The Brotherhood of the Rose (17 page)

"Shoveling shit." The captain sagged in his creaky chair... what's wrong?"

"That bloodbath last night. Six men with enough weapons to invade a small country, blown away in an apparently ordinary apartment buildding."

"You ran out of leads?"

"You could say that. It never happened."

The lieutenant choked on his cigarette smoke. "What the hell are you talking about?" He stalked past filing cabinets into the room. "The call I just got." The captain gestured with contempt toward the phone. "It came from high up. I mean so high I'm not even allowed to tell you who. It makes me sick to think about it. If I don't handle this thing right, I'll be back in a squad car." Wincing, the captain pressed his burning stomach. "This damn town-sometimes I think it's the ass-end of the universe. "For Christ's sake, tell me."

"The men who got killed. The government's impounded their bodies." The captain didn't need to explain what "government" meant. Both he and his lieutenant had worked in Washington long enough to recognize the synonym for covert activities. "For security reasons, those corpses won't be identified. Official business. No publicity. The government's handling almost everything."

"Almost?" The lieutenant jabbed his cigarette in an overflowing ashtray. "You're not making sense."

"Two men and a woman. We've got the woman's nameerika Bernstein. We've got detailed descriptions. If we find them, I've got a number to call. But we can't let them know they've been seen, and we can't pick them up."

"That's crazy. They shot six men, but we can't arrest them?"

"How the hell can we? I told you the government impounded the bodies. Those corpses don't exist. What we're looking for are three nonkillers for a mass murder that never happened."

Erika left the building first. One at a time, Chris and Saul followed shortly afterward, using different exits, scanning the -dark before they retreated along shadowy streets. Making sure they weren't pursued, they each hailed a taxi as soon as they were out of the neighborhood, giving the drivers instructions to take them to separate districts on the other side of Washington. While Erika went to the parking garage to get her car, Chris waited at a pizza parlor they'd agreed on. Saul in turn went to a video-game arcade where he played Guided Missile while he glanced through the window toward the street they'd chosen.

Just before the arcade closed at midnight, he saw a blue Camaro stop at the curb, its engine idling. Recognizing Erika behind the wheel, he went out, automatically scanning the street as he opened the passenger door. "I hope the two of you won't feel cramped in back."

He wondered what she meant. Then he noticed Chris hunched down out of sight behind the driver's seat. "The elevator shaft, now this?"

Groaning, he climbed in back. As Erika pulled from the curb, he hunkered on the floor near Chris. "You don't have to be chummy too long," she said.

Saul noticed the periodic glow of streetlights as she drove. "How long exactly?"

"An hour." He groaned again, shoving Chris. "Hey, move your big feet." She laughed. "The cops want two men and a woman. If they saw us together, they might pull us over, just on a hunch."

"I'm not so sure," Chris said. "But why take chances?"

"That's not what I mean. While I waited at the pizza parlor, I got a look at a newspaper. The killings weren't mentioned."

"It must have been yesterday's paper," Erika said. "No, today's. Six men dead. Your apartment shot up. I expected a front-page story, descriptions of us, the works. I checked some other papers. I found nothing."

"Maybe they got the story too late to run it."

"The shooting happened at quarter after ten last night. There was plenty of time."

She turned a corner. Headlights flicked past the Camaro. "Someone must have convinced the papers not to run it."

"Eliot," Saul said. "He could've impounded the bodies and asked the police to stay quiet for the sake of national security. The papers would never have known what happened."

"But why?" Chris said. "He's hunting us. He could have our pictures on every front page in the country. With so many people searching for us, he'd have a better chance to catch us."

"Unless he doesn't want publicity. Whatever this is all about, he wants to keep it private."

"What, though?" Chris clenched a fist. "What's so damned important?"

Saul felt the Camaro turn. In the night, the smooth highway suddenly changed to a bumpy side road. On the back floor, he gripped the seat. "Don't you have any shocks in this thing?" Erika grinned. "We're almost there. It's safe to sit up now." Grateful, Saul raised himself to the seat. Easing back, stretching his cramped legs, he peered through the windshield. The Camaro's headlights showed dense bushes on both sides of a narrow dirt lane. "Where are we?" "South of Washington. Near Mount Vernon."

