The Fraternity of the Stone (42 page)

Rivals? Doubles?

Janus. He'd killed Janus, but the man behind Janus was still alive!

Enraged at the pointlessness of the death, Drew wanted to kick Mike's corpse, to smash its teeth, to crush its nose.

You stupid...

Instead he sank to his knees in the dark.

With tears streaking down his cheeks, he prayed for Mike's soul.

And his own.

Chapter 15.

Time had been so distorted in the black room that, when Drew left the building, he blinked in surprise. The night had passed. A cold October sun was rising. Now, all the gaslamps were extinguished, the apartments silent, though chickens clucked eerily from somewhere. Obviously the people who lived here had not heard the shots or else had deliberately ignored them, not wanting to get involved. He followed the zigzagging hallways, passages, and tunnels back to the narrow alley with a cinderblock wall on the right, where an eternity ago he'd stepped from the stack of sheltering boards and confronted his double.

He'd used a handkerchief to wipe Mike's blood from his face and hands. He'd used the same handkerchief to staunch the flow of blood from his shoulder where Mike had struck it with a screwdriver. Then he'd taken off his coat and carried it folded across his shoulder to hide both the wound and the bloodstains on the coat. The precaution was needless. This early, he encountered no one.

Cold, his shoulder throbbing, sick at heart, he used a key that he'd taken from Mike as he searched the body, and unlocked the door to Mike's room. He had no fear of boobytraps or anti-intruder alarms. Earlier, Mike had taken no precautions as he pulled out this same key and aimed it toward the lock. So Drew's assumption was that the apartment was unprotected. And if it wasn't?

Drained, he didn't care. He had killed again, and nothing else mattered.

Nothing. Except the continuation of his quest. The need to avenge the monks in the monastery. To discover who Mike had been working for.

He turned the knob and opened the door, frowning when he saw no light in the room. His instincts quickened in alarm. Last night, there'd been a glow beyond the closed drapes and the opaque window. Who'd been in here to turn off the light? As his chest tightened, he scanned the room. Even with the light off, it wasn't pitch-dark. The rising sun illuminated the open doorway, dispersing the shadows.

Despite his uneasiness, he made two assumptions. The first was that the room was deserted. After all, anyone hiding here had already been given ample opportunity to attack him.

The second was the consequence of the first. The lights were off because, as Arlene had suspected last night, they were on a timer.

Stepping farther in, he saw brick-and-board bookshelves, a desk with a typewriter, a sofa-bed, a dinette table, a television and stereo.

Nothing fancy. The furnishings a graduate student would have. The same sort of furnishings Drew had once had, though he - like Mike - could have afforded much better.

The apartment was all in one room; a stove and fridge were set off by a counter.

Something moved near the sofa. Drew bent his knees, raising his hands, preparing to defend himself. Then his scowl changed into a grin, which broadened as he remembered Stuart Little. For now he was crouched defensively against a cat.

It meowed, approaching. Not a kitten, but not full-grown either. Orange with white spots. Another cat appeared from beneath the desk, and another from behind the counter, one totally black, the other a Siamese, its blue eyes distinctive even in the shadows.

He almost laughed but stopped himself, his injured shoulder throbbing, again reminded of the parallel between Mike and himself.

In the old days, before the monastery, Drew had enjoyed keeping cats. They'd been his luxury; his social life. And later, when not a cat but a mouse had entered his cell in the monastery, he'd once again felt alive. Because, despite the Carthusian insistence on effacing oneself from the world, the one thing he'd missed was the chance to share his existence with another creature.

"Cats, I bet you wonder why no one came home last night," he said, with a sudden vision of Mike dead in that black room. Shuddering, he tried to stifle his terrible emotion. His voice sounded hoarse. "I bet you're awful hungry."

He closed the door behind him, locked it, noticed a murky light switch on the wall, and flicked it up.

Two lamps came on, one beside the sofa, the other on the desk. He flinched, stumbling back. A door came open to his left. And across from him, a figure rose from behind the counter. He braced himself.

Father Stanislaw appeared from the door. Beyond it, Drew saw a closet. He swung toward the counter where Arlene stood all the way up.

She came to him. He wanted desperately to hold her.

"Thank God, you're alive." She hugged him longingly. "When you didn't come back to the car... "

He felt her arms around him, her breasts pressed against his chest. Reflexively, he leaned to kiss her.

Father Stanislaw cleared his throat. "If I can interrupt."

Drew glanced at him in confusion.

"We waited till just before dawn," Father Stanislaw said.

Arlene stepped back slightly, still keeping her arms around him. But Drew's chest retained the sensation of her breasts. He remembered the way he'd held her,

lovingly, so often in the old days. To camp and go climbing. And hold her, as she held him, in the sleeping bag they shared.

"By then, we didn't know what else to do," she added. "We had to come in and find you."

"From the outside, the apartment was quiet." Father Stanislaw stepped closer. "Everything seemed peaceful. But we reasoned that, if there'd been trouble, your counterpart would have fled instead of staying here. The risk seemed acceptable. But we even knocked on the door before... "

"You picked the lock?"

Arlene still had her arms around him as he glanced toward the priest. Seeing a nod, Drew shook his head. "You keep surprising me."

"Well" - Father Stanislaw shrugged - "the Lord is with me."

"And with your lockpicks."

The priest grinned.

"When you stepped through that door," Arlene said, "I almost thought you were... "

"My double?"

"You were carrying your coat instead of wearing it. For a moment, I thought he'd taken it off you."

"No." Drew swallowed. "He's dead." He slid his coat off his shoulder, revealing his bloody shirt and the bulge beneath it where he'd stuffed the handkerchief.

