The Fraternity of the Stone

by David Morrell

  The picnic area was small but attractive. A dense line of woods concealed it from the road. Five redwood tables were dispersed amid a grove of chestnut trees, their leaves turned autumn brown. A white stone path led to a narrow log bridge that went across a stream toward a seesaw and swing.

  He stopped beside the first table and admired the glinting stream—no doubt unexceptional to jaded eyes, but to Drew, it was sensational—and then got to work. This time, he sensed a change in his prisoner.

  Drew’s defensive instincts took charge. He aimed the Mauser, staring at his prisoner’s face. The man’s eyelids came open; not completely, somewhat listlessly, but nonetheless open.

  “Don’t move,” Drew said. “I’m not sure how awake you are, but in case you feel lucky, you ought to know we’re alone here. I’ll shoot if you force me to.”

  The warning got no response.

  “You hear me?” Drew asked.

  No answer.

  “Do you understand?”

  No reply.

  There was one way to find out how groggy the man truly was. Drew waved his free hand in front of his prisoner’s face, then abruptly touched his index finger against the tip of the prisoner’s nose. This technique was favored by referees in boxing matches. If a boxer was fully conscious, his eyes would automatically follow the movement of the finger.

  That happened now.

  “You’re awake all right,” Drew said. Words came easier the more he talked. “Pay attention. I have to loosen the belt on your leg. It’s in your best interest not to try kicking me while I do it. I’d only have to give your wound a punch to calm you down.”

  The prisoner studied him harshly. “Go ahead. Loosen the belt.”

  Drew did.

  The prisoner squinted out the window toward the picnic tables. “Where’s this? We still in Vermont?”

  “New Hampshire.”

  “Ah.” The man licked his cracked lips.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “If we’re all the way to New Hampshire, I guess I can’t expect…”

  “Your friends to find you? No, I wouldn’t count on it.”

  The man stared down at his leg. “How bad?”

  Drew shrugged. “The bullet went straight through. It missed the bone.”

  “That’s something to be thankful for, isn’t it? I’ve got a first-aid kit in the back. If you wouldn’t mind.”

  Drew thought about it. “Sure. Why not?”

  The man seemed surprised.

  “And you’ll be thirsty from loss of blood. I’ll open one of those Cokes. Too bad they’re not cold.”

  Drew cleaned the wound, disinfected and bandaged it. He swabbed crusted blood off the man’s forehead, then tilted an opened Coke can against his lips. “Don’t swallow too much at once. I don’t want you sick.”

  The man blinked, incredulous.

  Thirsty, Drew opened a Coke for himself. After six years of nothing to drink but water, milk, and fruit juice, the carbonated beverage was cloyingly sweet. “How bad’s your pain?”

  “I’ve had it worse.”

  “No doubt.”

  “If I need to—” he sounded indignant “—believe me, I can take more.”

  “Of course, but even so…” Drew opened two small sealed packs of Tylenol from the medical kit and pushed four pills between the man’s lips.

  “Why all the help?”

  “Let’s just say I’m a good Samaritan.”

  “Tell me another one. You wouldn’t have brought me along unless you wanted to question me. You think you’ve invented some new technique? I’m supposed to crack up from all this kindness?”

  Drew sighed. “Okay, if you insist, let’s get down to it. What you’re thinking now is that as long as I need information, I’ll keep you alive. So you’re weighing your life against the pain I’d give you to make you talk. Under those conditions, you’re prepared to suffer the maximum. Or maybe you’re planning to tell me whatever lies you think I might be dumb enough to accept. But then again, maybe the lies aren’t such a good idea. After all, if I believed them and decided that I didn’t have any further use for you, I might just finish you off. Are you with me so far?”

  The man stayed silent.

  Drew spread his hands. “If I had chemicals—sodium amytal, for instance—I could make you tell me whatever I wanted. But when it comes to torture, your survival depends on keeping your mouth shut. So here’s the point. I don’t intend to torture you, and I don’t intend to kill you.”

