League of Night and Fog Page 16

  Neutral ground. No business is ever conducted there. Medici favors its menu and its wine list. He always arrives at five minutes after eight, eats heartily, tips generously, and at precisely ten o 'clock returns to his mansion, where a whore--different each night--attends to his pleasure. His home, of course, is superbly guarded. But his weak spot is that restaurant. Mind you, under usual circumstances, his routine presents no risks. Terrorist groups have no reason to harm him.

  And the authorities realize that, if they moved against him, all terrorist groups who'd commissioned services from him would automatically revise their plans. Then if we move against him. Drew had said, won't that alert whatever terrorist group might have taken

  Cardinal Pavelic? The cardinal is ancient history. Who'd suspect that the motive for grabbing Medici was to learn about an operation from several months ago? Haverford, you needn't worry. Drew did, however--about whether what he and Arlene planned was possible. This kind of mission normally required a well-rehearsed team of at least ten people. Two could do the essentials, yes, but what about contingencies?

  What if the unpredictable happened and backup was needed, for defense and for distractions to implement escape? In the shadowy alley. Drew put his hand on Arlene's shoulder, pressing it gently, providing reassurance. She raised a hand, lovingly touching his in return; she spoke as if she knew what he'd been thinking. "We don't go in unless it looks good. Only two of us, there's a good chance we won't attract attention as even the best of teams can. And Medici certainly won't be expecting us." Drew agreed. The alternative was to give up this potential source of information. And then what? With no other leads, they'd be forced to hide and bide their time until the Fraternity found them and punished them for their failure. As he and Arlene had decided the previous night, an uncertain death was better than a certain one. To gain his freedom to be with her, he would face--eagerly--the calculated risk awaiting him. To his left, a limousine swung into the nearest intersection, coming his way. He took his hand off Arlene's shoulder.

  They stepped back farther into the alley. As the limousine came closer.

  Drew saw a chauffeur. A shadowy partition separated the driver from whoever was in back. Drew studied the passenger window on his side, but its smoke-colored, reflective, and presumably bulletproof glass concealed the rear seat Not that Drew needed to see inside. The license plate was identical to the one Gatto had mentioned. The limousine belonged to Medici. It pulled into the restaurant's driveway and stopped. The chauffeur got out, a handgun in a shoulder holster bulging his jacket. He opened a rear door, allowing another man to step out.

  This second man wore a suit instead of a uniform, but his jacket too bulged from a handgun. Next came a short weasely-faced man in a tuxedo; he matched Gatto's description of Medici. The plan was to subdue the chauffeur while he waited for Medici to eat dinner. When Medici came out at ten. Drew and Arlene would cancel the bodyguard in the suit and escape with Medici in the limousine. The plan had the merits of simplicity and practicality. From the information Drew had been given, he gathered that Medici would be too difficult to grab from his home.

  But here? Regardless of his armed escorts, Medici clearly felt unassailable. The death merchant walked ahead of his bodyguard toward the restaurant. The chauffeur turned toward the limousine. Drew took a deep breath, preparing himself to attack the chauffeur as soon as he parked the car in the lot beside the restaurant But Arlene suddenly murmured, "Something's happening."

  It didn't take long. Twenty seconds at most. But the length of time was difficult to determine. Too much occurred. The driver of a small red car stopped behind the limousine and got out, shouting obscenities at the chauffeur. The man wore a peaked cap that almost concealed his red hair. His face, though contorted with fury, was extremely pale. He was taller than the chauffeur but thin, almost emaciated. He shook his fists at the chauffeur, screaming insults at him for having blocked the driveway. The chauffeur strode indignantly to meet him. At once another man appeared from the shadows of the parking lot He wore a black knitted cap mat didn't completely conceal his blond hair. He was square-faced, tanned, and muscular. He pulled a cannister from his windbreaker and sprayed its contents at the face of the bodyguard, who fell, unmoving, as if he'd been clubbed. Bracing himself like a boxer, the blond man punched Medici's chin and, even as the death merchant toppled, shoved him into the limousine. The red-haired man confronting the chauffeur easily dodged the punch directed at him and chopped the chauffeur's larynx with a force great enough to break it The chauffeur fell. The red-haired man jumped into the limousine with the blond-haired man and

  Medici. The red-haired man backed the limousine onto the street ran over the chauffeur, and sped away. It had happened so swiftly, so smoothly that only when the limousine disappeared down the street did a crowd garner, staring down at the bodies. Almost as an afterthought, someone screamed.

