The Fraternity of the Stone (31 page)

But as his vision got used to the glare of the sun, he suddenly grinned excitedly and rushed to the man.

"Uncle Ray!"

In truth, the man was not related to Drew, but from years of habit, that was what Drew had always called him.

"Uncle Ray!"

Drew threw his arms around the man's waist, feeling the soft brown cloth of the overcoat.

The man laughed, picked Drew up, and swung him around. "It's good to see you, sport. How's the world been treating you?"

Drew was too delighted to pay attention to the question. As the man continued laughing, Drew laughed as well, enjoying the wonderful dizziness of being swung around.

The man set him down and, smiling, crouched to face him. "Surprised?"

"Boy, I'll say!"

"I happened to be in Boston on business, and I thought, 'What the heck, as long as I'm here, I might as well visit my old friend Drew.' " Uncle Ray mussed Drew's hair. "A good thing I did, huh? When I saw you on that swing, you looked pretty glum."

Drew shrugged, remembering how he'd felt, returning to his somber mood.

"Got troubles, sport?"

"Yeah, I guess so."

"Any you'd like to tell me about?"

Drew scuffed his running shoes in the dead brown grass. "Just stuff."

"Well, it might be I know a few of them already. I stopped at the house. Your aunt told me where you'd gone." Ray paused. "She also told me what's been happening. Your problems at school." He bit his lip. "The other things. And I hear you've been getting in fights with your cousin."

"He doesn't like me."

"Oh? You're sure of that?"

"He's mad because I live there. He's always playing practical jokes on me or hiding my homework or blaming me for things I didn't do."

"I can see how that might happen. So you decked him, huh?"

Drew grinned, holding up his right hand. "Bruised my knuckles."

"It could be an even trade. At the house, I saw his black eye."

The man was as old as Drew's father had been. For some reason, "thirty-five" stuck in Drew's mind. He had neatly trimmed sandy hair, expressive blue eyes, and a narrow, handsome face, his jaw strongly outlined. Drew loved the sweet smell of his aftershave.

"Yeah, a lot of commotion," Ray said. "The question is, what are we going to do about it? You feel like taking a walk, sport?"

Chapter 21.

Puzzled, his heart thumping, Drew listened out of sight in the hall as the grown-ups talked about him in the living room.

"As you're aware, Drew's father and I were very close," Ray said. His smooth voice carried down the hall. "I knew him for years. We went to Yale together. We received our State Department training together. We were both stationed in Japan."

Drew's uncle said, "Then you were at the embassy when his parents were killed?"

"No, by the time the demonstrations started, I'd already been transferred to Hong Kong. When I heard what had happened, well, I couldn't believe that anybody would do such a horrible thing. I was involved in a diplomatic emergency at the time, and I couldn't leave Hong Kong even to go to the funeral. In fact, my assignment was serious enough that I wasn't free to get away till just last week. I'm sure you'll understand that I can't be specific about what I was doing. But as soon as

I could, I wanted to come here to Boston - to pay my respects, to at least see their graves. It's hard to put this into words. Of course, he was your brother, Mr. Mac-Lane, so I hope you don't take this wrong if I say that I felt... well, like a brother to him also. As I said, we were very close."

"I understand," Drew's uncle said. "The fact is, you probably knew him better than I did. I hadn't seen him in the past five years, and even before then, we didn't get together much."

"What about the boy?"

"I don't believe I saw him more than three or four times. Ever. My brother and I were the only children in our family. Our parents died several years ago. So naturally, when my brother called me to say that he was having a new will made out and would I take custody of Drew if anything happened to Susan and himself... "

"Yes, naturally you agreed."

"There wasn't anybody else he could ask, you see. But I never dreamed that I'd have to make good on my promise."

"What I want to talk to you about is this. I've always been fond of Andrew. I guess I feel like an uncle to him. Again, I don't mean any offense. I'm not trying to be presumptuous. But my wife and I don't have any children. It seems we're not able to. At any rate, given the difficulties you've been having with him... "

"Difficulties. That's putting it mildly."

"I wondered if you'd let my wife and me have custody of him."

"Have custody! Are you serious?"

"It could be the answer to several problems. The grief I feel for my friend. My fondness for the boy. My wife and I had already considered going to an adoption agency. Add to that the problems you've been having with Drew."

Drew's uncle sounded suspicious. "What makes you think you can do any better with him?"

"I'm not sure I can. But I'd like to try."

"And if it didn't work out?"

"I wouldn't bring him back to your doorstep, if that's what you mean. I'd abide by our agreement. If you're hesitant, though, if you think you'd want him back, we could arrange a compromise. Perhaps the boy could spend a month or so with my wife and myself, and after that, we all could talk about it again. This way, you'd have a chance to get your household back the way it used to be."

"I don't know. Where would you take him?"

"Hong Kong. For half of his life, he lived in the Orient. Hong Kong isn't Japan, of course. But perhaps he'd feel more at home if he went back to the Far East."

Drew's uncle sighed. "This is hard to... Your offer's certainly tempting. I confess I've been at my wits' end. But there might be a problem. Suppose the boy doesn't want to go?"

"We can always ask him."

Hiding in the hall, his heart swelling, Drew silently shouted, Yes!

Chapter 22.

The bitter wind brought tears to his eyes, though he might have been crying for a different reason as he stared down at his parents' graves.

Uncle Ray pulled up the collar on his overcoat and shoved his gloved hands into its pockets. "I miss them too, sport." His sandy hair was blown by the wind.

"Maybe I... "

"Yes? Go on." Ray put an arm around him.

"... should have brought the flowers anyhow."

"On a raw day like this? They wouldn't have lasted long. No, it's better that we let them live a while longer back at the flower shop."

