The League of Night and Fog (47 page)

“A hit team? My father and Avidan and the rest … seventy-year-old men … disappeared because they’re out for revenge against Nazi war criminals?”

“That might not be all they’re doing.”

“Worse?”

Drew helped Saul explain. “In the car, Icicle mentioned the Night and Fog. He didn’t mean the Nazi Night and Fog. He meant … We think your father and his team weren’t satisfied with punishing the war criminals they learned about. We think they decided to terrorize the
children
of the Nazis. To pay the fathers back in kind.”

Sudden understanding gave Erika strength to stand from the bed. “But don’t you see? If the point was to torture the fathers by terrorizing the children, the fathers must still be alive. Otherwise the vengeance isn’t complete. The Nazis have to
know
their children
are being terrorized. They have to suffer by realizing their loved ones are suffering. There’s still a chance to stop my father’s team before they kill.”

Drew smiled. “Saul was right about how smart you are.”

“If I’m so smart, why aren’t I cheering my father on?” Erika asked. “Part of me
wants
him to get even.”

“Part of me feels that way, too,” Saul said. “Maybe that’s why I’m so angry about trying to protect them.”

“That’s just the point,” Drew said. “Part of you wants vengeance. But
only
part of you. I feel like an outsider—without a right to an opinion.
My
relatives weren’t killed in the Holocaust.
My
race wasn’t hunted and almost exterminated. But when I think about the SS, I feel so outraged I want to …” He sighed. “Some of them weren’t even crazy enough to believe in what they were doing. They just complied with the craziness around them. To earn a living. To feed their families. If enough of the hypocrites had objected with sufficient force …”

“But the world isn’t like that,” Erika said.

“We are,” Drew said. “That’s why we refuse to condone Nazi methods being used against Nazis. Because we refuse to
become
like Nazis. Isn’t that what the Nuremberg trials were about? Not vengeance but reason and law. Believe me, I want to see these war criminals punished. I don’t care how old they are. They
must
be punished. Death in my opinion. An absolute crime requires absolute penance. But not by individuals, not on the basis of anger alone, not without the sanction of society.”

“But how … ?” Erika faltered, reaching for the bed.

“Are you all right?” Saul hurried over and put his arm around her.

She nodded, anxious to ask her question. “How are we going to stop my father?”

“Toronto,” Saul told her. “Halloway lives nearby. Your father was last seen there. Do you feel strong enough to travel?”

“Even if I didn’t, I’d say I did. For my father’s sake.”

“But
do
you?”

“Yes. Get two tickets on the first plane you can.”

“Four,” Drew said.

Erika glanced up quickly at him in surprise.

Arlene, who’d listened in silence, stepped forward. “I agree with Drew. Four tickets. We’re coming along.”

“But you don’t …”

“Have to? Is that what you wanted to say?”

“It’s not your problem.” Erika gestured in frustration. “That sounds rude. I don’t mean it that way. But he’s not your father.”

“Right,” Drew said. “We’re not obligated. All the same, we’re coming along.”

“You don’t even know me.”

“We will.”

J
oseph Bernstein sat alone in the dark living room of the house-turned-into-a-prison in Toronto. He tried to relax before the tension of tomorrow. A few minutes’ quiet.

I’m seventy, he thought. Other old men—my comrades—sleep upstairs. Equally old men—my enemies—are our prisoners. Tomorrow, after more than forty years, I fulfill a vow I made in my youth. To avenge my family. To punish monsters as they punished me.

T
he Air Canada DC-10 landed in Toronto shortly after 2
P.M
. Saul’s body was still set for Rome time, where the sun would be setting, not blazing above him. He’d slept little the night before and felt exhausted. His legs ached from lack of exercise.

Arlene and Drew said they felt as he did. But Erika had an excess of energy. Concern about her father prompted her to take charge as soon as they passed through immigration and customs.
She found a car-rental booth and twenty minutes later drove the group out of the airport complex, merging with Highway 401.

