Carrion Comfort (71 page)

“Which I had nothing to do with,” said Harod. “Which you managed to extricate yourself from,” said Sutter. “Dear God, what a mess. Five FBI agents and six of Colben’s special people dead. A dozen local blacks killed. A local minister murdered. Fires, destruction of private and public property . . .”

“The media still buys the gang warfare story,” said Harod. “The FBI was supposed to be there because of the black militant group of terrorists . . .”

“Yes, and the repercussions are reaching all the way to the mayor’s office and beyond . . . to Washington even. Did you know that Richard Haines is now working privately— and discreetly— for Brother C.?”

“Who gives a shit?” said Harod. “Precisely.” Jimmy Wayne Sutter smiled. “But you see why your addition to the Steering Committee comes at a . . . sensitive time.”

“You’re sure they want to use me to get to Willi,” said Harod. “Absolutely,” said Sutter. “And then they’ll dump me?”

“Literally,” said Sutter. “Why?” asked Harod. “Why would they take a murderous old psychopath like Willi?”

“There’s an old desert saying that was never included in Scripture but was old enough to have been recorded in the Old Testament,” said Sutter.

“What’s that?”

“ ‘It’s better to have a camel inside the tent pissing out than outside pissing in,’ ” intoned Sutter.

“Thank you, Reverend,” said Harod. “You’re welcome, Anthony.” Sutter glanced at his watch. “You’d better hurry if we’re going to get you to Atlanta in time for your flight.”

Harod sobered up quickly. “Do you know why Barent called this meeting for Saturday?”

Sutter made a vague gesture. “I presume Brother C. called it because of this Monday’s events.”

“Reagan’s shooting . . .”

“Yes,” said Sutter, “but did you know who was with the president . . . three steps behind him . . . when the shots rang out?”

Harod raised his eyebrows. “Yes, Brother C. himself,” said Sutter. “I imagine we will have lots to talk about.”

“Jesus” said Harod.

Jimmy Wayne Sutter scowled. “You will
not
take the name of the Lord God in vain in this room,” he snapped. “Nor would I advise that you do it in the presence of Brother C.”

Harod walked to the door, paused. “One thing, Jimmy, why do you call Barent ‘Brother C.’?”

“Because C. Arnold does not care for it when I call him by his Christian name,” said Sutter.

Harod looked amazed. “You
know
it?”

“Of course,” said Sutter. “I have known Brother C. since the nineteen thirties when both of us were little more than children.”

“What is it?”

“C. Arnold’s Christian name is Christian,” said Sutter with a smile. “Huh?”

“Christian,” repeated Sutter. “Christian Arnold Barent. His daddy believed even if Brother C. does not.”

“Well I’ll be goddamned,” said Harod and hurried out of the room before Sutter could say a word.

N
atalie Preston landed at the David Ben-Groin Airport near Old on the El Al flight from Vienna at 10:30
A.M.
local time. Israeli Customs was calm and efficient if not overly courteous. “Welcome back to Israel, Miss Haps haw,” said the man behind the counter as he checked her two bags. It was her third entry into the country on the false passport and her heart still pounded as she waited. It was only slightly reassuring that the Mossad, Israel’s own intelligence agency, had forged the documents in the first place.

Once through Customs she took the El Al bus to Tel Aviv and walked from the bus station on Jeff Road to the ITS/Avis outlet on Hamster Street. She paid the weekly rate and left a four-hundred-dollar deposit for a green 1975 Opal with brakes that pulled to the left every time she stopped.

It was early afternoon by the time Natalie left the ugly suburbs of Tel Aviv and drove north along the coast on the Haifa Road. It was a sunny day, the temperature was in the high 50s, and Natalie pulled on her sunglasses as midday glare reflected off the highway and the Mediterranean. About twenty miles from Tel Aviv she passed through Netanyahu, a cluttered little resort town set on cliffs above the beach. Some miles beyond that she saw the sign for Or Alive and left the four-lane highway for a narrower asphalt road that wound through sand dunes toward the beach. She caught a glimpse of the Roman aqueduct and the massive ramparts of the Crusader City, and then she was following the old coastal road past the Dan Caesarea Hotel with its eighteen-hole golf course secured behind a perimeter of high fence and concertina barbed wire.

