The trimotored Fokker was stationary as maintenance crews checked the engines and a fuel truck filled the tanks. They were in Munich; they had left Warsaw early in the morning with a stop at Prague. Most of the passengers had gotten off at Munich.
Müllheim was next, the last leg of their journey. Victor sat uncomfortably beside a seemingly relaxed Lübok in the quiet cabin of the aircraft. There was one other passenger: an aging corporal on leave to Stuttgart.
“I’d like it better if there were a few more hitchhikers,” whispered Lübok. “With so small a number, the pilot may insist everyone stay on board at Müllheim. He could gas up quickly and be on his way. He takes on most of his passengers in Stuttgart.”
He was interrupted by the sound of clattering footsteps on the metal stairs outside the aircraft. Raucous, uninhibited laughter accompanied the unsteady clattering and grew louder as the new passengers approached the cabin door. Lübok looked at Fontine and smiled in relief. He returned to the newspaper provided by the attendant and sank back in the seat. Victor turned; the Munich contingent came into view.
There were three Wehrmacht officers and a woman. They were drunk. The girl was in a light-covered cloth coat; she was pushed through the narrow door by two of the Wehrmacht and shoved into a seat by the third. She did not object; instead she laughed and made funny faces. A willing, participating toy.
She was in her late twenties, pleasant-looking but not attractive. There was a frantic quality in her face, an intensity that made her appear somehow frayed. Her light-brown, windswept hair was a little too thick; it had not fallen free in the wind. The mascara about her eyes was too pronounced, the lipstick too red, the rouge too obvious.
“What are you looking at?” The question was shouted above the roar of the revving motors. The speaker was the third Wehrmacht officer, a broad-chested, muscular man in his thirties. He had walked past his two comrades and addressed Victor.
“I’m sorry,” said Fontine, smiling weakly. “I didn’t mean to be rude.”
The officer squinted his eyes; he was a brawler, it was unmistakable. “We’ve got a fancy one. Listen to the lace-pants!”
“I meant no offense.”
The officer turned to his comrades; one had pulled the not-unwilling girl over on his lap, the other was in the aisle. “The lace-pants meant no offense! Isn’t that nice?”
The two fellow officers groaned derisively. The girl laughed; a little too hysterically, thought Victor. He turned front, hoping the Wehrmacht boor would go away.
Instead, a huge hand reached over the seat and grabbed him by the shoulder blade. “That’s not good enough.” The officer looked at Lübok. “You two move up front.”
Lübok’s eyes sought Victor’s. The message was clear: Do as the man ordered.
“Certainly.” Fontine and Lübok rose and walked swiftly up the aisle. Neither spoke. Fontine could hear the uncorking of bottles. The Wehrmacht party had begun.
The Fokker sped down the runway and left the ground. Lübok had taken the aisle seat, leaving him the window. He riveted his eyes on the sky, withdrawing into the cocoon of himself, hoping to produce a blankness that would make the journey to Müllheim pass more swiftly. It could not pass swiftly enough.
The blankness would not come. Instead, involuntarily, he thought of the Xenope priest in the underground tunnel of the Casimir.
You travel with Lübok. Lübok works for Rome.
We are not your enemies. For the mercy of God, bring the documents to us.
Salonika. It was never far away. The vault from Constantine was capable of violently dividing men who fought a common enemy.
He heard laughter from the rear of the cabin, then a whispered voice behind him.
“No! Don’t turn around. Please!” It was the flight attendant, barely audible through the narrow space between the seats. “Don’t get up. They’re Kommandos. They just let off steam, so don’t concern yourselves. Pretend there is nothing!”
“Kommandos?” whispered Lübok. “In Munich? They’re stationed north, in the Baltic zones.”
“Not these. These operate across the mountains in the Italian sectors. Execution teams. There are many—”
The words struck with the impact of silent thunderbolts. Victor inhaled; the muscles of his stomach hardened into a wall of stone.
… execution teams.…
He gripped the armrests of his seat and arched his back. Then, pressing his back into the seat, he stretched his neck and turned his eyes toward the rear of the cabin, over the metal rim of the headrest. He could not believe what he saw.
