David Morrell - League of Night and Fog

by League of Night

  "With this bomb attached to her? If the husband loves her, he'll follow orders." Seth removed a blasting cap from his lapel pocket, inserted it into the explosive and wired it to a post on the detonator. He took the remaining wire, attached one end to a contact on the metal belt and the other to a second post on the detonator. "Once I put the batteries into the detonator and lock the belt, I've got a continuous electrical current. I'll close the metal box and wire the lid to the detonator

  It's foolproof. If anyone opens the box to get at the detonator, the circuit will be broken. A switch on the detonator will engage another set of batteries that automatically triggers the bomb. The same thing will happen if someone unlocks the belt or snips it apart. Of course, the other way to detonate the bomb is by using this." He held up the radio controlled transmitter. Icicle watched him with loathing, troubled by a discrepancy between Seth's explanation and what he claimed to have told the husband. "Once you're out of radio range, the bomb can be dismantled?"

  "No way."

  "But you told the husband..."

  "I lied." Seth slid the belt around the woman's waist and locked it. He inserted two sets of batteries into the detonator, closed the metal box's lid on the bare end of a wire attached to the detonator, and locked the lid. He smiled. "The only way to get this thing off her now is to blow the bitch up. How, my friend, do you feel about that?"

  critical mass

  Toronto, Canada. 6:30 a. m. The sun had just risen. Exhausted, Joseph

  Bernstein told the taxi driver to let him off at the next corner. He'd directed the driver to one of the few decaying sections of the city.

  Soon to be purged by urban renewal, ill-maintained two-story houses lined the street. Bernstein paid the driver and gave him a tip neither so large nor so small that the driver would remember. The moment the taxi was out of sight, Bernstein tested his weary body's resources by walking one block south and two blocks east He felt the way the worst houses looked. Lights were on in some of them, but he passed no one on the street, only a stray dog tearing apart a bulging plastic garbage bag. In the middle of the final block, he turned onto a cracked concrete sidewalk that led to a listing front porch. All the windows in the house were dark. An empty beer can lay on its side to the right of the top of the steps--the signal that everything was as it should be. He knocked three times on the front door, waited while a curtain was pushed aside, then stepped in when the door was opened. Ephraim Avidan quickly closed the door and locked it, only then placing the Beretta he held into a shoulder holster beneath his rumpled suitcoat. "You had no problems?"

  "Everything's on schedule. What about the others?"

  "Upstairs asleep. We take turns, two at a time standing guard."

  "No, I meant the others" Bernstein said. "Have you had any problems with them?"

  "They take orders well." Avidan's mouth showed a trace of a bitter smile. "The sedatives in their food help."

  "I want to see them."

  "Your stomach must be stronger than mine. I despise them so much I try to see them as little as possible."

  "I want to remind myself."

  "As you wish." Avidan led him down a narrow corridor into a shadowy kitchen whose linoleum tile was peeling at the edges. He knocked three times on a warped plywood door, unlocked and opened it, then stepped back. Bernstein peered down musty steps toward a concrete floor the color of a bullet. A pale light at the bottom revealed a tall, bearded man of about seventy who wore a thick pullover sweater and stared up anxiously, holding a Beretta as Avidan had. Seeing Bernstein, the man lowered his pistol. When Bernstein reached the bottom, he put his arms around the man. David Gehmer was one of the most dependable, long-suffering members of the team. For the past four months, he--along with Gideon Levine--had endured without complaint the tedious, disagreeable task of acting as jailer. One by one, captives had been brought here from around the world--all told, eleven of them by now--imprisoned in the basement of this dilapidated house in Toronto.

  Yesterday, the other members of the team, having completed their tasks, had converged here as well and were asleep now in the upper floors of the house. Bernstein scanned the large cellar. Its windows had been boarded over. Spaced equally apart, three bare lights dangled from the ceiling. White slabs of plastic insulation had been attached to the walls to minimize dampness. Nonetheless, the room felt cold and clammy.

