Brotherhood of the Rose

  He set the phone back on its cradle. Leaving the bar, he walked through the cover of the storm to arrive at his hotel precisely when he would have if, after seeing the movie, he'd taken his usual thirty-minute walk.

  He asked the desk clerk, "Any messages for Grisman? Room 21 L"

  "Sorry, sir."

  "No problem." Avoiding the elevator, he walked upstairs to his room. The strand of hair at the bottom of his door remained exactly where he'd placed it when he'd gone out, assuring him no one had entered in his absence. One more routine day.

  With two exceptions.

  Follow standard procedure. In the morning, Saul bought his ticket at the last possible moment. When the driver started his engine, Saul got on the bus. He sat in back and watched for anyone boarding after him.

  But no one did. As the bus pulled from the station, he eased back, nodding with satisfaction, staring at the condominiums of Vail and the far-off dots of skiers on the snow-covered mountains.

  He liked buses. He could see out the back if he was being followed. He could buy a ticket without getting logged in a computer, the reason he didn't fly or rent a car-he didn't want to leave a paper trail. What's more, a bus made several stops along its route. He could get off at any of them without attracting attention.

  Though his ticket was for Salt Lake City, he never intended to go there. He left the bus at Placer Springs an hour west of Vail. After waiting to see if anyone else got off, he bought a ticket for Denver, boarded the next bus heading east, and stumped in the back seat. Analyzing what he'd done, he decided he'd made no errors. Certainly if someone had been watching him, his shadow would be puzzled now, soon nervous, making urgent phone calls. Saul didn't care. He'd gained his freedom.

  He was ready to do his work.

  Tuesday, 9 A.m. The Denver wind brought tears to his eyes. Gray clouds hulking over the mountains made the morning seem like dusk. Despite his down-filled coat, he shivered, standing on a suburban corner, squinting toward a building in the middle of the block.

  Long, low, and drab. Counting from the address on the corner, Saul guessed the building was 48 Cody Road. He walked through slush to reach it. Though he'd used local buses to get here, transferring often, he nonetheless glanced behind him, just in case. He saw few cars and none that looked familiar.

  Turning forward, he stopped in surprise, gaping at a Star of David above the door. A synagogue? Himself a Jew, he wondered if he'd mis-heard his instructions. Granted, he was used to meetings in uncommon places.

  But a synagogue? His spine felt numb. Uneasily he entered. He faced a shadowy vestibule. His nostrils flared from the smell of dust. As he shut the door, its rumble echoed.

  Stillness settled over him. He chose a yarmulke from a box on a table, put the small black cap on the back of his head, and, lips taut, pulled another door.

  The temple. He felt a pressure. The air seemed heavy and dense. It seemed to squeeze him. He stepped forward.

  In a front seat, an old man stared at the white curtain that hid the Ark, his skullcap shiny from years of worship. The old man lowered his eyes toward his prayer book.

  Saul held his breath. Except for the old man at the front, the temple was deserted. Something was wrong.

  The old man turned to him. Saul tensed. "Shalom," the old man said. Impossible. The man was Eliot. He stood. As always, he wore a black suit and vest. A matching overcoat and homburg hat lay on the seat beside him.. A gentile, he was sixty-seven, tall and gaunt, gray-skinned, dark-eyed, his shoulders stooped, his face pinched with sorrow.

  Smiling warmly, Saul replied, "Shalom." His throat hurt as he approached.

  They hugged each other. Feeling the wrinkled kiss on his cheek, Saul kissed the old man in return. They studied one another. "You look well," Saul said. "A lie, but I'll accept it. You look well, though."

  "Exercise."

  "Your wounds?"

  "No complications."

  "In the stomach." Eliot shook his head. "When I heard what happened, I wanted to visit you."

  "But you couldn't. I understand."

  "You received good care?"

  "You know I did. You sent the best."

  "The best deserves the best."

