The Gemini Contenders: A Novel

  “By the use of a second train,” added Victor. “Mounted and routed identically. Sent three days later.”

  “Yes. Word of this second train was leaked to Donatti through the Germans, who had no concept of the significance of the vault from Constantine. They looked for treasures—paintings, sculpture, art objects—not obscure writings they were told were valuable only to scholars. But Donatti, the fanatic, could not resist; the Filioque denials had been rumored for decades. He had to possess them.” The priest of Xenope paused, the memory painful. “The cardinal’s and the German interests coincided. Berlin wanted Savarone Fontini-Cristi’s influence destroyed; Donatti wanted to keep him from that train. At all costs.”

  “Why was Donatti involved at all?”

  “Again, your father. He knew the Nazis had a powerful friend in the Vatican. He wanted Donatti exposed for what he was. The cardinal could not know about that second train unless the Germans told him. Your father intended to make use of this fact. It was the only price Fontini-Cristi asked of us. As it turned out, that price brought about the executions of Campo di Fiori.”

  Victor could hear his father’s voice piercing through the decades.… He issues edicts to the uninformed and enforces them by fear.… A disgrace to the Vatican. Savarone knew the enemy, but not the extremes of his monstrousness.

  The brace across Fontine’s back was cutting into his flesh. He had been standing too long. He gripped his cane and walked toward the chair in front of the desk. He sat down.

  “Do you know what was on that train?” asked the old monk gently.

  “Yes. Brevourt told me.”

  “Brevourt never knew. He was told part of the truth. Not all of it. What did he tell you?”

  Victor was suddenly alarmed. He locked eyes once again with the priest.

  “He spoke of the Filioque denials, studies that refuted the divinity of Christ. The most damaging of which was an Aramaic scroll that raised questions as to whether Jesus ever existed at all. The conclusion would appear that he did not.”

  “It was never the denials. Never the scroll. It was—is—a confession written in its entirety that predates all the other documents.” The priest of Xenope looked away. He raised his hands; his bony fingers touched the pale skin of his cheek. “The Filioque denials are artifacts for scholars to ponder. As one of them, the Aramaic scroll, was ambiguous, as the scrolls of the Dead Sea were ambiguous when studied fifteen hundred years later. However, thirty years ago at the height of a moral war—if that’s not a contradiction in terms—that scroll’s exposure might have been catastrophic. It was enough for Brevourt.”

  Fontine was mesmerized. “What is this confession? I’ve never heard it mentioned.”

  The monk returned his eyes to Victor. During the brief silence before he spoke, the old priest conveyed the pain of his immediate decision. “It is everything. It was written on a parchment brought out of a Roman prison in the year sixty-seven. We know the date because the document speaks of the death of Jesus in terms of the Hebrew calendar that places the figure at thirty-four years. It coincides with anthropological scholarship. The parchment was written by a man who wandered blindly; he speaks of Gethsemane and Capernaum, Gennesaret and Corinth, Pontus, Galatia and Cappadocia. The writer can be no one else but Simon of Bethsaida, given the name of Peter by the man he called Christ. What is contained in that parchment is beyond anything in your imagination. It must be found.”

  The priest stopped and stared across at Victor.

  “And destroyed?” asked Fontine softly.

  “Destroyed,” replied the monk. “But not for any reason you might think of. For nothing is changed, yet all is changed. My vows forbid me to tell you more. We’re old men; we haven’t much time. If you can help, you must. That parchment can alter history. It should have been destroyed centuries ago, but arrogance prevailed. It could plunge a great part of the world into a terrible agony. No one can justify the pain.”

  “But you say nothing is changed,” replied Victor, repeating the monk’s words, “yet all is changed. One cancels the other; it doesn’t make sense.”

  “The confession on that parchment makes sense. In all its anguish. I can tell you no more.”

  Fontine held the priest’s eyes. “Did my father know about the parchment? Or was he told only what Brevourt was told?”

