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The Brotherhood of the Rose: A Novel - Softcover

Buch 1 von 3: Brotherhood of the Rose

Morrell, David

 
9780345514516: The Brotherhood of the Rose: A Novel
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0345514513 ISBN 13: 9780345514516
Verlag: Random House Publishing Group, 2009

Inhaltsangabe

They were orphans, Chris and Saul–raised in a Philadelphia school for boys, bonded by friendship, and devoted to a mysterious man called Eliot. He visited them and brought them candy. He treated them like sons. He trained them to be assassins. Now he is trying desperately to have them killed.

Spanning the globe and full of heart-stopping action, The Brotherhood of the Rose is an astonishing novel of fierce loyalty and violent betrayal, of murders planned and coolly executed, of revenge bitterly, urgently desired.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

David Morrell is the award-winning author of First Blood—the novel in which Rambo was created—as well as twenty-seven other books. This book was the basis for the 1989 mini-series starring Robert Mitchum. With eighteen million copies in print, his work has been translated into twenty-six languages. He was a professor in the English department at the University of Iowa and currently serves as the copresident of the International Thriller Writers organization. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with his wife.

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Book One: SANCTUARY  
A MAN OF HABIT  

Chapter One


vail, colorado.  

The snow fell harder, blinding Saul. He skied through deepening powder, veering sharply back and forth down the slope. Everything-the sky, the air, and the ground-turned white. His vision shortened till he saw no more than a swirl before his face. He swooped through chaos.  

He might hit an unseen tree or plummet off a hidden cliff. He didn't care. He felt exhilarated. As wind raged at his cheeks, he grinned. He christied left, then right. Sensing the slope ease off, he streaked across a straightaway.  

The next slope would be steeper. In the white-out, he pushed at his poles to gain more speed. His stomach burned. He loved it. Vacuum. Nothing to his back or front. Past and future had no meaning. Only now-and it was wonderful.  

A dark shape loomed before him.  

Jerking sideways, Saul dug in the edge of his skis to stop himself. His pulse roared in his head. The shape zoomed past from right to left in front of him, vanishing in the snow.  

Saul gaped through his goggles, hearing a scream despite the wind. He frowned and moved cautiously toward it.  

Shadows gathered in the storm. A line of trees.  

A moan.

  He found the skier sprawled against a tree trunk, flanked by blood in the snow. Beneath his mask, Saul bit his lip. He crouched and saw the crimson seeping from the skier's forehead, and the grotesque angle of one leg.  

A man. Thick beard. Large chest.  

Saul couldn't go for help-in the chaos of the storm, he might not be able to find this place again. Worse, even if he did manage to bring back help, the man might freeze to death by then.  

One chance. He didn't bother attending to the head wound or the broken leg. No use, no time. He took off his skis, removed the skis from the injured man, rushed toward a pine tree, and snapped off a thickly needled bough.  

Spreading the bough beside the man, he eased him onto it, careful to let the good leg cushion the broken one. He gripped the end of the bough and stooped, walking backward, pulling. The snow stung harder, cold gnawing through his ski gloves. He kept tugging, inching down.  

The man groaned as Saul shifted him over a bump, the snow enshrouding them. The man writhed, almost slipping off the bough.  

Saul hurried to reposition him, tensing when he suddenly felt a hand behind him clutch his shoulder.   Whirling, he stared at a looming figure, "Ski Patrol" stenciled in black across a yellow parka.  

"Down the slope! A hundred yards! A shed!" the man yelled, helping Saul.  

They eased the skier down the hill. Saul bumped against the shed before he saw it, feeling corrugated metal behind him. He yanked the unlocked door open and stumbled in. The wind's shriek diminished. He felt stillness.  


Turning from the empty shed, he helped the man from the Ski Patrol drag in the bleeding skier.  

"You okay?" the man asked Saul, who nodded. "Stay with him while I get help," the man continued. "I'll come back with snowmobiles in fifteen minutes."  

Saul nodded again.  


