Fraternity of the Stone

by David Morrell

  The voice was male. It was far away, hushed.

  "Why did you have to do it?" The voice was ghostly.

  Drew strained his eyes but couldn't penetrate the blackness... over there, to his right.

  He didn't feel threatened. Not yet, at least. Because he knew that the man could easily have shot him while he stood in front of his parents' graves.

  Which meant that the man felt the need to talk.

  He recognized the voice.

  Jake's.

  "Do you realize the shit you've caused?" Jake asked from the dark.

  Drew almost smiled. A rush of friendship overcame him.

  "Or how many men they've got hunting you?" Jake's voice was low.

  "And what about you?" Drew asked. "Were you told to hunt me, too? You're a long way from New York. You're not here because you like cemeteries at three a.m. Are you going to kill me?"

  "That's what I'm supposed to do." Jake's voice was resonant, mournful.

  "Then go ahead." Exhausted, empty, Drew suddenly didn't care any longer. "I'm dead already. I might as well fall down and be still."

  "But why?"

  "Because you've got your orders," Drew said.

  "No, that isn't what I mean. I want to know why you sold the network out."

  "I didn't."

  "They say you did."

  "And I can say I'm the Pope. That doesn't make it true. Besides, you didn't believe them. Otherwise, you'd never have given me the chance to talk. You'd have shot me while I stood here. How did you find me?"

  "Desperation."

  "That's what I always liked about you. Your knack for long explanations."

  "They sent a team to watch where you lived, just in case, but I knew you wouldn't go back there. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more I realized you wouldn't go back to any place that the network associates with you. My best guess was you'd holed up somewhere in the mountains. You know enough to survive there for months, years, even in winter. So that was that, I figured. The race was over. You'd won."

  "That doesn't explain... "

  "I'm coming to it. See, something kept nagging at me. A speck of a memory. There had to be some place that irresistibly tugged you. Even people like us are human. Where, though? What made you what you are? And then I remembered what you'd told me once - when a snowstorm forced us to camp for the night on a peak, the wind chill so bad we had to keep talking to each other to make sure we didn't fall asleep and die. Remember?"

  Drew did. With fondness. "In the Andes."

  "Right." Jake's voice came out of the dark. "And when you couldn't think of anything else, you told me what had happened to your parents and how you lived with your uncle and aunt in Boston."

  "My uncle's dead now."

  "Yes, but your aunt's still alive, though the way you'd described her I knew you'd never get in touch with her for help. But Boston reminded me of your story about how you protected your parents' graves. How you used to sneak into the cemetery every night. How, even as an adult, you still went to visit them whenever you could. It wasn't hard for me to learn which cemetery your parents were buried in or to find their graves. But I kept asking myself, before you went to ground, before you shut yourself off from the world, would you say your final goodbyes, would you still obey the old impulse? Or had you done so already and I'd missed you?"

  "A long shot."

  "Sure. But the only shot I had."

  Drew squinted toward the dark. "I've been on the run since January. You've been watching these graves every night since then?"

  "I told you. Desperation. But I gave myself till the end of this month." Jake laughed. "Imagine my surprise when you suddenly came out of the shadows. For a second, I thought I was seeing things."

  "It's a good place for ghosts. And reunions. And executions. The undertaker might just as well skip the funeral and plant me where I fall. But you still haven't shot me. Why?"

  In the darkness, Jake sighed. "Because I want to know what really happened."

  Drew told him.

  For a moment, Jake didn't react. "It makes a good story."

  "It's more than a story!"

  "But don't you see. It doesn't matter. What they believe is what matters. They came to me. 'You're his friend,' they said. 'You know his habits. You know what he'll do. He's dangerous. There's no telling who he might sell us out to next.' "

  "I told you already. I didn't sell them out!"

  "And they also said, 'We'll give you a hundred thousand dollars if you find him... and you kill him.' "

  Drew lost his patience. He stepped ahead, stretching out his arms. "Then do it! What are you waiting for? Earn the bounty!"

  "Don't rely on our friendship," Jake warned from the darkness. "Don't come any closer, and don't try to run."

  "Run? I'm sick of running. Kill me, or let me go."

  "If I let you go, you'd still be running."

  "No. Tomorrow I'm supposed to enter a monastery."

  "What?"

  "That's right. I'm becoming a Carthusian."

  "You mean you really did get religion? A Carthusian? Wait a minute. Aren't they the ones who live alone in a cell and pray all day? That's fucking weird. It's like crawling into a grave."

  "The opposite. Like being resurrected. I'm in a grave already. And not because of the gun you're aiming at me. Think what you want. From your point of view, by joining the Carthusians I'd be dead already, wouldn't I? You wouldn't have to kill me."

