The League of Night and Fog (14 page)

She didn’t know what to do. When the priest had contacted her in New York, directing her to go after Drew, he’d given her a Cairo telephone number. “Call me as soon as you bring him out of the desert.” At the time, she’d been so grateful to be told where Drew was, to have the chance to be with him again, that she’d readily agreed to the priest’s condition. But now that she and Drew were together, she hesitated. Whatever the Fraternity wanted from Drew, it would surely not be a dispensation. No, by
definition, a summons from the Fraternity meant trouble. She’d lost Drew once when he entered the monastery. She’d lost him again when he fled to the desert. She didn’t intend to lose him a third time.

But what if the Fraternity’s punishment for disobedience was … ?

To kill Drew, whom they’d spared till now, and instead of killing her as well, leave her to grieve for the rest of her life.

She decided to make the call. But her hand felt so heavy she couldn’t raise it toward the phone on the bedside table.

In the bathroom, the water stopped flowing. The door came open, and Drew stepped out, naked, drying himself with a large plush towel. She had to smile. After his six years in the monastery, after his monk’s vow of celibacy, he had sexual inhibitions, true. But modesty? He was more comfortable with his body, naked or clothed, than any man she’d ever met.

He grinned as he toweled himself. “Once a year, whether I need it or not.”

She touched her still damp hair. “I know. I feel like I lost a ton of sand.”

Drew had used her Egyptian money to buy shampoo, scissors, shaving soap, and a razor. His beard was gone now. He’d trimmed his hair. Tucked back behind his ears, it made his gaunt cheeks look even thinner. But the effect was attractive.

He set down the towel. “I’ve had a lot of time … too much … to think,” he said.

“About … ?”

“Some laws are God-made, others are human-made.”

She laughed. “What are you talking about?”

“My vow of chastity. If Adam and Eve weren’t allowed to have sex, God wouldn’t have made them man and woman.”

“Is this your way of telling me sex is natural? I knew that already.”

“But as you’ve probably noticed, I’ve been confused.”

“Oh,
that
I’ve definitely noticed.”

“So I’ve decided …”

“Yes?”

“If you wouldn’t mind …”

“Yes?”

“Choosing nature over artificial laws …”

“Yes?”

“I’d enjoy making love to you.”

“Drew …”

It was his turn now to ask, “Yes?”

“Come over here.”

I
n the late afternoon, with the draperies closed and the room in cool shadows, they held each other on the bed after making love. Naked, relaxed, enjoying the touch of each other’s skin, neither spoke for quite a while. But preoccupations intruded.

“The priest,” Drew said.

“I know. I wish we didn’t have to.”

“But the problem won’t go away.”

Brooding, he reached for his clothes.

“There’s something I’m curious about,” Arlene said.

He stopped buttoning his shirt. “Curious?”

“Before, when you had to leave the monastery, you couldn’t stop asking questions. About how the culture had changed in the six years you’d been away and who was president and what had happened in the world. But this time, after a year in the desert, you haven’t asked me anything.”

His cheek muscles rippled. “Yes. Because the last time, I didn’t like what I learned.”

“Then why call the priest? Why don’t we disappear? Retreat. Together.”

“Because I no longer believe I
can
retreat. I want this settled. So I don’t have to worry about the Fraternity. Or anyone else interfering with us.
Ever again.”

C
airo was heat, noise, crowds, and traffic jams. Automobile exhaust fought to destroy the fragrance of Arabian food and spices sold at bazaars. The complex directions they’d been given over the telephone led Drew and Arlene through a maze of narrow streets. They reached a door to a restaurant whose Egyptian sign Drew translated as “The Needle’s Eye.” He glanced both ways along the lane, seeing no sudden reaction from anyone, no interruption of the natural rhythm of the crowd. Of course, the absence of unusual activity didn’t prove they weren’t being followed; a professional tail wasn’t likely to give himself away so easily. On the other hand, at least they hadn’t proved they
were
being followed, and for the moment, that consolation would have to do.

