The envelope—bold black ink emphasizing its PERSONAL! caution—lay on his desk. The postage cost, including the special delivery fee, had been nine dollars and fifteen cents. No return address.
So why am I nervous? he thought. It’s just an envelope.
He glanced back down at the cost-projection figures but found himself compelled to glance again at the envelope. Couldn’t turn his eyes away.
Well, maybe if I don’t open it. Maybe if I throw it in the trash.
No, Marge might find it there and open it.
Then I could take it with me when I left the office and get rid of it on the way home. And anyway, so what if Marge saw what was in it? What difference would that make?
Because it’s marked PERSONAL!, and after what you found at the bottom of your swimming pool, you’d better pay attention when your psychic alarm bells start going off. You might not want to open it, but you’d damned well better.
Even so, he sat motionless, staring at the envelope.
At last, he exhaled and inched his fingers across the desk. The envelope felt heavy, dense. He started to tear open its flap and froze, tasting something sour.
This might be a letter bomb, he thought. His impulse was to drop it back on the desk and hurry from the office, but he hesitated, compelled by a stronger impulse to pinch it gently and trace a finger along its edges. The contents felt solid—no give in the middle where cardboard might cover a hollow filled with explosives. Cautiously, he tore open the flap and peered inside.
At a thick stack of photographs. He stared at the image on top. It was black-and-white, a reproduction of what evidently had been a picture taken years ago.
The horror of it made him gasp. Filled with disgust, he leafed through the stack, finding other horrors, each more revolting than the one before, obscenity heaped upon obscenity. His lungs didn’t want to draw in air.
Corpses. The top photograph—and the countless others beneath it—showed corpses, stacks and stacks of corpses, thrown together on top of each other, arms and legs protruding in grotesque angles, rib cages clearly outlined beneath starved flesh. Gaunt cheeks, sunken eyes, some of which were open, accusing even in death. Scalps shaved bare. Lips drawn inward over toothless gums. Features contorted with permanent grimaces of fright and pain. Old men. Women. Children.
So many. He almost screamed.
8
“It’s true! You have to believe me! I don’t know!” Medici insisted. “Please!”
Again Seth slapped him across the mouth. The slap, though it produced less pain than a punch, resulted in paradoxically greater terror, as if assaulting Medici’s dignity was the key to breaking him.
“The priest!” Seth demanded. “Cardinal Pavelic! I’m losing my patience! Who abducted the priest?”
“If I knew, I’d tell you!”
This time Seth used the back of his hand, slapping Medici’s head to the side, leaving angry red welts on Medici’s cheek. Seth’s own cheeks were as red as his hair, his usually nonexpressive eyes bright with what might have been pleasure.
Icicle stood in a corner of the kitchen in the isolated farmhouse they’d rented, watching with interest.
His interest had two causes: Seth’s interrogation technique and Medici’s response to it. Seth had tied Medici to a chair, bound the prisoner’s wrists behind the back of the chair, and looped a noose around the prisoner’s neck, the tail of the noose attached to the rope that bound his wrists. Every time Medici’s head jerked from a slap, the noose tugged into his throat and the resultant pressure yanked Medici’s wrists up toward his shoulder blades.
Ingenious, Icicle decided. A minimum force produces a maximum effect. The prisoner realizes he’s inflicting most of the agony upon himself. He struggles to resist the impact of the slap, but the way he’s been tied, he can’t resist. His body becomes his enemy. His self-confidence, his dignity, becomes offended. You’ll crack anytime now, Medici, he decided. The tears streaming down Medici’s face confirmed his conclusion.
“One more time,” Seth demanded. “Who abducted the cardinal?”
Medici squinted, calculating his answer. Pain had unclouded his mind. He understood his situation now. None of his men realized where he was. No one was going to rescue him. Pain wasn’t his problem so much as how to survive. “Listen first. Why don’t you listen before you slap me again?”
