The Gemini Contenders: A Novel Read online

  Petride watched them, feeling apart from them, and that was how it should be. His mind wandered back to what seemed only hours ago, but was in reality six weeks. He had been ordered out of the fields and taken to the white concrete rooms of the Elder of Xenope. He was ushered into the presence of that most holy father; there was one other priest with the old prelate, no one else.

  “Petride Dakakos,” the holy man had begun, sitting behind his thick wooden table, “you have been chosen above all others here at Xenope for the most demanding task of your existence. For the glory of God and the preservation of Christian sanity.”

  The second priest had been introduced. He was an ascetic-looking man with wide, penetrating eyes. He spoke slowly, precisely. “We are the custodians of a vault, a sarcophagus, if you will, that has remained sealed in a tomb deep in the earth for over fifteen hundred years. Within that vault are documents that would rend the Christian world apart, so devastating are their writings. They are the ultimate proof of our most sacred beliefs, yet their exposure would set religion against religion, sect against sect, entire peoples against one another. In a holy war.… The German conflict is spreading. The vault must be taken out of Greece, for its existence has been rumored for decades. The search for it would be as thorough as a hunt for microbes. Arrangements have been made to remove it where none will find it. I should say, most of the arrangements. You are the final component.”

  The journey had been explained. The arrangements. In all their glory. And fear.

  “You will be in contact with only one man. Savarone Fontini-Cristi, a great padrone of northern Italy, who lives in the vast estates of Campo di Fiori. I, myself, have traveled there and spoken with him. He’s an extraordinary man, of unparalleled integrity and utter commitment to free men.”

  “He is of the Roman church?” Petride had asked incredulously.

  “He is of no church, yet all churches. He is a powerful force for men who care to think for themselves. He is the friend of the Order of Xenope. It is he who will conceal the vault … You and he alone. And then you … but we will get to that; you are the most privileged of men.”

  “I thank my God.”

  “As well you should, my son,” said the holy father of Xenope, staring at him.

  “We understand you have a brother. An engineer for the railroads.”

  “I do.”

  “Do you trust him?”

  “With my life. He’s the finest man I know.”

  “You shall look into the eyes of the Lord,” said the holy father, “and you will not waver. In His eyes you will find perfect grace.”

  “I thank my God,” said Petride once again.

  He shook his head and blinked his eyes, forcing the reflections out of his mind. The priests by the truck were still standing immobile; the hum of whispered chants came from rapidly moving lips in the darkness.

  There was no time for meditation or prayer. There was no time for anything but swift movement—to carry out the commands of the Order of Xenope. Petride gently parted the priests in front of him and jumped up into the truck. He knew why he had been chosen. He was capable of such harshness; the holy father of Xenope had made that clear to him.

  There was a time for such men as himself.

  God forgive him.

  “Come,” he said quietly to those on the ground. “I’ll need help.”

  The monks nearest the truck looked uncertainly at one another. Then, one by one, five men climbed into the van.

  Petride removed the black drape that covered the vault. Underneath, the holy receptacle was encased in the heavy cardboard, wood framing, and the stenciled symbols of Xenope; identical except for size and shape to all the other crates. But the casing was the only similarity. It required six strong backs, pushing and pulling, to nudge it to the edge of the van and onto the freight car.

  The moment it was in place, the dancelike activity resumed. Petride remained in the freight car, arranging the crates so that they concealed the holy thing, obscuring it as one among so many. Nothing unusual, nothing to catch the eye.

  The freight car was filled. Petride pulled the doors shut and inserted the iron padlock. He looked at the radium dial of his wristwatch; it had all taken eight minutes and thirty seconds.

  It had to be, he supposed, yet still it annoyed him: His fellow priests knelt on the ground. A young man—younger than he, a powerful Serbo-Croat barely out of his novitiate—could not help himself. As the tears rolled down his cheek, the young priest began the chant of Nicaea. The others picked it up and Petride knelt also, in his laborer’s clothes, and listened to the holy words.