They entered the restaurant’s murky interior. Drew’s first impression, apart from shadows, was one of smell. Pungent tobacco smoke. Strong coffee aroma. Next came touch—the gritty feel of the stone floor beneath his shoes. In a moment, his eyes adjusted to the layout of the restaurant—wooden tables and chairs, no tablecloths, but several ornate Arabian rugs on the walls, except in back, where behind a counter colorful bottles and polished brass containers were stacked on shelves below a mirror. Here and there along the walls, intricately carved wooden partitions surrounded the tables. Apart from a white-aproned waiter behind the counter and two men dressed in dark suits and red fezzes sitting at the far-left corner table, the place was deserted.

Drew and Arlene chose a table on the right. The table was equidistant between the entrance and what Drew assumed would be a rear exit through the kitchen behind the counter. They sat with their backs to the wall.

“What time did he say he’d meet us?” Drew asked.

“He didn’t exactly. All he said was, he’d be here before sundown.”

Drew tapped his fingers on the table. “You want some coffee?”

“Egyptian
coffee? That stuff’s so strong I might as well put a gun to my head and blow my brains out
that
way.”

Drew started to laugh but stopped when he heard a chair scrape behind a wooden partition to his left. A man in a white suit appeared from behind the partition and paused at the table.

The man was solidly built, olive-complexioned, with a thick dark mustache that emphasized his smile. The smile was one of amusement as much as friendliness. “Ms. Hardesty, I spoke to you earlier on the phone.”

“You’re not the priest who came to me in New York,” Arlene said.

Drew braced himself to stand.

“No,” the man said agreeably. “You’re right, I’m not. The priest you spoke to—Father Victor—was called away on an urgent assignment.” The man continued to smile. “My name is Father Sebastian. I hope the shift in personnel is acceptable. But of course, you’ll want credentials.”

The man held out his left hand, palm down, revealing a ring on his middle finger.

The ring had a large perfect ruby that glinted even in shadow. Its band and setting were thick gleaming gold. On the tip of the ruby, an insignia showed an intersecting sword and cross. Religion and violence. The symbol of the Fraternity of the Stone. Drew shuddered.

“I see you’re familiar with it.” Father Sebastian kept smiling.

“Anybody
can wear a ring.”

“Not
this
ring.”

“Perhaps,” Drew said. “May the Lord be with you.”

Father Sebastian’s smile faded. “Ah.”

“That’s right.” Drew’s tone became gruff. “The code. Go on and finish it. The Fraternity’s greeting. ‘May the Lord be with you.’”

“And with your spirit.”

“The rest of it?”

“Deo gratias
. Are you satisfied?”

“Just getting started.
Dominus vobiscum.”

“Et cum spiritu tuo.”

“Hoc est enim …”

“Corpus meum.”

“Pater Noster …”

“Qui est in coeli.”

Arlene interrupted, “What are you two talking about?”

“We’re exchanging the responses of a traditional mass,” Drew said. “The Fraternity’s conservative. In the mid-sixties, it never shifted Catholic ritual from Latin into the vernacular. And you”—Drew studied the swarthy, Egyptian-looking man with the ring who’d said his name was Father Sebastian—“are younger than I am. Thirty? Unless you belonged to the Fraternity, you wouldn’t have seen a
real
mass in so long you couldn’t remember the Latin responses. Who founded the Fraternity?”

“Father Jerome.”

“When?”

“The Third Crusade. Eleven ninety-two.”

“His real name?”

“Hassan ibn al-Sabbah. Coincidentally the same name as the Arab originator of terrorism a hundred years earlier. Though a monk, Father Jerome was recruited as an assassin by the crusaders because he was an Arab and hence could mix freely with the heathen. But in contrast with Arab terror, Father Jerome’s was
holy
terror. And since that time, we’ve”—Father Sebastian shrugged—“done whatever was necessary to protect the Church. Now are you satisfied?”

Drew nodded.

The priest sat at the table. “And
your
credentials?”

“You had plenty of chance to study me through that partition. You must have a photograph.”

“Plastic surgery can work wonders.”

“Your ring has a poison capsule inside. Your monastery is on the western coast of France, across from England, in the territory contested by France and England during the Third Crusade.
Only someone who’d been approached, to be recruited, by the Fraternity would know these things.”

