The Gemini Contenders: A Novel

  “Can you do it?”

  “I’ll have enough petrol to return if I cannot. That will will be my decision, not yours. But not one lira will be given back; is that understood?”

  “I don’t care.”

  The pilot turned to the Alitalia clerk, speaking authoritatively, obviously for the benefit of the man who would pay such money for such a flight. “Get me the weather. Zermatt, stations south, heading two-eighty degrees sweep to two-ninety-five out of Milan. I want radar fronts.”

  The Alitalia clerk shrugged and sighed.

  “You’ll be paid,” said Adrian curtly.

  The clerk picked up a red telephone. “Operazioni,” he said officiously.

  The landing at Champoluc was not as hazardous as the pilot wanted Adrian to believe. The field, it was true, was not operational—there was no radio contact, no tower to guide a plane in—but the single strip was outlined, the east and west perimeters marked by red lights.

  Adrian walked across the field toward the only structure with lights on inside. It was a semicircular metal shell, perhaps fifty feet long, twenty-five feet high at its midpoint. It was a hangar for small private aircraft. The door opened, brighter light spilled out on the ground, and a man in overalls was silhouetted in the doorway. He hunched his shoulders, peering out into the darkness; then he stretched, stifling a yawn.

  “Can you speak English?” asked Fontine.

  The man did—reluctantly and poorly, but clearly enough to be understood. And the information Adrian was given was pretty much what he expected. It was four in the morning and there was no place open at all. What pilot was crazy enough to fly into Champoluc at such an hour? Perhaps the polizia should be called.

  Fontine withdrew several large bills from his pocket and held them in the light of the doorway. The watchman’s eyes riveted on the money. Adrian suspected it was over a month’s pay for the angry man.

  “I came a long way to find someone. I’ve done nothing wrong except hire a plane to fly me here from Milan. The police are not interested in me, but I must find the person I’m looking for. I need a car and directions.”

  “You’re no criminal? Flying up at such an hour—”

  “No criminal,” interrupted Adrian, suppressing his impatience, speaking as calmly as he could. “I’m a lawyer. An … avvocato,” he added.

  “Avvocato?” The man’s voice conveyed his respect.

  “I must find the house of Alfredo Goldoni. That’s the name I’ve been given.”

  “The legless one?”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  The automobile was an old Fiat with torn upholstery and cracked side windows. The Goldoni farmhouse was eight to ten miles out of town, according to the watchman, on the west road. The man drew a simple diagram; it was easy to follow.

  A post-and-rail fence could be seen in the glare of the headlights, the outlines of a house farther in the distance. And there was a dim wash of light coming from the house, shining through windows, dimly illuminating cascading branches of pine trees that fronted the old building near the road. Adrian removed his foot from the Fiat’s accelerator, wondering whether he should stop and walk the rest of the way on foot. Lights on in a farmhouse at a quarter to five in the morning was not what he expected.

  He saw the telephone poles. Had the night watchman at the airport called Goldoni and told him to expect a visitor? Or did farmers in Champoluc normally rise at such an early hour?

  He decided against approaching on foot. If the watchman had telephoned, or the Goldonis were starting their day, an automobile was not the alarming intruder a man alone, walking quietly in the night, would be.

  Adrian turned into a wide dirt path between the tall pines; there was no other entrance for a car. He pulled up parallel to the house; the dirt drive extended far back into the property, ending at a barn. Farm equipment could be seen through the open barn doors in the wash of the headlights. He got out of the car, passed the lighted front windows covered by curtains, and walked to the front door. It was a farmhouse door—wide and thick, the upper section a panel by itself, separated from the lower to let in the summer breezes and keep the animals out. There was a heavy, pitted brass knocker in the center. He used it.

  He waited. There was no response, no sounds of movement within.

  He rapped again, louder, with longer spaces between the sharp metallic reports.

  There was a sound from behind the door. Indistinct, brief. A rustle of cloth or paper; a hand scratching on fabric? What?

