The Gemini Contenders: A Novel

  “I’ve said that to myself more times than I can count. But I’m not sure how it can be.”

  “Perhaps I do. At least, I’m willing to try. And I have at my disposal the finest Intelligence service in existence.”

  Victor glanced at him, interested. “Where would you start?”

  “The question is not where, but when.”

  “Then, when?”

  “When this war is over.”

  “Please, Alec. No more words, no strategies. Or tricks.”

  “No tricks. A simple, uncomplicated agreement. I need you. The war has turned; Loch Torridon enters its most important phase. I intend to see that it does its job.”

  “You’re obsessed.”

  “So are you. Quite rightfully. But you’ll learn nothing of ‘Salonika’—that’s Brevourt’s code name, incidentally—until this war is won, take my word for it. And the war will be won.”

  Fontine held Teague’s eyes with his own. “I want facts, not rhetoric.”

  “Very well. We have identities you don’t have, nor, for your own safety and the safety of your family, will I reveal them to you.”

  “The man in the car? In Kensington, Campo di Fiori. The streak of white? The executioner?”

  “Yes.”

  Victor held his breath, controlling a nearly overpowering urge to grab the Englishman and force the words from him. “You’ve taught me to kill; I could kill you for that.”

  “To what end? I’d protect you with my life, and you know it. The point is, he’s immobilized. Under control. If, indeed, he was the executioner.”

  Victor let his breath out slowly. The muscles in his jaw pained from the tension. “What other identities?”

  “Two elders of the Patriarchate. Through Brevourt. They command the Order of Xenope.”

  “Then they’re responsible for Oxfordshire. My God, how can you—?”

  “They’re not,” interrupted Teague quickly. “They were, if possible, more shocked than we were. As was pointed out, the last thing they wanted was your death.”

  “The man who guided those planes was a priest! From Xenope!”

  “Or someone made to appear so.”

  “He killed himself,” said Fontine softly, “in the prescribed manner.”

  “No one has a quota on fanatics.”

  “Go on.” Victor began walking back on the path, away from the guard and the dog.

  “These people are the worst kind of extremists. They’re mystics; they believe they’re involved in a holy war. Their war permits only confrontation by violence, not negotiation. But we know the pressure points, those whose word cannot be disobeyed. We can bring about a confrontation through Whitehall pressure, if need be, and demand a resolution. At least one that removes you from their concerns—once and for all. You can’t do this by yourself. We can. Will you come back?”

  “If I do, all this will be set in motion? I, myself, a part of the planning?”

  “We’ll mount it with the precision we mounted Loch Torridon.”

  “Has my cover in London been kept absolute?”

  “Not a dent. You’re somewhere in Wales. All our telephone calls are placed to the Swansea area and tripped north. Mail is regularly sent to a post office box in the village of Gwynliffen, where it’s quietly put in other envelopes and returned only to me. Right now, if I’m needed, Stone places a call to a Swansea number.”

  “No one knows where we are? No one?”

  “Not even Churchill.”

  “I’ll talk with Jane.”

  “One thing,” said Teague, his hand on Fontine’s arm. “I’ve given my word to Brevourt. There’ll be no more trips across the Channel for you.”

  “She’ll like that.”

  Loch Torridon flourished. The principle of mis-management-at-all-costs became a thorn in the German craw.

  In the Mannheim printing plants, 130,000 Commandmant Manuals for Occupation came off the presses with all negatives dropped in vital restrictions. Shipments to the Messerschmidt factories in Frankfurt were routed to the Stuka assembly lines in Leipzig. In Kalach on the Russian front, it was found that three quarters of the radio equipment now operated on varying frequency calibrations. In the Krupp plants at Essen, engineering miscalculations resulted in malfunctions in the firing mechanisms of all cannon with the bore number 712. In Kraków, Poland, in the uniform factories, fabric bypassed a chemical saturation process and 200,000 units were sent out, subject to instant flammability. In Turin, Italy, where the Germans ran the aircraft plants, designs were implemented that caused metal fatigue after twenty hours of flight; entire sections of squadrons structurally collapsed in midair.

