The Brotherhood of the Rose (21 page)

"They do," Chris said. In anger, he turned from the rain at the window. "Boys' Home."

"What?" Saul stared in dismay. "It's in Akron." Trembling with rage, Chris walked toward Saul and Erika. "The Haven for Boys is in Omaha. Pennsylvania has the Johnstown Boys' Academy and the Shade Gw,-) Boys' Institute, not to mention our own Franklin School for Boys in Philadelphia. The cities on these printouts read like the top ten boys' schools in the country - But don't let the titles fool you," Chris told Erika bitterly. "Haven for Boys, or School for Boys, or Boys' Institute. They all mean the same damn thing: orphanage." He clenched his teeth, "The men on this list all share one thing in common with Saul and me. They're orphans. Each pair was raised in the same institution. That's why their cryptonyms suggest they're brothers, even though their last names are different." Chris breathed painfully. "Because when each member of a pair met the other, their loneliness forced them into a bond. They formed so strong a friendship they became the emotional equivalent of bloodbrothers. Goddamn him, Saul! Do you understand what he did to us?"

Saul nodded. "Eliot lied to us in the most fundamental way I can think of. He never loved us. All along-from the start he used us."

Erika clutched Saul and Chris strongly by the arms. "Would one of you mind telling me what in God's name you're talking about?"

"It takes a lifetime," Chris said. He slumped on the sofa and moaned.

The rain fell harder, making the morning seem like dusk. Eliot stood at his office window, brooding, unaware of the stormy Virginia landscape. His skin looked as gray as the rain. Behind him, someone knocked on his door. He didn't turn to see who entered. , "Something strange, sir. I don't know what to make of it, but I thought I'd better let you know." The voice belonged to Eliot's assistant. "It's not good news, I gather," Eliot said. "They had a security leak over at the National Defense Agency. Yesterday their chief programmer was found in a porno district. Hallucinations, fits. The police thought he was high on something, so they put him in the psychiatric ward to dry out. Well, this morning he's all right, but he can't remember going to the porno district, and he doesn't remember taking any drugs. Of course, he could be lying, but --- 2' "Scopolamine," Eliot said and turned to him. "Get to the point."

"Last night, while he was in the psych ward, someone used his code to get in the NDA's computer bank. They've got a system over there to find out who asked for what information. That's where we come in. Whoever used that programmer's code didn't want classified information. All he wanted was the major statistics on eighteen men. Since you supervised their training, the NDA thought you ought to know about the leak. The thing is, sir, two of the names were Romulus and Remus."

Eliot sat wearily behind his desk. "And Castor and Pollux, and Cadmus and Cilix."

"Yes, sir, that's right." The assistant sounded puzzled. "How did you know?"

Eliot thought about Castor and Pollux standing guard outside his office door. Then he thought about Saul and Chris. "They're getting closer. Now that they've guessed what to look for, they won't take long to figure the whole thing out."

Mournfully he swung toward the rain streaking down the window. "God help me when they do."

He silently added, God help us all.

Book Three

BETRAYAL

THE FORMAL EDUCATION OF AN OPERATIVE At 1700 hours on December 23, 1948, United States military intelligence at Nome, Alaska, picked up the evening weather forecast from the Russian ports of Vladivostok, Okhotsk, and Magadan. The air force used these reports in conjunction with forecasts from Japanese ports to schedule night testing flights for its B-50s. The Russian forecast told of unseasonably warm weather. Nothing to worry about.

Seven minutes later, all frequencies were jammed by an amplified signal from the Russian naval base at Vladivostok to one of its submarines at sea. Coded and exceedingly lengthy for a Soviet communique, the message was sufficiently unusual for American military intelligence at Shepherds Field in Nome to concentrate on deciphering it rather than pay attention to the Japanese weather reports. They routinely cleared four B-50s for a high-altitude flight to test de-icing systems.

