The Gemini Contenders: A Novel Read online

  “No, captain. We did not expect that.”

  “A small vicarage in Scotland. A church of England ceremony. Not exactly what one would have thought.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’ve worked the Italian sectors, general. The Catholic influence is most pervasive.”

  “Fontine’s not a religious man. What in hell are you driving at?”

  “Just that. Everything’s a question of degree, isn’t it? One never is just this or just that. Especially a man who has wielded such power. I went back to his file; we’ve photostats of every damned thing we could lay our hands on. Including his marriage application and certificate. Under the heading of ‘denomination’ he inserted one word: ‘Christian.’ ”

  “Get to the point.”

  “I’m doing so. One thing always leads to another. An immensely wealthy, powerful family in a Catholic country, and the surviving son purposely denies any association with its church.”

  Teague narrowed his eyes. “Go on, captain.”

  “He was denying. Perhaps unconsciously, we don’t know. ‘Christian’ is not a denomination. We were looking for the wrong Italians, pulling out the wrong files.” Stone raised the envelope with his left hand, unwound the small string and opened the flap. He took out a newspaper clipping, a cropped photograph of a bareheaded man with a shock of white in his dark hair. The bareheaded man wore the black robes of the church; the picture was taken at the altar of St. Peter’s. The man was kneeling, facing the cross. Above him was a pair of outstretched hands. They were holding the three-cornered hat of a cardinal.

  “My God!” Teague looked up at Stone.

  “The Vatican files. We keep records of all ecclesiastical elevations.”

  “But this—”

  “Yes, sir. The subject’s name is Guillamo Donatti. He’s one of the most powerful cardinals in the Curia.”

  10

  MONTBÉLIARD

  The aircraft began its ninety-degree turn. They were at 3,000 feet, the night clear, the wind stream rushing past the open hatch with such force Fontine thought he would be sucked out before the red light above him was extinguished, replaced by the sudden glare of the white bulb that was his signal to leap. He gripped the handles at the sides of the hatch, bracing himself; his thick boots were pressed against the steel deck of the Haviland bomber; he waited to jump.

  He thought of Jane. At first, she’d objected strenuously to her confinement. She had earned her position at the Air Ministry, weeks and months of “just plain damned hard work,” were now taken away in a matter of hours. And then she abruptly stopped, seeing, he was sure, the pain in his eyes. She wanted him back. If isolation in the countryside would help his return, she would go.

  He thought, too, of Teague; partially of what he said, mostly of what he did not say. MI6 had a line on the German executioner, the man-monster with the streak of white in his hair who had coldly observed the horror of Campo di Fiori. The service assumed him to be a ranking member of the Geheimdienst Korps, Himmler’s secret police, a man who stayed far in the background, never expecting to be identified. Someone who had been stationed at the German consulate in Athens, perhaps.

  “Assumed.” “Perhaps.” Words of equivocation. Teague was concealing information. For all his experience, the Intelligence man could not hide his omissions. Nor was he entirely convincing when he subtly introduced a subject that had little to do with anything:

  “—it’s standard procedure, Fontine. When a man goes on assignment we list his religious affiliation. Just like a birth certificate or a passport—”

  No, he had no formal affiliation. No, he was not Catholic, nor was that extraordinary; there were non-Catholics in Italy. Yes, Fontini-Cristi was a derivative combination that was translated as the “fountains of Christ”; yes, the family for centuries had been allied with the church, but a number of decades ago had broken with the Vatican. But, no, he did not place undue emphasis on the break; he rarely thought about it.

  What was Teague after?

  The red light went off. Victor bent his knees as he had learned to do, and held his breath.

  The white bulb flashed. The tap came—sharp, assured, solid. Fontine whipped his hands into reverse grips on the latch handles, leaned back, and propelled himself through the open hatch into the furious slipstream of the aircraft. He was buffeted away from the huge fuselage, the force of the wind crashing into his body with the sudden velocity and weight of a giant wave.

