The Fraternity of the Stone (14 page)

Drew's thoughts became frantic. Despite his misgivings, he nonetheless hoped. He needed to believe. A recognition code, some information that only the two of them shared. "Six years ago, we met in your office. We had an argument. But then we went to the church across the street, and you heard my confession."

"I've heard a lot of... six years ago? There's only one confession I can think of that anyone could be certain I'd remember."

"We had a discussion about a liqueur."

"Good God, it can't be! You?"

"No, listen. The liqueur. Do you remember its name?"

"Of course."

Drew scowled. "It comes to mind so quickly?"

"The Carthusians make it. I chose it deliberately. It's named for the fatherhouse. Chartreuse."

Drew relaxed. Good. Or at least, it would have to do.

Father Hafer kept talking. "What in heaven's name is all this mystery about? Where on earth are you? Why are you calling me?" The priest was even more out of breath. "You're obviously not at - "

"No, there's been an emergency. I had to leave. We've got to talk."

"Emergency? What kind?"

"I can't say on the phone. I have to meet with you. Now."

"Why are you being so evasive? Meet where? And what's wrong with telling me over the phone?" The voice paused abruptly. "Surely you're not suggesting... ?"

"It might be tapped."

"But that's absurd."

"Absurd is what it is out here, Father. I'm telling you I don't have time. An emergency. Please listen to me."

The phone was silent except for the priest's strained breathing.

"Father?"

"Yes, all right. We'll meet."

Drew glanced around the shopping center, keeping his voice low but urgent. "Get a pad and pencil. I'll tell you the way to do this. You've got to help me, Father. You have to bring me in."

Chapter 10.

A classic intercept operation. A version of the dead drop. Theoretically. But this time Drew had to make allowance for more than one variable.

His primary fear, after all, was that the hit team had assumed where he'd have to go for help. By definition, not to the police, not with Drew's background. And not with his predictable need to avoid being held in their custody.

The logical alternative? The priest who'd sponsored him as a candidate for the Carthusians. After all, who else would be understanding? But by the same logic, the hit team would maintain surveillance on the priest. And when Father Hafer suddenly left the rectory during supper hour, an alert would be issued. He'd be followed.

The extra factor? Suppose the police had become involved, either because the bodies had been discovered or because Father Hafer was sufficiently disturbed by Drew's call to ask them for protection? It was possible that not only the hit team or the police but both would follow the priest. That complication changed an otherwise textbook operation from the equivalent of algebra into calculus. Regardless of how sophisticated the plan became, Drew had to begin with the basics.

Several times during the day, he'd passed Boston Common, scouting it from every angle, calculating its advantages. A large park filled with trees and paths, gardens, ponds, and playground equipment, it was flanked by rows of adjoining buildings, commercial and residential, on every side. He'd chosen a likely vantage point and, by seven o'clock that night, had positioned himself on an apartment building's roof. He crouched behind the cover of a chimney, concealing his silhouette, and peered down toward the Common. In mid-October, the sun had already set; the park was in darkness except for streetlights along the borders and lamps beside the paths.

The advantage of this rooftop location was that Drew could study three of the four streets flanking the Common. The far side was cloaked by the black intersecting branches of leafless trees. But the far side didn't matter; it was too remote for the hit team or the police to rush to this side without exposing themselves and giving Drew a chance to get away. And it was on this side that Drew intended to approach Father Hafer.

But not in person.

He'd been cautious about what he told the priest. If he'd merely instructed Father Hafer to go to the Common and wait for further developments, he'd have risked being found on this roof by either the hit team or the police when they predictably checked the buildings along the Common's perimeter. That way of thinking assumed that the rectory's phone had been tapped or that the priest was cooperating with the authorities. But Drew's survival depended upon assumptions. Even now, after many years, he vividly recalled the Rocky Mountain Industrial College in Colorado, Hank Dalton, and his lectures: "Paranoia will save your life. In your world, boyos, it's crazy not to be paranoid. Assume the bastards are against you. All the time. Everywhere."

So Drew's instructions had been so complicated that he'd told Father Hafer to write them down. No hit team or police force could possibly have so many men that they could cover the complete itinerary with only a few hours' notice. They'd have no specific target area. From their perspective, contact might be established anywhere.

But needing an extra margin of safety, Drew had decided not to make that contact in person. As he scanned the three shadowy but visible streets - below him, and to his right and left - he saw no evidence of surveillance, no loiterers or vehicles that stopped with no one getting out. The streets looked normally occupied, innocent, ordinary.

He'd soon find out. At ten past seven, he saw the priest. Father Hafer wore a long dark overcoat, its top buttons open as instructed, the white of his collar clearly visible in the partly illuminated night. But the way Father Hafer moved caused Drew to frown. The priest didn't walk so much as he shuffled, slightly stooped, with evident fatigue. He came from the corner on Drew's right, beginning to cross the Common. Something was wrong. Drew shifted his gaze toward the street that the priest had left. No one seemed to be following.

Drew darted his eyes back toward the priest, and abruptly his alarm increased. Not because he'd discovered a trap, but because of something far more unexpected, though now that Drew thought about it he'd been given all the clues. He should have realized. Father Hafer was bent over, coughing so hard that fifty yards away Drew was able to hear it. The priest seemed in pain. And thinner than Drew recalled. Even at night, his pallor was evident.

The priest was dying.

"Treatment," the sherry-dusted voice had said from the rectory phone. "He might not want to be available after his treatment."

Chemotherapy. Radiation. Father Hafer was dying from cancer. The hoarseness, the lack of breath, how else to account for them? The cancer was in his throat, more likely in his lungs. And with terrible sorrow, Drew recalled the cigarette after cigarette that Father Hafer had smoked six years ago during the interview. The priest once more bent over, coughing, in evident pain. He used a handkerchief to wipe his mouth and straightened slowly, proceeding with difficulty toward the Common. Drew concentrated on the third bench along the path that the priest had been instructed to walk along.

