The League of Night and Fog

by David Morrell

  “Things?”

  “He was manipulated into killing.”

  Drew flinched.

  “You can’t understand unless you know that Chris and I were orphans. The institution where we lived was modeled after the military. From when we were kids, we were taught to be warriors. A man unofficially adopted us. His name was Eliot. He took us on trips. He gave us candy. He made us love him.”

  Saul had difficulty continuing. “It turned out he worked for the government, and his motive for becoming our foster father was to recruit us into intelligence work. After we went through extensive training, he sent us out on missions. The U.S. doesn’t officially condone assassination, of course, but that’s what we did just the same. We thought our missions were government-sanctioned, supposedly for a just cause. As it happened, we weren’t working for the government but for Eliot himself. We loved him so much we’d do anything for him. So he told us to kill. For his own reasons. Chris broke down from the stress of what we were doing. To atone for the things he’d done, he entered the monastery. But his nightmares kept haunting him, and he retreated even more from the world. He lapsed into trances. The condition’s called catatonic schizophrenia. Meditative paralysis. The Cistercians insisted on each monk contributing equally to the labor of the monastery, but Chris’s trances kept him from working. The order had to ask him to leave.”

  “He must have felt torn apart.”

  “Oh, believe me, he did. But he’s at peace now.”

  “How?”

  “He was killed,” Saul said.

  Drew’s eyes narrowed.

  “Stabbed to death—because Eliot eventually turned against us. To protect his secrets, he betrayed us. I evened the score for Chris, though.”

  “How?”

  “I killed Eliot … And you?”

  “I’m not sure what you mean,” Drew said.

  “Why did you leave the Carthusians?”

  “A hit team took out the monastery.”

  Saul blinked in amazement.

  17

  Beside him, Drew felt Arlene tense in astonishment at his candor.

  “Took out the monastery?” Saul asked.

  “I’m an orphan, too. My parents were killed when I was ten,” Drew said. “In Tokyo. My father worked for the U.S. State Department there. In 1960, he and my mother were blown up by terrorists. The authorities never found whoever was responsible. I was only ten, but I made a vow that one day I’d track them down or, if I couldn’t find them, I’d punish whoever was like the people who’d murdered my parents. I was sent to America to live with my uncle.” Bitterness distorted his voice. “That didn’t work out too well. So my father’s best friend adopted me. His name was Ray. He worked for the State Department, the same as my father had, and he took me all over the world on his assignments. Wherever we went, I still intended to keep the vow I’d made—to revenge my parents—so Ray recruited me into a secret State Department antiterrorist group called Scalpel. I was trained to be an assassin. For ten years, that’s what I did.”

  “Ten years? What made you stop? Why did you enter the monastery?”

  “The same reason as your friend. I had nightmares. In 1979, I was sent on a mission that ended with the death of an innocent man and woman. I blew them up, just as my parents had been blown up. Their son saw it happen just as I’d seen it happen to mine.”

  “This man and woman, you say they were innocent? You made a mistake?”

  “No. Scalpel wanted them killed for political reasons. But I couldn’t justify what I’d done. I’d become a version of the people who’d murdered my parents. I’d turned into the scum I was hunting. I was my enemy. I had a … breakdown, I guess you’d call it. I was so desperate to redeem myself, to punish myself for my sins, that I became a Carthusian. For almost six years, through penance and prayer, I achieved a measure of peace.”

  “And that’s when the hit team took out the monastery?”

  “Nineteen monks were poisoned. Two others were shot. I was the primary target, but I escaped. I vowed to find out who’d killed my fellow monks and threatened my chance for redemption. In the end, I discovered that the man who’d ordered the hit was Ray. He feared that one day, because of my breakdown, I’d reveal secrets about him. He’d been searching for me all those years, and when he finally learned where I’d gone to ground … Well, as you said about the man who ordered your foster brother’s death, I found Ray, and I got even.”

