The Brotherhood of the Rose Read online

  I might outlive all my sons, he thought, sadly wishing Saul could be reprieved.

  But that was impossible.

  He suddenly felt uneasy. What if Saul escaped? Unthinkable.

  But what if he did? He’d learn Chris was dead.

  And come for me.

  He’d never give up.

  I truly think nothing could stop him.

  Book Four

  RETRIBUTION

  FURIES

  1

  Saul stared through the windshield toward a misty streetlight, his rented Citroën parked in the middle of a line of cars along a residential block. He sat close to Erika, his arm around her, apparently just another couple in the City of Lovers. But he didn’t allow himself to enjoy being near her. He couldn’t become distracted. Too much depended on this mission.

  “If Landish told the truth, we’ll soon have some answers,” Erika said.

  Her Mossad informants had learned that Victor Petrovich Kochubey would be at the Soviet embassy tonight, performing Tchaikovsky’s “Violin Concerto” at a reception in honor of the new Franco-Soviet alliance. “But you can’t grab him there,” the informants had said. “Various intelligence networks have set up surveillance cameras around the clock to watch all the entrances. If anyone looks suspicious, the police’ll arrest them. No one’s supposed to embarrass relations with the Soviets. France and Russia are getting along too well these days. Your best bet’s to grab him later when he returns to his apartment on the Rue de la Paix.”

  “But won’t he be guarded?” Saul had asked.

  “A violinist? Why would he need protection?”

  At eight minutes after one, Kochubey drove past in his Peugeot, its headlights flashing. Erika got out and walked along the street. Kochubey—in his fifties, tall, with sensitive but heavy features—locked his car, carefully holding his violin case. He wore a tuxedo. Erika approached him as he reached the stoop to his apartment house. The street was deserted.

  He spoke first. “This late at night, a lady shouldn’t be out alone. Unless, of course, you have a proposition?”

  “Victor, shut up. In my purse, I’ve a very large pistol aimed at your crotch. Please go to the curb and wait for a car to pull up.”

  He stared but did so. Saul stopped the car, climbing from the driver’s seat into the back where he searched Kochubey and took the violin case.

  “Gently! It’s a Stradivari!”

  “It’ll be safe.”

  “As long as you cooperate.” Erika drove.

  “Cooperate?” Kochubey’s mouth opened and shut nervously. “How? I don’t even know what you want!”

  “The messages.”

  “What?”

  “The ones you gave to Landish.”

  “You remember,” Erika said. “To pass to Eliot.”

  “Are the two of you insane? What are you talking about?”

  Saul shook his head, rolled down his window, and balanced the violin case on the rim.

  “I said be careful!”

  “The messages. What was in them?” Saul tilted the case out the window.

  “A Stradivari can’t be repaired!”

  “Then buy another one.”

  “Are you crazy? Where would I find—?”

  Saul took his hands from the case. It started falling.

  Kochubey wailed and grabbed for it.

  Saul pushed him away and snatched back the case. “The messages.”

  “I never knew what was in them! I was a courier, nothing more! You think I’d risk execution by breaking the seal?”

  “Who gave them to you?” Saul held the case out the window.

  “A KGB bureau chief!”

  “Who?”

  “Alexei Golitsin! Please!” Kochubey’s hands trembled to grab the case.

  “I don’t believe you. Golitsin was shot for treason in ’73.”

  “That’s when he gave me the messages!”

  “In ’73?”

  Saul frowned. Hardy had said Eliot disappeared in ’54, then again in ’73. What did a KGB officer shot for treason have to do with Eliot’s disappearance? What had happened in ’73?

  “It’s the truth!” Kochubey said.

  “Perhaps.”

  “The Stradivari! Please!”

  Saul balanced it out the window. Headlights flashed by. He thought about it, shrugging. “This is pointless. If I dropped the case, what reason would you have to change your story? With Amytal, we’ll soon learn what you really know.” He set the case on the floor.

  “Thank God.”

  “Thank me.”

  2

  They drove from Paris.

  “Who do you work for?”

  “No one.”

  “Where are you taking me?”

  “Vonnas.”