At 1900 hours, all four planes were hit by a Siberian cold front with wind gusts of over seventy knots. All de-icing systems failed. None of the planes returned to base. The lead plane, Suite Lady, had been piloted- by Major Gerald Kilmoonie. When news of his loss arrived at the Eighth Air Force base (SAC) in Tucson, Arizona, General Maxwell Lepage called Roman Catholic chaplain Hugh Collins in Philadelphia to deliver the news to Mrs. Dorothy Kilmoonie and her three-year-old son, Chris. He told the chaplain to ten Gerry's wife that the country had lost the finest skeet shooter he'd ever known.

Two years later-1950. On Calcanlin Street in Philadelphia stood thirty rowhouses. It was a miserable place for a child to play. The street was dark and narrow. The coal ashes and sandlots held concealed traps of rusty nails, broken glass, and rat droppings. The weed-choked cracks in the sidewalk widened to cfevasses at the curb and craters in the road. Toward the middle of the block, at its darkest, stood the dilapidated home of Dorothy Kilmoonie.

The house overflowed with tables: a card table with motherof-pearl inlay; end tables; three-legged parlor tables; a coffee table with cigarette burns all over its top; a high tea table wedged against the Maytag wringer-washer in the bathroom; a dining table; a kitchen table with a chrome border and a Formica top supporting a plastic bowl of wax fruit. There were piles of dead flies beside the imitation fruit. There were similar piles on every table in the house. Also on every table, next to the flies, were pieces of old dry bologna, curled like shavings of cedar wood.

The first thing Chris had done that hot August morning was slide the screen from the parlor window and place a fat headless oily sardine on the window sill. When his mother had left him alone in the house in July while she went to spend the summer in Atlantic City, she'd put a roll of bologna in the icebox as well as several cans of soup and sardines and boxes of crackers in the cupboard. She'd given money to the neighbors, telling them to look after Chris, but by the end of July, the neighbors had spent the money on themselves and left Chris to survive alone with the food he had. He hated bologna. He'd used it for days to lure the flies into the house. But their distaste for bologna was equal to his. And the rat droppings from the street, though the flies enjoyed them, dried even faster than the meat. The sardines worked perfectly, however. By nine that morning, he could nod with pride at a new heap of flies on the coffee table, killed with a long rubber band from one of his mother's garters.

At the most exciting moment of the hunt, as he perched fighting for balance on an end table, aiming his rubber band toward a clever fly that always took off a moment before he shot at it, he sensed an unfamiliar movement in the street and glanced out the window toward a large ominous black car parked in front of his house. At the age of five, he prided himself on knowing the difference between Hudson Hornets and Wasps, Studebakers and Willys and Kaiser-Frazers. This was a 1949 Packard, and its bulk took up most of the width of the street, From the driver's seat, a heavy man in a military uniform with a body like a punching bag seemed almost to roll from the car to the road. He straightened and, while surveying the cluttered neighborhood, smoothed the rear of his pants. With his shoulders hunched and his body stooped slightly forward, he rounded the back fenders of the Packard and opened the front passenger door. A tall slim gray-faced man in a badly wrinkled trenchcoat slowly got out. The man had slender cheeks, thin lips, a downward bend in his nose.

Chris didn't hear what they said to each other, but the way they stared at this house made him nervous. He crept from the table near the window. As the men left the car, walking up the crumbly sidewalk, he turned in panic, running. He dodged past a tea table and the kitchen table toward the listing door to the cellar. It creaked when he closed it leaving a finger-wide gap that allowed him to see through the kitchen to the parlor. In the dark, on the cellar steps that smelled like rotten potatoes, he felt afraid that the strangers would know where to catch him because they could hear the drumming of his heart.

The front door rattled as they knocked. He held his breath and reached for the rope that stretched from the parlor through the kitchen to these stairs. There hadn't been time for him to lock the front door, but he had other ways to protect himself. He clutched the rope. The front door scraped open. A man's deep voice asked, "Anybody home?"

Heavy footsteps rumbled, coming down the hall. "I saw the boy at the window." Their shadows entered the parlor. "What's with all these tables? My God, the flies."

