The Brotherhood of the Rose (39 page)

A neutral zone, a respite-even at Franklin, "home free" had been the goal of games-was paramount. An operative required the chance to scuff the ground and say, "All right, you beat me, but dammit all, I'm still alive. And dammit worse, you've got to let me back in play. I got here, see. I'm neutralized." A guaranteed sanctuary, inviolable, where any attempt to kill meant instant reprisal.

But a safe house was temporary, designed for operatives and hired hands. What if you'd risen so high and made so many enemies you could never dare leave the safe house? What if your hunters hated you so much they'd never stop waiting for you to come out? It wouldn't matter howmany guards you had to protect you as you left-you'd still be killed.

Clearly something better was needed than just the protection of what amounted to a motel. How many paces of your room could you tolerate-how many records could you listen to, how much television could you watch-before the walls squeezed in on you? The constantly repeated daily pattern eventually made a safe house a prison. Boredom became unbearable. You started to think about sneaking away; risking your hunters. Or maybe you saved them the trouble, sticking a gun in your mouth. A week of safety? Wonderful. Maybe a month. But what about a year? Or ten years? In a place like the Church of the Moon, even safety became damnation.

Something better, more ultimate, was needed, and the Abelard designers in their wisdom had imagined further. Rest homes. Permanent sanctuaries. Complete environments. Absolute satisfaction.

For a price. Faced with death, an outcast would gladly pay the limit for guaranteed immunity and every comfort. Not a safe house. A rest home. Always and forever. Desperation rewarded.

There were seven Abelard safe houses. Rest homes, though, were complicated. Sweeping, huge, complete. Only three of them. And because their clients tended to be elderly, climate was a factor. Not too hot and not too cold. Not moist but not obscenely dry. A paradise in paradise. Because of the need for long-term security, the rest homes had been situated in traditional neutral countries, their politics stable-Hong Kong, Switzerland, and Canada.

The Cloister Valley. British Columbia. Canada.

The Hermitage. Eliot had sought retirement, hoping to lure Saul into a trap. But as Saul urged the Eagle higher, reaching the treeline, passing snow, about to descend to another valley, thinking of Chris, he murmured through his teeth, "What's good for the goose is good for the fucking gander."

Traps could be turned around.

He reached a crossroads, pausing to study his map. If he headed right again, he'd veer up a slope, go through a narrow pass, and, angling down, reach Cloister Valley. He assumed he'd find a weatherbeaten sign-nothing blatant certainlyfor the Hermitage. An unaware traveler wouldn't know if it meant a lodge or someone's cottage. Trees would hide the property. No doubt a padlocked gate and a potholed lane would discourage curiosity He also assumed there'd be sentries down the lane to turn back unwelcome visitors. Every entrance to the valley would be watched. A country store would be a surveillance post, a gas station would be staffed with guards, a fisherman sipping Labatt's would this time have a walkie-talkie in his knapsack. From the moment Saul reached the pass, his every movement would be reported.

In themselves, these precautions didn't bother him. After all, a rest home needed security. Its administration would be professional, using first-rate tradecraft. What did bother him was that some of the sentries along the road would belong to Eliot, not the rest home.

That's the way he'd do it, Saul thought. Distribute a hit team through the valley, wait till I was spotted, and kill me before I ever got on the grounds. The rules forbid interference once I'm on neutral territory, but nothing says he can't kill me on the way. The entire valley isn't protected, only the land owned by the rest home. I'd be foolish to drive through the valley.

But he knew another way. Instead of turning right and heading up the pass, he went straight ahead. Three elk grazed in a meadow beyond a stream. A pheasant flew across the road, He studied a line of aspen to his right, glanced at his map, then back at the trees. What he looked for shouldn't be far. Wind fluttered the leaves, their silver undersides turning up, glinting in the sun. That made him conscious of the sun's lower -angle. Three o'clock. At the latest, to take advantage of the remaining light, he had to be ready by five.

