27

Andrew peered through the windshield at the sign caught in the dull wash of the headlights. It was dawn but pockets of fog were everywhere.

MILANO 5 KM.

He had driven through the night, renting the fastest car he could find in Rome. The journey at night minimized the risk of being followed. Headlights were giveaways on long stretches of dark roads.

But he had not expected to be followed. In Rock Creek Park, Greene said he was marked. What the Jew did not know was that if IG wanted him that quickly, they could have picked him up at the airport. The Pentagon knew exactly where he was; a cable from the secretary of the army had brought him back from Saigon.

So the word to take him had not been given. That it would within days, perhaps hours, was not the issue; of course it would. But he was the son of Victor Fontine. The Pentagon would not be hasty issuing any formal orders for arrest. The army did not bring charges against a Rockefeller or a Kennedy or a Fontine lightly. The Pentagon would insist on flying back the Eye Corps officers for corroborating testimony. The Pentagon would leave nothing to chance or error.

Which meant he had the time to get out. For by the time the army was prepared to move, he would be in the mountains tracing a vault that would change the ground rules as they had never been changed before.

Andrew stepped on the accelerator. He needed sleep. A professional knew when the body hungered for rest in spite of the high-pitched moment, and the eyes became aware of their sockets. He would find a small boardinghouse or country inn and sleep for most of the day. Late in the afternoon he would drive north to Campo di Fiori and find a picture on the wall. The first clue in the search for a vault buried in the mountains.

He drove by the crumbling stone gates of the entrance without slowing down, and continued for several miles. He allowed two cars to pass him, observing the drivers; they were not interested in him. He turned around and went past the gates a second time. There was no way to tell what was inside; whether there were any security measures—trip alarms or dogs. All he could see was a winding paved road that disappeared into the woods.

The sound of an automobile on that road would be its own alarm. He could not chance that; he had no intention of announcing his arrival at Campo di Fiori. He slowed the car down, and turned into the bordering woods, driving as far off the road as possible.

Five minutes later he approached the gates. By habit he checked for wires and photoelectric cells; there were none, and he passed through the gates and walked down the road cut out of the woods.

He stayed at the edge, concealed by the trees and the overgrowth until he was in sight of the main house. It was as his father had described: more dead than alive.

The windows were dark, no lamps were on inside. There should have been. The house was in shadows. An old man living alone needed light; old men did not trust their eyes. Had the priest died?

Suddenly, out of nowhere, there came the sound of a voice, high-pitched and plaintive. Then footsteps. They came from the road beyond the north bend of the drive; the road he remembered his father describing as leading to the stables. Fontine dropped to the ground, below the level of the grass, and remained motionless. He raised his head by inches; he waited and watched.

The old priest came into view. He was wearing a long black cassock and carried a wicker basket. He spoke out loud, but Andrew could not see who he was talking to. Nor could he understand the words. Then the monk stopped and turned and spoke again.

There was a reply. It was rapid, authoritative, in a language Fontine did not immediately recognize. Then he saw the monk’s companion and instantly appraised him as one might an adversary. The man was large, the shoulders wide and heavy, encased in a camel’s hair jacket above well-tailored slacks. The last rays of the sun illuminated both men; not well—the light was at their backs—but enough to distinguish the faces.

Andrew concentrated on the younger, powerfully built man walking behind the priest. His face was large, the eyes wide apart, beneath light brows and a tanned forehead that set off short, sun-bleached hair. He was in his middle forties, certainly no more. And the walk: It was that of a deliberate man, capable of moving swiftly, but not anxious for observers to know it. Fontine had commanded such men.

The old monk proceeded toward the marble steps, shifting the small basket to his left arm, his right hand lifting the folds of his habit. He stopped on the top step and turned again to the younger man. His voice was calmer, resigned to the layman’s presence or instructions or both. He spoke slowly and Fontine had no trouble now recognizing the language. It was Greek.