The wild-eyed girl was on the floor, her coat open; she was naked except for torn undergarments, her legs spread, her buttocks moving. A Wehrmacht officer, his trousers and shorts pulled down to his knees, lowered himself on her, his penis stabbing. Kneeling above the girl’s head was a second Wehrmacht, his trousers removed, an erection protruding from the opening in his shorts. He held the girl by the hair and lanced his erection around the flesh of her face; she opened her mouth and accepted it, moaning and coughing. The third Wehrmacht was sitting, bent over on the armrest above the rape. He was breathing in gasps through parted lips, his left hand extended, rubbing the girl’s naked breasts in a rhythm that matched the masturbating motions of his right hand.
“Animali!” Fontine lunged from the seat, ripping Lübok’s fingers from his wrist, hurling himself forward. The Wehrmacht were stunned beyond movement, their shock total. The officer on the armrest gaped. Victor’s open hand gripped his hair and crashed the man’s head into the steel rim of the seat. The skull cracked; an eruption of blood sprayed the face of the Wehrmacht lying between the spread legs of the girl. The officer caught his knees in his trousers; he fell forward on top of the girl, his hands lashing out to grab support. He rolled on his back, crushing the girl in the narrow aisle. Fontine raised the heel of his right boot and propelled it into the soft throat of the Wehrmacht. The blow was pulverizing; the veins in the German’s neck swelled into huge tubes of bluish-black under the skin. His eyes rolled up into his sockets, the eyeballs white gelatine, blank and horrible.
The screams of the girl beneath were now mingled with the cries of agony from the third officer, who had sprung forward, propelling himself off the Fokker’s deck toward the rear bulkhead. The man’s underwear was matted with blood.
Fontine lunged; the German rolled hysterically away. His bloody, trembling hand reached under his tunic; Victor knew what he was after: the four-inch Kommando knife, strapped next to his flesh beneath his armpit. The Wehrmacht whipped out the blade—short, razor sharp—and slashed it diagonally in front of him. Fontine rose from his crouch, prepared to leap.
Suddenly an arm was lashed around Victor’s neck. He struck back with his elbows, but the grip was unbreakable.
His neck was yanked back and a long knife sped through the air and imbedded itself deep in the German’s chest. The man was dead before his body slumped to the floor of the cabin.
Abruptly Fontine’s neck was released. Lübok slapped him across the face, the blow powerful, stinging his flesh.
“Enough! Stop it! I won’t die for you!”
Dazed, Victor looked around. The throats of the other two Wehrmacht had been cut. The girl had crawled away, vomiting and weeping between two seats. The flight attendant lay sprawled in the aisle—dead or unconscious, there was no way to tell.
And the old corporal who had stared at nothing—in fear—only minutes ago, stood by the pilot’s cabin door, a pistol in his hand.
Suddenly the girl started screaming as she got to her feet. “They’ll kill us! Oh, God! Why did you do it?”
Stunned, Fontine stared at the girl and spoke quietly with what breath he had left. “You? You can ask that?”
“Yes! Oh, my God!” She pulled her filthy coat around her as best she could. “They’ll kill me. I don’t want to die!”
“You don’t want to live like that.”
She returned his stare maniacally, her head trembling. “They took me from the camps,” she whispered. “I understood. They gave me drugs when I needed them, wanted them.” She pulled at her loose right sleeve; there were scores of needle marks from her wrist to her upper arm. “But I understood. And I lived!”
“Basta!” roared Victor stepping toward the girl, raising his hand. “Whether you live or die is immaterial to me. I didn’t act for you!”
“Whatever you did is done, Captain,” said Lübok quickly, touching his arm. “Snap out of it! You’ve had your confrontation, there can be no more. Understand?”
Fontine saw the strength in Lübok’s eyes. Breathing heavily, Victor pointed in astonishment at the fortyish corporal who stood silently by the cabin door, his weapon drawn. “He’s one of you, isn’t he?”
“No,” said Lübok. “He’s a German with a conscience. He doesn’t know who or what we are. At Müllheim he’ll be unconscious, an innocent bystander who can tell them whatever he likes. I suspect it will be nothing. Stay with the girl.”
Lübok took charge. He went back to the bodies of the Wehrmacht and removed identification papers and weapons. In the tunic of one, he found a hypodermic kit and six vials of narcotics. He gave them to the girl, who sat by the window next to Fontine. She accepted them gratefully and without so much as looking at Victor, she proceeded to break a capsule, fill the hypodermic, and insert the needle into her left arm.
