The Gemini Contenders (33 page)

There was the sound of thunder over the water; Fontine wished the symbolism were not so crudely simple. The clouds were above them now; the sun was gone and the rains began. He was grateful for the diversion. He looked at Jane. She was staring at him; somehow he had communicated to her his profound uneasiness.

“Go in,” he said softly. “I’ll follow in a minute or two.”

“The letter—?”

“Of course,” he answered her unspoken question as he replaced the pages in the envelope and handed it to her. “Read it.”

“You’ll be drenched. The rain will get stronger.”

“It’s refreshing; you know I like the rain.” He smiled up at her. “Then perhaps you’ll help me change the brace while we talk.”

She stood above him for a moment, and he could feel her eyes on him. But as always, she would leave him alone when he wished it.

He was chilled by his thoughts, not the rain. The letter from Aldobrini was not the first time Salonika had reappeared. He had said nothing to Jane for there was nothing concrete, only a series of obscurely disturbing—seemingly minor—occurrences.

Three months ago he had gone to Harkness for yet another week of corrective surgery. Several days after the
operation he’d had a visitor whose appearance startled him; a monsignor from the Archdiocese of New York. His name was Land, he said. He had returned to the United States after many years in Rome, and wanted to meet Victor because of information he had come across in the Vatican archives.

The priest was solicitous; what struck Fontine was that the cleric knew a great deal about his physical condition, far more than a casual visitor would know.

It was a very odd half hour. The priest was a student of history, he said. He had come across archive documents that raised profoundly disturbing questions between the house of Fontini-Cristi and the Vatican. Historical questions that led to the break between the
padroni
of the north and the Holy See. When Victor was well again, perhaps they could discuss the past. The
historical
past. He had ended his good-byes with a direct reference to the assault at Campo di Fiori. The pain and anguish inflicted by one maniacal prelate could not be laid at the soul of the church, he said.

About five weeks later there’d been a second incident. Victor had been in his Washington office, preparing to testify before a congressional committee looking into the tax concessions enjoyed by American shippers sailing under the Paraguayan flag, when his intercom buzzed.

“Mr. Fontine, Mr. Theodore Dakakos is here. He says he wants to pay his respects.”

Dakakos was one of the young Greek shipping giants, an impertinent rival of Onassis and Niarchos, and far better liked. Fontine told his secretary to send him in.

Dakakos was a large man with a blunt, open expression on his face that might become an American football player more than a shipping tycoon. He was around forty years of age; his English was precise, the language of a student.

He had flown to Washington to observe the hearings, perhaps to learn something, he said smiling. Victor laughed; the Greek’s reputation for integrity was matched only by the legend of his acute business sense. Fontine told him so.

“I was most fortunate. At a very young age I was given the advantages of an education by a sympathetic but remote religious brotherhood.”

“You were, indeed, fortunate.”

“My family was not wealthy, but they served their church, I’m told. In ways that today I do not understand.”

The young Greek magnate was saying something beyond his words, but Victor could not determine what it was. “Gratitude as well as God, then, moves in strange ways,” said Victor smiling. “Your reputation is a fine one. You do credit to those who aided you.”

“Theodore is my first name, Mr. Fontine. My full name is Theodore Annaxas Dakakos. Throughout my schooling I was known as Annaxas the Younger. Does that mean anything to you?”

“In what way?”

“The name Annaxas.”

“I’ve dealt with literally hundreds of your countrymen over the years. I don’t think I’ve ever run across the name Annaxas.”

The Greek had remained silent for several moments. Then he spoke quietly. “I believe you.”

Dakakos left soon after.

The third occurrence was the strangest of all; it triggered a memory of violence so sharply into focus that Fontine lost his breath. It had happened only ten days ago in Los Angeles. He was at the Beverly Hills Hotel for conferences between two widely divergent companies trying to merge their interests. He had been called in to salvage what he could; the task was impossible.

Which was why he was taking the sun in the early afternoon, instead of sitting inside the hotel listening to lawyers trying to justify their retainers. He was drinking a Campari at a table in the outside pool area, astonished at the number of good-looking people who apparently did not have to work for a living.

