The League of Night and Fog (49 page)

“No,” Joseph said again.

But again, amid Ephraim’s shouts, no one heard him.

The sons were pale with shock.

“Aren’t you going to try to stop us?” Ephraim asked. “Halloway? Rosenberg? Try to stop us! No? Are you beginning to understand how fear can rob you of your will? The SS used to say that the Jews deserved to die because they didn’t resist being marched to the gas chamber! Well, now it’s your turn! Resist! Show us how superior you are!” He whipped their fathers again. “On your feet! Damn you, hurry!”

Joseph watched Ephraim’s hate-contorted face and felt sickened. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. He’d expected to feel satisfaction, not disgust. Relief, not nausea.

Ephraim whipped the old men faster. “Soon you’ll learn how it feels to see your sons dig your graves, to watch your sons being forced to watch you getting shot! You’ll feel afraid, humiliated, debased!” Ephraim glared toward the sons. “And soon
you’ll
learn how it feels to see your father killed, to stand helplessly back after you participated in his execution by digging his grave! Soon you’ll learn how it feels to wonder if the obscene bargain you made will be honored, if you’ll be killed or spared!”

The old men were being herded toward the back of the house, their sons prodded with Uzis, forced to carry shovels for the pit.

“Try to escape!” Ephraim shouted. “That’s what
we
were tempted to do! We knew we’d be shot, and yet we kept hoping that something,
anything
, would stop the efficiency, stop the—!”

Joseph opened his mouth to shout again, “No!” But the word froze in his throat.

Because someone else, a woman, shouted it first.

J
oseph swung toward the open front door of the mansion. The others spun with their Uzis. Ephraim drew his Beretta.

With dizzying astonishment, Joseph watched the woman step out of the mansion.

No! he thought. This can’t be happening! I’m imagining it!

But he knew he wasn’t. As the gravel beneath him seemed to tilt, he recognized beyond a doubt.

The woman was Erika.

Her face was flushed with anger. “No! You can’t! This is wrong! It’s
worse
than wrong! If you do to them what they did to you, to
us
, to our people, you make yourselves them! You destroy yourselves! This has to stop!”

“Erika …” Joseph murmured.

“You
know
this woman?” Ephraim asked.

“My daughter.”

“What?”

A man and a woman rushed from the right side of the house, grappled with two members of Ephraim’s team, and grabbed their Uzis. Almost at once, a man lunged through the mansion’s open door, held a member of Ephraim’s team in a stranglehold, and took his weapon.

Joseph felt a further disorienting sense of unreality.

The man at the open door was Erika’s husband
.

“Saul?” he asked, bewildered. “But how did—?”

“It’s finished!” Erika shouted. “There’ll be no execution! We’re leaving these old men with their sons! We’re getting out of here!”

But Ephraim continued to aim his pistol at her. “No,
you’re
going to leave! I’ve waited too long for this! I’ve suffered too much! Before I die, before
they
die, they’ll be punished!”

“And it’ll happen!” Erika rushed down the steps. “In the courts! Let the law take care of this!”

Ephraim scowled with contempt. “The law? Where was the law in Nazi Germany? I know what the law will do! Waste time! It’ll give them rights their victims never dreamed of! The trials will take forever! And in the end, instead of being executed, they’ll die peacefully at home.”

“If you won’t respond morally … !”

“Did the SS?”

“Then think about this! Kill them, and you’ll be hunted for the rest of your life! You’ll be caught and die in prison!”

“You’re proving my point! The law would punish me more than them! And as for my life, it ended more than forty years ago!”

“Then you’re a fool!”

Ephraim stiffened so abruptly Joseph feared he’d pull the trigger on his pistol.

“Yes, a fool!” Erika said. “By a miracle, you survived! But instead of giving thanks to God, instead of savoring life, you savored death! God granted you a gift, and you threw it away!”

Ephraim aimed toward Halloway’s father.

“No!” Joseph yelled.

