League of Night and Fog Page 30

  "And the Church condoned this?"

  "At the time,"

  Drew said. "You have to remember the religious fervor that motivated the Third Crusade. The Pope gave a dispensation for any sins committed during what was supposed to be a divinely inspired war against the heathens."

  "Times change, though."

  "Yes, but the order founded by that assassin-priest didn't. Unknown to the Church, the Fraternity of the Stone continued to practice holy terror throughout the centuries--whenever they considered it necessary to defend the Faith."

  "And the ring?"

  "A way for them to identify each other. It's a replica of the ring King

  Richard wore during the Third Crusade. A ruby that signifies the blood of Christ."

  "But why would they want to stop me and Erika from finding her father?"

  Saul asked. "Are they involved in Erika's disappearance?"

  "Maybe Father Dusseault will tell us when we question him," Arlene said.

  "The reason we came to the gardens to meet him involved a disappearance as well. A cardinal named Krunoslav Pavelic. Father Dusseault is his assistant."

  "I've heard about the disappearance. But why are you looking for him?"

  'To pay off a debt,"

  Drew said. "A priest who belonged to the Fraternity tried to recruit me into the order. When I refused, he tried to kill me to protect the order's secrets. Arlene's brother shot him to save my life."

  "The Fraternity thought Drew had killed the priest," Arlene said. 'To protect my brother, to thank him for saving his life. Drew fled as if he were guilty. For the past year, he's been living in Egypt. Three weeks ago, a member of the Fraternity came to me in New York. He said the order had learned where Drew was hiding. He asked me to go to Drew and convince him to provide a service to the Fraternity. In exchange, the order would consider the debt paid in full for the death of the priest."

  "What was the service they wanted?"

  "Drew had to find the missing cardinal."

  "Why couldn't they handle the job themselves?"

  "That's what we wondered, too," Drew said. "A Fraternity priest we met in Cairo told us that someone in the order was trying to destroy it, that the key to finding whoever was responsible had something to do with

  Pavelic's disappearance. If Arlene and I wanted to live in peace, we had to find the cardinal and in so doing find whoever was trying to sabotage the Fraternity. I have a suspicion that Father Dusseault is involved in the betrayal, so some things are starting to come together.

  But what puzzles me is that two other people are looking for the cardinal. Two assassins, the sons of Nazi assassins."

  "The sons of Nazi assassins?"

  "Their code names are Icicle and Seth." Saul stood in distress. "A blond and a redhead?"

  "You know about them?"

  "When I was in the Agency, I heard rumors. About Seth in particular.

  He's supposed to be crazy. What the hell is going on?"

  "And is there a connection? Among what you want, we want, and they want?" Arlene asked. "Disappearances--my wife and her father," Saul said. "And priest-assassins."

  "A cardinal's disappearance," Drew said. "And the sons of Nazi assassins."

  20

  the darkness. Icicle sat on a damp concrete floor in the basement of a palace near the Sistine Chapel. He couldn't see the unconscious woman sprawled beside him, but he could feel her body heat, and, if he leaned close, hear her faint breathing. Of course, he couldn't see Seth on the other side of her either, but it bothered him that he could hear

  Seth--the faint brush of Seth's hand along her body. Icicle tried to hold his disgust in check. Yesterday afternoon, determined to force information from the missing cardinal's assistant. Father Dusseault, they'd entered the Vatican among a group of tourists. A guide had escorted the group through St. Peter's Basilica; Icicle and Seth had hung back, looking for a place where they could hide until nightfall.

  The door to this murky basement had been unlocked. At midnight, they'd left the palace basement and walked toward Father Dusseault's apartment.

  Experts at becoming one with the night, they were never noticed. Their plan was to enter the priest's apartment while he slept, to subdue him, and to question him throughout the night. When they reached the corner of the street that ran along the entrance to the priest's apartment building, they paused to study the approach before moving in. But just as Seth stepped forward. Icicle tugged him back behind cover and pointed toward an alcove a third of the way down the street, on the opposite side. That recess, deep and dark, had been one of Icicle's intended hiding places. But someone else had the same idea.

  A shadow moved within the alcove. A man leaned forward, gazed up toward a window of the apartment building across from him, then stepped back into the dark. He showed himself for only a moment, but it was enough for Icicle to see that the man did not wear the black suit of a priest--he was an outsider, the same as Icicle and Seth. They watched the man watch the building. In a while, the man peered down the street, then moved back in. He didn't do so conspicuously. He was obviously experienced. The way he peered down the street suggested that he wasn't alone, that he was waiting to give or receive a signal.

  A priest stepped out of the apartment building, glanced both ways along the street and headed to his left, away from Icicle and Seth, away from the man who watched the building. The man remained in place, but farther down the street, after the priest had passed a doorway, a woman eased into view and followed. Icicle's muscles tightened. A man and a woman?

