The Gemini Contenders: A Novel

by Robert Ludlum

“So there it is. Religious documents that go back fifteen hundred years, an Aramaic scroll that made the British government go half out of its collective mind in the middle of the war, and a confession written on a parchment two thousand years ago that contains God only knows what. That vault’s caused more violence than I want to think about. If what my father says is true, those documents, that scroll—the parchment, most of all—could alter a large part of history.”

  Barbara leaned back in the chair, her brown eyes leveled at him. She watched him without replying for several moments. “That seems highly unlikely. Documents are unearthed every day. History doesn’t change,” she said simply.

  “Have you ever heard of something called the Filioque Clause?”

  “Certainly. It was incorporated in the Nicene Creed. It was the first issue that separated the Western and Eastern church. The debate went on for hundreds of years, and led to the Photian schism in … the ninth century. I think. Which in turn brought about the schism of 1054. The issue ultimately became papal infallibility.”

  “How the hell do you know that?”

  Barbara laughed. “It’s my field. Remember? At least the behavioral aspects.”

  “You said the ninth century. My father said fifteen hundred years—” “Early Christian history is confusing, date-happy. From the first to the seventh centuries there were so many councils, so much seesawing back and forth, so much debate over this doctrine and that law, it’s nearly impossible to sort out. Do these documents concern the Filioque? Are they supposed to be the denials?”

  Adrian’s glass was suspended on the way to his lips. “Yes. That’s what my father said; he used the term. The Filioque denials.”

  “They don’t exist.”

  “What?”

  “They were destroyed—ceremonially, I believe—in Istanbul, in the Mosque of Saint Sophia early in the Second World War. There’s documentation … witnesses, if I remember correctly. Even charred fragments confirmed by spectrochemical analyses.”

  Adrian stared at her. Something was terribly wrong. It was all too simple. Too negatively simple. “Where did you get that information?”

  “Where? You mean specifically where?”

  “Yes.”

  Barbara leaned forward, moving her glass absently in thought. Her forehead was creased. “It’s not my area, but I can find out, of course. It goes back several years. I do remember that it was quite a shock to a lot of people.”

  “Do me a favor,” he said rapidly. “When you get back, find out everything you can about that fire. It doesn’t make sense! My father would know about it.”

  “I don’t know why. It’s awfully academic stuff.”

  “It still doesn’t make sense—”

  “Speaking of Boston,” she interrupted. “My answering service had two calls from someone trying to locate you. A man named Dakakos.”

  “Dakakos?”

  “Yes. A Theodore Dakakos. He said it was urgent.”

  “What did you say?”

  “That I’d give you the message. I wrote down the number. I didn’t want to give it to you. You don’t need hysterical phone calls from Washington. You’ve had a horrid few days.”

  “He’s not from Washington.”

  “The phone calls were.”

  Adrian looked up from the table, past the miniature hedges in the boxes bordering the café. He saw what he was looking for: a telephone booth.

  “I’ll be right back.”

  He walked to the phone and called the District Towers in Washington.

  “Front desk, please.”

  “Yes, Mr. Fontine. We’ve had several calls from a Mr. Dakakos. There’s an aide to Mr. Dakakos in the lobby now waiting for you.”

  Adrian thought quickly. His father’s words came back to him; he had asked his father if he could trust Dakakos. Where Salonika is concerned, I trust no one.…

  “Listen to me. Tell the man in the lobby you just heard from me. I won’t be back for several days. I don’t want to see this Dakakos.”

  “Of course, Mr. Fontine.”

  Adrian hung up. His passport was in Washington. In the room. He’d go by way of the garage. But not tonight; that was too soon. He’d wait until tomorrow. He’d stay in New York tonight.… His father. His father should be told about Dakakos. He called the North Shore house.

  Jane’s voice was strained. “The doctor’s with him now. Thank God he allowed them to give him something. I don’t think he could have stood it much longer. He’s had spasms—”

  “I’ll phone you tonight.”

  Adrian walked out of the booth and threaded his way between the strollers back into the café, to the table.

  “What is it?” Barbara was alarmed.

  “Get in touch with your service in Boston. Tell them to call Dakakos and say we missed each other. I had to fly to—hell, Chicago. On business. That was the message for you at the hotel here.”

  “You really don’t want to see him, do you?”

  “I’ve got to avoid him. I want to throw him off the track. He’s probably tried to reach my brother.”

  The path in Rock Creek Park. It was Martin Greene’s idea, his selection. Greene had sounded strange on the telephone, somehow defiant. As though he didn’t care about anything anymore.

