The Brotherhood of the Rose Page 26

  “Hang on.” Chris stared at Landish tied to the chair. “Last chance. If anything goes wrong, you know the price.”

  “How many times do I have to tell you? He gave me the messages.”

  “All right,” Chris told Saul. “Pick him up. But phone me as soon as you’ve gone to ground with him.”

  “Near dawn.”

  “Don’t worry about waking me. Till you’re safe, I won’t be able to sleep.”

  “Still got that feeling?”

  “Worse than ever.”

  “It’s a walk-through. He’ll be easy.”

  “For God’s sake, don’t get overconfident.”

  “I’m only trying to reassure you. Hold it. Erika wants to tell you something.”

  Interference crackled. Erika teased him. “We’re having a wonderful time. The food’s unbelievable.”

  “Spare me the gory details. I just had a peanut butter sandwich.”

  “How’s your roommate?”

  “Swell. When we’re not talking about his stupid roses, I deal solitaire for him. His arms are tied, so he has to tell me which cards to turn over.”

  “Does he cheat?”

  “No, I do.”

  She laughed. “I’d better run. What I wanted to say was not to worry. Everything’s going smoothly. I’ll take care of Saul. Depend on it.”

  “And don’t forget yourself, huh.”

  “Never. See you tomorrow.”

  Aching with affection for both of them, he heard the click as she broke the connection. The doorstep creaked as he set down the phone.

  18

  He froze.

  He’d locked the doors. The shutters were closed. No light showed to attract a stranger all the way here from the road in the dark. If someone who knew the cottage had come to welcome him, he’d have knocked instead of sneaking up.

  They’d found him. He didn’t know how. He couldn’t think. No time. Grabbing the radio transmitter off the table, he dove to the floor and pressed a button.

  Shockwaves made him wince. Explosions roared around the cottage, shaking its walls. He’d planted the charges at strategic spots of cover where someone creeping up would be likely to hide. He’d made sure the bombs were good and dirty, lots of noise and shrapnel, plenty of smoke and flames. Arranging them had been a force of habit, an obedience to Eliot’s rule—no matter how safe you think you are, there’s always something more you can do to protect yourself.

  He drew his Mauser. A projectile blew a hole in the door. A tear gas canister thumped on the carpet, rolling, hissing. He coughed from the thick white fumes, shooting at the door, knowing what would happen next. As soon as the gas filled the room, the door would be shattered, men would burst in.

  He swung to a window, freed its lock, and raised it, pushing the shutter. The night was filled with smoke and flames. A man thrashed on the ground, screaming from the agony of his burning clothes. Another man saw the movement of the shutter. As he turned to aim, Chris shot him twice in the chest.

  The front door blew apart.

  Chris spun toward Landish, aiming, unable to see him in the white gas filling the room. He heard a heavy thump as if Landish had toppled his chair, seeking cover. Footsteps charged up the outside steps. Again no time. He leapt from the window, running as he struck the ground. Angry voices filled the cottage. Charging through the dark, along the cliff top, away from the flames, he imagined the hit team in gas masks searching the cottage, discovering the open window. But by then he’d be far away. In the dark, they wouldn’t know which way he’d gone. They’d never find him.

  He raced harder, clutching the Mauser, blinking from sweat. Away from the flames, he felt released, sprinting wildly through the night.

  Landish’ll tell where Saul is. Got to warn him.

  Then he heard it. Behind him.

  Closer, faster, louder.

  Footsteps. Someone was chasing him.

  19

  “Untie my hands,” Landish blurted. The tear gas made him cough.

  A grim-lipped man in black applied a treated cloth to Landish’s eyes. Another tugged at the ropes.

  The windows had been opened, the shutters unlatched. A sea breeze wafted the gas from the room.