As he listened to the priest he reached another, equally obvious conclusion. The powerfully built man was Theodore Annaxas Dakakos. He is a bull.

The priest continued across the wide marble porch to the doors; Dakakos climbed the steps and followed. Both men went inside.

Fontine lay in the grass on the border of the drive for several minutes. He had to think. What brought Dakakos to Campo di Fiori? What was here for him?

And as the questions formed, the single answer was apparent. Dakakos, the loner, was the unseen power here. The conversation that had just taken place in the circular drive was not a conversation between strangers.

What had to be established was whether Dakakos had come alone to Campo di Fiori. Or had he brought his own protection, his own firepower? There was no one in the house, no lights in the windows, no sounds from inside. That left the stables.

Andrew scrambled backward in the wet grass until all sightlines from the windows were blocked by the over-growth. He rose behind a clump of bushes and removed a small Beretta revolver from his pocket. He climbed the embankment above the drive and estimated the angle of the stable road across the knoll. If Dakakos’s men were in the stables, it would be a simple matter to eliminate them. Without gunfire; that was essential. The weapon was merely a device; men collapsed under its threat.

Fontine crouched and weaved his way across the knoll toward the stable road. The early evening breezes bent the upper grass and the branches of trees; the professional soldier fell instinctively into the rhythm of their movement. The roofs of the stables came into view and he stepped silently down the incline toward the road.

In front of the stable door was a long steel-gray Maserati, its tires caked with mud. There were no voices, no signs of life; there was only the quiet hum of the surrounding woods. Andrew lowered himself to his knees, picked up a handful of dirt, and threw it twenty yards in the air across the road, hitting the stable windows.

No one emerged. Fontine repeated the action, using more dirt mixed with small pieces of rock. The splattering was louder; there was no way it could go unobserved.

Nothing. No one.

Cautiously, Andrew walked out on the road toward the car. He stopped before he reached it. The surface of the road was hard, but still partially wet from the earlier rain.

The Maserati was headed north; there were no footsteps on the passenger side of the car in front of him. He walked around the automobile; there were distinct imprints on the driver’s side: the shoe marks of a man. Dakakos had come alone.

There was no time to waste now. There was a picture on a wall to be taken, and a journey to Champoluc that had to begin. Too, there was a fine irony in finding Dakakos at Campo di Fiori. The informer’s life would end where his obsession had begun. Eye Corps was owed that much.

He could see lights inside the house now, but only in the windows to the left of the main entrance. Andrew kept to the wall, ducking under the ledges, until he was at the side of the window where the light was brightest. He inched his face to the frame and looked inside.

The room was huge. There were couches and chairs and a fireplace. Two lamps were lit; one by the far couch, the second nearer, to the right of an armchair. Dakakos was standing by the mantel, gesturing in slow, deliberate movements with his hands. The priest was in the chair, his back to Fontine, and barely visible. Their conversation was muted, indistinguishable. It was impossible to determine whether the Greek had a weapon; the assumption had to be that he did.

Andrew pried a brick loose from the border of the drive and returned to the window. He rose, the Beretta in his right hand, the brick gripped in his left. Dakakos approached the priest in the chair; the Greek was pleading, or explaining, his concentration absolute.

The moment was now.

Shielding his eyes with the gun, Fontine extended his left arm behind him, then arced it forward, hurling the brick into the center of the window, shattering glass and wood strips everywhere. On impact he smashed the remaining, obstructing glass with the Beretta, thrusting the weapon through the space, and screamed at the top of his voice.

“You move one inch, you’re dead!”

Dakakos froze. “You?” he whispered. “You were taken!”

The Greek’s head slumped forward, the gashes from the pistol barrel on his face deep, ugly, and bleeding profusely. There was nothing that so became this man as a painful death, thought Fontine.

“In the name of God have mercy!” screamed the priest from the opposite chair, where he sat bound and helpless.

