The Gemini Contenders: A Novel Read online

  In seconds the door was opened by Barzini. Their exchange was simple, without strain. The old man spoke clearly.

  “You’re sure I can’t bring you something, padrone? A pot of tea, coffee?”

  “No, thank you, old friend. Get some sleep. We have a lot to do in the morning.”

  “Very well. The horses will eat early today.” Barzini walked past Victor to the steps and down into the circular drive. He turned left toward the stables.

  Victor stood in the great hall; everything was as it had been. The Germans knew when not to mar a thing of beauty. He turned into the darkened south section, into the enormous drawing room toward the doors of his father’s study. As he walked through the familiar space, he felt pains of anguish in his chest and the catching of breath in his throat.

  He went into his father’s study, Savarone’s sanctum sanctorum. Instinctively, he turned right in the darkness; the huge desk was where it had always been. He put the box down and turned on the green-shaded lamp he remembered; it was the same lamp. Nothing had changed.

  He sat down in his father’s chair and removed the pistol from his pocket. He placed it on the desk, behind the wooden box, concealing it from the front.

  The waiting had begun. And for the second time his life was in Barzini’s hands. He could not imagine a firmer grip. For Barzini would not reach the stables. He would walk up the stable road and enter the woods, doubling back into the gardens, to the rear of the house. He would let himself in through one of the patio doors, and wait for the Englishman to come.

  Stone was trapped.

  The minutes dragged on. Absently, Fontine opened the drawers of his father’s desk. He found sheets of Wehrmacht stationery, and methodically he placed them sheet by sheet in separate piles, a game of solitaire with huge blank playing cards.

  He waited.

  At first, he did not hear any sound. Instead, he felt the presence. It was unmistakable, filling the air between himself and the intruder. Then the creak of a floorboard pierced the silence, followed by two distant footsteps, bold, unconcealed; Fontine’s hand moved toward the gun.

  Suddenly, out of the dark space, a light-colored object came flying through the shadows toward him, at him! Victor recoiled as the object came into focus, trailing rivulets of blood in the air. There was a harsh slap—flesh against wood—and the horrible thing made contact with the top of the desk and rolled obscenely under the spill of the lamp.

  Fontine expelled his breath in an instant of total revulsion.

  The object was a hand. A severed right hand cut crudely above the wrist. The fingers were old and withered and clawlike in spastic contraction, the tendons iced at the instant of primitive surgery.

  It was the hand of Guido Barzini. Thrown by a maniac who had lost his own on a pier in Celle Ligure.

  Victor shot up from the chair, suppressing the revulsion that welled up beside him, stabbing for the gun.

  “Don’t touch that! You do, you’re dead!” Stone’s words were spat out in English. He crouched in the shadows across the room, behind a high-backed armchair.

  Victor withdrew his hand. He had to force himself to think. To survive. “You killed him.”

  “They’ll find him in the woods. It’s odd I found him there, isn’t it?”

  Fontine stood motionless, accepting the awful news, suspending emotion. “Odder still,” said Victor quietly, “that your Corsican didn’t.”

  Stone’s eyes reacted; only a flicker of recognition, but the reaction was there. “The walk you took. I wondered.” The Englishman nodded his head. “Yes, you could have done that. You could have taken them out.”

  “I didn’t. Others did.”

  “Sorry, Fontini. That doesn’t wash.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “Because if there were others, you wouldn’t use an old man for the last job; that’s stupid. You’re an arrogant son of a bitch, but you’re not stupid. We’re alone, all right. Just you and me and that box. Christ! It must have been in one hell of a hole. Enough people looked for it.”

  “Then you made your deal with Donatti?”

  “He thinks so. Strange, isn’t it? You took everything from me. I crawled out of Liverpool and made my way up, and you took it all away on a fucking guinea pier five years ago. Now I’ve got it all back and then some. I may hold the, biggest auction anyone’s ever heard of.”

  “For what? Old hunt prizes? Faded citations?”

  Stone snapped the hammer of his weapon into firing position. His black glove slapped the back of the chair, his eyes bore through the shadows. “Don’t make jokes!”