  18

  Saul listened, deeply moved. The parallels between his story and Drew’s were unnerving.

  But Chris had been killed.

  And Drew had survived, resembling Chris, with his fair hair, fiery eyes, hint of freckles, and strong-boned rectangular face. Saul had the sense that a niche had been filled in his life, that a ghost had come back.

  “You didn’t say if you had any brothers,” Saul said.

  “No brothers. I’m an only child.”

  Saul smiled. “If you want a brother, you’ve got one now. You wouldn’t have told me your background if you didn’t recognize the similarities between …”

  “I noticed the parallels,” Drew said, “and I can’t explain them either.”

  “Running into each other. How could—? I can’t believe it’s just a coincidence.”

  “The question is,” Arlene interrupted, “how many other similarities are there?”

  19

  The two men turned to her.

  Arlene had listened with growing distress as Saul and Drew talked to each other. It was startling enough that two men who’d never met before should quickly become so open with each other. Even more startling were the parallels between Drew and Saul’s dead foster brother. What Saul had said just now was true—none of this seemed a coincidence. And the most disturbing part was that she didn’t think the surprises were over.

  “Other similarities?” Saul asked.

  “You showed up in the Vatican gardens at the same time we did—to force information from Father Dusseault,” she said. “Doesn’t that make you wonder? You’ve got to be curious what we were doing there. I’m sure curious to know what you were doing there. In different ways, did we come there for the same reason?”

  “Your wife’s father was missing—isn’t that what you said?” Drew asked. “And three men tried to kill you? Men who wore a ring identical to Father Dusseault’s?”

  Saul didn’t answer for a moment. Then he shuddered, and it seemed to Arlene that he did so to force his attention back to this conversation. Because, if she guessed correctly, the disappearance of his wife was related to everything they were discussing.

  “Right,” Saul said. “And we traced those three men to Father Dusseault. To what you called the Fraternity of the Stone. All priests. What is the Fraternity?”

  “Soldiers for God,” Drew said. “Church militants.”

  “Explain.”

  “The order dates back to the twelfth century, the Third Crusade,” Drew said. “They follow a tradition established by an Arab who converted to Catholicism, became a priest, and used his knowledge of Arab ways to help the crusaders try to liberate the Holy Land from the Muslims.”

  “Help the crusaders? How?”

  “As an assassin. Since he was an Arab, he could easily infiltrate the enemy. His mandate was to execute Muslim leaders in the same brutal way that their assassins had executed leaders of the Crusade. Specifically, he came upon his targets while they slept and cut off their heads.”

  “Graphic,” Saul said dryly. “And no doubt dramatically effective.”

  “The theory was to fight terror with terror. Of course, the crusaders felt that their terror was holy.”

  “And the Church condoned this?”

  “At the time,” Drew said. “You have to remember the religious fervor that motivated the Third Crusade. The Pope gave a dispensation for any sins committed during what was supposed to be a divinely inspired war against the heathens.”

  “Times change, though.”

  “Yes
, but the order founded by that assassin-priest didn’t. Unknown to the Church, the Fraternity of the Stone continued to practice holy terror throughout the centuries—whenever they considered it necessary to defend the Faith.”

  “And the ring?”

  “A way for them to identify each other. It’s a replica of the ring King Richard wore during the Third Crusade. A ruby that signifies the blood of Christ.”

  “But why would they want to stop me and Erika from finding her father?” Saul asked. “Are they involved in Erika’s disappearance?”

  “Maybe Father Dusseault will tell us when we question him,” Arlene said. “The reason we came to the gardens to meet him involved a disappearance as well. A cardinal named Krunoslav Pavelic. Father Dusseault is his assistant.”

  “I’ve heard about the disappearance. But why are you looking for him?”

  “To pay off a debt,” Drew said. “A priest who belonged to the Fraternity tried to recruit me into the order. When I refused, he tried to kill me to protect the order’s secrets. Arlene’s brother shot him to save my life.”

