The Gemini Contenders

The orchestra and the caterers left. Andrew was driven to LaGuardia Airport. There was a nine o’clock plane to Washington.

Adrian remained on the beach by himself for nearly thirty minutes after his brother left. Finally he wandered up to the house to talk to his parents. He told them he had intended to stay the night but now thought he should leave. He had to get back to Washington.

“You should have gone with your brother,” said Jane at the front door.

“Yes, I should have,” said Adrian softly. “I didn’t think.” He said his good-byes.

When he left, Jane walked out to the terrace, carrying the letter brought by the priest. She held it out for her husband, unable to conceal her fear. “A man brought this. About three hours ago. He was a priest. He said he was from Rome.”

Victor looked up at his wife. There was no comment in his eyes, and by the lack of it, there was. “Why did you wait?”

“Because it was your sons’ birthday.”

“They’re strangers to each other,” said Fontine, taking the envelope. “They’re both our children, but they’re very far apart.”

“It won’t last. It’s the war.”

“I hope you’re right,” said Victor, opening the envelope and taking out the letter. It ran several pages, the handwriting small but precise. “Do we know a man named Aldobrini?”

“Who?”

“Guido Aldobrini. That’s the signature.” Fontine held up the last page.

“I don’t think so,” answered Jane, sitting down in the nearest chair, her eyes on the threatening sky. “Can you see in this light? It’s getting darker.”

“It is sufficient.” Victor put the pages in sequence and began to read.

Signor Fontini-Cristi:

You do not know me although we met many years ago. That meeting cost me the better part of my life. I have spent over a quarter of a century in the Transvaal in holy penance for an act of shame. I did not touch you myself, but I observed and did not raise my voice for mercy, which was an indecent and unholy thing.

Yes, Signore, I was one of the priests with the Cardinal Donatti that dawn at Campo di Fiori. For what we believed was the preservation of Christ’s Mother Church on earth, the Cardinal convinced us that there were no laws of God or man or mercy standing between our actions and the preservation of God’s Church. All our scholastic training and vows of obedience—not only to our superiors, but to the highest authority of conscience—were twisted by the power of Donatti’s influence. I have spent twenty-five years trying to understand, but that is another story not pertinent here. One would have had to know the Cardinal to understand.

I am retired from my cloth. The illnesses of the African forests have taken their toll, and thanks be to Christ I do not fear death. For I have given of myself as fully as I knew how. I am cleansed and await the judgment of God.

Before I face our merciful Lord, however, there is information I must impart to you, for to withhold it now would be no less a sin than that for which I have paid holy penance.

The work of Donatti continues. A man, one of the three defrocked priests who were imprisoned by the civil court for their assault on you, has been released. As you perhaps know, one took his own life, the other died of natural causes while in prison. This third man survives and for motives beyond my comprehension, has rededicated himself to the pursuit of the Salonika documents. I say beyond my comprehension, for Cardinal Donatti was discredited in the highest circles of the Vatican. The Grecian documents cannot affect the Holy Mother Church. Divine revelation cannot be contravened by the hand of mortal man.

This defrocked priest goes by the name of Enrici Gaetamo, and he is taken to wearing the collar denied him by apostolic decree. It is my understanding that his years spent in the criminal institution have done nothing to enlighten his soul or show him the ways of a merciful Christ. On the contrary, I am told he is Donatti incarnate. A man to be feared.

He currently, painstakingly, researches every detail he can unearth relative to the train from Salonika thirty-three years ago. His travels have carried him from the yards of Edhessa, through the Balkans, over the rail routes beyond Monfalcone into the northern Alpine regions. He seeks out all he can find who knew the son of Fontini-Cristi. He is a man possessed. He subscribes to the code of Donatti. There is no law of God or man that will interfere with his “journey for Christ,” as he phrases it. Nor will he reveal to anyone the objective of his journey. But I know, and now you do. And soon I shall depart this life.

Gaetamo resides in a small hunting lodge in the hills of Varese. I’m sure the proximity to Campo di Fiori does not escape you.

This is all I can tell you; it is all I know. That he will attempt to reach you, I am certain. That you be warned and remain safe in God’s hands, is my prayer.

In sorrow and personal anguish for my past, I remain,

Guido Aldobrini

There was the sound of thunder over the water; Fontine wished the symbolism were not so crudely simple. The clouds were above them now; the sun was gone and the rains began. He was grateful for the diversion. He looked at Jane. She was staring at him; somehow he had communicated to her his profound uneasiness.