  Whatever was gnawing at Greene would vanish in the time it took to tell him the story. My God, would it! In one afternoon, Eye Corps had taken a giant step! Beyond anything they could have imagined. If the things his father said about that vault—the lengths powerful men, entire governments went to possess it—if it was all only half true, Eye Corps was in the catbird seat! Unreachable!

  His father said he was going to prepare a list. Well, his father didn’t have to; there was a list. The seven men of Eye Corps would control that vault. And he would control the seven men of Eye Corps.

  Christ, it was incredible! But events did not lie; his father did not lie. Whoever possessed those documents, that parchment from a forgotten Roman prison, had the leverage to make extraordinary demands. Everywhere! An omission of recorded history, kept from the world out of unbelievable fear. Its revelation could not be tolerated. Well, fear, too, was an instrument. As great a one as death. Often greater.

  Bear in mind that the contents of that vault are as staggering to the civilized world as anything in history.…

  The decisions of extraordinary men—in peace and in war—supported his father’s judgment. And now other extraordinary men, led by one extraordinary man, would find that vault and help shape the last quarter of the twentieth century. One had to begin to think like that, think in large blocks, concepts beyond ordinary men. His training, his heritage: All was coming into focus, and he was ready for the weight of enormous responsibility. He was primed for it; it was his with a vault buried in the Italian Alps.

  Adrian would have to be immobilized. Not seriously; his brother was weak, indecisive, no contender at all. It would be enough to slow him down. He would visit his brother’s rooms and do just that.

  Andrew started down the Rock Creek path. There were very few strollers; the park was not a place for walking at night. Where was Greene? He should have been there; his apartment was a lot closer than the airport. And Greene had told him to hurry.

  Andrew walked out on the grass and lighted a cigarette. There was no point standing under the spill of the park lamps. He’d see Greene when he came down the path.

  “Fontine!”

  The soldier turned around, startled. Twenty yards away at the side of a tree trunk stood Martin Greene. He was in civilian clothes; there was a large briefcase in his left hand.

  “Marty? What the hell—”

  “Get over here,” ordered the captain tersely.

  Andrew walked rapidly into the cluster of trees. “What’s going on?”

  “It’s gone, Fontine. The whole goddamned thing. I’ve been calling you since yesterday morning.”

  “I was in New York. What are you talking about?”

  “Five men are
in a maximum security jail in Saigon. Want to take a guess who?”

  “What? The subpoena wasn’t served! You confirmed it, I confirmed it!”

  “Nobody needed a subpoena. The I.G. crawled out of the rocks. They hit us on all points. My guess is that I’ve got about twelve hours before they figure I’m the one in procurement. You, you’re marked.”

  “Wait a minute. Just wait a minute! This is crazy! The subpoena was canceled!”

  “I’m the only one who benefits from that. You never mentioned my name in Saigon, did you?”

  “Of course not. Just that we’ve got a man here.”

  “That’s all they’ll need; they’ll put it together.”

  “How?”

  “A dozen different ways. Locking in and comparing my checkout times with yours is the first that comes to mind. Something happened over there; something blew everything apart.” Greene’s eyes strayed.

  Andrew breathed steadily, staring down at the captain. “No, it didn’t,” he said softly. “It happened over here. Last Wednesday night.”

  Greene’s head snapped up. “What about Wednesday night?”

  “That Black lawyer. Nevins. You had him killed, you stupid son of a bitch. My brother accused me! Accused us! He believed me because I believed it myself! It was too stupid!” The soldier’s voice was a strained whisper. It was all he could do to keep from lashing out at the man staring up at him.

  Greene replied calmly, with assurance. “You’re getting the right total but the wrong numbers. I had it done, that’s true, and I’ve got that bastard’s briefcase, including the deposition against us. But the contract was so remote the people who did it don’t know I exist. To bring you up to date, they were caught this morning. In West Virginia. They’ve got laundered money that can be traced to a company up for fraud. And we’re not it.… No, Fontine, it wasn’t me. Whatever it was, happened over there. I think you blew it.”

  Andrew shook his head. “Impossible. I handled—”

  “Please. No burdens. I don’t want to know, because I don’t give a damn anymore. I’ve got a suitcase at Dulles and a one-way ticket to Tel Aviv. But I’m going to do you one last favor. When everything hit, I called a few friends at I.G., they owed me. That deposition from Barstow we worried so much about wasn’t even in the prize money.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Remember the routine congressional inquiry? The Greek you never heard of—?”

  “Dakakos?”

  “That’s right. Theodore Dakakos. Over at I.G. they call it the Dakakos probe. It was him. Nobody knows how, but that Greek was the one who got everything there was to get on Eye Corps. He funneled it piece by piece into the I.G. files.”