  But not speaking them. There was no time! Couldn’t they understand?

  What was happening to him? In order to take his mind off the holy whispers, he put his hand inside his shirt and checked the leather pouch that was strapped to his chest. Inside that flat, uncomfortable dispatch case were the orders that would lead him across hundreds of miles of uncertainty. Twenty-seven separate pages of paper. The pouch was secure; the straps cut into his skin.

  The prayer over, the priests of Xenope rose silently. Petride stood in front of them and each in turn approached him and embraced him and held him in love. The last was his driver, his dearest friend in the order. The tears that filled the rims of his eyes and rolled down his strong face said everything there was to say.

  The monks raced back to the trucks; Petride ran to the front of the train and climbed up into the pilot’s cabin. He nodded to his brother who began to pull levers and turn wheels. Grinding shrieks of metal against metal filled the night.

  In minutes the freight was traveling at high speed. The journey had begun. The journey for the glory of one Almighty God.

  Petride held on to an iron bar that protruded from the iron wall. He closed his eyes and let the hammering vibrations and rushing wind numb his thoughts. His fears.

  And then he opened his eyes—briefly—and saw his brother leaning out the window, his massive right hand on the throttle, his stare directed to the tracks ahead.

  Annaxas the Strong, everyone called him. But Annaxas was more than strong; he was good, When their father had died, it was Annaxas who had gone out to the yards—a huge boy of thirteen—and worked the long, hard hours that exhausted grown men. The money Annaxas brought home kept them all together, made it possible for his brothers and sisters to get what schooling they could. And one brother got more. Not for the family, but for the glory of God.

  The Lord God tested men. As He was testing now.

  Petride bowed his head and the words seared through his brain and out of his mouth in a whisper that could not be heard.

  I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of all things both visible and invisible, and in one Lord, Jesus Christ, Teacher, Son of God, Only begotten of the Father. God of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God, begotten not made.…

  They reached the sidings at Edhessa; a switch was thrown by unseen, unauthorized hands, and the freight from Salonika plunged into the northern darkness. The Yugoslav border police at Bitola were as anxious for Greek news as they were for Greek bribes. The northern conflict was spreading rapidly, the armies of Hitler were maniacs; the Balkans were next to fall, everyone said so. And the unstable Italians were filling the piazzas, listening to the screams of war mouthed by the insane Mussolini and his strutting fascisti. The talk everywhere was of invasion.

  The Slavs accepted several crates of fruit—Xenope fruit was the best in Greece—and wished Annaxas better fortune than they believed he would have, especially since he traveled north.

  They sped through the second night north into Mitrovica. The Order of Xenope had done its work; a track was cleared on which no train was scheduled and the freight from Salonika proceeded east to Sarajevo, where a man came out of the shadows and spoke to Petride.

  “In twelve minutes the track will be shifted. You will head north to Banja Luka. During the day you’ll stay in the yards. They’re very crowded. You’ll be contacted at ni
ghtfall.”

  In the crowded freight yards at Banja Luka, at precisely quarter past six in the evening, a man came to them dressed in overalls. “You’ve done well,” he said to Petride. “According to the dispatcher’s flagging schedules, you don’t exist.”

  At six thirty-five a signal was given; another switch was thrown, and the train from Salonika entered the tracks for Zagreb.

  At midnight, in the quiet yards of Zagreb, another man, emerging from other shadows, gave Petride a long manila envelope. “These are papers signed by Il Duce’s Ministro di Viaggio. They say your freight is part of the Venice Ferrovia. It is Mussolini’s pride; no one stops it for anything. You will hold at the Sezana depot and pick up the Ferrovia out of Trieste. You’ll have no trouble with the Monfalcone border patrols.”

  Three hours later they waited on the Sezana track, the huge locomotive idling. Sitting on the steps, Petride watched Annaxas manipulate the valves and levers.

