The League of Night and Fog

by David Morrell

  “A packet of explosive will be attached to your wife’s back. I’ll hide it under her jacket. The bomb will have a radio-controlled detonator whose electronic trigger will be in my pocket. As long as I’m within a mile of her, I’ll be able to set the bomb off if I feel threatened. Don’t fool yourself into thinking that all you have to do is remove the bomb from her and then betray me. The explosives will be held in place by a locked metal belt that’s been wired in such a way that any attempt to remove it—by using metal clippers, for example—will blow her apart. Only when I’m out of radio range will the detonator be deactivated. Only then can the belt be safely cut off.”

  Saul felt as if insects had invaded his chest. “You seem to have thought of everything.”

  “That’s why I stayed alive so long. Six o’clock. Don’t try to be clever. Just do what you’ve been told.” With a click, the line was disconnected.

  Saul set down the phone. He tried to keep his voice from shaking while he explained to Drew and Arlene.

  Drew was briefly silent, assessing the information. At once he spoke with resolve. “It’s twenty after twelve. We’ve got just five minutes to take Father Dusseault back down to the other room before Gallagher shows up. You can question the priest for a while after that. But if he’s supposed to be able to walk from the Colosseum, you’ll have to stop giving him Sodium Amytal and let the drug wear off.”

  “That’s assuming Gallagher agrees to surrender the priest,” Saul said.

  Arlene looked surprised. “You think he might not?”

  “Gallagher wants to learn everything he can about the Fraternity. He won’t be happy about the deal I made. Suppose he thinks he can infiltrate a surveillance team into the Colosseum? Suppose he decides the threat about the bomb is a lie and figures he can get the priest back after the exchange? I won’t bet Erika’s life on someone else’s tradecraft. And something else—I’m not supposed to have moved the priest. How am I going to explain to Gallagher where I got the phone call? I’d have to tell him I brought the priest here so the two of you could help question him. He’d learn about you.”

  Drew glanced at Arlene. She nodded.

  “Tell Gallagher,” Drew said. “Your wife is more important than hiding us from Gallagher.”

  Saul felt a surge of warmth. His voice was choked with feeling. “I know how much your privacy means to you. I appreciate your gesture. Truly. More than I can say.”

  “It’s not just a gesture,” Drew said.

  “But even if I did let Gallagher know about you, it wouldn’t solve the problem. I still couldn’t count on his keeping the bargain I made. I don’t want his men at the Colosseum, and the only way I can guarantee they won’t be there …”

  “Is not to tell him?” Drew asked.

  “We’re going to have to steal the priest.”

  Drew committed himself immediately, reacting as if he and Saul had been working together for years. “Arlene, check the hallway. Make sure Gallagher isn’t out there. Saul and I will carry Father Dusseault down the fire stairs. Get the car. Have it waiting for us outside.”

  “But you’ll be seen taking the priest from the hotel!”

  “We’ll pretend it’s an emergency. We’ll leave so fast no one’ll have time to question us.”

  28

  When Icicle heard a knock on the door, he stood abruptly. He’d been staring at the unconscious woman on the bed, brooding about Seth’s behavior. To kill as an automatic choice, without sufficient reason, was a sign of lack of control. It wasn’t professional. It wasn’t … He likes it, Icicle thought. That’s what bothers me. The gleam he gets in his eyes. It’s as if he’s having … Sex? That realization made Icicle remember the near-fight he’d had with Seth to keep him from abusing the woman. Employing drugs or force to interrogate a prisoner was justified. But abusing this woman merely for the sake of self-gratification insulted Icicle’s sense of dignity. Victims had a right not to be caused needless pain, not to be treated as objects.

  Keep thinking about your father, he told himself. Nothing else … not the woman, not your principles … matters.

  But he couldn’t help noting that the conflict between Seth and himself was a replication of the lifelong enmity between their fathers. Was it happening all over again?

  He checked the peephole, identified Seth, and freed the lock on the door. He felt uneasy about the packages Seth carried and the gleam in his eyes.