  “The Fraternity thought Drew had killed the priest,” Arlene said. “To protect my brother, to thank him for saving his life, Drew fled as if he were guilty. For the past year, he’s been living in Egypt. Three weeks ago, a member of the Fraternity came to me in New York. He said the order had learned where Drew was hiding. He asked me to go to Drew and convince him to provide a service to the Fraternity. In exchange, the order would consider the debt paid in full for the death of the priest.”

  “What was the service they wanted?”

  “Drew had to find the missing cardinal.”

  “Why couldn’t they handle the job themselves?”

  “That’s what we wondered, too,” Drew said. “A Fraternity priest we met in Cairo told us that someone in the order was trying to destroy it, that the key to finding whoever was responsible had something to do with Pavelic’s disappearance. If Arlene and I wanted to live in peace, we had to find the cardinal and in so doing find whoever was trying to sabotage the Fraternity. I have a suspicion that Father Dusseault is involved in the betrayal, so some things are starting to come together. But what puzzles me is that two other people are looking for the cardinal. Two assassins, the sons of Nazi assassins.”

  “The sons of … ?”

  “Their code names are Icicle and Seth.”

  Saul stood in distress. “A blonde and a redhead?”

  “You know about them?”

  “When I was in the Agency, I heard rumors. About Seth in particular. He’s supposed to be crazy. What the hell is going on?”

  “And is there a connection? Among what you want, we want, and they want?” Arlene asked.

  “Disappearances—my wife and her father,” Saul said. “And priest-assassins.”

  “A cardinal’s disappearance,” Drew said. “And the sons of Nazi assassins.”

  20

  In darkness, Icicle sat on a damp concrete floor in the basement of a palace near the Sistine Chapel. He couldn’t see the unconscious woman sprawled beside him, but he could feel her body heat and, if he leaned close, hear her faint breathing. Of course, he couldn’t see Seth on the other side of her either, but it bothered him that he could hear Seth—the faint brush of Seth’s hand along her body. Icicle tried to hold his disgust in check.

  Yesterday afternoon, determined to force information from the missing cardinal’s assistant, Father Dusseault, they’d entered the Vatican among a group of tourists. A guide had escorted the group through St. Peter’s Basilica; Icicle and Seth had hung back, looking for a place where they could hide until nightfall. The door to this murky basement had been unlocked. At midnight, they’d left the palace basement and walked toward Father Dusseault’s apartment. Experts at becoming one with the night, they were never noticed.

  Their plan was to enter the priest’s apartment while he slept, to subdue him, and to question him throughout the night. When they reached the corner of the street that ran along the entrance to the priest’s apartment building, they paused to study the approach before moving in. But just as Seth stepped forward, Icicle tugged him back behind cover and pointed toward an alcove a third of the way down the street, on the opposite side. That recess, deep and dark, had been one of Icicle’s intended hiding places.

  But someone else had the same idea. A shadow moved within the alcove. A man leaned forward, gazed up toward a window of the apartment building across from him, then stepped back into the dark. He showed himself for only a moment, but it was enough for Icicle to see that the man did not wear the black suit of a priest—he was an outsider, the same as Icicle and Seth.

  They watched the man watch the building. In a while, the man peered down the street, then moved back in. He didn’t do so conspicuously. He was obviously experienced. The way he peered down the street suggested that he wasn’t alone, that he was waiting to give or receive a signal.

  A priest stepped out of the apartment building, glanced both ways along the street and headed to his left, away from Icicle and Seth, away from the man who watched the building. The man remained in place, but farther down the street, after the priest had passed a doorway, a woman eased into view and followed. Icicle’s muscles tightened. A man and a woman? He and Seth had crossed paths with a man and a woman before. During the abduction of Medici.

  But the man shifted out to follow the priest as well, and when Icicle got a good look at him, he decided that this couple was definitely not the couple he’d seen before. The man was more husky, the woman had longer hair.