  “What kind of—?”

  “As far as I’m concerned, you’re a hired hand. You were just doing your job. The person who hired you is the one responsible, not you.”

  “I don’t know what the hell—”

  “All right, I’ll make it simple. When you hit the monastery, did you know who I was? Were you told about my background?”

  “I get it.” The man scowled. “This whole thing’s a trick to get me to tell you who—”

  Drew shook his head. “I did my best to explain. Then settle for this. In case you haven’t guessed, I’m not just a monk. I’m not an amateur. Whatever I do with you, I want you to know it’ll be professional. And I expect your standards to be the same. No panic, no stupid moves, no sloppiness. All right?”

  The man looked baffled.

  “For instance,” Drew said, “I’m going to fasten the tourniquet again. Then I’m going to cover you with a sleeping bag up to your shoulders. You’ll pretend to be asleep. We’re going to drive till we find a service station. I won’t leave the van. I’ll talk to the attendant from my window. I need to buy something from him. And you’ll keep pretending to be asleep. Otherwise, if you make a commotion, in all good conscience I’ll have to stop you.”

  “Aside from that? You said no killing, no torture.”

  “You’ve got my word.”

  “But you still figure you can make me talk?”

  “That’s right.”

  “This I have to see.”

  Drew smiled.

  As he drove from the picnic area, he felt assaulted by the noise and commotion of increased traffic. The cars seemed even smaller than he remembered them, a legacy from the gas crisis in the mid-’70s. But then two enormous motor homes went by, and he recalled predictions from 1979 that fuel-squandering vehicles would be a thing of the past.

  Apparently not. The motor homes were followed by a luxury car, the style and name of which he didn’t recognize (had the gas crisis ended? Had a new cheap plentiful fuel been developed?), and then by a big convertible. He didn’t understand—convertibles had been discontinued before he entered the monastery. What had happened to cause the turnaround?

  He reached a series of fast-food drive-throughs. Offensive to him in the ’70s, he’d nonetheless been used to them, familiarity rendering them invisible. But now, to his unaccustomed perspective, their ugliness was overwhelming. A sign advertised a special on something called a taco pizza. And what on earth were Chicken McNuggets?

  He found a service station. Gas was a dollar twenty per gallon, fifty cents higher than the outrageous price he remembered from 1979, and yet cars still crowded the road.

  “I feel like I’ve come here from Mars.”

  The man beside him said, “What?”

  Or maybe this was Mars.

  Drew parked the van near the service station pumps. “Close your eyes and keep quiet. Someone’s coming.”

  Drew bought a radiator hose from a young attendant, using cash from the wallet that he’d taken from the man on the hill. As he drove past the pumps toward the street, he tossed the hose onto his prisoner’s lap. “Here. Got a present for you.”

  Despite the restraining safety belts, the man almost jumped. “What the hell is this for?”

  “Why are you upset? Don’t you like surprises?”

  “I said, what’s it for?”

  “Take a guess.”

  “It’s used to beat somebody and not leave marks! But you said you wouldn’t—”

&nb
sp; “Right. No beating. Wrong guess. But keep on trying. It’ll help pass the time.”

  “And aren’t we going back the way we just came?”

  “To that picnic area.”

  “I get it now.”

  “Get what?”

  The man squirmed. “Holy God, you’re crazy!”

  Drew stared at him. “I wish you wouldn’t take the name of the Lord in vain.”

  2

  They reached the deserted picnic grounds. Concealed from traffic by the wooded stretch along the road, Drew backed the van until it was almost against a chestnut tree. He shut off the engine and stepped out, smiling. “Be right back,” he promised, and cheerfully waved the radiator hose.

  He shoved one end of the hose on top of the van’s exhaust pipe, opened the rear door, and bent the hose until its opposite end was inside the van. Restarting the engine, he backed toward the chestnut tree so the rear door was secure against the hose. He left the engine running. The van began to fill with dense blue acrid exhaust.