  He was in free fall. He forced his legs into a V, feeling the harness of his chute cutting into his thighs. He thrust his arms forward and diagonally out at his side. The spread-eagle configuration did what it was supposed to do: It stabilized his fall through the sky, just enough for Victor to concentrate on the dark earth below.

  He saw them! Two tiny flares to his left.

  He pulled his right hand in against the rushing air and tugged at a small ring beside the parachute release. There was a momentary flash above him, like an instantly fading spit of a Roman candle. It would be enough for those on the ground to get a sighting. The moment fell back into darkness; he yanked the rubber handle of the parachute release. The billowing folds of cloth shot out of the pack; the massive jolt came, causing him to expunge his breath, his every muscle taut in counterthrust.

  He floated, swinging in quarter circles in the night sky, toward the earth.

  The conferences in Montbéliard went well. It was strange, thought Victor, but in spite of the crude, even primitive surroundings—an abandoned warehouse, a barn, a rock-strewn pasture—the conferences were not unlike smoothly run management meetings, with himself acting as a visiting consultant from the home office. The objective of each conference with the teams of underground leaders who made their covert treks into Lorraine was the same: projected recruitment for the pool of skilled personnel now in exile in England.

  Management personnel were in demand everywhere, for everywhere within the Third Reich’s expanding sphere production facilities were instantly appropriated and geared for maximum output. But there was a major flaw in the German obsession for immediate efficiency: Control remained in Berlin. Requests were processed by the Reichsministerium of Industry and Armaments; orders were cleared and issued hundreds of miles away from the place of origin.

  Orders could be intercepted enroute; requests could be altered at the source, within the ministries; infiltrated at the clerical level.

  Positions could be created; personnel could be replaced. In the chaos that was the Berlin fever for instant, total efficiency, fear was inherent. Orders were rarely questioned.

  Everywhere the bureaucratic environment was ripe for Loch Torridon.

  “You will be taken to the Rhine and put aboard a river barge at Neuf-Brisach,” said the Frenchman, going to the small window in the rooming house overlooking Montbéliard’s rue de Bac. “Your escort will bring the papers. I understand they describe you as river garbage, strong back and small head. A loading stevedore who spends most of his waking hours drunk with very cheap wine.”

  “That should be interesting.”

  THE RHINE

  It wasn’t. It was grueling, physically exhausting, and made almost intolerable by the stench below decks. German patrols prowled the river, stopping vessels continuously, subjecting crews to brutal interrogations. The Rhine was an underground courier route; it took no great perception to know that. And because the river “garbage” deserved no better, the patrols took delight in wielding clubs and rifle stocks when bones and flesh were the objects of impact. Fontine’s cover was successful, if revolting. He drank enough rancid wine and induced sufficient vomit to give his breath the putrid foulness of a confirmed, unkempt alcoholic.

  What kept him from losing his sensibilities altogether was his escort. The man’s name was Lübok, and Victor knew that whatever risks he was taking, Lübok’s were far greater.

  Lübok was a Jew and a homosexual. He was a blond-haired, blue-eyed, middle-aged ballet master whose Czechoslovakian parents had
emigrated to Berlin thirty years ago. Fluent in the Slovak languages, as well as German, he held papers identifying him as a translator for the Wehrmacht. Along with the papers were several letters on High Command stationery that proclaimed Lübok’s loyalty to the Reich.

  The papers and the letterheads were genuine, the loyalty false. Lübok operated as an underground courier across the Czechoslovakian and Polish borders. At such times he wore his homosexual inclinations outrageously on his sleeve; it was common knowledge that such circles existed in the Officer Korps. Checkpoints never knew who was favored by powerful men who preferred to bed with other men. And the middle-aged ballet master was an encyclopedia of truths, half-truths and gossip as they pertained to the sexual practices and aberrations practiced by the German High Command in any given sector or zone he entered. It was his inventory; it was his weapon.