She carefully repacked the kit and shoved it into the pocket of her bloodstained coat. She leaned back and breathed deeply.
“Feel better?” asked Fontine.
She turned and looked at him. Her eyes were calmer now, only contempt showing in them. “You understand, Captain. I don’t feel. There are no feelings. One just goes on living.”
“What will you do?”
She took her eyes away from him and returned to the window. She answered him quietly, dreamily—out of contact. “Live, if I can. It’s not up to me. It’s up to you.”
In the aisle the flight attendant stirred. He shook his head and got to his knees. Before he could focus, Lübok was in front of him, his gun at the attendant’s head.
“If you want to stay alive, you’ll do exactly as I say at Müllheim.”
Obedience was in the soldier’s eyes.
Fontine got up. “What about the girl?” he whispered.
“What about her?” countered Lübok.
“I’d like to bring her out with us.”
The Czech ran an exasperated hand through his hair. “Oh, Christ! Well, it’s that or killing her. She’d identify me for a drop of morphine.” He looked down at the girl. “Get her to clean up. There’s a raincoat in the back. She can put it on.”
“Thanks,” said Victor.
“Don’t,” replied Lübok. “I’d kill her in a second if I thought it was a better solution. But she could be valuable; she’s been with a Kommando unit where we didn’t know one existed.”
The Resistance fighters met the automobile on a back road of Lörrach, near the Franco-Swiss border. Victor was given clean but ragged clothes to replace the German uniform. They crossed the Rhine at nightfall. The girl was taken west to a Resistance camp in the hills; she was too drugged, too erratic to make the trip south to Montbéliard.
The flight attendant was simply taken away. Fontine kept his own counsel. There’d been another corporal from another army on a pier in Celle Ligure.
“I leave you now,” said Lübok, crossing to him on the riverbank. The Czech’s hand was extended.
Fontine was surprised. The plan had been for Lübok to go with him to Montbéliard; London might have new instructions for him. He took Lübok’s hand, protesting.
“Why? I thought—”
“I know. But things change. There are problems in Wiesbaden.”
Victor held the Czech’s right hand with his own, covering it with his left. “It’s difficult to know what to say. I owe you my life.”
“Whatever I did, you would have done the same. I never doubted that.”
“You’re generous as well as brave.”
“That Greek priest said I was a degenerate who could blackmail half of Berlin.”
“Could you?”
“Probably,” answered Lübok quickly, looking over at a Frenchman who was beckoning him to the boat. He acknowledged with a nod of his head. He turned back to Victor. “Listen to me,” he said softly, removing his hand. “That priest told you something else. That I worked for Rome. You said you didn’t know what that meant.”
“I don’t, specifically. But I’m not blind; it has to do with the train from Salonika.”
“It has everything to do with it.”
“You do work for Rome, then? For the church?”
“The church is not your enemy. Believe that.”
“The Order of Xenope claims it is not my enemy. Yet certainly I have one. But you don’t answer my question. Do you work for Rome?”
“Yes. But not in the way you think.”
“Lübok!” Fontine grabbed the middle-aged Czech by the shoulders. “I have no thoughts! I don’t know! Can’t you understand that?”
Lübok stared at Victor; in the dim night light his eyes were searching. “I believe you. I gave you a dozen opportunities; you seized none of them.”
“Opportunities? What opportunities?”
The Frenchman by the boat called again, this time harshly. “You! Peacock! Let’s get out of here.”
“Right away,” replied Lübok, his eyes still on Fontine. “For the last time. There are men—on both sides—who think this war is insignificant compared to the information they believe you have. In some ways I agree with them. But you don’t have it, you never did. And this war must be fought. And won. In fact, your father was wiser than all of them.”
“Savarone? What do you-?”
“I go now.” Lübok raised his hands, with strength but no hostility, and removed Victor’s arms. “For these reasons, I did what I did. You’ll know soon enough. That priest in the Casimir was right: there are monsters. He was one of them. There are others. But don’t blame churches; they are innocent. They harbor the fanatics, but they’re innocent.”
“Peacock! No more delay!”
“Coming!” said Lübok in a shouted whisper. “Good-bye, Fontine. If for one minute I thought you were not what you say you are, I would have wracked you myself for the information. Or killed you. But you are what you are, caught in the middle. They’ll leave you alone now. For a while.”
