Seth stalked into the temple. “Blood hides no secrets. I know where you are.” His shoes scraped on the ancient stone floor. His shadow loomed over the altar.
Icicle peered up toward the red-haired man, whose punched lips were swollen, crusted with blood. Seth’s eyes had never been brighter.
“The detonator.” Seth held out his hand.
“I hid it before I came down here.”
“Then you won’t mind if I search you.” Seth stepped closer.
Icicle squirmed backward.
“Give it to me,” Seth said, “and maybe I won’t kill you.”
“You’ll kill me, all right. But not until after you force me to watch you press the button.”
“Our few days together have been like a long-term marriage, I see. You’ve learned to understand me.” Seth stepped even closer. “Give me the detonator.”
Icicle continued backward. “You’ll have to take it.”
Seth shook his head. “What I’ll do is shoot you again, in the stomach this time, before I come closer. You’d live to see me press the button, but you wouldn’t have the strength to attack.” Seth raised his pistol.
Icicle’s mind raced, desperate to think of a way to distract his opponent. “Did you mean what you said in the car?”
Seth hesitated.
“Did you really kill my father?” Icicle asked.
“Would I lie when the truth is so satisfying? Of course I killed him.”
“Why?”
“It was Halloway’s idea to bring you into this. I told him I didn’t need help, but Halloway insisted. The trouble was, your father hadn’t disappeared. Mind you, he might have been next on the list, but I didn’t want to use up valuable time waiting for it to happen. So I got my hands on him myself.” Seth’s mangled lips formed a smile. “I did it at your dive shop in Australia. Used a silencer. Shot your father and your salesclerk while you were meeting with Halloway’s emissary. I wrapped your father’s body in a tarpaulin and loaded him into the trunk of my car. Did it in plain sight of everyone on the beach. No one paid attention. Does anyone ever pay attention? Went back to the shop and set fire to it. Drove away. I might as well have been invisible.”
Icicle wanted to vomit. “What did you do with the body?”
“Rented a boat. Took it out to sea. Let the sharks have a feast.”
Icicle made a choking sound.
“The body had to disappear,” Seth said, “to make it seem as if the Night and Fog was responsible. So you’d join us and help look for the rest of our fathers.”
“What about Halloway’s emissary? Why did he disappear?”
“I waited for him at his hotel. Identified myself. Took him for a drive. Shot him. Fed him to the sharks the same as I did your father. The theory was that if he too disappeared you’d think Halloway had something to do with the disappearances. I wanted to force you to seek out Halloway …”
“And when I did, like a fool I let both of you convince me you were innocent. I joined you.”
“And proved of some help, I admit, when it came to grabbing Medici. But really,” Seth said, “Halloway was wrong—I didn’t need you. We could never have gotten along. Your father stole the woman my father loved. Your mother could have been my mother. You would never have been born. If my father’s still alive, if I can manage to find him, I’m sure he’ll be overjoyed to learn that I killed both his enemy and the son of his enemy. It’s ironic, don’t you think? Like our fathers, we fell out over a woman. Give me the detonator. I promise your death will be quick after you watch me push the button.”
Loss of blood made Icicle sleepy. Concentrate, he told himself. Don’t let the bastard win. “Your word?” he asked. “You’ll kill me cleanly?” He raised his almost useless right arm to point toward the soft spot behind his right ear.
“You have my promise.”
With the same arm, Icicle reached in his pocket and took out the detonator, holding it out to his enemy.
“Set it on the floor. Slide it over to me,” Seth said.
“Too weak.”
“I don’t think so.”
His heart sinking in despair, Icicle did what he was told, hearing the detonator scrape across the stone floor.
“Excellent.” Seth stooped to pick up the detonator. He shifted his gaze from Icicle only for a second.
That second would be the only chance Icicle got. He whipped his agonized left arm from behind his back and threw the knife with all his remaining strength.