"Drew!"

"He stabbed me with a screwdriver. My coat helped to ease the blow."

Before he could argue with her, Arlene had unbuttoned his shirt. The intimacy made him feel weak. Gently, she took out the bloody handkerchief, peering beneath the torn cloth.

"It could have been worse," Drew said. "At least, the bleeding stopped. I don't think it needs stitches."

"But it sure needs disinfecting. Take off your shirt. I'll get a washcloth and soapy water."

"It can wait."

"No, it can't." Again he didn't have the chance to argue. "Hold still."

It made him feel oddly good to accept her orders. While she cleaned the wound, using a first-aid kit from the bathroom to dress it, he told them what had happened.

Father Stanislaw raised his right hand and gave Drew absolution. "I'm sure you're forgiven. You had to defend yourself."

"But his death was so pointless." Drew's throat constricted, only partly because of the swelling from the fist Mike had struck against it. "What did it accomplish?"

"Your life," Arlene insisted.

"Insignificant. The answers. They were what mattered."

"We've been looking for them," she said.

He listened intently.

"We went through his papers. Receipts. Canceled checks. Bills."

"What did you find?"

"Exactly what you'd expect," Father Stanislaw said. "The man was a professional. Nothing."

"Nothing?" Drew thought about it. "Maybe. At least, that's how it seemed."

"I don't understand."

"From what you just said, you saw it, all right. But you didn't know what you were seeing. What to look for."

"I still don't know what you mean."

"Receipts, you said. Canceled checks, bills?"

"That's right."

Drew glanced tenderly toward Arlene. "You couldn't have understood. Because you" - he turned toward Father Stanislaw - "and you didn't have my cover. The way the system worked, I used a post office box for my mail. Anonymous. As long as I made sure I wasn't being watched when I picked up my magazines, tuition bills, whatever. But I had another post office box in the nearest town. And that was where I picked up the stuff that mattered... Like my pay."

He let it sink in.

"Of course." Arlene got it first. "Scalpel was part of the government."

"A buried branch of it. The government itself never knew what was going on."

"But records had to be kept," she said. "And payrolls justified. Because the network had a budget, no matter how buried. The ledger had to be balanced."

Father Stanislaw understood now. "The same way the CIA or any other intelligence network has to keep accounts. But not directly. Its budget might be channeled through the Department of Agriculture or the Interior."

"However it's channeled, the money has to come from somewhere," Drew said. "If the funds belong to the system, there's a paper trail. There has to be."

"But if Scalpel's defunct" - puzzled, Arlene glanced from Drew to the priest - "if the network was canceled but someone reactivated it, someone not in the government, then the money comes from the private sector."

"All the more reason to need ledgers, explanations for where the money went," Drew said. "The IRS is ruthless. It demands an accounting."

"So?"

"We follow the paper trail," Drew said. "Canceled checks. You told me you'd found them. What's the name of the local bank? And" - Drew turned toward Father Stanislaw - "who's the most powerful Opus Dei contact here? The one in banking and business?"

"Ah," the priest said, understanding.

"Yes," Drew told him.

Father Stanislaw glanced at his watch. "It's only seven in the morning. We'll have to wait till - "

"Fine," Drew said. "I've got something almost as important to keep me busy."

Chapter 16.

He found an opener in a drawer beside the sink and took the lids off every container of cat food in the apartment. Ten, all told. Some were chicken, others liver and fish, and one, Gourmet Delight, seemed to be a combination of everything.

He found two bags of dry food underneath the sink and opened them as well, then carried all of it to the alley outside and in the cold morning air spread the goodies along the cinderblock wall.

The cats ate voraciously.

"Enjoy," he said. "That's all there is. There won't be any more."

He felt an ache in his chest.

Because your master's dead. I killed him.

Chapter 17.

At five after nine, as Drew and Arlene watched, Father Stanislaw used the phone in the apartment to reach his contact. He explained what he needed, hung up, and ten minutes later received a call from someone else.

Again he listened. He nodded and thanked whoever was calling. At once, he phoned someone else, received more information, and called yet another number.

The process took fifty minutes. And when for the final time he set down the phone, he leaned back exhausted on the sofa.

"Well?" Drew asked.

"When you cash a check, the bank keeps microfilm records of the transaction. Mike's inheritance - sometimes it's called a scholarship; never mind, let's say his checks - came from the Fairgate Institute. So what's the Fairgate Institute? I charged long distance to this number. I didn't think the occupant would mind. According to my contacts in New York and Washington, the Fairgate Institute is part of the Golden Ring Foundation. A non-profit help-to-the-needy, et cetera, et cetera. And the Golden Ring Foundation... remember the IRS insists on these records... God bless bureaucracy... the Golden Ring Foundation is part of... well, the bottom line is, when layer after layer is peeled away, the Risk Analysis Corporation. In Boston."

Drew shook his head. "Am I supposed to make a connection?"

"No. At least, not on the face of it. You won't like this," Father Stanislaw said. "My contact in Boston found out the name of the man who runs this Risk Analysis Corporation."

"And I know him?"

"Oh, indeed," Father Stanislaw said. "The coincidence is too shocking to be dismissed. I think it proves that Risk Analysis is Scalpel, and that this man ran it as well."

"Who?"

When Father Stanislaw told him, Drew ignored everything - Arlene's hand on his shoulder, the meow of the cats outside, the memory of Mike's blood dribbling salty past his lips.

The name.

Oh, yes, the name.

It and nothing else mattered.

His world came together.

The name was the secret to his life.

*

PART EIGHT