  In late April of 1944, Loch Torridon concentrated on the offshore patrols throughout the coastal zones of Normandy. A strategy was conceived that would alter the patrol schedules as they were issued to the German naval personnel from the base at Pointe de Barfleur. Brigadier Teague brought the explosive report to Supreme Headquarters, Allied Command, and handed it personally to Dwight Eisenhower.

  The German coastal predawn patrols will be removed from Normandy zones during the first eleven days in June. That is the calendar target. Repeat: 1 June through 11 June.

  The supreme commander responded appropriately. “I’ll be goddamned.…”

  Overlord was executed and the invading armies progressed. Under Badoglio and Grandi, the outlines of the Italian collaboration were negotiated in Lisbon.

  It was a trip Alec Teague permitted Major Fontine. He was entitled to it.

  And in a small room in Lisbon, a weary Badoglio faced Victor. “So the son of Fontini-Cristi brings us our ultimatum. There must be a certain gratification in that for you.”

  “No,” replied Victor simply. “Merely contempt.”

  JULY 26, 1944 WOLFSSCHANZE, EAST PRUSSIA

  (Excerpts from the Gestapo investigation of the assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler at the Wolfsschanze High Command Headquarters. File removed and destroyed.)

  … The aides of the traitor, Gen. Claus von Stauffenberg, have broken. They described a widespread conspiracy implicating such generals as Olbricht, von Falkenhausen, Hoepner, and possibly Kluge and Rommel. This conspiracy could not have been coordinated without enemy assistance. All normal channels of communication were avoided. A network of unknown couriers was employed, and a code name surfaced, unheard of previously. It is of Scottish origin, the name of a district or a village: Loch Torridon.… We have captured …

  Alec Teague stood in front of the map on his office wall. Fontine sat dejectedly in the chair by Teague’s desk, his eyes on the brigadier across the room.

  “It was a gamble,” said Teague. “We lost. Can’t expect to win every time. You’ve had too few losses, that’s your trouble, you’re not used to them.” He removed three pins from the map and walked back to his desk. He sat down slowly and rubbed his eyes. “Loch Torridon has been an extremely effective operation. We have every reason to be proud.”

  Fontine was startled. “Past tense?”

  “Yes. The Allied ground offensive toward the Rhine will commence maximum effort by October first. The Supreme Command wants no complications; they anticipate widespread defections. We’re a complication, possibly a detriment. Loch Torridon will be phased out over the next two months. Terminated by the end of September.”

  Victor watched Teague as the brigadier made the pronouncement. A part of the old soldier died with the words. It was painful to watch Alec. Loch Torridon was his moment in the military sun; he would get no nearer, and jealousies were not out of the question regarding its termination. But decisions had been made. They were irrevocable, and to fight them was out of the question. Teague was a soldier.

  Fontine examined his own thoughts. At first he experienced neither elation nor depression; more a suspension, as if time were abruptly arrested. Then slowly, painfully, there was the momentary feeling of what now? Where is my purpose? What do I do?

  And then suddenly these vague concerns were swiftly replaced. The o
bsession that was never far from his mind came sharply into focus. He got out of the chair and stood in front of Alec’s desk. “Then I call in your debt,” he said quietly to Teague. “There’s another operation that must be mounted ‘with all the precision of Loch Torridon.’ That’s the way you phrased it.”

  “It will be. I gave you my word. The Germans can’t last a year; surrender feelers already come from the generals. Six, eight months, and the war will be over. ‘Salonika’ will be mounted then. With all the precision of Loch Torridon.”

  14

  It took twelve weeks to close the books and bring the men back to England. Loch Torridon was finished; twenty-two cabinets of accomplishments were all that remained. They were put under lock and seal and stored in the vaults of Military Intelligence.

