The Fraternity of the Stone (23 page)

"No. Good gracious me, of course not. What strange ideas you have. I mean that I draw my thoughts in. Mentally I make myself" - he grasped for the words -"not here."

Drew shook his head.

"In time, you will learn. But something else. You must never - never - become distracted. Allow nothing to confuse you or to disturb your concentration. Not just here while we practice. Any time. Everywhere."

This kid's supposed to be fourteen, Drew thought. No way. Just because he's short, he thinks he can lie about his age. He has to be twenty at least. Become invisible. Move with the crowd. Don't let anything distract you. Drew tried again.

And again. Until one afternoon after school, as Drew came through another gauntlet, approaching Tommy Two, who lounged as usual against a wall, he reached in his pocket, disgusted at another failure, only to blink at the wallet he pulled out. His own. "You let me win."

Tommy Two soberly shook his head. "I never let anyone win. You did what I taught you. You didn't react to the beggar who wanted money. You never glanced at the parrots on sale at that stall. Above all, you showed no interest in the cart of vegetables that overturned, but merely stepped around it, not even glancing at the peppers beneath your feet. You made it impossible for me to trick you."

Drew's heart beat faster with pride. "Then, I -"

"Did it once. Once is not a pattern. Are you ready to try again?"

The next time, Drew again produced his own wallet.

But Tommy Two did not congratulate him. The young yet ancient Nepalese seemed to take for granted that success was its own reward. "Now we begin the hard part."

"Hard?" Drew's spirits sank.

"You've proven that I can't steal your wallet. Is it possible for you to steal mine?"

Drew shifted his feet. "Let's give it a try."

Drew snuck through the crowd, coming from behind, seeing his chance, darting forward, reaching. Tommy grabbed his hand. "I knew where you were every second. You didn't become invisible. Try it again."

And, "Let the crowd absorb you."

And, "Anticipate what might distract me."

"Nothing distracts you."

"Then that's a problem for you to solve."

Three days later, Drew lounged against the wall at the end of the gauntlet. When Tommy Two saw the posture, his eyes flashed with understanding. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out the wrong wallet.

"When the orange struck my shoulder?" Tommy Two asked.

"I paid a kid to throw it at you."

"Foolishly, I turned in that direction. Because I was sure you'd thrown it."

"But I was behind you."

"Excellent!" Tommy Two laughed. "Good gracious, my, what a joke!"

"But aren't you forgetting something?"

Tommy Two looked puzzled. At once, he understood and shrugged. "Of course." Without a hint of disappointment, he gave Drew an American dollar.

Because this time Drew had decided to bet.

Chapter 3.

Proceeding down Twelfth Street, beginning his surveillance of the brownstone from three blocks away, Drew realized he'd begun to think of Tommy Two. He had never seen him after the lessons were over, but Tommy and his lessons had remained vivid in his memory. He knew that Tommy would look glummer than usual - and be more sternly rebuking - if he were somehow here and knew that Drew had allowed himself to be distracted, even for an instant.

Blend with the pattern of the street. Compact your spirit. Make yourself invisible. Concentrate. Drew obeyed the silent genteel British voice and knew that everything would be okay. Composed, he stepped from the first block, crossing the noisy intersection, approaching the other two blocks.

But he didn't intend to pass the midpoint of this second block. The tactic he employed required patience, circumnavigating the neighborhood, using several approaches from different directions, always narrowing the area. Confident that he attracted no attention, he crossed the street halfway down the second block and returned the way he'd come. At the intersection he headed south, walked down to Tenth Street, proceeded along it in a direction parallel to the brownstone, and eventually headed north, coming back to Twelfth. Now he was three blocks away from the brownstone again, but this time coming from the opposite direction. As before, blending with the rhythms of the street, studying every detail before him, he began his reconnaissance. When he reached the middle of the second block, he crossed the street again, returning.

All right, he thought, I've narrowed the perimeter, and so far everything looks fine. By definition - because I haven't been attacked. If the house is being watched, the spotters are within a block and a half on either side.

He knew exactly what to look for. First, a car. You had to assume that if your target left the surveillance area, he or she would get in a taxi. And that meant you needed a car to keep up. But the city's parking problem was so severe that once you found a spot, you didn't dare give it up. What's more, you had to stay near the car in case your target left quickly. Two men in a parked car would attract attention, so one man usually stayed in the car while the other man found a vantage point in a nearby building.

There were variations on these tactics, and Drew had been watching for all of them: the car whose hood was up while someone made repairs, the van with too many antennas, the man setting up an umbrella stand on the corner.

But already he'd seen what he wanted to know. At the west end of the brownstone's block, a man sat in a dark blue (the rule was never to use a bright-colored) car, more interested in the brownstone than in a platinum blonde in a tight leather suit who passed him, walking a Malamute.

Blend with the rhythm of the street, pal, Drew thought. If the occasion demands, look distracted even though you're not.

Drew wasn't sure where the other spotter was. In fact, he assumed there'd be two more in the area, one to remain near the brownstone, the third to get in the car with the driver and be let out wherever 'the target decided to go.

But their primary purpose, Drew reminded himself, was not to watch the Hardestys. The brownstone was just the bait. I'm the reason the spotters are here, and they'll follow Arlene and Jake only on the chance that I might try making contact somewhere other than the brownstone.

Fine, he thought. No problem. Having determined the closest safe distance from the brownstone, he hurried back to where he'd left the motorcycle near Washington Square. He unlocked the chain with which he'd secured it to a metal fence and kicked down on the starter lever, heading back to Twelfth Street. He parked between two cars three-quarters of a block behind the spotter in the car, pushed down the kickstand, leaned against the padded seat, and, shielded by the vehicle in front of him, began to wait.

Chapter 4.

