The Gemini Contenders: A Novel

  “Yes … I know. I saw.” Adrian felt the wave of nausea spreading over him again.

  “But it’s a pretty warm night. I think the window on the driver’s side was rolled down. I couldn’t swear to it—that car’s totaled—but your friend could have taken a short blast from a shotgun.”

  Adrian raised his eyes. Something inside his head snapped; the words his brother said seven years ago in San Francisco seared into his brain.

  “… There’s a war out there … the firepower’s real!”

  Among the papers in Nevins’s briefcase was the deposition taken from an officer in Saigon. The indictment of Eye Corps.

  And he had given his brother five days’ warning.

  Oh, God! What had he done?

  He took a cab to the precinct police station. His credentials as an attorney gained him a brief conversation with a sergeant.

  “If there’s foul play involved, we’ll find it,” said the man, looking at Adrian with the distaste the police reserved for lawyers who followed up accidents.

  “He was a friend of mine and I have reason to believe there was. Did you find the truck?”

  “Nope. We know it’s not on any of the highways. The state troopers are watching for it.”

  “It was a rental.”

  “We know that, too. The rental agencies are being checked. Why don’t you go home, mister?”

  Adrian bent over the sergeant’s desk, his hands on the edge. “I don’t think you’re taking me very seriously.”

  “Fatality sheets come into this station a dozen an hour. Now, what the hell do you want me to do? Suspend everything else and put a whole goddamned platoon on one hit-and-run?”

  “I’ll tell you what I want, sergeant. I want a pathology report on all cranial injuries sustained by the deceased. Is that clear?”

  “What are you talking about?” replied the police officer disdainfully. “Cranial—”

  “I want to know what blew that man apart.”

  23

  The train from Salonika had claimed its last sacrifice, thought Victor, as he lay in his bed, the morning sun streaming through the oceanside windows of the North Shore house. There was no reason on earth why any further life should be lost in its name. Enrici Gaetamo was the last victim, and there was no sorrow in that death.

  He himself had very little time remaining. He could see it in Jane’s eyes, in the eyes of the doctors. It was to be expected; he had been granted too many reprieves.

  He had dictated everything he could remember about that day in July a lifetime ago. He had probed forgotten recesses in his mind, refused the narcotics that would numb the pain because they would equally numb the memories.

  The vault from Constantine had to be found, its contents evaluated by responsible men. What had to be prevented—however remote it might be—was a chance discovery, exposure without thought. He would charge his sons. Salonika was now theirs. The Geminis. They would do what he could not do: find the vault of Constantine.

  But there was a piece of the puzzle that was missing. He had to find it before he spoke with his sons. What did Rome know? How much had the Vatican learned about Salonika? Which was why he had asked a man to visit him this morning. A priest named Land, the monsignor from New York’s archdiocese who had come to his hospital room months ago.

  Fontine heard the footsteps outside the bedroom, and the quiet voices of Jane and the visitor. The priest had arrived.

  The heavy door opened silently. Jane ushered in the monsignor, then went back into the hallway, closing the door behind her. The priest stood across the room, a leather book in his hand.

  “Thank you for coming,” Victor said.

  The priest smiled. He touched the leather cover of the book. “Conquest with Mercy. In the Name of God. The history of the Fontini-Cristis. I thought you might like this, Mr. Fontine. I found it in a bookshop in Rome years ago.”

  The monsignor placed the book on the bedside table. They shook hands; each, Victor realized, was appraising the other.

  Land was no more than fifty. He was of medium height, broad in the chest and shoulders. His features were sharp, Anglican; his eyes hazel beneath generous eyebrows that were darker than his short, graying hair. It was a pleasant face with intelligent eyes.

  “A vanity publication, I’m afraid. A custom of dubious value at the turn of the century. It’s long been out of print. The language is Italian—”

  “An obsolete northern idiom,” completed Land. “Court Victorian would be the English equivalent, I think. Somewhere between ‘you’ and ‘thee.’ ”

  “You have the advantage over me. My knowledge of languages is not nearly so erudite.”