  Landish stumbled to a table, grabbing the phone. He dialed impatiently. Crucial seconds passed. He told the operator the number in Falls Church, Virginia. Trembling, he clutched the table for balance, unconsciously fingering the five-inch strip of aluminum attached to the back of his belt. The strip was magnetically coded. As soon as his guards had discovered his disappearance, they’d have activated an emergency procedure, using electronic sensors to trace the code on the metal strip. On land, the sensors worked only for a limited distance, blocked by obstacles and the curve of the earth. But from a satellite or a surveillance plane—both of which MI-6 had in readiness—they were as effective as any other high-altitude scanning device. Twelve hours after Landish had been abducted, his security force would have known where his captors held him prisoner. The rest of the time would then have been devoted to setting up the rescue.

  Landish felt the room swirl, hyperventilating. The phone buzzed. It kept buzzing, making him cringe. But someone finally answered.

  “Eliot,” Landish demanded, fearing he might not be available. “Seventeen plus three.”

  The man’s gruff voice became alert. “I’ll put you through.”

  In seconds that seemed like minutes, Eliot answered.

  “I’ve found your Black Princes,” Landish said.

  “Where?”

  “They were at my home.”

  “Dear God.”

  “A woman’s with them.”

  “Yes, I know. What happened?”

  “They abducted me.” Landish told him everything. “Remus escaped. We’re hunting him. Romulus and the woman have gone to Paris.”

  “Why?”

  Landish told him.

  “Kochubey? But he’s KGB.”

  “That worries you.”

  “The opposite. Remus killed a Russian at the Abelard house in Bangkok. They put out a contract on him. We don’t have to get involved. They’ll owe me a favor for telling them how to get the man who helped him.”

  20

  Chris’s opponent gained on him. The rocks along the top of the cliff made running difficult. In the dark Chris couldn’t see where he was going. He felt tempted to spin and shoot, but the night would obscure his target. Worse, his muzzle flash would make him a target, and the noise from the shot would attract the others.

  His chest burned. His heart pounded. But the fierce, steady, urgent breath of his pursuer surged ever closer. He strained his legs to their maximum, muscles aching. Sweat soaked his clothes. The rapidly approaching footfalls warned of imminent contact.

  Through blurry vision, he noticed a patch of white ahead. It sloped to his right toward the cliff. A darker spot in its middle became a trough. The white was chalk.

  A niche.

  He dove to it, rolling, absorbing the impact along his shoulders and hips. Scuttling down, he grabbed outcrops, scrambling. The trough became steeper. Instead of sloping, it veered straight down, an indentation like a three-sided airshaft, its craggy sides providing hand- and footholds.

  Clambering, he heard the scrape of his hunter’s shoes on the rocks above him. Shards of chalk cascaded over him, cracking against his shoulders and scalp. His hands bled as he scurried lower.

  If I can reach the bottom, he prayed. Wind tugged his hair. The surf on the beach roared louder as he neared it.

  Slipping, he almost fell, but he wedged his shoes against a ridge. Squirming over it, he reached a slope, stumbling down to the stony beach. A five-foot slab of chalk provided cover. Fumbling in his pocket, he grabbed the silencer for the Mauser, screwing it on the barrel. Spreading his legs for balance, he aimed his right arm stiffly, raising his left hand to support it.

  There. A shadow moved down the niche. He shot. The pounding surf obscured both the silencer’s spit and the bullet�
�s impact. He couldn’t be sure he’d struck the shadow. In the dark, he couldn’t aim properly, couldn’t line up his front and rear sights. He shot above and below where he’d seen the shadow.

  Move. If he stayed behind this chalk slab any longer, he’d give his hunter time to calculate his position. Hunched, he ran to another slab, then another, rushing farther along the beach away from the cottage. Behind him, the night glowed from the flames on top of the cliff. The thundering surf made it useless for him to listen for anyone racing toward him. He turned, moving backward, studying the now distant niche.

  Unable to see it anymore, he assumed his hunter couldn’t see him either. Swinging forward, he ran again. The beach was like a tunnel, whitecaps crashing on the right, the chalk cliff stretching on the left. But far ahead, at the tunnel’s end, he saw the pinpoint of a village. He raced harder.

  If he could steal a car…

  The cliff angled lower, sometimes an incline more than a precipice. When the bullet singed his hair, he dove in surprise to the rocks. The shot had come from the dark ahead of him, a silencer muffling both the sound and the muzzle flash, aided by the surf and the gloom.

