The Gemini Contenders: A Novel Read online

  MARCH 20, 1941 BERLIN, GERMANY

  (Extracted minutes of the meeting between accounts stabilizers of the Finanzministerium and the officials of Reichsordnung. File removed—duplicate.)

  … The substance of Ordnance’s unending difficulties are to be found with the Finanzministerium’s consistent errors in funds allocations. Accounts go unsettled for months, payrolls are miscalculated, monies are transferred to wrong dispersal depots—often to wrong geographical sectors! Whole battalions have gone without pay because the funds were somewhere in Yugoslavia when they should have been in Amsterdam!…

  JUNE 23, 1941 BREST-LITOVSK, RUSSIAN FRONT

  (Courier dispatch from General Guderian to his commander, General Bock, Hdqtrs: Pripet, Poland. Intercept: Bialystok. Not delivered.)

  … In two days of the offensive we are within forty-eight hours of Minsk. The Dnieper will be crossed in a matter of weeks, the Don and Moscow not far beyond! The speed of our assault requires instant communications—in the main—radio communications, but there are increasing difficulties with our radio equipment. Specifically in what the engineers tell me is frequency calibration. More than half our divisional equipment is set in differing graduations. Unless extreme caution is taken, communications are sent out on unintended frequencies, often enemy frequencies. It is a factory problem. Our concern is that it is impossible to determine which equipment has malfunctioning calibrations. I, myself, initiated a communication to Kleist on Rundstedt’s south flank and reached our forces in eastern Lithuania.…

  FEBRUARY 2, 1942 BERLIN, GERMANY

  (Removed from correspondence file of Manfried Probst, Official, Reichsindustrie from Hiru Kayanaka, attaché, Japanese Embassy, Berlin.)

  Dear Reichsoffiziell Probst:

  Since we are now comrades in battle as well as spirit we must attempt to strive further for the perfection expected of us by our leaders.

  To the subject at hand, my dear Reichsoffiziell. As you know, our respective governments have entered into joint radar development experiments.

  We flew—at great risk—our foremost electronic scientists to Berlin to enter conferences with your people. That was six weeks ago and to date there have been no conferences whatsoever. I am now informed that our foremost scientists were flown to Greifswald on the Baltic Sea by error. They are not concerned with the rocket experiments, but with radar, my dear Reichsoffiziell. Unfortunately, none speak your language and the interpreters you assigned are less than fluent in ours.

  Word reached my desk an hour ago that our foremost scientists are now on their way to Würzburg, where there are radio transmitters. My dear Reichsoffiziell, we do not know where Würzburg is. And our foremost scientists are not concerned with radio transmitters, but with radar!

  Can you please locate our foremost scientists? When are the radar conferences? Our foremost scientists are traveling all over Germany for what purpose? …

  MAY 25, 1942 ST. VALERY-EN-CAUX, FRANCE

  (Report filed by Captain Victor Fontine, who was dropped behind lines in the Héricourt district. Returned by trawler, Isle of Wight.)

  … The armaments shipments along the coastal regions are primarily offensive in nature, with little thought at this point given to defensive weapons. The shipments are routed from Essen, through Düsseldorf, across the border to Roubaix and then to the French coast. The key is fuel. We have placed our people in the petrol depots. They are receiving continuous “instructions” from the Reichsministerium of Industry to divert shipments of fuel immediately out of Brussels to Rotterdam, where rails will begin the journey to the Russian front. At last report, there were fourteen miles of standard armaments vehicles choking the roads between Louvain and Brussels, their tanks empty. And, of course, no reprisals. We estimate that the ploy will be operable for another four days, at which point Berlin will be forced to move in and our people will move out. Coordinate air strikes at this time.…

  (Note: Loch Torridon Command. For record. Cleared, Brigadier General Teague. Captain Victor Fontine granted leave upon return from Wight. Recommendation for majority approved—)

  Fontine sped out of London on the Hempstead road toward Oxfordshire. He thought the debriefing session with Teague and Stone would never end! God! The repetitions! His coadministrator, Stone, was always furious when he returned from one of his trips behind the German lines. It was work Stone had been trained to do, but now was impossible for him. His shattered hand ruled out such incursions and he spent his rage on Victor. He would subject Fontine to rapid, harsh, repetitive interrogation, looking for errors in every phase of a mission. What charity Victor once felt for the cryptographer had disappeared over the months. Months? Mother of Christ, it was nearly two and a half years!

