The Fraternity of the Stone (46 page)

"I'm not quite sure yet. Something. I don't know -call it a premonition. I feel like I'm being manipulated."

"We have to expect he'll want to get back at you."

"That's the point," Drew said. "Why would he let me have all day to learn the address of this new number?" He studied the tourists on Bunker Hill. "Maybe I'm overly cautious, but we'd better not hang around this phone booth."

They started down Monument Avenue.

"If it makes you nervous, don't call him," she said.

"I have to."

"Why?"

"To say I want to meet with him."

She turned, surprised. "Meet with him? He'll set up a trap."

"Of course. But I won't show up. I'll make an excuse and arrange another meeting. But I won't arrive for that one, either. In the meantime, we can think of other ways to put pressure on him. I want to keep aggravating him, make him nervous. Or better yet, maybe we could plan a meeting in such a way that we could turn his trap around." Drew couldn't quell his uneasiness. "That new number he gave me. To call at four o'clock. What's he up to?"

"You're right - he has to assume you'll learn its location."

Drew stopped abruptly and studied her face. "Is that it? He's trying to trick me into going to that location? He wants me to try to grab him while he's making the call?"

"And his men would kill you instead."

He shook his head. "No. He gave us too much time to anticipate the trap. Whatever he's got in mind, it isn't that. His tactic's working, though. He's got us confused. He's put us on the defensive. I told you. He isn't stupid."

Chapter 13.

At noon, a van arrived outside the Beacon Hill house. Two men helped Father Stanislaw get out. The priest was pale, his arm in a sling. Supported by his escorts, wincing from the strain, he mounted the steps of the townhouse; but once inside, with the door closed, he crumpled into their arms. Gently, they lowered him onto a sofa.

A middle-aged woman came in behind him. Handsome rather than pretty, with a conservative haircut and no makeup, she wore a blue London Fog overcoat and a gray wool suit. As the two men left, never saying a word, shutting the door again, she explained that she was there to take care of the priest. His wound wasn't critical, but he'd soon be needing another sedative, she said, and there was always the danger of infection. She carried a medical bag. Drew noticed that she didn't volunteer her name, and neither he nor Arlene asked for it.

They helped Father Stanislaw up the stairs to a bedroom, made him as comfortable as they could, and let him sleep.

"His constitution's remarkable," the woman said when they returned to the living room. "Polish, I believe. Hardy Slavic stock. He barely has a fever."

"We have to wake him up soon."

The woman spoke sharply. "I'm afraid I can't allow that."

"We wouldn't do it if we had a choice."

"I'll be the judge of that." She stood with her back to the stairs, as though to bar Drew from going up again. "What did you wish to speak with him about?"

He had a sudden intuition. Remembering how Father Stanislaw had addressed the businessman in the church in Pennsylvania, he said, "The Lord be with you."

"And with your spirit."

"Deo gratias."

The woman relaxed. "Then you're one of us."

"Not exactly. Close enough. For six years, I was a Carthusian."

"In New Hampshire."

Drew sensed he was being tested. "No. In Vermont."

She smiled. "The Carthusians are saints on earth."

"Not this one, I'm afraid. I'm a sinner."

"Aren't we all? But God understands human weakness."

"I hope so. We have to talk to Father Stanislaw so we can get in touch with his contact at the telephone company. We need to find the location of a number we've been given."

The woman reached out her hand. "Give the number to me."

"But... "

"It that's the only information you want, there's no need to wake Father Stanislaw. I'll take care of it myself."

Drew blinked.

"Surely you don't think I'd have been allowed to attend him if I weren't responsible," the woman said. "Please, give me that number."

Drew did.

She walked to a phone, dialed, and, in a soft voice, gave instructions. She hung up, and they waited.

At two o'clock, the phone rang. The woman answered, listened, said, "Deo Gratias." And hanging up, she turned to Drew.

"A pay phone near the Paul Revere statue and Old North Church."

"A pay phone?"

"In North End," the woman said.

"But... "

Arlene leaned forward from a canvas director's chair. "What's wrong?"

"A pay phone? Near the Paul Revere statue - a tourist area?" Drew's stomach felt packed with ice. "And Uncle Ray gave us the day to find where it was? That doesn't make sense. He wouldn't dare to use that phone. It's too exposed. If we staked out that location, we could tell right away if Ray was setting up a trap. He'll never go there. But he'll spread men through the neighborhood in case we do."

"Which means we won't," Arlene said.

"Right. But Ray expects that, too. He wants to use that phone for another reason. Someone, not Ray, will answer my call. And give me another number. That pay phone's just a relay. We'd better get moving."

"No," Arlene insisted. "I'm staying right here till you tell me what's going on."

"It's a setup, all right. For sure, a trap. But not the one we expected. This is algebra turned into trigonometry. He's skipped a dozen steps. But I know what he's doing. I learned from the same set of rules. I used the same trick in... " He shuddered at the memory.

"If you don't explain what's going on."

"When we get in the car. Hurry." He swung toward the woman with the medical bag. "We need a room with a door that has a window. I have to be able to stand outside and look through the window into the room. An isolated location. And the room has to have a phone."

The woman considered. "I don't... No, wait a minute. There's a local parish hall with a kitchen in the basement. The kitchen has a swinging door with a window so people coming in and out can see and not bump the door against each other. The kitchen has a phone."

"What's the address?"

The woman told him.

Drew wrote it down. "Call and make sure no one's there." He glanced at his watch. "We don't have much time till four o'clock."

"For what?" Arlene asked.

"To buy a tape recorder. And, God help me, a mouse."

Chapter 14.

It was white - unlike Stuart Little, who'd been gray. Drew bought it with a cage. He paid the petshop owner. "Have you got any mouse treats?"

