The Covenant Of The Flame

by David Morrell

  Professor Harding leaned forward, propping his hands on his cane. 'I confess you've made me curious. What are you suggesting?'

  Tess rubbed her forehead. 'If the heretics feared that their religion was about to be destroyed, if a small group managed to escape' – she darted her eyes toward Priscilla, then Professor Harding – 'what's the one thing those heretics would have considered so important that they wouldn't have dared to leave without it?'

  Professor Harding frowned. 'I still don't follow.'

  Priscilla's eyes, however, gleamed with fascination.

  'The treasure without which the heretics had no meaning,' Tess said. 'Something so valuable that they couldn't allow it to be destroyed and, equally important, desecrated. Something mysterious in the deepest sense of the word. Something so…'

  'Sacred,' Priscilla blurted. 'Absolutely.'

  'You understand?'

  'Yes!' Priscilla gestured emphatically toward the photograph. 'The image of Mithras that stood on their altar! When Constantine converted to Christianity, the Christians destroyed the Mithraic chapels. For all the heretics at Montsegur knew, the scuplture they possessed might have been the only one in existence. If they left it behind, when the crusaders found it…'

  Tess anticipated, The crusaders would have smashed it to pieces. The heretics had to protect the statue in order to protect their religion.' In imitation of Priscilla's earlier gesture, Tess jabbed a finger at the photograph. That statue. There's no weathering on its marble. No cracks. It's in perfect condition. A pristine replication of an ancient model. To borrow your words, someone went to a great deal of trouble and expense to reproduce that statue. Why? It makes no sense unless… I think I know the answer. It terrifies me. God, I think that statue's a copy of the one from Montsegur, but I don't think it's the only copy, and I don't think…' Tess stared at Priscilla. 'We've been talking around this possibility all afternoon, so why don't I say it outright? My friend believed in Mithraism. There are others who believe as he did. They're the ones who killed my mother, who killed Brian Hamilton, and who tried to kill me. To stop anyone from knowing about their existence.'

  'Fire,' Priscilla interrupted.

  'What about it? Tess struggled to control her shaking.

  'You said your friend was killed with fire.'

  'And then his apartment was set on fire, and my mother's house was set on fire, and Brian Hamilton died in flames in a freeway accident. Why is fire so-?'

  'It purifies. It symbolizes divine energy. Out of the ashes comes life. Rebirth. Fire was sacred to Mithraism. The sun god. When the torch is held upward, it signifies good.'

  'But how can all of this killing be good?'

  Priscilla suddenly looked aged again. 'I'm afraid there are two things I haven't told you about Mithraism.'

  Apprehensive, Tess waited, trembling.

  'First,' Priscilla said, 'followers of Mithras, particularly those in the Albigensian sect, the ones at Montsegur, believed in reincarnation. To them, death was not an ultimate end but merely a beginning of another life, until finally – after many lives – their being was perfected and they went to heaven. In that respect, they believed in the theories of Plato.'

  Tess remembered that The Collected Dialogues of Plato was one of the books in Joseph's bedroom. 'Keep going.'

  'The point is,' Priscilla said, 'a follower of Mithras was able to kill without guilt because he believed that he wasn't ending someone's life but merely transforming it.'

  Tess was appalled. 'You said there were two things. What's the…?'

  'Second, followers of Mithras were used to killing. They were trained to kill. Don't forget the statue. The knife. The blood. Roman soldiers converted en masse. Mithraism was a warrior cult. By definition. In their souls, they believed that they were engaged in a cosmic struggle of good against evil.'

  'The bastards,' Tess said. 'To defeat what they thought was evil, they'd do anything!'

  'I'm afraid that's true.'

  'They'd kill anyone, including my mother!' Tess raged. 'The sons of…! When I get the chance – and I'm sure I will because I'm sure they'll come for me again – they'll learn the hard way about the difference between good and evil!'

  THIRTEEN

  As the taxi rounded a corner and proceeded along a street of well-maintained, century-old houses near Georgetown, Craig stiffened in the back seat, seeing a black Porsche 911 parked ahead at the curb. Abruptly he leaned forward, pointing urgently. 'There,' he told the driver. 'Where that sportscar…'

  'Yeah.' The driver scanned the numbers on houses. 'That's the address you want, all right.'