  He and Seth had crossed paths with a man and a woman before. During the abduction of Medici. But the man shifted out to follow the priest as well, and when Icicle got a good look at him, he decided that this couple was definitely not the couple he'd seen before. The man was more husky, the woman had longer hair. Despite the differences, the fact that again a man and woman were staking out sites where Icicle and Seth were engaged in a mission made Icicle nervous. Were they, too, after Father

  Dusseault? Indeed, was the priest he'd just seen Father Dusseault? He'd never met the man or seen a photograph of him. The best thing to do.

  Icicle decided, was to follow. Their wary pursuit led them deep within the Vatican gardens where, staying carefully back from the man and woman, they had a distant view of a Spanish-galleon fountain in a clearing. Moonlight revealed a priest standing before the fountain.

  Icicle sank to his stomach. With Seth beside him, he crawled nearer, wanting a better view of the priest, anxious to see if he was the same priest who'd left the apartment building. No. He wasn't. But with a shock. Icicle realized that this was the same man he'd seen in the alley during Medici's abduction. Baffled, he glanced at Seth, who had also recognized the man and shook his head in confusion. A second priest-- the one who'd left the apartment building, whom Icicle suspected was Father Dusseault--stepped into the clearing. They spoke to one another. Surprisingly, Father Dusseault lunged with a knife.

  Just as amazingly, the other priest defended himself superbly. Though

  Father Dusseault was good, the other priest was better, taking the advantage, striking Father Dusseault repeatedly, knocking him senseless to the ground. Icicle watched in awe. He'd never heard of priests who handled themselves like warriors. A nun rushed into the clearing--the same woman Icicle had seen the other night in the alley with this man.

  Icicle wanted more desperately to know what was going on. He and Seth could have used their silenced handguns to disable them and make them explain. But he was aware that he and Seth weren't alone out here. The other couple, the strangers, were hidden somewhere, watching. The man they'd followed stepped into the clearing, his hands raised. Icicle was tempted to risk crawling even closer in the hopes of hearing what they said to one another. But Seth distracted him. The assassin pulled a flat leather case from a jacket pocket, removed a hypodermic, and crawled not forward but toward the right, as if he meant to circle the clearing. Puzzled, Icicle went after him,
and as Seth stopped, scanned dark bushes, and crawled farther. Icicle realized that Seth was stalking the woman they'd noticed outside the apartment building. She hadn't yet shown herself in the gardens; she must have decided to wait to see what would happen in the clearing. Her shadow rose behind a tree twenty yards to Icicle's left. From the clearing, she could not have been seen, but from Icicle's vantage point behind her, she was distinct.

  Seth inched toward her, poised himself, and lunged to sweep a hand across her mouth at the same time that he plunged the needle into her arm. She struggled for less than five seconds. Seth eased her silently backward, away from file clearing. Icicle joined him, reaching to help him carry her, but Seth shoved his arm away. The red-haired man's eyes gleamed fiercely, signaling she's mine. Icicle shuddered, realizing that Seth was sicker than he'd imagined. Seth shuddered also, with sexual pleasure, lifting the woman so her stomach was over his shoulder, her breasts pressed against his back. They returned to this dark palace basement With me unconscious woman next to him and Seth on the other side of her. Icicle struggled to contain his revulsion, hearing Seth's hand brush along her body. The night had been long. He pressed a button on his digital watch: 7:23. He imagined the daylight outside. He didn't know how he'd be able to bear sitting in this dark musty room, waiting for nine o'clock, when tourists would be allowed to enter the

  Vatican and they could leave, pretending the woman had suddenly fainted.

  21

  Too much wine, too little sleep," Icicle said in Italian to a solicitous desk clerk when he and Seth reached their hotel. They stood with the woman held up between them while they waited for the elevator doors to open. "Jet lag and all night partying don't go together, I'm sorry to say." He tipped the clerk in appreciation for his concern. "Tonight, she'll probably want to go dancing." The clerk smiled knowingly and told them if they needed anything... "We'll phone the front desk and ask specifically for you," Icicle said. The elevator opened. They stepped inside and went up to their room. While Icicle locked the door, Seth carried the woman to the bed. "Is she all right?"

  Seth checked her eyes. "She's coming around. We'll soon be able to question her." He took off her shoes and massaged her feet. Icicle tasted bile. It took all his effort to keep from telling Seth to stop touching her. "Did you recognize the man and woman dressed as a priest and nun?"

  "From when we grabbed Medici. They wore street clothes then.

  It makes me wonder if tonight they were in disguise. And now another man and woman are involved. The one couple didn't seem to know the other."

  Seth brooded. "What was their interest in Father Dusseault? Did each couple have a different motive or the same? Are their motives ours?"

  'To learn what the priest knows about the disappearance of our fathers?"

  Sickened, Icicle averted his gaze from where Seth now touched the woman.

  "No. They're not part of our group. They don't have a reason to look for our fathers."