A half-kilometer farther on, he saw it. There, to the right through the trees, a lane so obscured by undergrowth he wouldn't have noticed if he hadn't been warned by the map. No cars ahead. None in his rearview mirror. Stopping, he flicked a switch on the left side of the steering column and converted The lane was narrow, bumpy, arched with trees. A hundred yards along, he braked. Getting out, swatting mosquitos in the forest's stillness, he walked back to the road. The bushes had been brokn- too severely to spring up and hide where he'd entered the lane. All the same, in theory no one in this valley ought to care.

In theory. He dragged a fallen limb across the mouth of the lane, using it to prop the branches so they stood as if they hadn't been broken. Someone looking closely would see the cracks along their stems, but a passing motorist wouldn't notice. Several days from now, the bushes would lose their leaves, but by then it wouldn't matter if anyone guessed this lane had been used. His concern was for tonight and tomorrow. He propped up a second row of bushes, studied his work, and decided they looked as natural as he could expect.

He continued driving up the lane. Branches scratched the Eagle. Bushes scraped its bottom. Furrows jostled him. He reached a fallen limb too large for him to drive across. Getting out, he shifted it, then drove ahead and for precaution walked back, placing it across the lane again. Farther up, he bumped across a stream, hoping the water wouldn't soften his brakes, frowning as a boulder whacked his muffler.

But the Eagle had a high suspension, and the four-wheel drive worked perfectly, surviving its torture, gaining traction on a brutal hill. The map didn't show any buildings ahead. That puzzled him. He wondered who'd built the lane and why.

Loggers? Hydro crews needing access to pylons through the mountains? Someone who owned this section and used it for hunting?

He hoped he wouldn't find out.

Disappointingly, the lane disappeared in the knee-high grass of an upper meadow.

End of the line. He couldn't risk driving through the grass. His tracks would be obvious from the air. He had to assume the Hermiitage used surveillance choppers. Strictly speaking, the rest home's guards wouldn't have much reason to check this bordering valley, but Eliot's people would. Since they knew Saul was coming, they'd be extra cautious.

He glanced at his watch- four-thirty -then at the sun behind him, dipping toward the mountains. Dusk soon.

Move. He parked the Eagle off the lane, hidden by bushes from the ground and by trees from the air. Raising the hatch, he took out his equipment.

He'd arranged it skillfully in a Kelty pack: beef jerky, peanuts, dried fruit (protein and carbohydrates he wouldn't have to cook), extra clothes, all wool (in case of a storm, the hollow fibers of wool dried fast without needing a fire), a sleeping bag filled with Dacron (like the wool, it dried fast), fifty yards of nylon rope, a knife, first-aid kit, and canteen, already filled, though when he got higher he'd trust the streams. He wore thick-soled mountain boots, designed to help his feet support the weight of the pack.

Hefting its metal frame to his shoulders, he tightened the straps and cinched the waist belt. In a moment, he'd adjusted his balance to the extra bulk. He eased his pistol along his side where the pack wouldn't pinch it against his skin, then locked the car and started up.

Around the meadow, not across it. He still couldn't leave a trail. Skirting mountain flowers, he reached the other edge, hiking steadily through the foothills, climbing steeper, harder. Sweat soaked his shirt, forming rivulets between his shoulder blades beneath his pack. At first, he judged his direction by sight alone, knowing the ridge he wanted, but as deadfalls blocked his way, as trees hid his view and draws meandered, he checked his map repeatedly, comparing its contour lines to features around him, aligning it with his compass. Sometimes he found a sparsely wooded slope that seemed an easy climb in the direction he needed to go, but the map warned otherwise. Or else he chose a gully so thick with boulders he wouldn't have considered it if the map hadn't shown it soon became a gentle rise. Forewarned of a cliff beyond the next hill, he veered a quarter-mile out of his way to reach a stream he followed up a steep but climbable gorge.

He stopped to swallow rock salt, drinking. At high altitude, the body worked harder than normal, sweating abundantly. But the dry air evaporated sweat so quickly a climber might not realize the risk of dehydration. Lethargy could lead to coma. Water alone wouldn't help, though. Salt was needed for the body to retain the water. But Saul didn't taste the salt, a sure sign he needed it. Shoving his canteen back in his knapsack, he studied the gorge he'd climbed, hearing the roar of the falling stream, then turned to the bluffs above.

