The League of Night and Fog

by David Morrell

  Drew smiled. “Saul was right about how smart you are.”

  “If I’m so smart, why aren’t I cheering my father on?” Erika asked. “Part of me wants him to get even.”

  “Part of me feels that way, too,” Saul said. “Maybe that’s why I’m so angry about trying to protect them.”

  “That’s just the point,” Drew said. “Part of you wants vengeance. But only part of you. I feel like an outsider—without a right to an opinion. My relatives weren’t killed in the Holocaust. My race wasn’t hunted and almost exterminated. But when I think about the SS, I feel so outraged I want to …” He sighed. “Some of them weren’t even crazy enough to believe in what they were doing. They just complied with the craziness around them. To earn a living. To feed their families. If enough of the hypocrites had objected with sufficient force …”

  “But the world isn’t like that,” Erika said.

  “We are,” Drew said. “That’s why we refuse to condone Nazi methods being used against Nazis. Because we refuse to become like Nazis. Isn’t that what the Nuremberg trials were about? Not vengeance but reason and law. Believe me, I want to see these war criminals punished. I don’t care how old they are. They must be punished. Death in my opinion. An absolute crime requires absolute penance. But not by individuals, not on the basis of anger alone, not without the sanction of society.”

  “But how … ?” Erika faltered, reaching for the bed.

  “Are you all right?” Saul hurried over and put his arm around her.

  She nodded, anxious to ask her question. “How are we going to stop my father?”

  “Toronto,” Saul told her. “Halloway lives nearby. Your father was last seen there. Do you feel strong enough to travel?”

  “Even if I didn’t, I’d say I did. For my father’s sake.”

  “But do you?”

  “Yes. Get two tickets on the first plane you can.”

  “Four,” Drew said.

  Erika glanced up quickly at him in surprise.

  Arlene, who’d listened in silence, stepped forward. “I agree with Drew. Four tickets. We’re coming along.”

  “But you don’t …”

  “Have to? Is that what you wanted to say?”

  “It’s not your problem.” Erika gestured in frustration. “That sounds rude. I don’t mean it that way. But he’s not your father.”

  “Right,” Drew said. “We’re not obligated. All the same, we’re coming along.”

  “You don’t even know me.”

  “We will.”

  14

  Joseph Bernstein sat alone in the dark living room of the house-turned-into-a-prison in Toronto. He tried to relax before the tension of tomorrow. A few minutes’ quiet.

  I’m seventy, he thought. Other old men—my comrades—sleep upstairs. Equally old men—my enemies—are our prisoners. Tomorrow, after more than forty years, I fulfill a vow I made in my youth. To avenge my family. To punish monsters as they punished me.

  15

  The Air Canada DC-10 landed in Toronto shortly after 2 P.M. Saul’s body was still set for Rome time, where the sun would be setting, not blazing above him. He’d slept little the night before and felt exhausted. His legs ached from lack of exercise.

  Arlene and Drew said they felt as he did. But Erika had an excess of energy. Concern about her father prompted her to take charge as soon as they passed through immigration and customs. She found a car-rental booth and twenty minutes later drove the group out of the airport complex, merging with Highway 401.

  Traffic was considerable, most drivers ignoring the hundred-kilometer-an-hour speed limit. But Erika didn’t want trouble with the police and, despite her impatience, maintained the legal maximum. The afternoon sun was oppressive. She switched on the sedan’s air conditioner and stared straight ahead, oblivious to the farm fields that flanked the highway.

  Saul watched the exit numbers and, fifty minutes later, pointed. “Here. Take this one.”

  He regretted that he hadn’t been able to wait for Misha Pletz’s phone call in Rome. Misha had insisted he had something important to say, and Saul had suspected the information was related to Halloway. But when it came to a choice between waiting in Rome or catching the earliest plane to Toronto, speed had dictated which decision to make.

  “Turn here. To the left,” Saul said.

  Erika drove along a country road. Five kilometers farther, Saul told her to turn left again. The sun-bathed countryside was gentle hills, woods alternating with corn and pasture.

