The Gemini Contenders: A Novel

  2.

  Seven—dash—one—four—dash—two.…

  There was a final impression but it was not a figure. It was a series of four short, straight lines joined together. A box … a square. A perfect geometric square.

  Of course, it was a figure! A zero!

  0.

  Seven—dash—one—four—dash—two—zero.

  What did it mean? Had Savarone’s age caused him to leave a message that meant nothing to anyone but him Had everything been so brilliantly logical but the message itself? It meant nothing.

  7—14—20…. A date? Was it a date?

  My God! thought Victor. 7–14. July 14! His birthday!

  Bastille Day. Throughout his life that had been a minor source of amusement. A Fontini-Cristi born on the celebrated day of the French Revolution.

  July 14 … two-zero … 20. 1920.

  That was Savarone’s key. Something had happened on July 14, 1920. What was it? What incident had occurred that his father considered so meaningful to his first son? Something that had a significance beyond other times, other birthdays.

  A shaft of pain—the second of what he knew would be many—shot through his body, originating, once again, at the base of his spine. The brace was like ice; the cold of the water had chilled his skin and penetrated the tendons and muscle tissue.

  With the sensitivity of a surgeon, he pressed his fingers around the area of the chiseled numbers. There was only the date; all else was flat and unspoiled. He took the stick in his left hand and thrust it below the water into the mud. Painfully, he sidestepped his way back toward the embankment, until the level of the water had receded to his thighs. Then he paused for breath. The flashes of pain accelerated; he had done more damage to himself than he had realized. A full convulsion was developing; he tensed the muscles of his jaw and throat. He had to get out of the water and lie down. Lurching for the overhanging vines on the embankment, he fell to his knees in the water. The flashlight spun out of his hand and rolled over some matted fern, its beam shooting out into the dense woods. He grabbed a cluster of thick, exposed roots and pulled himself up toward the ground, pushing the stick behind him into the mud for propulsion.

  All movement was arrested in a paralyzing instant of shock.

  Above him, in the darkness on the embankment, stood the figure of a man. A huge man dressed in black, and motionless, staring down at him. Around his throat—in jarring counterpoint to the pitch-black clothing—was a rim of white. A priest’s collar. The face—what he could see of it in the dim forest light—was impassive. But the eyes that bore down at him had fire in them, and hatred.

  The man spoke. His speech was deliberate, slow, born of loathing.

  “The enemy of Christ returns.”

  “You are Gaetamo,” said Fontine.

  “A man came in an automobile to watch my cabin in the hills. I knew that automobile, that man. He serves the heretic of Xenope. The monk who lives his life in Campo di Fiori. He was there to keep me away.”

  “But he couldn’t.”

  “No.” The defrocked priest elaborated no further. “So this is where it was. All those years and the answer was here.” His deep voice seemed to float, beginning anywhere, ending abruptly in midstatement. “What did he leave? A name? Of what? A bank? A building in the Milan factories? We thought of those; we took them apart.”

  “Whatever it was, it has no meaning for you. Nor for me.”

  “Liar,” replied Gaetamo quietly, in his chilling monotone. He turned his head right, then left; he was remembering. “We staked out every inch of these woods. We ran yellow strings from stake to stake and marked each area as we studied it. We considered burning, cutting … but were afraid of what we might destroy. We damned the stream and probed the mud. The Germans gave us instruments … but always nothing. The large rocks were filled with meaningless markings, including the birthdate of an arrogant seventeen-year-old who had to leave his conceit in stone. And always nothing.”

  Victor tensed. Gaetamo had said it. In one brief phrase the defrocked priest had unlocked the door! An arrogant seventeen-year-old, leaving his mark in stone. But he had not left it! Donatti had found the key but had not recognized it! The reasoning was so simple, so uncomplicated: a seventeen-year-old carving a memorable day on a familiar rock. It was so logical, so essentially unremarkable. And so clear.

  As the memory was now clear. Most of it.