  "But they might have a reason to look for the missing cardinal," Seth said. To Icicle's relief, he took his hands away from the woman. "And there might be a connection between this woman and our missing fathers.

  She's almost certainly Jewish"

  "That could be coincidental."

  "Possibly," Seth said, "but not probably."

  "We'll soon find out." Seth undid her belt, opened the button on the waist of her slacks, and tugged her zipper down, revealing a glimpse of peach-colored panties.

  Icicle couldn't restrain his disgust any longer. "No." Seth glanced at him, frowning. His voice was hard. "I beg your pardon?"

  "What you've got in mind to do to her before she wakes up, forget it"

  "Do to her?" Seth smiled coldly. "My indignant friend, what exactly do you think I intend to do to her?"

  "I'm telling you to forget it."

  "What I intend to do is remove her slacks--to make her more comfortable during the interrogation. As well, her bodily functions are overdue.

  She'll need to use the bathroom." Seth pulled off the woman's slacks, exposing her legs. The woman murmured, drawing her knees toward her stomach as if she were cold. "Come along now." Seth raised her to a sitting position, put her arm around his neck, and helped her to stand.

  With a challenging look toward Icicle, he started into the bathroom with her.

  "I'll go with you," Icicle said. "No need. I can manage her myself."

  "The two of us can manage her better." Seth squinted. "One moment you're afraid I'll assault her--the next you want to watch her go to the bathroom. Your values are confused." Refusing to be taunted. Icicle took the woman's other arm and escorted her and Seth into the bathroom.

  Embarrassed, he watched Seth take off her panties and sit her on the toilet. Her head flopped one way, then the other. "Try to relieve yourself," Seth said. "We don't want any accidents, do we?"

  Icicle almost slapped Seth's hand away when he pressed her abdomen. No!

  My father! I have to find my father! Nothing must interfere! I can deal with Seth later, but right now...! To Icicle's relief, the woman urinated. They carried her back to the bed. Again she drew her knees towards her stomach. "What are you doing?" Seth barked at Icicle.

  "Putting her underwear back on."

  "She doesn't need them!" They stared at each other. The room compacted with tension.

  Icicle reached for a corner of the bedspread, about to drape it over her. "No," Seth's eyes blazed in warning. "The drug works better if she's chilly." Icicle realized they were at the danger point. If he didn't back off, in all probability there'd be a fight. His father had to take priority. "Whatever you say."

  "That's exactly correct. Whatever I say. I wouldn't want our friendship to be strained." Seth's tone was mocking. "Get on with it. Question her." While you concentrate on her nakedness. Icicle thought angrily.

  He stepped to the bureau, opened a drawer, and removed a vial of

  Sodium-Amytal powder. In a larger vial, he mixed five hundred milligrams of the powder with twenty milliliters of distilled water. He filled a hypodermic.

  22

  Can you hear me?" The woman didn't answer. Icicle leaned close and repeated the question. The woman nodded, her voice weak. "Hear you..."

  "Good. You mustn't worry. You're safe. You have nothing to fear.

  You're with friends."

  "Friends..."

  "That's right. Now tell me your name."

  "Erika..."

  "And your last name?"

  "Bernsteingrisman." The last name left no doubt. Icicle thought. The woman was Jewish, as Seth had suspected. Icicle's tone was gentle. "Why did you follow Father Dusseault to the Vatican gardens?"

  "Three men tried to kill us..." The non sequitur made Icicle close his eyes in frustration. But he persisted with his gentle tone. "You can tell us about the three men later, Erika. What about Father Dusseault?"

  Another non sequitur

  "My father disappeared." The problem. Icicle decided, was whether to keep her talking about Father Dusseault or whether to follow her random associations. What Erika knew might be so complicated that he'd fail to learn vital information if he kept his questions within too narrow a range. Certainly her statement about her father, though seemingly irrelevant, was disturbing enough to merit inquiry. "Disappeared? When?"

  "Two weeks ago."

  "Where?"

  "Vienna."

  "Why did he disappear?"

  "Don't know..." Even in a stupor, the woman became so agitated that

  Icicle chose nonthreatening questions--to make her feel at ease, to accustom her to talking freely. 'Tell us about your father." She didn't answer. Icicle made his questions more specific. "How old is he?"

  "Seventy..."

  "Does he still have a job?"

  "Retired..."

  "From what?" Already Icicle felt bored by the unimportant questions with which he attempted to calm her. "How did he earn a living?"

  "Mossad..." The unexpected response cramped Icicle's hear
t. He pivoted towards Seth, who jerked his surprised gaze up from the woman's legs.

  Icicle turned again to the woman. "Your father was once an operative for the Mossad?"

  "Yes."

  "Do you work for the Mossad?"

  "No." The pressure around Icicle's heart eased. "Resigned..."

  "Why?"

  "Wanted to be with my husband..."

  "The man who was with you in the Vatican gardens? Does he work for the

  Mossad?"

  "No."

  "Did he ever?"

  "No."