Drew understood. There wasn't any reason why the flowers should die as well. Only the people who'd killed his parents ought to die.

"So what do you think?" Ray asked. "I know you want to stay, but we've been here almost an hour. We have to catch that plane at five o'clock. It's not forever, you know. Someday, you'll be back."

"Sure. It's just... "

"Hard to leave them? You bet. But we've got photographs. You can still remember them while you're away. I mean, a guy can't very well camp here in the cemetery, can he?"

"No." Drew's eyes stung, misty, this time definitely not from the wind. He had trouble breathing. "I guess not."

Chapter 23.

Reading the dossier's objective summary, Drew recalled - and reexperienced - the emotions of his youth. As if a child again, he walked with Ray toward the car that would take them to the airport. In his painful memory, he glanced back, his throat tight, toward his parents' graves.

He knew that the priest's intention was to get him to talk about those days, and he did so freely, not caring if he gave the priest his wish. He needed to vent his sadness. "In later years, whenever I was in Boston, I used to go back to that cemetery. I went there before I became a Carthusian. Last week, though, I never had the chance to visit them."

"It was prudent of you not to," Father Stanislaw said. "Whoever wanted you dead would have put a surveillance team near those graves, just as Arlene was being watched in case you showed up." The priest retrieved the dossier. "Just a few more items. In Hong Kong, you began to run with a Chinese street gang. The man you called Uncle Ray understood your motive - to acquire the skills you thought you'd need to go after your parents' killer. To ensure your safety, he arranged for the grandson of a Gurkha to teach you street sense.

Tommy Limbuk was the child's name."

"Limbu," Drew said. "Known as Tommy Two."

Father Stanislaw wrote a correction in the dossier. "And after that, wherever Uncle Ray was stationed -France, Greece, Korea - he arranged for you to learn the martial skills of the local population. Foot boxing, wrestling, judo, karate. When you were seventeen, your need for revenge had still not abated. During your stay in various countries, you'd learned an impressive number of languages - and acquired a remarkable liberal arts education, I might add. Uncle Ray, aware of your life's ambition, knowing you couldn't be dissuaded, approached you with a suggestion. The United States, nervous about growing anti-American sentiment in the world, had decided to form a counterterrorist unit, designed to confront the very enemies you yourself had chosen. So you agreed to his suggestion and enlisted in the Rocky Mountain Industrial School in Colorado, a cover for military-intelligence instruction, a training facility much more secret than the farm in Virginia that the CIA used for its operatives."

"Scalpel," Arlene said.

Father Stanislaw glanced surprised at her. "You know about it?"

"I belonged to it. So did Jake. That's where we met Drew."

The priest leaned back in his chair. "Thank God. I was starting to think you still didn't trust me. I wondered if you'd ever volunteer information."

"You didn't ask the right questions. I'll tell you anything I can," she said, "if it helps me find Jake."

"Then tell me," Father Stanislaw said, "about Scal-pel."

Chapter 24.

"Nineteen sixty-six: the year international terrorism became organized. In an effort to unite the struggles of

Communist groups in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, Fidel Castro invited revolutionists from eighty-two countries to come to Cuba for an intensive training session, known as the Tricontinental Conference. A school for urban guerrilla warfare resulted, where members from almost every later infamous terrorist group received instruction. The IRA, the Red Brigades, The Baader-Meinhof Gang. The principles of terrorism worked out at that school became a Devil's bible. Qaddafi followed Castro's lead and organized training schools of his own in Libya. With Libya's enormous oil wealth, Qaddafi was able to accomplish more than Castro, not merely providing instruction to terrorists but also financing their operations. Random assassination; embassy takeovers; the slaughter of the Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. The kidnapping of the OPEC oil ministers in Vienna in '75. Commercial airliners destroyed by bombs. School buses blown apart. On and on. The list of horrors grew longer each year, but they all dated back to 1966, Castro, and Cuba. Even the fanatical Muslim sects from the time of the Crusades were not as barbarous."

(At the mention of the Crusades, Father Stanislaw touched the ruby ring on his left hand, tracing the symbol of the intersecting sword and Maltese cross. Arlene continued.)

"In 1968, the U.S. State Department, warned by intelligence sources about Castro's school for terrorists, financed its own school for counter terrorists. The State Department could, of course, have gone to the CIA for that kind of service. But given the notoriety that the CIA had acquired since the Bay of Pigs, the State Department chose instead to sponsor its own clandestine unit. A truly clandestine unit, spared exposure in The New York Times and The Washington Post. Only a few insiders knew about it."

As Arlene paused, Father Stanislaw nodded. "Scalpel." He glanced at Drew. "The unit into which your Uncle Ray recruited you."

"Now wait a minute," Drew said. "He didn't recruit me into anything."

"Then let's say he made a discreet suggestion," Father Stanislaw said. "We can play with words all you want. The end result is what matters. He approached you about it, and you joined. Why was Scalpel chosen as the code name for the unit?"

Drew tried to mute his anger. "Precise surgical removal."

"Ah, yes, of course. The terrorists were like cancer. As a consequence, their excision was morally permissible. An ingenious choice of name. It symbolized its justification."

"You find something wrong with the concept?" Arlene asked.

Father Stanislaw kept his eyes on Drew. "Obviously you did, or you wouldn't have resigned."

"Not wrong with the concept. Wrong with me."

"Ah," Father Stanislaw said. "In that case, we should perhaps have met earlier."

"Why?"

"To refresh your memory of St. Augustine. The concept that killing is necessary if a war is just."

"War?"

"Not nation fighting nation, not a conventional war. All the same, a war. The oldest, most basic one of all: good against evil. Terrorists, by definition, turn their backs on civilized standards. Their weapon is outrageous attack - to so disrupt the lives of average citizens that those citizens rebel against their government. But no end can justify such hellish means."