  “We ought to be close now,” Saul said. The blacktop road curved. He pointed to the right toward a gravel lane that led up through trees toward a sloping lawn and a mansion on a bluff. “I think this is it. The layout’s the same as Icicle’s description. There should be a … Yes, see the silhouette of a greyhound on the mailbox at the side of the road.”

  “Lots of people put decorations on their mailbox, and lots of those decorations are silhouettes of dogs,” Drew cautioned.

  “Icicle said there’d be a metal bridge around a bend past the mansion.”

  A minute later, Erika drove across such a bridge. “I’m convinced. It’s almost three-thirty. Let’s not waste daylight.” She turned the car around and drove back across the bridge, stopping at the side of the blacktop. “Near the river, the abandoned car won’t look suspicious. It’ll seem as if somebody stopped to go fishing.”

  “I wish we’d been able to bring our weapons,” Saul said.

  “Through airport security? We’d still be back in Rome. In jail,” Drew told him.

  “It’s just a wish. But I’m going to feel severely underdressed when we get to that mansion.”

  16

  The woods were dense. Only on occasion did sunbeams pierce the canopy of leaves. Smelling fragrant loam, Drew followed a zigzagging game trail, stepped over a fallen trunk, and started up a more densely wooded slope. He glanced back toward Arlene, admiring her graceful movements, her obvious feeling of being at home in difficult terrain. We’ll have to go rock-climbing, he thought. Just the two of us in a wilderness for a couple of weeks.

  When this is over.

  He concentrated only on the present and climbed higher through the trees. At the top, he waited for Arlene to join him and touched her shoulder lovingly. Beyond the clearing, a break in a line of trees revealed the mansion to the right on the continuation of this bluff. Saul and Erika were ahead of them, crouched among bushes.

  Even at a hundred yards, Drew could see a half-dozen armed guards in front of the mansion. Their attention was directed toward the entrance to the estate. Ten cars of different types were parked beside them. A man in a blue exercise suit strode out of the mansion’s front door and stopped abruptly, appalled by what he saw. A truck arrived, raising dust as it sped up the gravel lane.

  17

  The previous evening, Halloway had felt so nervous about the impending munitions delivery that he’d decided to risk visiting his wife and children at the safe house in Kitchener. Three A.M. in Libya was 9 P.M. in Ontario, and allowing for the time required to transfer the arms from Medusa to the Libyan freighter and for the further time the Libyan freighter would need to get back to home port, he didn’t expect to receive word about the transaction until the next morning.

  Though he wasn’t religious, he prayed that the mission would be a success, for he now shared Rosenberg’s tense misgivings about the Night and Fog’s possible discovery of the shipment. The enemy had learned so much with which to terrorize them that perhaps they’d learned about Medusa too. But Halloway couldn’t warn the Libyans about the potential information leak. Assured of maximum punishment for sending a shipment that might have been compromised, he took the gamble of not alerting his clients and hoped that nothing would go wrong.

  His hope was manifested by a toast at dinner. He raised a glass of wine and feigned a smile toward his wife and children. “I know you’re confused about what’s going on. The past few months have been a strain. You wish you were home. The
bodyguards make you nervous. But sometimes international finance creates enemies. If it helps, I believe we’ll soon see the end of the crisis. In the meantime, your patience and understanding have been remarkable.” He sipped his wine and silently proposed another toast. To Medusa. To the satisfactory conclusion of a hundred-million-dollar agreement.

  He noted that it was precisely 9 P.M., the time for the Mediterranean delivery. A bodyguard came into the dining room and handed him a telegram.

  Halloway ripped open the side of the envelope and pulled out the message. He had to read it several times before he absorbed the impact of the words.

  ALL PROBLEMS SOLVED. YOUR FATHER SAFE. RETURNING HIM TOMORROW. YOUR TIME THREE P.M. YOUR ESTATE. ICICLE. SETH.