  “Ah.”

  Kochubey’s sudden mood shift bothered Saul. “You know it?”

  The musician nodded, strangely pleased by the thought of visiting the small town fifty kilometers north of Lyon. “Perhaps you’ll allow me the pleasure of eating at Le Cheval Blanc.”

  “It’s not on the expense account.”

  Kochubey abruptly scowled. “You Americans are skinflints. Truth serum leaves such a bad aftertaste—like liver without butter or bacon. Very well.” He squinted angrily. “We’ve a good three hours of driving ahead of us. Since you won’t discuss your credentials, I’ll talk about mine.”

  Saul groaned, sensing what was coming, and wished he could sedate him, but that would interfere with the Amytal.

  Kochubey leaned back, smiling perversely, his large head framed by long, prematurely white hair in the style of composers and musicians from the previous century. He loosened his tie and rested his hands on the cummerbund of his tuxedo. “I don’t suppose you attended my performance.”

  “We weren’t on the guest list, I’m afraid.”

  “A pity. You’d have been given a lesson in Soviet idealism. You see, Tchaikovsky was like Lenin, and the similarity shows itself in the violin concerto, for the great composer had a theme in mind, as did Lenin. To arrive at his goal, he wove in transitional phrases, just as we in the Soviet Union have an ideal, and we move toward it, not in constant revolution, but in transitional phrases due to adjustments we’ve had to make because of the war and our economy. I won’t say we’ve reached our finale, but we’ve come a long way in sixty-five years, have we not?”

  “I’ll admit you’re well organized.”

  “An understatement. But I was talking about the great composer. The concerto opens simply, and you think the obvious strains contain the message. But underneath, other strains lie hidden, half-heard, half-guessed, as if the master were saying, ‘I’ve a secret to tell you—but not a word to others.’ It’s like a whispered code to a member of our espionage network, or a sign of brotherhood among the people.”

  Saul grew tired quickly, fighting off sleep as Kochubey went on and Erika raced along the Autoroute du Sud toward Lyon. Forty minutes before reaching the city, she turned on the gravel access road that would in the next year become the Geneva-Macon spur of the expressway. Along the route, heavy road equipment had been parked for the night. The sharp crack of gravel pelting the underside of the car made Saul apprehensive.

  He peered past the Citroën’s headlights toward a heavy tanker truck that rumbled in his direction. Frowning, he watched it suddenly veer.

  It blocked the road.

  Vans streaked from behind the heavy equipment, flanking the Citroën. Arc lights blazed from the dark.

  “My eyes!” Hand up to shield them, Erika swerved to miss the truck, stamping the brakes. The Citroën skidded, jolting against a bulldozer, throwing her forward. Her head whacked the steering wheel, spewing blood.

  The impact knocked Saul down. Scrambling up from the floor, he stared at her, moaning, unconscious. He couldn’t carry her and get away, he realized. His frantic hope was to force the occupants of the vans to chase him, lose them, and double back for her. He grabbed at Kochubey’s lapel a
s he opened the door, but the fabric tore away.

  On his own, he leapt out, dodged the bulldozer, and raced to avoid the spotlights. Doors banged over on the vans. He heard a car skidding to a stop on the road. Men shouted. Footsteps crunched on the gravel. The spotlights tracked him, throwing his urgent shadow across the muddy field. He stumbled in a rut, flailing his arms for balance, charging forward, desperate to reach the murky trees beyond the spotlights. Metal scraped. He tensed his shoulders, anticipating the wallop of a high-powered bullet, feeling a sting instead. In his neck: a dart. A second dart stung his hip. He flinched from an excruciating jolt. His vision failed. He fell to the mud, his knees jerking up to his chest, his arms twisting inward, convulsing. And that was all.

  3

  When he wakened, he knew enough to keep his eyes shut and listen. Groggy, he lay on a wooden floor. The pain in his left forearm must have been a puncture wound from a hypodermic. With enough Brevital in him, he could have been out for hours, only to be wakened by Kochubey’s urgent shouts to someone else in the room. The handcuffs at his wrists behind his back were cold, not yet warmed by his body. Whoever was in the room must have recently brought him here and cuffed him.

