The Gemini Contenders (53 page)

The sound of cracking came louder, hammerlike and furious. It was directly above him, above the sheer sheet of rock that sprang up, facing the small, defined plateau on the north side. The ground at his feet was disturbed; snow and earth were intermingled, footprints and broken shrubbery formed a semicircle beneath the overhang. Fragments of rock signified the method of ascent: A rope had been thrown above, with a hook attached, and the first throw or throws had not been successful.

A rotted ladder lay in the snow-laced, gray bushes, a number of its steps torn from the frame. It was the ladder Paul Leinkraus remembered. It was at least twenty feet long, on end, slightly higher than the sheet of rock in front of which Adrian crouched.

The burial ground is really a surface of shale. It cracks easily under the force of a pick to the earth beneath. The child’s coffin was placed in the ground and a thin layer of concrete spread over it
. The words of Paul Leinkraus.

Above him, his brother had broken through the layer of concrete described by Leinkraus. The hammering stopped; a metal instrument was thrown aside on the hard surface. Large particles of cement plummeted down, kicked by impatient feet, joining the fragments of rock on the ground and the bushes. Adrian got to his feet quickly and pressed himself into the miniature cliff. If he was seen, he was dead.

The spray of cement stopped. Adrian shivered; he knew he had to move. The cold was penetrating the black sweater, his breath formed billows of vapor in front of his face. The brief, light snowfall was letting up; a shaft of sunlight broke through the clouds, but brought no warmth.

He edged his way around the sheet of rock until he could go no farther, blocked by a projecting boulder bulging
out of the mountaintop. He stepped forward onto the shrub-covered, snow-layered ground.

Suddenly, the earth gave way. Adrian leaped back and stood motionless, petrified, at the side of the boulder. The sounds of falling rock carried on the wind. He heard the foorsteps above—heavy, abrupt—and held his breath so no steam would emerge from his mouth or nostrils. The sound of footsteps stopped—except for the wind, only silence remained. Then the footsteps started again—less heavy, slower. The soldier’s alarm had subsided.

Adrian looked down in front of him. He had come to the end of Paul Leinkraus’s path; there was only mountain now. Below, beyond the edge of broken earth and wild grass, was a drop, a wide, sweeping crevasse whose empty space separated the ground of the summit from the shallow ledge of earth across from it that led to higher regions. The crevasse was far deeper than Leinkraus remembered; it was well over thirty feet to a floor of jagged rock. The boy had been reprimanded by his elders, but not so truthfully as to frighten him, or instill a fear of the mountains.

Adrian swung his body around and, clinging to the uneven surface, inch by inch, testing each, he moved out, pressing his chest and legs into the boulder, holding whatever sharp point he could grasp. On the other side was a narrow mass of indiscriminately formed rock that angled sharply up to the flat surface of the peak.

He was not sure he could reach it. A small boy could walk on the ledge away from the immediate base of the projecting boulder; it would not give way under his weight. A grown man was something else. It had not taken Adrian’s weight; it would not take it.

The distance from the central point of the boulder—where he was—to the first promontory of rock was about five feet. He was over six. If he could angle his fall, with his arms outstretched, there was a good change his hands would reach. More of a chance if he could narrow the distance.

The muscles of his feet were in agony. He could feel cramps forming in both insteps: the strain on his calves swelled his skin, the tendons beneath arching nearly beyond endurance. He forced all thoughts of pain and risk out of his mind and concentrated only on the inches he could cover around the massive boulder.

He had gone no more than a foot when he felt the ground sinking beneath him—slowly, in minute, hypnotizing stages. Then he could hear—actually
hear
—the cracking of stone and frozen earth. He thrust out his arms at the last half second. The ledge fell away and for a moment he was in the void, suspended. His hands clutched out crazily; the wind whipped against his face in midair.

His right arm crashed over the jagged rock somewhere above him. His shoulder and head slammed into the rough, shagged surface. He clamped his hand around the sharp stone, arching his back instinctively to absorb the shock of the impact.

He swung like a puppet on the string of his own appendage, his feet dangling. He had to drag himself up.
Now!
There were no seconds to waste! No time to adjust to his own disbelief!