  Drew pressed his foot harder on the rented Fiat's accelerator. Tires squealed up the winding road. "'Professional' doesn't begin to describe it. Those guys were artists," he said. Arlene gripped the dashboard, bracing herself against the car's sudden swerves. "They had the same plan as we did. But instead of waiting for Medici to come outside after dinner, they moved in as soon as he arrived. Who are they? And why did they want Medici?"

  "Let's hope we soon find out" Drew braked. His headlights gleamed toward

  Gatto's estate. For the second time today, they were coming here for information. The gate to Gatto's villa was disturbingly open. Two guards lay dead beyond them, chests dark with blood. Drew sped up the lane to the Romanesque house. He rejected caution, suspecting that whoever had killed the guards had departed quite a while ago. The absence of lights in the villa confirmed his suspicion. The attack had occurred during daylight He stopped before the huge front door of the villa and raced from the Flat, Arlene running beside him. Three guards lay dead on the steps. He charged through the open door, found a light switch and flicked it, staring in momentary paralysis at yet more bodies, then scurried from room to room. Death. Everywhere death.

  Gatto lay on a lounge beside his swimming pool, his throat slit, his cotton robe soaked with his blood. "The two men at the restaurant The blond and the redhead,"

  Arlene said. "They must have come here." Drew nodded. "It's the only explanation I can think of," Arlene continued. "They made Gatto talk.

  About Medici. They realized the perfect time to grab him, the same as we did." Dismay made Drew's throat ache. "Coincidence? I don't believe in it What happened here and what happened at the restaurant are related." He stared at Gatto's corpse. "I wonder. What do you do to a man who's dying from cancer? How do you add to his misery so much mat his cancer can't compare to the pain you inflict upon him? How do you convince him to reveal what he doesn't want to when death is a foregone conclusion?" Drew tugged open Gatto's robe, revealing the obscene mutilation inflicted upon him. His mouth soured. "Yeah, those guys are geniuses, all right."

  "But Gatto didn't tell them about us,"

  Arlene said. "Otherwise they'd have tried to take us out before they moved against Medici." Again Drew nodded. "I hope the Lord did look with mercy upon you, Gatto. In the end, you did damned fine."

  "The blond and the redhead," Arlene said. "What did they want with

  Medici?"

  "Maybe their motive was the same as ours." 'To find the cardinal?"

  "I wish to God I knew. Are those two guys moving parallel to us? Or are they behind us?"

  "Drew, they're just skilled enough, they might be ahead of us."

  BOOK FOUR

  COLLISION COURSE

  grave images

  -Mexico City. Using the phone in the backseat of his Mercedes sedan,

  Aaron Rosenberg called ahead to warn his bodyguards to double-check for suspicious strangers outside his home. Nothing had happened to persuade him an attack was imminent, but now that he and Halloway had decided to honor their business commitment, he'd become increasingly uneasy. The abduction of his
father had filled him with foreboding. His wife's affair with her bodyguard had further destroyed his peace of mind. Now, in spite of Halloway's assurances that Seth and Icicle would root out the source of the Night and Fog, no reports of success had arrived. Yet

  Halloway's prediction of their success had been the major reason

  Rosenberg had agreed to the danger of going ahead with delivery of the

  Devil's merchandise. If the Night and Fog learned about the shipment, or if the Devil learned that the Night and Fog might be able to expose the nature of the shipment and who had ordered it, we'd face two enemies, Rosenberg thought. And both would attack, for different reasons. The Mercedes was trapped in a line of stalled traffic. At the head of the line, steam gushed from beneath the hood of an open truck filled with crates of chickens. Bystanders gesticulated around it. What the hell am I doing in this country?

