The Brotherhood of the Rose (7 page)

That was the problem. Chris didn't want Eliot to follow his movements. Given what Chris intended to do, he didn't want Eliot to know the consequences, didn't want Eliot to grieve or feel embarrassed.

He tried not to show impatience. At the earliest opportunity, he'd go to the priest and get the dentist's name.

Preoccupied, he-turned from the dismal rain beyond the window. Wiping his sweat-blurred eyes, he gaped in disbelief at a man whom he had last seen seventeen years ago.

The man, a Chinese, had entered the dining room. Slender, round-faced, genteel, he wore an impeccable khaki suit, the jacket of which was buttoned to his collar in the Mao style. His youthful face and his thick black hair belied his sixty-two years.

The man's name was Chin Ken Chan. I.Q.: one hundred and eighty. Multilingual in Russian, French, and English in addition to Chinese. Chris knew his background. Chan had received his formal education from Dame Sahara Day-Wisdom, O.B.E., at Merton College, Oxford University, from 1939 till the war had ended. During that time, he'd been influenced by the Communist members of clubs at both Oxford and Cambridge, easily recruited by the mole Guy Burgess to help Mao after the war. Because Chan was a homosexual, he'd never risen higher than the rank of colonel in the intelligence arena of China. But he was a valuable idealist in the Maoist cause and, despite his effete appearance, one of its finest killers, particularly with the garotte.

Chan glanced dismissively at Chris and walked toward another table. He sat primly, reaching between the buttons of his jacket to pull out his own set of chopsticks.Chris chewed and swallowed, hiding his surprise. "The Snow Leopard."

Chan raised his head. "Does the Snow Leopard miss Deep Snow?" Chan nodded impassively. "It's been thirteen years since we've had Deep Snow in the Orient."

"I was thinking of seventeen years ago. I believe it snowed then in Laos."

Chan smiled politely. "There were only two Americans in the snow that year. I recall they were brothers-but not by birth."

"And this one is eternally grateful to you."

"Chris?" Chan said.

Chris nodded, throat tight. "Good to see you, Chan." His heart raced as he grinned and stood. They crossed the room and embraced.

Father Janin felt apprehensive. As soon as a servant had taken the American to the dining room, he grabbed the phone on his desk and dialed quickly. "Remus," he said.

He hung up, gulped a glass of brandy, frowned, and waited. Coincidences bothered him. Two days ago, he'd given sanctuary to a Russian, Joseph Malenov, the director of the KGB's opium traffic into Southeast Asia. Malenov had stayed in his room, where, by agreement, the priest supplied him daily with 300 milligrams of the suppressant Dilantin to try to calm his outbursts of rage and hypertension. The treatment was working.

Yesterday, the priest had given sanctuary to a Chinese Communist operative, Col. Chin Ken Chan. Informants had told the priest that Chan was here to meet the Russian and perhaps become a double agent for the KGB- Such arrangements were not unusual. In an Abelard safe house, opposing operatives frequently took advantage of neutral territory to transact business, sometimes defecting. But the priest was not convinced of Chan's motivation. He knew that the Chinese Communists opposed Russia's opium smuggling into Southeast Asia, partly because they resented Soviet interference in the region, partly as well because they felt that opium undermined the character of the area. It made no sense that Chan, who for years had been sabotaging Russia's opium shipments, would defect to the.very man who directed the smuggling.

Now, today, the American had arrived. His request for a dentist who would extract teeth and stay quiet about it could have only one purpose-to prevent someone's body from being identified. But whose? The Russian's?

His thoughts were interrupted when the phone rang. The priest picked up the receiver and listened. In a minute, he set it down, twice as puzzled. REMUS, he'd learned, was the cryptonym for Christopher Patrick Kilmoonic, one-time lieutenant in the American Special Forces, who in 1965 had worked in conjunction with the CIA in an operation called Deep Snow, the purpose of which was to destroy the flow of Russian opium. In 1966, Kilmoonie had resigned from the military and joined the CIA. In 1976, he'd entered a Cistercian monastery. In 1982, he'd rejoined the CIA. The combination of religion and politics seemed unusual, but Father Janin could empathize since he himself had combined them. Still, what troubled him was that all three men were connected in different ways with the opium' traffic.