  “You’re remarkable,” he said, meaning the compliment sincerely.

  “It’s a small talent,” replied Annaxas. “It takes no schooling, just doing it over and over.”

  “I think it’s a remarkable talent. I could never do it.”

  His brother looked down at him; the glow of the coals washed over his large face, with the wide-set eyes, so firm and strong and gentle. He was a bull of a man, this brother. A decent man. “You could do anything,” said Annaxas awkwardly. “You have the head for thoughts and words far beyond mine.”

  “That’s nonsense,” laughed Petride. “There was a time when you’d slap my backside and tell me to tend to my chores with more brains.”

  “You were young; that was many years ago. You tended to your books, you did that. You were better than the freight yards; you got out of them.”

  “Only because of you, my brother.”

  “Rest, Petride. We must both rest.”

  They had nothing in common any longer, and the reason they had nothing was because of Annaxas’s goodness and generosity. The older brother had provided the means for the younger to escape, to grow beyond he who provided … until there was nothing in common. What made the reality unbearable was that Annaxas the Strong understood the chasm between them now. In Bitola and Banja Luka he had also insisted they rest, not talk. They would get little sleep once they crossed the borders at Monfalcone. In Italy there would be no sleep at all.

  The Lord God tested.

  In the silence between them, in the open cabin, the black sky above, the dark ground below, the incessant straining of the engine’s fires filling the night outside, Petride felt an odd suspension of thought and feeling. Thinking and feeling once-removed, as though he were examining another’s experiences from some isolated perch, looking down through a glass. And he began to consider the man he would meet in the Italian Alps. The man who had provided the Order of Xenope with the complicated schedules of transportation through northern Italy. The expanding circles within circles that led inexorably across the Swiss borders in a way that was untraceable.

  Savarone Fontini-Cristi was his name. His estate was called Campo di Fiori. The Elders of Xenope said the Fontini-Cristis were the most powerful family in Italy north of Venice. Quite possibly the richest north of Rome. The power and the wealth certainly were borne out by the twenty-seven separate papers in the leather pouch strapped so securely around his chest. Who but an extraordinarily influential man could provide them? And how did the Elders reach him? Through what means? And why would a man named Fontini-Cristi, whose origins had to be of the Roman Church, deliver such assistance to the Order of Xenope?

  The answers to these questions were not within his province, but nevertheless the questions burned. He knew what lay sealed in the vault of iron in the third freight car. It was more than what his brother priests believed.

  Far more.

  The Elders had told him so he would understand. It was the holiest of compelling motives that would allow him to look into the eyes of God without doubt or hesitation. And he needed that assurance.

  Unconsciously, he put his hand under the coarse shirt and felt the pouch. A rash had formed around the straps; he could feel the swelling and the rough, abrasive surface of his skin. It would be infected soon. But not before the twenty-seven papers did their work. Then it did not matter.

  Suddenly, a half mile away on the northern track, the Venice Ferrovia could be seen speeding out of Trieste. The Sezana contact raced out of the control tower and ordered them to proceed without delay.

  Annaxas fired up and throttled the idling locomotive as rapidly as possible and they plunged north behind the Ferrovia toward Monfalcone.

  The guards at the border accepted the manila envelope and gave it to their superior officer. The officer shouted at the top of his lungs for the silent Annaxas to fire up quickly. Proceed! The freight was part of the Ferrovia! The engineer was not to delay!

  The madness began at Legnago, when Petride gave the dispatcher the first of Fontini-Cristi’s papers. The man blanched and became the most obsequious of public servants. The young priest could see the dispatcher searching his eyes, trying to unearth the level of authority Petride represented.

  For the strategy devised by Fontini-Cristi was brilliant. Its strength was in its simplicity, its power over men based in fear—the threat of instant retaliation from the state.