  Rosenberg thought. For a nostalgic instant, he had a vision of mountains, streams, and forests. He jerked his head toward the bodyguard on his left, then with equal abruptness toward the bodyguard next to the driver. Madness, he thought. Before he realized what he was doing, he slid open the hatch on the bar built into the seat ahead of him, took out a bottle of tequila, filled a tumbler, and swallowed its oily contents in one gulp. As it jolted into his stomach, the

  Mercedes moved ahead, the stalled truck having been pushed to the side of the street. But the air conditioning in the Mercedes had been strained. Tepid, recycled air drifted over him. Combined with the tequila in his stomach, it made him want to gag. He raised his fist to his mouth as if to stifle a cough and kept his dignity, anxious to reach the sanctuary of his home. Perhaps Maria would be in the mood to do more

  "driving," he fantasized. Anything to distract him from his troubles.

  She owed it to him, he concluded. Didn't he heap upon her the bounty of his labor? Hadn't he held off confronting her about her infidelity? His driver managed to turn onto the spacious Paseo de la Reforma, gaining speed along the avenue, reaching the Spanish mansion squeezed between high-rise apartment buildings. Rosenberg's bodyguards scrambled from the

  Mercedes, assessing potential dangers. Nonexistent ones apparently. One of the bodyguards nodded to Rosenberg. The mansion's security force stepped from the entrance. Rosenberg darted from the car, up the stone steps, and into the vestibule of his home, where he slumped against a wall. Admittedly his arrival hadn't been dignified, but death wasn't dignified either, no matter what form it took. His security force might joke among themselves about his fear, but he paid them well, and they could joke all they wanted as long as they did their job. He straightened from the wall when he noticed his maid standing beside the curved staircase, surveying him in confusion.

  "It's quite all right," he said in Spanish. "The heat overcame me briefly. Is your mistress upstairs?"

  "No, Senor Rosenberg," the servant said. "Your wife has gone out for the afternoon."

  "Gone out?" Rosenberg scowled. "Where?"

  "She did not tell me, Senor."

  "With Esteban?"

  "But of course, with her bodyguard." Her bodyguard? Rosenberg thought.

  Her body violator would be more accurate! He charged up the stairs. Damn it, they fuck all day while I take the risks! At the top of the stairs, he stopped abruptly, hearing voices from Esteban's room at the end of the hallway. The voices were too muted for Rosenberg to identify them, but they belonged to a man and a woman, and Rosenberg had the keen suspicion that the maid had been either mistaken or instructed to lie.

  He was powerless to solve his other problems, but by God, he could settle this one right now. He stormed toward Esteban's room, and even when he'd gone sufficiently far along the hall to realize that the voices in fact came from the maid's room--a television soap opera she'd forgotten to turn off--even then he was too committed to stop himself.

  He rammed Esteban's door open, bursting in, fully expecting to find his wife and her bodyguard embracing on the bed. They weren't. The room was deserted, but what he saw on the bed was so much more shocking than the tryst he'd imagined that his knees wavered. He gripped Esteban's bureau to steady himself and, as soon as the spasms in his legs subsided, lunged for the bedspread, clutching it to his chest. An iron band seemed to tighten around his rib cage. He spun, staring furtively behind him, apprehensive lest the maid might have followed him upstairs and seen what was on the bedspread. She still might come up and wonder about his actions. He had to get the bedspread out of sight He compacted the bedspread and shifted it from his chest to his right side where the maid might not notice it as he hurried along the hallway, toward the master bedroom. He'd already entered the bedroom, closed the door, and rushed toward the dresser to hide the spread when he saw the reflection of his own bed in the dresser's mirror--and what was on the bedspread.

  It was identical to what he'd found on the spread in Esteban's room.