Seth shrugged. “The problem is, I need something to listen to.”
Medici tried to swallow, but the tight noose constricted his throat. “I’m just a middleman. Clients come to me. They want weapons, information, surveillance teams, safe houses. I supply these services. They don’t tell me why they want these services. I don’t ask.”
Seth turned to Icicle, pretending a yawn. “I ask him about the cardinal, he gives me the story of his life.”
“You’re not letting me explain!” Medici said.
“I will when you say something!”
Medici hurried on. “My clients don’t tell me their plans, but I do keep my ears to the ground.”
“Now he gives me grotesque images,” Seth told Icicle.
“I have to keep up with the ins and outs of the profession, don’t I? To keep on top of things?”
“He has a problem with prepositions,” Seth told Icicle.
“But I haven’t heard any rumors, not a whisper, about terrorists going after the cardinal. Believe me, I would have heard.” Medici squirmed, causing the noose to bind his neck tighter. He made a gagging sound. “Whoever took the cardinal, they weren’t radicals, they weren’t …”
“Terrorists. Scum,” Seth said. “Your clients have no style. They’re indiscriminate and clumsy. Bombs on buses.” Seth pursed his lips in disgust. “Dismembered children.”
For an instant, Icicle wondered if Seth had dimensions of character he hadn’t recognized. But then he realized that Seth’s objections were aesthetic, not moral. If Seth were paid enough, and if the plan required children to be killed as a distraction from the central purpose of executing a diplomat, this man would do it.
On the other hand, Icicle thought and firmly believed, I’d never agree to killing children. Not under any circumstances. Never.
Medici continued. “Terrorists might attack the Church as an institution they believed was corrupt, abduct a cardinal whose politics disagreed with their own. They went after the Pope a few years ago, didn’t they? But what I’m telling you is I haven’t heard about anyone going after the cardinal. I don’t believe you’re on the right trail.”
“In that case,” Seth said and spread his hands magnanimously, “as one professional to another”—his words implied respect, but his tone was mocking—“what course do you suggest we follow?”
Medici’s eyes became furtive. “Have you thought about the Church itself? Someone in the Church?”
Seth turned to Icicle.
“A possibility.” Icicle shrugged.
“I’m not convinced,” Seth said.
“That the cardinal might be a victim of the Church?”
“That this predator is telling the truth.”
“I am!” Medici insisted.
“We’ll soon find out.” Seth turned to Icicle. “We’ll do it your way now.”
“Thanks for the belated confidence.”
“It’s a matter of using every method. Force by itself can lead to convincing lies. Chemicals can elicit programmed responses. But the two together make up for each other’s liabilities.”
“In that case, I’ll fill a hypodermic with Sodium Amytal. Stand back. As you say, it’s my turn now.”
9
With the noose removed from his neck but his body still tied to the chair, Medici slumped, semiconscious. In theory, the Sodium Amytal had eliminated his mental censors, making it possible to acquire information that Medici otherwise, even in pain, might not reveal. The trick was not to inject so much Amytal that Medici’s responses became incoherent or that he sank fully into unconsciousness.
Now it was Icicle’s
turn to stand before the prisoner. Holding the almost empty hypodermic in one hand, he asked the key question that had brought him from Australia to Canada and finally to Italy. “Does the expression Night and Fog mean anything to you?”
Medici responded slowly. His tongue seemed stuck in his mouth. “Yes … from the war.”
“That’s right. The Second World War. The Nazis used it as a terrorist tactic. Anyone disloyal to the Third Reich risked vanishing without a trace, disappearing into the Night and Fog.” Icicle spoke slowly, distinctly, letting the words sink in. “Has the Night and Fog come back? Have you heard rumors about its being reactivated?”
Medici shook his head. “No rumors. No Night and Fog.”
“Try to remember. Did terrorists or a group pretending to be terrorists approach you? Did anyone ask for information about Cardinal Pavelic? Did anyone hire you to put surveillance on the cardinal?”
