The Fraternity of the Stone (38 page)

Untying the plastic bag, he gently dropped Stuart's body into the bottom of the trough, then used his hands to fill in the dirt, covering it with a clump of grass. To complete the ritual, he gingerly stepped on the grass, tamping down the earth, making everything smooth. The edge of the meadow now looked undisturbed.

He stared down, for a distressing instant reminded of his parents' graves.

"Well," he said, "you saved my life. The fact is, you brought me back to life. I'm grateful." He almost turned before he thought of something else. "And I'll get even for you, pal."

He left the trees, grimly descended the windy grassy slope, and got in the car.

"Drew?" Arlene was awake now, frowning with concern.

He shrugged.

"Are you okay?"

"Fine."

"You're sure?"

"You were up there twenty minutes," Father Stanis-law said. "We almost went looking for you."

"Well, now I'm back," Drew said. "I made a promise up there. So let's put some miles behind us. I want to see this damned thing finished. I want to make sure I keep my promise."

"The look in your eyes," Father Stanislaw said. "God help the people we're after."

"No, that's wrong."

"I'm not sure what you mean."

"God help us all."

Chapter 7.

One range blended with another, then another. By mid-afternoon, they reached the Alleghenies, following the twists and turns of roads that led past barren strip-mined slopes and dying towns. Massive oil pumps were sometimes visible among skeletal trees, their metallic beaks rising and falling, rising and falling, their relentless thump oppressive even through the car's closed windows.

In contrast with their long intense discussions back at the motel room, neither Drew, Arlene, nor Father Stanislaw spoke much now, each brooding privately.

They reached their destination, zigzagging down a road that took them into a circular valley, located at almost the exact mid-point of Pennsylvania. And there, in the middle of the valley, they came to State College.

It was one of those towns that Drew had said was best for cover. The sprawling campus was large, with majestic vine-covered buildings and rows of towering trees. Because the town had no other major business, the local population had been forced to adjust to the vagaries of the more than twenty thousand students upon whom they depended for their livelihood. Typical of any large college town, half the population was constantly in flux, students coming and going, enrolling and graduating. An operative who liked to fill his time between assignments by reading and going to classes could have a satisfying life here and, more important, could have a cover that no one questioned. As long as he didn't need a social life, he'd be invisible. He could disappear.

Chapter 8.

Father Stanislaw used a pay phone in a supermarket on the outskirts of town, getting directions to the local Catholic church. The church had a modern design, low,

long, made of concrete, with an iron statue of Christ on the Cross in front. They parked the car and entered the front door.

A tall, balding man in a business suit sat on a chair beside the holy water fountain in the vestibule, reading a prayer book. He glanced up as they came in.

"God be with you," he said.

"And with your spirit," Father Stanislaw added.

"Deo gratias."

"Amen," the priest responded. "I must say it's good to hear Latin spoken in a church."

Drew stood with Arlene in the background, watching with interest.

"Is the suspect still being followed?" Father Stanislaw asked.

Nodding, the businessman set down the prayer book and stood. "He doesn't seem aware of it. As you suggested, we're keeping a cautious distance and tailing him - is that the right word? - in shifts." He permitted a smile. "It's almost like taking turns for forty-hours devotion."

"You know where he lives?"

The businessman nodded again. "It was difficult to learn. The university sends his mail, grades and such, to a postal box. He isn't listed in the phone book. But our source at the phone company discovered that he did indeed have a phone, unlisted. The computer's billing file had his address." The businessman reached into his suitcoat and pulled out a folded piece of paper, giving it to Father Stanislaw.

"It's a section of town where a lot of students live," the businessman continued. "I've marked it on this map. Years ago, the landlord owned a rundown mansion that he divided into as many single-room apartments as he could. He made so much money that he couldn't resist adding onto the mansion. Sections on the sides, in back, in front, each with tiny rooms. After a while, you couldn't see the mansion for all the additions. And still not satisfied, he started buying houses along the block and in back. He built additions onto those as well until all the additions came together and you couldn't tell one house from another. It's as if the block imploded. Only God knows how many apartments he's got there. The place is crammed with intersecting hallways and alleys so the students can get to the inner apartments. It's a maze. You can get lost in there."

Father Stanislaw glanced at the paper. "Number eighty-five?"

"The sequence isn't always in a continuous line. You'll have to do your best and then ask directions."

"But he's not at home right now?"

"Not that I know of. There's a pay phone here in the basement. I've been getting reports every hour. The last I heard, he'd finished a class in Depression novelists and gone to the library."

"Is there anything else I should know about where he lives?"

"Only that the students don't take well to strangers. They realize how unusual the place looks, and they get tired of sightseers."

"Perhaps they won't object to a priest. You did good work. All of you. Your Church is grateful. Tell the others."

"We're the ones who are grateful. As long as it was necessary to preserve the faith."

"Believe me, it was."

"For the honor and glory of God."

"And the protection of His Church."

Father Stanislaw raised his right hand in blessing. "Please continue to receive your reports. Periodically I'll phone in case you have any change in the target's status."

The businessman bowed his head. "God's will be done, Father."

"Indeed it will. And thank you again."

Father Stanislaw turned, gesturing for Drew and Arlene to leave the church with him.

The heavy door thumped behind them.

Outside, the air was nippy, the dark sky bright with stars. A car drove by, its muffler streaming frosty exhaust.

"Opus Dei?" Drew asked.

Father Stanislaw didn't answer.

Chapter 9.

Drew stood in shadows across the street from the complex. Filling an entire block, it was situated at the level top of a gentle slops, bordered by shrubs. These shrubs and the night made it almost impossible to tell where one house ended and the next began.