  Huge, black, grotesque, so unnerving mat after Rosenberg crumpled this spread too and shoved it into a drawer with the other, he didn't consider driving to the secret office he maintained. He quite simply, absolutely panicked and lurched toward the bedside phone.

  Ghalloway was appalled by Rosenberg's stupidity in using an unsecured phone. That lapse in procedure, combined with Rosenberg's babbling, made clear that the man had obviously lost all control. "Slow down, for

  Christ's sake," Halloway urged. "What are you talking about? You found what?"

  "A skull! A fucking death's head! Painted in black on my bedspread! My wife's bodyguard had one on his bed too!" 'Take it easy.

  This might not mean what you mink. It might be just a death threat.

  There's no reason to assume--"

  "If we're dealing with the Night and Fog, I have to assume! It's more than just a death threat! You know what else the symbol means! Whoever painted those skulls wants to remind us they know all about us!"

  Halloway kept his voice low, not wanting to attract the attention of his bodyguards outside in the corridor. "All right, suppose they are reminding us, what difference does it make? It doesn't change things.

  We already knew they'd found us out"

  "It changes everything!" Rosenberg's voice verged on hysteria.

  "It proves they weren't content to take our fathers! Now they want us!

  The sins of the fathers! The next generation has to suffer! And they can do it! They managed to sneak inside my home despite every possible security precaution!"

  "We can't keep talking about this on an unprotected phone," Halloway warned. "Hang up. Call me an hour from now at..." Rosenberg rushed on. "And that's not all! Why two skulls? Why on my bed? Why on the bed of my wife's bodyguard?"

  "I assume to double the effect To..."

  "Damn it, you don't understand! My wife and her bodyguard are having an affair! I thought no one knew! I've been trying to pretend I don't suspect! But the Night and Fog know! That's why they painted the skulls on both beds! They're telling me they know everything about me, including who's screwing my wife! They're bragging they know all my secrets! All our secrets, Halloway! The merchandise! The shipment! If they've learned about...!"

  "You're jumping to conclusions."

  "Jumping to conclusions?" Rosenberg moaned. "Dear God, why did I ever go into business with you? You're so damned self-confident you won't admit...!"

  "Seth and Icicle will take care of--"

  "Will take care of? Will? But they haven't done it yet, have they? And that's all I care about! While those two chase shadows, I've got a situation here! I'm cancelling our arrangement right now!"

  "What are you--?"

  "Either that, or you let me stop the shipment! I don't need two enemies, Halloway! If our clients find out we went ahead without warning them the Night and Fog might know about the shipment, they'll come for us! They'll make the Night and Fog seem a minor nuisance!"

  "But I'm telling you..."

  "No, I'm telling you! The moment I hang up, I'm calling Rio! I'll do what I should have done in the firs
t place! I'll tell him 'no'! And then I'll hope to God your two maniacs find a way to stop this!"

  Halloway's mouth felt parched. He had no doubt that Rosenberg meant what he said. A balance had tipped. Events were now out of control. He tried to moisten his dry mouth. "All right," he murmured. "If that's what you think is best."

  Halloway set down the phone. The truth was--and he would never have dared tell Rosenberg--he'd received three other calls from members of their group, all about death's heads. Miller in St. Paul, Minnesota, had found one painted on the bottom of his drained swimming pool.

  Culloden in Bristol, England, had found one painted on a billiard table in his game room. Svenson in Goteborg, Sweden, had found one painted on the floor of his kitchen. The parallels had disturbing implications.

  In each case, the symbol had been left at the victim's home, as if to say

  "We can get close to you anyplace, even where you feel most protected. But if we'd wanted, we could have painted the death's head where others could see it, at your workplace perhaps or in full view of your neighbors. We want you to realize--we can expose you at any time, humiliate your wife and children, embarrass your business contacts. And after that? Do you hope we'll be satisfied? Or will we come after you as we did your father? Will you have to pay the ultimate penalty?