“No surveillance on the cardinal,” Medici whispered. “No one asked me about him.”
“Who do you think abducted the cardinal?”
“Don’t know.”
“Why would he have been abducted?”
“Don’t know.”
“Could someone within the Church be responsible?”
“Don’t know.”
Seth stepped forward. “That last answer’s interesting. He doesn’t know whether someone in the Church was responsible.”
Icicle understood what Seth meant. Forty minutes ago, Medici had insisted that they direct their attention toward the Church. “Before, he was grasping for any way he could imagine to distract us. He doesn’t know anything.”
“But the more I think about it, his suggestion is worth exploring.”
“The Church? Why not? We have to eliminate the possibilities. It’s conceivable that someone within the Church discovered what the cardinal knew and passed it on to the Night and Fog.”
“Or that someone in the Church is the Night and Fog.”
“Pavelic.” Icicle’s voice was fraught with hate. “For forty years, the bastard kept his hooks in our fathers. The records he kept. God knows how much money he demanded in exchange for keeping those records a secret. Pavelic was the only outsider who had the information that linked all our fathers. The Night and Fog couldn’t have organized its terror against them without knowing what was in the cardinal’s files.”
“Logical,” Seth said, “but not necessarily the case. There could be an explanation we’ve overlooked.”
“Such as?”
“That’s the problem. We don’t know enough,” Seth said. “But this man doesn’t either. I suggest we investigate the cardinal’s private life.”
“ ‘Private’?” Icicle laughed. “I didn’t know priests were allowed to have ‘private’ lives.” He hesitated. “And what about … ?” He gestured toward Medici.
“Get rid of him, of course. He’s useless to us, even a danger. Another injection of Amytal should be sufficient. Painless.” Seth raised his shoulders. “Perhaps even pleasureful.”
“That still leaves the man and the woman in the alley across from where we grabbed him. You noticed them as I did. They weren’t hiding there by coincidence. They had the same interest in Medici that we did.”
“If we see them again, we’ll kill them.” The blaze in Seth’s eyes suggested that too would be a pleasure.
NIGHTMARES THEN AND NOW
1
As the mountain road curved higher, the rented Volkswagen’s engine began to sputter. The car refused to gain speed to compensate for the incline. A half-kilometer later, Saul smelled gasoline and veered toward an observation point at a bend in the road. He shut the ignition off.
Beside him, Erika squirmed and wakened. When she peered toward the valley below them, the bright morning sun made her squint. The sky was turquoise, the farm fields emerald. Yawning, she glanced at her watch. “Ten forty-six?” Concern made her fully alert. “You’ve been driving since dawn. You must be exhausted. I’ll change places with you.”
“I can manage. We’ve only got fifteen kilometers to go.”
“Fifteen kilometers? If that’s all, why did you stop?”
“We almost had a fire.”
Her nostrils widened. “I smell it now. Gasoline.”
“I think it’s the carburetor.” He opened the driver’s door, approached the front of the car, and lifted the hood. A film of liquid covered the engine. Vapor rose. Erika appeared beside him and studied the engine.
“Hand me your pocketknife,” she said.
She opened its blade and adjusted a screw on the carburetor’s stem. Saul knew what she was doing. The car, which they’d rented in Vienna, must have been tuned for lowland city driving. Now after struggling against the thin air of the mountains, the carburetor hadn’t been able to mix sufficient oxygen with gasoline to allow the fuel to be detonated by the spark plugs. The engine had flooded. The excess fuel had backed up into the carburetor, which had overflowed. The simple adjustment to the carburetor would remedy the problem.
“Another five minutes, and we’d have been walking,” Saul said.
“Running’s more like it.” She laughed self-critically. “Before the gas tank blew up. We’ve been living in the desert too long. We forgot the problems altitude can cause.” Her long dark hair glinted in the morning sun. Her beige jacket emphasized the deep brown of her eyes.