And one other connection. When the American had mentioned that in 1965 he'd come here with a crushed face, ruptured appendix, and fractured spine, the priest had remembered the American's escort-the same Chinese now in this buildingchin Ken Chan.

Coincidences bothered him.

Chris stood on the rectory's porch as rain drummed on the corrigated metal roof. He still couldn't see the graveyard. Next to him, Chan leaned on the railing, facing outward. Though the safe house wasn't bugged, they used the noise from the rain to prevent their conversation from being overheard. They'd chosen a windowless corner. "Two things," Chan said.

Chris waited. "You must leave here quickly. Joseph Malenov is -in a room upstairs," Chan said.

Chris understood. In their profession, what was said was seldom what was meant. Discretion was the rule. For Chan to speak even this directly was unusual. Chris quickly made the connection, filling the gaps between Chan's statements.

He was shocked. The basis of their way of life was adherence to strict codes, the most extreme of which was the sanctity of an Abelard safe house.

Chan intended to commit the cardinal sin. "It's never been done," Chris said. "Not true. While you were in the monastery-"

"You've been keeping tabs on me."

"I saved your life. I'm responsible for you. During your stay in the monastery, the code was broken twice. In Ferlach, Austria. Then again in Montreal."

Chris felt a chill. Chan's gaze never wavered. "Then the world's gone crazy," Chris said. "Isn't that why you left it? Because the monastery offered a code with honor?"

"No. Back then, the profession still had rules. I left because I failed the profession. Not the-other way around."

"I don't understand."

"I can't explain. I don't want to talk about it. If the sanction's lost its meaning, how can we depend on anything else?" He shook his head in dismay. "Nothing's sacred."

"Everything gets worse," Chan said. "Six years ago, what I plan would have been unthinkable."

"And now?" Chris asked. "Since precedent has been established, I feel free from obligation. Malenov is mentally diseased. These past few months, he's increased the opium traffic beyond tolerance. He has to be stopped."

"Then kill him outside," Chris insisted. "He's too well guarded then."

"But you'll be hunted."

"By them all." Chan nodded. "Everyone. The Snow Leopard has his tricks."

"The odds," Chris said. "If everyone's against you... Ferlach, and then Montreal? What happened?"

"To the violaters? They were found, and they were killed. And so will I be killed. In time. But I will stretch the time."

"I ask you not to do this."

"Why?"

"Because I feel responsible to you."

"The debt is mine. I interfered with what you understand as fate. But I must face my own. As I grow old, I must prepare to die with what you Westerners call dignity, what I call honor. I must face my destiny. Too many years I've waited for this chance. The opium is wrong. It has to be stopped."

"But the KGB will only send another man to replace him."

Chan clutched the rail. "Not Malenov. The man is evil." Sweat drenched his face. "He has to die."

Chris felt distressed by Chan's directness. "In the morning, I will leave."

"But I can't wait that long. The Russian leaves tomorrow."

I need important information from the priest."

"Then get it soon. What I want, our friendship won't be overlooked. The coincidence of our meeting after all these years will seem suspicious. Fate, my-friend. I didn't save your life so long ago to have you lose it due to me now. Get out of here. I beg you."

The rain fell harder.

Something wakened Chris. He lay in his room in the dark, squinting at the luminous dial on his watch. Three-thirty. Puzzled, he kept still and concentrated. The storm had passed. Occasional drops of water trickled off the eaves. As moonlight glimmered through his open window, he smelled the sordid odor of the river and the fertilized soil of the garden below.He listened to the songs of the birds beginning to stir.

For a moment, he thought he'd wakened from habit and nothing more. His six years in the monastery had trained him to use the hours before dawn for meditation. Normally he would have wakened shortly anyhow.