  “Please,” he called out courteously. “My name’s Fontine. You knew my father, and his father. From Milan. From Campo di Fiori. Please let me speak to you! I mean no harm.”

  Only silence now. Nothing.

  He stepped back onto the grass and walked to the lighted windows. He put his face against the glass and tried to see through the white sheer curtains beyond. They were in opaque folds. The blurred images inside were further distorted by the thick glass of the Alpine window.

  Then he saw it, and for a moment—as his eyes adjusted to the blurred distortion—he thought he had lost his mind for the second time that night.

  At the far left side of the room was the figure of a legless man writhing in short, spastic twitches across the floor. The deformed body was large from the waist up, dressed in some kind of shirt that ended at the huge stumps, what remained of the legs hidden in the cloth of white under-shorts.

  The legless one.

  Alfredo Goldoni. Adrian watched now as Goldoni maneuvered himself into a dark corner at the far wall. He carried something in his arms, clutching it as though it were a lifeline in a heavy sea. It was a rifle, a large-barreled rifle. Why?

  “Goldoni! Please!” Fontine cried out at the window. “I just want to talk to you. If the watchman called you, he must have told you that.”

  The report was thunderous; glass shattered in all directions, fragments penetrating Adrian’s raincoat and jacket. At the last instant he had seen the black barrel raised and had lurched to the side, covering his face. Thick, jagged points of glass were like a hundred pieces of ice across his arm. But for the heavy sweater he had bought in Milan, he would have been a mass of blood. As it was, his arms and neck were bleeding slightly.

  Above, through the billows of smoke and the shattered glass of the window, he could hear the metallic snap of the rifle; Goldoni had reloaded. He sat up, his back against the stone foundation of the house. He felt along his left arm and removed as much of the glass as he could. He could feel the rivulets of blood on his neck.

  He sat there, breathing heavily, ministering to himself, then called out again. Goldoni could not possibly negotiate the space between the dark corner and the window. They were two prisoners, one intent on killing the other, held at bay by an invisible, unclimbable wall.

  “Listen to me! I don’t know what you’ve been told, but it’s not true! I’m not your enemy!”

  “Animale!” roared Goldoni from within. “I’ll see you dead!”

  “For God’s sake, why? I don’t want to harm you!”

  “You are Fontini-Cristi! You are a killer of women! An abductor of children! Maligno! Animale!”

  He was too late. Oh, Jesus! He was too late! The killer had reached Champoluc before him.

  But the killer was still loose. There was a chance.

  “One last time, Goldoni,” he said, without shouting now. “I’m a Fontini-Cristi, but I’m not the man you want dead. I’m not a killer of women and I’ve abducted no children. I know the man you’re talking about and he’s not me. That’s as clear and as simple as I can put it. Now, I’m going to stand up in front of this window. I haven’t got any gun—I’ve never owned one. If you don’t believe me, I guess you’ll have to shoot. I haven’t got time to argue any longer. And I don’t think you do, either. Any of you.”

  Adrian pressed his bleeding hand on the ground and rose unsteadily. He walked slowly in front of the shattered glass of the window.

  Alfredo Goldoni called out q
uietly, “Walk in with your arms in front of you. There’s no way you’ll live if you hesitate or break your step.”

  Fontine came out of the shadows of the darkened back room. The legless man had directed him to a window through which he could enter; the cripple would not risk the manipulations required of him to open the front door. As Adrian emerged from the darkness, Goldoni cocked the hammer of the rifle, prepared to fire. He spoke in a whisper.

  “You’re the man and, yet, you are not the man.”

  “He’s my brother,” said Adrian softly. “And I have to stop him.”

  Goldoni stared at him in silence. Finally, his eyes still concentrated on Fontine’s face, he uncocked the rifle and lowered it beside him in the corner.

  “Help me into my chair,” he said.

  Adrian sat in front of the legless man, bare to the waist, his back within the reach of Goldoni’s hands. The Italian-Swiss had removed the fragments of glass, applying an alcohol solution that stung but did its work; the bleeding stopped.

