League of Night and Fog

by David Morrell

  He climbed the fence, dropped onto the lawn, and knelt, not moving, straining to detect a threat. He waited five minutes before creeping upward, periodically interrupting his cautious ascent to study the night. A hundred yards and thirty minutes later, he reached the edge of a tennis court on top of the hill. Wary of triggering alarms, he snuck toward a swimming pool, its placid water reflecting light from the mansion. A small structure next to the pool seemed to be a changing room. He ducked behind it, peering past a corner toward the five-stalled garage to his right, its doors all closed. He shifted his position and stared left toward the car, a dark Cadillac, in front of the mansion. Then he studied the mansion itself. It was peaked, with chimneys and gables. On this side, a flagstone patio led to closed

  French doors; beyond the windows, lamps glowed in a room lined with paintings and books. He tensed as a man walked past the windows. The brief glimpse showed the man was well-built and middleaged, dressed in a blue exercise suit--he seemed to be alone. Icicle studied the windows in the other rooms. Most were dark. The few with lights didn't seem occupied. Not seeing any guards, he sprinted from behind the small building near the pool, crossed the driveway, and sank below the cover of a concrete balustrade that flanked the patio, then studied the area before him. At once he realized that the patio, which went along this side of the mansion and presumably along the other sides as well, held the only alarm system the mansion needed. An intruder couldn't get inside unless he crossed the flagstones, but they weren't joined by concrete. The light from the room beyond the French doors made clear mat each flagstone was rimmed by sand. The sand was sloppy, grains of it speckling the patio. But why would the owner of a million-dollar property cut costs on so minor a detail? Why this inconsistency in an otherwise carefully maintained estate? The answer was obvious. Because each stone, independent, rested upon a pressure detector. The moment an intruder stepped upon any stone in the patio, an alarm would sound. He glanced to the right and left, hoping for a tree whose branches would allow him to climb through an upper window. Seeing none, he decided to look for an equipment shed where a ladder might have been stored. By setting one end of the ladder on top of the patio's balustrade and easing the other end of the ladder onto the sill of a window in a darkened room farther along, he'd have what amounted to a bridge he could use to crawl across above the flagstones. He began to creep backward. "So you guessed," a voice said. Icicle spun. "About the patio." The voice was flat, thin, emotionless. It came from his left, from an open window of the Cadillac parked in front of the mansion. "I'd hoped you would. I wouldn't want your reputation to exceed your ability." Icicle braced himself to run. "I'm not your enemy." The

  Cadillac's passenger door came open. A tall gangly man stepped out.

  "You see. I willingly show myself. I mean you no harm." The man stepped into the fall blaze of the spotlight in front of the mansion. He held his arms out, away from his gray suit. His face was narrow, his nose and lips thin, his eyebrows so sparse they were almost nonexistent.

  His red hair contrasted with his pallid skin. The patio doors burst open. "Is he here? Pendleton, is that you?" The man in the exercise suit reached toward the inner wall and flicked what seemed to be a switch, deactivating an alarm, before he stepped out onto the patio.

  "Pendleton? Icicle?" For an instant. Icicle almost lunged toward the darkness beyond the swimming pool. Already he imagined his rush down the slope toward the fence and the trees and... Instead he straightened. "No. Not Icicle. I'm his son."

  "Yes, his son!" the man on the patio said. "And this man"--pointing toward the Cadillac--"is Seth, or rather Seth's son! And I'm known as

  Halloway, but I'm the Painter's son!" The cryptonym

  "Painter" had force, but

  "Seth" made Icicle wince as if he'd been shot. He stared at the lanky, pale, impassive man beside the Cadillac. Seth's gray suit matched his eyes, which even in the spotlit night were vividly unexpressive, bleak. But Seth didn't matter, nor did Halloway. Only one tiring had importance. Icicle swung toward Halloway on the patio.

  "Where's my father?"

  "Not just your father," Halloway said. "Where's mine?"

  "And mine," Seth said. "That's why we've been waiting for you."

  "What?"

  "For you to come here--to help us find all our fathers,"

  Halloway said. "We'd almost despaired that you'd ever show up." He gestured toward the mansion. "Come in. We've a great deal to talk about."

  When they entered the study, Halloway closed the patio doors, pulled the draperies shut, and activated the alarm switch on the wall. Next to the switch. Icicle noticed a landscape painting. "My father's," Halloway said. Similar colorful paintings hung on the other walls. Icicle nodded.

  "I'd heard he was talented. I've never seen his work."

  "Of course not. His early paintings were either stolen or destroyed.

  For precaution's sake, even though no one saw his later work outside this house, he changed from watercolor to acrylic, and just as important, he altered his style." Halloway's tone changed from reverence to dismay. "What did you plan to do? Attack me?" 'I had to make sure I could trust you," Icicle said. "Trust me? Right now, Seth and I are the only ones you can trust"

  "I had to find out about Kessler."

  "He went to see you inAustralia."

