League of Night and Fog Page 4

  "That's what this is all about? You came all this way to hire me?"

  "We don't know what else to do."

  "No. it's impossible. I can't" the fee..."

  "You don't understand. You could offer a fortune, it wouldn't matter.

  It's too risky."

  "But under the circumstances... old friends..."

  "And lead the enemy to us, as you maybe have? I'm leaving."

  Pendleton stood. 'Tell them no."

  "I'm at the Captain Cook Lodge!

  Think about it! Change your mind!"

  "I won't" Pendleton started to walk away. "Listen to me!" Kessler said.

  "There's something else you should know!" Pendleton hesitated. "Cardinal

  Pavelic!" Kessler said.

  "What about him?"

  "He disappeared as well."

  14

  His chest aching, Pendleton rushed down a sandy slope toward Bondi

  Beach. It was half past five. His jogging suit clung to him. He'd switched taxis several times to elude possible surveillance. When the final taxi had been caught in a traffic jam near the beach, he'd paid the driver and run ahead. He had much to fear. Not just the risk that

  Kessler's arrival had posed. Or the disturbing information that the priest had disappeared. What truly bothered him was that his own father might vanish as the others had. Icicle had to be warned. But when he'd called from a phone booth near the gardens, he'd received no answer either at the dive shop or at the ocean-bluff home he shared with his father. He told himself that his assistant must have closed the shop early, though that had never happened before. He tried to convince himself that his father had not yet returned home from the beach, though his father never failed to get home in time to watch the five o'clock news. Closer to Bondi Beach, he'd phoned the shop again; this time his call had been interrupted by a recorded announcement telling him that line was out of order. His stomach felt as if it were crammed with jagged glass. He reached the bottom of the sandy slope and blinked through sweat-blurred vision toward a line of buildings that flanked the ocean. Normally, he'd have had no trouble identifying his dive shop among the quick-food, tank-top, and souvenir stores, but chaotic activity now obscured it. Police cars, a milling crowd, fire engines, swirling smoke. His pulse roaring behind his ears, he pushed through the crowd toward the charred ruin of his shop. Attendants wheeled a sheet-covered body toward an ambulance. Ducking past a policeman who shouted for him to stop, Pendleton yanked the sheet from the corpse's face. The ravaged features were a grotesque combination of what looked like melted wax and scorched hamburger. A policeman tried to pull him away, but Pendleton twisted angrily free, groping for (he corpse's left hand. Though the fingers had been seared together, it was clear that the corpse was not wearing a ring. Pendleton's assistant had not been married. But Pendleton's father, though a widower, always wore his wedding ring. He no longer resisted the hands that tugged him from the stretcher. "I thought it was my father."

  "You belong here?" a policeman asked. "I own the place. My father.

  Where's--?"

  "We found only one victim. If he's not your father--"

  Pendleton broke away, running through the crowd. He had to get to the house! Inhaling acrid smoke, he darted past a police car, veered between buildings, and charged up a sandy slope. The stench of scorched flesh cleared from his nostrils. The taste of copper spurted into his mouth. The home was on a bluff a quarter-mile away, a modernistic sprawl of glass and redwood. Wind-ravaged trees surrounded it. Only as he raced closer did he realize the danger he himself might be in. He didn't care. Bursting through the back door, he listened for voices from the television in the kitchen where his father always watched while drinking wine and preparing supper. The kitchen was silent, the stove turned off. He yelled for his father, received no answer, searched the house, but found no sign of him. He grabbed the phone book in his father's bedroom, quickly paged to the listing for the Captain Cook Lodge, and hurriedly dialed. "Put me through to Mr. Kessler's room."

  "One moment... I'm sorry, sir. Mr. Kessler checked out."

  "But he couldn't have! When?"