  7–14–20. His seventeenth birthday. It came back to him because there had been none like it in his life. My God, thought Victor, Savarone was incredible! Part of his childhood. It was on his seventeenth birthday that his father had given him the present he had wanted so badly he had dreamed of it, pleaded for it: The chance to go up into the mountains without his younger brothers. To really do some climbing … above the usual and—for him—dreary campsites in the foothills.

  On his seventeenth birthday, Savarone had presented him with an authentic Alpine pack, the sort used by experienced climbers. Not that his father was about to take him up the Jungfrau; they never really scaled anything extraordinary. But that first trip—alone with his father—was a landmark in his early manhood. That pack and that journey were symbols of something very important to him: proof that he was growing up in his father’s eyes.

  He had forgotten; he was not sure of it even now, for there had been other trips, other years. Had it—that first trip—been in the Champoluc? It must have been, but where? That was beyond memory.

  “… end your life in this water.”

  Gaetamo had spoken, but Fontine had not heard him: only the threat had penetrated. Of all men—all priests—this madman could be told nothing. “I found only meaningless scribblings. Childish markings, as you said.”

  “You found what rightfully belongs to Christ!” Gaetamo’s words sliced through the forest. He lowered himself to one knee, his immense chest and head inches from Victor, his eyes wide and burning. “You found the sword of the archangel of hell! No more lies. Tell me what you’ve found!”

  “Nothing.”

  “Liar! Why are you here? An old man in water and mud! What was in this stream? On this rock!”

  Victor stared at the grotesque eyes. “Why am I here?” he repeated, stretching his neck, arching his tortured back, his features pinched. “I’m old. With memories. I convinced myself that the answer might be here. When we were children we left messages for one another here. You saw for yourself. Childish markings, scribblings, stone scratched against stone. I thought perhaps-But I found nothing. If there was anything, it’s gone now.”

  “You examined the rock, and then you stopped! You were prepared to leave.”

  “Look at me! How long do you think I can stay in this water?”

  Gaetamo shook his head slowly. “I watched you. You were a man who found what he had come to find.”

  “You saw what you wanted to see. Not what was there.”

  Victor’s foot slipped; the stick that braced him in the water slid in the mud, sinking deeper. The priest thrust out a hand and grabbed Fontine’s hair. He yanked viciously, pulling Victor into the embankment, forcing his head and neck to one side. The sudden contortion was unbearable; wrenching pain spread throughout Fontine’s body. The wide maniacal eyes above him in the dim light were not those of an aging man in the clothes of a priest but, instead, the eyes of a young fanatic thirty years ago.

  Gaetamo saw. And understood. “We thought you were dead then. There was no way you could have survived. The fact that you did convinced our holy man that you were from hell! … You remember. For now I’ll continue what was begun thirty years ago! And with each crack of your bones you’ll have the chance—as you did then—to tell me what you’ve found. But don’t lie. The pain will only stop when you tell me the truth.”

  Gaetamo bent forward. He began to twist Victor’s head, pressing the face downward into the rocky embankment, cutting the flesh, forcing the air out of Fontine’s throat.

  Victor tried to pull back; the priest slammed his
forehead into a gnarled root. Blood spurted from the gash, flowing into Victor’s eyes, blinding him, infuriating him. He raised his right hand, grappling for Gaetamo’s wrist; the defrocked prest clasped the hand and wrenched it inward, snapping the fingers. He pulled Fontine higher on the ground, twisting, always twisting his head and neck, causing the brace to cut into his back.

  “It won’t end until you tell me the truth!”

  “Pig! Pig from Donatti!” Victor lurched to the side. Gaetamo countered by crashing his fist into Fontine’s rib cage. The impact was paralyzing, the pain excruciating.

  The stick. The stick! Fontine rolled to his left, his left hand below, still gripped around the broken limb, gripped as one holds an object in a moment of agony. Gaetamo had felt the brace; he pulled on it, wrenching it back and forth until the steel lacerated the surrounding flesh.