  "I know that! I met him there!" Icicle said. "But after I saw him, he disappeared. So did my father. Did Kessler set me up? Was Kessler a way to separate my father and me, to make it easier for someone to grab him?" Halloway spread his hands. "He never returned fromAustralia. He was reliable. If you'd been here at the meeting, you'd have realized that once he committed himself to a purpose, he wouldn't back out. So when he didn't return... when he disappeared..."

  "You assume he's dead?"

  "Yes." Halloway thought about it. "In all probability, yes."

  "So either your meeting was bugged or one of the group betrayed you."

  "No. I took precautions," Halloway insisted. "Believe me, this house has never been bugged. And I can't imagine why one of us would betray his own best interests. But there are other considerations." Icicle raised his eyebrows. "At the time of the meeting, your father and Seth's were the only members of the original group who hadn't yet disappeared,"

  Halloway said. "We sent messengers to each--to emphasize the danger, to convince them... and yourselves... to join us. Unfortunately, Seth's father disappeared before the messenger could reach him. That left only your father."

  Icicle stared. "Go on."

  "If our enemies were in place to attack your father, if they discovered

  Kessler in the area, they might have given in to temptation and taken

  Kessler as well, hoping he hadn't yet warned your father and yourself."

  Icicle shook his head. "But Kessler disappeared at almost exactly the same time my tamer did. If they wanted to stop him from warning my father, they'd have taken Kessler first and only men have set up the trap for my father. No, they must have had another reason for picking up Kessler."

  "Several explanations occur to me. They may have wanted to make you suspect--as you did--that Kessler was responsible for your father's disappearance. To turn you against us. Or they may have wanted to make you realize that no one, not even the children of the fathers, was safe.

  To instill fear in you. For yourself."

  "We think they're bringing back the Night and Fog," Seth said. Barbed wire seemed to bind Icicle's chest

  "Yes, the ultimate terror," Halloway said. "Not only to punish the heads of each family but to imply a threat to us, their children, and to torture our imaginations because we don't know what was done to them and what might be done to ourselves."

  "From one generation to the next," Icicle grimaced. "It never ends."

  "Oh, but it will," Seth said. "I guarantee it" Despite the anger in his words, his voice remained flat The contrast made Icicle tingle. He stared at Sem's red hair, his pale, gaunt, expressionless face, the effect so hypnoti
c he had to force himself to turn toward Halloway.

  "What made you sure I'd come, so sure mat you waited for me?"

  "We felt you had no other choice. When Kessler didn't return, it was obvious his mission had gone terribly wrong. Neither he nor you responded to our further messages. We concluded, reluctantly, that your father too had vanished. Perhaps you'd been taken as well. But if you were free, we knew you wouldn't stop until you found your father. Your logical destination? Here. To the site of the meeting you didn't attend, to the group who sent Kessler to find you. What other lead did you have?"

  "I hope," Seth added, his voice dry and inflection less "you don't mind working with me." No explanation was necessary. Icicle knew very well what he meant. Seth's father and Icicle's father had once been two of the most feared men inEurope. Though linked by a common purpose, they'd nonetheless been rivals, as close to enemies as cohorts could be. What one achieved, the other fought to surpass, for the rewards of success, the advantages of being favored by their leader, were considerable. Both men had loved the same woman, and when Icicle's father had been chosen instead of Seth's, professional differences became personal.

  Jealousy--at least on Seth's father's part-- turned to hate. Their conflict worsened after the failure of the cause to which they'd pledged their lives. As subsequent freelance specialists, they often found themselves on opposite sides, an extra incentive for Seth's father.

  Eventually retired, they'd put the world between them, one living in

  Australia, the other inSouth America. At Bondi Beach inSydney ,

  Icicle's father had always worn a T-shirt, to hide the two bullet scars on his chest. From his rival. 4

  Now Icicle faced the son of his father's lifelong enemy. The sight of the lean, pale, severe-faced man in the gray suit made his stomach swarm with spiders. Even the cryptonym

  "Seth" implied the unnatural. Seth, the Egyptian god of the desert, of barrenness, drought, and chaos, of darkness and destruction. The red god, red like this man's hair. When depicted in human guise, Seth was always pale, as this man's skin was pale. But most often, the god was a monstrous animal, its body that of a greyhound, its snout an anteater's, its ears square, its tail inexplicably forked. The god of death. Seth. The perfect cryptonym for an assassin. And what about my cryptonym? Icicle? Seth reached out his hand. "My father loved your mother very much." Icicle nodded. "My father always regretted that he and your father couldn't be friends."

  "But you and I can be friends. Or if not friends, then allies. Joined by a common purpose." Icicle sensed mat Seth could never be a friend to anyone. It didn't matter. No conflict existed between them directly, and they had the best of reasons to join forces. The combination of their considerable talents couldn't be matched by their opponents. They would triumph, either finding their fathers or gaining revenge. Icicle shook his dry, cold hand. He turned again to Halloway.

  "Where do you suggest we start?"

  "Go after the common denominator. Our fathers never associated with each other. True, they kept in touch, so they could help each other if they sensed danger, but they carefully separated their past lives from their present ones. They lived thousands of miles away from each other.

  Yet their enemies found out where they were."