She turned east onto a gravel road and followed a sign for Kibbutz Meagan Michael until another, narrower lane intersected it. The Opal bounced its way a quarter of a mile uphill through stands of carob trees, around thick clusters of pistachio bushes, and past an occasional pine tree before stopping at a padlocked gate. Natalie got out of the car, stretched her legs, and waved at the white house on the hilltop.

Saul Laski came down the lane to let her in. He had lost weight and shaved his beard. His thin legs protruding from baggy khaki shorts and his narrow chest under a white T-shirt should have made him look like a parody of a prisoner from
The Bridge on the River Kwan
, but the effect was more of deeply tanned skin over lean muscle. His bald spot was more pronounced because of sunburn, but the rest of his hair had bleached grayer and grown longer, curling down over his ears and the back of his neck. He had traded his broken horn-rimmed glasses for a pair of silver aviator-style glasses that darkened in the bright sun. The scar on his left arm was still a raw red.

He unlocked the gate and they hugged each other briefly. “Did it go well?” he asked. “Very well,” said Natalie. “Simon Wiesenthal says to say hello.”

“He is in good health?”

“Very good health for a man his age.”

“And was he able to direct you to the right sources?”

“Better than that,” said Natalie, “he did the searching himself. What he didn’t have in that strange little office of his, he had his researchers bring from the various Vienna libraries and registries and such.”

“Excellent,” said Saul. “And the other things?”

Natalie gestured toward her large suitcase in the backseat. “Filled with photocopies. It’s terrible stuff, Saul. Are you still going to Yard Vase twice a week?”

“No,” said Saul. “There is a place not far from here, Loamed HaGeta’ot, built by Poles.”

“And it’s like Yad Vashem?”

“On a smaller scale,” said Saul. “It will suffice if I have the names and case histories. Come drive through, and I will lock the gate and ride up with you.”

There was a very large white house on the summit of the hill. Natalie followed the road past it, down the south side of the hill, to where a small whitewashed bungalow sat at the edge of an orange grove. The view was incredible. To the west, beyond the groves and cultivated fields, lay sand dunes and ruins and the serried breakers of the blue Mediterranean. To the south, shimmering in the heat daze of distance, rose the forested cliffs of Netanya. East lay a series of hills and the orange-scented Sharon Valley. North, beyond Templars’ castles, fortresses old in Solomon’s time, and the green ridge of Mount Carmel, lay Haifa with its narrow streets of rain-washed stone. Natalie was glad to be back.

Saul held the door open for her as she carried her bag in. The cottage was just as she had left it eight days earlier; small kitchen and dining room combined in a long room with fireplace: simple wooden table with three chairs, another chair by the fireplace, small windows spilling rich sunlight onto whitewashed walls, and two bedrooms. Natalie carried her bags into her room and tossed them on the big bed. Saul had set fresh flowers in the white vase on her nightstand.

He was brewing coffee when she came out to the main room. “Good trip?” he asked. “No problems?”

“No problems,” said Natalie. She laid out some dossiers on the rough wood of the table. “Sarah Hapshaw is getting to see all the places Natalie Preston never saw.”

Saul nodded and set a white mug of rich, black coffee in front of her. “Any problems here?” she asked. “None,” said Saul. “None were expected.”

She added sugar from a blue bowl and stirred. She realized that she was very tired. Saul sat down across from her and patted her hand. Even though his thin face was etched with planes and lines, she thought that he looked younger than when he had worn a beard. Three months ago. Centuries ago.

“More news from Jack,” he said. “Would you like to take a walk?”