“Shut up!” roared the soldier, his eyes on Dakakos. “Why did you do it? Why are you here?”

The Greek stared, his breathing erratic, his eyes swollen. “They said you were taken. They had everything they needed.” He could barely be heard, speaking as much to himself as to the man above him.

“They made a mistake,” said Andrew. “Their signals got crossed. You didn’t expect them to wire you their apologies, did you? What did they tell you? That they were picking me up?”

Dakakos remained silent, blinking from the rivulets of blood that rolled down his forehead into his eyes. Fontine could hear the Pentagon commanders. Never admit. Never explain. Take the objective, the rest is no strain.

“Forget it,” he said quietly, icily to Dakakos. “Just tell me why you’re here.”

The Greek’s eyes swam in his head; his lips moved. “You are filth. And we’ll stop you!”

“Who’s we?”

Dakakos arched his neck, thrusting it forward, and spat into the soldier’s face. Fontine swung the barrel of the pistol up into the Greek’s jaw. The head slumped forward.

“Stop!” cried the monk. “I’ll tell you. There’s a priest named Land. Dakakos and Land work together.”

“Who?” Fontine turned abruptly to the monk.

“It’s all I know. The name! They’ve been in contact for years.”

“Who is he? What is he?”

“I don’t know. Dakakos doesn’t say.”

“Is he waiting for him? Is this priest coming here?”

The monk’s expression suddenly changed. His eyelids quivered, his lips trembled.

Andrew understood. Dakakos was waiting for someone, but not a priest named Land. Fontine raised the barrel of the pistol and shoved it into the mouth of the semiconscious Greek. “All right, Father, you’ve two seconds to tell me who it is. Who’s this son of a bitch waiting for?”

“The other one.…”

“The other what?”

The old monk stared at him. Fontine felt a hard emptiness in his stomach. He removed the pistol.

Adrian.

Adrian was on his way to Campo di Fiori! His brother had broken away and sold out to Dakakos!

The picture! He had to make sure the picture was there! He turned, looking for the door of the.…

When the blow came it was paralyzing. Dakakos had snapped the lamp cord binding his wrists and lunged forward, his first pummeling into Andrew’s kidney, his other hand wrapped around the Beretta’s barrel, twisting Fontine’s forearm until he thought his elbow would crack.

Andrew countered by falling sideways, rolling with the force of Dakakos’s lunge. The Greek sprang on top of him, crushing him like some elephantine hammer. He smashed Fontine’s knuckles against the floor until the gun exploded, the bullet embedding itself in the wooden arch of the doorway. Andrew brought his knee up, pounding the base of Dakakos’s groin, crushing the Greek’s testicles until he arched his back, grimacing in torment.

Fontine rolled again, freeing his left hand, clawing the bleeding face above, tearing at the hanging flesh. Still, Dakakos would not retreat, would not let up; he slammed his forearms into Andrew’s throat.

It was the instant! Andrew arched forward, sinking his teeth into the flesh of Dakakos’s arm, biting deeply, as a mad dog would bite, feeling the warm blood glowing into his throat. The Greek pulled his arm up—his hand away—and it was the space Fontine needed. He crashed his knee up once again in Dakakos’s groin, and slid his whole body under the giant; as he did so he shot his left hand into the well of Dakakos’s armpit, and pressed the nerve with all the force he could summon.

The Greek raised his right side in agony. Andrew rolled to his left, kicking the heavy body away, pulling his arm free.

With the speed born of a hundred fire fights, Fontine was on his haunches, the Beretta leveled, spitting bullets into the exposed chest of the informer who had come to close to killing him.

Dakakos was dead. Annaxas was no more.

Andrew rose unsteadily; he was covered with blood, his whole body wracked. He looked at the priest of Xenope in the chair. The old man’s eyes were closed, his lips moving in silent prayer.

There was one shell left in the Beretta. Andrew raised the gun and fired.