  But tonight Stone’s delaying tactics were unforgivable. The Luftwaffe strikes over England had lessened, but they had not disappeared. Should the air raid sirens begin, it might be impossible for him to drive out of London.

  And Jane was nearly due. The doctors had said it was a matter of a fortnight. That was a week ago, when he had flown out of Lakenheath to France and dropped into the grazing fields of Héricourt.

  He reached the outskirts of Aylesbury and looked at his watch, holding it under the dim light of the dashboard. It was twenty minutes past two in the morning. They would both laugh at that; he was always coming back to her at ridiculous hours.

  But he was coming back. He’d be at the compound in ten minutes.

  Behind him, in the distance, he could hear the wail of the sirens rising and falling in plaintive fugues. There was not the jolting, breath-catching anxiety that used to accompany the terrible sound. The sound itself had taken on a weariness; repetition had dulled its terror.

  He swung the wheel of the automobile to the right; he was now on the back road that led to the Oxfordshire estate. Another two or three miles and he’d be with his wife. His foot pressed down on the accelerator. There were no cars on the road; he could speed.

  Instinctively, his ears listened for the distant rumbling of the bombing. But there was no faraway thunder, only the incessant whines of the sirens. Suddenly, there were sounds intruding where no sounds should be; he caught his breath, realizing instantly the return of forgotten anxiety. He wondered for a moment whether his exhaustion was causing tricks to be played.…

  It was no trick! No trick at all! The sounds were overhead and unmistakable. He’d heard them too often, both over London and across the Channel in scores of different, covert locations.

  Heinkel aircraft. Twin-engine, German, long-range bombers. They’d passed London. And if London was bypassed, it was a good bet that Heinkels would take a northwest heading toward the Birmingham district and the munitions factories.

  My God! The aircraft were losing altitude. They were pitching down in rapid descent.

  Directly above him!

  In front of him!

  A bombing run! An airstrike in the countryside of Oxfordshire! What in God’s name? …

  Jesus! Oh, Jesus Christ!

  The compound!

  The one place in England without parallel in security. From the ground, but not from the skies!

  A low-altitude air strike had been called against the compound!

  Fortine held the accelerator to the floor, his body trembling, his breath coming in short, spurting expulsions, his eyes riveted to the onrushing road.

  The skies exploded. The screams of diving aircraft mingled with the manmade thunder: detonation after detonation. Immense flashes of white and yellow—jagged, shapeless, horrible—filled the open spaces above and between the woods of Oxfordshire.

  He reached the compound’s gate, tires screeching as he braked the car into a turn. The iron gates were open.

  Evacuation.

  He stabbed the pedal to the floor and sped into the long straight drive. Beyond, fires were everywhere, explosions everywhere, people running in panic—everywhere.

  The main house had taken a direct hit. The entire left front wall was blown out; the
roof was collapsing in weirdly shapeless splendor, bricks and stone cascading to the ground. Smoke spread in vertical swirls of black and gray—fires beyond, spurting upward, jagged, yellow, terrifying.

  A deafening crash; the car lurched, the ground swelled, the windows shattered, hurling fragments of glass—everywhere. Fontine felt blood streaking down his face, but he could see and that was all that mattered.

  The bomb had struck less than fifty yards to his right. In the light of the fires he could see the ripped-out earth of the lawn. He swung the car to the right, skirting the crater, cutting across the grass toward the dirt road that led to their cottage. Bombs did not strike twice in the same zero target, he thought.