Erika ran to her father. “Tell him! Convince him! If you love me, make him stop!” She grabbed his shoulders. “Do it! For me! I’m begging you! Tell him these monsters aren’t worth destroying your lives! You’ve got a grandson you’ve seldom seen! You could watch him grow up! You could learn about innocence and maybe even regain your own! You could be young again!” Tears streamed down her face. “For God’s sake, do it! If you love me!”

Joseph felt a tightness in his chest that took his breath away. It was overpowering, frighteningly different from the pressure that had brought him here. Produced by love, not hate.

“Ephraim …” It was difficult to speak. “She’s right.” He sounded raspy, in pain, though the feeling was quite the opposite. “Let’s get out of here.”

Ephraim squinted down the barrel of his pistol toward Halloway’s
father. “It would be so easy to squeeze the trigger. It would be so satisfying.”

“You didn’t see yourself when you whipped them. You reminded me of the commandant of the workforce at Treblinka.”

“Don’t compare me with—!”

“You aren’t relieving my nightmares. You’re bringing my nightmares back. I’m ashamed that my daughter saw us doing this. Ephraim, please, I know now what I want. To forget.”

“And let them go?”

“What difference will it make? Killing them won’t bring our loved ones back. It won’t stop hate. But if you kill them, you’ll be a part of hate.”

Like Erika, Ephraim had tears running down his face. “But what’s to become of me?”

Joseph took his gun away and held him. “With luck … both of us … we’ll learn to live.”

T
here were five of them now in the rented car. Drew and Arlene in front. Saul, Erika, and Joseph in back. As they drove from Halloway’s estate, followed by the truck in which Ephraim brought away the rest of the team, Saul said, “Halloway won’t dare call the police. He and the others have too much to hide.”

Joseph nodded solemnly and turned to Erika. “How did you find me?”

“I’ll need the flight back to Europe to explain.”

“I’m afraid I won’t be going back with you.”

She paled. “But I assumed …”

“I wish I could.” Joseph held her. “But there’s much to be done. The operation has to be dismantled. Our escape procedures have to be cancelled. Besides”—Joseph glanced sadly toward Ephraim in the cab of the truck behind them—“my friends and I have a lot to talk about. To adjust to. It won’t be easy. For Ephraim. For any of us.”

“Then you have to promise you’ll come to visit us, to see your grandson,” Erika said.

“Of course.”

“When?” she asked quickly.

“Two weeks.”

“Thank God we got to you in time,” Drew said.

“I wonder.” Joseph brooded. “Ephraim was right about one thing. They’ll die peacefully before they’re punished.”

“No. We’ll contact Misha,” Erika said. “We’ll tell him what you found out. He’ll force extradition. They
will
be punished.”

“I want to believe that. But on the other hand …” Joseph smiled at something outside the car.

“What do you mean ‘on the other hand’? Why are you smiling?”

“No reason.”

He’d just seen a car go past. A big car. Heading toward Halloway’s estate. It was filled with Arabs. Libyans, he was sure. Angry Libyans. About to demand an explanation from Halloway and Rosenberg about the hijacked munitions shipment.

Yes, Joseph thought and hugged Erika again, justice feels satisfying.

T
hey caught a night flight back to Rome. Saul slept most of the way, but an hour before landing, he felt a hand grip his shoulder. Waking, he saw that Drew had just passed him and was motioning for him to follow. Careful not to wake Erika, noticing that Arlene was still asleep as well, Saul unbuckled his seat belt and joined Drew where he waited out of sight in a narrow corridor between two rows of restrooms.

“Before we land,” Drew said, “I want to talk with you.”

“I figured we could do that in Rome.”

“We won’t have time. Arlene and I need to report to the Fraternity. We fulfilled our bargain with them. We learned why the
cardinal disappeared and who was trying to sabotage the order. We’re anxious to arrange for our freedom.”

“Are you sure they’ll stick by their agreement?”

“They’d better. What I wanted to tell you is I’m glad everything worked out for you and your wife. The way she stepped out of that mansion to face those Uzis—she’s remarkable. Good luck to both of you.”

“Erika and I couldn’t have solved our problems without your help.”

“And Arlene and I couldn’t have made it without you and Erika. We’re grateful.”

“This is difficult for me to say.”

Drew waited.