  Lübok had volunteered for the Loch Torridon assignment, to be the MI6 escort out of Montbéliard, through Wiesbaden, east to Prague and north to Warsaw. And as the journey progressed and the days and the miles went by, Fontine was grateful. Lübok was the best. Beneath the well-tailored suits was a powerful man whose acid tongue and withering stare guaranteed a hot but intelligent temper.

  WARSAW, POLAND

  Lübok drove the motorcycle with Victor in the sidecar, dressed in the uniform of a Wehrmacht Oberst attached to Occupation Transport. They sped out of Lódz on the road to Warsaw, reaching the final checkpoint a little before midnight.

  Lübok performed outrageously before the patrols, dropping the names of Kommandanten and Oberführerin in acid rapidity, implying all manner of recriminations if their vehicle was detained. The embarrassed guards were not anxious to test him. The bike was waved through; they entered the city.

  It was chaos. Although it was dark, rubble could be discerned everywhere. Street after street was deserted. Candles shone in windows—most electricity was out. Wires sagged, automobiles and trucks were immobilized—scores overturned, lying like giant steel insects waiting to be impaled on a laboratory table.

  Warsaw was dead. Its armed killers walked in groups, themselves afraid of the corpse.

  “We head for the Casimir,” said Lübok softly. “The underground’s waiting for you. It’s no more than ten streets from here.”

  “What’s the Casimir?”

  “An old palace on the Kraków Boulevard. In the middle of the city. For years it was the university; now the Germans use it for barracks and offices.”

  “We go in there?”

  Lübok smiled in the darkness. “You can put Nazis in universities, but it guarantees no instruction. The maintenance crews for all the buildings and the grounds are podziemna. Underground, to you. At least the beginnings of one.”

  Lübok squeezed the motorcycle between two staff cars on the Kraków Boulevard, halfway down the block, across from the main gate to the Casimir. Except for the guards at the gatehouse, the street was deserted. Only two street-lamps were working, but within the Casimir’s grounds floodlights shot up from the grass, lighting the ornate facades of the buildings.

  Out of the shadows walked a German soldier, an enlisted man. He approached Lübok and spoke quietly in Polish. Lübok nodded; the German continued diagonally across the wide boulevard up toward the Casimir gate.

  “He’s with the podziemna,” said Lübok. “He used the correct codes. He said you should go in first. Ask for Captain Hans Neumann, Block Seven.”

  “Captain Hans Neumann,” repeated Victor. “Block Seven. What then?”

  “He’s tonight’s contact in the Casimir. He’ll take you to the others.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’m to wait ten minutes and follow. I’m to ask for an Oberst Schneider, Block Five.”

  Lübok seemed concerned. Victor understood. Never before had they been separated at their point of contact with the underground leaders. “This is an unusual procedure, isn’t it? You look troubled.”

  “They must have their reasons.”

  “But you don’t know what they are. And that fellow didn’t tell you.”

  “He wouldn’t know. He’s a messenger.”

  “Do you sense a trap?”

  Lübok leveled his gaze at Fontine. He was thinking as he spoke. “No, that’s not really possible. The commandant of this sector has been compromised. On film. I won’t bore you with details, but his proclivity for children has been duly recorded. He’s been shown the results and told negatives exist. He lives in fear, and we live with him.… He’s a Berlin favorite, a close friend of Göring’s. No, it’s not a trap.”

  “But you’re worried.”

  “Needlessly. He had the codes; they’re complicated and very precise. I’ll see you later.”

  Victor got out of the cramped sidecar and started across the boulevard toward the gates of the Casimir. He stood erect, the picture of arrogance, prepared to arrogantly display false papers that would gain him admittance.

  As he walked across the Casimir’s floodlit grounds, he could see German soldiers strolling in pairs and threes down the paths. A year ago these men might have been students and professors, recapping the events of the academic day. Now they were conquerors, peacefully removed from the devastation that was everywhere outside the walls of the Casimir. Death, hunger, and mutilation were within the sound of their commands, yet they talked quietly on clean paths, oblivious to the consequences of their acts.

