The League of Night and Fog (38 page)

“Whatever you want,” Gallagher said, “I’ll see you get.”

They checked the hallway outside. It was empty. The well-built men braced the priest between them. Holding his arms around their necks, they walked him down the hall. The man who wore glasses followed. No one saw them.

Gallagher turned from where he’d been watching at Saul’s open doorway. “Remember, get some rest. I’ll phone when he’s ready.”

Saul leaned against a wall, his knees weak from exhaustion. “I’ll be waiting.” He locked the door.

T
he bathroom door came open.

“You,” Arlene told Saul, “are going to take Gallagher’s advice. I’m calling for room service.”

“She thinks she’s Florence Nightingale. She gets mean when her patients don’t let her help,” Drew said.

Saul smiled. Fatigue made him slump toward a chair.

Arlene picked up the phone. “My friend here seldom eats meat,” she told Saul. “How about scrambled eggs, rolls, and coffee?”

“I’m too tense already,” Saul said. “No coffee.”

“Milk,” Drew said, “and fruit. Lots of fruit.”

Arlene made the call to room service. Saul watched her. She was tall and lithe, reminding him of Erika. But there the similarity ended. Arlene’s hair wasn’t as dark and long. Her face, though beautiful, was more oval. Her skin, though tanned, wasn’t naturally swarthy as Erika’s was. The big difference was in the eyes. Arlene’s were green while Erika’s were brown.

Erika.

To distract himself, he shifted his attention toward Drew and again was reminded of Chris. “You still haven’t told me whether you’re really a priest.”

“No.” Drew sounded wistful. “I was once a brother, though.”

The reference caught Saul by surprise. “Brother? You mean like—?”

“I’m a Roman Catholic. I used to be a monk.”

Saul strained to sound casual. “I had an extremely close friend, a foster brother you might say, who was Roman Catholic. Irish.”

“I’m Scottish.”

“My friend joined a Cistercian monastery and stayed there for six years,” Saul said.

“Really? That’s quite a coincidence.”

“Oh?” Saul’s nerves quivered. “How’s that?”

“I was in the monastery almost as long. But I was a Carthusian.”

“Yes, my friend told me about the Carthusians. He said his own order, the Cistercians, were tough. They didn’t speak. They believed in hard physical labor. But the Carthusians—they each lived alone in a cell, hermits for life, totally solitary—he said the Carthusians were the toughest.”

“I enjoyed the peace. What was your friend’s name?”

“Chris.”

“Why did he leave the order?”

“He had nightmares about things he’d been forced to do before he joined the order. In fact, those things were what made him join the order in the first place.”

“Things?”

“He was manipulated into killing.”

Drew flinched.

“You can’t understand unless you know that Chris and I were orphans. The institution where we lived was modeled after the military. From when we were kids, we were taught to be warriors. A man unofficially adopted us. His name was Eliot. He took us on trips. He gave us candy. He made us love him.”

Saul had difficulty continuing. “It turned out he worked for the government, and his motive for becoming our foster father was to recruit us into intelligence work. After we went through
extensive training, he sent us out on missions. The U.S. doesn’t officially condone assassination, of course, but that’s what we did just the same. We thought our missions were government-sanctioned, supposedly for a just cause. As it happened, we weren’t working for the government but for Eliot himself. We loved him so much we’d do anything for him. So he told us to kill. For his own reasons. Chris broke down from the stress of what we were doing. To atone for the things he’d done, he entered the monastery. But his nightmares kept haunting him, and he retreated even more from the world. He lapsed into trances. The condition’s called catatonic schizophrenia. Meditative paralysis. The Cistercians insisted on each monk contributing equally to the labor of the monastery, but Chris’s trances kept him from working. The order had to ask him to leave.”

“He must have felt torn apart.”

“Oh, believe me, he did. But he’s at peace now.”

“How?”

“He was killed,” Saul said.

Drew’s eyes narrowed.

“Stabbed to death—because Eliot eventually turned against us. To protect his secrets, he betrayed us. I evened the score for Chris, though.”

“How?”

“I killed Eliot … And you?”

“I’m not sure what you mean,” Drew said.

“Why did you leave the Carthusians?”

“A hit team took out the monastery.”

Saul blinked in amazement.