  Saul felt embarrassed. A year ago, he had been the best, But now? "A lie," he said. "I don't deserve it."

  "You're alive."

  "By luck."

  "By skill. A lesser man could not have escaped."

  "I shouldn't have needed to escape," Saul said. "I planned the operation. I thought I'd allowed for every factor. I was wrong. A cleaning lady, for God's sake. She should have been on another floor. She never checked that room that early."

  Eliot spread his hands. "Exactly my point. Random chance. You can't control it."

  "You know better," Saul replied. "You used to say the word accident had been invented by weak people to excuse their mistakes. You told us to strive for perfection."

  "Yes. But--2' Eliot frowned, "-perfection can never be attained."

  "I almost had it. A year ago. I don't understand what happened." He suspected, though. He was six feet tall, two hundred pounds of bone and muscle. But he was also thirty-seven. I'm getting old, he thought. "I ought to quit. It's not just this job. Two others went bad before it."

  "Random chance again," Eliot said. "I read the reports. You weren't to blame."

  "You're making allowances."

  "Because of our relationship?" Eliot shook his head. "Not true. I've never let it sway me. But sometimes failure can have a beneficial effect, It can make us try much harder." He took two slips of paper from the inner pocket of his suitcoat.

  Saul read the neat handprinting on the first one. A telephone number. He memorized it, nodding. Eliot showed him the second sheet. Instructions, six names, a date, and an address. Again, Saul nodded.

  Eliot took back the papers. Picking up his hat and overcoat, he left the temple to cross the vestibule toward the men's room. Thirty seconds later, Saul heard flushing. He took for granted Eliot had burned the pages and disposed of the ashes. If the temple had been bugged, their conversation alone would not have revealed the subject of the notes.

  Eliot returned, putting on his overcoat. "I'll use the exit in the rear."

  "No, wait. So soon? I hoped we could talk."

  "We will. When the job's completed."

  "How are your flowers?"

  "Not just flowers. Roses." Eliot shook a finger at him in mock chastisement. "After all these years, you still enjoy baiting me by calling them flowers." Saul grinned. "Actually," Eliot said, "I've developed an interesting variation. Blue. No rose has ever been that color before. When you come to visit, I'll show it to you."

  "I look forward to it."

  Warmly they embraced. "if it matters," Eliot said, "the job you'll be doing is designed to protect all this." He gestured toward the temple. "One more thing." He reached into his overcoat, pulling out a candy bar.

  Saul's chest tightened as he took it. A Baby Ruth. "You still remember."

  "Always." Eliot's eyes looked sad.

  Saul swallowed painfully, watching Eliot leave through the back, listening to the echo of the door snicking shut. In accordance with procedure, he himself would wait ten minutes and go out the front. Eliot's cryptic remark about the purpose of this assignment troubled him, but he knew only something important would have caused Eliot to deliver the instructions in person.

  He squeezed his fists, determined. This time he wouldn't fail. He couldn't allow himself to disappoint the only father he, an orphan, had ever known.

  The man with a mustache munched a taco. Saul explained the assignment to him. They used no names, of course. Saul hadn't seen him before and wouldn't again. The man wore a jogging suit. He had a cleft in his chin. He wiped his mustache with a napkin.

  Baltimore. Three days later, 2 P.m. The Mexican restaurant was almost deserted. Even so, they sat at the remotest corner table.

  The man lit a cigarette, studying Saul. "We'll need a lot of backup."
/>
  "Maybe not," Saul said. "You know the protocol."

  Saul nodded. Established method. A team of fourteen men, the bulk of them working on surveillance, the others obtaining equipment, relaying messages, providing alibis, each of them knowing as little as possible about the others, all of them dropping out of sight an hour before the specialists stepped in. Efficient. Safe. "All right," the man told Saul. "But this is six jobs. Times fourteen backup men. That's eighty-four. We might as well hold a convention, advertise, sell tickets."