The first. The second.

As Father Hafer reached the third, a shadow darted from bushes, rushing toward him.

Now, Drew thought. If he's under surveillance, now. Instead of watching the lean, jackal-like figure that seemed to be attacking the priest, Drew focused all his attention on the neighboring streets.

But nothing happened, no shouts, no sirens, no sudden eruptions of shadows or gunfire. Nothing. Eerie, the night remained still and, except for nearby traffic, silent.

Drew jerked his attention back toward the third bench along the path. His instructions to the lunging shadow had been explicit, based on the location of lamps in the park, allowing Drew an unimpeded view of what would happen. If the priest had been given a microphone and battery pack to hide beneath his clothes, the shadow's hasty frisk would reveal it. The figure would raise his right hand, warning Drew to run.

Of course, the shadow needed incentive to perform the frisk, and earlier Drew had looked for an evident but functional junky in the Combat Zone. He'd given the addict some, but promised him more, of a glassine bag of heroin that Drew had spent part of the afternoon relieving from a second-rate pusher. The bribe had been sufficient to motivate the junky but not enough to moderate his desperation, and not enough for Drew's purpose - or the possible danger - to be questioned.

Drew watched as the darting shadow collided with the priest, frisked him without seeming to, and delivered a note to the palm of Father Hafer's hand. At once, the shadow lunged away, retreating through a dark space between two path lamps, visible again when he scrambled through illuminated playground equipment, rushing as instructed toward the corner of the Common on Drew's left.

My, my, Drew thought. Well, what do you know? Not bad. Really not too shabby. It just goes to show - in a pinch, don't underestimate a junky, as long as he's properly motivated. Drew was delighted not only by the junky's performance but by his survival. The junky had not been killed.

Conclusion: If the hit team was in the area, they'd realized that the shadow down there wasn't Drew but instead a courier. They'd devote their attention to the courier as much as to the priest, in the hope that the courier would lead them back to Drew or at least give them information about what was in the note. The courier would lead them all right - to a cul-de-sac alley three blocks away where Drew had promised to pay the junky the rest of the heroin in the glassine bag.

Drew had left the bag on a window sill, and now, as he watched the junky disappear safely, he began to believe that neither the hit team nor the police had followed Father Hafer. But he still wasn't totally sure. He'd planned yet another diversion, and that was the purpose of the note that the priest now held in his hand.

Drew switched his attention back to the park. Father Hafer stood next to the third bench on the path, clutching one hand to his chest as if to control the startled pounding of his heart. Recovering from the assault, he peered down mystified at the note he held in his other hand, but before he could read it, he suddenly burst into another fit of coughing, pulling out his handkerchief, retching into it.

May God have mercy, Drew thought.

The priest wearily approached a nearby lamp and hunched his shoulders, straining to read the note. Drew knew what he would see.

My apologies for the surprise. I have to be sure that you're not being followed. If there'd been another way... But we're almost there. Go back the way you came. Return to the rectory.

The priest jerked his head up from the note, glancing around with what, even at this distance, was evident annoyance. He crammed the note into his overcoat pocket, bent forward again, and coughed painfully into his handkerchief. With energy born from impatience, he turned to shuffle angrily from the Common, back the way he'd come.

If I'd known you were sick, I wouldn't have done it this way, Drew thought. I'd have chosen a shorter, less difficult route. Forgive me, Father, for the suffering I've caused you. I had no choice. I had to make the enemy feel as impatient as you are.

He watched the priest walk with effort away from the Common, then trudge out of sight down the street to Drew's right. He saw no evidence of hastily reorganized surveillance. No vehicle turned to head in the priest's new direction. No figure pivoted, hurrying to keep the priest in sight.

Drew waited twenty seconds longer, and when he still saw nothing unusual, he became as convinced as he was going to be that neither the police nor a hit team were involved.

Still, from his rooftop position, Drew couldn't see the street that the priest had entered. Unless he hurried from this roof and rushed to peer around the corner, he couldn't know if that street was safe. To approach the priest there might be a risk.

He did have another option. If he couldn't go to the priest, the priest could come to him.

Chapter 11.

From the darkness of bushes beside the church, Drew peered across the street toward the rectory. Above him, light from within the church cast a glow through stained-glass windows depicting the Stations of the Cross. Though the windows were closed, Drew heard the prayers of an evening mass, a priest's muffled voice intoning, "Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on us. Lamb of God... "

The congregation joined in, "Give us peace."

Drew's note had told Father Hafer to retrace the meandering directions he'd been given, returning to the rectory. But Drew had used a direct route to get here sooner. He needed to study various vantages on the rectory, to determine if anyone was watching it. A final precaution. After all, if a hit team had followed Father Hafer, one of its members might nonetheless have been left behind, a final precaution of their own. Only when Drew felt satisfied that the rectory was safe would he risk going forward with the rest of his plan.

But after six years in the monastery, he'd forgotten that during the seventies the Church had relaxed its rules on obligating Catholics to attend Sunday mass - a Saturday-evening mass could take its place.

And this was Saturday evening. With mass in progress, with parishioners' cars parked along the street of this well-to-do neighborhood, others pulling to a stop in front of the rectory, their motors running, their drivers apparently waiting to pick up worshippers when mass was completed, Drew found himself confronted with too many possible trouble spots. A match flared in a car down the street, a silhouette lighting a cigarette. Would a professional reveal his position that blatantly? Perhaps - if he wanted to seem like just another driver waiting for a passenger.