“Guten Tag, mein Herr.”

The speaker was a woman in her late forties or early fifties, that age so well cosmeticized by the well-to-do. She was of medium height, quite well proportioned, with streaked blond hair. She wore white slacks and a blue blouse. Covering her eyes was a pair of large silver-rimmed sunglasses. Her German was natural, not studied. He replied in his own, academic, less natural, as he rose awkwardly.

“Good afternoon. Have we met? I’m sorry, but I don’t seem to remember.”

“Please, sit down. It’s difficult for you. I know that.”

“You do? Then we
have
met.”

The woman sat down opposite him. She continued in English. “Yes. But you had no such difficulties then. You were a soldier then.”

“During the war?”

“There was a flight from Munich to Müllheim. And a whore from the camps escorted on that flight by three Wehrmacht pigs. More pigs than she, I try to tell myself.”

“My God!” Fontine caught his breath. “You were a
child
. What happened to you?”

She told him briefly. She had been taken by the French Resistance fighters to a transit camp southwest of Montbéliard. There for several months she endured agonies best left undescribed, as she experienced the process of narcotics withdrawal. She had tried to commit suicide numerous times, but the Resistance people had other ideas. They banked on the fact that once the drugs were expunged, her memories would be motive enough to turn her into an effective underground agent. She was already tough; that much they could see.

“They were right, of course,” the woman said, ten days ago at the table on the patio of the Beverly Hills Hotel. “They kept watch over me night and day, men and women. The men had more fun; the French never waste anything, do they?”

“You survived the war,” Fontine replied, not caring to probe.

“With a bucket full of medals.
Croix de guerre, Légion d’honneur, Légion de résistance.”

“And so you became a great motion picture star and I was too stupid to recognize you.” Victor smiled gently.

“Hardly. Although I’ve had occasions to be associated, as it were, with many prominent people of the motion picture industry.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

“I became—and at the risk of sounding immodest, still am—the most successful madame in the south of France. The Cannes Film Festival alone provides sufficient income for a perfectly adequate subsistence.” It was the woman’s turn to smile. It was a good smile, thought Fontine. Genuine, alive.

“Then I’m very happy for you. I’m Italian enough to find a certain honorableness in your profession.”

“I knew you were. And would. I’m here on a talent hunt. It would be my pleasure to grant any request you might have. There are a number of my girls out there in the pool.”

“No, thank you. You’re most kind, but, as you said, I am not the man I was.”

“I think you’re magnificent,” she said simply. “I always have.” She smiled at him. “I must go. I recognized you and wanted to speak to you, that’s all.” She rose from the table and extended her hand. “Don’t get up.”

The handshake was firm. “It’s been a pleasure—and a relief—to see you again,” he said.

She held his eyes and spoke quietly. “I was in Zürich a few months ago. They traced me through a man named Lübok. To you. He was a Czech. A queen, I’m told. He was the man on the plane with us, wasn’t he?”

“Yes. A very brave man, I must add. A king, in my judgment.” Victor was so startled he replied instinctively, without comprehending. He had not thought of Lübok in years.

“Yes, I remember. He saved all of us. They broke him.” The woman released his hand.

“Broke him? About
what?
My God, the man, if he’s alive, is my age or more. Seventy or better. Who would be interested in such old men? What are you talking about?”

“About a man named Vittorio Fontini-Cristi, son of Savarone.”

“You’re talking nonsense. Nonsense I understand, but I don’t see how it might concern you.
Or
Lübok.”

“I don’t know any more. Nor do I care to. A man in Zürich came to my hotel room and asked questions about you. Naturally, I couldn’t answer them. You were merely an Allied Intelligence officer who saved a whore’s life. But he knew about Anton Lübok.”

“Who was this man?”

“A priest. That is all I know. Good-bye,
Kapitän.”
She turned and walked away, waving and smiling at various girls who were splashing about in the pool and laughing too obviously.