  “In the mountains blood is precious. Our countrymen in the north call this fluid leimen. It’s better than the powder. I doubt the medical doctors approve, but it does the trick. Put on your shirt.”

  “Thank you.” Fontine rose and did as he was told. They had spoken only briefly of things that had to be said. With an Alpiner’s practicality, Goldoni had ordered Adrian to remove his clothes where the glass had penetrated. A wounded man, uncared for, was of little good to anyone. His role of rural physician, however, did not lessen his anger or his agony.

  “He’s a man from hell,” said the cripple as Fontine buttoned his shirt.

  “He’s sick, though I realize that’s no help for you. He’s looking for something. A vault, hidden somewhere in the mountains. It was carried there years ago, before the war, by my grandfather.”

  “We know. We’ve known someone would come someday. But that’s all we know. We don’t know where in the mountains.”

  Adrian didn’t believe the legless man and yet he could not be sure. “You said killer of women. Who?”

  “My wife. She’s gone.”

  “Gone? How do you know she’s dead?”

  “He lied. He said she ran away down the road. That he took chase and caught her and keeps her hidden in the village.”

  “It’s possible.”

  “It is not. I can’t walk, signore. My wife can’t run. She has the swollen veins in her legs. She wears thick shoes to get around this house. Those shoes are in front of your eyes.”

  Adrian looked down where Goldoni gestured. A pair of heavy, ugly shoes were placed neatly at the side of a chair.

  “People do things they don’t think they can do—”

  “There’s blood on the floor,” interrupted Goldoni, his voice trembling, pointing to an open doorway. “There were no wounds on the man who calls himself a soldier. Go! Look for yourself.”

  Fontine walked to the open door and went inside the small room. A glass bookcase was smashed, sharp fragments everywhere. He reached inside and removed a volume behind one of the shattered panels. He opened it. In clear handscript were pages detailing successive climbs into the mountains. The dates extended back beyond 1920. And there was blood on the floor by the door.

  He was too late.

  He walked swiftly back into the front room.

  “Tell me everything. As quickly as you can. Everything.”

  The soldier had been thorough. He had immobilized his enemy, rendered them helpless through fear and panic. The major from Eye Corps had mounted his own invasion of the Capomonti inn. He had done so swiftly, without a wasted move, finding Lefrac and the members of the Capomonti and Goldoni families in an upstairs room where they were holding their hastily summoned conference.

  The door of the room had crashed open, a terrified desk clerk propelled through it so harshly he fell to the floor. The soldier entered quickly, closing the door before any in the room knew what was happening, and held them all rigid at the point of a gun.

  The soldier then issued his demands. First, the old ledger describing a journey into the mountains over fifty years ago. And maps. Minutely detailed maps used by climbers in the Champoluc district. Second, the services of either Lefrac’s son or eighteen-year-old grandson to lead him into the hills. Third, the granddaughter as a second hostage. The child’s father had lost his head and lunged at the man with the gun; but the soldier was expert and the father subdued without a shot.

  Old Lefrac was ordered to open the door and call for a housemaid. Proper clothing was brought to the room and the children dressed under gunpoint. It was then that the man-from-hell told Goldoni his wife was a prisoner. He was to return to his house and remain there alone, sending his driver—his nephew—away. If he stopped to reach the police, he would never see his wife again.

  “Why?” asked Adrian quickly. “Why did he do that? Why did he want you back here alone?”

  “He separates us. My sister returns with my nephew to her house on the Via Sestina; Lefrac and his son remain at the inn. Together we might make each other bold. Apart we’re frightened, helpless. A gun against a child’s head is not easily forgotten. He knows that alone we’ll do nothing but wait.”

  Adrian closed his eyes. “God,” he said.

  “The soldier’s an expert, that one.” Goldoni’s voice was low, the hatred seething.

  Fontine glanced at him. I have run with the pack—in the middle of the pack—but now I have reached the edges and I will peel away.

  “Why did you shoot at me? If you thought it was him, how could you take the chance? Not knowing what he did.”