  "Maybe not," Saul said. "So humor me."

  "The key is all together-at one time, one place."

  "Who knows when that'll be? We could wait all year."

  "Three weeks from today."

  The man stared down at his cigarette. Saul told him where. The man stubbed out his cigarette. "Go on," he said. "We can keep surveillance to a minimum, simply making sure all six of them show up for the meeting."

  "Possibly. We'd still need communications. Someone else to get the stuff."

  "That's you." "No argument. But getting the stuff in the building won't be easy."

  "Not your worry.". "Fine with me. It's flaky. I don't like it. But if that's the way you want it, we can do the job with twenty men."

  "You're right," Saul said- "That's how I want it."

  "What's the matter?"

  "Let us just say I had a few assignments with people who let me down. I'm losing my faith in human nature."

  "That's a laugh."

  "For this job, as much as Ican, I wanttodependon myself."

  And me, of course. You'll have to depend on me." Saul studied him. The waitress brought the check. "My treat," Saul said.

  The estate spread across the valley-a three-story mansion, swimming pool, tennis courts, stables, a lush green pasture, riding trails through a park-like forest, ducks on a take. He lay in tall grass on a wooded bluff a half mile away, the warm spring sun on his back, its angle such that it wouldn't reflect off the lens of his telescope and warn the bodyguards in front of the house that someone was watching them. He studied a dust cloud on a gravel road, a limousine approaching the house, four other limousines already parked in front of a six-stall garage to the left. The car stopped at the house, a bodyguard stepping forward as a man got out. "He ought to be there by now," a voice said from a walkie-talkie next to Saul, the raspy tone of the man he'd talked to in Baltimore. The walkie-talkie had been adjusted to a seldomused frequency. Even so, there was always a chance of someone accidentally overhearing the conversation, so the walkie-talkie had been equipped with a scrambler. Only someone with another scrambler tuned to the same uncommon frequency could receive a clear transmission. "That's the last of them," the voice continued. "Eyeball I.D. Counting the guy who lives there, all six targets are in the zone."

  Saul pressed the "send" button on the walkie-talkie. "I'll take it from here. Head home." He stared through the telescope at the house. The visitor had gone inside, the limousine joining the others in front of the garage.

  He checked his watch. Everything on schedule. Though the mansion was closely guarded now, its security force had been minimal a week ago, just a man at the gate, another patrolling the grounds, a third in charge of the house. With a Starlite nightscope, he'd studied the estate three nights in a row, learning the guards' routine, when they were relieved and when they were careless, choosing four A.m. as the best time to infiltrate the grounds. In the dark, he'd crept through the forest toward the back. Precisely at four, two members of his team had created a diversion on the road that ran past the gate by pretending to be kids revving loud jalopies in a drag race. While the guards were distracted, Saul had picked the lock on a storm door, entering the basement. He hadn't worried about a warning system since he'd noticed that the guard in charge of the house never took precautions to shut off an alarm when he entered. In the basement, he used a shielded penlight, hiding plastique explosive in a furnace duct, attaching a radioactivated detonator. Taking his equipment, he locked the door and disappeared into the forest, hearing the roar of the jalopies finishing the race.

  Two days later, a full security force had sealed off the estate. When they searched the house, they might have found the explosive, but from his vantage, he'd seen no commotion.

  The guards had seemed concerned only with watching the perimeter of the house.

  He'd soon learn if the explosive remained. Glancing at his watch again, he saw that twenty minutes had passed. Time enough for the man with the cleft in his chin to have got away. Putting the walkie-talkie and the telescope in,his knapsack, he concentrated on a single blade of grass, focusing on it, narrowing his vision till the grass absorbed his mind. Free of emotion, achieving a stillness, he picked up a radio transmitter and pressed a button.