  Despite the differences, the fact that again a man and woman were staking out sites where Icicle and Seth were engaged in a mission made Icicle nervous. Were they, too, after Father Dusseault? Indeed, was the priest he’d just seen Father Dusseault? He’d never met the man or seen a photograph of him. The best thing to do, Icicle decided, was to follow. Icicle motioned to Seth and stepped out into the street.

  Their wary pursuit led them deep within the Vatican gardens where, staying carefully back from the man and woman, they had a distant view of a Spanish-galleon fountain in a clearing. Moonlight revealed a priest standing before the fountain. Icicle sank to his stomach. With Seth beside him, he crawled nearer, wanting a better view of the priest, anxious to see if he was the same priest who’d left the apartment building.

  No. He wasn’t. But with a shock, Icicle realized that this was the same man he’d seen in the alley during Medici’s abduction. Baffled, he glanced at Seth, who had also recognized the man and shook his head in confusion. A second priest—the one who’d left the apartment building, whom Icicle suspected was Father Dusseault—stepped into the clearing. They spoke to each other. Surprisingly, Father Dusseault lunged with a knife. Just as amazingly, the other priest defended himself superbly. Though Father Dusseault was good, the other priest was better, taking the advantage, striking Father Dusseault repeatedly, knocking him senseless to the ground.

  Icicle watched in awe. He’d never heard of priests who handled themselves like warriors. A nun rushed into the clearing—the same woman Icicle had seen the other night in the alley with this man. Icicle wanted more desperately to know what was going on. He and Seth could have used their silenced handguns to disable them and make them explain. But he was aware that he and Seth weren’t alone out here. The other couple, the strangers, were hidden somewhere, watching. The man they’d followed stepped into the clearing, his hands raised. Icicle was tempted to risk crawling even closer in the hopes of hearing what they said to each other.

  But Seth distracted him. The assassin pulled a flat leather case from a jacket pocket, removed a hypodermic, and crawled not forward but toward the right, as if he meant to circle the clearing. Puzzled, Icicle went after him, and as Seth stopped, scanned dark bushes, and crawled farther, Icicle realized that Seth was stalking the woman they’d noticed outside the apartment building. She hadn’t yet shown herself in the gardens; she must have decided to wait to see what would happen in the cle
aring.

  Her shadow rose behind a tree twenty yards to Icicle’s left. From the clearing, she could not have been seen, but from Icicle’s vantage point behind her, she was distinct. Seth inched toward her, poised himself, and lunged to sweep a hand across her mouth at the same time that he plunged the needle into her arm. She struggled for less than five seconds.

  Seth eased her silently backward, away from the clearing. Icicle joined him, reaching to help him carry her, but Seth shoved his arm away. The red-haired man’s eyes gleamed fiercely, signaling she’s mine. Icicle shuddered, realizing that Seth was sicker than he’d imagined. Seth shuddered also, with sexual pleasure, lifting the woman so her stomach was over his shoulder, her breasts pressed against his back.

  They returned to this dark palace basement. With the unconscious woman next to him and Seth on the other side of her, Icicle struggled to contain his revulsion, hearing Seth’s hand brush along her body. The night had been long. He pressed a button on his digital watch: 7:23. He imagined the daylight outside. He didn’t know how he’d be able to bear sitting in this dark musty room, waiting for nine o’clock, when tourists would be allowed to enter the Vatican and they could leave, pretending the woman had suddenly fainted.

  21

  “Too much wine, too little sleep,” Icicle said in Italian to a solicitous desk clerk when he and Seth reached their hotel. They stood with the woman held up between them while they waited for the elevator doors to open. “Jet lag and all-night partying don’t go together, I’m sorry to say.” He tipped the clerk in appreciation for his concern. “Tonight, she’ll probably want to go dancing.”

  The clerk smiled knowingly and told them if they needed anything …

  “We’ll phone the front desk and ask specifically for you,” Icicle said.

  The elevator opened. They stepped inside and went up to their room.