  Halloway exhaled, overcome with relief. For the first time in several months, he felt buoyant, liberated. True, he wondered why Seth and Icicle had sent a telegram instead of phoning, and why they’d sent the telegram here, to the safe house he’d told them about, instead of to the estate outside town. But after he phoned a guard at the estate and learned that a telegram had just arrived there as well, he felt reassured that Seth and Icicle had tried to contact him at both of the places where he’d probably be. They must have worried that a phone call, for whatever reason, would have endangered them. He instructed the security force at his estate to expect company tomorrow.

  “Your grandfather’s coming home,” he told his children. With a beaming smile toward his wife, he departed from his usual abstemiousness and poured himself a second glass of wine.

  By noon the next day, he felt so nervous he couldn’t keep still. Protected by bodyguards, he drove out to his estate. A car had already arrived. Overjoyed, he rushed toward it.

  But instead of his father, Rosenberg stepped out of the car.

  Halloway froze in astonishment. “What are you doing here?”

  “Your telegram.”

  “Telegram?”

  “You didn’t send one?”

  “For Christ’s sake, no!”

  “But it’s got your name on it.” Rosenberg took the telegram from his suit-coat pocket.

  Halloway yanked it away from him. His heart sank as he read it.

  PHONE CAN’T BE TRUSTED. ALL PROBLEMS SOLVED. OUR FATHERS ARE SAFE. ARRIVE TOMORROW. MY TIME THREE P.M. MY ESTATE. HALLOWAY.

  “And you believed this?” Halloway crushed the paper.

  “What was I supposed to do? Phone when you told me I shouldn’t? Stay in Mexico when I hoped my father was here in Canada?”

  “You stupid bastard, I received a telegram as well! The message was almost the same! My father was supposed to be here.”

  “Then you’re as stupid as you think I am!”

  “They did this!” Halloway pivoted toward the entrance to his estate. “They set us up!”

  “They?” Rosenberg’s knees bent. “The Night and Fog?”

  “Who else would … ? They must be watching us right now!”

  Halloway and Rosenberg retreated toward the mansion.

  But Halloway pivoted again, hearing a car roar up the gravel lane. As guards rushed toward it, Halloway recognized Miller behind the steering wheel. “I told you not to come here!”

  Miller’s car crunched to a halt on the gravel. The angry architect surged from his car. “And I told you I was coming! You knew what my father was! You knew what all the fathers were! I tried to convince myself I’d only be sinking to your level if I came here and strangled you. But God help me, even knowing my father’s crime, I wanted him back! And then you sent me this telegram! My father! You said he’d be here! Where is he?”

  Halloway grabbed the piece of paper with which Miller gestured in fury. The message was the same one that Rosenberg had received. “They’re out there,” Halloway cried. “I know it. I’m sure of it. They’re watching us.”

  “Out there?” Miller’s anger rose. “What are you—? Out there? Who?”

  “We’ve got to take cover. Quickly. Inside.” Halloway scurried toward the front steps. He shouted orders to the captain of his guards. “Pull your men in from the perimeter! Protect the house!”

  But at once he spun again, hearing a car roar up the lane. Oh, Jesus, he thought. Not another one.

  18

  It went on like that for the next two hours, cars rushing up to the mansion, men scrambling out, each clutching a telegram. From around the world, they’d been summoned. From Mexico, America, England, France, Sweden, Egypt, and Italy, they’d rushed to be reunited with their fathers, only to learn of the trick that had brought them to Halloway’s estate. Sheltered in his study while guards watched the mansion, they raised frightened angry voices. They shouted, accused, complained.

  “I’m getting out of here!”

  “But it isn’t safe to leave!”

  “It isn’t safe to stay!”

  “What’s supposed to happen at three o’clock?”

  “Why was that time specified in the telegram?”

  “What if our fathers will be returned?”

  “What if we’ll be attacked?”

  The appointed time passed. Halloway heard another vehicle enter the lane. He rushed outside, hoping he was wrong about the Night and Fog, praying this was Icicle and Seth.

  But instead of a car, he saw a truck. With wooden slats along its sides, a tarpaulin covering the top. It looked like …

  Halloway shivered.

  … a cattle truck.