  Bernstein understood why, even in June, David Gehmer wore a sweater. The walls were lined with cots, eleven of them, upon each of which an old man lay covered with a woolen blanket Some were awake, their eyes dazed by the lingering effects of the sedation in last night's supper. Most were deeply asleep. All were pale from lack of exposure to the sun. All were handcuffed. A chain led from each cuff to a ring bolted into the wall. A few books and magazines lay next to each cot. Against a narrow wall at the far end of the room, shelves of plates and tinned food stood next to a small gas stove near an unshielded toilet

  "It's quite an assembly line," Bernstein said dryly. "All the comforts of home."

  "By comparison with Auschwitz, this is the promised land," Gehmer said.

  "I shave each of them every other day. I cook all their meals. I make them take turns, cuffed to the sink, doing the cleanup. They're only allowed to use plastic spoons. I count the spoons after every meal.

  When they have to go to the toilet, I let them go one at a time, chained to the sink again. That's when they're allowed to wash up."

  "Yes, you've organized them remarkably."

  "They inspired me. These monsters had a special talent for organization, after all. Sometimes I remember so vividly I think I'm back in the camp. I want to..." Gehmer raised his pistol and aimed it at the nearest prisoner. Bernstein touched Gehmer's hand. "Patience, my friend. We both have nightmares. But we won't have to endure them much longer. Soon justice will be served."

  "Soon?" Gehmer spoke quickly. "When?"

  "Tomorrow." 2

  Joseph surfaced again." Misha Pletz, intent upon rechecking the plans for tonight's Operation Salvage, needed a moment before he realized what his assistant had said to him. "Surfaced?"

  "Two hours ago."

  "Where? Still in Washington?"

  "No. Toronto this time."

  "Tomnto?"

  "He contacted another of our operatives," the assistant said. "The same as before. He chose one of his former students. It was four-thirty in the morning there. Joseph showed up at the man's apartment, woke him, and gave him a message to relay to you. The operative had it coded and radioed here to Tel Aviv." Misha held out his hand for the piece of paper his assistant clutched, but when he read it, he was baffled. "Two names?"

  "Aaron Rosenberg. Richard Halloway." The assistant handed Misha a second piece of paper. "This is me operative's summary of the verbal instructions Joseph gave him. They're related to his previous message--the arms shipment he warned us was being sent to the Libyans to be used against us. Joseph says when you stop the shipment tonight he wants you to leak those names to the Libyans but not in a way that'll make them suspect it's a leak. He wants you to make it seem as if the two men accepted money from us in exchange for information about the shipment."

  "But if the Libyans believe the leak, they'll want revenge." Misha stared at the paper in bewilderment

  "We'd be setting them up to be killed. Why does Joseph want--?"

  "Rosenberg and Halloway are the arms dealers responsible for the shipment"

  "He wants to make it look as if they accepted money from and then double crossed the Libyans? He wants Rosenberg and Halloway punished by the people they were working for? Some crazy sense of justice? Why didn't

  Joseph give us these names in his first message? Why did he wait until--?" Misha paused; an explanation occurred to him. "Because he didn't want to give us time to check on them before we stopped the shipment? Is there another time limit we don't know about, another schedule Joseph is following?" The assistant pointed toward the last paragraph of the report. "He made it a point of h
onor. The price for

  Joseph telling us about the shipment is we have to leak the names to the

  Libyans."

  Saul waited anxiously with Father Dusseault in a recess of one of the middle terraces at the northern side of the Colosseum. The priest was able to walk, but he was still groggy enough to be passive, easily guided. He'd made no trouble when Saul had brought him here and sat him down. The many tourists paid no attention to the infirm priest.