  “It was sufficient for Loch Torridon,” said the priest.

  “Yes, it was. Please sit down, Monsignor Land.” Victor gestured to the chair by the bed. The priest sat. The two men looked at each other. Fontine spoke.

  “Several months ago you came to my hospital room. Why?”

  “I wanted to meet the man whose life I had studied so thoroughly. Shall I speak frankly?”

  “You wouldn’t have come here this morning if you meant to do otherwise.”

  “I was told you might die. I was presumptuous enough to hope you’d allow me to administer last rites.”

  “That is frank. And was presumptuous.”

  “I realized that. It’s why I never returned. You’re a courteous man, Mr. Fontine, but you couldn’t conceal your feelings.”

  Victor examined the priest’s face. There was the same sorrow he had remembered in the hospital. “Why did you study my life? Does the Vatican still investigate? Wasn’t Donatti’s cause rejected?”

  “The Vatican is always engaged in study. In examination. It doesn’t stop. And Donatti was more than rejected. He was excommunicated, his remains refused the sanctity of Catholic burial.”

  “You answer my last two questions. Not the first. Why you?”

  The monsignor crossed his legs, clasping his hands in front of him on his knees, his fingers entwined. “I’m a political and social historian. Which is another way of saying that I look for incompatible relationships between the church and its environs at given periods of time.” Land smiled, his eyes reflective. “The original reason for such work was to prove the virtue of the church and the error of any who opposed her. But virtue wasn’t always found. And it certainly wasn’t found in the countless lapses of judgment, or morality, as they were exposed.” Land’s smile had gone; his admission was clear.

  “The execution of the Fontini-Cristis was a lapse? Of judgment? Morality?”

  “Please.” The priest spoke swiftly, his voice soft but emphatic. “You and I both know what it was. An act of murder. Impossible to sanction and unforgivable.”

  Victor saw once again the sorrow in the man’s eyes. “I accept what you say. I don’t understand it, but I accept it. So I became an object of your social and political examinations?”

  “Among many other questions of the time. I’m sure you’re aware of them. Although there was a great deal of good during those years, there was much that was unforgivable. You and your family were obviously in this category.”

  “You became interested in me?”

  “You became my obsession.” Land smiled again, awkwardly. “Remember, I’m American. I was studying in Rome, and the name Victor Fontine was well known to me. I had read of your work in postwar Europe; the newspapers were filled with it. I was aware of your influence in both the public and the private sectors. You can imagine my astonishment when, in studying the period, I found that Vittorio Fontini-Cristi and Victor Fontine were the same person.”

  “Was there a great deal of information in your Vatican files?”

  “About the Fontini-Cristis, yes.” Land gestured his head toward the leather-bound volume he had placed on the bedside table. “As that book, somewhat biased, I’m afraid. Hardly as flattering, naturally. But of you, there was substantively nothing. Your existence was acknowledged: the first male child of Sav
arone, now an American citizen known as Victor Fontine. Nothing more. The files ended abruptly with the information that the remaining Fontini-Cristis had been executed by the Germans. It was an incomplete ending. Even the date was missing.”

  “The less written down, the better.”

  “Yes. So I studied the records of the court of Reparations. They were far more complete. What began as curiosity turned into shock. You made accusations to the tribunal of judges. Accusations I found unbelievable, intolerable, for you included the church. And you named a man of the Curia, Guillamo Donatti. That was the link that was missing. It was all I needed.”

  “Are you telling me Donatti’s name was nowhere in the files of the Fontini-Cristis?”

  “It is now. It wasn’t then. It was as if the archivists couldn’t bring themselves to acknowledge the connection. Donatti’s papers had been sealed, as usual with excommunicants. After his death, they had been found in possession of an aide—”

  “Father Enrici Gaetamo. Defrocked,” interrupted Fontine softly.

