The League of Night and Fog (29 page)

“No one showed any interest,” she said.

That didn’t prove they weren’t being watched. Nonetheless, they’d have been foolish not to take the precaution. They joined the stream of shoppers along the street.

“We got a message,” Drew said. He didn’t show it to her. Couldn’t. In the cubicle at the bank, he’d torn the note into minuscule pieces and kept them in a pocket of his trousers. While he’d walked to the Bahnhofstrasse, he’d surreptitiously dropped the bits here and there along the sidewalk.

“Assuming the message was actually from Father Sebastian,” Drew said, “he gave us a time and place for a meeting tonight. He also gave us two fallback times and places for tomorrow in case we didn’t get his message today.”

“Thorough.”

“No more than I’d expect from a member of the Fraternity.”

Again her eyes flashed with apprehension. “Where do we meet him?”

A
t 1
A.M
., they emerged from the darkness of an alley, crossed the narrow stone expanse of the Rathausbrucke, and reached an ornate fountain. Mist from the river drifted toward them.

“I can think of better places for a meeting,” Arlene said.

“One less exposed?” Drew asked. “On the other hand, anyone following us would have to cross the bridge. This late at night, hardly anyone else around, we’d be sure to notice him.”

The instructions had been to reach the fountain at five minutes after one, but they knew that the rendezvous might not occur until as long as a half hour later. Father Sebastian would want to satisfy himself that they hadn’t been followed before he showed himself.

But a half hour later, the priest had still not arrived.

“I don’t like what I’m feeling. We’ll try the fallback time and place tomorrow morning,” Drew said. “We’d better get out of here.”

Arlene didn’t need encouragement. She walked from the fountain, but not back toward the bridge, instead toward the street along this side of the river. Drew followed.

The mist thinned. Reaching a murky side street, they passed a restaurant, its windows dark. Ahead, a young man drove a motorcycle through an intersection, the noise so loud that for a moment Drew didn’t hear the car behind him. He spun toward its headlights. The car raced toward them. Drew pressed Arlene back toward a doorway and reached for his pistol. The car was already stopping.

Through an open window, Father Sebastian said, “Get in. Quickly.”

They did. Drew barely had a chance to close the door before Father Sebastian stepped on the throttle and urged the car down the street.

“What took you so long?” Drew said. “Why didn’t you meet us?”

Father Sebastian sped around a corner. “I’ve been watching you from a block away. In case you’d been followed, I wanted to make it seem the meeting had been aborted and you’d given up. I waited till contact was least expected, with little chance of anyone catching up to us.”

The priest wore dark slacks, a dark zipped-up Windbreaker, and dark driving gloves. The ring on the middle finger of his left hand made a bulge in the glove.

“I’m surprised you got our message as soon as you did. We left it at the bank only this morning,” Drew said. “Are you staying here in Zurich?”

“No. In Rome.”

“Then how … ?”

“From the moment I gave you the safe-deposit box key and the code words, my most-trusted assistant has been assigned to a cloister here in Zurich. He checks the box daily. When he found your message, he phoned me in Rome. I told him to arrange for several possible meetings and left at once for Zurich. My flight arrived this evening.”

“But if your assistant knew about your plans …”

“Exactly. As much as I trust him, prudence required me to add my own variation. By such precautions, the Fraternity has kept itself secret all these centuries. And we mustn’t forget—I recruited you, an outsider who had no choice except to help me, precisely because I have reason to believe there is an enemy within the order.” The priest sped around another corner and checked his rearview mirror. “No one behind us. It seems we’ve accomplished our purpose. Would you care to do some late-night sightseeing?”

The priest sped north, toward the wooded hills outside the city.

“Y
our request for a meeting was unexpected. Indeed, from a security point of view, most distressing.” Father Sebastian continued driving. “What do you want?”

“Information,” Drew said.

“You couldn’t have put your questions in writing and left them at the bank?”

“So your assistant could learn what I needed before
you
did? What precautions could you have taken after that?”

“I grant your point.”

“Besides, a great deal’s happened since we met you at the Vatican.”

“I hope that means you’ve made progress.”

“It means there are other players in the game.”

Father Sebastian turned sharply toward him.
“Who?”