  "You were always good with words," Jake said from the darkness.

  "I won't insult our friendship by thinking that you're tempted by the hundred thousand dollars they offer you to kill me. I won't insult you either by trying to tempt you with a larger amount if you let me go. The fact is, I don't have that kind of money anymore. I gave everything away."

  "Weirder and weirder."

  "What I am doing is counting on our friendship. I saved your life once. On that same climb in the Andes. Remember?"

  "Oh, I remember all right."

  "Nobody knows you found me. Return the favor. Save my life. Let me walk away."

  "If only things could be that simple. See, there's something else I haven't told you. And more at stake here than just the hundred thousand. That's just the carrot on the end of the stick. But that stick has another end, a sharp end, and it's being jabbed right into my back. You really made them angry, Drew. A failed assignment. A major one. And those three operatives you killed. The network's sure you've become a freelance, a rogue."

  "They're wrong!"

  "But that's what they think. They're sure you sold out. The things you know, you could do a lot of damage to the network. So they're falling on you hard. They won't ever stop looking. And the angrier they get, the more they start falling hard on other people, too. Like me. It's like because I know you, because we're friends, they figure I should be able to find you. And if I don't, then I must be a rogue. Next month, I expect them to put the boots to me. So you see my point? I can't let you go."

  Drew heard the sorrow in Jake's tone. "But do you want to kill me?"

  "Christ, no! Why do you think I'm stalling?"

  "Then maybe there's a better way."

  "If there is, I don't know it."

  "Go back and tell them you found me and killed me."

  "What the hell good would that do? They wouldn't just take my word. I'd have to bring them proof!"

  "So what's the problem? Give them that proof!"

  "Make sense."

  "Tell them you rigged a car-bomb and blew me up." Drew remembered the method of execution he'd been told to use in the Alps. "Take photographs. They like photographs."

  "Of what? A bombed-out car won't... "

  "No, of me getting in the car and driving away. Of the car blowing up, toppling into a river. Under the circumstances, if you tell them you couldn't get me except with a bomb, what more proof could they want? But I won't be in the car."

  "You stop the car and get out before it blows?"

  "That
's right. Tomorrow, I'm supposed to report to the monastery. It's up in Vermont. But I can wait till morning to help you take the pictures."

  Drew started forward, toward Jake's voice in the darkness.

  "Stay where you are, Drew."

  "I can't wait any longer. I have to know. It's time to put our friendship on the line. Shoot me, or help me. There's no other choice." He stretched his arms out again. A gesture of openness.

  "I'm warning you, Drew." Jake sounded panicked. "Don't make me do it. Don't come any closer."

  "Sorry, buddy. I've been running too long. I'm tired. And I want to see your face."

  "For Christ's sake!"

  "Yes, that's right!" Drew came within ten feet from the clump of bushes where Jake was hidden. Five. And stopped. He stared at the darkness. "So what's it going to be? Do you want to help me prove to them that you killed me? So you can get me off the hook, and I can spend the rest of my life in peace? Or do you want to kill me for real?"

  He waited. Silence closed in.

  The bushes rustled.

  Drew tensed, fearing he'd miscalculated, imagining Jake raise his weapon.

  A figure emerged from the darkness.

  Jake approached, his arms outstretched as Drew's were. "God love you, pal."

  They embraced.

  5

  "In seventy-nine?" Arlene scanned Drew's face, her voice as taut with emotion as Drew's had been.

  "In March. In Boston. The day before I entered the monastery."

  She slumped back into her chair. "You're right. I had to hear all of it before I could understand. It's like... "

  Drew watched her struggle to find the words. "I came to think of it as a spiderweb," he said. "Everything interlocked, interwoven, coming full circle. For a terrible purpose. Because the ultimate spider's waiting."

  She studied him. "And Jake did what you asked? He helped you?"

  "We staged the photographs. I don't know what he told Scalpel. But he must have been convincing. From what you've said, there weren't any repercussions. In fact, until two weeks ago, you didn't notice anything unusual."

  "That's right." She brooded. "But then he became nervous."

  "And shortly after Jake disappeared, the monastery was attacked," Father Stanislaw said.

  The room seemed to narrow with tension.

  "Are the two events related?" The priest turned to Drew. "Did someone decide that Jake knew more than he was telling? Was he forced to admit that you were still alive, to reveal where you were?"

  "But why the six-year delay?" Drew asked. "If Scalpel was suspicious about his story, why did they wait so long to question him?"

  "Scalpel?" Arlene looked incredulous. "You're assuming they're responsible? That they caused Jake's disappearance and attacked the monastery?"

  "I have to. Everything points to them."