  “He knew,” said the monk of Xenope. “The Filioque denials were like your American articles of impeachment, charges for canonical debate. Even the most damaging—as you called it—the Aramaic scroll, was subject to the linguistic interpretations of antiquity. Fontini-Cristi would have perceived these issues; Brevourt did not. But the confession on that parchment is not debatable. It was the single, awesome thing that demanded Fontini-Cristi’s commitment. He understood and accepted it.”

  “A confession on a parchment taken out of a Roman prison.” Fontine spoke quietly; the issue was clear. “That’s what the vault of Constantine is all about.”

  “Yes.”

  Victor let the moment pass. He leaned forward in the chair, his hand on his metal cane. “You said the key is here. But why? Donatti searched—every wall, every floor, every inch of ground. You’ve remained here for twenty-seven years, and still there’s nothing. What’s left for you?”

  “Your father’s words, said in this room.”

  “What were they?”

  “That the markings would be here in Campo di Fiori. Etched for a millennium. That was the phrase he used: ‘etched for a millennium.’ And his son would understand. It was part of his childhood. But his son was told nothing. We came to know that.”

  Fontine refused a bed in the great house. He would rest in the stables, in the bed on which he had placed the dead Barzini a lifetime ago.

  He wanted to be alone, isolated, and above all, out of the house, away from the dead relics. He had to think, to go back over the horror again and again until he found the missing connection. For it was there now; the pattern existed. What remained missing was the line that completed the design.

  Part of his childhood. No, not there, not yet. Don’t start there; it would come later. Begin with what one knew, one saw, one heard for himself.

  He reached the stables and walked through the empty rooms and past the empty stalls. There was no electricity now; the old monk had given him a flashlight. Barzini’s room was as he remembered it. Bare, without ornament; the narrow bed, the worn-out armchair, the simple trunk for his few possessions.

  The tack room, too, was as he had seen it last. Bridles and leather straps on the walls. He sat down on a small wooden stirrup bench, exhaling in pain as he did so. He put out the flashlight. The moon shone through the windows. He inhaled deeply and forced his mind back to the horrible night.

  The shattering of machine gun fire filled his ears, evoking the memory he abhorred. The swirling clouds of smoke were there, the arched bodies of loved ones in succeeding instants of death, seen in the blinding light of the flood-lamps.

  Champoluc is the river! Zürich is the river!

  The words were screamed, then repeated, twice, three times! Roared up at him but aimed higher than where he was, above him, as the bullets pierced his father’s chest and stomach.

  Champoluc is the river!

  The head raised? Was that it? The head, the eyes. It’s always in the eyes! A split fraction of time before the words poured out, his father’s eyes had not been on the embankment, not on him.

  They had been leveled to his right, on a diagonal. Savarone had been staring at the automobiles, into the third automobile.

  Savarone had seen Guillamo Donatti! He had recognized him in the shadows of the back seat of the car. At the instant of death, he knew the identity of his executioner.

  And the roars of fury had poured forth, up at his son, but beyond his son. Up and beyond and … what was it? What was it his father had done at that last instant of life? It was the missing connection, the line that completed the pattern!

  Oh, Christ! Some part of his body. His
head, his shoulders, his hands. What was it?

  The whole body! My God, it was the gesture in death of the whole body! Head, arms, hands. Savarone’s body had been stretched in one final gesture! To his left! But not the house, not the lighted rooms so viciously invaded, but beyond the house. Beyond the house!

  Champoluc is the river.…

  Beyond the house!

  The woods of Campo di Fiori!

  The river! The wide mountain stream in the forest! Their own personal “river”!

  It was part of his childhood. The river of his childhood was a quarter of a mile beyond the gardens of Campo di Fiori!

  Sweat fell from Victor’s face; his breath was erratic, his hands trembled. He gripped the edge of the stirrup bench in the darkness. He was spent, but certain; it was all suddenly, totally clear.