She glanced at her coffee. “Take it with you,” said Saul. “We’ll walk toward the hippodrome.” He stood up and went into his bedroom for a second. When he returned, he was wearing a loose khaki shirt with the shirttails out. It did not quite hide the bulge of the .45 automatic in the waistband of his shorts.

They strolled west, downhill, past the fences and orange groves to where sand dunes crept toward the cultivated fields and green private grounds of villas. Saul walked out from the top of a dune onto the surface of an aqueduct that rose twenty-five feet above the sand and stretched for miles toward the cluster of ruins and new buildings near the sea. A young man in a white shirt ran toward them, shouting and waving his arms, but Saul spoke to him quietly in Hebrew and the man nodded and turned away. Saul and Natalie walked along the rough top of the aqueduct.

“What did you say to him?” asked Natalie. “I mentioned that I knew the trinity of Frova, Avi-Yonah, and Negev,” said Saul. “Those three have been excavating the sites here since the nineteen fifties.”

“Is that all?”

“Yes,” said Saul. He stopped and looked around. The Mediterranean lay to their right; a riot of low new buildings caught afternoon sunlight a mile ahead.

“When you told me about your place here, I imagined a shack in the desert,” said Natalie.

“That is what it was when I came here right after the war,” said Saul. “First we built and enlarged Kibbutzum Gaash, Kfar Vitkin, and Ma’agan Mikhael. After the War of Independence, David and Rebecca built their farm here . . .”

“It’s an estate!” said Natalie.

Saul smiled and sipped at the last of his coffee. “The Baron Roth-schild’s place is an estate. That is now the five-star Dan Caesarea Hotel down there.”

“I love the ruins,” said Natalie. “The aqueduct, the theater, the Crusader City, it’s all so . . .
old
.”

Saul nodded. “I missed that sense of overlay of ages when I was in America.”

Natalie removed the red shoulder bag she had been carrying and set their empty coffee cups in it, wrapping them carefully in a towel. “I miss America,” she said. She hugged her knees and looked out over the expanse of sand that lapped against the yellow stone aqueduct like a tan and frozen sea. “I
think
I miss America,” she said. “Those last days were so nightmarish . . .”

Saul said nothing and the two sat in silence for several unstrained minutes.

Natalie spoke first. “I wonder who went to Rob’s funeral.”

Saul glanced at her, his polarized glasses reflecting the light. “Jack Cohen wrote that Sheriff Gentry was buried in a Charleston cemetery with members of several local agencies and police forces attending.”

“Yes,” said Natalie, “but I mean who was
close
to him. Were there any family members there? His friend Daryl Meeks? Anyone who had . . . had loved him?” Natalie stopped.

Saul handed her his handkerchief. “It would have been madness for you to go,” he said softly. “
They
would have recognized you. Besides, you were in no condition. The doctors in Jerusalem Hospital said that your ankle had a very bad break.” Saul smiled at her and accepted his handkerchief back. “I noticed almost no limp today.”

“No,” said Natalie, “it’s much better.” She returned Saul’s smile. “OK,” she said, “who goes first?”

“You, I think,” said Saul. “Jack had some very interesting news, but I want to hear about Vienna.”

Natalie nodded. “Hotel registries confirmed that they were there . . . Miss Melanie Fuller and Nina Hawkins . . . that was the Drayton woman’s maiden name . . . the Hotel Imperial . . . 1925, ’26, and ’27. The Hotel Metropole in ’33, ’34, and ’35. They could have been there other years, in other hotels that lost their records because of the war or some other reason. Mr. Wiesenthal is still checking.”

“And von Borchert?” said Saul. “No hotel registration,” said Natalie, “but Wiesenthal confirmed that Wilhelm von Borchert rented a small villa in Perchtoldsdorf just outside of the city from 1922 until 1939. It was torn down after the war.”

“What about . . . the others?” asked Saul. “Crimes.”

