Petride leaped to his feet and leaned over the side, his pulse wild, his hands trembling as he gripped the roof ladder. Down the track no more than a quarter of a mile, a lantern was being raised and lowered, its light flickering through the thin sheets of snow.
Annaxas braked the locomotive. The belching engine drew out its roars like the subsiding giant furnace it was. In the snow-lit, moonlit distance, aided by the beam of the locomotive’s single headlight, Petride saw a man standing next to an odd-shaped vehicle in a small clearing at the side of the rails. The man was dressed in heavy clothing, collar and cap of fur. The vehicle was both a truck and not a truck. Its rear wheels were much larger than those in front, as though belonging to a tractor. Yet the hood beyond the windshield was not a truck’s hood, or a tractor’s, thought the priest. It resembled something else.
What was it?
Then he knew and he could not help but smile. He had seen hundreds of such pieces of equipment during the past four days. In front of the strange vehicle’s hood was a vertically controlled cargo platform.
Fontini-Cristi was as resourceful as the monks in the Order of Xenope. But then the pouch strapped to his chest had told him that.
“You are the priest of Xenope?” Savarone Fontini-Cristi’s voice was deep, aristocratic, and very used to authority. He was a tall man and slender beneath the Alpine clothing, with large, penetrating eyes recessed in the aquiline features of his face. And he was a much older man than Petride thought he would be.
“I am, signore,” said Petride, climbing down into the snow.
“You’re very young. The holy men have given you an awesome responsibility.”
“I speak the language. I know that what I do is right.”
The padrone stared at him. “I’m sure you do. What else is left for you?”
“Don’t you believe it?”
The padrone replied simply. “I believe in only one thing, my young father. There is but a single war that must be fought. There can be no divisions among those who battle the fascist. That is the extent of what I believe.” Fontini-Cristi looked up abruptly at the train. “Come. There’s no time to waste. We must return before daybreak. There are clothes for you in the tractor. Get them. I’ll instruct the engineer.”
“He doesn’t speak Italian.”
“I speak Greek. Hurry!”
The freight car was lined up with the tractor. Laterally operated chains were placed around the holy vault, and the heavy iron receptacle encased in strips of wood was pulled, groaning under the tension, out onto the platform. It was secured by the chains in front; taut straps buckled over the top.
Savarone Fontini-Cristi tested the harnessing on all sides. He was satisfied; he stood back, the beam of his flashlight illuminating the monastic symbols stenciled on the encasement.
“So after fifteen hundred years it comes out of the earth. Only to be returned to the earth,” said Fontini-Cristi quietly. “Earth and fire and sea. I should have chosen the last two, my young priest. Fire or the sea.”
“That is not the will of God.”
“I’m glad your communication is so direct. You holy men never cease to amaze me with your sense of the absolute.” Fontini-Cristi turned to Annaxas and spoke fluently now in Greek. “Pull up so that I may clear the tracks. There’s a narrow trail on the other side of the woods. We’ll be back before dawn.”
Annaxas nodded. He was uncomfortable in the presence of such a man as Fontini-Cristi. “Yes, Your Excellency.”
“I’m no such thing. And you’re a fine engineer.”
“Thank you.” Annaxas, embarrassed, walked toward the engine.
“That man is your brother?” asked Fontini-Cristi softly of Petride.
“Yes.”
“He doesn’t know?”
The young priest shook his head.
“You’ll need your God then.” The Italian turned swiftly and started for the driver’s side of the enclosed tractor. “Come, Father. We have work to do. This machine was built for the avalanche. It will take our cargo where no human being could carry it.”
Petride climbed into the seat. Fontini-Cristi started the powerful engine and expertly shifted gears. The platform in front of the hood was lowered, permitting visibility, and the vehicle lunged forward, vibrating across the tracks into the Alpine forest.
The priest of Xenope sat back and closed his eyes in prayer. Fontini-Cristi maneuvered the powerful machine through the rising woods toward the upper trails of the Champoluc mountains.