  The mansion blew apart, from the basement upward, outward, its walls disintegrating, rubble flying, spewing in all directions. The roof lifted, toppling, shrouded with dust, engulfed with flames. The shock wave hit him. Ignoring it, he shoved the radio transmitter in his knapsack. Hearing a rumble, he ignored it also, running from the bluff, approaching a car in a weed-covered lane.

  Eight years old. The team member responsible for transportation had bought it cheap, using cash and an alias, from a man who'd advertised in the Baltimore want ads. No one could trace it here.

  He obeyed the speed limit, calm, allowing no satisfaction, even though he'd achieved what his father had asked.

  EXPLOSION KILLS SIX COSTIGAN, VIRGINIA (AP)-An unexplained explosion Thursday evening destroyed the secluded mansion of Andrew Sage, controversial oil magnate and energy adviser to the president. The powerful blast killed Sage and five unidentified guests who, highly placed sources speculate, were representatives from various large American corporations, members of the Paradigm Foundation, which Sage had recently founded. "Mr. Sage's family is too distraught to talk about it," an FBI official announced at a press conference. "As much as we can determine, Mr. Sage had convened a kind of industrial summit meeting in an attempt to solve the nation's economic crisis. The president, of course, is deeply shocked. He lost not only a trusted adviser but a cherished friend."

  Sage's family was not present on his country estate at the time of the explosion. Several members of his security staff were injured by flying rubble. Investigators continue to search the wreckage for a clue to the cause of the blast.

  Saul reread the front-page story, folded the newspaper, and leaned back in his chair. A cocktail waitress, breasts and hips bulging from her costume, passed his table. He glanced from the piano player in the lounge, across the noisy casino, toward the blackjack tables, watching a pit boss study the crowd.

  He felt uneasy. Frowning, he tried to understand why. The job had gone smoothly. His getaway had been uneventful. After leaving the car at a Washington shopping mall, he'd taken a bus to Atlantic City. He'd made sure no one followed him.

  Then why was he worried? As slot machines rang, he continued frowning.

  Eliot had insisted on explosives. But Saul knew the job could easily have been done in a less dramatic way. Prior to the meeting, the six men could have died from apparent natural causes at different times in widely separate parts of the country: heart attack, stroke, suicide, traffic accident, a variety of other ways. The inner circle would have noticed the pattern, understanding what it meant, but there'd have been no publicity. Saul had to conclude, then, that publicity was the reason for the job. But why? Saul's instincts nagged him. Publicity violated the logic of his training. Eliot had always insisted on subtlety. Then why now had Eliot suddenly changed?

  Another thing bothered him- his present location, Atlantic City. After a job, he always went to a predetermined neutral site-in this case, a locker at a Washington gym-finding money and instructions on where to disappear. Eliot knew the locations Saul preferred-the mountains, Wyoming and Colorado in particular-and as a favor, Eliot always agreed to them. So why the hell was I sent to Atlantic City? he thought. He'd never been here. He didn't like crowds. He tolerat
ed them only as a necessary evil when he gratified his need to ski. Here, people swarmed around him like scavenging insects.

  Something was wrong. The orders to use explosives, to go to Atlantic City-they were blatant 'violations of routine. As roulette wheels clattered, Saul's hands itched with apprehension.

  He left the cocktail lounge, approaching the blackjack tables. He hated crowds, but in the locker at the gym, he'd found two thousand dollars and orders to play blackjack.

  Accepting his cover, he found an empty chair and bought five hundred dollars' worth of chips. After betting a twenty-five dollar chip, he received a king and a queen.

  The dealer won with blackjack.

  "Goddamned bastards," the president said. He punched a fist against the palm of his hand. He hadn't slept. The news had aged him shockingly, much more than the recent assassination attempt. Fatigue made him tremble. Oriegrief and anger pinched his face. "I want the man who killed my friend. I want those sonsofbitches---2' Abruptly the president stopped. Unlike his predecessors, he understood the wisdom of silence. What he didn't say couldn't be used against him.