“Murders,” said Natalie. “The usual assortment of street crime, political killings . . . crimes of passion and so forth. Then, in the summer of 1925, three bizarre, inexplicable murders. Two important men and a woman— a prominent Vienna socialite— murdered by acquaintances. In each case, the murderers had no motives, no alibis, no excuses. The papers called it ‘summer insanity’ because each of the killers swore they had no memory of their deeds. All three were found guilty. One man was executed, one committed suicide, and the third . . . a woman . . . was sent to an asylum where she drowned in a fish pond a week after she was institutionalized.”

“Sounds like our young mind vampires were beginning their game,” said Saul. “Getting a taste for blood.”

“Mr. Wiesenthal couldn’t understand the connections,” said Natalie, “but he kept researching for us. Seven unexplained murders in the summer of 1926. Eleven between June and August of 1927 . . . but that was the summer of an abortive
Putsch
. . . there were eighty workers killed in a demonstration that got out of hand . . . Vienna authorities had more to worry about than the deaths of some lower-class citizens.”

“So our trio changed their targets,” said Saul. “Perhaps the deaths of members of their own social circle put too much pressure on them.”

“We couldn’t find any crime reports that fit in the winter or summer of 1928,” said Natalie, “but in 1929, there were seven mysterious disappearances in the Austrian resort town of Bad Ischl. Vienna press talked about the ‘Zauner Werewolf’ because all of the people who disappeared— several of them very important figures in Vienna or Berlin— had last been seen in the chic Café Zauner on the Esplanade.”

“But no confirmation that our young German and his two American ladies were there?” asked Saul.

“Not yet,” said Natalie. “But Mr. Wiesenthal points out that there were scores of private villas and hotels in the area that no longer exist.”

Saul nodded in satisfaction. Both of them looked up as a formation of five Israeli F-16s roared low over the Mediterranean, headed south.

“It’s a beginning,” said Saul. “We will need more detail, much more detail, but it is a beginning.” They sat in silence for several minutes. The sun was getting lower in the southwest, throwing the intricate shadows of their aqueduct farther across the dunes. The world seemed wrapped in a red and golden glow. Finally, Saul said, “Herod the Great, a fawning sycophant, started this city in 22 B.C., dedicating it to Caesar Augustus. It was a center of power by 6 A.D., the theater, hippodrome, and aqueducts all gleaming white. For a decade, Pontius Pilate was prefect here.”

Natalie frowned at him. “You told me most of this when we first came here in February,” she said.

“Yes,” said Saul. “Look.” He pointed to the dunes lapping high on the stone arches. “Most of this has been buried for the last fifteen hundred years. The aqueduct we’re sitting on was not excavated until the early sixties.”

“So?” asked Natalie. “So what of Caesar’s power?” asked Saul. “What of Herod’s ingratiating schemes? What of the apostle Paul’s fears and apprehensions when he was imprisoned here?” Saul waited several seconds. “All dead,” he said. “Dead and covered with the sands of time. Power gone, the artifacts of power toppled and buried. Nothing left but stone and memories.”

“What are you saying, Saul?” asked Natalie.

“The Oberst and the Fuller woman must be at least in their seventies by now,” said Saul. “The photograph Aaron showed me was of a man in his sixties. As Rob Gentry once said, they are mortal. They will not rise with the next full moon.”

“So we just stay here?” snapped Natalie, her voice rising in anger. “We just hunker down here until these . . . these
monsters
die of old age or kill each other off?”

“Here or somewhere else safe,” said Saul. “You know what the alternative is. We, too, must take life.”

Natalie stood up and paced back and forth on the narrow stone wall. “You forget, Saul, I’ve already taken life. I shot that awful boy— Vincent— the one whom the old lady was using.”

“He was a thing by that time,” said Saul. “You did not take his life, Melanie Fuller did that. You released his body from her control.”

“They’re
all
things as far as I’m concerned,” said Natalie. “We
have
to go back.”