Traffic was considerable, most drivers ignoring the hundred-kilometer-an-hour speed limit. But Erika didn’t want trouble with the police and, despite her impatience, maintained the legal maximum. The afternoon sun was oppressive. She switched on the sedan’s air conditioner and stared straight ahead, oblivious to the farm fields that flanked the highway.

Saul watched the exit numbers and, fifty minutes later, pointed. “Here. Take this one.”

He regretted that he hadn’t been able to wait for Misha Pletz’s phone call in Rome. Misha had insisted he had something important to say, and Saul had suspected the information was related to Halloway. But when it came to a choice between waiting in Rome or catching the earliest plane to Toronto, speed had dictated which decision to make.

“Turn here. To the left,” Saul said.

Erika drove along a country road. Five kilometers farther, Saul told her to turn left again. The sun-bathed countryside was gentle hills, woods alternating with corn and pasture.

“We ought to be close now,” Saul said. The blacktop road curved. He pointed to the right toward a gravel lane that led up through trees toward a sloping lawn and a mansion on a bluff. “I think this is it. The layout’s the same as Icicle’s description. There should be a … Yes, see the silhouette of a greyhound on the mailbox at the side of the road.”

“Lots of people put decorations on their mailbox, and lots of those decorations are silhouettes of dogs,” Drew cautioned.

“Icicle said there’d be a metal bridge around a bend past the mansion.”

A minute later, Erika drove across such a bridge. “I’m convinced. It’s almost three-thirty. Let’s not waste daylight.” She turned the car around and drove back across the bridge, stopping at the side of the blacktop. “Near the river, the abandoned car
won’t look suspicious. It’ll seem as if somebody stopped to go fishing.”

“I wish we’d been able to bring our weapons,” Saul said.

“Through airport security? We’d still be back in Rome. In jail,” Drew told him.

“It’s just a wish. But I’m going to feel severely underdressed when we get to that mansion.”

T
he woods were dense. Only on occasion did sunbeams pierce the canopy of leaves. Smelling fragrant loam, Drew followed a zigzagging game trail, stepped over a fallen trunk, and started up a more densely wooded slope. He glanced back toward Arlene, admiring her graceful movements, her obvious feeling of being at home in difficult terrain. We’ll have to go rock-climbing, he thought. Just the two of us in a wilderness for a couple of weeks.

When this is over.

He concentrated only on the present and climbed higher through the trees. At the top, he waited for Arlene to join him and touched her shoulder lovingly. Beyond the clearing, a break in a line of trees revealed the mansion to the right on the continuation of this bluff. Saul and Erika were ahead of them, crouched among bushes.

Even at a hundred yards, Drew could see a half-dozen armed guards in front of the mansion. Their attention was directed toward the entrance to the estate. Ten cars of different types were parked beside them. A man in a blue exercise suit strode out of the mansion’s front door and stopped abruptly, appalled by what he saw. A truck arrived, raising dust as it sped up the gravel lane.

T
he previous evening, Halloway had felt so nervous about the impending munitions delivery that he’d decided to risk visiting his wife and children at the safe house in Kitchener. Three
A.M
. in Libya was 9
P.M
. in Ontario, and allowing for the time required to transfer the arms from
Medusa
to the Libyan freighter and for the further time the Libyan freighter would need to get back to home port, he didn’t expect to receive word about the transaction until the next morning.

Though he wasn’t religious, he prayed that the mission would be a success, for he now shared Rosenberg’s tense misgivings about the Night and Fog’s possible discovery of the shipment. The enemy had learned so much with which to terrorize them that perhaps they’d learned about
Medusa
too. But Halloway couldn’t warn the Libyans about the potential information leak. Assured of maximum punishment for sending a shipment that might have been compromised, he took the gamble of not alerting his clients and hoped that nothing would go wrong.

