The League of Night and Fog (18 page)

A shot roared behind him, blowing off the nose of a spotted horse on the carousel. That’s enough! Saul mentally shouted. You’ve made your point!

A murky figure appeared ahead of him, from behind the carousel. For an instant, Saul thought it was Erika, who, not understanding the show the network had choreographed, was coming to help him. The figure raised a handgun.

It’s not Erika! I’m the target!

Misha Pletz had given him a Beretta. He yanked it from his dark Windbreaker, but instead of firing toward the enemy ahead of him, he darted toward the right, hoping to blend with trees and bushes. A gunshot, much closer, made his ears ring. A bullet slashed the leaves of a bush beside him. He dove behind a concrete bench and spun to fire at the figure near the carousel.

But the figure was gone. Behind him, urgent footsteps ran along a sidewalk, from the direction of the bandstand. Ahead, he saw a shadow step from behind a tree and aim. Saul fired.

But the figure ducked behind the tree.

A bullet cracked against the bench, chunks of concrete making
Saul flinch. The bullet had come from a
third
sniper in the park! Not from behind him or ahead! But to his right! He charged past a fountain. Someone shouted. Sirens wailed. His lungs burning, he surged from the park. The trees ended. The walkway beside the Danube appeared before him. He spun to the right. Fifty yards away, a figure raced out of bushes. He spun to the left. Another figure! Gripping the metal guardrail, his lungs protesting, he heaved himself over.

Cold water enveloped him. He couldn’t be sure, but swimming under the surface, resisting the weight of his sodden clothes, struggling toward the middle of the river, he thought he heard a bullet strike the water.

E
rika hid among shadows on the street side of the park, watching the murky bandstand. She stiffened when she saw Saul’s contact punch him in the stomach. Rushing forward, handgun drawn, determined to protect her husband, she noticed Saul pivot to avoid another blow and knock the man to the bandstand’s floor. A shot. Saul scrambled off the bandstand. Chaos. First one, then two, then
three
gunmen raced through the shadowy park. More shots. Sirens wailed in the distance. Erika’s only thought was to get to Saul, to help him. But the chaos intensified as Saul charged through the darkness, burst through bushes at the edge of the park, and vaulted the guardrail next to the Danube. A gunman shot at the water, turned, and saw other figures racing toward him. Firing repeatedly toward the shadows, not aiming so much as providing distraction, the gunman hurried along the walkway, vanishing into the night. The sirens wailed louder. Figures darted in separate directions out of the park.

She was one of them. She couldn’t guess where Saul would surface along the river. Knowing he’d do everything possible to save himself, she had her own obligation. Indeed she took for granted that Saul would
expect
her to do what she now intended.
Retreating from the park in the direction from which she’d arrived, she raced across the street and into an alley, reaching its far end just as police cars stopped at the park. She sprinted across another street and into a farther alley, her mind repeating the same frantic thought. Yes, Saul would understand she couldn’t find him; he had to try to save himself on his own.
She
had to save …

A restaurant glowed before her. Lunging into its lobby, barely registering the smell of sauerkraut, she shoved coins into a pay phone.

She dialed her father’s apartment. One buzz. Two. But nobody answered. Three.

She shuddered with relief when she heard a familiar, reassuring voice say, “Hello.”

“Misha, it’s Erika! I don’t have time to explain!” She struggled to catch her breath. “It’s bad! Wake Christopher! Don’t even bother dressing him! Get out of there!”

No response.

“Misha!”

“Where shall I meet you?”

“Where my father was supposed to go but didn’t!” she said. “You understand? Every morning and evening.”

“Yes,” Misha said. “I’ll wake the boy at once. He’ll be safe.”

“I pray to God.”

“Just make sure
you
remain safe.”

“Get moving!”

She hung up the phone and turned to see startled patrons of the restaurant staring at her in the lobby. She rushed past them, leaving the restaurant.

But what about Saul? she worried as she ran along the street. Would
he
remain alive to reach the rendezvous they’d agreed upon?

G
allagher’s voice had the force of a shout.
“Were they ours?”
The pockmarked man winced, adjusting the sling on his dislocated arm. “Not unless you assigned another team to cover this. They sure as hell weren’t on
my
team.”

“Jesus.” Gallagher sat rigidly at the head of the conference table. Two other men waited in nervous silence. Gallagher drummed his fingers.
“Three
of them?”

“In addition to our own man, yes,” the pockmarked man said. “We played it exactly as you wanted. I punched him. He defended himself. Our marksman opened fire, pretending to want to kill him.”

“I want to know about the others,” Gallagher said.

“The first was hidden behind a carousel. The other two seemed to come out of nowhere. They tried to catch Romulus in a pincer movement.”

“And they weren’t pretending? You’re certain they meant to kill him?”

“Romulus surely believed it—he returned their fire. Before the police could arrive, the intruders fled. Of course, so did we.”

Gallagher’s lips tightened. “If only Romulus had managed to kill one. Then at least we’d have a body. We’d be able to find out who else was in the game. Damn it, your team should have kept closer watch on the park!”

“We couldn’t. You said you wanted witnesses from other networks. The point of the demonstration was to convince every organization that Romulus was still an outcast. We had to back off, to let our audience take position.”

“Great. The operation worked so well it failed.”

“Maybe it didn’t fail,” the pockmarked man said.

Gallagher raised his eyebrows in question.

“If anything, since Romulus almost
was
executed, the other networks will be even more convinced he’s not involved with us,”
the pockmarked man said. “Nothing’s changed. He can still pursue his vendetta. He still has to give us the favor he promised.”

