The Gemini Contenders (3 page)

At six thirty-five a signal was given; another switch was thrown, and the train from Salonika entered the tracks for Zagreb.

At midnight, in the quiet yards of Zagreb, another man, emerging from other shadows, gave Petride a long manila envelope. “These are papers signed by
Il Duce
’s
Ministro di Viaggio
. They say your freight is part of the Venice
Ferrovia
. It is Mussolini’s pride; no one stops it for anything. You will hold at the Sezana depot and pick up the
Ferrovia
out of Trieste. You’ll have no trouble with the Monfalcone border patrols.”

Three hours later they waited on the Sezana track, the huge locomotive idling. Sitting on the steps, Petride watched Annaxas manipulate the valves and levers.

“You’re remarkable,” he said, meaning the compliment sincerely.

“It’s a small talent,” replied Annaxas. “It takes no schooling, just doing it over and over.”

“I think it’s a remarkable talent. I could never do it.”

His brother looked down at him; the glow of the coals washed over his large face, with the wide-set eyes, so firm and strong and gentle. He was a bull of a man, this brother. A decent man. “You could do anything,” said Annaxas awkwardly. “You have the head for thoughts and words far beyond mine.”

“That’s nonsense,” laughed Petride. “There was a time when you’d slap my backside and tell me to tend to my chores with more brains.”

“You were young; that was many years ago. You tended to your books, you did that. You were better than the freight yards; you got out of them.”

“Only because of you, my brother.”

“Rest, Petride. We must both rest.”

They had nothing in common any longer, and the reason they had nothing was because of Annaxas’s goodness and generosity. The older brother had provided the means for the younger to escape, to grow beyond he who provided … until there was nothing in common. What made the reality unbearable was that Annaxas the Strong understood the chasm between them now. In Bitola and Banja Luka he had also insisted they rest, not talk. They would get little sleep once they crossed the borders at Monfalcone. In Italy there would be no sleep at all.

The Lord God tested.

In the silence between them, in the open cabin, the black sky above, the dark ground below, the incessant straining of the engine’s fires filling the night outside, Petride felt an odd suspension of thought and feeling. Thinking and feeling once-removed, as though he were examining another’s experiences from some isolated perch, looking down through a glass. And he began to consider the man he would meet in the Italian Alps. The man who had provided the Order of Xenope with the complicated schedules of transportation through northern Italy. The expanding circles within circles that led inexorably across the Swiss borders in a way that was untraceable.

Savarone Fontini-Cristi was his name. His estate was called Campo di Fiori. The Elders of Xenope said the Fontini-Cristis were the most powerful family in Italy north of Venice. Quite possibly the richest north of Rome. The power and the wealth certainly were borne out by the twenty-seven separate papers in the leather pouch strapped
so securely around his chest. Who but an extraordinarily influential man could provide them? And how did the Elders reach him? Through what means? And why would a man named Fontini-Cristi, whose origins had to be of the Roman Church, deliver such assistance to the Order of Xenope?

The answers to these questions were not within his province, but nevertheless the questions burned. He knew what lay sealed in the vault of iron in the third freight car. It was more than what his brother priests believed.

Far more.

The Elders had told him so he would understand.
It
was the holiest of compelling motives that would allow him to look into the eyes of God without doubt or hesitation. And he needed that assurance.

Unconsciously, he put his hand under the coarse shirt and felt the pouch. A rash had formed around the straps; he could feel the swelling and the rough, abrasive surface of his skin. It would be infected soon. But not before the twenty-seven papers did their work. Then it did not matter.

Suddenly, a half mile away on the northern track, the Venice
Ferrovia
could be seen speeding out of Trieste. The Sezana contact raced out of the control tower and ordered them to proceed without delay.

Annaxas fired up and throttled the idling locomotive as rapidly as possible and they plunged north behind the
Ferrovia
toward Monfalcone.

The guards at the border accepted the manila envelope and gave it to their superior officer. The officer shouted at the top of his lungs for the silent Annaxas to fire up quickly.
Proceed!
The freight was part of the
Ferrovia!
The engineer was not to delay!