  “No jokes. I’m not stupid, remember? And you’re not in any position to pull that trigger. You’ve only got one chance to deliver the contents of that vault. If you don’t, another order of execution can easily be issued. Those powerful men who hired you five years ago don’t like embarrassing speculations.”

  “Shut up! Stop it!” Furiously, Stone raised the clawlike glove above the chair and smashed it down. “Those tactics won’t work on me, you guinea bastard! I used them before you ever heard of Loch Torridon.”

  “Loch Torridon was based on error. Miscalculation! Mismanagement! That was its premise. Remember?” Fontine took a step backward, pushing the chair with his legs, extending his hands out in a gesture of helplessness. “Come on. Look for yourself. You wouldn’t kill me before you saw what the bullet cost you.”

  “Move back! Farther!” Stone came around the chair, his immobile right hand stretched out directly in front of him like a protruding lance. His left hand held the weapon with the cocked hammer; the slightest squeeze of the trigger and the pin would spring forward, exploding the shell.

  Victor did as he was commanded, his eyes riveted on the pistol. His moment would come; it had to come or there was nothing.

  The Englishman approached the desk, each step the movement of a man filled with loathing and wariness, prepared to destroy at the split second of imbalance. He took his eyes from Fontine and stared at the top of the desk. At the severed, mutilated hand of Guido Barzini. At the box. At the pile of debris inside the box.

  “No,” he whispered. “No!”

  The moment came: the shock of revelation was in Stone’s eyes. It would not come again.

  Victor sprang forward over the desk, his long arms plunging for the weapon; it had wavered with only a heartbeat, but that was all he could hope for.

  The explosion was deafening, but Fontine’s grip had deflected the shot. Only inches, but it was enough. The bullet shattered the top of the desk, hurling splinters of wood everywhere. Victor held Stone’s wrist, wrenching with all the power he possessed, feeling and not feeling the blows delivered to his face and neck by the hard gloved hand. Stone brought his right knee up, pummeling Fontine’s groin and stomach; the pistol would not be dislodged. The Englishman screamed and went into a paroxysm of frenzy. He would not, could not be bested by strength alone.

  Victor did the only thing left for him. For an instant he stopped all movement, then yanked Stone’s wrist forward as if jamming the pistol into his own stomach. As the gun was about to touch the cloth of his jacket, he suddenly twisted his body and Stone’s wrist, inverting the weapon, and shoved it with his full weight upward.

  The explosion came. For a second Fontine was blinded, his flesh ice cold with fireburn, and for that instant he believed he had been killed.

  Until he felt the body of Geoffrey Stone collapse, pulling him downward to the floor.

  He opened his eyes. The bullet had entered the flesh beneath Stone’s jaw, its trajectory upward, through the skull, ripping open the top of Stone’s head.

  And next to the mass of blood and tissue was the severed hand of Guido Barzini.

  He carried Barzini’s body out of the woods and to the stables. He placed the mutilated corpse on the bed and covered it with a sheet. He stood over the body, for how long he would never remember, trying to understand pain and terror and love.

  Campo di Fiori was stil
l. For him its secret was buried, never to be known. The mystery of Salonika was a confidence Savarone had not shared. And the son of Savarone would no longer dwell on it. Let others do so, if they cared to. Let Teague take care of the rest. He was finished.

  He walked down the north road from the stables to the drive in front of the house and climbed into the rented car. It was dawn. The orange summer sun broke over the Italian countryside. He took one last look at the home of his childhood and started the ignition.

  The trees rushed by, the foliage became a blur of green and orange and yellow and white. He looked at the speedometer. Over eighty. Eighty-four kilometers an hour on the twisting entrance road cut out of the forest. He should brake the speed, he knew that. It was foolhardy, if not dangerous. Yet his foot would not obey his mind.

  Oh, God! He had to get away!