Seth jerked his head up. With a curse, his eyes fierce, he aimed. Not soon enough. The knife struck his throat, the blade entering his Adam’s apple, splitting it. The tip made an obscene scraping sound against his neckbone. The handle’s guard stopped against fractured cartilage.
Seth stumbled backward, his face twisting in shock, his skin almost chalk white in contrast with the crimson spewing from his throat. The massive trauma to his Adam’s apple would cause swelling that would shut off the passage of air to his lungs, Icicle knew. He’d die from asphyxiation before he bled to death. But he wouldn’t die instantly.
Icicle watched, horrified, as Seth squinted at him. You think you’ve won, his eyes seemed to say. But you haven’t. I still have the strength to shoot you again. We’ll both die. But not before you watch me do this.
Seth grasped the detonator and flicked the activation switch.
Icicle screamed, scrambling to stop him, but slipped and fell in the pool of his blood.
Seth staggered back out of reach and lowered a finger toward a button.
A shadow lunged from the stairwell, the man who’d been dressed as a priest in the Vatican gardens. The stranger yanked the detonator from Seth’s grasp at the same time that he twisted the pistol away from him.
Seth turned toward his sudden assailant. Wheezing, he tried to remove the knife from his throat, but the stranger rammed the butt of the knife so the blade reentered Seth’s throat. The impact made the knife twist sideways, widening the gap in Seth’s Adam’s apple. Crimson gushed. Spastic, Seth lurched from the force of the blow. He fell against the statues on the altar, turned to grab them for support, slid down, and collapsed unmoving upon the floor. His blood trickled over the knife Mithras held to the throat of the bull.
Icicle had not yet adjusted to the sudden arrival of the stranger, who now flicked off the switch on the detonator and stalked toward him, aiming Seth’s pistol. The stranger’s expression was a combination of disgust and fury.
“Get me out of here,” Icicle said, “before the authorities arrive. We don’t have much time. If you help me, I’ll help you.” Delirium made his thoughts drift. He fought to steady them. “I’ll tell you anything you want to know. My father’s dead. This isn’t my fight any longer. Halloway has to be punished.”
“Halloway. Who’s Halloway?”
“For God’s sake, get me out of here. The woman we kidnapped from the gardens. Seth rigged explosives to her.”
“I know that.”
“But her husband thinks he can safely remove the bomb if we’re out of radio range. Seth lied. The bomb’ll go off if the husband tries to disconnect the wires.”
The stranger spoke urgently. “Can you walk?”
“I think so.” Icicle almost fainted from pain when the stranger helped him up.
The stranger put his jacket over Icicle’s shoulders. “It’ll hide the blood.”
Icicle leaned against the stranger and, through a haze, stumbled from the temple. The next thing he knew, he was in the subterranean basilica. He didn’t remember going up the final group of stairs or crossing the upper basilica. He only knew that he was outside, that the last rays of sunset were blinding, that a police siren’s wail was approaching.
“Walk faster,” the stranger said, supporting him.
They reached a corner and turned in the direction opposite to the siren.
At another corner, they turned again.
And again. Disoriented, Icicle had the sense of wandering through a maze. “I
don’t think I can stand up much longer.”
“We’re almost there.”
A park to the south of the Arch of Constantine, Icicle saw. In the dimming blaze of sunset, tourists milled through the area, admiring the carvings on the monument. The stranger set him on the ground against a tree. Given the emergency, the cover was perfect, Icicle realized. As long as I don’t bleed through the jacket he slipped over my shoulders, I won’t attract attention.
“Stay here. I’ll be back,” the stranger said.
“Tell the woman’s husband not to try to remove the bomb.”
But the stranger had already disappeared through the crowd.
8
“Damn it, Romulus, I warned you not to jerk me around. Where the hell’s the priest? I promised you two hours alone with him. I come back, and the room’s deserted. Nothing’s on the fucking tape recorder.” Gallagher pounded a fist into his hand.