  The man became hysterical. “Christ, I was right! You are, you’re fucking nuts!”

  “Get too excited,” Drew said coldly, “and you won’t be able to hold your breath.”

  The man’s eyes widened. Surrounded by haze, he started coughing.

  Drew used the sleeping bags to seal the cracks around the back door. He made sure the windows were rolled up tightly. As a parting thought, he switched on the radio. “How would you like some music?”

  He’d expected something more strident than heavy-metal rock. But what he heard instead was: “Linda Ronstadt and the Nelson Riddle Orchestra,” an announcer said.

  Against a lush arrangement typical of Frank Sinatra’s Capitol recordings from the ’50s, Ronstadt (whose raw-throated versions of “When Will I Be Loved?” and “Back in the U.S.A.” Drew vividly remembered) began to sing a standard from the ’40s. He felt his sanity tilt.

  His prisoner’s coughing snapped him back to normal. The exhaust was thicker inside the van.

  “Can’t breathe,” the man said. “Don’t…”

  Drew closed the door. He walked in front of the van, along the white stone path to the log bridge spanning a stream, where he dropped a few pebbles into the water. The air smelled cool and sweet.

  With apparent indifference, he glanced back toward the van. The interior was obscured by haze, but he could nonetheless see the man writhing in the passenger seat. More important, the man could see him. Drew stretched his arms and leaned against the railing on the bridge. From the van, he heard screaming.

  Shortly, when the screams began to subside, Drew left the bridge to stroll back along the white stone path. He opened the driver’s door and shut off the engine. “How are you doing?”

  The man’s face was faintly blue. His eyelids were three-quarters closed. As a breeze helped the exhaust to drift from the van, Drew gently tapped his cheeks. “Don’t go to sleep on me. I’d hate to think I was boring you. I asked you, how are you doing?”

  The man retched, dry-heaving. “You son of a bitch.”

  “That well, huh?”

  The man coughed again, hacking desperately to clear his lungs. “You bastard, you gave me your word.”

  “About what?”

  “You promised. No killing, no torture.”

  “I’m keeping my promise. You’re the one to blame if it’s torture. Asphyxiation’s supposed to be peaceful. Like going to sleep. Relax and drift with the flow. Make it easy on yourself.”

  The man wheezed, his eyes red, watering. “And this is what you call not trying to kill me?”

  Drew looked insulted. “I meant it. I haven’t the slightest intention of letting you die.”

  The man squinted. “Then?”

  “I’ve got questions. If you don’t answer them, I’ll give you another dose of exhaust. And another if I have to. The monoxide’s bound to have an effect. Only you can judge to what extent, though there’s always the risk that your mind will become too weak for you to realize when you shouldn’t stay quiet any longer.”

  “You think I’m afraid of dying?”

  “I keep telling you, death’s not at issue here. You’ll survive.”

  “Then why the hell should I talk?”

  “Because you’re facing something worse than death. What’s in your future, if you don’t talk—” Drew scratched his beard stubble “—is brain damage. Permanent.”

  The man turned pale.

  “You’ll be a vegetable.”

  “They should have told me.”

  “Told you what?”

  “How good you are. Since the moment I woke up, you haven’t stopped screwing with my mind. You’ve played a half-dozen personalities. You’ve kept me off-balance all the time. Crazy? Hell, you’re as sane as they come.”

  Drew turned on the engine again and shut the door.

  3

  Two sessions later, the man started answering questions. It took a while. He was semicoherent by then, and his statements were frequently garbled. But though forced to be patient, Drew at least felt confident that the man was telling the truth, for the carbon monoxide made him so groggy that it destroyed his inhibitions and in that respect was somewhat like sodium amytal. Two hours later, Drew had learned about as much as he figured he could expect.