Saul tapped Chris's shoulder, pointing toward a grove of trees. Beyond them, moonlight glimmered on an impressive red brick mansion. "Colonial?" Chris said. "A little later. It was built in eighteen hundred." Erika stopped the car where the lane curved from the trees toward the lawn before the extensive porch. She aimed her headlights toward the forest beyond. "You know who lives here?" Chris said. "We agreed we couldn't risk going to friends."

"He's not a friend."

"Then who?"

"This man's a Jew. I fought beside his son in Israel. I've been here only once-when I came to tell him his son died bravely." She swallowed. "I gave him a photograph of the grave. I gave him the medal his son never lived to receive. He told me if I ever needed help..." Her voice sounded hoarse.

Saul felt what she hadn't said. "You knew the son well?"

"I wanted to. If he'd lived, I might have stayed in Israel with him."

Saul put a comforting hand on her shoulder. The house stayed dark. "Either he's asleep," Chris said, or he isn't home."

"He's cautious. Unexpected visitors this late-he wouldn't turn the lights on."

"Sounds like us," Chris said.

"He survived Dachau. He remembers. Right now he's probably staring out here, wondering who the hell we are."

"Better not keep him waiting."

She stepped out, walking past the headlights toward the house. From the car's back seat, Saul watched her disappear behind a flowering dogwood, absorbed by the night. He waited five minutes. Suddenly nervous, he reached for the door.

Her tall slim figure emerged from shadows. She got back in the car.

Saul felt relieved. "He's home? He'll help us?" She nodded, driving past the front of the house. A lane curved toward the murky forest in back. "I told him some friends and I needed a place to stay. I said it was better if he didn't know why. He asked no questions. He, understood." The Camaro bumped along the lane.

Saul turned around. "But we're leaving the house."

"We won't be staying there." Her headlights glared through the trees.

With the windows open, Saul heard the predawn songs of birds. Mist swirled. He hugged his arms against the dampness. "I hear frogs," Chris said. "The Potomac's up ahead." She reached a clearing and an old stone cottage, partly covered with vines. "He says it's his guest house. There's power and water." Stopping, she got out, studied the cottage, and nodded approvingly.

As she went in with Saul, Chris walked around to the back, instinctively checking the perimeter. Wooden steps angled down a steep slope to the misty river. In the dark, he heard waves lap the bank. Something splashed. He smelled decay.

A light came on behind him from a window in the cottage. Turning, he watched Saul and Erika open cupboards in a rustic kitchen. With the window closed, he couldn't hear what they said, but he was struck by their ease with one another-even though they hadn't been lovers in ten years. He'd never experienced that kind of relationship. His inhibitions nagged at him. His throat felt tight as Saul leaned close to Erika, gently kissing her. Ashamed to be watching, he turned away.

He made a warning noise when he entered. The living room was spacious, paneled, with a wooden floor and beams across the peaked ceiling. He noticed a table to his left and a sofa before a fireplace to his right, the furniture covered with sheets.

Across from him, he saw two doors and the entrance to the kitchen. He smelled dust. "We'd better open the windows," Erika said as she and Saul came into the living room. She took the sheets off the furniture. Dust swirled. "There's some cans of food in the cupboards." Chris felt ravenous. He lifted a window, breathing fresh air, then checked the doors across from him. "A bedroom. A shower. Tell you what. I'll cook. You can have the bathroom first."

"You won't get an argument." She touched her hair, already unbuttoning her blouse as she stepped in, closing the door behind her.

They heard the sound of the shower and went to the kitchen, where they cooked three cans of beef stew. The stew made Chris's stomach growl The water soon stopped. When Erika came back, she wore a towel around her hair and a robe she'd found in the bathroom closet. "You look beautiful," Saul said.

Mocking, she curtsied. "And you look like you need a bath.