  The road was blocked; trees had fallen, fires consuming them—everywhere.

  He lurched out of the car and raced between the flaming barriers. He saw their cottage. A huge oak had been blown out of the ground, its massive trunk crashed into the pipe-tiled roof.

  “Jane! Jane!

  God of hatred, do not do this to me! Do not do this to me again!

  He smashed through the door, sending it hurtling off its hinges. Inside was total wreckage; tables, lamps, chairs were scattered, overturned, broken into a thousand fragments. Fires were burning—on the couch, in the open roof where the oak had crashed.

  “Jane!”

  “Here.…”

  Her voice came from the kitchen. He raced through the narrow doorway and felt for an instant that he should fall to his knees in supplication. Jane stood gripping the edge of the counter, her back to him, her body shaking, her head nodding up and down. He rushed to her and held her shoulders, his face against her cheek, the spastic rhythm of her movements uninterrupted.

  “My darling.”

  “Vittorio.…” Suddenly Jane contracted violently, gasping as she did so. “Sheets.… Sheets, my love. And blankets, I think I’m not sure, really—”

  “Don’t talk.” He picked her up and saw the pain in her face in the darkness. “I’ll take you to the clinic. There’s a clinic, a doctor, nurses—”

  “We can’t get there!” she screamed. “Do as I say.” She coughed in a spasm of pain. “I’ll show you. Carry me.”

  In her hand she gripped a knife. Hot water had been running over the blade; she had been prepared to give birth alone.

  Through the incessant detonations, Victor could hear the aircraft ascending, scrambling to higher altitudes. The strike was coming to an end; the distant, furious whines of Spitfires converging into the sector was a signal no Luftwaffe pilot overlooked.

  He did as his wife told him to do, holding her in his arms, awkwardly gathering up whatever she ordered.

  He kicked his way through the wreckage and the spreading flames and carried his wife out the door. Like an animal seeking sanctuary, he hurried into the woods and found a lair that was their own.

  They were together. The frenzy of death that was several hundred yards away could not deter life. He delivered his wife of two male infants.

  The sons of Fontini-Cristi were born.

  Smoke spiraled up lazily, vertical coils of dignified, dead vapor interrupting the shafts of early morning sunlight. Stretchers were everywhere. Blankets covered the faces of the dead; the living and partly living were staring upward, mouths open, the shock imbedded. Ambulances were everywhere. And fire engines and police vehicles.

  Jane was in an ambulance, a mobile medical unit, they called it. His sons were with their mother.

  The doctor came out of the lean- to canvas extension of the strange vehicle and walked across the short stretch of lawn toward Victor. The doctor’s face was haggard; he had escaped death but he lived with the dying.

  “She’s had a hard time of it, Fontine. I told her she would under normal circumstances—”

  “Will she be all right?” interrupted Victor.

  “Yes, she’ll be all right. However, she’ll need a long, long rest. I told her several months ago I suspected a multiple birth. She was not—shall I say—designed for such a delivery. In some ways it’s rather amazing that she made it.”

  Fontine stared at the man. “She never mentioned that to me.”

  “Didn’t think she would. You’re in a precarious business. Can’t have too much on your mind.”

  “May I see her?”

  “Not for a while. She’s solidly corked off; the infants are quiet. Let her be.”

  The doctor’s hand was gently on his arm, leading him away from the ambulance toward what remained of the main house. An officer approached them and took Victor aside.

  “We found what we were looking for. We knew it was here, or something like it. The strike was far too accurate. Even German instruments couldn’t do it, and night pilotage was out; we checked. There were no markings, no flares.”

  “Where are we going? What are you talking about?” Victor had heard the officer speak, but the words were elliptical.

  “… high-arc transmitter.”

  The words still did not penetrate. “I’m sorry. What did you say?”

  “I said the room’s still standing. It’s at the rear of the right wing. The bastard was operating a simple high-arc transmitter.”