  Kochubey kept shouting. “What are they after? Why haven’t you protected me better? You obviously knew I was in danger!”

  Saul heard a different voice, deep and smooth. “Comrade, if you play a scale with your left hand and a contradictory scale with your right?”

  “It’s impossible to tell if the mode is major or minor! Any schoolboy—but what’s that got to do with—?”

  “The left and right hands had to be incompatible. If you’d known my intention, you wouldn’t have been convincing to Romulus, whose faulty interpretation was essential to the trap. Now please stop shouting, or perhaps you’d enjoy practicing your music in the port of Hodéida in Yemen.”

  Saul peered through barely open lids in time to see Kochubey’s face go pale.

  “Relax, Victor,” the voice said. “I’ll supply you with a nice warm overcoat and send you on the high-speed train back to Paris.”

  While the man addressed Kochubey, Saul was able to recognize the ferretlike face between a black leather Tyrol hat and the high collar of a green loden coat. Boris Zlatogor Orlik, GRU colonel and Paris section chief for the KGB. Orlik prided himself on never having directly killed or stolen secrets or passed disinformation. Instead he was a theorist, a methodical planner whose exploits rivaled those of Richard Sorge, the master Soviet operative against Japan in the Second World War. It was Orlik who’d proven that GRU Lieutenant Colonel Yuri Popov was a spy for the CIA from ’52 to ’58, and that GRU Colonel Oleg Penkovsky was a spy for MI-6 in ’62.

  As Kochubey left, Saul didn’t close his eyes fast enough.

  “Ah, Romulus, I see you’re awake. Forgive me for raising my voice, but sometimes with men like Kochubey it’s necessary.”

  Saul didn’t bother pretending he was still asleep. Squirming to sit up, he studied the room—a den with paneled walls, rustic paintings, a fireplace. “Where am I?”

  “Near Lyon. A modest château I sometimes use for interrogation.”

  “Where’s Erika?”

  “Down the hall. But you needn’t worry. A doctor’s with her. She’s fine, though she’s got a nasty headache.”

  So did Saul. He slumped against a chair. His thoughts spun. “How did you find us?”

  “The international language.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Music. Besides the Stradivari, the violin case contained a microphone and a homing device.”

  Saul groaned in disgust. “Kochubey was so convincing I didn’t think to check it.”

  “But you almost dropped it out a window. I’ll admit you had me nervous for a moment.”

  “That still doesn’t answer my question. How’d you know we’d grab Kochubey?”

  “Your agency told us.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “The information was specific. Since it was our man Remus killed in Bangkok, your people offered us the courtesy of letting us eliminate you.”

  “Eliot.” Saul sounded as if he cursed.

  “So it seemed to me as well.”

  “But how did—?”

  “We’ll get to that. First let me set the stage.” Orlik gestured toward a window. “Dawn is breaking. If you think of escape, that’s natural. But listen to what you’re up against. You’re on the edge of the Pilat Regional Park. There’s a town to the south called Véranne, another to the north called Pellusin. No doubt you anticipate we have dogs, so you’d take to the wooded high ground—toward Véranne. But there you’d have to avoid the village. By night, you’d be stuck in the soft earth of the graveyard or the open fields. Wherever, we’d catch up with you. Our darts would give you another headache, and we’d have to start all over. Granted, a confrontation in a graveyard would be romantic. But the reality is it’s dawn and we need to talk. I’m sorry I can’t offer you a Baby Ruth.”

  Saul narrowed his eyes.

  “You’re well informed.”

  “Depend on it. Would you like some breakfast? Please don’t think I’ve laced the croissants or coffee with anything. It never works properly.”

  Despite himself, Saul laughed.

  “Good, let’s be friendly.” Orlik removed the handcuffs.

  Puzzled, Saul rubbed his wrists, waiting till Orlik poured and drank the coffee. At last he had to ask. “Then you know about Eliot’s orphans?”

  “I’m sure it’s occurred to you the Latin word for patriotism comes from the same root as father. Pater. Patriae amor. You saw your father as an extension of your country. Trained to defend it, you did everything he told you, unaware you were loyal to him—but not your government. His scheme was so brilliant the others adopted it.”