Saul rubbed the dirt on his face and laughed. But nothing was funny. While they ate their first few spoonfuls, no one spoke. Finally Saul set down his spoon. "Those men in the apartment next to yours would have known it was me, not Chris, who came home with you. Even so, they sent for a hit team. Sure, I'm helping Chris, but he's the one who violated the sanction. He should have been the primary target, but he wasn't. I was. Why?"

"And Colorado had nothing to do with the sanction either," Chris said. "Whatever their reason, they didn't attack till I found you. It wasn't me they wanted. It was you."

Saul nodded, troubled. "Atlantic City. The Mossad."

"Those men at my apartment weren't Mossad," Erika insisted. "I'd have been told about the hit. They'd have made sure I was safe before they tried to kill you."

"But they handled themselves like Israelis."

"Just because they used Uzis and Berettas?" she said. "All right, I grant you. Even the Russians sometimes use those weapons. But the other things. The heel of the palm in hand-to-hand combat."

"And the way they made silencers, and their flat-footed crouch for balance when they stalked you. I know," Erika said. "You told me. Those tactics don't prove a thing."

Saul's face turned red with impatience. "What are you talking about?

Nobody else is trained like that."

"Not true."

They stared at her. "Who else?" Chris said. They waited. "You say they seemed to be cooperating with Eliot," she continued, "but trained by the Mossad."

They nodded. "Think about it," she said. "My God," Chris said. "You just described us."

The implications kept Chris awake. He lay on the sofa and stared toward dawn beyond the window. Past the closed bedroom door, he heard a muted gasp-Saul and Erika making love. He closed his eyes, struggling to ignore what he heard, forcing himself to remember.

1966. After he and Saul had finished their tour in Nam and their stint in Special Forces, Eliot had wanted them to receive extra training, "final polish" he'd called it. Flying separately to Heathrow Airport outside London, they'd rendezvoused at the baggage area. With keys they'd been given, they'd opened lockers and taken out expensive luggage filled with French clothing. Each suitcase had also contained a yarmulke.

During the flight to Tel Aviv, they'd changed clothes in the washroom. A stewardess put their discarded outfits in shopping bags and stuffed them in an empty food. container at the rear of the plane. At the airport, once past customs, they were greeted by a heavy middle-aged woman who called them affectionate nicknames. In their skullcaps and French clothing, they looked like typical Parisian Jews embarking on their first kibbutz experience, and so it would have seemed when they boarded a bus designated for travel outside the city.

A few hours later, they were given rooms in a gymnasium-residence complex similar to a YMCA in America. Instructed to go at once to the main hall, they and twenty other students were met by an old man who introduced himself as Andre Rothberg. His casual appearance belied the deadly legend he'd created for himself. Bald and wrinkled, dressed in white shoes, white trousers and a white shirt, he resembled a genteel sportsman. But his history told of a very different man. His father, the fencing instructor for the last Russian czar, had taught Andre the quickness and coordination of hand and eye that had propelled him through the sports activities of Cambridge in the thirties, British naval intelligence during the Second World War, and finally the Israeli intelligence community after the '48 truce. Though Jewish, he'd remained a British citizen and thus had never been given access to the inner circles of power in Israel. Undaunted, he'd made his own valuable contribution by devising a system of self-defense training unequaled for its precision. Rothberg called it "killer-instinct training," and the performance Chris and Saul witnessed that day stunned them.

Using a trolley suspended by a chain from the ceiling of the vast room, an assistant pushed in the naked cadaver of a male, six feet tall, robust, recently deceased, in his twenties. Before the corpse had been harnessed and hooked in an upright position, it must have been stored on its back, where blood had settled, for the posterior side was blueblack while the front was yellow. It hung in a standing posture, feet on the floor, next to Rothberg. He took a large scalpel and made a ten-inch slash on each side of the chest, then across the bottom. With additional strokes, he separated the subcutaneous tissue from the rib cage and lifted the flap to expose the bones. He waited while his students inspected his work, drawing their attention to the undamaged ribs. He put the flap back in place and sealed the incisions with surgical tape.