  Victor inched the long stick up by pressing it into the embankment. It touched his chest; he felt it. The end was jagged. If he could only find the smallest opening between himself and the monster above, space enough to thrust it upward, toward the face, the neck.

  It came. Gaetamo raised one knee. It was enough.

  Fontine shoved the stick up, driving it with every ounce of strength he could summon, impaling it into the stunned body above. He heard a cry of shock, a scream that filled the forest.

  And then an explosion filled the gray darkness. A powerful gun had been fired. The screeches of birds and animals swelled in the woods—and the body of Gaetamo fell forward on top of him. It rolled to the side.

  The stick was lodged in his throat. Below his neck a huge gaping mass of torn flesh saturated with blood was in his upper chest; he had been blown apart by the gun that had been fired out of the darkness.

  “May God forgive me,” said the monk of Xenope from the shadows.

  A black void came over Victor; he felt himself slipping into the water as trembling hands grabbed him. His last thoughts—strangely peaceful—were of his sons. The Geminis. The hands might have been the hands of his sons, trying to save him. But his sons’ hands did not tremble.

  PART

  TWO

  22

  Major Andrew Fontine sat rigidly at his desk, listening to the sounds of morning. It was five minutes to eight; the offices were beginning to fill up. Voices rose and fell in the corridors as the Pentagon started the day.

  He had five days to think. No, not to think, to move. There wasn’t that much to think about; it was only necessary to move out and cut down. Stop whatever Adrian and his “concerned citizens” had started.

  Eye Corps was the most legitimate clandestine unit in the army. It was doing exactly what the dissenters thought they were doing, but without tearing down the system, without revealing weakness. Maintain strength and the illusion of strength. It was all important. They’d tried it the other way. Eye Corps wasn’t born in Georgetown, over brandy and cigars and pictures of the Pentagon on the walls. Bullshit! It was born in a hut in the Mekong Delta. After he had come back from Saigon and told his three subordinate officers what had happened at command headquarters.

  He had gone to Saigon with legitimate field complaints, proof of corruption in the supply lines. Hundred of thousands of dollars’ worth of equipment was being drained off all over the Mekong every week, abandoned by ARVN troops at the first sign of hostilities, routed back into the black market. Payrolls were banked by ARVN commanders, drugs bought and distributed by Vietnamese networks out of Hue and Da-nang. Millions were piped out of the Southeast Asia operation, and no one seemed to know what to do about it.

  So he brought his proof to Saigon, right up to the command brass. And what did the brass do? They thanked him and said they would investigate. What was there to investigate? He’d brought enough proof to institute a dozen charges.

  A brigadier had taken him out for a drink.

  “Listen, Fontine. Better a little corruption than blow the whole ammo dump. These people are thieves by nature, we’re not going to change that.”

  “We could make a few examples, sir. Openly.”

  “For Christ’s sake! We’ve got enough Stateside problems! That kind of publicity would play right into the antimilitary hands. Now, you’ve got a fine record; don’t louse it up.”

  That’s when it started, when Eye Corps was born. The name itself said it: a unit of men who watched and recorded. And as the months went on, the four of them expanded to five, then seven. Recently, they’d added the eighth man: Captain Martin Greene, in the Pentagon. They were born of disgust. The army was led by weak-kneed whores—women—afraid to offend. What kind of stature was that for the military leaders of the strongest nation on earth?

  Something else happened, too, along the way. As the records grew and the enemies within tagged for what they were, the obvious stared the men of Eye Corps in the face: they were the inheritors! They were the incorruptible; they were the elite.

  Since regular channels didn’t work, they would do it their way. Build up the records, get files on every misfit, every deviate, ever corrupter, large and small. Strength lay with those who could confront the misfits and make them crawl. Make them do exactly what strong, incorruptible men wanted them to do.

  Eye Corps was nearly there. Almost three years’ worth of recorded garbage. Christ! Southeast Asia was the place to find it. They’d take over soon; go right into the Pentagon and take over! It was men like themselves who had the skill and training and the commitment to oversee the vast complexities that were the armed might of the country. It was not a delusion; they were the elite.