  He silently cursed. His hunter had never climbed all the way down the niche back there. Realizing the trap Chris would prepare, the man had crawled back up to run along the cliff top. Knowing Chris would eventually hurry along the beach away from the cottage, he’d hoped to find another way down, get ahead of Chris, and intercept him.

  Trapped.

  I can’t go back. They must be searching that end of the beach now. They’ll split up, heading both ways along the top and bottom of the cliff. Eventually they’ll get this far.

  Outflanked.

  The sea and the cliff on either side. Ahead and behind him?

  Something moved. In front of him to the left against the cliff, its pale white Chris’s only advantage, providing a screen-like background against which a shadow scurried.

  Flat on the rocks, he swung his aim with the shadow, tracking it. The moment he shot, he rolled. A bullet struck the rocks beside him, so close even the surf couldn’t obscure its brittle crack as it ricocheted toward the sea.

  He rolled again, frantic to keep his gaze toward the cliff, and this time when a bullet whacked the rocks, splinters slicing his thigh—the sharp hot pain irrelevant—he saw his target clearly, a hunkered figure sprinting closer, dropping to one knee, aiming.

  Chris fired sooner, excited as the shadow lurched off balance. Despite the surf, he thought he heard a wail. He couldn’t stay down here, stalking and dodging till the others found him. Now, in the few seconds given to him, he had to take his chance, charging to his feet, sprinting across the stones. He saw the man—in black, his left arm wounded, fumbling for something among the rocks.

  Chris stopped and aimed. He pulled the trigger.

  Nothing happened. The Mauser held eight rounds.

  He’d shot them all.

  His stomach scalding, he rushed ahead, dropping the Mauser, drawing his knife from the sheath up the left sleeve of his jacket.

  The man saw him coming, gave up groping for his handgun, rose, and drew his own knife.

  21

  Amateurs hold a knife with the blade pointed down from the bottom of the fist, the thumb curled around the top of the handle. In that position, the knife must be raised to shoulder level, the blow delivered downward. That takes time. It’s awkward.

  Street gangs hold a knife with the blade protruding from the top of the fist, above the thumb. This position permits a variety of blows delivered from waist level, angled up or down or to each side. The common stance is similar to a fencer’s—one arm held sideways for balance while the other arm slashes and parries. The tactic is graceful, dancelike, dependent on rapid lunges, quick retreats, and speedy footwork. It’s effective against an amateur or a member of another street gang. Against a world-class killer, though, it’s laughable.

  Professionals hold a knife as street gangs do—the blade at the top of the fist—but there the similarity ends. Instead of dancing, they stand flatfooted, legs spread apart for balance, knees bent slightly, body crouched. They raise their free arm, bending it at the elbow, extending it across the chest, as if holding an invisible shield. The arm itself is the shield, however, the wrist turned inward to protect its major arteries. The other arm, holding the knife, doesn’t slash straight ahead or sideways. It jabs up on an angle, ignoring the opponent’s stomach and chest—a stomach wound might not be lethal; ribs protect the heart—aiming toward the eyes and the throat.

  Chris braced himself in this position, startled when his enemy did the same. He’d learned to fight this way at Andre Rothberg’s killer-instinct school in Israel. The method was unique. The only way his opponent could have learned it was by going to that school.

  The implication filled him with dismay. Had Landish too sent private warriors to Rothberg? Why? How else were Landish and Eliot connected? What else were they involved in?

  He jabbed with his knife. His enemy blocked the blow with his arm, sustaining a wound, ignoring it, jabbing toward Chris, who felt the blow pierce the back of his wrist. The sharp blade stung, blood spurting. If there’d been time, Chris would have wrapped his jacket around his defensive arm, but since he hadn’t been able to, he was fully prepared to accept extensive damage. A mangled arm meant nothing compared to survival.

  Again he jabbed. Again his opponent used his arm to block the thrust, taking another cut. The arm was crimson, its sliced tissue parting. In turn, Chris blocked a jab, the blade so keen he hardly felt the shredding impact on his arm.