Saul had never loved her more. “I hope that’s all we forgot. I’d hate to think we’ve just been lucky so far, and now, out of practice for years, we’re making mistakes.”
“Keep thinking that way. It’ll stop us from being overconfident.”
“That’s one thing I’m not.”
Eager to get moving, they subdued their frustration and waited for the gasoline to evaporate from the engine. The surrounding slopes, above and below, were lush with evergreens. The thin air of six thousand feet made breathing difficult. Snowcapped mountains towered in the distance. Under other circumstances, these dramatic conditions—the Swiss Alps, south of Zurich—would have been mesmerizing.
Saul shut the car’s hood. “It’s probably safe to drive now. According to the map, the road’ll take us down to the neighboring valley. But Misha investigated the names on the list he made. His agents must have already been where we’re going. If they’d learned anything important, we’d have been told about it. Let’s be prepared for disappointment.”
“We have to start somewhere.”
Saul’s voice thickened. “Right. And if the answer isn’t here, it’s somewhere else… . We’ll keep searching till we finish this.”
2
The village was Weissendorf: a cluster of perhaps a hundred buildings perched upon a small plateau with a gently sloping pasture above and below. A road ran through it. The buildings were narrow, often four stories tall, the upper levels projecting an arm’s-length out from the bottom one so that they seemed like awnings designed to keep pedestrians dry when it rained. With their peaked roofs that curved slightly up at the eaves, the buildings reminded Saul of fir trees. At the same time, elaborately carved designs on railings, windowsills, and doors reminded him of gingerbread houses.
He parked the Volkswagen outside an inn. An oversized ale tankard with a handle and hinged lid hung above the entrance. He turned to Erika. “Which one of us should ask directions to where Ephraim Avidan lives?”
She realized the problem. Switzerland had no language of its own. Its citizens spoke the language of the nearest bordering country. “Your German’s better than mine,” she said. “But this is southern Switzerland. Our French is about the same, but my Italian’s—”
“Better. Besides—excuse a sexist remark—they might be more receptive to a female stranger. You want to give it a try?”
With a grin that didn’t disguise her troubled mood, she opened the passenger door and entered the inn.
Saul waited uneasily. Before promising his former network that he wouldn’t accept help from any intelligence agency, he’d already received a great
deal of help from Misha Pletz and the Mossad. He didn’t think he could be accused of reneging on his agreement if he took advantage of that prepromise help. For one thing, Misha had supplied them with Israeli passports using cover names and fictitious backgrounds that, if questioned by the authorities, would be endorsed by Israeli civilians and businesses secretly affiliated with the Mossad. For another, Misha had given them sufficient money to conduct their search. He’d also provided them with weapons, though Saul and Erika had hidden these before leaving Austria, not wanting to risk crossing the border with them.
But at the moment, the most important of Misha’s contributions was a photocopy of his notebook—the list of names he’d made and the information about them. The first name on the list was Ephraim Avidan.
“What do the names on the list have to do with what happened to my father?” Erika had asked.
“I have no idea,” Misha had answered.
“I don’t believe that. You wouldn’t have made the list if there isn’t a connection among them.”
“Did I say there isn’t a connection? We know their backgrounds, their addresses, their habits, their former occupations.”
“Former?”
“These men are all ex-Mossad, all retired. But you asked how they related to what happened to your father, and that puzzle I haven’t been able to solve yet.”
“They claim they don’t know my father? They won’t answer your questions? What’s the problem?”
“I haven’t been able to ask them anything.”
“You’re doing it again. Evading.”
“I’m not. These men share two other factors. They survived the Nazi death camps …”
“And?”
“They’ve all disappeared.”
As Erika’s father had disappeared.
The inn door swung open. Saul couldn’t interpret the expression on Erika’s face when she got in the car.
“Anything?” he asked.