  The gleam abruptly diminished when Seth glanced toward the bed. “You dressed her.”

  “She was shivering.”

  “Shivering?” Seth’s gleam returned. “Since you feel so protective about her, I’m sure you’ll be relieved to know that she’ll be leaving us.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When you interrogated her, she told us her husband’s name and where they were staying in Rome,” Seth explained.

  Icicle nodded.

  Seth put the packages on the bureau. “I phoned her husband.”

  “You what?”

  “I’ve made arrangements to exchange her for the priest.” Seth opened the packages, revealing a fist-sized clump of plastic explosives along with a radio-controlled detonator and transmitter. There were batteries, wires, a metal belt welded to a metal box, a lock.

  “Where the hell did you get—?”

  “One of my contacts here in Rome.” As Seth placed the explosives and the detonator in the metal box, he explained what he’d told the woman’s husband.

  Icicle’s lips parted in astonishment. No wonder Seth didn’t want to reveal why he was going out, he thought. I would never have agreed to the plan. “It’s too risky. Despite what the husband promised, there’s bound to be a surveillance team.”

  “With this bomb attached to her? If the husband loves her, he’ll follow orders.” Seth removed a blasting cap from his lapel pocket, inserted it into the explosives, and wired it to a post on the detonator. He took the remaining wire, attached one end to a contact on the metal belt and the other to a second post on the detonator. “Once I put the batteries into the detonator and lock the belt, I’ve got a continuous electrical circuit. I’ll close the metal box and wire the lid to the detonator. It’s foolproof. If anyone opens the box to get at the detonator, the circuit will be broken. A switch on the detonator will engage another set of batteries that automatically triggers the bomb. The same thing will happen if someone unlocks the belt or snips it apart. Of course, the other way to detonate the bomb is by using this.” He held up the radio-controlled transmitter.

  Icicle watched him with loathing, troubled by a discrepancy between Seth’s explanation and what he claimed to have told the husband. “Once you’re out of radio range, the bomb can be dismantled?”

  “No way.”

  “But you told the husband …”

  “I lied.” Seth slid the belt around the woman’s waist and locked it. He inserted two sets of batteries into the detonator, closed the metal box’s lid on the bare end of a wire attached to the detonator, and locked the lid. He smiled. “The only way to get this thing off her now is to blow the bitch up. How, my friend, do you feel about that?”

  CRITICAL MASS

  1

  Toronto, Canada. 6:30 A.M. The sun had just risen. Exhausted, Joseph Bernstein told the taxi driver to let him off at the next corner. He’d directed the driver to one of the few decaying sections of the city. Soon to be purged by urban renewal, ill-maintained two-story houses lined the street. Bernstein paid the driver and gave him a tip neither so large nor so small that the driver would remember. The moment the taxi was out of sight, Bernstein tested his weary body’s resources by walking one block south and two blocks east. He felt the way the worst houses looked. Lights were on in some of them, but he passed no one on the street, only a stray dog tearing apart a bulging plastic garbage bag. In the middle of the final block, he turned onto a cracked concrete sidewalk that led to a listing front porch. All the windows in the house were dark. An empty beer can lay on its side to the right
of the top of the steps—the signal that everything was as it should be. He knocked three times on the front door, waited while a curtain was pushed aside, then stepped in when the door was opened.

  Ephraim Avidan quickly closed the door and locked it, only then placing the Beretta he held into a shoulder holster beneath his rumpled suitcoat. “You had no problems?”

  “Everything’s on schedule. What about the others?”

  “Upstairs asleep. We take turns, two at a time standing guard.”

  “No, I meant the others,” Bernstein said. “Have you had any problems with them?”

  “They take orders well.” Avidan’s mouth showed a trace of a bitter smile. “The sedatives in their food help.”

  “I want to see them.”

  “Your stomach must be stronger than mine. I despise them so much I try to see them as little as possible.”

  “I want to remind myself.”

