Thriller (21 page)

meeting grounds in which alliances between agencies could be

safely negotiated and intrigues formulated. The sanctuaries

would provide a chance for any operative, no matter his or her

allegiance, to rest, to heal and to consider the wisdom of tactics

and choices. Anyone speaking frankly in one of these refuges

need not fear that his or her words would be used as weapons

outside the protected walls.

The penalty for violating the Abelard sanction was ultimate.

If any operative harmed any other operative in an Abelard safe

house, the violator was immediately declared a rogue. All members of all agencies would hunt the outcast and kill him or her

at the first opportunity, regardless if the transgressor belonged

to one’s own organization. Because Abelard’s original sanctuary was in a church, the framers of the Abelard sanction decided to continue that tradition. They felt that, in a time of

weakening moral values, the religious connection would reinforce the gravity of the compact. Of course, the representative

from the NKVD was skeptical in this regard, religion having

been outlawed in the USSR, but he saw no harm in allowing

the English and the Americans to believe in the opiate of the

masses.

During the Second World War and the escalating tensions of

the subsequent cold war, Abelard sanctuaries proved so useful

that new ones were established in Bangkok, Singapore, Florence, Melbourne, Ferlach, Austria and Santa Fe, New Mexico.

The latter was of special note because the United States representative to the 1938 Abelard meeting doubted that the sanction

could be maintained. He insisted that none of these politically

sensitive, potentially violent sites would be on American soil.

But he turned out to be wrong. In an ever more dangerous

world, the need for a temporary refuge became greater. In a

cynical profession, the honor and strength of the sanction remained inviolate.

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* * *

Santa Fe means Holy Faith. Abelard would approve, Saul Grisman thought as he guided a nondescript rented car along a duskshadowed road made darker by a sudden rainstorm. Although

outsiders imagined that Santa Fe was a sun-blistered, lowland,

desert city similar to Phoenix, the truth was that it had four seasons and was situated at an altitude of seven thousand feet in the

foothills of a range of the Rocky Mountains known as Sangre de

Cristo (so-called because Spanish explorers had compared the

glow of sunset on them to what they imagined was the blood of

Christ). Saul’s destination was toward a ridge northeast of this

artistic community of fifty thousand people. Occasional lightning

flashes silhouetted the mountains. Directions and a map lay next

to him, but he had studied them thoroughly during his urgent

flight to New Mexico and needed to stop only once to refresh

his memory of landmarks that he’d encountered on a mission in

Santa Fe years earlier. His headlights revealed a sign shrouded

by rain: Camino de la Cruz, the street of the cross. Fingers tense,

he steered to the right along the isolated road.

There were many reasons for an Abelard safe house to have

been established near Santa Fe. Los Alamos, where the atomic

bomb was invented, was perched on a mountain across the valley to the west. Sandia National Laboratories, a similar research

facility important to U.S. security, occupied the core of a mountain an hour’s drive south near Albuquerque. Double agent Edward Lee Howard eluded FBI agents at a sharp curve on Corrales

Street here and escaped to the Soviet Union. Espionage was as

much a part of the territory as the countless art galleries on

Canyon Road. Many of the intelligence operatives stationed in

the area fell in love with the Land of Enchantment, as the locals

called it, and remained in Santa Fe after they retired.

The shadows of piñon trees and junipers lined the potholed

road. After a quarter mile, Saul reached a dead end of hills.

Through flapping windshield wipers, he squinted from the glare

of lightning that illuminated a church steeple. Thunder shook

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the car as he studied the long, low building next to the church.

Like most structures in Santa Fe, its roof was flat. Its corners were

rounded, its thick, earth-colored walls made from stuccoed

adobe. A sign said, Monastery of the Sun and the Moon. Saul,

who was Jewish, gathered that the name had relevance to the

nearby mountains called Sun and Moon. He also assumed that

in keeping with Santa Fe’s reputation as a New Age, crystal-andfeng-shui community, the name indicated this was not a traditional Catholic institution.

Only one car, as dark and nondescript as Saul’s, was in the

parking lot. He stopped next to it, shut off his engine and headlights, and took a deep breath, holding it for a count of three,

exhaling for a count of three. Then he grabbed his over-theshoulder travel bag, got out, locked the car and hurried through

the cold downpour toward the monastery’s entrance.

Sheltered beneath an overhang, he tried both heavy-looking

wooden doors but neither budged. He pressed a button and

looked up at a security camera. A buzzer freed the lock. When

he opened the door on the right, he faced a well-lit lobby with

a brick floor. As he shut the door, a strong breeze shoved past

him, rousing flames in a fireplace to the left. The hearth was

a foot above the floor, its opening oval in a style known as

kiva, the crackling wood leaning upright against the back of

the firebox. The aromatic scent of piñon wood reminded Saul

of incense.

He turned toward a counter on the right, behind which a young

man in a priest’s robe studied him. The man had ascetic, sunken

features. His scalp was shaved bare. “How may I help you?”

“I need a place to stay.” Saul felt water trickle from his wet hair

onto his neck.

“Perhaps you were misinformed. This isn’t a hotel.”

“I was told to ask for Mr. Abelard.”

The priest’s eyes changed focus slightly, becoming more intense. “I’ll summon the housekeeper.” His accent sounded Eu-
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ropean but was otherwise hard to identify. He pressed a button.

“Are you armed?”

“Yes.”

The priest frowned toward monitors that showed various

green-tinted night-vision images of the rain-swept area outside

the building: the two cars in the parking lot, the lonely road, the

juniper-studded hills in back. “Are you here because you’re

threatened?”

“No one’s pursuing me,” Saul answered.

“You’ve stayed with us before?”

“In Melbourne.”

“Then you know the rules. I must see your pistol.”