  There was a long hairpin curve that preceded the gate. In the old days—years ago—it was the custom to blow one’s horn when one approached the curve. There was no cause to do so now; and he was relieved to find his foot relaxing its pressure on the pedal. Instinct was intact. Still, he took the curve at fifty, the tires screeching as he came out of the turn and headed for the gates. Automatically, on the straightaway, he accelerated. He would whip past the gateposts and swing out the road for Varese. Then Milan.

  Then London!

  He was not sure when he saw it. Them. His mind had wandered, his eyes on the immediate ground in front of the hood. He only knew that he slammed the brakes with such force he was thrown against the steering wheel, his head inches from the windshield. The car swerved, the the tires screamed, dust billowed up from the wheels, and the automobile skidded diagonally through the gates, stopping only feet from the two black limousines that had converged out of nowhere, blocking the road beyond the stone posts.

  His body was jolted back against the seat; the whole car shook in its sudden, violent arrest. Stunned, it took Fontine several seconds to shake off the effects of the near collision. He blinked his eyes, quickly regaining focus. His fury was suspended in astonishment at what he saw.

  Standing in front of the two limousines were five men in black suits and white clerical collars. They stared impassively at him. Then the rear door of the limousine on the right opened and a sixth man got out. He was a man of about sixty, in the black robes of the church.

  With a shock of white in his hair.

  17

  The cardinal had the eyes of a fanatic and the strained, clipped voice of a man possessed. He moved in slow, fluid motions, never permitting his audience’s attention to waver. He was at once theatrical and ominous. It was a cultivated appearance, refined over the years in the corridors of the Vatican. Donatti was an eagle who fed on sparrows. He was beyond righteousness; he was righteousness.

  At the sight of the man Victor lost control of himself. That this killer of the church could approach Campo di Fiori was an obscenity he could not stand. He lunged at the vile, cassocked figure, all sense of reason and survival and sanity itself destroyed in the instant of memory.

  The priests were ready for him. They converged, as the limousines had converged, blocking his path of assault. They held him, twisting his arms high up behind his back; a hand with powerful fingers gripped his throat, forcing his head into an agonizing arch, choking off all speech, but not sight or hearing.

  “The car,” said Donatti quietly.

  The two priests who were not restraining Fontine raced to the rented car and began the search. Victor could hear the doors and the trunk and the hood being opened. Then the ripping of upholstery and the crashing of metal as the car was torn apart. For nearly a quarter of an hour the ransacking continued. Throughout, Fontine’s eyes were locked with the cardinal’s. Only at the end of the search did the priest of the Curia look over at the automobile, when the two men approached and spoke simultaneously.

  “There is nothing, Your Grace.”

  Donatti gestured to the priest whose powerful hand held Victor’s throat. The grip was eased; Fontine swallowed repeatedly. His arms were still stretched taut behind his back. The cardinal spoke.

  “The heretics of Constantine chose well: the apostates of Campo di Fiori. The enemies of Christ.”

  “Animal! Butcher!” Victor could barely whisper; the muscles of his neck and windpipe had been damaged severely. “You murdered us! I saw you!”

  “Yes. I thought you might have.” The cardinal spoke with quiet venom. “I would have fired the weapons myself, had it been required. And thinking thus, you are quite correct. Theologically, I was the executioner.” Donatti’s eyes grew wide. “Where is the crate from Salonika?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’ll tell me, heretic. Believe the word of a true priest. You haven’t got a choice.”

  “You hold me against my will! In the name of God, I presume!” said Fontine coldly.

  “In the name of preserving the mother church! No laws take precedence over that. Where is the shipment from Salonika?”

  The eyes, the high-pitched voice triggered the memory of years ago—a small child outside a study door. “If that knowledge was so important to you, why did you execute my father? He was the only one who knew.…”

  “A lie! That is a lie!” Donatti caught himself, his lips trembling.

  Fontine understood. A raw nerve had been exposed. An error of extraordinary magnitude had been made, and the cardinal could not bear to face it. “You know it’s the truth,” said Victor quietly. “Now you know it’s the truth and you can’t stand it. Why? Why was he killed?”