“Go in,” he said softly. “I’ll follow in a minute or two.”

“The letter—?”

“Of course,” he answered her unspoken question as he replaced the pages in the envelope and handed it to her. “Read it.”

“You’ll be drenched. The rain will get stronger.”

“It’s refreshing; you know I like the rain.” He smiled up at her. “Then perhaps you’ll help me change the brace while we talk.”

She stood above him for a moment, and he could feel her eyes on him. But as always, she would leave him alone when he wished it.

He was chilled by his thoughts, not the rain. The letter from Aldobrini was not the first time Salonika had reappeared. He had said nothing to Jane for there was nothing concrete, only a series of obscurely disturbing—seemingly minor—occurrences.

The priest was solicitous; what struck Fontine was that the cleric knew a great deal about his physical condition, far more than a casual visitor would know.

It was a very odd half hour. The priest was a student of history, he said. He had come across archive documents that raised profoundly disturbing questions between the house of Fontini-Cristi and the Vatican. Historical questions that led to the break between the padroni of the north and the Holy See. When Victor was well again, perhaps they could discuss the past. The historical past. He had ended his good-byes with a direct reference to the assault at Campo di Fiori. The pain and anguish inflicted by one maniacal prelate could not be laid at the soul of the church, he said.

About five weeks later there’d been a second incident. Victor had been in his Washington office, preparing to testify before a congressional committee looking into the tax concessions enjoyed by American shippers sailing under the Paraguayan flag, when his intercom buzzed.

“Mr. Fontine, Mr. Theodore Dakakos is here. He says he wants to pay his respects.”

Dakakos was one of the young Greek shipping giants, an impertinent rival of Onassis and Niarchos, and far better liked. Fontine told his secretary to send him in.

Dakakos was a large man with a blunt, open expression on his face that might become an American football player more than a shipping tycoon. He was around forty years of age; his English was precise, the language of a student.

He had flown to Washington to observe the hearings, perhaps to learn something, he said smiling. Victor laughed; the Greek’s reputation for integrity was matched only by the legend of his acute business sense. Fontine told him so.

“I was most fortunate. At a very young age I was given the advantages of an education by a sympathetic but remote religious brotherhood.”

“You were, indeed, fortunate.”

The young Greek magnate was saying something beyond his words, but Victor could not determine what it was. “Gratitude as well as God, then, moves in strange ways,” said Victor smiling. “Your reputation is a fine one. You do credit to those who aided you.”

“Theodore is my first name, Mr. Fontine. My full name is Theodore Annaxas Dakakos. Throughout my schooling I was known as Annaxas the Younger. Does that mean anything to you?”

“In what way?”

“The name Annaxas.”

“I’ve dealt with literally hundreds of your countrymen over the years. I don’t think I’ve ever run across the name Annaxas.”

The Greek had remained silent for several moments. Then he spoke quietly. “I believe you.”

Dakakos left soon after.

The third occurrence was the strangest of all; it triggered a memory of violence so sharply into focus that Fontine lost his breath. It had happened only ten days ago in Los Angeles. He was at the Beverly Hills Hotel for conferences between two widely divergent companies trying to merge their interests. He had been called in to salvage what he could; the task was impossible.

Which was why he was taking the sun in the early afternoon, instead of sitting inside the hotel listening to lawyers trying to justify their retainers. He was drinking a Campari at a table in the outside pool area, astonished at the number of good-looking people who apparently did not have to work for a living.

“Guten Tag, mein Herr.”

The speaker was a woman in her late forties or early fifties, that age so well cosmeticized by the well-to-do. She was of medium height, quite well proportioned, with streaked blond hair. She wore white slacks and a blue blouse. Covering her eyes was a pair of large silver-rimmed sunglasses. Her German was natural, not studied. He replied in his own, academic, less natural, as he rose awkwardly.

“Good afternoon. Have we met? I’m sorry, but I don’t seem to remember.”

“You do? Then we have met.”

The woman sat down opposite him. She continued in English. “Yes. But you had no such difficulties then. You were a soldier then.”

“During the war?”

“There was a flight from Munich to Müllheim. And a whore from the camps escorted on that flight by three Wehrmacht pigs. More pigs than she, I try to tell myself.”

“My God!” Fontine caught his breath. “You were a child. What happened to you?”