  It was so logical for him, too. His father would understand that, if he could ever talk to him about it. And one day he might. Since his earliest memories, he felt the presence of influence, of pride, of consequence. And power … yes, power. It wasn’t a dirty word! It belonged to those who knew how to handle it; it was his birthright.

  And Adrian wanted to tear it down! Well, the spoiler was not going to tear it down. He was not going to rip Eye Corps apart.

  … arrangements can be made. That’s what Adrian had said in the boathouse.

  How right he was! Arrangements could be made; but not any arrangements considered by Adrian and his concerned citizens. A lot would happen before then.

  Five days. Adrian wasn’t trained to consider the options. Practical, physical alternatives, not words and abstractions and “positions.” The army would have a hell of a time trying to reach him five days from now if he was 10,000 miles away in a combat zone, involved in operations covered by an umbrella of security. He had enough clout to do that; to get over there and build that umbrella.

  There was a weakling in Saigon who had betrayed them. Betrayed the rest of Eye Corps. To learn who he was—and he was one of six—was the first reason to get over there. Find him … then make a decision.

  Once he was found—and the decision made—the rest was easy. He’d brief the remaining men of Eye Corps. The stories would be integrated, synchronized.

  Even the army needed proof. And there was no way it could get that proof.

  Here in Washington, Eye Corps’ eighth member could take care of himself. Captain Martin Greene was steel and leather. And smart. He could hold his own against any flak leveled at him. His people had come from the Irgun, the toughest fighters in Jew history. If the D.C. brass gave him any static, he’d cut out for Israel in a second, and the Jew army would be better for it.

  Andrew looked at his watch. It was a little past eight, time to reach Greene. He couldn’t take the chance last night. Adrian and his civilians were trying to find an unknown officer who worked at the Pentagon. Outside telephones could not be trusted. He and Marty would have to talk; they couldn’t wait for their next scheduled meeting. He would be on a plane for Saigon before the day was over.

  They had agreed never to be seen together. If they met by chance at a conference or a cocktail party, both pretended they were meeting for the first time. It was vital that no connection between them be apparent. When they did mee
t, it was in out-of-the-way places and always by prearranged schedule. During the meetings they would combine whatever damaging information they’d culled from Pentagon files during the week, seal the pages in an envelope, and mail it to a post office box in Baltimore. The enemies of Eye Corps were being catalogued everywhere.

  In times of emergencies, or when one needed the other’s immediate advice, they sent word to each other by placing a “mistaken” call through the Pentagon switchboard. It was the signal to invent some excuse, get out of the office, and head for a bar in downtown Washington. Andrew had made the “mistaken” call two hours ago.

  The bar was dark and cheap and gaudy, with booths in the back that afforded a clear view of the entrance. Andrew sat in a booth by the back wall, toying with his bourbon, not interested in it. He kept looking up at the entrance fifty feet away. Whenever the door opened, the morning sun burst through briefly, a harsh intruder on the interior darkness. Greene was late; it wasn’t like him to be late.

  The door opened again and the silhouette of a stocky, muscular man with broad, thick shoulders was arrested in the glare. It was Marty; he was out of uniform, dressed in an open white shirt and what appeared to be plaid trousers. He nodded to the bartender and started toward the rear of the bar. Everything about Greene was powerful, thought Andrew. From his thick legs to the shock of bright-red hair, shaped in a bristling crew cut.

  “Sorry it took me so long,” said Greene, sliding into the booth opposite Andrew. “I stopped off at the apartment to change. Then I went out the back way.”

  “Any particular reason?”

  “Maybe, maybe not. Last night I took the car out of the garage and thought I picked up surveillance—a dark-green Electra. I reversed directions; it was still there. I went home.”

  “What time was it?”

  “Around eight thirty, quarter to nine.”

  “It figures. It’s why I called you. They expect me to contact someone in your section; set up a meeting right away. They probably had half a dozen others followed.”