The Brotherhood of the Rose Read Online Free PDF Page A

angled partitions led him to a table, a chair, a rack of costumes, a wall of levers and switches.
    No one. "He went through there!" the waiter shouted beyond the curtain.
    Saul stepped toward a fire door. He'd trained himself to ignore distractions, staying alive this long because of his concentration. Again, it saved him. As he touched the knob on the door, he paid no attention to the quick steps on the stage beyond the curtain. He was preoccupied by something else the whisper of cloth behind him. He dodged. A knife rebounded, clattering off the metal door. A shadow lunged from behind a crate, the only corner Saul had deliberately failed to check. Don't go to your enemy. Make him come to you.
    As adrenaline quickened his instincts, Saul crouched, bending his knees for balance, ready to meet the attack. The man struck, surprising Saul by using the heel of his palm as a weapon, his fingers upright, thrusting straight ahead. Trained to defend himself against this form of combat, Saul blocked the hand. He used the heel of his own palm, slamming the man's ribcage, aiming at his heart.
    Bones cracked. Groaning, the man lurched back. Saul spun him, grabbed from behind, and pushed the fire door, dragging him out.
    Five seconds had passed. As he closed the door, he glimpsed two waiters on the stage. He spun toward a hall of doors. At its end, a guard had his back turned, making a phone call.
    Saul-tugged the injured man in the opposite direction, shoving open a door marked Stairs but not going through, instead rushing farther down to a door with a large red star. He turned the knob. It wasn't locked. He went into a dressing room, -dropped the man, and shut the door. Flicking the lock, he swung to protect himself. The room was deserted.
    He held his breath, listening at the door. "Hey!" a waiter shouted. "Anyone pass you down there?" Saul didn't hear the guard's response. "The door to the stairs!" a second waiter shouted. Saul heard them running. The sound of their footfalls receded.-He stared at the man on the floor. Unconscious, the man breathed shallowly, expelling red foam from his nostrils and mouth. The splintered bones from the shattered ribcage caused extensive internal bleeding. Death from lung and heart congestion would occur in minutes.
    A man with a mustache. The man Saul had talked to in Baltimore. No doubt about it. He must have followed me here, Saul thought.
    But how? He'd been confident he wasn't shadowed. Conclusion-the man was good at his work.
    Too much so. When the man had turned abruptly outside the restaurant, his motive hadn't been to keep Saul from recognizing him. Exactly the opposite. The man had wanted to confuse Saul into following him-to lead Saul to a quiet place and... Kill me. Why? Something else disturbed him. Method. The knife would have done the job if I hadn't been alert. But the way he came at me, lunging straight ahead with the heel of his palm, aiming toward my rib cage. It's unique. Only someone trained in Israel knows how to do it.
    The Mossad. The Israeli intelligence network. The best in the world. Saul had been taught by them. So had the man on the floor.
    But why would they-? No professional assassin works alone. Somewhere close, other members of the death team waited.
    He stepped from the dressing room, glancing along the hall. The guard was gone. Wiping his fingerprints off the doors, he left the way he'd come-past the stage and its curtain, through the empty theater.
    In the casino, the noises from the crowd swept over him. Slot machines jangled. He glanced at his watch, A voice crackled from the public address system, asking Princess Fatima to pick up a service phone. Translated, the announcement meant the casino had an emergency. All security personnel were ordered to contact the office at once.
    He tried not to hurry as he left the casino's glitter and reached the boardwalk, his eyes not used to twilight. Tourists leaned against a rail, a cool breeze tugging their clothes as they