“If I knew, I wouldn’t have had to risk asking for this meeting. I need your resources, your network, to help me find out.”

The priest concentrated on the road. “Explain.”

Drew began with his decision to investigate the possibility that terrorists were responsible for Cardinal Pavelic’s disappearance. “Terrorists used to be my specialty, after all,” he said bitterly.
“But Father Victor’s research seemed to indicate he hadn’t explored that possibility.”

“Cardinal Pavelic’s disappearance might have been the first stage of a terrorist attack against the Church? My compliments. It hadn’t occurred to me.”

“I’m not sure I’m right. But two other men had the same suspicion.” Drew explained about his conversation with Gatto and how the arms merchant, no longer privy to confidential information, had directed him to Medici. “But when Arlene and I were set to grab Medici, two men took him first. And when we returned to Gatto to ask what he knew about these men, we found his villa had been attacked. His bodyguards were dead. He’d been tortured. His throat had been slit.”

Father Sebastian gripped the steering wheel. “Then you assume the two men forced Gatto to reveal what he’d already told you?”

“Yes. I believe those two men tortured Gatto to learn if terrorists were involved in the cardinal’s disappearance. I think they have the same purpose I do. And I want to know who they are.”

“Describe them.”

Drew remembered his view from the alley as the two men subdued Medici’s bodyguard and chauffeur, then shoved Medici into his limousine. The confrontation and abduction had been amazingly quick—no longer than twenty seconds—but Drew’s expert memory envisioned it again as if he were watching a film-strip.

“They were in their early forties,” he said. “They both wore caps. Even so, I could see hair at the back of their necks and along their ears. One man was a blond, the other a redhead. The blond was six feet tall, tanned, well-built, as if he lifted weights, big shoulders and chest, wide forehead and jaw. The redhead was taller, maybe six foot two, extremely thin and pale. His cheeks were gaunt. His face seemed squeezed together.”

“A charming couple,” Father Sebastian said. “But without
more information, I don’t see how my sources can identify them. A muscular blond and a pasty redhead. Did you get any sense of their nationality?”

“Only in a negative sense. I had the impression they weren’t French, Spanish, or Italian. Still, we do have other information.”

“Oh?”

“Those men were professionals. I don’t mean just that they knew what they were doing. I mean world-class. I’ve seen few men better, and in my former life, I dealt with a lot of experts. They can’t be that good and not have a reputation. My guess is the color of their hair is part of their trademark. Ask your sources about top-of-the-line assassins. Find out if two of them are a blonde and a redhead. And something else—assuming they’re not Italian, they had to come through immigration. Check with your Opus Dei people in Italian security, Interpol, the CIA. Maybe our two friends entered Italy recently. Maybe somebody spotted them.”

“It still isn’t much of a lead.”

“It’s all we’ve got,” Drew said. “All
you’ve
got. I’m handing the case over to you for now.”

“For now? Or is this your attempt to bow out completely? You haven’t forgotten your bargain, I hope. If you cooperate, we’ll pardon your sins against us.”

“I haven’t forgotten. All I want is the chance to be with Arlene. I know if I betray you I’ll never get that chance.
But how can I cooperate if I don’t get the information I’ve asked for?”

Father Sebastian debated. “As you say, it’s in my hands for now. Check the safe-deposit box every morning at ten, every afternoon at three.”

Exhausted by the discussion, Drew leaned back. Next to him, in the rear of the shadowy car, he felt Arlene gazing at him searingly.

“I’ll try to have an answer for you soon,” the priest said.

T
he Langenberg Wildlife Park, off a scenic road southwest of Zurich, allowed its visitors an intimate glimpse of chamois, marmot, deer, and boar. Drew and Arlene drove from the park’s two acres of rocky forested hills and proceeded farther south along a series of rising switchbacks until they stopped at the top of Albis Pass. From its 2,600 feet, they had a view of rolling countryside. More important, their position gave Father Sebastian a chance to see if they’d been followed from the park.

Ten minutes later, Father Sebastian pulled up beside them. After Drew and Arlene got in, the priest sped down the road from the pass. He soon turned onto a wooded side road and checked his rearview mirror. It was the afternoon after their late-night meeting. The sky was cloudy, with a threat of rain.