  Fontine returned to the isolated compound in Scotland. To Jane and the twins, Andrew and Adrian, named for the British saint and any of several acceptable Romans. But they were neither saintly nor imperial; they were two and a half years old, with all the energy that age implied.

  Victor had been surrounded by the children of his brothers all his adult life, but these were his. In themselves they were different. They alone would carry on the Fontini-Cristis. Jane could have no more children; the doctors had agreed. The injuries at Oxfordshire were too extensive.

  It was strange. After four years of furious activity and strain he was suddenly, abruptly, totally passive. The five months in ’42 when he remained in Dunblane could not be considered a period of tranquility. Jane’s recovery had been slow and dangerous; the fortifying of the compound had obsessed him. There’d been no letup of pressure then.

  There was now. And the transition was unbearable. As unbearable as the wait for “Salonika” to begin. It was the inactivity that gnawed at him; he was not a man for idleness. In spite of Jane and the children, Dunblane became his prison. There were men outside, across the Channel, deep within Europe and the Mediterranean, who sought him as intensely as he sought them. There was nothing until that movement could begin.

  Teague would not go back on his word, Victor understood that. But neither would he deviate from it. The end of the war would mark the commencement of the strategy that would lead to the men of Salonika. Not before. With each new victory, each new penetration within Germany, Fontine’s mind raced. The war was won; it was not over, but it was won. Lives all over the world had to be picked up, the pieces put back together and decisions made, for years of living had to be faced. For him, for Jane, everything depended on the forces that sought a vault that came out of Greece five years ago—at dawn on the ninth of December.

  The inactivity was his own particular hell.

  During the waiting he had reached one decision: he would not return to Campo di Fiori after the war. When he thought of his house and looked at his wife, he saw other wives slain in the white mists of light. When he saw his sons, he saw other sons, helpless, terrified, riddled by gunfire. The tortures of the mind were too vivid still. He could not go back to the killing ground, or to anything or anyone associated with it. They would build a new life somewhere else. The Fontini-Cristi Industries would be returned to him, the Court of Reparations in Rome had sent word to London.

  And he had sent word back through MI6. The factories, the plants, all lands and properties—except Campo di Fiori—would go to the highest bidder. He would make separate arrangements for Campo di Fiori.

  It was the night of March 10. The children were asleep across the hall; the last of the winter winds blew in gusts outside the windows of their bedroom. Victor and Jane lay under the covers, the coals in the fireplace throwing an orange glow on the ceiling. And they talked quietly, as they always talked in the final hours of the day.

  “Barclay’s will handle everything,” said Victor. “It’s a simple auction, really. I’ve put a cellar on the total; however they want to divide the entire purchase is up to them.”

  “Are there buyers?” asked Jane, lying on her elbow, looking at him.

  Fontine laughed softly. “Packs of them. Mostly in Switzerland, mostly American. There are fortunes to be made in the reconstruction. Those who have manufacturing bases will have the advantage.”

  “You sound like an economist.”

  “I sincerely hope so. My father would be terribly disappointed if I didn’t.” He fell silent. Jane touched his forehead, brushing aside his hair.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Just thinking. It’ll be over with soon. First the war, then ‘Salonika’; that will be finished, too. I trust Alec. He’ll bring it off if he has to blackmail all the diplomats in the Foreign Office. The fanatics will be forced to accept the fact that I don’t know a damn thing about their ungodly train.”

  “I thought it was supposed to be awfully godly.” She smiled.

  “Inconceivable.” He shook his head. “What kind of god would allow it?”

  “Checkmate, my darling.”

  Victor raised himself on the pillow. He looked over at the windows; a March snow was silently careening off the dark panes of glass, carried by the winds. He turned to his wife. “I can’t go back to Italy.”

  “I know. You’ve told me. I understand.”

  “But I don’t want to stay here. In England. Here I will always be Fontini-Cristi. Son of the massacred family of padrones. Equal parts reality, legend, and myth.”

  “You are Fontini-Cristi.”

  Victor looked down at Jane in the dim light of the fire. “No. For five years now I’ve been Fontine. I’ve gotten rather used to it. What do you think?”