Their shadows lengthened. The forest became deep green, like a jungle or clouds before a tornado. Emotions stormed inside him. His steps were relentless, fierce. The thought of jungle had reminded him of missions with Chris in Nam, of a war they'd fought because Eliot wanted them to experience combat. He remembered escaping with Chris from the choppers in the mountains of Colorado because their father had betrayed them.

Chris, he wanted to scream. Remember the summer Eliot took us camping in Maine? The best week of my life. Why couldn't things have turned out differently?

The spongy loam of the forest led higher. Through a break in the trees, he saw the pass he aimed for, a saddlelike ridge between two peaks. He climbed past slabs of granite, the last rays of sunset glinting through the pass, a beacon through the dusk. He reached the entrance, more determined now. Too excited to feel the weight of his pack, he hurried to a sheltered bluff from which he gazed at the valley below.

It wasn't much different from the valley behind him. The peaks, the forest, were, similar. A river, the Pitt, ran through it. The map said the next valley over was Golden Ears Provincial park. But as he stared at alpenglow from the dying sunset, he saw all the difference that mattered.

The valley was bisected by a road, roughly east to west. Another road cut across it, heading toward the park beyond. But the northwest sector... there... A sizable area was clear of trees. He guessed its lawn filled a hundred acres. Through binoculars, he identified stables, a swimming pool, a jogging track, a golf course.

in the midst of it all, a massive lodge reminded him of a place at Yellowstone where Eliot once had taken him and Chris.

Rest home. Haven. Death trap.

in the night, it rained. Among his equipment, he had a sheet of waterproof nylon. Stretching it across two boulders, anchoring the sides, he made a shelter. Hunched beneath it, wearing his thick wool clothes, his sleeping bag around him, he ate, barely tasting the peanuts and jerky, peering at the dark. Rain pelted the nylon, dripping off the front. His cheeks felt damp. He shivered, unable to sleep, thinking of Chris.

At dawn, the drizzle changed to mist. He crawled from his sleeping bag and relieved his bladder among some rocks. He washed - in a nearby stream, shaved, and scrubbed his hair. Hygiene was mandatory up here-he couldn't risk getting sick. Equally crucial, he had to preserve his self-respect. If he fouled his body with dirt and odor, his mind would soon be affected. Feeling sloppy, he'd start to think that way, and Eliot would catch him making mistakes. With yesterday's sweat rinsed off, his bare skin tingled, scoured to a glow, he regained energy, welcoming the goosebumps raised by the chill. Resolve became sharper. Rage surged through him. He was ready.

His clothes felt damp only a moment. His body warmed their hollow wool fiber, causing vapor to rise like steam. Assembling his equipment, he hefted the backpack to his shoulders and started grimly down the mountain.

This far from the Hermitage, he didn't worry about sentries.

The terrain was too wild. With several passes leading into the valley, it would take too many men to watch every approach, The main thing was he'd avoid surveillance-and probably snipers-on the road. As he got closer, though, he expected guards, especially near the rest home's site in the valley'& northwest corner. Despite his eagerness, he descended carefully, knowing how easy it was to injure an ankle under the stress of going down. '1The sun came out at noon, adding to the heat of exertion, A cliff stretched so far in both directions he had to loop his rope around his pack, lower it, pull up one end of the rope to free it, then rappel. At last, by midafternoon, he reached the basin.

Calculating. If snipers watched the road, they'd want a clear wide line of fire. That suggested they wouldn't hide in the trees, where all they'd have was a brief glimpse of a car. More likely, they'd. prefer an elevated position, a bluff above the trees with a view for miles.

Concealed by a boulder, he peered from a ridge toward lower ridges, slowly shifting his gaze from left to right, inspecting details.

It took an hour. He finally saw them, two, a half-mile apart, watching both ends of the road. Each lay in tall grass on a bluff, wearing brown and green to match the terrain, a telescopic-sighted rifle in position. He wouldn't have noticed them if each hadn't moved slightly, one to reach for a walkie-talkie, the other a minute later to drink from his canteen. Across the road, a gate in a fence was equidistant between them, no doubt the entrance to the rest home.