“At the start,” Saul said, “I felt an instinctive friendship for you. Because of my dead foster brother. You don’t only have the same background that Chris did. You even look like him.”

“What do you mean ‘at the start’? What’s changed?”

“Resemblance to someone is a poor basis for a friendship. I want to be friends with you—because of what
you
are.”

Drew smiled. “Fair enough.”

They clasped each other’s shoulders.

“There’s something I want you to do for me,” Drew said.

“Name it.”

“Convince Gallagher not to look for us. Tell him we’ve had our fill of networks. We don’t want to be recruited. All we want to do is drop out of sight. To live in peace.”

“He’ll get the message.”

“And something else,” Drew said. “We can’t report to the Fraternity as long as the Agency has Father Dusseault.”

Saul understood. If the Fraternity discovered that the priest was a CIA prisoner, the order would blame Drew and Arlene for jeopardizing its secrecy. Instead of gaining their freedom, Drew and Arlene would be killed.

“The last time I saw him, the priest was drugged,” Drew said. “He doesn’t know anything that happened since the night in the Vatican gardens. He doesn’t know about you or that he’s been
questioned by the Agency. Tell Gallagher to learn what he needs to and then leave the priest near the Vatican. Father Dusseault will seek protection from the Fraternity, but after my report to them, they’ll punish him for killing the cardinal and sending Avidan’s group after the Nazis.”

“And in time the Agency will go after the Fraternity. Dusseault’s release shouldn’t be hard to arrange,” Saul said. “Gallagher’s already nervous about keeping the priest. He’s afraid of having exceeded his authority. What he wants is information without controversy about how he got it.” Saul paused. “Will you keep in touch?”

“As soon as Arlene and I are free.”

“Where do you plan to settle?”

“We’re not sure yet. Maybe the Pyrenees.”

“How about the desert? We’d like you to stay with us in Israel.”

“I spent a year in the desert. It didn’t agree with me.”

Saul grinned. “Sure. I understand.” His grin faltered. “It’s just …”

“Tell me.”

“I have a favor of my own to ask.”

“Name it.”

“Two weeks ago, when all of this started, our village was attacked. We thought it had something to do with Joseph’s disappearance. Maybe someone trying to stop us from finding out why he disappeared. The problem is, none of what we’ve learned is related to that attack. I’m worried that someone else is out there, someone with a different reason to want to kill Erika and me. I think they’ll try it again.”

Drew touched his new friend’s arm. His eyes were hard with determination, yet bright with love. “We’ll be there as soon as possible. After that …” He sounded so much like Chris. “I’d like to see the bastards try. Against the four of us? Let them come.”

T
he Brotherhood of the Rose
(1984) is a special book for me. It was my first
New York Times
bestseller. Later, it was the basis for an NBC miniseries after the Super Bowl in 1989. The “rose” in the title refers to the ancient symbol of secrecy as depicted in Greek mythology. Clandestine councils used to meet with a rose dangling above them and vowed not to divulge what was said
sub rosa
, under the rose. The “brotherhood” refers to two young men, Saul and Chris, who were raised in an orphanage and eventually recruited into the CIA by a man who acted as their foster father. Having spent time in an orphanage, I readily identified with the main characters.

When
Brotherhood of the Rose
was completed, I so missed its world that I wrote a similarly titled novel,
The Fraternity of the Stone
(1985), in which I introduced a comparable character, Drew MacLane. Still hooked on the theme of orphans and foster fathers (I think of this as self-psychoanalysis), I then wrote
The League of Night and Fog
(1987), in which Saul from the first book meets Drew from the second. If you’re keeping score,
Night and Fog
is thus a double sequel that is also the end of a trilogy. I intended to write a further novel in the series and left a
deliberately dangling plot thread that was supposed to propel me into a fourth book. But then my fifteen-year-old son Matthew died from the complications of a rare form of bone cancer known as Ewing’s sarcoma. Suddenly, the theme of orphans searching for foster fathers no longer spoke to my psyche. I was now a father trying to fill the void left by my son, a theme I explored in several
non-Brotherhood
novels, especially
Desperate Measures
(1994) and
Long Lost
(2002).