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Drew MacLane is a star agent in Scalpel, a clandestine, government-sanctioned organization named for its purpose: precise surgical removal. Assassination. Then MacLane decides to stop killing. He withdraws from the operation and retreats to a monastery, where for six years he lives the life of a hermit. But then someone tracks him down, leaving a trail of bodies. Someone who knows all about himand will stop at nothing to destroy him. In this novel of thrilling suspense, a former killer is drawn back into that electrifying world where no one is as he seemsand where life's most horrifying, harrowing game is played.

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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The House of the Dead

Chapter One

It was north of Quentin, Vermont. You could see it partly hidden by fir trees a quarter mile off the two-lane blacktop, to the right on the crest of a hill. Beyond it loomed a higher hill, thick with maple trees, brilliant now in the autumn, vivid orange and yellow and red. A high wire fence ran parallel to the blacktop, the sides veering off at right angles, disappearing back into the forest. You’d have trouble calculating, since you couldn’t see how far back the fences went, but you wouldn’t be wrong to guess that the property covered at least a hundred acres. The nearest building—apart from the one on the hill—was a boarded-up service station quite a ways behind you, out of sight, on the other side of the corkscrew turn that led to this straightaway. And you wouldn’t get to the maple syrup factory up ahead for more than a mile.

Remote. Secluded.

Peaceful.

Glancing toward the pine tree-studded hill, you might suspect that the partly hidden structure, with its gleaming wood, was a millionaire’s retreat, a forest hideaway where the pressures of business could be relieved by who could imagine what distractions.

Or possibly the building was a ski resort, closed till the snow fell. Or . . .

But from just driving by, of course, you could never know. There was neither a mailbox nor a sign at the gate, and the gate itself had a thick chain holding it in place—an even thicker lock. The lane on the other side was weedgrown, squeezed by bushes and drooping pines. To be sure, you could always ask at the maple syrup factory if your curiosity lasted till then, but you’d only feel more frustrated as a result. The workers there, true New Englanders, were willing to talk to strangers about the weather but not about their own or their neighbor’s business. It wouldn’t have mattered, anyhow. They didn’t know, either, though there were rumors.

Chapter Two

From the air, the structure on the hill was larger than the view from the road suggested. Indeed, an elevated vantage point revealed that the building wasn’t alone. Smaller buildings—otherwise hidden by pine trees—formed three sides of a square, the fourth of which was the lodge itself. Enclosed by the square was a lawn. Two white-stone walkways intersected at its middle, bordered by flower gardens, trees, and shrubs. The effect was one of balance and order, symmetry, proportion. Soothing. Even the smaller buildings, though joined like rows of townhouses, had small peaked roofs in imitation of the larger peaked roof on the lodge.

Despite the expanse of the estate, however, remarkably few people showed themselves down there. The tiny figure of a groundskeeper tended the lawn. Two miniature workmen harvested apples from an orchard outside one line of buildings. A wisp of smoke rose from a bonfire in a considerable vegetable garden flanking the opposite line of buildings. With so sizable a commitment to agriculture, the estate presumably had many residents, yet except for those few signs of life, the place seemed deserted. If there were guests, it hardly seemed natural for them to ignore the pleasure of this bright crisp autumn day. To remain indoors, they must surely have an important reason.

But then the seclusion of the inhabitants was part of the mystery about this place. Since 1951, when teams of construction workers had arrived from somewhere—not from the local town, though whoever was funding the project at least had the goodness to buy a decent amount of supplies from there—the citizens of Quentin had wondered what was happening on that hill. When the workers put up the gate and departed, the local busybodies noted a fascinating pattern. They recalled stories they’d recently read about the development of the atomic bomb in New Mexico at the end of the w

Excerpted from The Fraternity of the Stone: A Novel by David Morrell
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The Fraternity of the Stone A Novel

The Fraternity of the Stone A Novel

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