The Man of Bronze (7 page)

“One last thing,” I said to Jacek. “Do you know the combination to your doorman’s gun vault? I’d hate to leave without my pistols.”

Jacek
did
know the combination . . . but that didn’t help much with the room pitch-black. To get light, we used the dashboard cigarette lighter in one of the SUVs to set fire to a waiting room magazine: a French-language copy of
Life,
dating back to the mideighties. I held the burning magazine as a torch while Jacek fumbled with the combination. The whole process took so long, I almost said, “Never mind, we don’t have time.” But when I felt the familiar weight of my VADS pistols resting in their holsters, a great weight lifted from my shoulders. Once again, I was ready for anything.

“Let’s move,” I told Reuben. “The Warsaw police may treat this clinic with kid gloves, but they aren’t the ones who worry me.” I nudged him toward the door, then turned back to Jacek. “Sorry again, old man. Trouble seems to follow me around.”

“Ach, Lara,” said Jacek with a shrug, “what’s to apologize? For real trouble, you should have been here
last
night.”

4

ST. BERNWARD’S MONASTERY:
THE INFIRMARY

We passed half a dozen police cars on our way out of town. They were all heading leisurely for Stare Miasto . . . but by the time they dawdled into Jacek’s, the mercenary corpses would be gone. The bodies and SUVs would turn up elsewhere—probably in some neighborhood noted for gang violence—and in due course, the authorities would write off the deaths as “drug-related killings.”

Though our destination lay to the northeast, I headed northwest on the highway to Gdansk. I was, after all, driving an SUV commandeered from the mercenaries. If it contained a LoJack or some other tracking device, I didn’t want to give away our intended direction.

We stopped at the first petrol station/coffee shop along the road. I made a phone call, then settled down to wait. Reuben had something to eat, while I bought road maps of every Polish province. I also took the chance to do a quick web search on St. Bernward using my mobile phone.
Born 960 A.D
.
in what is now northern Germany. Became Bishop of Hildescheim, 993. Famed for encouraging sacred art in churches, most notably the superbly decorated bronze gates of the cathedral at Hildesheim. Died 1022. Canonized 1193. Now the patron saint of metal workers, architects, and sculptors.
No mention of a monastery in Poland, but that didn’t mean much. The Roman Catholic Church has thousands of unpublicized retreats in odd corners of the world, most of them named after saints with no obvious connection to the site or its inhabitants. Whatever awaited us at St. Bernward’s Monastery, we’d have to find out for ourselves.

Half an hour later, a man named Krzysztof with terrible teeth arrived to take our Explorer in exchange for an aging Honda Accord. The Accord had seen years of rough treatment, but that was what I wanted: its dents would be camouflage, helping it fit in with other vehicles in the cash-strapped backcountry where we’d be going. Krzysztof assured me the engine was still “strong like tiger” . . . and since he owed me his life (five years earlier, I’d pulled him out of a giant wasp’s nest in the sewers of Krakow—don’t ask), I was willing to trust him. The car proved peppy enough; not in the same class as a Lamborghini Diablo, but exactly what we needed to trundle through Polish farmland without attracting attention.

Three hours passed uneventfully with Reuben asleep in the passenger seat. His breathing was troubled by gasps that never quite stirred him to consciousness. Once, as we passed through a village with a single streetlight, the mercury glow revealed that his bandages were red with fresh blood. I cursed my stupidity; before leaving the clinic, I should have asked Dr. Jacek for appropriate medical supplies. Krzysztof had left a filthy old blanket in the back of the car, so I ripped off a strip and tied it around Reuben’s torso in the hope it would press his dressings tighter against the bullet wounds. Reuben whimpered in his sleep but didn’t wake.

I checked a road map. The nearest hospital was hours away. I decided to press on to St. Bernward’s Monastery; the monks would surely have a first-aid kit and maybe a full-scale infirmary. Rural monasteries were usually self-sufficient in such matters.

Back on the highway, farmland gave way to snow-packed forests and lakes. In wealthier countries, an area like this would be full of hunting lodges and summer cottages . . . but few in Poland could afford such indulgences. Besides, the Soviet Union had operated military camps here until the Iron Curtain fell. The Red Army had strongly discouraged Polish families from holidays in the region. With the Soviets gone, vacationers might now begin to filter in; but it would take years for a full-fledged tourist industry to develop.

So nobody lived here but lumberjacks and the occasional recluse. Only a few snowy dirt tracks led into the woods—mostly logging roads not shown on the map. Some had signs telling which timber company owned the land, but the majority just said
PRIVATE, KEEP OUT
in Polish.