“I have two sons older than you,” said Fontini-Cristi after a while. And then he added, “I’m taking you to the grave of a Jew. I think it’s appropriate.”
They returned to the Alpine clearing as the black sky was turning gray. Fontini-Cristi stared at Petride as the young priest climbed out of the strange machine. “You know where I live. My house is your house.”
“We all reside in the house of the Lord, signore.”
“So be it. Good-bye, my young friend.”
“Good-bye. May God go with you.”
“If He chooses.”
The Italian pushed the gearshift into place and drove quickly down the barely visible road below the tracks. Petride understood. Fontini-Cristi could not lose a minute now. Every hour he was away from his estate would add to the questions that might be asked. There were many in Italy who considered the Fontini-Cristis to be enemies of the state.
They were watched. All of them.
The young priest ran through the snow toward the engine. And his brother.
Dawn came over the waters of Lago Maggiore. They were on the Stresa freight barge; the twenty-sixth authorization in the pouch was their passport. Petride wondered what would greet them in Milan, although he realized that it did not really matter.
Nothing mattered now. The journey was coming to an end.
The holy thing was in its resting place. Not to be unearthed for years; perhaps to be buried for a millennium. There was no way to tell.
They sped southeast on the main track through Varese into Castiglione. They did not wait for nightfall … nothing mattered now. On the outskirts of Varese, Petride saw a roadsign in the bright Italian sunlight.
CAMPO DI FIORI. 20 KIL.
God had chosen a man from Campo di Fiori. The holy secret now belonged to Fontini-Cristi.
The countryside rushed by; the air was clear and cold and exhilarating. The skyline of Milan came into view. The haze of factory smoke intruded on God’s sky and lay suspended like a flat, gray tarpaulin above the horizon. The freight slowed and entered the tracks of the depot sidings. They held at a stop until a disinterested spedizioniere in the uniform of the state railroads pointed to a curve in the rails where a green disc snapped up in front of a red one. It was the signal to enter the Milan yards.
“We’re here!” shouted Annaxas. “A day’s rest, then home! I must say you people are remarkable!”
“Yes,” said Petride simply. “We’re remarkable.”
The priest looked at his brother. The sounds of the freight yard were music to Annaxas; he sang a Greek song, his whole upper body swaying rhythmically to the sharp, fast beats of the melody.
It was strange, the song Annaxas sang. It was not a song of the railroads; it belonged to the sea. A chanty that was a favorite of the fishermen of Thermaïkós. There was something appropriate, thought Petride, about such a song at such a moment.
The sea was God’s source of life. It was from the sea that He created earth.
I believe in one God … maker of all things.…
The priest of Xenope removed the large Italian pistol from under his shirt. He took two steps forward, toward his beloved brother, and raised the barrel of the weapon. It was inches from the base of Annaxas’s skull.
… both visible and invisible … and in one Lord, Jesus Christ … only begotten of the Father.…
He pulled the trigger.
The explosion filled the cabin. Blood and flesh and things most terrible flew through the air a
nd matted onto glass and metal.
… substance of the Father … God of God … light of light … very God of very God.…
The priest of Xenope closed his eyes and shouted in exaltation as he held the weapon against his own temple.
“… begotten, not made! I will look into the eyes of the Lord and I shall not waver!”
He fired.
PART
ONE
1
DECEMBER 29, 1939
MILAN, ITALY
Savarone walked past his son’s secretary into his son’s office and across the heavily carpeted floor to the window overlooking the vast factory complex that was the Fontini-Cristi Industries. His son, of course, was nowhere to be seen. His son, his eldest son, was rarely in his office; he was rarely in Milan, for that matter. The first son, the heir-apparent to all of Fontini-Cristi, was incorrigible. And arrogant, and far too concerned with his own creature comforts.
Vittorio was also brilliant. A far more brilliant man than the father who had trained him. And that fact only served to further infuriate Savarone; a man possessing such gifts had greater responsibilities than other men. He did not settle for the daily accomplishments that came naturally. He did not carouse and whore and gamble at roulette and baccarat. Or waste sleepless nights with the naked children of the Mediterranean. Neither did he turn his back on the events that were crippling his country, veering it into chaos.