  Craig glanced behind him, checking yet again to make sure he hadn't been followed. There wasn't much traffic. A few cars passed through an intersection back there. A UPS truck turned at the corner but headed in the opposite direction from where the taxi had gone. Halfway down the other block, the truck stopped. A uniformed driver got out, carrying a box toward a house.

  Craig had seen several UPS trucks on his way here. They were as commonplace as Federal Express and post office trucks. He had no way to tell if that particular truck had been tailing him. Indeed, contrary to popular misconception, Craig knew that unless you had a team using various cars to help you, or unless your opponent was clumsy, it was almost impossible to spot motorized surveillance, especially if your enemy also had a team and alternated vehicles.

  Well, Craig thought with growing unease as the taxi stopped behind the Porsche, I've done what I could. I can't keep cruising around the city. I've got to make a choice. I've got to commit. Tess is waiting for me. She needs my help.

  Nervous, Craig paid the driver and left the taxi. While it drove away, he studied the Victorian house, saw colorful, high-stalked flowers along the sides, and wondered what on earth Tess was doing here. In a rush, he approached the front steps.

  FOURTEEN

  'Sorry. Wrong address,' the solemn man with a ring in his pocket told the woman whose doorbell he'd just pressed. 'My mistake. This package belongs down the block.'

  The woman had curlers in her hair and looked annoyed that she'd been interrupted. Inside the house, a TV gameshow host announced outstanding prizes, his audience applauding.

  'Really. My apologies,' the man said. He wore the brown uniform of a UPS delivery man. When he turned to carry the package back to his truck, he heard the woman slam the door behind him.

  At the truck, he climbed behind the steering wheel and turned to the five men in back. They had their handguns ready and ignored him, their concentration focused toward the rear window and the taxi pulling away from the Porsche parked in front of a house in the middle of the next block. The tall, rugged detective stood on the sidewalk for a moment, then disappeared past trees and bushes, approaching the house.

  'Well, this might be another false rendezvous, but it's my guess that the bait led us to the quarry,' the solemn man said and closed his door. 'Now all we have to do is wait for the vermin.'

  'Assuming they followed him as well. But we didn't see any sign of them,' one of the men in the back said.

  'Just as we were careful and hope that they didn't see any sign of us,' the man in front said. 'We know, however, that their only chance to find the woman is to follow the detective.'

  In back, someone murmured, 'I'll feel more confident when our other unit shows up.'

  The man in front nodded. 'And even more confident when the enforcers arrive. I called our man at the airport. He'll instruct them where we've gone.'

  Another man in back asked, 'How long will they take to-?'

  Their plane lands in half an hour,' the man in front said. 'Figure another twenty minutes after that. We've got a car waiting to bring the enforcers.'

  'In which case, we just have to hope that the vermin don't make their move before… Wait a moment. I see a car.'

  The gunmen stared out the rear window.

  'It isn't our other unit,' one of them breathed.

  The man in front concentrated. Through the rear window
, he saw a blue Toyota round the corner, approaching. A thirtyish man drove, an attractive woman beside him.

  'Do you think it might be-?'

  They probably live in the neighborhood. But if they are the vermin, they've made a mistake.' The man in front drew his pistol. 'Six against two. They're outnumbered.'

  The car passed the truck's back window, no longer in sight. As the solemn man turned toward his sideview mirror to watch the car continue forward, he flinched.

  The woman hurled a canister through his open window.

  The canister hissed.

  The car kept driving down the street.

  'No!' the solemn man screamed.

  At once he shuddered and slumped. Invisible nerve gas filled the truck. The men behind him scrambled to open the back door.

  Too late. As the gas touched their skin, they convulsed, voided their bowels, vomited, and lay still.

  FIFTEEN

  'But what about the photograph of the books?' Tess demanded. 'Do their titles mean anything to-?'