But this much was sure, there were many houses. Twenty? Drew wondered. Thirty? The houses had been expanded with no consideration for consistency of style or materials. A plain cinderblock structure abutted an ornate wooden chalet attached to a modernistic glass-brick tower, and these all protruded from a Victorian mansion with gables and dormer windows. The mansion in turn adjoined a two-story log cabin, and then something that resembled a castle.

Jammed together, the entire hodgepodge seemed the work of an architect gone insane from the wondrous possibility of choice, though the prosaic truth was probably that the owner had simply built each new addition in whatever style was necessitated by the cheapest materials he could get his hands on from year to year.

Drew scanned the lit windows in the jumbled levels across from him. He stepped deeper into the shadows, watching silhouettes disappear among the crazily contrasting buildings.

Nervous, he turned from the eerie glow of gaslamps up there to frown at Arlene. "Father Stanislaw should have been back by now."

She shrugged. "He might have had trouble finding his way."

"Or else... Another five minutes. Then we'd better find out what happened to him."

"We?"

"Okay" - he allowed himself to grin - "I mean you."

She grinned back.

They both understood. Because of Drew's resemblance to the man they were looking for, he couldn't risk attracting attention by wandering the complex.

Five minutes lengthened to ten.

"That's it. Now I'm worried, too," she said. "I'm going in there. He should have... "

A shadow emerged from the bushy slope across the street. Drew relaxed as he recognized Father Stanislaw.

The priest approached, exhaling frost. "I found it. Finally. That place is like a rabbit warren. It's astonishing how easy it is to get lost up there."

"The apartment?"

"In a narrow alley. It's got an outside entrance, with no doors on either side, and it faces a cinderblock wall."

"So the neighbors can't see him going in and out. And if he disappeared for a couple of days, no one would notice."

"Or probably care. These people aren't what you'd call friendly. Twice, I needed to ask directions; not to his apartment, of course, just near it. They treated me as if I'd demanded their youngest child. By the way, his apartment has an opaque glass window with its curtain closed, but I could tell that the lights were on."

"Timers, probably," Arlene said. "The last we heard, he was still downtown."

"An hour ago," Father Stanislaw warned. "Be careful."

"How do I get there?" Drew asked.

"At the top of the slope, you'll face three alleys. Take the middle one. You'll come to a tree carved into a totem pole."

"Totem pole?"

"Turn left till you reach a statue that looks like twisted airplane propellers. Then turn right." Father Stanislaw sighed. "I think I'd better draw you a map."

Chapter 10.

A gaslamp hissed, barely dispelling the gloom. When Drew passed the statue, he had to stoop beneath an arch and found himself in one of the buildings. To his right, along a musty hall with pale bare bulbs dangling from the ceiling, he saw doors. To his left, a rickety wooden stairwell led down to an earthen floor. And down there, beyond in the shadows, he saw other doors. Father Stanislaw had called this place a rabbit warren. Drew's own impression was that of an anthill, except that ants didn't play rock music or cook onions.

He left the building and entered a courtyard where another gaslamp revealed a One Way Only traffic sign that stood in front of three tunnels. The map that Father Stanislaw had drawn told Drew to angle left. The tunnel led him through a further building to a courtyard that housed a chicken coop. He heard fowl clucking in there. And later in another courtyard, he saw a goat in a pen. Glancing down, he found that the long stone slabs he was walking on were tombstones. Madness. The deeper he followed the zigzagging corridors into the chaos, the more he accepted the bizarre.

His double had chosen his lodging well. In this environment, a man who stayed to himself would hardly be noticed. Indeed, everyone here seemed to want to be alone, as if convinced that the rest of the tenants were crazy. Drew realized why Father Stanislaw had encountered suspicion when he knocked on doors to ask for directions. Here, a priest would be inappropriate.

Several times, tenants stared suspiciously at Drew. But he didn't give them a chance to see his face, and as he moved purposefully forward, appearing to belong here, they relaxed.

As soon as he was out of their sight, he checked his map again, and at last he came to his destination. The narrow alley. The cinderblock wall to the right. The single door on the left, and the opaque window with the curtain behind it, the faint projection of light from inside.

He paused, his cheeks cold. From an apartment somewhere behind him, he heard muffled voices arguing about Plato and Aristotle.

Read St. Augustine, Drew thought, as he shifted toward the end of the narrow alley. He stood in the dark at the corner farthest along, shifting behind a head-tall stack of boards, leaning against the crook in the wall, his insulated coat protecting his back from the chill of the cinderblocks.

He waited.

Chapter 11.

Just before midnight, a shadow came around the opposite end of the alley. The timing was right. Drew had often followed this schedule himself. Don't head home till the neighbors have settled down. In the meantime, go to a movie. Maybe one of those retrospectives of Truffaut at the Student Union or, for a laugh, the latest James Bond movie downtown. In a college community, there were many other distractions: a lecture by this year's notable literary critic, a touring company's version of Measure for Measure, the music department's Mozart concert. If you wanted soothing diversion, especially in Drew's former line of work, a university was perfect. The next best thing to becoming a priest.

All the same, this approaching shadow might just be a student using the alley to reach an apartment farther back. But as the figure moved closer to the door across from the cinderblock wall, Drew became certain. The man approaching him was himself!

Drew held his breath; the figure stopped. He had Drew's proportions - the same build, the same height. The facial resemblance was uncanny, making Drew shiver. I wonder if he's been told I'm not dead, Drew thought. Or if he knows about the monastery. Then wouldn't he have gone into hiding?