  "Let me see, sir. Four o'clock this afternoon." Shuddering, Pendleton set down the phone. His meeting with Kessler had been at four, so how could Kessler have checked out then?" Had Kessler been involved in his/ other disappearance? No. It didn't make sense. If Kessler were involved, he wouldn't have announced his presence; he wouldn't have asked for a meeting. Unless... The suspicion grew stronger. Kessler might have been a decoy, to separate father and son, to make it easier to grab Icicle. Of course, there was an alternate explanation, but

  Pendle- ton didn't feel reassured. Someone else could have checked

  Kessler out, the checkout permanent To spread the reign of terror. In that case, Pendleton thought, the next logical victim ought to be...

  Me. Professional habits took over. He withdrew his father's pistol from a drawer, made sure it was loaded, then went to his own room and grabbed another pistol. He searched the house again, this time more thoroughly, every alcove, not for his father now but for an intruder. The phone rang. He swung toward it, apprehensive; hoping it was his father, he picked it up. The caller broke the connection. His muscles became like concrete. Wrong number? An enemy trying to find out if I'm home? He had to assume the worst. Quickly he took off his jogging suit and put on warm woolen outdoor clothes. Dusk cast shadows. Creeping from the house, he reached a nearby bluff from which he could watch every approach to the building. Timer lights flicked on. The phone rang again; he could hear it faintly. After two rings, it stopped. Before he'd left the house, he'd turned on his answering machine, which now would instruct the caller to leave a message. Though desperate to know if the call was from his father, be couldn't risk going back to the house to listen to the tape. He'd anticipated this problem, however, and brought a cordless phone with him, leaving it turned off so that it wouldn't ring and reveal his position on this bluff. But now he switched the phone on. As if he'd picked up an extension within the house, he heard the end of the machine's request for a name and number.

  But as before, the caller simply hung up. A police car arrived, presumably because of the fire at the shop, though maybe this wasn't a real police car. An officer knocked on the door and tried to open it, but Pendleton had left it locked. The officer went around to the back door, knocked and tested it as well, then drove away. No one else approached the house.

  His father had disappeared! Just like all the other fathers. But unlike the sons of those fathers, Pendleton wasn't typically second-generation, wasn't an amateur. Icicle had trained him well. One day, the enemy will return, his father had warned. Indeed it had. And taken his father. So now it's my turn! Pendleton inwardly shouted.

  He'd refused the job the other sons had offered him because he had to avoid attracting attention to his father. But avoiding attention no longer mattered. I'll do it! he thought. But this isn't business!

  This is personal! If my father isn't back by tomorrow, after forty years you bastards will finally get what's coming to you! For Idclel For me!

  the return OF THE warrior

  North of Beersheeba. Israel. Hearing a sudden rattle of gunfire, Saul threw his shovel to the ground, grabbed his rifle, and scrambled from the irrigation ditch. He'd been working in this field since dawn, sweating beneath the blaze of the sun as he extended the drainage system he'd constructed when he first came to this settlement almost three years ago. His wife, Erika, had been pregnant then, and both of them had been anxious to escape the madness of the world, to find a sanctuary where the futility of their former profession seemed far away. Of course, they'd realized that the world would not let them ever escape, but the illusion of escape was what mattered. In this isolated village where even the conflict between Jews and Arabs was remote, they'd made a home for themselves and the baby--Christopher Eliot

  Bernstein-Grisman--who'd been born soon after. The villagers had commented on the boy's unusual name. "Part Chr
istian, part Jewish? And why the hyphen at the end?" Bernstein was Erika's last name, Grisman

  Saul's. Christopher had been his foster brother, an Irish-Catholic with whom he'd been raised in an orphanage in Philadelphia. Eliot had been their foster father, the sad-eyed gray-faced man who always wore a black suit with a rose in his lapel, who'd befriended Chris and Saul, been the only person to show them kindness, and recruited them for intelligence work, specifically to be assassins. In the end, their foster father had turned against them, Chris had been killed, and Saul had killed Eliot.