Savarone heard a slight cough behind him and turned. Vittorio’s secretary had come into the office.
“I’ve left word for your son at the Borsa Valori. I believe he was to see his broker this afternoon.”
“You may believe it, but I doubt you’ll find it on his calendar.” Savarone saw the girl flush. “I apologize. You’re not accountable for my son. Although you’ve probably done so, I suggest you try whatever private numbers he’s given you. This is a familiar office to me. I’ll wait.” He removed his overcoat of light camel’s hair and his hat, a Tyrolean of green felt. He threw them on the armchair at the side of the desk.
“Yes, sir.” The girl left quickly, closing the door behind her.
It was a familiar office, thought Fontini-Cristi, although it had been necessary to call it to the girl’s attention. Until two years ago, it had been his. Very little remained of his presence, now; only the dark wood paneling. All the furniture had been changed. Vittorio had accepted the four walls. Nothing else.
Savarone sat in the large swivel chair behind the desk. He did not like such chairs; he was too old to let his body be suddenly turned and sprung back by unseen springs and hidden ball bearings. He reached into his pocket and took out the telegram that had brought him to Milan from Campo di Fiori, the telegram from Rome that said the Fontini-Cristis were marked.
But marked for what? By whom? On whose orders?
Questions that could not be asked on the telephone, for the telephone was an instrument of the state. The state. Always the state. Seen and unseen. Observing, following, listening, prying. No telephone could be used and no answer given by the informer in Rome who employed the simple codes.
We have received no reply from Milan, therefore we take the liberty of wiring you personally. Five shipments of aircraft piston hammers defective. Rome insists on immediate replacement. Repeat: immediate. Please confirm by telephone before the end of the day.
The number “five” referred to the Fontini-Cristis, because there were five men in the family—a father and four sons. Anything to do with the word “hammer” meant sudden, extreme danger. The repetition of the word “immediate” was self-explanatory: not a moment could be lost, confirmation of receipt was to be made by telephone to Rome within minutes of the telegram’s arrival in Milan. Other men would then be contacted, strategies analyzed, plans made. It was too late now.
The wire had been sent to Savarone that afternoon. Vittorio must have received his cable by eleven. And yet his son had neither replied to Rome nor alerted him in Campo di Fiori. The end of the day was at hand. Too late.
It was unforgivable. Men daily risked their lives and the lives of their families in the fight against Mussolini.
It had not always been so, thought Savarone, as he stared at the office door, hoping that any second the secretary would reappear with news of Vittorio’s whereabouts. It had all been very different once. In the beginning, the Fontini-Cristis had endorsed Il Duce. The weak, indecisive Emmanuel was letting Italy die. Benito Mussolini had offered an alternative; he had come himself to Campo di Fiori to meet with the patriarch of the Fontini-Cristis, seeking alliance—as Machiavelli once so sought the backing of the princes—and he had been alive, and committed, and filled with promise for all Italy.
That was sixteen years ago; since that time Mussolini had fed upon his own rhetoric. He had robbed the nation of its right to think, the people of their freedom to choose; he had deceived the aristocrats—used them and denied their common objectives. He had plunged the country into an utterly useless African war. All for the personal glory of this Caesar Maximus. He had plundered the soul of Italy, and Savarone had vowed to stop him. Fontini-Cristi had gathered the northern “princes” together, and quietly the revolt was taking place.
Mussolini could not risk an open break with the Fontini-Cristis. Unless the charge of treason could be sustained with such clarity that even the family’s most avid supporters would have to conclude they had been—if nothing else—stupid. Italy was gearing for its own entry into the German war. Mussolini had to be careful. That war was not popular, the Germans less so.