  “It doesn’t lose too much in the translation,” said Jane, smiling again. “Except, perhaps, a flavor of landed gentry.”

  “That’s part of what I mean,” he replied quickly. “Andrew and Adrian shouldn’t be burdened with such nonsense. Times are not what they were; those days will never return.”

  “Probably not. It’s a little sad to see them go, but it’s for the best, I suppose.” His wife suddenly blinked her eyes and looked questioningly up to him. “If not Italy, or England, then where?”

  “America. Would you live in America?”

  Jane stared at him, her eyes still searching. “Of course. I think that’s very exciting … Yes, it’s right. For all of us.”

  “And the name? You don’t mind really, do you?”

  She laughed, reaching up to touch his face. “It doesn’t matter. I married a man, not a name.”

  “You matter,” he said, pulling her to him.

  Harold Latham walked out of the old, brass-grilled elevator and looked at the arrows and the numbers on the wall. He had been transferred to the Burma theater three years ago; it had been that long since he’d been in the corridors of MI6-London.

  He tugged at the jacket of his new suit. He was a civilian now; he had to keep reminding himself of that. Soon there would be thousands upon thousands of civilians—new civilians. Germany had collapsed. He’d wagered five pounds that the formal announcement of surrender would come before the first of May, There were three days to go, and he didn’t give a damn about the five quid. It was over; that was all that mattered.

  He started walking down the hallway toward Stone’s office. Good old, poor old, angry Geoff Stone. The Apple to his Pear. Rotten fucking luck it was, old Apple’s hand shot to bits because of a high-handed guinea; and so early on, too.

  Still, it bloody well might have saved his life. An awful lot of two-handed operatives never came back. In some ways Stone was damned fortunate. As he had been fortunate. He had a few pieces of metal in his back and stomach, but if he was careful they said he’d do fine. Practically normal, they said. Discharged him early, too.

  Apple and Pear had survived. They’d made it! Goddamn, that called for a month of whiskies!

  He had tried to call Stone but hadn’t been able to reach him. He telephoned for two days straight, both the flat and the office, but there was never an answer. There was no point in leaving messages; his own plans were so ragtail he wasn’t sure
how long he could stay in London.

  It was better this way. Just barge in and demand to know why old Apple had taken so long to win the war.

  The door was locked. He knocked; there was no answer. Damn! The front desk had Stone checked in; that was to say he hadn’t checked out last night, or the night before, which was not unusual these days. Office couches were beds these days. All the Intelligence services were working around the clock, going through files, destroying records that could be embarrassing, and probably saving a few thousand lives in the process. When the dust of victory and defeat settled, informers were the least popular survivors.

  He knocked louder. Nothing.

  Yet there was light shining through the thin, lateral crack at the base of the door. Perhaps Stone had stepped out for a minute. To the W.C. or the cafeteria.

  And then Latham’s eyes strayed to the round lock cylinder. There was something odd, something wrong. A speck of dull gray seemed to cling to the brass, a tiny scratch above it, to the right of the keyhole. Latham looked closer; he drew a match and struck it, almost afraid to do what he was about to do.

  He held the flame directly below the speck of gray matter. It melted instantly and fell away; solder.

  It was also an obscure but time-tested device that Apple favored. He had used it on numerous occasions when they worked together. Come to think of it, Latham couldn’t remember anyone else ever using it.

  Melt the end of a small solder wire and shove the soft liquid into the lock with its key. It jammed the tumblers but did not prevent the key from going in.

  It merely prevented any key from opening the lock. In quiet situations that called for a little time while a man raced out of a trap, it provided that time without raising any sudden alarms. A perfectly normal-looking lock malfunctioned; most locks were old. One did not break down a door; one called a locksmith.

  Had Apple needed time? Was there a trap?

  Something was wrong.

  “Good Christ! Don’t touch anything! Get a doctor!” shouted Teague, lunging into the office beyond the unhinged door. “And keep this tight!”