  Priscilla removed a magnifying glass from a drawer in the desk and held it over the photograph. 'Eleanor of Aquitaine… The Art of Courtly Love…'

  'The one in Spanish means The Dove's Neck Ring,' Tess said.

  'I know. It's another treatise on courtly love. Eleventh century as I recall.'

  Tess blinked in surprise. 'You can't imagine the trouble I went through to learn that, and you just…'

  'Hey, it's my specialty, remember.' Priscilla's wrinkled lips formed a modest smile. 'These titles are all related. It's just like with the sculpture. Once you understand the background, everything's clear. Eleanor was the Queen of France during the century before the fall of Montsegur. Aquitaine, where Eleanor came from, was in southwestern France. She established – and her daughter, Marie de France, continued to maintain – a royal court in that region.'

  Tess nodded, having learned that much when she'd read the introduction to The Dove's Neck Ring the previous night at her mother's home, just before the fire had…!

  With a shudder, grieving, she forced herself not to interrupt.

  'Southwestern France,' Priscilla emphasized. 'Where Mithraism resurfaced, in the form of the Albigensian heresy, shortly after Eleanor's death. Eleanor encouraged the notion of courtly love, a strict set of rules that idealized the relationship between men and women. Physical union wasn't permitted until after a stringent code of overly polite behavior was obeyed. The Albigensians adapted courtly love for their own purposes. To them, after all, the good that Mithras fought for was spiritual. The evil of the opposing god was physical, belonging to the world and the flesh. For example, Albigensians were vegetarians, allowing only the purest of foods to enter their bodies.'

  'My friend was a vegetarian.' Tess felt startled.

  'Of course. And I imagine he didn't drink alcohol.'

  'Right,' Tess said.

  'And he exercised rigorously.'

  'Yes!'

  'He needed to deny and control his flesh,' Priscilla said. 'It's what I'd expect from someone who believed in Mithras. But the Albigensians also believed that sex was impure, that carnal desires were one of the ways that the evil god tempted them. So they abstained, except for rare occasions, allowing intercourse only for the exclusive purpose of conceiving children. A necessary grudging surrender to the flesh. Otherwise their community would have dwindled and died. With that rare exception, in the place of sexual relations, they substituted highly formal, immensely polite social relations that they borrowed from the concept of courtly love.'

  'My friend insisted that we could never be lovers, never have sex,' Tess said. 'He claimed he had certain obligations he had to follow. The most we could ever have was what he called a platonic relationship.'

  'Of course.' Priscilla shrugged. 'Plato. Another of the books on the shelf in this photograph. According to Plato, the physical world is insubstantial. A higher level should be our goal. You see how it all comes together?'

  'But what about…?'

  The doorbell rang. Tess had become so absorbed by the conversation that the sudden disturbance made her flinch. At once she realized.

  It must be -

  Priscilla jerked up her head, anticipating. 'I imagine that's your other friend. The one you phoned from here a while ago. The man who expected you to meet him near the airport.'

  Tess stared toward the exit from the study. 'God, I hope. Priscilla… Professor Harding… I have to explain. My friend's a…'

  'No need to explain,' Professor Harding said. 'Any friend of yours is welcome here.'

  'But you have to understand! He's not just a friend. He's-'

  Again the doorbell rang.

  '-a policeman. A detective from New York's Missing Persons.' Tess reached inside her canvas purse. 'But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it's someone else! What if it's-?' She withdrew the handgun from the purse.

  Priscilla and Professor Harding blanched at the sight of it.

  Grasping the trigger, Tess ordered, 'Hide in that closet. Don't make a sound. If it's them and they kill me, if they come in here and take the photographs, they might be satisfied! They might not search the house! They might not find-!'

  The doorbell rang a third time.

  'I shouldn't have come here! I hope I haven't-!' Tess couldn't wait any longer. 'Pray!'

  She lunged from the study, assumed the stance her father had taught her, aimed her handgun down the hallway toward the front door, and said a silent prayer of thanks when she saw Craig's tense, confused face through the window in the door.

  As he pressed the bell yet again, Tess hurried along the hallway, yanked the door open, and tugged him inside, thrusting her arms around him. 'I've never been so glad to see anyone in my life.'

