of the spotlight in front of the mansion. He held his arms out, away from his gray suit. His face was narrow, his nose and lips thin, his eyebrows so sparse they were almost nonexistent. His red hair contrasted with his pallid skin.

The patio doors burst open. “Is he here? Pendleton, is that you?” The man in the exercise suit reached toward the inner wall and flicked what seemed to be a switch, deactivating an alarm, before he stepped out onto the patio.
“Pendleton? Icicle?”

For an instant, Icicle almost lunged toward the darkness beyond
the swimming pool. Already he imagined his rush down the slope toward the fence and the trees and …

Instead he straightened. “No. Not Icicle. I’m his son.”

“Yes, his son!” the man on the patio said. “And this man”—pointing toward the Cadillac—“is Seth, or rather Seth’s son! And I’m known as Halloway, but I’m the
Painter’s
son!”

The cryptonym “Painter” had force, but “Seth” made Icicle wince as if he’d been shot. He stared at the lanky, pale, impassive man beside the Cadillac. Seth’s gray suit matched his eyes, which even in the spotlit night were vividly unexpressive, bleak.

But Seth didn’t matter, nor did Halloway. Only one thing had importance.

Icicle swung toward Halloway on the patio. “Where’s my father?”

“Not just
your
father,” Halloway said. “Where’s
mine
?”

“And mine,” Seth said.

“That’s why we’ve been waiting for you.”

“What?”

“For you to come here—to help us find
all
our fathers,” Halloway said. “We’d almost despaired that you’d ever show up.” He gestured toward the mansion. “Come in. We’ve a great deal to talk about.”

W
hen they entered the study, Halloway closed the patio doors, pulled the draperies shut, and activated the alarm switch on the wall. Next to the switch, Icicle noticed a landscape painting.

“My father’s,” Halloway said.

Similar colorful paintings hung on the other walls.

Icicle nodded. “I’d heard he was talented. I’ve never seen his work.”

“Of course not. His early paintings were either stolen or destroyed. For precaution’s sake, even though no one saw his later
work outside this house, he changed from watercolor to acrylic, and just as important, he altered his style.” Halloway’s tone changed from reverence to dismay. “What did you plan to do? Attack me?”

“I had to make sure I could trust you,” Icicle said.

“Trust me? Right now, Seth and I are the only ones you
can
trust.”

“I had to find out about Kessler.”

“He went to see you in Australia.”

“I
know
that! I met him there!” Icicle said. “But after I saw him, he disappeared. So did my father. Did Kessler set me up? Was Kessler a way to separate my father and me, to make it easier for someone to grab him?”

Halloway spread his hands. “He never returned from Australia. He was reliable. If you’d been here at the meeting, you’d have realized that once he committed himself to a purpose, he wouldn’t back out. So when he didn’t return … when he disappeared …”

“You assume he’s dead?”

“Yes.” Halloway thought about it. “In all probability, yes.”

“So either your meeting was bugged or one of the group betrayed you.”

“No. I took precautions,” Halloway insisted. “Believe me, this house has never been bugged. And I can’t imagine why one of us would betray his own best interests. But there are other considerations.”

Icicle raised his eyebrows.

“At the time of the meeting, your father and Seth’s were the only members of the original group who hadn’t yet disappeared,” Halloway said. “We sent messengers to each—to emphasize the danger, to convince them … and yourselves … to join us. Unfortunately, Seth’s father disappeared before the messenger could reach him. That left only
your
father.”

Icicle stared. “Go on.”

“If our enemies were in place to attack your father, if they discovered
Kessler in the area, they might have given in to temptation and taken Kessler as well, hoping he hadn’t yet warned your father and yourself.”

Icicle shook his head. “But Kessler disappeared at almost exactly the same time my father did. If they wanted to stop him from warning my father, they’d have taken Kessler first and only then have set up the trap for my father. No, they must have had another reason for picking up Kessler.”