"What you did," the man told Saul. "You're something else. Hang on. We'll get you warm."  

The man stepped out and closed the door. Saul slumped against the wall and sank to the ground. He stared at the groaning skier, whose eyelids flickered.  

"Keep your leg still."  

The man winced, nodding. "Thanks."  

Saul shrugged.  

Scrunching his eyes in pain, the man said, "Massive foul-up."  

"It can happen."  

"No. A simple job."  

Saul didn't understand. The man was babbling.  

"Didn't figure on the storm." The man scowled, his temples pulsing. "Dumb."  

Saul listened to the storm, soon hearing the far-off roar of snowmobiles. "They're coming."  

"Did you ever ski in Argentina?"  

Saul's throat constricted. Babbling? Hardly. "Once. I got a nosebleed."  

"Aspirin..."   "...cures headaches," Saul replied, the code completed.  

"Ten o'clock tonight." The man groaned. "Goddamn storm. Who figured it'd screw things up?"  

The roar grew louder as the snowmobiles stopped outside the shed. The door jerked open. Three men from the Ski Patrol stepped in.  

"You still okay?" one man asked Saul.  

"I'm fine. But this guy's babbling."

Chapter Two


Maintain a pattern. Every day, Saul kept the same routine, appearing at scheduled places at established times. Eight-thirty: breakfast at the coffee shop in his hotel. A half hour's walk, the route unchanging. Twenty minutes' browsing in a book store. Eleven o'clock: the slopes, again his route consistent.  

For two reasons. First-in case somebody needed to get in touch with him, the courier would know where he was at any time and be able to intercept him, though it had just been demonstrated how an accident could jeopardize procedure. Second-if Saul was being watched, his schedule was so predictable it might bore his shadow into making mistakes.

  Today, more than usual, he had to avoid suspicion. He helped take the injured man down to the ambulance. At the lodge, he chatted with the Ski Patrol in their office, waiting for his chance to slip away. He went to his room and changed from his ski suit to jeans and a sweater. He reached his customary bar exactly when he always did, sitting in the smoke-filled conversation pit, watching cartoons on the giant television screen, sipping a Coke.  

At seven, he went to dinner, as always at the dining room in his hotel. At eight, he went to a Burt Reynolds car-chase movie. He'd seen the feature before and knew it ended at quarter to ten. He'd chosen the theater for its pay phone in the men's room. Making sure the stalls were empty, he put the proper change in the phone and dialed a memorized number precisely at ten o'clock as the man on the slope had instructed him.

A gruff male voice announced basketball scores. Saul didn't pay attention to the names of the teams. He cared only about the numbers, ten in all, a long-distance telephone number, mentally repeating them.  

He left the men's room and, without being obvious, checked the lobby to see if he was being watched.  

No indication of surveillance, though an expert shadow wouldn't let himself be noticed.

  He stepped from the theater, pleased that the storm had persisted. Through the dark and confusion, he slipped down a side street, then another side street, waiting in an alley to make sure he wasn't being followed. With sight so restricted in the storm, a tail would have to follow him closely past this alley to keep up with him.

  But no one did.   He crossed the street and chose a pay phone in an unfamiliar bar two blocks away. Near the din of electronic games, he dialed the numbers he'd been given.  

A woman's sexy voice said, "Triple A Answering Service."  

"Romulus," he said.  

"You've got an appointment. Tuesday. 9 a.m. Denver. 48 Cody Road."  

He set the phone back on its cradle. Leaving the bar, he walked through the cover of the storm to arrive at his hotel precisely when he would have if, after seeing the movie, he'd taken his usual thirty-minute walk.   He asked the desk clerk, "Any messages for Grisman? Room 211."  

"Sorry, sir."  

"No problem."  

Avoiding the elevator, he walked upstairs to his room. The strand of hair at the bottom of his door remained exactly where he'd placed it when he'd gone...

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Verlag
Random House Publishing Group
Erscheinungsdatum
2009
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0345514513
ISBN 13 
9780345514516
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
448
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
preigu
mail@preigu.de

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