  Saul had arrived fifteen minutes early for the six o'clock appointment, and now it was ten minutes after. He used his binoculars to scan the opposite side of the Colosseum, worried that the exchange would not take place. As instructed, he'd come here alone with Father Dusseault. But terribly conscious of the sun letting lower, he cursed himself for disobeying one condition of the exchange by allowing Drew and Arlene to watch the Colosseum from the gardens of the Esquiline across the street.

  The Esquiline, one of the seven hills of Rome, was dominated by Nero's palace, the so-called Golden House, and the sightseers swarming through both it and the surrounding park made the chances of an enemy spotting

  Drew and Arlene highly unlikely. It had seemed prudent to take the slight risk. But now he wished he hadn't permitted the violation.

  Because by twenty after six he was sure that something was wrong. The number of tourists began to dwindle. A woman with blue-tinted hair stepped in front of Saul, obscuring his gaze through the binoculars. Her overweight husband joined her, listening to her complain about the high-heeled shoes he shouldn't have let her wear.

  Saul stepped to the right, to reestablish his view of the opposite terraces. Scanning them, he suddenly froze the binoculars on a woman sitting on a walkway, her back against a wall. Saul had trouble steadying his hands on the binoculars. Erika? Even magnified, the woman wasn't distinct, her head drooping toward her chest But her hair was long and dark like Erika's, and she seemed to be the same age, to have the same long legs and lithe body. What confused him was that this woman wore a green nylon jacket, which Erika did not possess.

  Abruptly he remembered the voice on the phone telling him mat Erika would wear a jacket to hide the bomb secured to her. When a man strolled over to her and set down a blue travel bag, Saul realized that the exchange was about to take place. With his binoculars, he tracked the tall pale man who'd left the travel bag and was moving to Saul's left. At once, the man stopped and raised his own binoculars, aiming them at Sam. He's waiting for me to start circling in the other direction, Saul thought He won't move until I do. Saul didn't need encouragement He left the priest sitting in the recess of the terrace and walked rapidly to the right It took all his self-control not to run.

  For a moment, though, he almost faltered as the significance of something about the man occurred to him. The color of his hair. It was red. Dear God, had the voice on the phone belonged to Sem? The assassin, the son of a Nazi assassin, whom Drew and Arlene had described? If so, would his partner, the blond-haired Icicle, be in the

  Colosseum with him? Saul didn't dare turn to scan the crowd. The gesture might disturb Seth into blowing Erika up as he'd threatened.

  Besides, at the moment Seth didn't matter. Nor did Icicle. Only Erika did. Rounding the curve of the Colosseum, approaching its southern side, he quickened his steps, his gaze focused anxiously on Erika. She continued to sit with her head drooped toward her chest He hadn't seen her shift position. Had Seth reneged on his bargain? Was Erika dead?

  He zigzagged through clusters of tourists, ignoring their angry objections, too distraught to murmur apologies. He was thirty yards from Erika now, and she still hadn't moved. He started running. Twenty yards. No sign of life. He reached her. When he raised her face and saw her eyelids flutter, he sank to his knees, almost weeping with relief. "Erika, it's me. It's Saul." He put his arms around her.

  And froze when he felt the metal box under the back of the rain jacket

  Moving his hands to her waist, he touched the metal belt that secured the box to her. Seth hadn't been bluffing.

  Saul swung to stare toward the opposite side of the Colosseum. Seth had reached the priest, had lifted him to his feet, and was guiding him along a walkway toward an exit The priest moved groggily. A few tourists glanced at him, but most were preoccupied with their cameras and the sunset-tinted ruins. At the exit, Seth turned toward Saul, raised his right arm, almost in an ancient Roman salute, his gesture ironic. Then Seth and Father Dusseault were gone. Wait five minutes before leaving, Seth had instructed. Five minutes it would be. He turned to Erika, hugging her again. "It's Saul," he repeated. "You're safe."

  He kissed her. "I love you. We've got nothing to worry about."