  "But- " She became more agitated.

  "What's wrong? I thought you took that for granted the same as I did."

  "No, you don't understand. It's impossible."

  "But everything fits."

  "It can't! Scalpel doesn't exist anymore!"

  Drew's stomach dropped. "What?"

  "The network was disbanded, in 1980. When you were in the monastery."

  Drew flinched.

  "She's right," Father Stanislaw said. "My sources are very firm about its cancellation. As you discovered, the program had gotten out of control. Far exceeding its mandate, it wasn't just counterattacking terrorists but had taken the potentially catastrophic step of interfering in foreign governments and plotting assassinations of heads of state. If the Ayatollah had learned that Americans were trying to kill him, he might have executed the hostages instead of merely holding them for ransom. For sure, he would have used the assassination attempt as proof that everything he said against America and its degeneracy was true. That's no doubt why Scalpel wanted you killed. Your failure to accomplish the hit and, worse, their suspicion that you'd become unstable enough to give away their secrets must have terrified them."

  "But then they thought I was dead."

  "And probably got their first good night's sleep since your failed assignment," Father Stanislaw said. "My sources feel that Scalpel decided it had come too close to disaster. A few even feel that someone in Scalpel was worried enough to let the State Department know how politically dangerous the program had become. Remember what happened to the CIA when the Senate's Church Committee uncovered the agency's assassination plots? Against Castro, Lumumba, Sukarno, the Diem brothers?"

  "The CIA was almost disbanded," Drew said. "As a compromise, its powers were severely restricted. And seven hundred members of the covert operations branch were fired."

  "Obviously Scalpel didn't want the same scandal. Protecting their careers, its administrators carefully and quietly dismantled the anti-terrorist network. The dismantling took a year from your failed attempt against the Ayatollah."

  "Then who the hell tried to kill me? And why?" Drew asked.

  "And what made Jake so nervous?" Arlene stared at them.

  "Maybe the poison will give us a clue," Drew said. "If we knew the type used to attack the monastery."

  Father Stanislaw considered him. "Yes. The bishop told me you'd kept the corpse of the mouse that saved your life. Your pet."

  "Stuart Little." Drew had trouble breathing. "I figured the last thing he could do for me was to help me find the answers. With an autopsy, if the poison was distinctive, I might have the information that would lead me to whoever had ordered the attack."

  "I wonder. Would you mind? May I see the body?"

  "It isn't pretty."

  "I expect that by now you know I'm not innocent."

  Drew glanced at the eerie red ring, the intersecting sword and Maltese cross. "I got that impression. The fraternity of the stone?"

  "That's right."

  "You'll have to tell me about it."

  "When the time is suitable. And in the meanwhile?"

  Drew went to his coat. Remarkably, when he pulled out the plastic bag, the tiny cadaver seemed unusually preserved. It was dry and shrunken, like a mummy.

  Father Stanislaw accepted it with reverence. "From tiny creatures..." He glanced from the mouse to Drew. "I've explained that I had the corpses removed from the monastery. Your concern was well founded, the fear of scandal you expressed to the bishop. If the authorities had learned about the attack, their investigation would have led them to discover that one monk had survived. And when they'd dug more deeply, they'd have learned about your background. The Church protecting an international assassin? It wouldn't do. So after our own investigation, we erased the evidence. The corpses were buried in keeping with Carthusian custom. Respectfully, but humbly, without a headstone to identify them. We maintained the privacy that the monks had always wanted. But autopsies were performed. The poison is distinctive. And under the circumstances, appropriate."

  Drew waited.

  "Monk's hood."

  The play on words was blasphemous. "If I ever get my hands on... "

  "Patience," Father Stanislaw said. He set the plastic

  bag on the dresser and touched his priest's white collar. "I should have put on my vestments."

  "For what?"

  "Your confession, for that's what this has been. A difficult problem of canon law. I wonder if my oversight makes your confession invalid."

  Drew's voice broke. "I don't think so."

  "I don't, either. God understands. Is that the end of it? Have you told me everything you think is pertinent? Everything that leads up to the attack on the monastery?"

  "Everything I can think of."

  "Then bow your head, and complete the ritual."

  "Father, I'm heartily sorry for these sins and the sins of all my life."

  Father Stanislaw raised his right hand, making the sign of the Cross. The priest prayed in Latin. Drew recognized the petition to God for forgiveness.

  Father Stanislaw paused. "To kill another human being is one of the ultimat
e crimes. Only suicide is greater. But the circumstances moderate your culpability. As does your lifelong ordeal. Make a good act of contrition."

  Drew did so.

  The priest said, "Go in peace." Then added, his voice suddenly harsh, "But stay right where you are."