B
eside him, Drew felt Arlene tense in astonishment at his candor.

“Took out the monastery?” Saul asked.

“I’m an orphan, too. My parents were killed when I was ten,” Drew said. “In Tokyo. My father worked for the U.S. State Department
there. In 1960, he and my mother were blown up by terrorists. The authorities never found whoever was responsible. I was only ten, but I made a vow that one day I’d track them down or, if I couldn’t find them, I’d punish whoever was
like
the people who’d murdered my parents. I was sent to America to live with my uncle.” Bitterness distorted his voice. “That didn’t work out too well. So my father’s best friend adopted me. His name was Ray. He worked for the State Department, the same as my father had, and he took me all over the world on his assignments. Wherever we went, I still intended to keep the vow I’d made—to revenge my parents—so Ray recruited me into a secret State Department antiterrorist group called Scalpel. I was trained to be an assassin. For ten years, that’s what I did.”

“Ten years? What made you stop? Why did you enter the monastery?”

“The same reason as your friend. I had nightmares. In 1979, I was sent on a mission that ended with the death of an innocent man and woman. I blew them up, just as
my
parents had been blown up. Their son saw it happen just as
I’d
seen it happen to mine.”

“This man and woman, you say they were innocent? You made a mistake?”

“No. Scalpel
wanted
them killed for political reasons. But I couldn’t justify what I’d done. I’d become a version of the people who’d murdered my parents. I’d turned into the scum I was hunting. I was my enemy. I had a … breakdown, I guess you’d call it. I was so desperate to redeem myself, to punish myself for my sins, that I became a Carthusian. For almost six years, through penance and prayer, I achieved a measure of peace.”

“And that’s when the hit team took out the monastery?”

“Nineteen monks were poisoned. Two others were shot. I was the primary target, but I escaped. I vowed to find out who’d killed my fellow monks and threatened my chance for redemption. In the end, I discovered that the man who’d ordered the hit was Ray. He feared that one day, because of my breakdown, I’d reveal secrets about him. He’d been searching for me all those
years, and when he finally learned where I’d gone to ground … Well, as you said about the man who ordered your foster brother’s death, I found Ray, and I got even.”

S
aul listened, deeply moved. The parallels between his story and Drew’s were unnerving.

But Chris had been killed.

And Drew had survived, resembling Chris, with his fair hair, fiery eyes, hint of freckles, and strong-boned rectangular face. Saul had the sense that a niche had been filled in his life, that a ghost had come back.

“You didn’t say if you had any brothers,” Saul said.

“No brothers. I’m an only child.”

Saul smiled. “If you want a brother, you’ve got one now. You wouldn’t have told me your background if you didn’t recognize the similarities between …”

“I noticed the parallels,” Drew said, “and I can’t explain them either.”

“Running into each other. How could—? I can’t believe it’s just a coincidence.”

“The question is,” Arlene interrupted, “how many other similarities are there?”

T
he two men turned to her.

Arlene had listened with growing distress as Saul and Drew talked to each other. It was startling enough that two men who’d never met before should quickly become so open with each other. Even more startling were the parallels between Drew and Saul’s dead foster brother. What Saul had said just now was true—none of this seemed a coincidence. And the most disturbing part was that she didn’t think the surprises were over.

“Other similarities?” Saul asked.

“You showed up in the Vatican gardens at the same time we did—to force information from Father Dusseault,” she said. “Doesn’t that make you wonder? You’ve got to be curious what we were doing there. I’m sure curious to know what
you
were doing there. In different ways, did we come there for the same reason?”

“Your wife’s father was missing—isn’t that what you said?” Drew asked. “And three men tried to kill you? Men who wore a ring identical to Father Dusseault’s?”

Saul didn’t answer for a moment. Then he shuddered, and it seemed to Arlene that he did so to force his attention back to this conversation. Because, if she guessed correctly, the disappearance of his wife was related to everything they were discussing.

“Right,” Saul said. “And we traced those three men to Father Dusseault. To what you called the Fraternity of the Stone. All priests. What
is
the Fraternity?”

“Soldiers for God,” Drew said. “Church militants.”

“Explain.”