  Land paused. “Yes. Gaetamo. I received permission to break the seals. I read the paranoid ramblings of a madman, a self-canonized fanatic.” Again the monsignor stopped briefly, his eyes wandering. “What I found there took me to England. To a man named Teague. I met with him only once, at his country house. It was raining and he repeatedly got up to stoke the fire. I never saw a man finger a watch so. Yet he was retired and had no place to go.”

  Victor smiled. “It was an annoying habit, that watch. I told him so many times.”

  “Yes, you were good friends, I learned that quickly. He was in awe of you, you know.”

  “In awe of me? Alec? I can’t believe that. He was far too direct.”

  “He said he never admitted it to you, but he was. He said he felt inadequate around you.”

  “He didn’t convey it.”

  “He said a great deal more, too. Everything. The execution at Campo di Fiori, the escape through Celle Ligure, Loch Torridon, Oxfordshire, your wife, your sons. And Donatti; how he kept the name from you.”

  “He had no choice. The knowledge would have interfered with Loch Torridon.”

  Land unclasped his hands and uncrossed his legs. He seemed to have difficulty finding the words. “It was the first time I had heard of the train from Salonika.”

  Victor raised his eyes abruptly; they had been focused on the priest’s hands. “That’s not logical. You read Donatti’s papers.”

  “And suddenly they were clear. The insane ramblings, the disjointed phrases, the seemingly deranged references to out-of-the-way places and times … suddenly made sense. Even in his most private papers, Donatti wouldn’t spell it out; his fear was too great.… Everything was reduced to that train. And whatever was on it.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “I came to. I would have learned more quickly, but Brevourt refused to see me. He died several months after I tried to reach him.

  “I went to the prison where Gaetamo was held. He spat at me through the wire mesh, clawing his hands over it until they were bleeding. Still, I had the source. Constantine. The Patriarchate. I gained an audience with a priest of the Elders. He was a very old man and he told me. The train from Salonika carried the Filloque denials.”

  “That was all?”

  Monsignor Land smiled. “Theologically speaking, it was enough. To that old man and his counterparts in Rome, the Filioque documents represented triumph and cataclysm.”

  “They don’t represent the same to you?” Victor watched the priest closely, concentrating on the steady hazel eyes.

  “No. The church isnt the church of past centuries, even past generations. Simply put, it couldn’t survive if it were. There are the old men who cling to what they believe is incontrovertible … in most cases it’s all they have left; there’s no need to strip them of their convictions. Time mandates change gracefully; nothing is as it was. With each year—as the old guard leaves us—the church moves more swiftly into the realm of social responsibility. It has the power to effect extraordinary good, the wherewithal—spiritually and pragmatically—to alleviate enormous suffering. I speak with a certain expertise, for I am part of this movement. We’re in every diocese over the globe. It’s our future. We are with the world now.”

  Fontine looked away. The priest had finished; he had described a force for good in a sadly lacking world. Victor turned back to Land.

  “You don’t know precisely, then, what is in those documents from Salonika.”

  “What does it matter? At the worst, theological debate. Doctrinal equivocation. A man existed and his name was Jesus of Nazareth … or the Essenian Archangel of Light … and he spoke from the heart. His words have come down to us, historically authenticated by the Aramaics and Biblical scholars, Christian and non-Christian alike. What difference does it really make whether he is called carpenter, or prophet, or son of God? What matters is that he spoke the truth as he saw it, as it was revealed to him. His sincerity, if you will, is the only issue, and on that there is no debate.”

  Fontine caught his breath. His mind raced back to Campo di Fiori, to an old monk of Xenope who spoke of a parchment taken out of a Roman prison.

  … what is contained in that parchment is beyond anything in your imagination … it must be found … destroyed … for nothing has changed yet all is changed.…

  Destroyed.

  … what matters is that he spoke the truth as he saw it, as it was revealed to him.… His sincerity is the only issue, and on that there is no debate.…

  Or was there?

  Was this scholar-priest, this good man beside him, prepared to face what had to be faced? Was it remotely fair to ask him to do so?

  For nothing has changed, yet all is changed.

  Whatever those contradictory words meant, it would take exceptional men to know what to do. He would prepare a list for his sons.

