Free Brotherhood of the Tomb by Daniel Easterman Page A

knew it hungered for a certain and sudden quarry.
    At first, Patrick would not respond to these overtures. He kept a determined silence, as though vowed to it. That was his novitiate. But as time passed and he lost track of night and day, present and past, dream and reality, he came to crave Natalya Pavlovna’s visits more and more. In the end, he felt only gratitude for her presence and an overwhelming desire to please her.
    At times he would wake out of some twisted dream or nightmare to find his mind preternaturally sharp, and in such moments he knew his gratitude to be no more than Natalya Pavlovna had contrived. But he could not wholly throw it aside. Lack of sleep and repeated caffeine buzzes kept him off balance. His resources were diminished, his resistance increasingly difficult to summon. There were moments when he felt he loved her, her soft, reassuring voice, her dark, questioning eyes.
    It was not love, of course, but fear mixed with gratitude. And yet at times he could feel a shiver of sexuality pass between them. Even nuns on their hard beds wake with a shudder of desire. Often when she visited, he had the beginnings of an erection. Her subtlety was like a finger drawn along his flesh. They experienced a growing intimacy. Her questions were a lover’s hands, stripping him bare. He would wake
    up sweating, dreaming of betrayal. But who was left for him to betray?
    On several occasions, she asked him about his sins, major and minor, old and new. It was a way into his soul, and from his soul to his heart, and thence to his mind, where he kept all his recollections of names and dates and places. Natalya Pavlovna cared nothing for theology. Sins were nothing to her, or at best keys with which to unlock the doors of Patrick’s mind.
    ‘Think of me as a priest,’ she would murmur, ‘as a father confessor. How long is it since your last confession?’
    And Patrick - who had indeed been many years absent from the confessional, and who did indeed suffer from a guilty conscience and the creeping footsteps of unquiet ghosts - unburdened his spirit gladly and without remorse.
    Natalya Pavlovna never rushed, never applied overt pressure, though it was becoming increasingly clear that she was working against time. From sins religious they passed to sins secular, from morals they ascended to pragmatism and the absolutism of the state.
    The sessions with Chekulayev were more down to earth. Unlike the woman, he was not interested in the state of Patrick’s soul. After a session with Natalya, Patrick found it almost a relief to be faced with Chekulayev’s directness.
    He knew the names of Patrick’s principal agents in Egypt and Lebanon, most of his contacts in the PLO and Hezbollah, and several of his agents of influence in Syria. He had details of CIA houses in Cairo and Port Said. He could recite details of several important cases in which Patrick had been involved, including some that had gone wrong, wrong enough to lead to
    unnecessary loss of life. He knew about Hasan Abi Shaqra.
    What he sought, of course, were the gaps. The things he knew were nothing to those of which he was ignorant. But Patrick knew when to talk and when to keep silent.
    ‘Tell me about Shifrin.’ Chekulayev returned time and time again to Patrick’s old mentor, his station chief in Cairo. When did he tell you about Passover? What does he know about the Brotherhood?’ Patrick did not answer, for the simple reason that he had nothing to offer.
    Natalya Pavlovna, however, possessed the skill to blur the difference between what she knew and what she did not. Each time they spoke, Patrick sensed his resistance weakening. He had talked and he wanted to talk more. He longed to confide in her. The white walls pressed in on him like the blocks of a hydraulic press. He thought they were growing closer. But he could not bring himself to measure them.
    ‘Tell me about Passover.’ Natalya Pavlovna returned to the subject with increasing frequency.