  Among shadows caused by sunset. Drew and Arlene watched from the Oppian

  Park to the east of Nero's palace. Their view of the Colosseum was impeded by the busy traffic on the Via Labicana, but even the frustration of an obstructed view was better than the greater frustration they'd have felt if they'd stayed away. With only the northern and eastern curves of the Colosseum available to them, they probably would not see Father Dusseault and his captor. Drew realized.

  Still, the Via Labicana was the most likely escape route, and for that reason, he concentrated less on the Colosseum and more on the street leading away from it. He checked his watch. Twenty-five minutes after six. The exchange was scheduled to have occurred on the hour. Unless something had gone wrong, a no-show for example, they'd probably missed seeing Father Dusseault being led away. All the same. Drew kept staring toward the opposite side of the street If he still didn't spot the priest by seven o'clock, he and Arlene would go to a nearby phone booth where, by prearrangement, Saul would call to report. He felt Arlene grip his arm. On the other side of the street, a priest--Father

  Dusseault--was being guided through a crowd of tourists emerging from the Colosseum. A gray Citroen veered from traffic and stopped at the curb. The priest was pushed inside onto the backseat, his abduct or following. The Citroen sped away. The pickup had taken no more than ten seconds, but even with the distraction of tourists and traffic. Drew had seen enough. There was no mistaking the red-haired man guiding the priest or the blond man driving the Citroen. Seth and Icicle. He bolted from Arlene's grasp, charging toward the street. Arlene ran after him.

  There was still a risk that Seth and Icicle had posted a surveillance team to watch for any attempt to follow the Citroen. In that case, if they noticed Drew and Arlene in pursuit, all the team had to do was contact the Citroen via two-way radio, and Seth or Icicle might make good on their threat to blow up Erika. But Drew was convinced that there wasn't a surveillance team. After all, Seth and Icicle hadn't arranged for help when they grabbed Medici, and the efficiency of that operation made Drew strongly suspect they trusted no one but themselves.

  The Citroen was far enough down the street that he couldn't see it That meant Seth and Icicle couldn't see Drew either as he darted through speeding traffic. He gestured frantically to a passing taxi. Arlene raced across the street to him, reaching the curb as the taxi responded to Drew's waving arms. They scrambled inside.

  Drew blurted instructions to the driver. If only we don't get caught in traffic, he worried. If only Seth and Icicle don't take a side street before I see where they turn. He wondered whether Saul had gotten Erika back and fervently prayed that his friend's wife was safe.

  What took you so long?" Driving, Icicle glanced quickly toward the backseat

  "Did something go wrong?"

  "I scouted the ruins before I showed myself. The husband followed instructions exactly. I couldn't be more pleased."

  "Well, / won't be pleased rill we get out of here. What if the other man and woman are hanging around?"

  "Even if they are," Seth said, "they'll keep their distance. They know I can still use this." He held up the detonator. "All that remains is to question the priest They wouldn't have abducted him unless they were certain he had vital information."

  "But perhaps not the information we want"
/>   "What reason would they have to question the priest except to learn about the cardinal? He's the only outsider who knew where our fathers were. Once we find out why he disappeared, we'll know how the Night and

  Fog discovered our fathers." Seth grinned. "Yes, all that remains is to question him. But on second thought, perhaps not all. Pull over."

  "We have to get away from here. Why do you--?"

  "Do it. Stop." Icicle obeyed, halting at the curb. 'Tell me why--"

  "I can't resist the temptation." Seth peered through the Citroen's rear window toward the Colosseum. "Of course, I won't be able to see the explosion, but I'll hear it." He shrugged. "The commotion among the tourists should be interesting." He flicked a switch to activate the radio-controlled detonator. A red light glowed. "No," Icicle said. Seth turned. "You still feel protective about her?" His eyes gleamed. He's doing this to taunt me. Icicle realized. Not to punish the woman but me. "What's the point? You told me you'd lied to the husband. In a while, when we're out of radio range, he'll think it's safe to disconnect the bomb without setting it off. Since she'll die soon anyhow, why kill her now?"