Move!

He clawed the uneven cliff with his free left hand; his feet pumped insanely until his right shoe caught a tiny ridge that supported his weight. It was enough. Like a panicked spider he scaled the wall of jagged rock, throwing his legs one after another over the diagonal incline, slamming his body into the base of the inner surface.

He was out of sight from above, not out of hearing. The sounds of the falling ledge brought Andrew to the edge of the plateau. The sun was behind him on his right, casting his shadow across the crevasse, over the rock and snow. Again, Adrian held his breath. He had a window on his own lantern show, played out in the now-blinding Alpine sun. The soldier’s movements were not only clear, they were magnified. Andrew held an object in his left hand: a climber’s folding shovel.

The soldier’s right arm was angled at the elbow; the shadow of his forearm joined the shadow of his upper body. It took little imagination to visualize what the right hand held: a gun. Adrian moved his own right hand to his belt. The pistol was still there; he was grateful for its touch.

The shadow moved about the ledge above, three steps to the left, four to the right. It bent down and then stood up again, another object now in its right hand. The object was thrown off; a large fragment of cement plummeted down no more than two feet from Adrian’s face and crashed on the floor of jagged rock below. The soldier stood motionless
during the object’s fall, as if counting off seconds, timing the descent. The last rolling spatters finished, the soldier walked away. His shadow disappeared, replaced by the harsh reflections of the sun.

Adrian lay in his recess, unaware of his discomfort, his face drenched with sweat. The curve of uneven rocks above his head swept sharply up, like a primitive spiral staircase in an ancient lighthouse. The sweep was about twenty-five feet in length; it was difficult to estimate for there was nothing beyond but sky and blazing sun. He could not move until he heard sounds from above. Sounds that meant the soldier was occupied, digging again.

They came. A loud crushing of stone, the scraping of metal against metal.

Andrew had found the vault!

Adrian crawled out of his shelter and, hand over hand, silent foot after silent foot, made his way up the jagged rock staircase. The ledge of the plateau was directly above; below was no longer the crevasse but a sheer drop of several hundred feet to the winding mountain pass. There were, perhaps, eight inches between him and the open space. The wind was steady. Its sound was a low whistle.

He reached for the pistol in his belt, removed it and—as Goldoni had instructed—checked the safety. It was in upright position, locked.

He snapped it level with the trigger and raised his head over the ledge.

The flat surface of the plateau was an oval, extending thirty-five feet or more in length, twenty or so in width. The soldier crouched in the center, next to a mound of earth covered with fragments of cracked cement. Beyond the dirt, partially concealed by the soldier’s broad back, was a plain wooden casket with metal borders; it was remarkably preserved.

There was no vault. There was nothing but earth, the fragments of cement, and the coffin. But no vault!

Oh, my God, thought Adrian. We were
wrong! Both wrong!

It wasn’t possible. It was not possible. For if there were no vault, the killer from Eye Corps would be in a rage. He knew Andrew well enough to know that. But his brother was not angry. He was crouched in thought, his head angled down; he was staring at the grave. And Adrian understood:
The vault was below, still in the earth. It had been buried beneath the coffin, that casket its final protection.

The soldier got to his feet and crossed to the Alpine pack which lay upright against the coffin. He bent over, un-snapped a strap, and pulled out a short, pointed iron bar. He returned to the grave, abruptly knelt by the edge, and reached down with the bar. Seconds later he yanked the bar up, letting it fall on the ground, and removed a gun from his jacket. Swiftly, but carefully, he angled the weapon down into the grave.

Three explosions followed. Adrian ducked his head below the edge of the plateau. He could smell the acrid odor of the gunfire, see the billows of smoke carried above him on the wind.

And then the words came and his whole body was locked in a fear he never believed he could experience. It was the shock of the knowledge of his own immediate execution.

“Put your head up, Lefrac,” was the soft-spoken command, delivered in a monotone of ice. “It’ll be quicker that way. You won’t feel a thing. You won’t even hear any noise.”

Adrian rose from his narrow perch, his mind blank, beyond fear now. He was going to die; it was as simple as that.