“True. Approached. And now we approach you again.”

Drew felt suddenly tired. It was all coming back. There was no escape. His voice shook. “What do you want? If you knew where I was hiding, why did you force me to spend a year … ?”

“In a cave in the desert? You had to do penance for your sins. For your soul. To purify you. We kept you in reserve. You refused to join us, but we found a way to encourage you to help us if we needed it.”

“Help?”

“Find.”

“What?”

“A priest.”

The room exploded.

T
he concussion struck Drew a millisecond before he heard the actual sound of the blast. The room became bright, then smotheringly dark as he flew back against the wall. The back of his head struck stone. He rebounded toward the table. It collapsed from his weight and the force of the explosion. The impact of his chest against the floor took his breath away. As he squirmed in pain, the room burst into flames.

The counter, now obliterated, must have been where the bomb had been hidden. The waiter behind it and the two men near it never screamed, presumably torn apart by the detonation. But this understanding came much later.

He did hear screaming. Not his own. A woman’s. Arlene’s. And his urgent loving need to save her brought him back to the flames in the devastated room.

Smoke made him gag convulsively. Crawling toward Arlene’s anguished screams, he felt someone grab him. He struggled and cursed but couldn’t stop himself from being lifted and dragged
away. Outside in the hot, dusky, narrow street, encircled by a crowd, he couldn’t hear Arlene screaming any longer. He made a final frantic effort to free himself from the arms that encircled his chest, to lunge back into the ruined building.

Instead he collapsed. Through swirling vision, he peered up, convinced he was hallucinating, for the face above him belonged to Arlene.

“I
was afraid you were dead.”

“The feeling was mutual,” Arlene said.

He squeezed her hand.

They sat on metal chairs in a sandy courtyard enclosed by a high stone wall. Beyond the walls, the din of Cairo intruded on the peacefulness of one of the few churches in this Arab city. A Greek Orthodox church, its bulbous spires in contrast with the slender minarets of a mosque.

It was early the following morning. Shadows filled one side of the courtyard. The heat was not yet oppressive.

“When the fire started, I heard you screaming.” He continued to squeeze her hand.

“I
was
screaming. Your name.”

“But you sounded so far away.”

“I sounded far away to me as well. But after the blast, I wasn’t hearing
anything
that didn’t sound far away. Even my breath seemed to come from outside. All I knew was, I could move better than you could. And both of us had to get out of there.”

He laughed. The laugh made his ribs hurt, but he didn’t care. It felt too good to know that Arlene was alive. “How did we escape?”

“Father Sebastian had a backup team.”

“Professional.”

“They got us away from the restaurant before the police arrived,” she said. “I don’t remember a lot after we reached the street, but I do remember both of us being carried through the
crowd and lifted into the back of a truck. After that, things got fuzzy. The next thing I recall is waking up in our room in the rectory of this church.”

“Where’s Father Sebastian?”

“Very much alive,” a voice said.

Drew turned. Father Sebastian, looking more Italian than Egyptian now that he wore a priest’s black suit and white collar, stood in the open doorway. He held a handkerchief to his nose. When he stepped from the rectory’s shadows into the sunlit courtyard, the handkerchief showed spots of blood, a consequence of the explosion, Drew assumed.

The priest brought over a metal chair and sat down. “I apologize for not joining you earlier, but I was celebrating morning mass.”

“I could have served for you and taken communion,” Drew said.

“You were still asleep when I looked in on you. At the time, your bodily needs seemed more important than your spiritual ones.”

“Right now, my psychological needs are even
more
important.”

“And those are?”

“I get miserable as hell when someone tries to blow me up. Under other circumstances, I might believe we simply happened to be where terrorists decided to set off a bomb. In Israel, say. In Paris or Rome. But in Cairo? It’s not on their itinerary.”

“That isn’t true any longer. While you were away in the desert, Cairo too became a target of terrorists.”

“But in an unimportant restaurant, in an out-of-the-way part of the city? What political purpose would the explosion have served? That bomb wasn’t placed at random. We didn’t just happen to be there when the blast went off. We were the targets.”