The madness began at Legnago, when Petride gave the dispatcher the first of Fontini-Cristi’s papers. The man blanched and became the most obsequious of public servants. The young priest could see the dispatcher searching his eyes, trying to unearth the level of authority Petride represented.

For the strategy devised by Fontini-Cristi was brilliant. Its strength was in its simplicity, its power over men based in fear—the threat of instant retaliation from the state.

The Greek freight was not a Greek freight at all. It was one of the highly secretive investigating trains sent out by
Rome’s Ministry of Transportation, the inspectors general of the Italian rail system. Such trains roamed the tracks throughout the country, manned by officials ordered to examine and evaluate all rail operations and submit reports that some said were read by Mussolini himself.

The world made jokes about
Il Duce
’s railroads, but behind the humor was respect. The Italian rail system was the finest in Europe. It maintained its excellence by the time-honored method of the fascist state: secret efficiency ratings compiled by unknown investigators. A man’s livelihood—or absence of it—depended on the judgments of the
esaminatori
. Retentions, advancements, and dismissals were often the results of a few brief moments of observation. It stood to reason that when an
esaminatore
revealed himself, absolute cooperation and confidentiality were given.

The freight from Salonika was now an Italian train with the covert imprimatur of Rome as its shield. Its movements were subject only to the authorizations contained in the papers supplied the dispatchers. And the orders within those authorizations were bizarre enough to have come from the convoluted machinations of
Il Duce
himself.

The circuitous route began. The towns and villages fled by—San Giorgio, Latisana, Motta di Levenza—as the freight from Salonika entered tracks behind Italian boxcars and passenger trains. Treviso, Montebelluna, and Valdagno, west to Malcesine on the Lago di Garda; across the large expanse of water on the sluggish freight boat and immediately north to Breno and Passo della Presolana.

There was only frightened cooperation. Everywhere.

When they reached Como the circling stopped and the dash began. They sped north on the land route and swung south to Lugano, following the tracks on the Swiss borders south and west again to Santa Maria Maggiore, crossing into Switzerland at Saas Fee, where the freight from Salonika resumed its identity, with one minor alteration.

This was determined by the twenty-second authorization in Petride’s pouch. Fontini-Cristi had once again provided the simple explanation: The Swiss International Aid Commission at Geneva had granted permission for the Eastern church to cross borders and supply its retreat on the outskirts of Val de Gressoney. What was implied was that the borders would soon be closed to such supply trains. The
war was gaining a terrible momentum; soon there would be no trains whatever from the Balkans or Greece.

From Saas Fee the freight rolled south into the yards at Zermatt. It was night; they would wait for the yards to close operations and a man who would come to them and confirm that another switch had been thrown. They would make the incursion south into the Italian Alps of Champoluc.

At ten minutes to nine a trainman appeared in the distance, coming out of the shadows across the Zermatt freight yard. He ran the last several hundred feet and raised his voice.

“Hurry! The rails are clear for Champoluc. There’s no time to waste! The switch is tied to a master line; it could be spotted. Get
out
of here!”

Once more Annaxas went about the business of releasing the enormous pressures built up in the fires of the iron fuselage, and once again the train plunged into the darkness.

The signal would come in the mountains, high near an Alpine pass. No one knew just where.

Only Savarone Fontini-Cristi.

A light snow was falling, adding its thin layer to the alabaster cover on the moonlit ground. They passed through tunnels carved out of rock, swinging westward around the ledges of the mountains, the steep gorges menacingly beneath them on their right. It was so much colder. Petride had not expected that; he had not thought about temperatures. The snow and the ice; there was ice on the tracks.

Every mile they traveled seemed like ten, every minute that passed could have been an hour. The young priest peered through the windshield, seeing the beam of the train’s searchlight reflecting off the falling snow. He leaned out; he could see only the giant trees that rose up in the darkness.