The station chief had been pacing angrily in the hotel room when Saul brought Erika back there. Saul had hoped to see Drew and Arlene, not Gallagher. He’d waited outside the Colosseum, expecting his friends to emerge from the park across from the ruins. When they hadn’t come, he’d tried to call them where they should have been waiting at the prearranged contact site, a pay phone. But the first time no one had answered, and the second time a strident woman had asked if he was Luigi and why was he keeping her waiting. By then, it was after 7 P.M., the deadline for contact. Filled with misgivings, he’d decided that the hotel room was the only other place where Drew and Arlene would know they could get in touch with him. Besides, the hotel room would give him the privacy he needed to remove the explosives from Erika’s back. Guiding her, he’d hailed a taxi and returned to the hotel as quickly as possible.
But now, in addition to his other pressures, he had to deal with Gallagher.
“The priest doesn’t matter,” Saul said. “I’ve got my wife back. That’s all I care about.”
“You’re telling me the priest is gone because you traded him?”
“Yes! And I’d do it again! I questioned him, don’t worry! I’ll keep my bargain! I’ve got plenty to tell you! But not before I deal with this!” Saul slipped the rain jacket off Erika, showing Gallagher the metal box attached to the belt at her spine.
Gallagher started. “Jesus Christ, it’s a bomb.”
Erika murmured something unintelligible; gradually the effects of the drug were lessening. Saul sat her on the bed and studied the apparatus secured to her. “I’ll have to break the lock or cut the belt. But the belt’s wired to the box. The whole thing—lock, belt, and box—forms a continuous electrical circuit.”
“Then the bomb might be rigged to go off if the circuit’s broken.”
“Seth told me it was safe to take it off as soon as he was out of radio range.”
“Seth? Who the hell is Seth?”
“I’ll explain later. First I have to—” Saul reached toward the wires, stiffening when he heard a knock on the door. He swung his troubled gaze toward the sound.
Gallagher went to answer it.
“No! Wait!” Saul said. He suspected Drew and Arlene were in the corridor, and he didn’t want Gallagher to see them.
“What’s the problem, Romulus? Another secret?”
Gallagher opened the door; Saul’s suspicion had been half-correct. Arlene stood out there, supporting the groggy priest.
“Who the hell are you?” Gallagher demanded.
Saul slumped into a chair.
Arlene held back for a moment, then acquiesced when Gallagher tugged her and Father Dusseault into the room.
“Romulus, who is this woman?” Gallagher insisted, locking the door.
“A friend.”
“That’s not a good enough explanation.”
“It’s all you need to know. You’ve got the priest back. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it? Thank her. Don’t ask questions about who she is.”
Arlene brought the priest to the bed and laid him down on the side away from Erika.
“The priest back?” Gallagher said. “No, that isn’t what I wanted.”
“I wish you’d make up your mind.”
“I don’t want him. I want what he knows. After I learn about the Fraternity, the sooner I’m rid of him the better.”
“He killed Cardinal Pavelic. He’s been trying to sabotage the Fraternity. What’s more, he can tell you where to find a dozen or more Nazi war criminals.”
Gallagher’s mouth opened in surprise.
Saul turned to Arlene. “I’m glad to see you again. When I couldn’t make contact … How did you get the priest back? Drew? Where’s Drew?”
“He went after Seth and Icicle,” she said.
“Icicle?” Gallagher looked even more mystified. “Drew?”
Saul and Arlene ignored him.
“Your wife?” Arlene asked. “Is she all right?”
“Still groggy from being drugged. It doesn’t seem as if they hurt her.”
“She’s beautiful.”
“Yes.” Saul felt tears in his eyes. “And smart and funny and kind. Strong, maybe stronger than I am—in all sorts of ways. I don’t know what I’d do without her.”
“Would somebody please tell me what’s going on?” Gallagher said.
“After World War Two, Cardinal Pavelic helped Nazi war criminals escape from the Allies,” Arlene said. “Over the years, he kept track of them. He blackmailed them in exchange for his silence. His assistant”—Arlene gestured toward Father Dusseault—“found out what the cardinal was doing. Father Dusseault belongs to the Fraternity, but he hates what the order stands for. He used his position in the order to try to sabotage it. He saw the cardinal as a further example of corruption within the Church. Not only did he kill the cardinal—he decided to punish the war criminals the cardinal had been protecting.”