  A stand-off, each man’s reflexes equal to the other’s. Flatfooted, crouched, Chris began to circle his enemy, cautious, slow, searching for weakness. His enemy pivoted to continue facing him. Chris hoped to force the man to stay in the middle of the circle. On the perimeter’s wide loop, Chris wouldn’t get dizzy as fast as the man who turned constantly at the center.

  But the man understood what Chris intended. Matching Chris’s tactic, he began his own wide circle, their orbits intersecting, almost a figure eight.

  Another stalemate, both men equally matched. When Chris had received his martial arts training, Ishiguro had said, “The way of the samurai is death. In a fifty-fifty life-or-death crisis, simply approach the crisis, prepared to die if necessary. There is nothing complicated about it. Merely brace yourself and proceed.”

  Chris did so now. Rejecting self-concern, he concentrated solely on the ritual. Jab and block, continue to circle. Once more. Then again. His arm throbbed, bloody, shredded.

  But his perceptions were undistracted, heightened, totally pure, his nervous system tingling. Jab, block, and circle. Years ago Lee, his karate instructor, had said, “There is nothing more exhilarating than to fight in the dark, facing death.” At killer-instinct school, Rothberg had said, “If both opponents have equal knowledge and skill, the younger man with the greater stamina shall be the victor.” Chris, who was thirty-six, judged his opponent to be twenty-nine.

  The cardinal rule in a knife fight is don’t allow your opponent to back you into a corner.

  Slowly, relentlessly, Chris’s hunter forced him against the cliff. Chris found himself wedged between ridges of chalk. He jabbed in a frenzy. His hunter ducked, then lunged beneath Chris’s arm.

  The blade plunged in to its hilt.

  Chris gagged. His larynx snapped. An artery burst. His mind went blank as he choked on his blood.

  22

  “You’re sure?” Eliot sounded hoarse as he clutched the phone in his greenhouse. “There’s no mistake? No chance of error?”

  “None. The kill was verified. I examined the body myself,” Landish said on the scrambler-protected long-distance line. “The man who helped destroy my roses—Remus—is dead.”

  Eliot’s chest felt cold. In desperation, he distracted himself by thinking of business. “You cleaned the area?”

  “Of course. We burned the cottage to destroy their fingerprints. We left befo
re the authorities arrived. They’ll never know who was there.”

  “And the body?” Eliot had trouble swallowing.

  “It’s been taken to my private plane. The pilot will truss it with weights and drop it at sea, too far out for the tide to bring it in.”

  “I see.” He frowned. “You seem to have thought of everything.”

  “What’s wrong? Your voice sounds strange.”

  “I didn’t realize I— Nothing.”

  “What?”

  “It’s not important.”

  “We’ve still got to deal with Romulus and the woman.”

  He struggled to pay attention. “I’ve already made arrangements. The moment I have word, I’ll call you.”

  Eliot’s arm felt numb as he set down the phone. He didn’t understand what was happening in him. For the past three weeks, since the Paradigm hit, his single purpose had been to find Saul and eliminate him before he could reveal who’d ordered the job. The president could never be allowed to learn why his friend had been killed. In the process, Chris had become a danger too, but now that problem was solved. With one of them dead and the other located, he’d almost achieved his goal, had almost protected himself. Then why, as he’d tried to tell Landish, did he feel remorse?

  He remembered the first time he’d taken Chris and Saul camping—Labor Day, 1952. The boys had been seven then, two years under his influence. He vividly recalled their innocent excited faces, their desperate need for affection, their eagerness to please him. More than any of his foster children, they’d been his favorites. Strangely, his throat aching, he felt gratified that Chris, though doomed to fail, had postponed his death so well. Yes, he admitted he had no right, but after all he’d taught the boy, and he couldn’t help feeling proud of him. Godspeed, he thought.

  Thirty years? Could so long a time have gone so fast? Did he mourn for Chris, he wondered… or for himself?

  Soon Saul would be dead as well. The KGB had been warned. If they acted quickly, they’d spring their trap. The crisis at last would be over, the secret safe. Only two more foster children would remain, Castor and Pollux, now guarding the house. The others had died in faithful service.