  “As you wish.” Avidan led him down a narrow corridor into a shadowy kitchen whose linoleum tile was peeling at the edges. He knocked three times on a warped plywood door, unlocked and opened it, then stepped back.

  Bernstein peered down musty steps toward a concrete floor the color of a bullet. A pale light at the bottom revealed a tall, bearded man of about seventy who wore a thick pullover sweater and stared up anxiously, holding a Beretta as Avidan had. Seeing Bernstein, the man lowered his pistol.

  When Bernstein reached the bottom, he put his arms around the man. David Gehmer was one of the most dependable, long-suffering members of the team. For the past four months, he—along with Gideon Levine—had endured without complaint the tedious, disagreeable task of acting as jailer. One by one, captives had been brought here from around the world—all told, eleven of them by now—imprisoned in the basement of this dilapidated house in Toronto. Yesterday, the other members of the team, having completed their tasks, had converged here as well and were asleep now in the upper floors of the house.

  Bernstein scanned the large cellar. Its windows had been boarded over. Spaced equally apart, three bare lights dangled from the ceiling. White slabs of plastic insulation had been attached to the walls to minimize dampness. Nonetheless, the room felt cold and clammy. Bernstein understood why, even in June, David Gehmer wore a sweater.

  The walls were lined with cots, eleven of them, upon each of which an old man lay covered with a woolen blanket. Some were awake, their eyes dazed by the lingering effects of the sedation in last night’s supper. Most were deeply asleep. All were pale from lack of exposure to the sun. All were handcuffed. A chain led from each cuff to a ring bolted into the wall.

  A few books and magazines lay next to each cot. Against a narrow wall at the far end of the room, shelves of plates and tinned food stood next to a small gas stove near an unshielded toilet.

  “It’s quite an assembly line,” Bernstein said dryly. “All the comforts of home.”

  “By comparison with Auschwitz, this is the promised land,” Gehmer said. “I shave each of them every other day. I cook all their meals. I make them take turns, cuffed to the sink, doing the cleanup. They’re only allowed to use plastic spoons. I count the spoons after every meal. When they have to go to the toilet, I let them go one at a time, chained to the sink again. That’s when they’re allowed to wash up.”

  “Yes, you’ve organized them remarkably.”

  “They inspired me. These monsters had a special talent for organization, after all. Sometimes I remember so vividly I think I’m back in the camp. I want to …” Gehmer raised his pistol and aimed it at the nearest prisoner.

  Bernstein touched Gehmer’s hand. “Patience, my friend. We both have nightmares. But we won’t have to endure them much longer. Soon justice will be served.”

  “Soon?” Gehmer spoke quickly. “When?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  2

  “Joseph surfaced again.”

  Misha Pletz, intent upon rechecking the plans for tonight’s Operation Salvage, needed a moment before he realized what his assistant had said to him. “Surfaced?”

  “Two hours ago.”

  “Where? Still in Washington?”

  “No. Toronto this time.”

  “Toronto?”

  “He contacted another of our operatives,” the assistant said. “The same as before. He chose one of his former students. It was four-thirty in the morning there. Joseph showed up at the man’s apartment, woke him, and gave him a message to relay to you. The operative had it coded and radioed here to Tel Aviv.”

  Misha held out his hand for the piece of paper his assistant clutched, but when he read it, he was baffled. “Two names?”

  “Aaron Rosenberg. Richard Halloway.” The assistant handed Misha a second piece of paper. “This is the operative’s summary of the verbal instructions Joseph gave him. They’re related to his previous message—the arms shipment he warned us was being sent to the Libyans to be used against us. Joseph says when you stop the shipment tonight he wants you to leak those names to the Libyans but not in a way that’ll make them suspect it’s a leak. He wants you to make it seem as if the two men accepted money from us in exchange for information about the shipment.”

  “But if the Libyans believe the leak, they’ll want revenge.” Misha stared at the paper in bewilderment. “We’d be setting them up to be killed. Why does Joseph want—?”

  “Rosenberg and Halloway are the arms dealers responsible for the shipment.”