A priest. In Zürich.

 … 
He seeks out all he can find who knew the son of Fontini-Cristi
.…

Now he understood the enigmatic meeting at the poolside in Los Angeles. A defrocked priest had been released after nearly thirty years in prison and revived the hunt for the documents of Constantine.

The work of Donatti continues
, the letter said.
He currently, painstakingly, researches every detail he can unearth … his travels have carried him from the yards at Edhessa, through the Balkans … beyond Monfalcone into the northern Alpine regions
.

He seeks out all he can find who knew the son of Fontini-Cristi
.

And thousands of miles away in New York City, another priest—very much
of
the cloth—comes into a hospital room and speaks of an act of barbarism that could not be separated from those documents. Lost three decades ago and hunted still.

And in Washington, a young industrial giant walks into an office and for no apparent reasons says his family served the church in ways he did not understand.

“… I was given … advantages … by a sympathetic but remote religious brotherhood.…”

The
Order of Xenope
. It was suddenly so very clear.

Nothing was coincidence.

It had come back. The train from Salonika had plunged through thirty years of sleep and reawakened. It had to be controlled before the hatreds collided, before the fanatics turned the search into a holy war, as they had done three decades ago. Victor knew he owed that much to his father, his mother, to the loved ones slain in the white lights of Campo di Fiori; to those who had died at Oxfordshire. To a misguided’ young monk named Petride who took his own life on a rocky slope in Loch Torridon, to a man named Teague, to an undergrounder named Lübok, to an old man named Guido Barzini who had saved him from himself.

The violence could not be allowed to return.

The rain came faster now, harder, in diagonal sheets blown by the wind. Fontine reached for the wrought iron chair beside him and struggled to his feet, his arm clamped within the steel band of his cane.

He stood on the terrace looking out over the water. The
Wind and the rain cleared his mind. He knew what he had to do, where he had to go.

To the hills of Varese.

To Campo di Fiori.

The heavy car approached the gates of Campo di Fiori. Victor stared out the window, aware of the spasm in his back; the eye was recording, the mind remembering.

His life had been altered, in pain, on the stretch of ground beyond the gates. He tried to control the memory; he could not suppress it. The images he observed were forced out of his mind’s eye, replaced by black suits and white collars.

The car went through the gates; Victor held his breath. He had flown into Milan from Paris as unobtrusively as possible. In Milan he had taken a single room at the Albergo Milano, registering simply as: V. Fontine, New York City.

The years had done their work. There were no raised eyebrows, no curious glances; the name triggered no surprises. Thirty years ago a Fontine or a Fontini in Milan would be reason enough for comment. Not now.

Before he left New York he had made one inquiry—any more might have raised an alarm. He had learned the identity of the owners of Campo di Fiori. The purchase had been made twenty-seven years ago; there had been no change of ownership since that time. Yet the name had no impact in Milan. None had heard of it.

Baricours, Pìre et Fils
. A Franco-Swiss company out of Grenoble, that’s what the transfer papers said. Yet there was no Baricours, Père et Fils, in Grenoble. No details could be learned from the lawyer who had negotiated the sale. He had died in 1951.

The automobile rolled past the embankment into the circular
drive in front of the main house. The spasm in Victor’s back was compounded by a sharp stinging sensation behind his eyes; his head throbbed as he reentered the execution grounds.

He gripped his wrist and dug his fingers into his own flesh. The pain helped; he was able to look out the window and see what was there now, not thirty-three years ago.

What he saw was a mausoleum. Dead but cared for. Everything was as it had been, but not for the living. Even the orange rays of the setting sun had a dead quality to them: majestically ornamental, but not alive.

“Aren’t there groundkeepers or men at the gates?” he asked.

The driver turned in the seat. “Not this afternoon,
padrone,”
he replied. “There are no guards. And no priests of the Curia.”

Fontine lurched forward in the seat; his metal cane slipped. He stared at the driver.

“I’ve been tricked.”

“Watched. Expected. Not tricked, really. Inside, a man is waiting for you.”