Where
was
he? Where was the Italian
padrone
, Fontini-Cristi? Perhaps he had changed his mind. O merciful God, that could not be! He could not allow himself to think such thoughts. What they carried in that holy vault would plunge the world into chaos. The Italian knew that; the Patriarchate had total confidence in the
padrone
.…

Petride’s head was aching, his temples pounded. He sat on the steps of the tender; he had to control himself. He looked at the radium dial of his watch.
Merciful God!
They’d traveled too far! In a half hour they’d be out of the mountains!

“There is your signal!” shouted Annaxas.

Petride leaped to his feet and leaned over the side, his pulse wild, his hands trembling as he gripped the roof ladder. Down the track no more than a quarter of a mile, a lantern was being raised and lowered, its light flickering through the thin sheets of snow.

Annaxas braked the locomotive. The belching engine drew out its roars like the subsiding giant furnace it was. In the snow-lit, moonlit distance, aided by the beam of the locomotive’s single headlight, Petride saw a man standing next to an odd-shaped vehicle in a small clearing at the side of the rails. The man was dressed in heavy clothing, collar and cap of fur. The vehicle was both a truck and not a truck. Its rear wheels were much larger than those in front, as though belonging to a tractor. Yet the hood beyond the windshield was not a truck’s hood, or a tractor’s, thought the priest. It resembled something else.

What was it?

Then he knew and he could not help but smile. He had seen hundreds of such pieces of equipment during the past four days. In front of the strange vehicle’s hood was a vertically controlled cargo platform.

Fontini-Cristi was as resourceful as the monks in the Order of Xenope. But then the pouch strapped to his chest had told him that.

“You are the priest of Xenope?” Savarone Fontini-Cristi’s voice was deep, aristocratic, and very used to authority. He was a tall man and slender beneath the Alpine clothing, with large, penetrating eyes recessed in the aquiline features of his face. And he was a much older man than Petride thought he would be.

“I am,
signore,”
said Petride, climbing down into the snow.

“You’re very young. The holy men have given you an awesome responsibility.”

“I speak the language. I know that what I do is right.”

The
padrone
stared at him. “I’m sure you do. What else is left for you?”

“Don’t you believe it?”

The
padrone
replied simply. “I believe in only one thing, my young father. There is but a single war that must be
fought. There can be no divisions among those who battle the fascist.
That
is the extent of what I believe.” Fontini-Cristi looked up abruptly at the train. “Come. There’s no time to waste. We must return before daybreak. There are clothes for you in the tractor. Get them. I’ll instruct the engineer.”

“He doesn’t speak Italian.”

“I speak Greek. Hurry!”

The freight car was lined up with the tractor. Laterally operated chains were placed around the holy vault, and the heavy iron receptacle encased in strips of wood was pulled, groaning under the tension, out onto the platform. It was secured by the chains in front; taut straps buckled over the top.

Savarone Fontini-Cristi tested the harnessing on all sides. He was satisfied; he stood back, the beam of his flashlight illuminating the monastic symbols stenciled on the encasement.

“So after fifteen hundred years it comes out of the earth. Only to be returned to the earth,” said Fontini-Cristi quietly. “Earth and fire and sea. I should have chosen the last two, my young priest. Fire or the sea.”

“That is not the will of God.”

“I’m glad your communication is so direct. You holy men never cease to amaze me with your sense of the absolute.” Fontini-Cristi turned to Annaxas and spoke fluently now in Greek. “Pull up so that I may clear the tracks. There’s a narrow trail on the other side of the woods. We’ll be back before dawn.”

Annaxas nodded. He was uncomfortable in the presence of such a man as Fontini-Cristi. “Yes, Your Excellency.”

“I’m no such thing. And you’re a fine engineer.”

“Thank you.” Annaxas, embarrassed, walked toward the engine.

“That man is your brother?” asked Fontini-Cristi softly of Petride.

“Yes.”

“He doesn’t know?”

The young priest shook his head.

“You’ll need your God then.” The Italian turned swiftly and started for the driver’s side of the enclosed tractor. “Come, Father. We have work to do. This machine was
built for the avalanche. It will take our cargo where no human being could carry it.”