His hope was manifested by a toast at dinner. He raised a glass of wine and feigned a smile toward his wife and children. “I know you’re confused about what’s going on. The past few months have been a strain. You wish you were home. The bodyguards make you nervous. But sometimes international finance creates enemies. If it helps, I believe we’ll soon see the end of the crisis. In the meantime, your patience and understanding have been remarkable.” He sipped his wine and silently proposed another toast. To
Medusa
. To the satisfactory conclusion of a hundred-million-dollar agreement.

He noted that it was precisely 9
P.M
., the time for the Mediterranean delivery. A bodyguard came into the dining room and handed him a telegram.

Halloway ripped open the side of the envelope and pulled out the message. He had to read it several times before he absorbed the impact of the words.

Halloway exhaled, overcome with relief. For the first time in several months, he felt buoyant, liberated. True, he wondered why Seth and Icicle had sent a telegram instead of phoning, and why they’d sent the telegram here, to the safe house he’d told them about, instead of to the estate outside town. But after he phoned a guard at the estate and learned that a telegram had just arrived there as well, he felt reassured that Seth and Icicle had tried to contact him at both of the places where he’d probably be. They must have worried that a phone call, for whatever reason, would have endangered them. He instructed the security force at his estate to expect company tomorrow.

“Your grandfather’s coming home,” he told his children. With a beaming smile toward his wife, he departed from his usual abstemiousness and poured himself a second glass of wine.

By noon the next day, he felt so nervous he couldn’t keep still. Protected by bodyguards, he drove out to his estate. A car had already arrived. Overjoyed, he rushed toward it.

But instead of his father, Rosenberg stepped out of the car.

Halloway froze in astonishment. “What are
you
doing here?”

“Your telegram.”

“Telegram?”

“You didn’t send one?”

“For Christ’s sake, no!”

“But it’s got your name on it.” Rosenberg took the telegram from his suit-coat pocket.

Halloway yanked it away from him. His heart sank as he read it.

“And you
believed
this?” Halloway crushed the paper.

“What was I supposed to do? Phone when you told me I shouldn’t? Stay in Mexico when I hoped my father was here in Canada?”

“You stupid bastard, I received a telegram as well! The message was almost the same!
My
father was supposed to be here.”

“Then you’re as stupid as you think
I
am!”

“They
did this!” Halloway pivoted toward the entrance to his estate. “They set us up!”

“They?”
Rosenberg’s knees bent. “The Night and Fog?”

“Who else would … ? They must be watching us right now!”

Halloway and Rosenberg retreated toward the mansion.

But Halloway pivoted again, hearing a car roar up the gravel lane. As guards rushed toward it, Halloway recognized Miller behind the steering wheel. “I told you not to come here!”

Miller’s car crunched to a halt on the gravel. The angry architect surged from his car. “And I told you I was coming! You
knew
what my father was! You knew what
all
the fathers were! I tried to convince myself I’d only be sinking to your level if I came here and strangled you. But God help me, even knowing my father’s crime, I wanted him back! And then you sent me this telegram! My father! You said he’d be here!
Where is he?”

Halloway grabbed the piece of paper with which Miller gestured in fury. The message was the same one that Rosenberg had received. “They’re out there,” Halloway cried. “I know it. I’m sure of it. They’re watching us.”

“Out there?” Miller’s anger rose. “What are you—? Out there? Who?”

“We’ve got to take cover. Quickly. Inside.” Halloway scurried toward the front steps. He shouted orders to the captain of his guards. “Pull your men in from the perimeter! Protect the house!”

But at once he spun again, hearing a car roar up the lane. Oh, Jesus, he thought. Not another one.

I
t went on like that for the next two hours, cars rushing up to the mansion, men scrambling out, each clutching a telegram. From around the world, they’d been summoned. From Mexico, America, England, France, Sweden, Egypt, and Italy, they’d rushed to be reunited with their fathers, only to learn of the trick that had brought them to Halloway’s estate. Sheltered in his study while guards watched the mansion, they raised frightened angry voices. They shouted, accused, complained.