The Brotherhood of the Rose Read Free Page B

the instructions in person.
    He squeezed his fists, determined. This time he wouldn't fail. He couldn't allow himself to disappoint the only father he, an orphan, had ever known.
    The man with a mustache munched a taco. Saul explained the assignment to him. They used no names, of course. Saul hadn't seen him before and wouldn't again. The man wore a jogging suit. He had a cleft in his chin. He wiped his mustache with a napkin.
    Baltimore. Three days later, 2 P.m. The Mexican restaurant was almost deserted. Even so, they sat at the remotest corner table.
    The man lit a cigarette, studying Saul. "We'll need a lot of backup."
    "Maybe not," Saul said. "You know the protocol."
    Saul nodded. Established method. A team of fourteen men, the bulk of them working on surveillance, the others obtaining equipment, relaying messages, providing alibis, each of them knowing as little as possible about the others, all of them dropping out of sight an hour before the specialists stepped in. Efficient. Safe. "All right," the man told Saul. "But this is six jobs. Times fourteen backup men. That's eighty-four. We might as well hold a convention, advertise, sell tickets."
    "Maybe not," Saul said. "So humor me."
    "The key is all together-at one time, one place."
    "Who knows when that'll be? We could wait all year."
    "Three weeks from today."
    The man stared down at his cigarette. Saul told him where. The man stubbed out his cigarette. "Go on," he said. "We can keep surveillance to a minimum, simply making sure all six of them show up for the meeting."
    "Possibly. We'd still need communications. Someone else to get the stuff."
    "That's you." "No argument. But getting the stuff in the building won't be easy."
    "Not your worry.". "Fine with me. It's flaky. I don't like it. But if that's the way you want it, we can do the job with twenty men."
    "You're right," Saul said- "That's how I want it."
    "What's the matter?"
    "Let us just say I had a few assignments with people who let me down. I'm losing my faith in human nature."
    "That's a laugh."
    "For this job, as much as Ican, I wanttodependon myself."
    And me, of course. You'll have to depend on me." Saul studied him. The waitress brought the check. "My treat," Saul said.
    The estate spread across the valley-a three-story mansion, swimming pool, tennis courts, stables, a lush green pasture, riding trails through a park-like forest, ducks on a take. He lay in tall grass on a wooded bluff a half mile away, the warm spring sun on his back, its angle such that it wouldn't reflect off the lens of his telescope and warn the bodyguards in front of the house that someone was watching them. He studied a dust cloud on a gravel road, a limousine approaching the house, four other limousines already parked in front of a six-stall garage to the left. The car stopped at the house, a bodyguard stepping forward as a man got out. "He ought to be there by now," a voice said from a walkie-talkie next to Saul, the raspy tone of the man he'd talked to in Baltimore. The walkie-talkie had been adjusted to a seldomused frequency. Even so, there was always a chance of someone accidentally overhearing the conversation, so the walkie-talkie had been equipped with a scrambler. Only someone with another scrambler tuned to the same uncommon frequency could receive a clear transmission. "That's the last of them," the voice continued. "Eyeball I.D. Counting the guy who lives there, all six targets are in the zone."
    Saul pressed the "send" button on the walkie-talkie. "I'll take it from here. Head home." He stared through the telescope at the house. The visitor had gone inside, the limousine joining the others in front of the garage.
    He checked his watch. Everything on schedule. Though the mansion was closely guarded now, its security force had been minimal a week ago, just a man at the gate, another patrolling the grounds, a third in charge of the house. With a Starlite nightscope, he'd studied the estate three nights in a row,