  “He wants to make it look as if they accepted money from and then double-crossed the Libyans? He wants Rosenberg and Halloway punished by the people they were working for? Some crazy sense of justice? Why didn’t Joseph give us these names in his first message? Why did he wait until—?” Misha paused; an explanation occurred to him. “Because he didn’t want to give us time to check on them before we stopped the shipment? Is there another time limit we don’t know about, another schedule Joseph is following?”

  The assistant pointed toward the last paragraph of the report. “He made it a point of honor. The price for Joseph telling us about the shipment is we have to leak the names to the Libyans.”

  3

  Saul waited anxiously with Father Dusseault in a recess of one of the middle terraces at the northern side of the Colosseum. The priest was able to walk, but he was still groggy enough to be passive, easily guided. He’d made no trouble when Saul had brought him here and sat him down. The many tourists paid no attention to the infirm priest.

  Saul had arrived fifteen minutes early for the six o’clock appointment, and now it was ten minutes after. He used his binoculars to scan the opposite side of the Colosseum, worried that the exchange would not take place. As instructed, he’d come here alone with Father Dusseault. But terribly conscious of the sun setting lower, he cursed himself for disobeying one condition of the exchange by allowing Drew and Arlene to watch the Colosseum from the gardens of the Esquiline across the street. The Esquiline, one of the seven hills of Rome, was dominated by Nero’s palace, the so-called Golden House, and the sightseers swarming through both it and the surrounding park made the chances of an enemy spotting Drew and Arlene highly unlikely. It had seemed prudent to take the slight risk.

  But now he wished he hadn’t permitted the violation. Because by twenty after six he was sure that something was wrong. The number of tourists began to dwindle. A woman with blue-tinted hair stepped in front of Saul, obscuring his gaze through the binoculars. Her overweight husband joined her, listening to her complain about the high-heeled shoes he shouldn’t have let her wear.

  Saul stepped to the right, to reestablish his view of the opposite terraces. Scanning them, he suddenly froze the binoculars on a woman sitting on a walkway, her back against a wall. Saul had trouble steadying his hands on the binoculars. Erika? Even magnified, the woman wasn’t distinct, her head drooping toward her chest. But her hair was long and dark like Erika’s, and she seemed to be the same age, to have the same long legs and lithe body. What confused him was that this woman wore a green ny
lon jacket, which Erika did not possess.

  Abruptly, he remembered the voice on the phone telling him that Erika would wear a jacket to hide the bomb secured to her. When a man strolled over to her and set down a blue travel bag, Saul realized that the exchange was about to take place. With his binoculars, he tracked the tall pale man who’d left the travel bag and was moving to Saul’s left. At once, the man stopped and raised his own binoculars, aiming them at Saul.

  He’s waiting for me to start circling in the other direction, Saul thought. He won’t move until I do.

  Saul didn’t need encouragement. He left the priest sitting in the recess of the terrace and walked rapidly to the right. It took all his self-control not to run. For a moment, though, he almost faltered as the significance of something about the man occurred to him.

  The color of his hair. It was red.

  Dear God, had the voice on the phone belonged to Seth? The assassin, the son of a Nazi assassin, whom Drew and Arlene had described? If so, would his partner, the blond-haired Icicle, be in the Colosseum with him?

  Saul didn’t dare turn to scan the crowd. The gesture might disturb Seth into blowing Erika up as he’d threatened. Besides, at the moment Seth didn’t matter. Nor did Icicle. Only Erika did. Rounding the curve of the Colosseum, approaching its southern side, he quickened his steps, his gaze focused anxiously on Erika. She continued to sit with her head drooped toward her chest. He hadn’t seen her shift position. Had Seth reneged on his bargain? Was Erika dead?

  He zigzagged through clusters of tourists, ignoring their angry objections, too distraught to murmur apologies. He was thirty yards from Erika now, and she still hadn’t moved. He started running. Twenty yards. No sign of life. He reached her. When he raised her face and saw her eyelids flutter, he sank to his knees, almost weeping with relief.