“Does he?
Will
he? What if Romulus believes the intruders belonged to us? Suppose he decides the mission went out of control and your men did try to kill him? He won’t repay any favor. What he might do is turn against us. What a mess! To keep him on our side, to use him later, we might be forced to help him.”

“On the other hand,” the pockmarked man said, “we don’t even know if he survived.”

C
hilled and exhausted, Saul waded from the murky Danube. It had taken him fifteen minutes to swim out of range down current and then across the river. The lights along this opposite shore glinted coldly. He plodded from mud to a concrete ramp, passed a boathouse, and finally reached a narrow street beyond a warehouse. No one had pursued him across the river. For the moment, he felt safe. But questions tortured his mind. Who’d tried to kill him? Had his former network decided to punish him after all? He shook his head, not believing it. The pockmarked man wouldn’t have put himself in the line of fire. Then had the mock-assassination become too realistic? Or had his as-yet-unknown enemies been waiting for an opportunity to make another attempt against him? If he’d been killed back there in the park, his former employers would have seemed responsible. They’d never convince other networks of their innocence. And the actual assailants would go undetected.

Shivering, Saul mustered strength for an even more distressing concern. Erika and Christopher. His wife, having seen the attack against him, realizing she was powerless to help, would have gone to protect their son. He
counted
on her doing so, that reassuring thought his only consolation. Erika’s mandatory first step would have been to contact Misha Pletz and warn him to rush Christopher to safety. He trudged ahead with greater determination.
For the moment, a single goal obsessed him—the fall-back site he and Erika had agreed upon. He had to get there.

C
hristopher’s eyes still ached from his abrupt awakening. His blue pajamas were covered by a sweater that the stoop-shouldered man named Misha Pletz had made him put on. His nostrils felt pinched by thick clouds of tobacco smoke, but his mouth watered from the sweet cocoa smell in this room of many tables and red-cheeked, laughing men. He recalled the urgency with which Misha had carried him down the stairs. The rush of the taxi ride. The scurry into this “coffee house,” as Misha called it. His mother suddenly appearing, her eyes red with tears as she hugged him. All bewildering.

He sat on a bench against a wall, his mother on one side, Misha on the other. Their conversation confused him.

“If he isn’t here in fifteen minutes,” his mother said, “we can’t risk staying any longer.”

A hefty man wearing a white apron leaned his head down toward his mother. “Come into the kitchen. We’ve just received a rare form of coffee.”

More confusion. His mother carrying him through a swinging door, Misha leading them. Glinting metal counters. Steaming pots. His father, clothes wet, stepping out of a room. Misha laughing. His mother sobbing, embracing his father. “Thank God.”

“Q
uickly. We have to go,” Misha said.

“Where?” Saul asked.

“Back to Israel.”

“No,” Erika said. “Not us.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Just you and Christopher. Take him with you. Protect him.”

“But what about
you
?” Misha asked.

“Christopher won’t be safe till Saul and I are. If something happens to us, put Christopher in a kibbutz. Give him a new identity.”

“I don’t believe the Agency tried to kill me,” Saul said. “It was someone else. The people we’re after.”

“Even so, can you trust your former network?”

“I have to. But I had to make a deal with them. In exchange for their letting me come back from exile, I promised I wouldn’t take your help. We have to do this on our own.”

“But …”

“No. We have the information you gave us. We’ve got to accept the risk. But if we fail, take over for us. Don’t let the bastards win.”

“You’re sure there’s no other way?”

“For us to survive?” Saul shook his head. “To get back to Christopher? No.”

H
is father kissed him. Why was his father crying? “Good-bye, son. Misha, take care of him.”

“Always remember, Christopher …”

Why was his
mother
crying too? More kisses. Her tears wet on his cheek.

“We love you.”

Shouts from beyond the swinging doors. “You can’t go back there!”

“They’ve found you! Hurry!”
Misha said.

A rush toward another door, this time into darkness, an alley, neverending, into the night. But when he looked in terror behind him, he saw that he and Misha had gone one way, his parents another. Eyes brimming with tears, he couldn’t see them any longer.

D
ressed as a priest and a nun among many actual priests and nuns, Drew and Arlene walked along Rome’s crowded Via della Conciliazione. Though the street wasn’t narrow, it seemed constricted when compared with the vista ahead of them. The eastern edge of Vatican City … St. Peter’s Piazza … Like the head of a funnel, the street opened out to the right and left, melding with the four curved rows of Doric columns that flanked the piazza’s right and left side.

“I’ve heard this called St. Peter’s Square,” Arlene said. “But it isn’t square. It’s oval.”

They reached the piazza’s center. An Egyptian obelisk stood between two widely spaced fountains. Though impressive in themselves, the obelisk, fountains, and surrounding columns seemed dwarfed by the majesty of St. Peter’s Basilica, which rose beyond the piazza, its massive dome haloed with radiance from the midafternoon sun. Renaissance buildings stretched to the right and left of the basilica and the huge tiers of steps leading up to it.

“I didn’t realize how big this place is,” Arlene said.

“It all depends on your perspective,” Drew said. “The piazza,
the basilica, and everything else in Vatican City would fill less than a seventh of New York’s Central Park.”

She turned to him in disbelief.

“It’s true,” he said. “The whole thing’s only a fifth of a square mile.”

“Now I know why they call this the world’s smallest city-state.”

“And it hasn’t even been a city-state very long,” Drew said. “It wasn’t until 1929—believe it or not, thanks to Mussolini, who wanted the Church to give him political support—that Vatican City was established and granted independence as a state.”

“I thought you told me you hadn’t been here before.”

“I haven’t.”

“Then how come you know so much about it?”