Saul reached under his leather jacket and carefully withdrew a Heckler & Koch 9mm handgun. He set it on the

counter, the barrel toward a wall, and waited while the priest

made a note of the pistol’s model number (P2000) and serial

number.

The priest considered the ambidextrous magazine and slide

release mechanisms, then set the gun in a metal box. “Any other

weapons?”

“A HideAway knife.” Modeled after a Bengal tiger’s claw, the

HideAway was only four inches long. Saul raised the left side of

his jacket. The blade’s small black grip was almost invisible in a

black sheath parallel to his black belt. He set it on the counter.

The priest made another note and set the knife in the box.

“Anything else?”

“No.” Saul knew that a scanner built into the counter would

tell the priest if he was lying.

“My name is Father Chen,” a voice said from across the lobby.

As thunder rumbled, Saul turned toward another man in a

priest’s robe. But this man was in his forties, Chinese, with an

ample stomach, a round face and a shaved scalp that made him

resemble Buddha. His accent, though, seemed to have been nurtured at a New England Ivy League university.

166

“I’m the Abelard housekeeper here.” The priest motioned for

Saul to accompany him. “Your name?”

“Saul Grisman.”

“I meant your code name.”

“Romulus.”

Father Chen considered him a moment. In the corridor, they

entered an office on the right, where the priest took a seat behind a desk and typed on a computer keyboard. He read the

screen for a minute, then again looked at Saul, appearing to see

him differently. “Romulus was one of the twins who founded

Rome. Do
you
have a twin?”

Saul knew he was being tested. “Had. Not a twin. A brother

of sorts. His name was…” Emotion made Saul hesitate. “Chris.”

“Christopher Kilmoonie. Irish.” Father Chen gestured toward

the computer screen. “Code name Remus. Both of you were

raised in an orphanage in Philadelphia. The Benjamin Franklin

School for Boys. A military school.”

Saul knew he was expected to elaborate. “We wore uniforms.

We marched with toy rifles. All our classes—history, trigonometry, literature, et cetera—were related to the military. All the

movies we saw and the games we played were about war.”

“What is the motto of that school?”

“‘Teach them politics and war so their sons may study medicine and mathematics in order to give their children a right to

study painting, poetry, music and architecture.’”

“But that quotation is not from Benjamin Franklin.”

“No. It’s from John Adams.”

“You were trained by Edward Franciscus Eliot,” Father

Chen said.

Again, Saul concealed his emotions. Eliot had been the CIA’s

director for counterespionage, but Saul hadn’t known that until

years later. “When we were five, he came to the school and befriended us. Over the years, he became…I guess you’d call him

our foster father, just as Chris and I were foster brothers. Eliot

got permission to take us from the school on weekends—to

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baseball games, to barbecues at his house in Falls Church, Virginia, to dojos where we learned martial arts. Basically, he recruited us to be his personal operatives. We wanted to serve our

father.”

“And you killed him.”

Saul didn’t answer for a moment. “That’s right. It turned out

the son of a bitch had other orphans who were his personal operatives, who loved him like a father and would do anything for

him. But in the end he used all of us, and Chris died because of

him, and I got an Uzi and emptied a magazine into the bastard’s

black heart.”

Father Chen’s eyes narrowed. Saul knew where this was going.

“In the process, you violated the Abelard sanction.”

“Not true. Eliot was off the grounds. I didn’t kill him in a sanctuary.”

Father Chen continued staring.

“It’s all in my file,” Saul explained. “Yes, I raised hell in a

refuge. Eventually Eliot and I were ordered to leave. They let him

have a twenty-four-hour head start. But I caught up to him.”

Father Chen tapped thick fingers on his desk. “The arbiters

of the sanction decided that the rules had been bent but not broken. In exchange for information about how Eliot was himself

a mole, you were given unofficial immunity as long as you went

into exile. You’ve been helping to build a settlement in Israel.

Why didn’t you stay there? For God’s sake, given your destructive history, how can you expect me to welcome you to an

Abelard safe house?”

“I’m looking for a woman.”

Father Chen’s cheeks flared with indignation. “Now you take

for granted I’ll supply you with a prostitute?”

“You don’t understand. The woman I’m searching for is my wife.”

Father Chen scowled toward an item on the computer screen.

“Erika Bernstein. A former operative for Mossad.”

“The car in the parking lot. Is it hers?”

“No. You said you’re
searching
for her?”

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“I haven’t seen her in three weeks. Does the car belong to Yusuf

Habib?”

As thunder again rumbled, Father Chen nodded. “He is a

guest.”

“Then I expect Erika to arrive very soon, and I’m not here to

cause trouble. I’m trying to stop it.”

A buzzer sounded. Frowning, Father Chen pressed a button. The

image on the monitor changed to a view of the lobby. Saul felt blood

rush to his heart as a camera showed Erika stepping from the rain

into the lobby. Even in black and white, she was gorgeous, her long

dark hair tied back in a ponytail, her cheekbones strong but elegant. Like him, she wore running shoes and jeans, but in place of

his leather coat, she had a rain slicker, water dripping from it.

Saul was out of the office before Father Chen could rise from

his chair. In the brightly lit lobby, Erika heard Saul’s urgently approaching footsteps on the brick floor and swung protectively,

hardly relaxing when she saw who it was.

She pointed angrily. “I told you not to come after me.”

“I didn’t.”

“Then what the hell are you doing here?”

“I didn’t follow you. I followed
Habib
.” Saul turned toward Father Chen. “My wife and I need a place where we can talk.”

“The refectory is empty.” The priest indicated the corridor behind them and a door on the left, opposite his office.

Saul and Erika stared at one another. Impatient, she marched

past him and through the doorway.

Following, Saul turned on the overhead fluorescent lights.