“Icicle and Seth.”

Drew didn’t understand. “Icicle and … ?”

“Seth,” the priest repeated. “Those are their cryptonyms. I confess I didn’t think I’d learn anything about them. But as soon as I mentioned a blonde and a redhead, I got an immediate reaction from my Opus Dei contacts in Interpol. I’m embarrassed I hadn’t heard about these two men before. The only excuse I can think of for my ignorance is they haven’t made a move against anything that involves the Church. They’re not terrorists; you wouldn’t have known about them either.”

“What about them?” Drew asked.

“They’re extremely expensive, extremely skilled, extremely deadly. They don’t work often, but when they do, it’s a major job. They’re experts at hiding. No one knows where they live.”

“By definition,” Drew said. “Otherwise there’d have been reprisals against them.”

“One Interpol theory is that they use a major proportion of their income to buy protection. But even so, they’ve made a few mistakes. Along the line some security cameras took photographs of them. Only a couple. The images are blurred. But
these days, computers can do wonders to add high-resolution to murky photographs. And those enhanced photographs were used to identify two men who came through Rome’s airport two days ago from Canada. Each man alone might not have triggered interest. But both of them on one plane …”

“Sure. They attracted attention to each other. The watcher was bound to notice.”

“That’s part of the reason they were spotted,” Father Sebastian said. “But there’s a stronger reason for both of them on one plane to be unusual. I told you their code names are Icicle and Seth. Both are appropriate to killing.”

“Death is an iceman. Seth is the red-haired Egyptian god of the underworld.”

“And forty years ago, the men with those code names were mortal enemies,” Father Sebastian said.

“That’s impossible! Forty years ago, the men I saw would have been infants!”

“I’m talking about the fathers whose code names the sons inherited. In the Second World War, Icicle and Seth were Hitler’s personal principal assassins. Each tried to outdo the other’s body count—to gain approval from the Führer. And after the Third Reich collapsed, the favored assassins continued to challenge each other. On several occasions, they tried to kill each other. Because of a woman, some sources say. Do the sons of old enemies consort with each other? Travel on the same plane? Cooperate to kidnap an informant?
That’s
what attracted Interpol’s attention. Whatever’s happening is more disturbing than I feared. Icicle and Seth working together?”

T
he sky became grayer. A light rain started falling as Father Sebastian let them off at the top of Albis Pass. “And now the case is yours again,” the priest said. “I don’t know how you can use the information I’ve given you. But I recruited you precisely because I didn’t want to risk involving the Fraternity in the
investigation. If you need me to do your work for you, why should I have bargained with you? I’m becoming impatient.” With an angry glare, the priest sped away.

Drew watched him disappear down the pass. The rain was like a heavy mist. It drifted across his face. Despondent, he and Arlene got into their car.

“What now?” Arlene asked. “Even with what he told us, I feel helpless. Where do we go?”

“I think back to Rome.” He tried to sound confident. “Where Cardinal Pavelic disappeared, where Father Victor was shot, where Seth and Icicle went after Gatto and Medici.”

Her gaze became hopeful. “But what’s the connection?”

“Between the sons of Hitler’s private assassins and the disappearance of Cardinal Pavelic? I’m not sure there
is
a connection, not a direct one anyhow. Seth and Icicle didn’t abduct the cardinal—otherwise they wouldn’t be looking for him. They want answers the same as we do. Why, though? Why are they so interested? What would make the sons of Nazi executioners—and remember their fathers were enemies—want to join forces to find a missing cardinal? From the start, we overlooked the obvious. The cardinal’s the key to this. But we are thinking of him only as a figurehead, a Church luminary, not as a man. Who
was
he? We hardly know anything about him.”

Drew turned the ignition key and steered toward the road. At once he saw a Renault go by, driven by a man speeding down the pass toward Zurich. Behind the Renault, another car, a Volkswagen Golf, followed closely. In it, a woman stared at the car ahead with intensity, as if the worst thing that could happen would be for her to lose sight of the Renault. Drew was positive he’d never seen them before, yet he felt a puzzling kinship. He pulled onto the road and drove behind them down the pass, but wherever they were headed, he and Arlene were going toward Zurich’s airport and the next flight back to Rome.