The Czech touched Victor’s face briefly, gently, and ran down to the boat.
The blue lights flashed above the Montbéliard field at precisely five minutes past midnight. Instantly two rows of small flares were ignited; the runway was marked, the plane circled and made its approach.
Fontine ran across the field carrying his briefcase. By the time he reached the side of the rolling plane, the hatch was open; two men were standing in the frame, gripping the sides, their arms extended. Victor heaved the briefcase inside and reached up, making contact with the arm on his right. He ran faster, jumped, and was pulled in through the opening; he lay face down on the deck. The hatch was slammed shut, a command shouted out to the pilot, and the engines roared. The plane sprang forward, the tail of the fuselage rising in seconds, and seconds later they were airborne.
Fontine raised his head and crawled to the ribbed wall outside the hatch. He pulled the briefcase to his side and breathed deeply, letting his head fall back against the metal.
“Oh, my God!” came the words spoken in shock out of the darkness. “It’s you!”
Victor snapped his head to the left, in the direction of the indistinguishable figure who spoke with such alarm in his voice. The first shafts of moonlight came from the windows of the open pilot area. Fontine’s eyes were drawn to the right hand of the speaker. It was encased in a black glove.
“Stone? What are you doing here?”
But Geoffrey Stone was incapable of answering. The moonlight grew brighter, illuminating the hollow shell that was the aircraft’s fuselage. Stone’s eyes were wide, his lips parted, immobile.
“Stone? It is you?”
“Oh, Jesus! We’ve been tricked. They’ve done it!”
“What are you talking about?”
The English continued in a monotone. “You were reported killed. Captured and executed in the Casimir. We were told that only one man escaped. With your papers—”
“Who?”
“The courier, Lübok.”
Victor got to his feet unsteadily, holding on to a metal brace that protruded from the wall of the vibrating aircraft. The geometric pieces were coming together. “Where did you get this information?”
“It was relayed to us this morning.”
“By whom? Who picked it up? Who relayed it?”
“The Greek embassy,” replied Stone barely above a whisper.
Fontine sank back down to the deck of the plane. Lübok had said the words.
I gave you a dozen opportunities; you seized none. There are men who think this war is insignificant.… For these reasons I did what I did. You’ll know soon enough.… They’ll leave you alone now. For a while.
Lübok had made his move. He had checked an airfield in Warsaw before daybreak and sent a false message to London.
It did not take a great deal of imagination to know what that message accomplished.
“We’re immobilized. We’ve exposed ourselves and been taken out. We all watch each other now, but no one can make a move, or admit what we’re looking for. No one can afford that.” Brevourt spoke as he stood by the leaded window overlooking the courtyard in Alien Operations. “Checkmate.”
Across the room, standing by the long conference table, was a furious Alec Teague. They were alone.
“I don’t give a damn. What concerns me is your blatant manipulation of Military Intelligence! You’ve placed an entire network in jeopardy. Loch Torridon may well have been crippled!”
“Create another strategy,” said Brevourt absently, looking out the window. “It’s your job, isn’t it?”
“Damn you!”
“For God’s sake, Teague, stop it!” Brevourt reeled from the window. “Do you for one minute think I was the final authority?”
“I think you compromised that authority! I should have been consulted!”
Brevourt started to reply, then stopped. He nodded his head as he walked slowly across the room to the table opposite Teague. “You may be right, general. Tell me, you’re the expert. What was our mistake?”
“Lübok,” said the brigadier coldly. “He faded you. He took your money and turned to Rome, then made up his own mind. He was the wrong man.”
“He was your man. From your files.”
“Not for that job. You interfered.”
“He can go anywhere in Europe,” continued Brevourt almost plaintively, as if Teague had not interrupted. “He’s untouchable. If Fontini-Cristi broke away, Lübok could have followed him anywhere. Even into Switzerland.”
“You expected that, didn’t you?”
“Frankly, yes. You’re too good a salesman, general. I believed you. I thought Loch Torridon was Fontini-Cristi’s brainchild. How logical it all seemed. The Italian goes back under perfect cover to make his own arrangements.” Brevourt sat down wearily, clasping his hands in front of him on the table.
“Didn’t it occur to you that if such was the case, he would have come to us? To you?”
“No. We couldn’t return his lands or his factories.”