“Reuben,” I called. “Reuben. Reuben!”

He woke only when I shook him hard. “Wha . . . what?”

“We’re getting close,” I said. “You’ll have to tell me which road to take.”

“Oh. Right.” He rubbed his eyes as if they wouldn’t focus. His head slipped back against the seat again.

“Reuben. Reuben!”

“Yeah. Yeah. Yeah . . .”

“Talk to me,” I said, just to keep him awake. “Tell me about where we’re going.”

“I told you—St. Bernward’s Monastery.”

“What kind of monastery is it?”

He forced himself to concentrate. “It’s old. There’s been a monastery on the site for more than a thousand years. Parts of the original are still standing. It hasn’t always been called St. Bernward’s, but—”

“What type of monastery is it?”

“Roman Catholic.”

“I guessed that,” I said dryly. “But what order of monks? Franciscan? Dominican? Benedictine?”

“Uhh . . . Dominican.”

“Reuben, here’s a tip: don’t lie unless you know what you’re doing. The Dominican order was founded by St. Dominic in 1215—eight hundred years ago, not a thousand. But then, you’ve always been the type of archaeologist who concentrates on true antiquities. I could never trip you up on prehistoric Mesopotamia, but anything after the fall of Rome is beyond your expertise.”

He said nothing. He should have known I was only teasing, but he was too weak to make a retort. “Who
really
lives in the monastery?” I asked.

Reuben sighed. If he’d been stronger he might have told me it was none of my business, but he seemed too tired to fight. “They
are
monks, Lara. And a few really are Dominicans. Also some Jesuits, some Trappists, some Hospitallers . . . some Buddhists, some Sikhs, some Sufis . . .” He sighed. “Nuns, too. Taoists, Jains, Essenes . . . a lot of different types.”

I raised my eyebrows. Hospitallers? They were a tiny order whose members hardly ever left Rome. And the Essenes were a Jewish sect who disappeared from history around the year 200. “An eclectic group to find anywhere, much less the backwoods of Poland. Care to tell me what they’re up to?”

“They call themselves the Order of Bronze,” Reuben said. “The Order is, uhh, quite old.”

I groaned. “An ancient society of religious dropouts hiding in the back of beyond? Reuben, how could you get involved with such people? They could be trying to summon some evil elder god . . . open the gates of hell . . . immanentize the eschaton . . .”

He stared at me blankly. I said, “It means bringing about the end of the world.”

“No, Lara, these people are all right. They’re the good guys. Really.”

I rolled my eyes but said nothing. Reuben had always been too trusting. Finally, I asked, “What were you doing for them?”

“Just research. Investigating rumors about bronze statuary.”

“What type of bronze statuary?”

“Umm. Er. Oh, here’s our turnoff. Turn left down that track.”

Reuben refused to say more. I was too busy driving to argue. The road was light gravel covered with three inches of snow; any moment, I expected the Accord to get stuck in some hollow where the snow had built up too deep. I had precious little room to maneuver around any blockages: snow-hung pine trees crowded on either side, stretching their branches above us. It seemed as if we were driving down a white-lined tunnel into a black unknown. If I hadn’t been worried about Reuben’s bullet wounds, I might have turned around and gone back . . . but my friend needed treatment, and St. Bernward’s Monastery—the Order of Bronze—was the closest place to find clean bandages.

Besides, I wanted to meet these people: to get a feel of who they were. If the Order of Bronze were Satanists or lunatics, I might have to take drastic action to free Reuben from their clutches.

For twenty minutes we drove through the dark. Our Accord bounced over rocks and potholes hidden under the snow, but sounds seemed eerily muted. The snow subdued every whisper . . . even the car’s engine. Once, we came to a stretch where the road ran along the shore of a jet-black lake. The water steamed, unfrozen despite the cold—most likely because of underground hot springs—but I couldn’t help picturing dark creatures lurking below the surface, ready to grab us as we drove past. I was relieved when we plunged safely in among the trees again . . . then immediately grew angry with myself for indulging in ridiculous fantasies. Usually, I know better than to unnerve myself with pointless imaginings; but there was something about the landscape, the silence, the brooding solitude . . .

I was glad when we broke out of the forest and saw our destination.

The monastery sprawled gloomily atop a low hill. It showed no lights—not a single candle—so the only illumination came from the few stars not obscured by clouds. Fields had been cleared in a wide ring around the monastery’s stone walls, but the Accord’s headlights picked out nothing but stunted weeds poking through the snow. I suspected the open area wasn’t for farming crops; it served as a no-man’s-land—a zone with no cover—so intruders couldn’t approach the central complex without being seen. Who knew what weapons were trained on our car as we climbed slowly up the rise?