She told him briefly. She had been taken by the French Resistance fighters to a transit camp southwest of Montbéliard. There for several months she endured agonies best left undescribed, as she experienced the process of narcotics withdrawal. She had tried to commit suicide numerous times, but the Resistance people had other ideas. They banked on the fact that once the drugs were expunged, her memories would be motive enough to turn her into an effective underground agent. She was already tough; that much they could see.

“They were right, of course,” the woman said, ten days ago at the table on the patio of the Beverly Hills Hotel. “They kept watch over me night and day, men and women. The men had more fun; the French never waste anything, do they?”

“You survived the war,” Fontine replied, not caring to probe.

“With a bucket full of medals. Croix de guerre, Légion d’honneur, Légion de résistance.”

“And so you became a great motion picture star and I was too stupid to recognize you.” Victor smiled gently.

“Hardly. Although I’ve had occasions to be associated, as it were, with many prominent people of the motion picture industry.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

“I became—and at the risk of sounding immodest, still am—the most successful madame in the south of France. The Cannes Film Festival alone provides sufficient income for a perfectly adequate subsistence.” It was the woman’s turn to smile. It was a good smile, thought Fontine. Genuine, alive.

“I knew you were. And would. I’m here on a talent hunt. It would be my pleasure to grant any request you might have. There are a number of my girls out there in the pool.”

“No, thank you. You’re most kind, but, as you said, I am not the man I was.”

“I think you’re magnificent,” she said simply. “I always have.” She smiled at him. “I must go. I recognized you and wanted to speak to you, that’s all.” She rose from the table and extended her hand. “Don’t get up.”

The handshake was firm. “It’s been a pleasure—and a relief—to see you again,” he said.

She held his eyes and spoke quietly. “I was in Zürich a few months ago. They traced me through a man named Lübok. To you. He was a Czech. A queen, I’m told. He was the man on the plane with us, wasn’t he?”

“Yes. A very brave man, I must add. A king, in my judgment.” Victor was so startled he replied instinctively, without comprehending. He had not thought of Lübok in years.

“Yes, I remember. He saved all of us. They broke him.” The woman released his hand.

“Broke him? About what? My God, the man, if he’s alive, is my age or more. Seventy or better. Who would be interested in such old men? What are you talking about?”

“About a man named Vittorio Fontini-Cristi, son of Savarone.”

“You’re talking nonsense. Nonsense I understand, but I don’t see how it might concern you. Or Lübok.”

“I don’t know any more. Nor do I care to. A man in Zürich came to my hotel room and asked questions about you. Naturally, I couldn’t answer them. You were merely an Allied Intelligence officer who saved a whore’s life. But he knew about Anton Lübok.”

“Who was this man?”

“A priest. That is all I know. Good-bye, Kapitän.” She turned and walked away, waving and smiling at various girls who were splashing about in the pool and laughing too obviously.

A priest. In Zürich.

Now he understood the enigmatic meeting at the poolside in Los Angeles. A defrocked priest had been released after nearly thirty years in prison and revived the hunt for the documents of Constantine.

The work of Donatti continues, the letter said. He currently, painstakingly, researches every detail he can unearth … his travels have carried him from the yards at Edhessa, through the Balkans … beyond Monfalcone into the northern Alpine regions.

He seeks out all he can find who knew the son of Fontini-Cristi.

And thousands of miles away in New York City, another priest—very much of the cloth—comes into a hospital room and speaks of an act of barbarism that could not be separated from those documents. Lost three decades ago and hunted still.

And in Washington, a young industrial giant walks into an office and for no apparent reasons says his family served the church in ways he did not understand.

“… I was given … advantages … by a sympathetic but remote religious brotherhood.…”

The Order of Xenope. It was suddenly so very clear.

Nothing was coincidence.

It had come back. The train from Salonika had plunged through thirty years of sleep and reawakened. It had to be controlled before the hatreds collided, before the fanatics turned the search into a holy war, as they had done three decades ago. Victor knew he owed that much to his father, his mother, to the loved ones slain in the white lights of Campo di Fiori; to those who had died at Oxfordshire. To a misguided’ young monk named Petride who took his own life on a rocky slope in Loch Torridon, to a man named Teague, to an undergrounder named Lübok, to an old man named Guido Barzini who had saved him from himself.

The violence could not be allowed to return.

The rain came faster now, harder, in diagonal sheets blown by the wind. Fontine reached for the wrought iron chair beside him and struggled to his feet, his arm clamped within the steel band of his cane.

To the hills of Varese.

To Campo di Fiori.

19