  But he wasn’t encouraged. The hit had been purchased in as professional a manner as it had been carried out. For obvious reasons, the rule was that the client was never directly involved with the operation. If something went wrong, if a member of the team was captured or decided to try to blackmail his employer, there wasn’t any direct trail back to whoever had paid the bill. Instead, the client got in touch with a broker, who contacted a sub-broker, who hired the necessary talent and made sure that the job was done. Except for the team itself, none of the principals met face to face. Arrangements among the client, broker, and sub-broker were conducted by intermediaries, using neutral phones. Nothing was ever communicated on paper. Fees were transferred through anonymous Swiss or Bahamian bank accounts.

  As much as Drew could determine from what his prisoner told him, that procedure had been followed in this instance. The man convinced Drew that he’d been hired by what amounted to his agent, whose name he’d never learned. The agent knew where to get in touch with his talent, though his talent didn’t know how to get in touch with him, and of course, the agent hadn’t told his talent who was paying for the hit or why. A job was a job. Bizarre in this case, granted. However, the down payment had been generous.

  Drew had frequently needed to rouse the man from his stupor, using smelling salts from the medical kit. Now he let him drift off to sleep, making sure that he had ventilation.

  He brooded, discouraged. He’d desperately hoped to find the answers easily, but God had determined otherwise. His ordeal was to be prolonged. Yet another penance.

  All right, he’d tried but failed here. Still, the failure wasn’t his fault; if he hadn’t tried, he’d have been foolish. But now he’d stayed too long. He had to get moving. Boston. His contact, Father Hafer. He had to tell his sponsor what had happened. To warn the Church and be given sanctuary.

  He took the radiator hose off the end of the exhaust pipe, removed the sleeping bags from the back door, and closed it. As the man slept sickly beside him, Drew steered the van from the picnic grounds and continued through New Hampshire, heading southeast now, toward Massachusetts.

  4

  It was twilight when he came to Boston. He took his prisoner’s wallet, then left the van and its unconscious occupant on the nearly empty top level of a parking ramp at Logan Airport. He had to do something with his prisoner, after all, and he had made promises. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t cause trouble.

  Dusk had turned to dark when he found a pay phone near a bus stop in front of the airport, and called airport security, telling them where the van was parked (he’d taken care to wipe off his fingerprints) and what they’d find inside.

  “He’s a terrorist. I’m telling
you, it’s twisted, sick, perverted. You just ask him. He’s got all these guns and—hey, he bragged about how he planned to hijack an overseas plane, make it fly to Florida, and crash on Disney World. Sick. So what could I do? Just put yourself in my place. I had to shoot him.”

  Drew hung up. Smiling inwardly, he got on a downtown bus, paid the driver, and took a seat to himself in back. The other passengers stared with disapproval at his stubble and grimy clothes. They’d remember him, he thought, and imagined the activity back at Logan.

  Airport security’s equipment would be sophisticated enough to trace even his twenty-second call, because a jamming device would keep the line open as if he’d never hung up. By now, a security team would have found the van, and another would be rushing toward that pay phone in front of the airport. They’d question people near it. Someone was bound to remember a disheveled, grungy-looking man in jeans and a padded outdoor vest coming out of the phone booth—and possibly even remember that the unshaven man had boarded a bus.

  He was leaving a trail. If he intended to disappear, he’d have to get off the bus and do something about his appearance, change it, improve it. Soon. Only then could he go to Father Hafer.

  He glanced out the back toward traffic in the Boston night. No flashing lights of pursuit cars sped this way. Not yet at least. But how long…?

  The stores were closed; he’d have to wait till morning to get unobtrusive clothes. Meanwhile? Assessing his options, he rejected a hotel, even a sleazy one. Not the way he looked. All hotel clerks had memories. Right now, he needed camouflage.

  He amused himself by imagining the questions that his prisoner would have to answer when the security officials found him. What kind of story would the man invent to explain the bulletproof van, the weapons, the radio equipment? Whatever the story, Drew thought, the one thing the man didn’t dare refer to was the monastery.