“You don’t know him,” concluded Teague with finality. “You never took the trouble. That was your first mistake.”
“Yes, I expect it was. I’ve lived most of my life with liars. The corridors of mendacity. The simple truth is elusive.” Brevourt suddenly looked up at the Intelligence man. His face was pathetic, his pallid skin taut, the hollows of his eyes proof of exhaustion. “You didn’t believe it, did you? You didn’t believe he was dead.”
“No.”
“I couldn’t take the chance, you see. I accepted what you said, that the Germans wouldn’t execute him, that they’d put a trace on him, find out who he was, use him. But the report said otherwise. So, if he was dead, it meant the fanatics in Rome or Xenope had killed him. They wouldn’t do that unless—unless—they’d learned his secret.”
“And if they had, the vault would be theirs. Not yours. Not England’s. It was never yours to begin with.”
The ambassador looked away from Teague and sank back in the chair, closing his eyes. “Nor could it be allowed to fall into the hands of maniacs. Not now. We know who the maniac is in Rome. The Vatican will watch Donatti now. The Patriarchate will suspend activities; we’ve been given assurance.”
“Which was Lübok’s objective, of course.”
Brevourt opened his eyes. “Was it really?”
“In my judgment, yes, Lübok’s a Jew.”
Brevourt turned his head and stared at Teague. “There’ll be no more interference, general. Get on with your war. Mine is at a standoff.”
Anton Lübok crossed Prague’s Wenceslaus Square and walked up the steps of the bombed-out cathedral. Inside, the late afternoon sun streaked through the huge gaps of stone where Luftwaffe bombs had exploded. Whole sections of the left wall were destroyed; primitive scaffolds had been erected everywhere for support.
He stood in the far right aisle and checked his watch. It was time.
An old priest came out of the curtained apse and crossed in front of the confessional booths. He paused briefly at the fourth. It was Lübok’s signal.
He walked down the aisle cautiously, his attention on the dozen or so worshipers in the church. None was watching him. He parted the curtains and walked inside the confessional. He knelt before the tiny Bohemian crucifix, the flickering light of the prayer candle throwing shadows on the draped walls.
“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned,” Lübok began softly. “I have sinned in excess. I have debased the body and blood of Christ.”
“One cannot debase the Son of God,” came the proper reply from behind the drapes. “One can only debase oneself.”
“But we are in the image of God. As was Himself.”
“A poor and imperfect image,” was the correct response.
Lübok exhaled slowly, the exercise was completed. “You are Rome?”
“I am the conduit,” said the voice in quiet arrogance.
“I didn’t think you were the city, you damn fool.”
“This is the house of God. Watch your tongue.”
“And you revile this house,” whispered Lübok. “All who work for Donatti revile it!”
“Silence. We are the way of Christ!”
“You’re dirt! Your Christ would spit on you.”
The breathing beyond the drapes was filled with controlled loathing. “I shall pray for your soul,” came the forced words. “What of Fontini-Cristi?”
“He had no other purpose but Loch Torridon. Your projections were wrong.”
“That won’t do!” The priest’s whisper was strident. “He had to have other objectives! We’re positive!”
“He never left my side from the moment we met in Montbéliard. There were no additional contacts other than those we knew about.”
“No! We don’t believe that!”
“In a matter of days it won’t make any difference what you believe. You’re finished. All of you. Good men will see to it.”
“What have you done, Jew?” The voice behind the drapes was low now, the loathing absolute.
“What had to be done, priest.” Lübok rose to his feet and put his left hand into his pocket. With his right he suddenly ripped the drapes in front of him.
The priest was revealed. He was huge, the black robes giving him the appearance of immensity. His face was the face of a man who hated deeply; the eyes were the eyes of a predator.
Lübok withdrew an envelope from his pocket and dropped it on the prayer stall in front of the stunned priest. “Here’s your money. Give it back to Donatti. I wanted to see what you looked like.”
The priest answered quietly. “You’d better know the rest. My name is Gaetamo. Enrici Gaetamo. And I’ll come back for you.”
“I doubt it,” replied Lübok.
“Don’t,” said Enrici Gaetamo.
Lübok stood for a moment looking down at the priest. When their eyes were locked, the blond-haired Czech wet the fingers of his right hand and reached for the prayer candle, extinguishing its flame. All was darkness. He parted the drapes and walked out of the confessional.