  The priest named Land was a candidate.

  The four massive overhead blades slowed to a stop, sending metallic thuds throughout the aircraft. An airman opened the hatch and sprang the lever that swung the short flight of steps out from the undercarriage. Maj. Andrew Fontine emerged into the morning sunlight and climbed down the metal stairs onto the helicopter pad at Air Force Base Cobra in Phan-thiet.

  His paper authorized priority transportation and access to the restricted warehouses down at the waterfront. He would commandeer a jeep from the officers’ pool and head directly to the piers. And to a file cabinet in Warehouse Four. The Eye Corps records were there; and they would stay there, the safest place in Southeast Asia, once he saw for himself that nothing was disturbed. He had two more stops to make after the warehouse: north to Da-nang, then south again, past Saigon into the Delta. To Can-tho.

  Captain Jerome Barstow was in Can-tho. Marty Greene was right; it was Barstow who had betrayed Eye Corps. The others agreed; his behavior was that of a man who had broken. He had been seen in Saigon with a legal officer named Tarkington. It wasn’t difficult to understand what had happened: Barstow was preparing a defense, and if that was so, a defense meant he would testify. Barstow did not know where the Eye Corps records were, but he had seen them. Seen them, hell! He’d prepared twenty or thirty himself. Barstow’s testimony could finish Eye Corps. They could not allow that.

  The legal officer named Tarkington was in Da-nang. He didn’t know it but he was going to meet another man from Eye Corps. It would be the last person he met. In an alley, with a knife in his stomach, and whiskey on his shirt and in his mouth.

  And then Andrew would fly to the Delta. To the betrayer named Barstow. Barstow would be shot by a whore; they were easy to buy.

  He walked across the hot concrete toward the transit building. A lieutenant colonel was waiting for him. At first Andrew was alarmed; had something gone wrong? The five days weren’t up! Then he saw that the colonel was smiling, somewhat patronizingly, but nevertheless in friendship.

  “Major Fontine?” The greeting was accompanied by an e
xtension of the hand; no salute was expected.

  “Yes, sir?” The handshake was brief.

  “Washington cable, straight from the secretary of the army. You have to get home, major. As soon as possible. I’m sorry to be the one to tell you, but it concerns your father.”

  “My father? Is he dead?”

  “It’s only a matter of time. You have priority clearance for any aircraft leaving Tan Son Nhut.” The colonel handed him a red-bordered envelope with the imprimatur of General Headquarters, Saigon, across the top. It was the sort of envelope reserved for White House liaisons and couriers from the Joint Chiefs.

  “My father’s been a sick man for many years,” said Fontine slowly. “This isn’t unexpected. I have another day’s work here. I’ll be at Tan San Nhut tomorrow night.”

  “Whatever you say. The main thing is we found you. You’ve got the message.”

  “I’ve got the message,” said Andrew.

  In the phone booth, Adrian listened to the weary voice of the police sergeant. The sergeant was lying; more credible still, someone had lied to him. The pathology report on Nevins, James, Black male, victim of hit-and-run, showed no apparent evidence of cranial, neck, or upper thorax injuries unrelated to the impact of collision.

  “Send the report and the X-rays to me,” said Adrian curtly. “You’ve got my address.”

  “There were no X-rays accompanying the pathology report,” replied the police officer mechanically.

  “Get them,” said Adrian, hanging up the phone.

  Lies. Everywhere lies and evasions.

  His was the biggest lie of all; he lied to himself, and accepted that lie and used it to convince others. He had stood up in front of a group of very frightened young lawyers from the Justice Department and told them that under the circumstances, the subpoena on Eye Corps should be delayed. They needed to regroup their evidence, obtain a second deposition; to go to the adjutant general with only a list of names was meaningless.

  It wasn’t meaningless! The moment was right to confront the military and demand an immediate investigation. A man was murdered; the evidence he carried with him removed from the scene of his death. That evidence was the indictment of Eye Corps! Here are the names! This is the gist of the deposition!