  The river was not in the Champoluc, nor in Zürich. It was minutes away from here. A brief walk down a forest path made by generations of children.

  Etched for a millennium.

  Part of his childhood.

  He pictured the woods, the flowing stream, the rocks … the rocks … the rocks. The boulders that bordered the stream in the deepest section of the water! There was one large boulder used for diving and jumping and lying in the sun, and scratching initials, and childish messages, and secret codes between very young brothers!

  Etched for a millennium. His childhood!

  Had Savarone chosen this rock on which to etch his message?

  It was suddenly so clear. So consistent.

  Of course he had.

  21

  The night sky turned gradually to gray, but no rays of the Italian sun broke through the overcast. Instead, there would be rain soon, and a cold summer wind whipping down from the northern mountains.

  Victor walked down the stable road into the gardens. It was too dark to make out the colors. Then, too, there were not the rows of flowers bordering the paths as there had been; he could see that much.

  He found the path with difficulty, only after examining the uncut grass, angling the beam of his flashlight into the ground, looking for signs of the past. As he penetrated the woods beyond the garden familiar things came back to him: a gnarled olive tree with thick limbs; a cluster of white birches, now concealed by beechwood vine and dying spruce.

  The stream was no more than a hundred yards away, diagonally to his right, if memory served. There were birches and tall pines; giant weeds formed a wall of tentacles, soft but uncomfortable to the touch.

  He stopped. There was a rustle of bird wings, the snap of a twig. He turned and peered into the black shapes of the overgrowth.

  Silence.

  Then the sound of a small animal intruded on the quiet. He had probably disturbed a hare. Strange, he should assume so naturally that it was a hare. The surroundings jogged memories long forgotten; as a boy he had trapped hares in these woods.

  He could smell the water now. He had always been able to smell the moistness when he approached the stream, smell it before he heard the sound of the flow. The foliage nearest the water was thick, almost impenetrable. Seepage from the stream had fed a hundred thousand roots, allowing rampant, uncontrolled growth. He had to force back limbs and spread thickets to approach the stream.

  His left foot was ensnared in a tangle of ground vine. He stepped back on his right and, with his cane, worked it free, losing his balance as he did so. The cane whipped out of his hand, spiraling into the darkness. He grabbed for a branch to break his fall; the small limb cracked, stripping itself from its source. On one knee, he used the thick stick to push himself off the ground; his cane was gone; he could not see it. He held onto the stick and threaded his way through the mass of foliage to the water’s edge.

  The stream seemed narrower than he remembered. Then he realized it was the gray darkness and the overgrown forest that made it appear so. Three decades of inattention had allowed the woods to impinge upon the water.

  The massive boulder was on his right, upstream, no more than twenty feet away, but the wall of overgrowth was such that it might have been half a mile. He began edging his way toward it, crouching, rising, separating, each movement a struggle. Twice he butted against hard obstacles in the earth, too high, too thin and narrow, for rocks. He swung the beam of the flashlight down; the obstacles were iron stakes, rusted and pitted as though relics from a sunken galleon.

  He reached the base of the huge rock; its body extended over the water. He looked below, the flashlight illuminating the separation of earth and flowing stream, and realized the years had made him cautious. The distance to the water was only a few feet, but it appeared a gulf to him now. He sidestepped his way down into the stream, the thick stick in his left hand prodding the depth.

  The water was cold—as he remembered, it was always cold—and came up to his thighs, lapped over his waist below the brace, sending chills throughout his body. He shivered and swore at the years.

  But he was here. It was all that mattered.

  He focused the flashlight on the rock. He was several feet from the edge of the bank; he would have to organize his search. Too many minutes could be wasted going over areas twice or three times because he could not remember examining them. He was honest with himself: He was not sure how long he could take the cold.

  He reached up, pressing the end of the stick into the surface of the rock. The moss that covered it peeled easily. The details of the boulder’s surface, made vivid by the harsh, white beam of the flashlight, looked like thousands of tiny craters and ravines.