“Punish them? How?”
Saul added to Arlene’s explanation. “Father Dusseault gave the information to a Mossad operative whose family had been killed and who himself had nearly been killed in Dachau. The theory was that someone with so terrible a grievance, particularly someone with his training and resources, would be a more reliable instrument of punishment than trials that might take years.”
“Punishment? Do you mean vengeance?” Gallagher asked. “Did Father Dusseault hope the Mossad operative would kill the Nazis?”
Saul nodded. “I’m less sure about the rest of it, but my guess is that the Mossad agent—his name was Ephraim Avidan by the way—decided he needed help. I think he went to other Mossad operatives who’d been in concentration camps and organized a team. These operatives were old enough to be retired. Many of them were widowers. They had the freedom, both politically and personally, to do what they wanted. In Vienna, Erika and I were given a list of men’s names by our contact with the Mossad. The men on that list matched the profile I just described. During the past few months, they all disappeared. I think they were dropping out of the limited society they still had, preparing for their mission.”
“Disappearing?” Gallagher asked. “It sounds like …”
“My wife’s father,” Saul said. “I think he’s one of the team.”
The room seemed to shrink.
“What about the two men you mentioned—Seth and Icicle?”
“Assassins. Sons of Nazi assassins. I think their fathers are two of the war criminals the cardinal protected. If Avidan’s team moved against their fathers, Seth and Icicle would want to know who was doing it and why. They seem to have decided that the cardinal was the key to the puzzle. If they found out why the cardinal disappeared, they’d find out why those war criminals became targets after so many years.”
Gallagher gestured toward Arlene. “So how do you fit into this? Who’s Drew?”
“No more questions,” Saul said. “Erika’s all that matters. I have to get this damned thing off her.”
That afternoon, he’d asked Arlene to buy the metal clippers Seth had claimed he’d need to get the belt off Er
ika once Seth was out of radio range. Now Arlene reached in her purse and gave them to Saul.
He pressed them against the metal belt and hesitated. “Arlene, maybe you, Gallagher, and the priest ought to get out of here. In case this thing blows up.”
“If you think it’s that risky, don’t do anything.”
Saul shook his head. “Suppose Seth isn’t out of radio range. You said Drew was chasing him. Seth might press the detonator.”
“Maybe we should all get out of here,” Gallagher said. “I’ll phone for an Agency explosives expert.”
“By the time he got here, it might be too late.” Saul studied the wires attached to the metal belt and box. “Unless … maybe. Yes, it just might work.” He hurried to unplug a lamp on a bureau. With sweat-slippery hands, he used the metal clippers to snip the cord from the base of the lamp and cut the electrical plug from the opposite end of the cord.
“What are you doing?” Gallagher asked.
Saul was concentrating too hard to answer. Gently, he pressed the clippers against the rubber insulation on the cord, nicked it two inches from each end, then peeled off the strips of insulation, exposing the wires. He went back to Erika and secured one end of the cord to a bare wire leading from the metal box to the belt. He attached the other end of the cord to a second bare wire leading from the box to the belt. He’d been afraid that the bomb would go off if he cut the belt and interrupted an electrical circuit. But now the lamp cord provided the same function that the belt did. In theory, he could now cut the belt, and the circuit wouldn’t be damaged.
In theory.
“I think,” Saul said, “that this would be a good time for all of you to leave.”
Unprotesting, Arlene raised the priest from the bed. “Gallagher, let’s take a stroll to the end of the hall.”
“Romulus?”
Saul waited.
“Good luck.”
“Thanks.”
“You’re something else.”
Ten seconds later, Saul was alone with Erika.
Aching with love, he pressed the clippers to the front of the belt and snipped it.
The phone rang precisely when he’d anticipated the explosion. The harsh sound jolted his nerves; his heart lurched.
The League of Night and Fog Page 34