“The order dates back to the twelfth century, the Third Crusade,” Drew said. “They follow a tradition established by an Arab who converted to Catholicism, became a priest, and used his knowledge of Arab ways to help the crusaders try to liberate the Holy Land from the Muslims.”

“Help the crusaders? How?”

“As an assassin. Since he was an Arab, he could easily infiltrate the enemy. His mandate was to execute Muslim leaders in the same brutal way that
their
assassins had executed leaders of the Crusade. Specifically, he came upon his targets while they slept and cut off their heads.”

“Graphic,” Saul said dryly. “And no doubt dramatically effective.”

“The theory was to fight terror with terror. Of course, the crusaders felt that
their
terror was holy.”

“And the Church condoned this?”

“At the time,” Drew said. “You have to remember the religious fervor that motivated the Third Crusade. The Pope gave a dispensation
for any sins committed during what was supposed to be a divinely inspired war against the heathens.”

“Times change, though.”

“Yes, but the order founded by that assassin-priest didn’t. Unknown to the Church, the Fraternity of the Stone continued to practice holy terror throughout the centuries—whenever they considered it necessary to defend the Faith.”

“And the ring?”

“A way for them to identify each other. It’s a replica of the ring King Richard wore during the Third Crusade. A ruby that signifies the blood of Christ.”

“But why would they want to stop me and Erika from finding her father?” Saul asked. “Are they involved in
Erika’s
disappearance?”

“Maybe Father Dusseault will tell us when we question him,” Arlene said. “The reason
we
came to the gardens to meet him involved a disappearance as well. A cardinal named Krunoslav Pavelic. Father Dusseault is his assistant.”

“I’ve heard about the disappearance. But why are you looking for him?”

“To pay off a debt,” Drew said. “A priest who belonged to the Fraternity tried to recruit me into the order. When I refused, he tried to kill me to protect the order’s secrets. Arlene’s brother shot him to save my life.”

“The Fraternity thought
Drew
had killed the priest,” Arlene said. “To protect my brother, to thank him for saving his life, Drew fled as if he were guilty. For the past year, he’s been living in Egypt. Three weeks ago, a member of the Fraternity came to me in New York. He said the order had learned where Drew was hiding. He asked me to go to Drew and convince him to provide a service to the Fraternity. In exchange, the order would consider the debt paid in full for the death of the priest.”

“What was the service they wanted?”

“Drew had to find the missing cardinal.”

“Why couldn’t they handle the job themselves?”

“That’s what we wondered, too,” Drew said. “A Fraternity
priest we met in Cairo told us that someone in the order was trying to destroy it, that the key to finding whoever was responsible had something to do with Pavelic’s disappearance. If Arlene and I wanted to live in peace, we had to find the cardinal and in so doing find whoever was trying to sabotage the Fraternity. I have a suspicion that Father Dusseault is involved in the betrayal, so some things are starting to come together. But what puzzles me is that two
other
people are looking for the cardinal. Two assassins, the sons of Nazi assassins.”

“The sons of … ?”

“Their code names are Icicle and Seth.”

Saul stood in distress. “A blonde and a redhead?”

“You
know
about them?”

“When I was in the Agency, I heard rumors. About Seth in particular. He’s supposed to be crazy. What the hell is going on?”

“And is there a connection? Among what you want, we want, and
they
want?” Arlene asked.

“Disappearances—my wife and her father,” Saul said. “And priest-assassins.”

“A cardinal’s disappearance,” Drew said. “And the sons of Nazi assassins.”

I
n darkness, Icicle sat on a damp concrete floor in the basement of a palace near the Sistine Chapel. He couldn’t see the unconscious woman sprawled beside him, but he could feel her body heat and, if he leaned close, hear her faint breathing. Of course, he couldn’t see Seth on the other side of her either, but it bothered him that he could
hear
Seth—the faint brush of Seth’s hand along her body. Icicle tried to hold his disgust in check.

Yesterday afternoon, determined to force information from the missing cardinal’s assistant, Father Dusseault, they’d entered the Vatican among a group of tourists. A guide had escorted the group through St. Peter’s Basilica; Icicle and Seth had hung back, looking for a place where they could hide until nightfall. The
door to this murky basement had been unlocked. At midnight, they’d left the palace basement and walked toward Father Dusseault’s apartment. Experts at becoming one with the night, they were never noticed.