But he was not what the soldier above him expected. Not
whom
the soldier expected. The killer from Eye Corps was suddenly, completely gripped in shock of his own. It was so total that his eyes widened in disbelief, his hand trembled and the weapon in its grasp wavered. He took an involuntary step backward, his mouth gaping, the skin on his face bloodless.

“You!”

Wildly, blindly, without thought or feeling, Adrian whipped up the heavy Italian pistol from the ledge of rock and fired at the stunned figure. He squeezed the trigger twice, three times. The gun jammed. The spits and smoke from the barrel-housing singed his flesh, stung his eyes. But he had hit the soldier! The killer from Eye Corps reeled backward, holding his stomach, his left leg buckling beneath him.

But Andrew still had the pistol in his hand. The explosion came; a crack of air detonated above Adrian’s head.
He lunged at the fallen man, crashing the jammed pistol down in the area of the face. His right hand shot out, grabbing the hot steel of Andrew’s gun, slamming it against the hard surface of the plateau. His own pistol found its mark; the bridge between the soldier’s eyes erupted; blood flowed into the corners of his sockets, bluring his vision. Andrew’s pistol flew out of his hand. Adrian sprang back.

He aimed his gun and squeezed the trigger with all his strength. It would not operate, it would not
fire
. The soldier got to his knees, rubbing his eyes, his mouth emitting grunts of fury. Adrian lashed out his foot, catching the killer from Eye Corps at the temple; the soldier’s neck arched back, but his legs shot forward, twisting, kicking, slamming into Adrian’s kneecaps, causing him to lurch to the side, his knees suddenly in agony.

Adrian could not stay on his feet. He rolled to his right as the major leaped up, still wiping his eyes. Andrew sprang off the ground, hands now outstretched like rigid hooks, directly at his intruder’s neck. Adrian recoiled farther, crashing into the casket at the side of the grave. The soldier’s lunge was uncontrolled; the screaming pitch of his anger caused him to lose his balance, and he fell, one arm plunged into the mound of earth and fragments of concrete. The earth flew; an eruption of dirt and snow and rock.

Adrian dove over the open space of the grave; on the opposite side was the iron bar. The soldier followed; he lunged up, screaming at Adrian, his hands locked above his head into a hammer—a monstrous bird screeching in for the kill. Adrian’s fingers were on the bar, and he lashed it up at the plummeting figure.

The point plunged into the soldier’s cheek, stunning him. Blood burst again from Andrew’s flesh.

Adrian lurched away as fast as his exhausted, aching legs could propel him, dropping the bar. He saw the soldier’s pistol lying across the flat stone surface; he lunged for it. His fingers wound around the handle; he raised it.

The iron bar came slicing through the air, creasing the skin of his left shoulder, tearing the sleeve half off his sweater. The shock sent him reeling back to the edge of the sheet of rock. He had brought the hand with the gun across his chest in panic; he knew the instant he did so it was the fraction of a second the soldier desperately needed. A wall
of earth and stone came at him, the space between himself and the killer from Eye Corps was filled with debris. It smashed into him; sharp pieces of rock pummeled his face, his eyes. He could not see.

He fired. His hand recoiled violently from the explosion of the weapon; his fingers arched from the vibration.

He tried to get to his feet; a boot hammered into his neck. He caught the leg as he fell back, his shoulders over the edge of the sheet of rock. He rolled to his left, holding the leg until he felt the barrel of the gun against the flesh.

He pulled the trigger.

Flesh and bone and blood filled his universe. The soldier was blown off the ground, his right leg a mass of red-soaked cloth. Adrian started to crawl but he could not; there was no strength left, no air in his lungs. He raised himself on one hand and looked over at Andrew.

The major writhed back and forth, moans coming from his throat, his mouth filled with blood and saliva. He pushed himself off the ground, halfway to his knees, his eyes staring insanely at what was left of his leg. He looked over to his executioner. And then he screamed.

“Help me!
You can’t let me
die!
You
don’t have the right!
Get me the
pack!”
He coughed, holding his shattered leg with one hand, his other trembling, gesturing at the Alpine pack against the coffin. The blood flowed everywhere, saturating his clothes. The poisons were spreading rapidly; he was dying.