  The priest lowered his voice. “The enemies of Christ deceived us. The heretics of Xenope fed lies to us.” And once more Donatti roared abruptly. “Savarone Fontini-Cristi was the communicator of those lies!”

  “What lies could he tell you? You never believed him when he told you the truth.”

  Again the cardinal trembled. He could barely be heard. “There were two freights out of Salonika. Three days apart. The first we knew nothing about; the second we picked up at Monfalcone, making sure that Fontini-Cristi would not meet it. We did not know then that he had already made contact with the first train. And now you will tell us what we wish to know. What we must know.”

  “I can’t give you what I don’t have.”

  Donatti looked at the priests and said one word. “Now.”

  Victor could never remember the length of time, for there was not time, only pain. Excruciating, harrowing, stinging, convulsive pain. He was dragged within the gates of Campo di Fiori and taken into the forest. There the holy apostolic priests began the torture. They started with his bare feet; every toe was broken, the ankles twisted until they cracked. The legs and knees were next: crushed, inverted, racked. And then the groin and stomach—O God! He wished to die!—And always, above him, blurred in the vision of tears of pain, was the priest of the Curia with the shock of white in his hair.

  “Tell us! Tell us! Enemy of Christ!”

  His arms were sprung from their sockets. His wrists were turned inward until the capillaries burst, spreading purple fluid throughout the skin. There were moments of blessed void, ended suddenly by hands slapping him back to consciousness.

  “Tell us! Tell us!” The words became a hundred thousand hammers, echoes within echoes. “Tell us! Enemy of Christ!”

  And all was void again. And through the dark tunnels of feeling, he sensed the rhythm of waves and air and suspension. A floating that deep within his brain told him he was near death.

  There was a final, convulsive crash, yet he could not feel it. He was beyond feeling.

  Yet he heard the words from far, far away in the distance, spoken in a chant.

  “In nomine Patris, et Filii et Spiritus sancti. Amen. Dominus vobiscum.…”

  Last rites.

  He had been left to die.

  There was the floating again. The waves and the air. And voices, indistinct, too far away to be really heard. And touch. He felt touching, each contact sending shafts of pain through
out his body. Yet these were not the touches of torture; the voices in the distance were not the voices of tormentors.

  The blurred images at last came into focus. He was in a white room. In the distance were shining bottles with tubes cascading in the air.

  And above him was a face. The face he knew he would never see again. What was left of his mind was playing horrible tricks on him.

  The face was crying; tears rolled down the cheeks.

  His wife Jane whispered. “My love. My dearest love. Oh, God, what have they done to you?”

  Her beautiful face was next to his. Touching his.

  And there was no pain.

  He had been found by worried men of MI6. The priests had carried him to a car, driven him to the circular drive, and left him to die in Campo di Fiori. That he did not die was not to be explained by the doctors. He should have died. His recovery would take months, perhaps years. And, in truth, he would never completely recover. But with care he would regain the use of his arms and legs; he would be ambulatory, and that in itself was a miracle.

  By the eighth week he was able to sit up. He concluded his business with Rome’s Court of Reparations. The lands, the factories, the properties were sold for seventy-five million pounds sterling. As he had promised himself, the transaction did not include Campo di Fiori.

  For Campo di Fiori he made separate arrangements, through a trusted lawyer in Milan. It, too, was to be sold but he never wanted to know the name of the buyer. There were two inviolate restrictions: The purchaser was to have nowhere in his history any connection with the fascists. Nor was he to have any association whatsoever, regardless of denomination, with any religious body.

  On the ninth week an Englishman was flown over from London on instructions of his government.

  Sir Anthony Brevourt stood at the foot of Fontine’s bed, his jaw firm, his eyes compassionate and yet not without hardness. “Donatti’s dead, you know. He threw himself off the balustrade of St. Peter’s. Nobody mourns him, least of all the Curia.”

  “Yes, I knew that. At the end an act of insanity.”

  “The five priests who were with him have been punished. Three were excommunicated, prosecuted, and in prison for several decades. The other two are under life penance in the Transvaal. What was done in the church’s name horrifies its leaders.”