Chris hunched on the stairs, peering through the crack in the door across the dirty linoleum toward the net on the parlor floor. When not killing flies, he'd been making the net since his mother had left, taking kite string from Kensington Park, cord from vacant lots, rope and shoelaces from trash cans, wool and thread from neighbors' bureau drawers, twine from the mill down the street, and clotheslines from nearby yards. He'd tied them all together-long pieces, short pieces, thick and thin-to form a huge intersecting pattern. His mother had promised to come back. She'd said she'd bring saltwater taffy and seashells and photographs, lots of photographs. And the day she did come back, he'd capture her in the net and keep her trapped till she promised never to go away again. His eyes stung as he watched the two men enter the parlor, standing on the net. If it could trap his mother... "And what's with all this twine and stuff on the floor?"

Chris yanked the rope. He'd attached it to chairs perched on tables in the parlor. When they fell, they pulled twine through the chain in the ceiling light and raised the corners of the net.

As the chairs clattered, the two men shouted. "What the-? Jesus!"

Chris puffed his chest, wanting to cheer, then suddenly scowled. The men were laughing, doubled over. Through the crack in the door, he saw the one in the uniform grab the net and rip the knots apart, breaking the string, stepping out of the twine.

Tears burned his cheeks. Furious, he scrambled down the cellar steps, swallowed by darkness. His hands shook from rage. He'd make them sorry. He'd get even with them for laughing.

The cellar door creaked open. Light struggled to reach the bottom of the stairs. Through a knothole in the wall of the coalbin, he watched their shadows come down. Their laughter continued. Someone must have told them everything about him, he thought-how he'd stolen the clothesline, the thread, and the twine; even where he'd hide. The cellar's light switch didn't work, but they seemed to know that also, for they had a flashlight, aiming it around the musty basement, stalking him.

He crept back toward the deepest corner of the coalbin. It was empty in summer. Even so, grit scraped beneath his sneakers. The flashlight swung his way. Dodging it, he stepped on a chunk of coal- His ankle twisted. Losing balance, he banged against a wall.

The flashlight came closer. Footsteps scurried. No! He slipped from a hand, but as he scrambled from the bin, another caught his shoulder. No! Weeping, he kicked, but he touched only air, flailing as the hands spun and lifted him. "Let's get you up in the light."

He struggled frantically, but the hands pinned his arms and legs, allowing him only to squirm and bang his head against a chest as the men took him up the cellar stairs. After the dark, he blinked from the sunlight through the kitchen window, crying. "Take it easy," the heavy man in the uniform said, puffing from his exertion.

The one in the trenchcoat frowned at Chris's tar-coated sneakers, filthy pants, and grimy hair. He took out a handkerchief, wiping the tears and coal dust from Chris's face.

Chris pushed the arm away, trying to seem as tall and strong as his tiny frame would allow. "Not funny!"

"What?"

Chris glared at the net in the parlor. "Oh, I see," the civilian said. Despite his cold eyes and sickly face, his voice sounded friendly. "You heard us laughing."

"Not funny!" Chris said louder. "No, of course not," the man in the uniform said. "You've got us all wrong. We weren't laughing at you. Why, the net seemed a good idea. Course you could've used some better material and a few lessons in design and camouflage. But the idea... Well, that's why we laughed. Not at you but with you. Sort of in admiration. You've got spunk, boy. Even if you didn't look like him, I could tell from the way you handle yourself-you're Gerry's son."

Chris didn't understand a lot of the words. He frowned as if the man in uniform was trying to trick him. A long time ago, he vaguely recalled, someone had told him he'd once had a father, but he'd never heard of anybody named Gerry. "I can tell you don't trust me," the man said. Spreading his legs, he put his hands on his hips, like a cop. "I'd better introduce myself. I'm Maxwell Lepage."

Like "Gerry," this name meant nothing. Chris stared suspiciously.

The man seemed puzzled. "General Maxwell Lepage. You know. Your dad's best friend."

Chris stared even harder. "You mean you never heard of me?" The man was astonished. He turned to the tall gray-faced civilian. "I'm no good at this. Maybe you can get him to---' He gestured helplessly.

The civilian nodded. Stepping ahead, he ssmiled. "Son, I'm Ted Eliot. But you can call me just Eliot. All my friends do."

Chris glared with mistrust. The man called Eliot pulled something from his trenchcoat. "I figure every boy likes chocolate. Especially Baby Ruths. I want to be your friend." Eliot put his hand out.