  The Greek freight was not a Greek freight at all. It was one of the highly secretive investigating trains sent out by Rome’s Ministry of Transportation, the inspectors general of the Italian rail system. Such trains roamed the tracks throughout the country, manned by officials ordered to examine and evaluate all rail operations and submit reports that some said were read by Mussolini himself.

  The world made jokes about Il Duce’s railroads, but behind the humor was respect. The Italian rail system was the finest in Europe. It maintained its excellence by the time-honored method of the fascist state: secret efficiency ratings compiled by unknown investigators. A man’s livelihood—or absence of it—depended on the judgments of the esaminatori. Retentions, advancements, and dismissals were often the results of a few brief moments of observation. It stood to reason that when an esaminatore revealed himself, absolute cooperation and confidentiality were given.

  The freight from Salonika was now an Italian train with the covert imprimatur of Rome as its shield. Its movements were subject only to the authorizations contained in the papers supplied the dispatchers. And the orders within those authorizations were bizarre enough to have come from the convoluted machinations of Il Duce himself.

  The circuitous route began. The towns and villages fled by—San Giorgio, Latisana, Motta di Levenza—as the freight from Salonika entered tracks behind Italian boxcars and passenger trains. Treviso, Montebelluna, and Valdagno, west to Malcesine on the Lago di Garda; across the large expanse of water on the sluggish freight boat and immediately north to Breno and Passo della Presolana.

  There was only frightened cooperation. Everywhere.

  When they reached Como the circling stopped and the dash began. They sped north on the land route and swung south to Lugano, following the tracks on the Swiss borders south and west again to Santa Maria Maggiore, crossing into Switzerland at Saas Fee, where the freight from Salonika resumed its identity, with one minor alteration.

  This was determined by the twenty-second authorization in Petride’s pouch. Fontini-Cristi had once again provided the simple explanation: The Swiss International Aid Commission at Geneva had granted permission for the Eastern church to cross borders and supply its retreat on the outskirts of Val de Gressoney. What was implied was that the borders would soon be closed to such supply trains. The war was gaining a terrible momentum; soon there would be no trains whatever from the Balkans or Greece.

  From Saas Fee the freight rolled south into the yards at Zermatt. It was night; they would wait for the yards to close operations and a man who would come to them and confirm that another switch had been thrown. They would make the incursion south
into the Italian Alps of Champoluc.

  At ten minutes to nine a trainman appeared in the distance, coming out of the shadows across the Zermatt freight yard. He ran the last several hundred feet and raised his voice.

  “Hurry! The rails are clear for Champoluc. There’s no time to waste! The switch is tied to a master line; it could be spotted. Get out of here!”

  Once more Annaxas went about the business of releasing the enormous pressures built up in the fires of the iron fuselage, and once again the train plunged into the darkness.

  The signal would come in the mountains, high near an Alpine pass. No one knew just where.

  Only Savarone Fontini-Cristi.

  A light snow was falling, adding its thin layer to the alabaster cover on the moonlit ground. They passed through tunnels carved out of rock, swinging westward around the ledges of the mountains, the steep gorges menacingly beneath them on their right. It was so much colder. Petride had not expected that; he had not thought about temperatures. The snow and the ice; there was ice on the tracks.

  Every mile they traveled seemed like ten, every minute that passed could have been an hour. The young priest peered through the windshield, seeing the beam of the train’s searchlight reflecting off the falling snow. He leaned out; he could see only the giant trees that rose up in the darkness.

  Where was he? Where was the Italian padrone, Fontini-Cristi? Perhaps he had changed his mind. O merciful God, that could not be! He could not allow himself to think such thoughts. What they carried in that holy vault would plunge the world into chaos. The Italian knew that; the Patriarchate had total confidence in the padrone.…

  Petride’s head was aching, his temples pounded. He sat on the steps of the tender; he had to control himself. He looked at the radium dial of his watch. Merciful God! They’d traveled too far! In a half hour they’d be out of the mountains!

  “There is your signal!” shouted Annaxas.