"Mouse treats?" The overweight man with thinning hair and a bird-dung-stained apron raised his eyebrows.

A parrot squawked in the background.

"Sure. Whatever a mouse likes to eat the best. Something he'd really love. Gourmet."

"Gourmet?" The man looked at Drew as if he were crazy. "Hey, listen, I could cheat you, but I want my customers happy. There's no reason to spend a lot of money on mouse food. This stuff over here, it's cheap, it's filling, they don't know the difference. I mean, a mouse, what the hell does a mouse know?"

"He's only the one who's eating it, right?"

"Yeah, except this particular mouse is female."

"Then she. I want the best for her. I want her to stuff herself with the best meal she ever had. And I don't care about the cost."

The man sighed. "Whatever you say. It's your wallet. Step right this way. What I've got here on this shelf, it's what you might call the Rolls Royce of mouse food."

Drew paid another ten dollars and left the petshop, a five-pound bag of food in one hand, the mouse in the cage in the other.

At the curb, Arlene sat waiting in the sports car, its motor rumbling. "Cute," she said. "Personally, mice never bothered me. Have you given it a name?" His voice was grim. "Stuart Little the second." She suddenly understood. "Oh, shit." Her look was consoling. "I'm sorry I tried to be funny."

Drew shut the door, clutching the cage. "No problem.

It's Ray who has to be sorry."

Chapter 15.

Even at half-past three, the basement of the parish hall was shadowy. As the autumn sun drooped low, the church on that side of the hall blocked out its descending brilliance. The windows at the top of the basement's western hall were shrouded with gloom.

The place was damp. Drew felt the chill as he came down concrete stairs, pausing while the echo of his footsteps diminished.

Silence.

He squinted at rows of long plastic-topped tables that smelled from years of church socials, beans and hot dogs, potato salad, coleslaw.

Arlene descended quickly behind him, holding a box that contained a tape recorder.

"Is anyone here?" Drew called. His voice echoed. Silence. "Good."

The mouse skittered in her cage.

Scanning the shadows, Drew pointed toward a door with a window halfway along the wall to his right. "That must be the kitchen. Now if only our friend remembered correctly and there's a phone."

There was. As Drew pushed open the swinging door and flicked on a light switch, he saw a phone on a counter between a stove and a humming refrigerator. "Let's make sure." He picked up the phone, exhaling when he heard a dial tone.

He set down the scrambling mouse in her cage and again glanced at his watch. "Less than twenty-five minutes. The tape recorder worked in the store. It had better work now."

Indeed, when he took the box from Arlene, unpacked and plugged in the recorder, it functioned perfectly. He dictated into the microphone and played the tape back.

"Does that sound like me?" he asked with concern. The recorded tone of his voice didn't seem like the tone inside his head.

Arlene said, "Lower the bass."

He did and played the tape again.

"That's you," she said. "It certainly ought to be. That machine's worth a fortune."

Drew rewound the tape. "Fifteen minutes. Time to feed our friend."

He opened the bag of mouse treats and sprinkled the tiny chunks through the top bars of the cage. The mouse became frantic with ecstasy.

"Good," Drew said. "Enjoy." He rubbed his forehead. "What else? I'd better rig the remote control." He pulled an electrical cord from the cardboard box, plugged it into the tape recorder, and led it across the kitchen floor, through the swinging door, and into the murky hall. The space beneath the kitchen door was sufficient for Drew to be able to close the door over the cord. The last thing he did was attach a remote control hand switch to his end of the wire.

In the light that came from the kitchen through the door's window, he studied the buttons on the hand switch. "On. Off. Pause. Play. Record." He nodded. "Ten minutes. Have we forgotten anything?"

Arlene thought about it. "Just in case, you'd better test that hand switch."

He did. It worked. "Then I guess there's just one thing left to do."

She didn't need to ask what he meant.

"Pray."

Chapter 16.

At four o'clock, Drew picked up the phone in the kitchen. A fist seemed to squeeze his heart. He'd know soon if he'd misjudged. Everything depended upon the logical assumptions he'd been making.

But what if Ray had anticipated those assumptions?

Drew stared at the phone. It was black, with an old-fashioned rotary dial. As his apprehension strengthened, he dialed the number that the Risk Analysis secretary had given him. The digits clicked ominously. He glanced at Arlene, reached out, and held her hand.

Relays connected. Drew heard a buzz as the phone at the other end - near the Paul Revere statue in North End - began to ring.

Someone answered it almost at once. In the background, Drew heard sounds of traffic. A gruff voice said, "Hello?"

"Mr. Rutherford, please."

"Who?"

"Uncle Ray. It's his nephew calling."

"Why didn't you say so? He isn't here."

"But" - Drew made himself sound puzzled - "I was told to call at four o'clock."

"He had an unexpected appointment. You can get in touch with him at... " The husky voice dictated a number. "You got it?"

Drew read the number back.

"Perfect," the voice said. "That housewarming you gave us last night? Cute, pal."

The man hung up.

Drew slumped against the counter.

"We were right?" Arlene asked.

He nodded. "Ray never intended to go near that phone. It was only a relay. I'm supposed to call another number."

"As you expected. But you could be wrong about the next call. It might not mean what you think. Suppose

Ray was only being careful. Suppose he took for granted that we'd learn the location of the number you were given this morning. This way, by using that phone booth as a relay, he was simply protecting himself. He knows you can't possibly find the location of this new number before he finishes the call and leaves."

Drew's shoulders ached from nervousness. "Possibly. But I don't think that's what's going on here. In sixty-eight, a man named Hank Dalton taught me a procedure. I used it once on a mission. Against a hit man for the Red Brigades. And Uncle Ray was Hank Dalton's boss. I have to suspect Ray'll try it on me." He paused. "Let's put it this way. If I'm wrong, we've lost nothing."