  Saul stopped drinking. “Others?”

  Orlik studied him. “You must have known. Why else would you pick up Landish?”

  “Others?”

  Orlik frowned. “You really don’t—? I assumed you’d reached the same conclusion I had. 1938.”

  “Make sense. Eliot wasn’t even in government then. Fifty-four is when he disappeared.”

  “And again in seventy-three.”

  “But that time one of your men, Golitsin—”

  “Not mine, but he did work for the KGB.”

  “—was involved, except your people shot him for treason.”

  “Then you have made progress.”

  “For Christ’s sake!”

  “Please, you’ll have to be patient. I thought you could tell me some things. I never guessed I’d be telling you.”

  “Then tell me, dammit! What’s going on?”

  “Nineteen thirty-eight. What does that mean to you?”

  “It could mean Hitler and Munich… or the Abelard sanction.”

  “Good. Then that’s where we’ll begin.”

  4

  When Hitler met with Chamberlain and Daladier in Munich, a different meeting took place that same day in Berlin. Hitler—with Mussolini next to him—demanded that England and France renege on agreements they’d made with Czechoslovakia, Austria, and Poland to protect those countries against invasion. Hitler’s intentions were obvious, but England and France did nothing to stop him, hoping he’d be satisfied if he expanded Germany’s territory into those adjacent countries. The men at the other meeting, the one in Berlin, knew better, however. After all, they directed espionage for Germany, England, France, the Soviet Union, and the United States, and they understood that Hitler’s invasion of those other countries wouldn’t be the end of his need for power but only the start. A war was coming, so vast and destructive it would dwarf all others before it. Though heads of state chose to ignore the implications, the directors of intelligence could not, for they realized the role they would play in the coming war, and they had to make preparations. Since the First World War, their community had dwindled. Conditions had changed. Traditions had been forgotten. With a new conflict
about to begin, it was time to reorganize, to agree on principles and establish rules, one of which was the Abelard sanction.

  “I’ve always admired the imagination of the men who created it,” Orlik said. “Such a brilliant refinement, so clever a variation. But there were other consequences of that meeting in Berlin, the most important of which was the recognition of the bond shared by those men. Because of their profession, they realized they formed a group larger than politics, transcending differences between their nations. One year countries might be friends, the next year enemies, the year after friends again. Such instability was senseless, based on the whim of politicians. It allowed the intelligence community to practice its skills, to enjoy the risks, but the men in Berlin understood that at heart they were closer to each other than to their governments. As well, they suspected the risks were becoming too huge. While they realized the need for rules, the leaders of their governments seemed to recognize no rules at all. How could the world survive if politicians refused to agree on limits? Someone had to act responsibly. Of course, before the war, they couldn’t have predicted how serious this question would become. But even before atomic weapons, the issue of responsibility aggravated the intelligence community. Hitler’s excesses became intolerable. We know some German intelligence officers collaborated with the English. These same German operatives attempted to assassinate Hitler. The bomb failed to kill him, and of course they were executed.”

  “You’re suggesting a pattern?”

  “What I’ve told you is fact. What follow are my suppositions. The men at the Abelard meeting agreed unofficially to act as—what shall we call them?—watchdogs on their governments, to see that international rivalry remained within acceptable bounds. A certain amount of conflict was necessary, of course, for the intelligence community to justify itself, but beyond a certain point, every nation stood an equal chance of losing, so the plan was set in motion. Stalin, remember, had begun his purges. My countryman, Vladimir Lazensokov, was executed a few months after he came back from the Abelard meeting. Did Stalin learn about that meeting and what Lazensokov had agreed to? Who can say? But his execution, in tandem with Hitler’s reprisals for his attempted assassination, made the watchdogs in the intelligence community much more circumspect. They delegated their responsibility to carefully chosen protégés. Tex Auton, America’s representative at that meeting, chose his adopted son, Eliot, for example. Percival Landish chose his own son. The French and German representatives did the same. Lazensokov, I believe, foresaw his execution and made arrangements beforehand.”