The stone walls, topped with an abundance of razor wire, blocked all view of what lay beyond. When we reached the gates—two slabs of steel more suited to a military bunker than a harmless religious retreat—Reuben said, “Get out of the car. And, uhh . . . maybe you better take off your guns.”

I sighed. It wasn’t an unprecedented request—I’ve visited numerous religious institutions, and the doorkeepers almost always demand I leave my weapons outside. For some reason, they believe firearms are out of place in “retreats of peace and solemnity.” However, it’s one thing to disarm oneself while visiting the Archbishop of Canterbury or the Dalai Lama; it’s quite another to drop one’s guns at the door of an obscure cadre of possible demon worshippers. The Dalai Lama wouldn’t try to cut me open and devour my liver. With the Order of Bronze, I wasn’t so sure.

Grumbling, I left my guns in the car. Reuben was already stumbling toward the gates. He was trying to hold up his hands like a hostage at a bank robbery—obviously to show any watchers how harmless he was—but he didn’t have the strength to keep his arms raised. Soon he let his hands drop and clutched them to his broken rib. I tried to help but he pushed me away and continued forward.

When he reached the steel slabs, he placed his palm flat on a slight indentation in one of the gates—a concealed fingerprint scanner. Five seconds passed. Then the gates swung back, softly scraping the top layer of snow.

“Leave the car,” Reuben told me. “Someone will come for it.”

“Someone with horns and a pitchfork?”

“Don’t be silly, Lara. The Order are . . .”

He stopped. I waited for him to finish his sentence, then realized he was about to fall over. He’d put up a brave front, but his energy was exhausted. If I hadn’t caught him, he’d have toppled face forward onto the road.

I draped Reuben’s arm over my shoulders and walked him into the monastery grounds. His breath was ragged with panting; he moved in a semiconscious daze. I let him lean most of his weight on me, and scanned the area in search of anything that might be a medical facility.

Despite Reuben’s acting as if people were watching our every move, St. Bernward’s appeared deserted. Not a light, not a sound, not a sign of life—nothing but buildings of silent stone, draped with wintry shadows. Our breaths steamed. No one came to greet us or to offer Reuben a hand. After a few moments, I started forward again, ready to kick down doors if that’s what it took to get Reuben some help.

There were more than a dozen buildings within the monastery’s walls. Most were stone huts—not for people to live in but for the many functions a medieval monastery once performed. There’d be a hut for drying herbs, another for blacksmithing, another for curing leather, and so on.

Four larger buildings were arranged in a square around a central courtyard. One had the look of a chapel, with a round stained-glass window above the entrance doors. The other three had no identifying marks: just chunky two-story buildings made of stone, with narrow windows cut grudgingly into the walls. Those buildings would house the monks and nuns, and provide the usual amenities of cloistered life—a kitchen, a refectory, a library. They might also contain an infirmary . . . so I guided Reuben toward the courtyard. When we got near enough, I called, “There’s an injured man here! He needs help!”

Light appeared in the entrance of one of the three anonymous stone buildings: an oil lamp in the hand of a man wearing the black robes of a Dominican monk. He was in his sixties, with short-cropped gray hair and a lean leathery face. His vision was obviously diminished with age because he squinted into the darkness several seconds before spotting us; then he stared disapprovingly for a count of ten before beckoning us inside.

As I propelled Reuben forward, the monk’s gaze dropped to the blood-soaked bandages on Reuben’s ribs. The man’s expression tightened. He stepped back so Reuben and I could get through the doorway. “Down here,” he said, leading us along a corridor of damp stone. Twenty paces later, he stopped at a closed wooden door, tapped once, then opened it.

My eyes were flooded with electric light . . . not abnormally bright, but after all the darkness, I was temporarily blinded. Someone eased Reuben’s arm off my shoulder. Two dark figures escorted him away and helped him onto a flat surface. As my vision returned, I took in my surroundings: a modern treatment room, as good as Jacek’s or better. The temperature was cozy. Two women in their twenties—twins, Japanese, wearing dark brown habits in the style of Zen nuns—stood on either side of Reuben where he lay on an examining table. One woman removed his bandages while the other pressed a stethoscope against his chest.

“Kaisho and Myoko are licensed doctors,” said the Dominican monk. His accent sounded Germanic . . . maybe Austrian or Swiss. He stared at me a moment, sizing me up. “I’m Father Emil. You’re Lara Croft?”

“Yes.”

“Reuben has been urging me for months to talk to you. I suppose he finally contacted you on his own.” Father Emil’s expression was sour. “I dislike people going behind my back.”