But then he glanced toward the hall light filtering through the crack below his door. A shadow passed. Whoever it was, he thought, the person knew how to walk like an animal, carrying the weight of his body along the outsides of his feet. He imagined a cat stalking silently toward its prey.

It might have been a servant patrolling the hall. Or Chan. Or someone after Chan. Or after me, Chris thought, because of my friendship with Chan.

He grabbed the Mauser by his side and threw off his sheet, lunging naked in the dark toward the protection of a chair. His testicles shrank. He held his breath and waited, cautious, aiming toward the door.

Beyond it, he heard a noise like a fist slamming into a pillow. Muffled, it nonetheless carried a great deal of force, As someone groaned, an object thudded to the floor out there.

Chris left the cover of the chair, creeping toward the wall beside his door. With his ear to the wall, he listened to the rattle of a latch as a door came open in the hall.

Someone spoke, alarmed, in Russian. "What have you done?"

Chris heard the old priest answer, also in Russian. "He was going in your room. You see his garotte. He meant to strangle you. I had no choice. I had to kill him."

Chris opened the door. If he didn't, if he stayed in his room, the.priest might wonder why the noise hadn't wakened him. Suspicious, the priest might decide Chris was somehow involved in this.

Chris squinted from his open door toward the light in the hall.

The priest swung toward the sound he'd made, aiming a Russian Tokarev automatic pistol with a silencer.

Chris froze. He raised his hands, the Mauser high above his head. "Your voices woke me." He shrugged. "I can see this is none of my business."

Waiting for a nod of dismissal from the priest, Chris stepped back in his room and closed the door.

He stared at the dark. He'd seen a man in another doorway. Middle sixties. Shrunken, pale. Dark circles under his eyes. Rumpled hair. Nervous twitches. Wearing sweat-stained silk pajamas. Joseph Malenov, Chris thought. He'd never met the man, but he'd seen photographs of him and knew that Malenov was addicted to the opium he smuggled.

On the floor, between the priest and Malenov, Chris had seen Char's body, the base of his skull shattered by the Russian pistol's 7.62-mm bullet. The floor had been dark with blood and urine. There'd been no point in checking to see if Chan was alive.

Chris seethed. Other shadows blocked the light at the base of the door. He recognized the sound of someone unfolding a blanket. He heard men, more than two, quietly, but not as quiet as Chan had been, lift the body, wrap it, and carry it away. He smelled acrid sandalwood, then the resin odor of pine.

Someone must have lit a pot of incense and thrown sawdust on the floor to absorb the body's fluids.

Chris stepped toward the window, careful not to show himself. The birds erupted from the trees, alarmed by intruders. Silhouetted by the moonlight, two Oriental servants left the rectory's porch, hunched over, carrying a heavy object wrapped in a blanket between them. A third servant led the way, flashing a light toward the path through the crosses in the graveyard and the pepper plants in the garden.

They went down the slope toward the river-to feed Chan to the crocodiles, or else to boat him across to the jungle.

Friend, Chris thought. His throat felt tight. He clutched his Mauser.

Father Janin made the sign of the cross. In the church, he'd been kneeling at the altar rail, reciting his daily prayers. He stared at the votive candles he'd lit, enveloped by the fragrance of beeswax and frankincense. They flickered in the dark.

5 A.m. The church was quiet. Sanctuary. Pushing from the altar rail, the old priest stood and genuflected to the tabernacle. He had prayed for God's forgiveness. Having vowed to guard this safe house, he believed he'd lose his soul if he didn't fulfill his obligations. Though the KGB had recruited him, he felt allegiance to every network. Every operative in the world was his parishioner. Their differences in politics-or religion, or lack of it-didn't matter. Even atheists had souls. Cold, tired men came here for refuge. As a priest, he had to offer them the corporal works of mercy. If he had to kill to protect the sanctity of this safe house, then he prayed for God to understand. What justification could be more compelling? In the dark, the candles flickered in commemoration of the dead.