  "It's not surprising," Icicle said. "All the enemy had to do was locate one of our fathers. Under chemicals, he'd have told how to find the rest My father always felt uncomfortable about that flaw in the pact"

  "But the pact had a limitation," Halloway said. "Precisely to guard against that danger, each member of the group knew the location of only one other member. Your father and Seth's remained ignorant of each other, for example. If the enemy tracked down one father and made him tell what he knew, the enemy would men have to go to the next man, and the next, in sequence, till all of the group had been discovered."

  "But it didn't happen like that," Seth said. Halloway resumed. "Some members of the group disappeared simultaneously. Besides, that still leaves the question, how did the enemy find the first man who disappeared? No." Halloway's voice became hoarse. "Our fathers didn't unwillingly betray each other. The information about them came from outside the group."

  "How?"

  "I told you--the common denominator. The one man who knew about all of them. A different kind of father. A priest Cardinal Pavelic." Icicle suddenly remembered the last thing Kessler had said to him in Sydney.

  "Cardinal Pavelic! He disappeared as well."

  "Find out what happened to the cardinal, and you'll find out what happened to my father," Halloway said, "and yours and--"

  "Mine," Seth said. "And everyone else's." 'the horror, THE horror"

  Vienna. Saul stood respectfully in the background, holding

  Christopher's hand, as Erika morosely surveyed her father's living room.

  It occupied the second level of a three-story rowhouse on a quiet tree-lined street three blocks from the Danube. Outside, a heavy rain made the day so drab, the room so glum, that even in early afternoon

  Misha Pletz had been forced to turn on the lights when they entered. The room was simply furnished, a rocking chair, a sofa, a coffee table, a plain dark rug, a hutch with photographs of Erika, Christopher, and

  Saul. No radio or television, Saul noticed, but he did see a crammed bookshelf--mostly histories and biographies--and several reading lamps.

  Prom studying the austere room, a stranger would not have guessed that

  Erika's father, retired from the Mossad, received an adequate pension from Israel. With supplementary dividends from a few modest investments, her father could have surrounded himself with more belongings and better ones. But after disposing of his wife's possessions when she died five years ago, Joseph Bernstein had preferred to live ascetically. The sole luxuries he allowed himself were morning and evening cups of hot chocolate at a small cafe that bordered the

  Danube. A pipe tobacco, the fragrance of which permeated the furniture and walls of the apartment. Saul himself had never smoked--another legacy from Eliot But the sweet lingering odor pleasantly widened his nostrils. Though he didn't see any photographs of Erika's father, Saul remembered him as a tall stocky man in his late sixties, slightly stooped, with thick white hair that never stayed in place, dense white eyebrows, and a thin inch-long scar along (he right ridge of his narrow jaw. On his own initiative, the man had never commented on the scar, and when asked, he'd never explained what had caused it. "The past,"

  was the most he'd ever allowed himself to murmur, and the expression in his gray eyes, behind his glasses, would grow sad. Occasionally rubbing his son's back to reassure him, Saul watched Erika turn her gaze slowly around the room. 'Tell me again,"

  she said to Misha. 'Tour days ago"--Misha sighed--"Joseph didn't come to the cafe for his morning cup of hot chocolate. The owner didn't think much about it till your father failed to show up that evening as well.

  Even if your father wasn't feeling well, if he had a cold for example, he always went twice daily to mat cafe."

  "And my father seldom even had a cold."

  "A strong constitution."

  "A man of habit," Saul interrupted. Misha studied him. "I'm assuming the cafe owner is one of you," Saul said. "Mossad." Misha didn't respond.

  "Joseph's visits to the cafe weren't just for hot chocolate, were they?"

  Saul asked. "Despite his retirement, he still kept a schedule, a customary routine that made it easy for a contact to reach him without attracting attention." Misha stayed silent

  "Not mat his skills would probably ever be needed," Saul said. "But who can tell? Sometimes a knowledgeable old man, no longer officially a member of his network, to all appearances divorced from intelligence work, is exactly what a mission requires. And this way, it made Joseph feel he still had a purpose, was being held in reserve as it were. Even if you didn't have a use for him, you were kind enough to make him feel he hadn't been discarded." Misha raised his eyebrows slightly, either a question or a shrug. "Plus... and th
is was probably your network's principal motive

  ... his schedule, dropping in twice a day, was a subtle way for you to make sure he was doing all right, wasn't helpless at home, hadn't suffered a stroke or a heart attack, for example. You also made sure he wasn't being victimized by an old enemy. In a way (hat didn't jeopardize his pride, you protected him." Erika stepped close to Misha.

  "Is that true?"

  "You married a good man."

  "I knew that already," she said. "Is Saul right?"

  "What harm was done? We took care of our own and made him feel he had worth."

  "No harm at all," she said. "Unless..."

  "He wasn't working on anything for us, if that's what you mean," Misha said. "Though I'd have welcomed him on an assignment Nothing violent, of course. But for stakeouts or routine intelligence gathering, he was still a first-rate operative. You have to remember, Erika. Your father's retirement was his choice, not ours."