  God have mercy, he thought, filled with a sickening premonition. The threat was all the more horrifying because it was vague. But of this he was certain—the end had begun.

  19

  “What’s happening down there?” Saul asked. Crouched beside Erika, Drew, and Arlene, he watched from the bluff as the truck approached the cars parked in front of the mansion. The man in the blue exercise suit gestured frantically to his guards, who raised their rifles toward the truck.

  Drew’s voice was strained. “We need to get closer.”

  “Now. While the guards are distracted,” Erika said.

  Beyond the bushes in which they hid, a waist-high barbed wire fence separated them from the lawn of the estate. Erika hurried toward it. There were no glass insulators on the posts; the wires weren’t electrified. She didn’t see any closed-circuit cameras. There might be hidden sound and pressure detectors, but need made her take the risk. She climbed a post, tumbled to the lawn, and crawled.

  To her right, a hundred yards away, she saw the man in the blue exercise suit shouting more orders to his guards, who aimed toward the cattle truck. It reached the top of the lane, approaching the cars.

  Impelled by a horrible foreboding, Erika crawled faster. She turned toward Saul, who was squirming through the grass in her direction. Drew and Arlene were farther to her left, spreading out so there’d be less chance of anyone seeing them.

  With the sun on her back, she hurried toward a garden plot filled with tall orange snapdragons that would give her more concealment on the way to the mansion.

  Abruptly she stopped. Two guards at the back of the mansion had scrambled toward the commotion in front. They joined their counterparts and aimed at the cattle truck, which had turned so that its hatch was pointed toward the group in front of the mansion.

  She took advantage of the guards’ preoccupation and hurried closer to the mansion. But on her left she saw a sentry. She crouched behind a shrub. The sentry, rifle at the ready, approached a shed, only to lurch back as if struck. He plucked at something on the side of his neck and suddenly collapsed. Baffled, Erika watched two elderly men emerge from behind the shed. One of them held a gun whose distinctive shape she recognized—it was used to shoot tranquilizer darts. Despite their advanced age, the men worked with surprising speed, dragging the sentry into the shed. One shut the door while the other grabbed the sentry’s rifle. They hurried toward the back of the mansion and disappeared.

  Erika’s bewilderment increased when she looked to her right, toward the front of the mansion, and saw an elderly man get out of th
e passenger door of the truck. The man walked toward the truck’s back hatch and joined another old man, who’d gotten out on the driver’s side and, unseen by Erika, had walked to the back. They braced themselves in front of the guards’ rifles. With a mixture of fear and dismay, Erika crawled faster. Her heart pounded. Her premonition worsened. The elderly man who’d just appeared from the blind side of the truck was her father.

  20

  Rage had made him incapable of fear. Joseph Bernstein stopped at point-blank range from the rifles and turned toward Halloway. “Is this any way to welcome visitors?”

  “Who are you?”

  “I think you already know,” Ephraim Avidan said. Standing next to Joseph, he lifted his hand toward the tarpaulin that covered the truck’s back hatch. “Tell your guards to lower their guns.” Ephraim yanked the tarpaulin to the side of the truck. The back hatch slammed down.

  A bearded elderly man sat in the truck, aiming a machine gun. “Since munitions are your business, you’re no doubt aware I’ve pulled back the cocking bolt on this weapon,” he said. “You also know the devastation rapid-feed thirty-caliber bullets can accomplish. Even if someone shot me right now, my nervous reflex would pull the trigger. I’m aiming directly at your chest. Please do what my associate requested and order your guards to lower their rifles.”

  “If you need further incentive, look deeper into the truck,” Joseph said.

  Lips parted with apprehension, Halloway squinted toward the interior.

  “Step closer. We want you to see every detail,” Ephraim said.

  Halloway took two nervous steps forward and paled when he saw what was in there.

  Drugged, ashen, hollow-cheeked, the fathers were chained together, eleven of them slumped on the floor of the truck. An elderly man guarded the prisoners, pressing an Uzi against the forehead of Halloway’s father.

  “Dear God.” Halloway clutched his stomach, as if he might vomit.