  “I saw your face against the glass. I wanted to blind you, not to kill you. A dead man can’t tell me where he’s taken my wife. Or the body of my wife. Or the children. I’m a good shot; I fired inches above your head.”

  Fontine crossed to the chair where he had thrown his jacket and took out the Xeroxed pages of his father’s recollections of fifty years ago. “You must have read that journal. Can you remember what was written?”

  “You can’t go after him. He’ll kill.”

  “Can you remember?”

  “It was a two-day climb with many crossing trails! He could be anywhere. He narrows down the place he seeks. He travels blindly. If he saw you, he’d kill the children.”

  “He won’t see me. Not if I get there first! Not if I wait for him!” Adrian unfolded the Xeroxed pages.

  “They’ve been read to me. There’s nothing that can help you.”

  “There has to be! It’s here!”

  “You’re wrong,” said Goldoni, and Adrian knew he was not lying. “I tried to tell him that, but he wouldn’t listen. Your grandfather made his arrangements, but the padrone did not consider unexpected death, or human failing.”

  Fontine looked up from the pages. Helplessness was in the old man’s eyes. A killer was in the mountains and he was helpless. Death would surely follow death, for surely his wife was gone.

  “What were these arrangements?” asked Adrian softly.

  “I’ll tell you. You’re not your brother. We’ve kept the secret for thirty-five years, Lefrac, the Capomontis, and ourselves. And one other—not one of us—whose death came suddenly, before he made his own arrangements.”

  “Who was that?”

  “A merchant named Leinkraus. We didn’t know him well.”

  “Tell me.”

  “We’ve waited all these years for a Fontini-Cristi to come.” So the legless man began:—

  The man they—the Goldonis, Lefrac, and the Capomontis—expected would come quietly, in peace, seeking the iron crate buried high in the mountains. This man would speak of the journey taken so many years ago by father and son, and he would know that journey was recorded in the Goldoni ledgers—as all who employed the Goldoni guides would know. And because that climb lasted for two days over considerable terrain, the man would specify an abandoned railroad clearing known as Sciocchezza di Cacciatori—Hunter’s Folly. The clearing had been left
to nature over forty years ago, long before the iron crate had been buried, but it had existed when father and son journeyed to Champoluc in the summer of 1920.

  “I thought those clearings were given—”

  “The names of birds?”

  “Yes.”

  “Most were, not all. The soldier asked if there was a clearing known by the name of the hawk. There are no hawks in the mountains of Champoluc.”

  “The painting on the wall,” said Adrian, more to himself than for the benefit of the Alpiner.

  “What?”

  “My father remembered a painting on a wall in Campo di Fiori, a painting of a hunt. He thought it might be significant.”

  “The soldier did not speak of it. Nor did he speak of why he sought the information; only that he had to have it. He wouldn’t mention the search to me. Or the ledgers. Or the reason why the railroad clearing was important. He was secretive. And, clearly, he did not come in peace. A soldier who threatens a legless man is a hollow commander. I didn’t trust him.”

  Everything his brother had done was contrary to the memory of the Fontini-Cristis as these people remembered them. It might have been so simple had he been open with them, had he come in peace; but the soldier couldn’t do that. He was always at war.

  “Then the area around this abandoned clearing—Hunter’s Folly—is where the vault is buried?”

  “Presumably. There are several old trails to the east that lead away from the tracks, up to the higher ridges. But which trail, which ridge? We do not know.”

  “The records would describe it.”

  “If one knew where to look. The soldier doesn’t.”

  Adrian thought. His brother had traveled across the world, eluding the Intelligence network of the most powerful nation on earth. “You may be underestimating him.”

  “He’s not one of us. He’s not a man of the mountains.”

  “No,” mused Fontine quietly. “He’s something else. What would he look for? That’s what we have to think about.”

  “An inaccessible place. Away from the trails. Ground that would not be traveled easily for any of several reasons. There are many such areas. The mountains are filled with them.”