The Gemini Contenders: A Novel

  “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 retur
n.

  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.

  20

  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.”

  “One man?”

  “Yes.”

  “Would his name be Enrici Gaetamo?”

  “I told you. There are no priests of the Curia here. Please, go inside. Do you need help?”

  “No, I can manage.” Victor got out of the car slowly, each movement a struggle, the pain in his eyes receding, the spasm in his back subsiding. He understood. His mind was refocusing itself. He had come to Campo di Fiori for answers. For a confrontation. But he had not expected it to be this way.

  He walked up the wide marble steps to the oak door of his childhood. He paused and waited for what he thought was inevitable: a sense of overwhelming sorrow. But it did not come, because there was no life here.

  He heard the gunning of the engine behind him and turned. The driver had swung the car out into the curve, and driven past the embankment into the road toward the main gate. Whoever he was, he wanted to be away as rapidly as possible.

  As he watched, Victor heard the metallic sound of a latch. He turned again to the huge oak door; it had opened.

  The shock was impossible to conceal. Nor did he bother to hide it. The rage inside him welled; his whole body trembled in anger.

  The man at the door was a priest! Dressed in the black cassock of the church. He was an old man and frail. Had he been otherwise, Fontine might have struck out at him.

  Instead he stared at the old man and spoke quietly. “That a priest would be in this house is most painful to me.”

  “I’m sorry you feel that way,” replied the priest in a foreigner’s Italian, his voice thin but firm. “We revered the padrone of the Fontini-Cristis. We placed our most precious treasures in his hands.”

  Their eyes were locked; neither wavered, but the anger within Victor was slowly replaced with incredulity. “You’re Greek,” he said, barely audible.

  “I am, but that’s not relevant. I’m a monk from Constantine. Please. Come in.” The old priest stepped back to allow Victor to pass. He added softly, “Take your time. Let your eyes roam. Little has changed; photographs and inventories were taken of each room. We have maintained everything as it was.”

  A mausoleum.

  “So did the Germans.” Fontine walked into the enormous hall. “It’s strange that those who went to such lengths to own Campo di Fiori don’t want to change it.”

  “One doesn’t cut a great jewel or deface a worthy painting. There’s nothing strange in that.”

  Victor did not reply. Instead, he gripped his cane and walked with difficulty toward the staircase. He stopped in front of the arch that led to the huge drawing room on the left. Everything was as it had been. The paintings, the half-tables against the massive walls, the glazed antique mirrors above the tables, the oriental rugs covering the polished floor, the wide staircase, its balustrade glistening.

  He looked over through the north arch into the dining room. Twilight shadows fell across the enormous table, now bare, polished, empty, where once the family had sat. He pictured them now; he could hear the chatter and the laughter. Arguments and anecdotes, never-ending talk; dinners were important events at Campo di Fiori.

  The figures froze, the voices disappeared. It was time to look away.

  Victor turned. The monk gestured at the south arch. “Shall we go into your father’s study?”

  He preceded the old man into the drawing room. Involuntarily—for he did not care to activate memories—his eyes fell on the furnishings, suddenly so familiar. Every chair, every lamp, every tapestry and sconce and table was precisely as he remembered it.

  Fontine breathed deeply and closed his eyes for a moment. It was macabre. He was passing through a museum that had once been a living part of his existence. In some ways it was the cruelest form of anguish.

  He continued on through the door into Savarone’s study; it had never been his, although his life nearly ended in that room. He passed by the doorframe through which a severed, bloody hand had been thrown in the shadows.

  If there was anything that startled him it was the desk lamp; and the light that spilled downward over the floor from the green shade. It was precisely as it was nearly three decades ago. His memory of it was vivid, for it was the light from the lamp that had washed over the shattered skull of Geoffrey Stone.

  “Would you care to sit down?” asked the priest.

  “In a minute.”

  “May I?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “May I sit at your father’s desk?” said the monk. “I’ve watched your eyes.”

  “It’s your house, your desk. I’m a visitor.”

  “But not a stranger.”

  “Obviously. Am I speaking with a representative of Baricours, Père et Fils?”

  The old priest nodded silently. He walked slowly around the desk, pulled out the chair, and lowered his frail body into it. “Don’t blame the lawyer in Milan; he couldn’t have known. Baricours met your conditions, we made sure of it. Baricours is the Order of Xenope.”

  “And my enemy,” said Victor quietly. “In 1942 there was an M.I.-Six compound in Oxfordshire. You tried to kill my wife. Many innocent people lost their lives.”

  “Decisions were made beyond the c
ontrol of the Elders. The extremists had their way; we couldn’t stop them. I don’t expect you to accept that.”

  “I don’t. How did you know I was in Italy?”

  “We are not what we once were, but we still have resources. One in particular keeps his eye on you. Don’t ask me who it is; I won’t tell you. Why did you come back? After thirty years, why did you return to Campo di Fiori?”

  “To find a man named Gaetamo,” answered Fontine. “Enrici Gaetamo.”

  “Gaetamo lives in the hills of Varese,” said the monk.

  “He’s still looking for the train from Salonika. He’s traveled from Edhessa, through the Balkans, across Italy, into the northern mountains. Why have you stayed here all these years?”

  “Because the key is here,” replied the monk. “A pact was made. In October of 1939, I traveled to Campo di Fiori. It was I who negotiated Savarone Fontini-Cristi’s participation, I who sent a dedicated priest on that train with his brother, an engineer. And demanded their deaths in the name of God.”

  Victor stared at the monk. The spill of the lamp illuminated the pale, taut flesh and the sad, dead eyes. Fontine recalled the visitor in his Washington office. “A Greek came to me saying his family served their church once in ways he didn’t understand. Was this priest’s brother the engineer, named Annaxas?”

  The old cleric’s head snapped up; the eyes became briefly alive. “Where did you hear that name?”

  Fontine looked away, his eyes falling on a painting beneath a Madonna on the wall. A hunting scene, birds being flushed from a thicket by men with guns. Other birds flew above. “We’ll trade information,” he said quietly. “Why did my father agree to work with Xenope?”

  “You know the answer. He had only one concern: not to divide the Christian world. The defeat of the fascists was all he cared about.”

  “Why was the vault taken from Greece in the first place?”

  “The Germans were scavengers and Constantine was marked. That was the information we received from Poland and Czechoslovakia. The Nazi commanders stole from museums, tore apart retreats and monasteries. We couldn’t take the chance of leaving it there. Your father engineered the removal. Brilliantly. Donatti was tricked.”