  “A transmitter?”

  “Yes. That’s how the Huns came in on pinpoint. They were guided by a radio beam. The chaps at M.I.-Five and -Six had no objection to my showing you. As a matter of fact, I think they were pleased. They’re afraid with all the confusion here someone’ll disturb things. You can confirm that we haven’t.”

  They threaded their way through the rubble and the intermittent piles of smoking debris to the right side of the large house. The major opened the door and they turned right down a corridor that seemed to be newly partitioned, as if for offices.

  “A radio beam could bring a squadron into the area,” said Fontine, walking beside the officer. “But only the area, not the target. These were bombers. I was on the road; they dove to the lowest levels. They would need more sophisticated equipment than a simple high-arc—.”

  “When I said there were no markings, no flares,” interrupted the major, “I meant in a pattern; points A to B to C. Once they were over the target area, the bastard simply opened his window and shot up fireworks. He did use flares then. A fucking box full, from what we’ve found on the ground.”

  At the end of the corridor a door was flanked by two uniformed guards. The officer opened it and stepped inside; Victor followed.

  The room was immaculate, miraculously no part of the surrounding carnage. On a table against the wall was an open briefcase, a circular aerial protruding out of it, attached to radio equipment beneath, secured in the case.

  The officer gestured to his left, to the bed, not at first visible from the doorway.

  Fontine froze. His eyes locked on the sight now in front of him.

  On the bed was the body of a man, the back of his head blown off, a pistol beside his right hand. In his left hand was gripped a large crucifix.

  The man was in the black robes of a priest.

  “Damned strange,” said the major. “His papers said he was a member of some Greek monastic brotherhood. The Order of Xenope.”

  13

  He vowed it! There would be no more.

  Jane and their two infant sons were taken secretly to Scotland. North of Glasgow, to an isolated house in the countryside of Dunblane. Victor would not rely on compounds without-parallel-in-security, nor on any guarantees from MI6 or the British government. Instead, he used his own funds, employed former soldiers, exhaustively screened by himself, and turned the house and grounds into a small but impenetrable fortress. He would not tolerate Teague’s suggestions or objections or excuses. He was being pursued by forces he could not understand, an enemy beyond control, removed from the war and yet part of it.

  He wondered if it would be so for the rest of his life. Mother of Christ, why didn’t they believe him? How could he reach the fanatics and the killers and roar his denials? He knew nothing! Nothing! A train had left Salonika three y
ears ago, at dawn on the ninth of December 1939, and he knew nothing! Only of its existence. Nothing more!

  “Do you intend to remain here for the rest of the war?” Teague had come up to Dunblane for the day; they walked in the gardens behind the house, in sight of the high brick wall and the guards. It had been five months since they’d seen each other, although Victor permitted calls over redirected scrambler-telephones. He was too much a part of Loch Torridon; his knowledge was vital.

  “You have no hold over me, Alec. I’m not British. I’ve sworn no allegiance to you.”

  “I never thought that was necessary. I did make you a major, however.” Teague smiled.

  Victor laughed. “Without ever having been formally inducted into the service? You’re a disgrace to military tradition.”

  “Absolutely. I get things done.” The brigadier stopped. He bent over to pick up a long blade of grass and rose, looking at Fontine. “Stone can’t do it alone.”

  “Why not? You and I talk several times a week. I tell you what I can. Stone expedites the decisions. It’s a sound arrangement.”

  “It’s not the same and you know it.”

  “It will have to do. I can’t fight two wars.” Fontine paused, remembering. “Savarone was right.”

  “Who?”

  “My father. He must have known that whatever was on that train could make men enemies even when they fought for a common survival.”

  They reached the edge of the path. A guard was thirty yards away across the lawn by the wall; he smiled and stroked the fur of a leashed Great Dane that snarled at the sight and scent of the stranger.

  “One day it will have to be resolved,” said Teague. “You, Jane, the children: You can’t live with it for the rest of your lives.”