  With her left hand, she slammed the door shut behind them, leaned past him to lock it, and hugged him even harder.

  'Ouch!' Craig said. 'I hope that pistol isn't cocked! You're pressing its handle against my back!'

  'Oh.' Tess lowered the pistol. I'm sorry! I didn't mean to-'

  Wary, Craig glanced at the pistol. 'Good, it isn't cocked. Where did you get that? Do you know how to use it?'

  'Yes. A very long story. Craig, I've learned so much! I've got so much to tell you!'

  'And I want to hear it, believe me.' Craig hugged her in return. 'I've been so damned worried about you. I-'

  Tess felt Craig's reassuring arms around her. She felt her breasts against his chest, her nipples unexpectedly tingling. The warmth surging through her was equally unexpected. Responding to an irresistible impulse, she kissed him. In the midst of fear, the pleasure she received from Craig's embrace was like…

  She'd been meant to be in his arms…

  Craig's lips against hers…

  Hers against his…

  From the moment they'd met.

  For now.

  For always.

  Abruptly Tess felt suffocated. Pushing away, sliding her hands from Craig's back, around his broad shoulders, toward his firm chest, she peered upward, straining to catch her breath. She studied his strong-boned, hard-edged features, which suddenly struck her as being handsome, and told herself, Screw love at first sight. Second sight is better. It gives you a chance to think, to get your Priorities straight. Passion is fine. But devotion and understanding are better.

  This man – whatever mistakes he made in his marriage – never mind what happened before I met him – is decent and kind. He cares for me. He's willing to risk his life to help me.

  He doesn't just love me. He likes me.

  Someone discreetly cleared a throat behind them.

  Turning, Tess saw Priscilla and Professor Harding standing selfconsciously in the hallway near the door from the study.

  'I'm sorry for interrupting,' Professor Harding said, 'but…'

  'No need to feel sorry.' Tess smiled. 'And we don't have to worry.'

  'I gathered that,' Priscilla said, her wrinkled eyes crinkling with amusement, 'from the way you greeted him.'

  Te
ss blushed. This is my friend. Lieutenant Craig. His first name's… You know,' she told Craig, 'you never mentioned it to me. But on your answering machine, I heard…'

  'It's Bill.' Craig walked down the hallway, extending his hand. 'Bill Craig. If you're friends of Tess…'

  'Oh, definitely,' Tess said.

  'Then I'm very pleased to meet you.' Craig shook hands with them.

  'Mr and Mrs Harding,' Tess said. They're both professors.'

  'Please, Tess, I told you no formalities.' Priscilla gave her first name to Craig. 'And this is Richard, my husband. And don't you dare refer to either of us as professor.'

  Craig chuckled. 'I can already see that we're going to get along.' His expression sobered. 'But Priscilla… Richard… we have things to discuss. Important things. And time's against us. So why don't you bring me up to speed? What are you doing here, Tess? What's going on?'

  Priscilla gestured. 'Come into the study.'

  'And perhaps you'd like some tea,' Professor Harding said.

  'Richard, for heaven's sake, the lieutenant came here to help Tess, not to be offered tea.'

  'Actually I could use a cup,' Craig said. 'My mouth's dry from being on the plane.'

  They entered the study.

  For the next fifteen minutes, while Craig politely sipped tea, he listened impatiently to what Tess… and then Priscilla… and on occasion, Richard… told him.

  When they finished, Craig set down his teacup. 'If I told this to my captain, he'd think you were, to put it politely, letting your imaginations get carried away. But never mind, I believe – because I saw the statue. And Joseph Martin's dead. And Tess, your mother's dead.' He shook his head in commiseration. 'And Brian Hamilton's dead. And you're in danger. All because of-'

  'Something that happened more than seven hundred years ago,' Priscilla said.

  'What else haven't you talked about?' Craig asked.

  'The titles of the books on the shelf in Joseph Martin's bedroom,' Priscilla said. 'Before you rang the doorbell, I was about to explain that The Consolation of Philosophy, a sixth-century treatise written by an imprisoned Roman nobleman, describes the Wheel of Fortune.'