  Campo di Fiori. There were floodlights at Campo di Fiori. And death with mutilation.

  He forced the images out of his mind; he could not allow his concentration to be weakened. The entranceway with the filigreed arch framing the thick double doors below the number seven was directly ahead. A Wehrmacht guard stood at attention on the single marble step.

  Fontine recognized him: the soldier who had whispered in Polish to Lübok on the Kraków Boulevard.

  “You’re efficient,” said Victor softly in German.

  The guard nodded, reached for the door and opened it. “Be quickly now. Do use the staircase to the left. You will be met on the first landing.”

  Fontine walked rapidly through the door into the huge marble hall, crossed to the stairs, and started up. Halfway to the landing he slowed his pace. A silent alarm went off in his brain.

  The guard’s voice, his use of German. The words were odd, strangely awkward. Be quickly.… Do use the staircase.…

  Watch for the lack of idiom, the excessively grammatical, or conversely, unmatching end syllables. Loch Torridon.

  The guard was not German. Yet why should he be? He was from the podziemna. Yet, again, the podziemna would not take chances.…

  Two German officers appeared on the landing, their pistols drawn and leveled down at him. The man on the right spoke.

  “Welcome to the Casimir, Signor Fontini-Cristi.”

  “Please don’t stop, padrone. We must hurry,” said the second man.

  The language they spoke was Italian, but their speech was not native. Victor recognized the source. The officers above him were no more German than the guard was German. They were Greek. The train from Salonika had reappeared!

  There was the crack of a pistol bolt behind him, followed by rapid footsteps. Within seconds, the barrel was jammed into the small of his back, propelling him farther up the staircase.

  There was no way he could move, no diversion he could employ, to distract his confronters. Weapons covered him, eyes watched his hands, bullets were locked in chambers.

  Above, somewhere in an unfamiliar corridor, he heard laughter. Perhaps if he shouted, raising alarms of an enemy within the enemy camp; the concentric circle of thought was numbing.

  “Who are you?” Words. Begin with words. If he could raise his voice in sequence, natural sequence that would minimize the chance of triggers pulled. “You’re not German!”

  Louder. Now louder.

  “What are you doing here?”

  The barrel of the pistol slid up his back and was jabbed into the base of his skull. The jolt ca
used him to stop. A closed fist punched him in the left kidney; he lurched forward, caught by the silent, staring Greeks in front of him.

  He started to shout; there was no other way. The laughter above was growing louder, nearer. Other men were descending the staircase.

  “I warn you—”

  Suddenly, both his hands were yanked back, his arms bent and locked, the wrists turned inward. A large, coarse cloth was shoved into his face, saturated with acrid, foul-smelling liquid.

  He was blinded; a breathless vacuum was being imposed on him, without light, without air. His tunic was ripped away, the cross strap pulled up from his chest. He tried to lash out his arms.

  As he did so, he could feel the long needle entering his flesh; he was not sure where. Instinctively, he raised his hands in protest. They were free; and they were useless as his resistance was useless.

  He heard the laughter again; it was deafening. He was aware of being propelled forward, and downward.

  But that was all.

  “You betray those who saved your life.”

  He opened his eyes; images came into focus slowly. There was a burning sensation in his left arm, or shoulder. He reached for it; the touch was painful.

  “You feel the antidote,” said the voice of the blurred figure somewhere in front of him. “It raises a welt, but it isn’t harmful.”

  Fontine’s eyes began to clear. He was sitting on a cement floor, his back against a wall of stone. Across from him, perhaps twenty feet away, a man stood in front of an opposite wall. They were on some kind of raised platform in a large tunnel. The tunnel appeared to be deep underground, carved out of rock, both ends disappearing into darkness. On the floor of the tunnel were old, narrow tracks; they were cracked, rusted. Light came from several thick candles inserted in ancient brackets on the walls.