Three hours.

Shortly after 4 p.m., as it began to drizzle, he saw a woman step out of the brownstone two blocks down. Even at this distance, her outline so small that Drew felt he was watching her through the reverse end of a telescope, he recognized her.

Arlene. His throat swelled tight till he had trouble breathing. He'd thought he'd prepared himself for the shock of seeing her again, but his pent-up emotions, denied for six years, assaulted him. His love for her rushed back with a jolt. Her training as an athlete, specifically as a mountain climber, had given her a distinctive sensuous walk, energetic but with no movement wasted, her footsteps springy yet firmly placed. Disciplined gracefulness. He remembered the feel of her body and the sound of her voice, and he longed to touch her and to hear that voice again.

Her clothes revealed her background. She almost never dressed formally; instead, she preferred jogging shoes or hiking boots, jeans, a heavy sweater, a denim jacket. In place of a purse, she carried a small nylon pack slung over a shoulder, walking in the opposite direction down the street, oblivious to the drizzle that fell on her auburn hair.

His throat still swollen, tears suddenly in his eyes, he started the motorcycle but didn't move from between the cars that shielded him. When Arlene had almost reached the far corner of her block, a wino stood from the steps down to a basement door across the street from the brownstone. Skirting an iron railing, he veered toward Drew, crossing the street toward the surveillance car on the corner. The wino scrambled into the back of the car and hadn't closed his door before the driver pulled out onto the street and sped toward the corner where Arlene now turned right.

Drew grinned, his predictions proved accurate. Somewhere in that block, another spotter would have been left behind. In the meantime, the surveillance car would reach that other corner in time to learn if Arlene stayed on the avenue or went inside a store or hailed a taxi.

Drew started driving, but he couldn't continue down Twelfth Street where the remaining spotter might notice him. Instead, he avoided the block by turning right at the intersection before it and headed north, parallel to Arlene. He turned left onto Thirteenth Street and sped toward the next corner of the avenue that Arlene had taken, hoping to catch up to her.

He didn't see her. What he did see was the dark blue surveillance car. Inside, the two men stared forward as they drove past the corner. Whom were they working for, Drew wondered. Scalpel?

When he reached the intersection, Drew glanced up and down the avenue. No Arlene. He restrained his impatience long enough to let several cars go by before he roared out into traffic to follow the surveillance car, which presumably had her in sight.

His assumption was that when she'd reached the avenue, she'd hailed a taxi. If so, her choice surprised him because she almost always walked where she was going, even if her destination was at some distance.

At least he had the surveillance car ahead of him, and that was as good as seeing Arlene. The several cars between the spotters and himself made it improbable that they would notice him if they happened to look back. The drizzle, which had now become a full-fledged rain, provided a shield as well, though the drops streaking cold down his face made it difficult for him to stop blinking.

To control the blinks, he mustered the discipline he'd learned in fencing classes at the Rocky Mountain Industrial School. The object had been to make him so accustomed to the lethal tip of a rapier being jabbed at his unprotected eyes that he learned to subdue the reflexive action of his eyelids. Some students never did develop that skill; they weren't at school much longer.

Through the stronger rain that now had soaked his wool gloves and collected beneath his coat collar, he followed the dark blue car. He entered midtown Manhattan and turned onto Fiftieth Street.

He slowed as the surveillance car did. In a moment, he understood why. Ahead, near enough to distinguish the sheen in her auburn hair, the glow on her healthy skin, he saw Arlene getting out of a taxi stopped at the curb.

He felt his heart race. She'd never needed makeup; the sun and wind had always given her sufficient color. Her forehead, cheekbones, and chin were perfectly proportioned, her features exquisite. But she was hardly a porcelain doll. Though she had an angular figure, her hips, waist, and breasts equal to those of any actress, she was sinewy, not at all soft.

The surveillance car stopped. The man in the grimy clothes of a wino crawled from the back seat into the front, sliding behind the steering wheel. The well-dressed driver got out to follow Arlene. As horns blared, the replacement driver responded, moving the surveillance car ahead. Drew sympathized with his problem. Where could this new driver find a parking space in midtown Manhattan? Unless he double-parked and risked a challenge from a policeman, he'd have to drive around the block, again and again, until his partner reappeared. At once, though, Drew noticed that the executive who followed Arlene had put a set of small earphones over his head. A wire dangled from them to an inside pocket of his suit.

Back in Boston, while walking through the mall, Drew had been puzzled when he saw teenagers and even adults wearing similar earphones. On occasion, he'd heard dim music drifting from them. He'd gone to a stereo store and learned that the earphones belonged to compact radios and tape players, known as Walkmans. The well-dressed man wasn't using a Walkman, though the earphones looked like they belonged to one and didn't attract attention. No, he was maintaining contact with the driver of the surveillance car by means of a small hidden two-way radio. The wino could drive the car around the block for the rest of the afternoon and still know exactly when and where to pick up his partner.

Though the time was now four-thirty, the gloom made the afternoon seem like dusk. Drew straddled his motorcycle at the curb, deciding to risk a ticket. Passing vehicles ignored him. He in turn ignored the chill of the rain and looked fifty yards ahead, past the well-dressed man with the earphones, watching Arlene go into a store.

Drew had already guessed where she was going when he saw her leave the taxi. The store she entered had its windows filled with sporting equipment, most of it for mountain climbers. Coiled, lightweight, twisted-nylon ropes, one hundred and fifty feet long, capable, he knew, of sustaining four thousand pounds of stress, carabiners, pitons and piton hammers, nylon slings, mountain packs, ice axes, climbing boots.

The store sold ordinary sporting goods as well, but because of its specialty, climbers from all over the northeast knew about it. Drew himself had several times been here with Arlene and Jake.