Twenty seconds later he stopped again. From above drifted the singing voices of the Brotherhood.
“Why do we wait?” Tanya whispered.
“To listen. I’m a student of bird calls and other forest noises.”
The vigil produced results more practical than aesthetic. After about two minutes the voices of the choristers stopped abruptly in mid-syllable, even in mid-note, to say nothing of mid-phrase.
The Saint and Tanya looked at one another.
“No wonder our friends sounded so professional,” Simon said. “They were.”
“A gramophone record.”
“Right, my dear. The invisible Brotherhood is just about as genuine as everything else in that joint. Did you notice those vegetable plots? Weeds bigger than the cabbages. Nobody’s bothered to cultivate them for days — or weeks.”
He took Tanya’s hand, and they went on down the path.
“So” she said, “you think they make our equipment there?”
“Seems very likely. There could be all sorts of hidden chambers. I was studying that possibility, too, but we can’t be sure until tonight.”
“Tonight?”
“Tonight. When I come back for another look around. I’ve never liked these conducted tours. By the way,” he added with a quizzical frown, “what do you think that was they were cooking in the kitchen?”
“I don’t know,” she answered absently. “Kasha? Rice?”
Suddenly Simon stopped and looked at her.
“Rice,” he said, and threw back his head and laughed.
8
A half-moon was just riding high enough to illuminate the snow on the great peaks above as the Saint began his return climb to the monastery. Everything was silvered, the sky was clear, and the air was keener than it had been in the daytime. The cold wind’s stimulus to his walking speed helped to nullify the reductive effect of his dinner (there was no menu and no choice) of goulash, noodles, and red cabbage.
Tanya had wanted to come, but he had convinced her that it was foolhardy for them both to be committed at the same time. If he had not returned by midnight she would be free to take whatever action she thought best — an old tactic but, like most lasting traditions, a sound one. It was almost ten o’clock now.
There was another logical reason for her to wait at the Gasthof: Igor and Ivan might arrive at any moment, following directions that had been left in Paris, and any news they had of Molière might be vital. Someone should be at the inn to meet them if they did turn up.
As he came closer to the monastery, Simon’s stride slackened and became more stealthy, until the last yards were covered with the silence of a stalking cat. The silence within seemed to be just as complete, and the few leaded windows high up in the walls were dark, but he could not believe that all the inmates would go to sleep at the same time, leaving no one on watch, if his suspicions had any foundation.
He picked up a couple of pebbles in one hand, and stood with his back pressed against the wall to one side of the great doors. In his other hand he held the long branch which he had discarded there on his earlier visit. He reached over and tapped with it on the door. After a pause, he tapped again, insistently. And again.
He heard the spy-slot open, but knew he could not be seen from where he stood. He waited another second or two, and then scratched hard with his stick on the lower part of the far door, where the watcher inside would not possibly see what was doing it.
The panel slid shut, and bolts and bars scraped on the inside. The door gave a faint cautious creak, and the profile of a man came through the opening. But the man was no monk — at least, no monk in the regular accoutrements. He was wearing military style fatigues, boots, and a forage cap. Even more unorthodox was the large pistol he carried, its barrel lengthened by the thick cylinder of a silencer.
Before the sentry’s widening arc of survey could swing around far enough to find him, Simon lobbed one of his pebbles straight ahead. The sound of its landing in the underbrush opposite riveted the guard’s eyes in that direction; the second pebble, tossed the same way, brought the man a step outside the door, his pistol at the ready.
It was as much space as the Saint needed. He stepped across in one long stride, swinging his stick numbingly into the watchman’s larynx, and then bringing him down with one swift karate chop to the back of the neck.
Simon picked up the pistol and checked it quickly. As an afterthought, he also took the guard’s forage cap and put it on — if any others should see him before he saw them, it might in near-darkness be just enough to disguise him for a few seconds that could make vital differences. Then he stepped in through the great doorway and pushed the door shut behind him until it just touched its mate without latching.
The courtyard was dark and deserted, but not all the windows that opened on to the interior were blacked out. The Saint moved on tiptoe towards the nearest one, which he recalled as belonging to the refectory. As soon as he was close enough to look in, he had complete and startling confirmation of what had only been a vague impression when he had glimpsed the doorkeeper’s features in the moonlight.
The sight would undoubtedly have caused the founding father of Kloster Altbergen to sit up in his do-it-yourself grave and demand an entire keg of Grand Abrouillac, for his venerable dining hall was populated by half a dozen Chinese.
They were not dressed in grim woolly habits, but in shirt sleeves or white laboratory coats. They were not engaged in silent meditation, but in gambling games, idle conversation, and cigarette smoking.
On the whole they were not husky or even particularly robust-looking men, which led the Saint to the swift conclusion that they constituted a technical rather than a military task force. If there were other trained soldiers such as the guard probably had been, they were not in sight. And it also appeared that unless egalitarianism in China had gone further than he suspected, there appeared to be no leader among the group. The men had the air of comrades glad to be relaxing at the end of a day’s routine work.
The Saint dragged himself away from that fascinating spectacle and moved around the cloisters until he came to another lighted window.
There he hit the jackpot: a rather overweight Chinese gentleman in a green uniform without insignia was sitting at a table in the library; with him was another man, not Chinese but some variety of European. What language they were speaking could not be heard through the sealed glass. Between them on the table was a pile of gold coins and a sort of record book in which the Chinese — whom Simon immediately christened “the General” — would occasionally write something.
The European, who the Saint now assumed to be “Brother Anton,” was not in black robes either, but in a suede jacket, and he seemed to have just concluded a discussion with the General. He stood and left the room as the Chinese went back to his calculations.
Simon flattened himself behind a pillar; Anton emerged through a narrow passage into the courtyard a few feet away. The erstwhile monk stretched his arms, took a deep breath, and admired the moon.
Then, as his gaze returned earthwards, he seemed to be transfixed by some much less pacifying vision. For three or four seconds he stood frozen in unnatural rigidity, and then he whirled around and rushed back to the entrance from which he had emerged, yelling something shrill and incomprehensible, but the Saint had no need of a literal translation to recognize the strident urgency of the alarm.
Looking around to discover what could have triggered it, he saw that the big door which he had been so careful to almost close was now wide open. The mild force of the wind could not possibly have moved the heavy gate on its hinges, and the guard Simon had disposed of would be out for some time more, if not permanently.