Campo di Fiori had become the meeting place of the disaffected. The sprawling acres of lawns and forests and hills and streams were suited to the clandestine nature of the conferences which generally took place at night. But not always; there were other gatherings that required the daylight hours, where younger men were trained by other experienced younger men in the arts of a new, strange warfare. The knife, the rope, the chain, and the hook. They had even coined a name for themselves: partigiani.
The partisans. A name that was spreading from nation to nation.
These were the games of Italy, thought Savarone. “The games of Italy” was what his son called them, a term used in derision by an arrogant, self-centered aristocratico who took seriously only his own pleasures.… No, that was not entirely true. Vittorio also took seriously the running of Fontini-Cristi, as long as pressures of the marketplace conformed to his own schedules. And he made them conform. He used his financial power ruthlessly, his expertise—the expertise he had learned at his father’s side—arrogantly.
The telephone rang; Savarone was tempted to pick it up, but he did not. It was his son’s office, his son’s telephone. Instead, he got out of the terrible chair and walked across the room to the door. He opened it. The secretary was repeating a name.
“… Signore Tesca?”
Savarone interrupted harshly. “Is that Alfredo Tesca?”
The girl nodded.
“Tell him to stay on the telephone. I’ll speak with him.”
Savarone walked rapidly back to his son’s desk and the telephone. Alfredo Tesca was a foreman in one of the factories; he was also a partigiano.
“Fontini-Cristi,” Savarone said.
“Padrone? I’m glad it’s you. This line is clear; we check it every day.”
“Nothing changes. It only accelerates.”
“Yes, padrone. There’s an emergency. A man has flown up from Rome. He must meet with a member of your family.”
“Where?”
“The Olona house.”
“When?”
“As soon as possible.”
Savarone looked at the overcoat and the green felt hat he had thrown over the chair. “Tesca? Do you remember two years ago? The meeting at the apartment on the Duomo?”
“Yes, padrone. It will be six o’clock soon. I’ll be waiting for you.”
Fontini-Cristi hung up the telephone and reached for his overcoat and his hat. He put them on and checked his watch. It was fi
ve forty-five; he had to wait a few minutes. The walk across the concrete lot to the factory was short. He had to time it so that he entered the building at the height of the crowds; when the day shift was leaving and the night shift came to work.
His son had taken full advantage of Il Duce’s war machine. The Fontini-Cristi Industries operated around the clock. When the father had reproached the son, the son had replied, “We don’t make munitions. We’re not geared for that. The conversion would be too expensive. We make only profits, father.”
His son. The most capable of them all had a hollowness in him.
Savarone’s eyes fell on the photograph in the silver frame on Vittorio’s desk. Its very existence was a cruel, self-inflicted joke. The face in the picture was that of a young woman, pretty in the accepted sense, with the pert, set features of a spoiled child growing into spoiled maturity. She had been Vittorio’s wife. Ten years ago.
It had not been a good marriage. It had been more an industrial alliance between two immensely wealthy families. And the bride brought little to the union; she was a pouting, self-indulgent woman whose outlook was guided by possessions.
She died in an automobile crash in Monte Carlo, early in the morning after the casinos had closed. Vittorio never talked about that early morning; he had not been with his wife. Another had.
His son had spent four years in turbulent discomfort with a wife he could not stand, and yet the photograph was on his desk. Ten years later. Savarone once asked him why.
“Being a widower lends a certain respectability to my life-style.”
It was seven minutes to six. Time to begin. Savarone walked out of his son’s office and spoke to the secretary. “Please call downstairs and have my car brought around to the west gate. Tell my chauffeur I have a meeting at the Duomo.”
“Yes, sir.… Do you wish to leave a number where your son can reach you?”
“Campo di Fiori. But by the time he calls, I’ll no doubt be asleep.”
Savarone took the private elevator to the ground floor and went out the executive entrance onto the concrete. Thirty yards away his chauffeur was walking toward the limousine with the crest of Fontini-Cristi on the door panels. The two men exchanged looks. The chauffeur nodded slightly; he knew what to do. He was a partigiano.
The Gemini Contenders: A Novel Page 3