  The bitterness Saul still felt over what had happened--the grief, disgust, and regret--had been his main motive for wanting to escape from the world. But love for his foster brother and indeed, despite everything, for Eliot had prompted him to want to name the baby after the two most important men in his life. Erika, understanding, had agreed. Generous, wonderful Erika. As graceful as an Olympic gymnast.

  As beautiful as a fashion model--tall, trim, and elegant with high strong cheeks and long dark hair. As deadly as himself. The sound of gunfire scorched his stomach. Racing frantically toward the village, his first thought was that he had to protect his son. His second was that Erika could protect the boy as well as he could. His third was that, if anything happened to either of them, he'd never rest till their killers paid. Though he hadn't been in action since he'd come to Israel, old instincts revived. Some things apparently could never be forgotten.

  He leapt a stone wall and neared the stark outline of the village, making sure that dust hadn't clogged the firing mechanism or the barrel of his rifle. Though he always kept it loaded, he inspected the magazine just to be certain. Hearing screams, he chambered a round and dove behind a pile of rocks. The shots became louder, more frequent. He stared at outlying cinder-block buildings and saw strangers wearing Arab combat gear who fired from protected vantage points toward the homes at the center of the village.

  Women dragged children down alleys or into doorways. An old man lurched to the ground and rolled from repeated impacts as he tried to reach a young girl frozen with fright in the middle of the street The girl's head blew apart. An invader tossed a grenade through an open window.

  The blast spewed smoke and wreckage. A woman shrieked. Sons of bitches!

  Saul aimed from behind a pile of rocks. He counted six targets, but the volume of gunfire told him mat at least six other invaders were on the opposite side of the village. The shots increased, other rifles joining the fight But the sound of these weapons was different from the characteristic stutter of the Kalashnikovs that the invaders were using and mat he himself used, preferring a weapon whose report would blend with that of the type Israel's enemies favored. No, the rifles that now joined the fight had the distinctive crackle of M-16s, the available weapon mat Saul had taught the teenagers of the village to shoot An invader fell, blood pouring from his back. The five remaining terrorists on Saul's side of the village directed their aim toward a corrugated-metal shed from which the volley had come. The shed quivered, dozens of holes appearing along its side. The M-16 became silent But others, from different buildings, sought vengeance.

  Another invader spurted blood, falling. Saul eased his finger onto the trigger, smoothly absorbed the recoil, and disintegrated an invader's spine. He switched his aim, hit another target this time in the skull, and scrambled from the pile of rocks, firing as he ran. Another enemy fell. Caught in a crossfire, the remaining Arab glanced backward and forward, sprinted toward a low stone wall, and halted in astonishment as

  Saul's favorite student popped up, firing at point-blank range, blowing his enemy's face apart. A mist of blood hovered over the falling body.

  Using the cover of ditches and walls that he and his students had constructed to provide defensive positions, Saul charged toward the opposite side of the village. At the corners of his vision, he noticed his students spreading out and heard the crackle of other M-16s, the answering stutter of more Kalashnikovs. A second grenade exploded within the building already partially destroyed by the first. This time, as a wall erupted, Saul heard no shrieks. With doubled fury, he completed the semicircle that brought him to the other group of invaders. He emptied his magazine, reloaded, emptied the new magazine, grabbed a Kalashnikov that a retreating Arab had dropped, emptied it, picked up an M-16 that his second-favorite student had dropped when dying, emptied it, and outraced a terrorist whose hand-to-hand combat skills were no match for the killer-instinct training that Saul had received twenty years ago. Using the palm of one hand, then the other, lunging with all his force, he drove the enemy's rib cage into his heart and lungs. The gunfire stopped. Saul squinted toward the enemy at his feet. His students, excited by victory, gathered around him. "No! Don't form a crowd! Split up! Take cover! We don't know if we got them all!"

  He followed his own directive and dove toward a ditch. But he cursed himself for being so right. He told himself that his soul was doomed for being professional. He tried to remind himself that the good of the village came first. In a culture barely hanging on, individuals had to come second. Here, sacrifice was the norm. But he desperately wanted to know about Erika and his son. Forced to set a good example, he divided his students into groups and methodically scoured the village.