  His pulse accelerated at the first signs of human intrusion. They were faint, barely visible, but they were there. And they were his marks, from more than half a century ago. Descending lines scratched deeply into the rock as part of a long forgotten boyhood game.

  The V was the clearest letter; he had made sure his mark was vivid, properly recorded. Then there was b, followed by what might have been numbers. And a t, again followed by what were probably numbers. He had no idea what they meant.

  He peeled the moss above and below the scratchings. There were other faint markings; some seemed meaningful. Initials, mainly; here and there, rough drawings of trees and arrows and quarter circles drawn by children.

  His eyes strained under the glare of the flashlight; his fingers peeled and rubbed and caressed a larger and larger area. He made two vertical lines with the stick to show where he had searched and moved farther into the cold water; but soon the cold grew too much and he climbed onto the bank, seeking warmth. His hands and arms and legs were trembling with cold and age. He knelt in the damp overgrowth and watched the vapor of his breath diffuse itself in the air.

  He went back into the water, to the point where he had left off. The moss was thicker; underneath he found several more markings similar to the first set nearer the embankment. V’s and b’s and t’s and very faint numbers.

  Then it came back to him through the years—faintly, as faintly as the letters and the numbers. And he knew he was right to be in that stream, at that boulder.

  Burrone! Traccia! He had forgotten but now recalled. “Ravine,” “trail.” He had always scratched—recorded—their journeys into the mountains!

  Part of his childhood.

  My God, what a part! Every summer Savarone gathered his sons together and took them north for several days of climbing. Not dangerous climbing, more hiking and camping. For them all, a high point of the summers. And he gave them maps so they knew where they had been; and Vittorio, the eldest, would indelibly, soberly record the journeys on the boulder down at the stream, their “river.”

  They had christened the rock The Argonaut. And the scratchings of The Argonaut served as a permanent record of their mountain odysseys. Into the mountains of their boyhood.

  Into the mountains.

  The train from Salonika had gone into the mountains! The vault of Constantine was somewhere in the mountains!

  He balanced himself with the stick and continued. He was near the face of the rock; the w
ater came up to his chest, chilling the steel brace beneath his clothes. The farther out he went the more convinced he became; he was right to be there! The faint scratching—the faded scars of half lines and zigzags—were more and more numerous. The Argonaut’s hull was covered with graffiti related to journeys long forgotten.

  The cold water sent a spasm through the base of his spine; the stick fell from his hands. He slapped at the water, grabbing the stick, shifting his fee in the effort. He fell—glided, actually—into the rock and righted himself by pressing the stick into the mud below for balance.

  He stared at the sight inches from his eyes in the water. There was a short, straight, horizontal line deeply defined in the rock. It was chiseled.

  He braced himself as best he could, transferred the stick to his right hand, manipulating it between his thumb and the flashlight, and pressed his fingers into the surface of the boulder.

  He traced the line. It angled sharply downward into the water; across and down and then it abruptly stopped.

  7. It was a 7.

  Unlike any other faded hieroglyphics on the rock; not scratches made by awkward, youthful hands, but a work of precision. The figure was no more than two inches high—but the impression itself was a good half inch deep.

  He’d found it! Etched for a millennium! A message carved in rock, chiseled in stone!

  He brought the flashlight closer and carefully moved his trembling fingers about the area. My God, was this it? Was this the moment? In spite of the cold and the wet, the blood raced to his head, his heart accelerated. He felt like shouting; but he had to be sure!

  At midpoint of the vertical line of the 7, about an inch to its right, was a dash. Then another single vertical line … a 1, followed by yet another vertical that was shorter, angling to the right … and intersected by a line straight up and down.… A 4. It was a 4.

  Seven—dash—one—four. More below the surface of the water than above it.

  Beyond the 4 was another short, horizontal line. A dash. It was followed by a … Z, but not a Z. The angles were not abrupt, they were rounded.