  Cautiously, he approached and checked every enemy corpse. Despising himself for being responsible, he supervised the search of intact buildings, verifying that no intruder hid within them. He organized assessment teams--ten villagers dead, fifteen wounded. "Where's the medic squad? Communications, did you radio an SOS to the base at

  Beersheeba?" Only when every emergency procedure had been followed, when every precaution had been taken, did he allow his humanity to assert itself. And knew again that he was doomed. His former life had intruded, controlling him. Responding to the rote with which he'd been trained, he'd behaved correctly. And from another perspective, completely, absolutely, the correctness was wrong. He'd allowed his public duties to overwhelm his private needs. The building that had received the most gunfire, that had erupted from two grenade blasts, was his own. As villagers and students surrounded him, in awe of his control, deeply respectful, he finally absolved himself of his public function. Tears streaking down his cheeks, he stalked toward the ruined building, the refuge of his wife and child. The right wall had toppled outward. On that side, the roof had collapsed, its angle bizarre. When the first grenade had exploded, he'd heard a woman shriek. Apprehensive, he peered through what had been the window but was now just a wide jagged hole. The curtains were blackened and tattered. To his left, he saw the remnants of a toy wooden truck he'd made for his son. Next to it lay shattered plates, fallen from a shelf that no longer existed. The ruins of a table almost covered them. He smelled burnt wood, scorched cloth, and melted plastic. The fallen roof obscured his view of the central part of the kitchen. He reached the door, which came off its hinges as he touched it, and swallowing sickly, stepped inside. He moved slowly, suddenly fearful of what he might step on, afraid of desecrating twisted limbs and--he hated to think about it-- dismembered portions of bodies. He shoved away a sheet of metal, lifted a wooden beam, stepped over what used to be a chair, but he saw no blood, and hope made his heart beat faster. He tugged at a section of roof, throwing it out the open doorway, stooping, hefting more rubble. Still he found no blood. He heaved against the section of roof that leaned down into the kitchen, budged it far enough to expose the only part of the room that he hadn't been able to see, and squinted at shadows. He saw no bodies. The well-disguised trapdoor broke two of his fingernails as he clawed at it. Fingers bloody, hefting the trapdoor against a wall, he stared into the mucky chamber below him. "Erika!" The pit absorbed his voice, giving off no echo. "Erika! It's Saul!" Too impatient to wait for an answer, he squirmed down, his shoes touching earth four feet below him.

  "It's over." He strained his eyes to penetrate the darkness. For a desperate instant, he suspected he was wrong, then suddenly realized he hadn't given the all-clear signal. An enemy might try to
mimic his voice. In this darkness, the trick might work. "Baby Rum and roses."

  "Lover, it's about time you said that You had me worried. I was trying to decide if I should shoot you." Erika's deep sensual voice came reassuringly from the rear of the chamber. "I hope you gave them hell."

  He couldn't help it; he laughed. "Jews aren't supposed to believe in helli"

  "But under certain conditions, it's a wonderful concept. For attacking this village, our home, I hope the bastards roast." In the dark, his son asked, "Daddy?"

  "It's me, son. You don't need to worry. But, Erika, watch your language in front of the boy, huh?"

  "You'll hear a lot worse if you don't tell me what took you so long." He tried to interpret her tone; his best guess was that she was joking.

  "The shooting stopped a while ago," she said. "What did you do, stop off for a drink?" Because Erika knew that Eliot had conditioned him to abstain from alcohol, Saul was sure now that she was joking, and slumping with relief, not only because she and the boy were safe but because she wasn't angry with him for being so inhumanly professional, he couldn't subdue his tears. Shoes scraped against dirt. Bodies squirmed along the earthen tunnel. "Saul?" Erika's voice was close and resonant, concerned, against his ear. "Daddy?"