  Theodore Dakakos, thought Andrew. Theodore Annaxas Dakakos, son of a Greek trainman slain thirty years ago in the Milan freight yards by a priest who was his brother. Extraordinary men went to extraordinary lengths to control the vault of Constantine. A calm swept over the soldier.

  “Thanks for telling me,” he said. Greene held up the briefcase. “By the way, I made a trip to Baltimore.”

  “The Baltimore records are among the best,” said Fontine.

  “Where I’m going, we may need some quick firepower in the Negev. These could get it.”

  “Very possibly.”

  Greene hesitated, and then asked quietly, “You want to come along? We can hide you. You could do worse.”

  “I can do better.”

  “Stop kidding yourself, Fontine! Use some of your well-advertised money and get out of here as fast as you can. Buy sanctuary. You’re finished.”

  “You’re wrong. I’ve just begun.”

  25

  Washington’s noonday traffic was slowed further by the June thunderstorm. It was one of the deluges without spells of relief that allowed pedestrians to dash from doorway to awning to doorway. Windshield wipers did little but intrude on the sheets of water that blanketed the glass, distorting all vision.

  Adrian sat in the back seat of a taxi, his thoughts divided equally in three parts, on three people. Barbara, Dakakos, and his brother.

  Barbara was in Boston, probably in the library archives by now, researching the information—the extraordinary information—about the destructions of the Filioque denials. If those ancient documents had been in the vault from Constantine, and proof of their destruction established beyond doubt … had the vault been found? A equals B equals C. Therefore A equals C. Or did it?

  Theodore Dakakos, the indefatigable Annaxas, would be scouring the Chicago hotels and law firms looking for him. There was no reason for the Greek not to; a business trip to Chicago was perfectly normal. The distraction was all Adrian needed. He would go up to his rooms, grab his passport, and call Andrew. They could both get out of Washington, avoiding Dakakos. The assumption had to be that Dakakos was trying to stop them. Which meant that somehow Dakakos-Annaxas knew what their father had planned. It was easy enough. An old man returns from Italy, his life expectancy short. And he summons his two sons.

  One of those sons was Adrian’s third concern. Where was his brother? He had telephoned Andrew’s apartment in Virginia repeatedly throughout the night. What bothered Adrian, and the admission wasn’t easy for him, was that his brother was more equipped to deal with someone like Dakakos than he. Move and countermove was part of his life, not thesis and antithesis.

  “Garage entrance,” said the cab driver. “Here it is.”

  Adrian dashed through the rain into the District Towers’s garage. He had to orient himself before walking toward the elevator. As he did so, he reached into his pocket for the key with the plastic tag; he never left it at the front desk.

  “Hi, Mr. Fontine. How are ya?”

  It was the garage attendant; Adrian vaguely remembered the face. A sallow, twenty-year-old hustler with the eyes of a ferret.

  “Hello,” replied Adrian, pushing the elevator button.

  “Hey, thanks again. I appreciated it, ya know what I mean? I mean it was real nice of you.”

  “Sure,” Adrian said blankly, wishing the elevator would arrive.

  “Hey.” The attendant winked at him. “You look a lot better’n you did last night. A real broiler, huh?”

  “What?”

  The attendant smiled. No, it wasn’t a smile, it was a leer. “I tied one on, too. Real good. Just like you said.”

  “What did you say? You saw me last night?”

  “Hey, come on. Ya don’t remember even? I gotta admit, you was fried, man.”

  Andrew! Andrew could do it when he wanted to! Slouch, wear a hat, draw out his words. He’d pulled that caricature dozens of times.

  “Tell me, I’m a little hazy. What time did I get in?”

  “Jee-sus! You was flat out. Around eight o’clock, don’t you remember? You gimme—” The attendant stopped; the hustler in him prevented full disclosure.

  The elevator doors opened. Adrian walked inside. So Andrew had come to see him while he was trying to call him in Virginia. Had Andy found out about Dakakos? Had he already left town? Maybe Andy was upstairs now. Again the realization was disquieting, but Adrian felt a certain relief at the prospect. His brother would know what to do.

  Adrian walked down the corridor to the door of his suite and let himself in. As he did so, he heard the footsteps behind him. He whipped around and saw an army officer standing in the bedroom door; not Andrew, a colonel.

  “Who the hell are you?”

  The officer did not immediately reply. Instead, he stood immobile, his eyes angry. When he did speak there was a slight drawl in his cold voice.

  “Yeah, you do look like him. Put on a uniform and straighten you up and you could be him. Now, all you have to do is tell me where he is.”

  “How did you get in here? Who the hell let you in?”

  “No question for a question. Mine comes first.”

  “What comes first is that you’re trespassing.” Adrian walked rapidly to the telephone, crossing in front of the officer. “Unless yo
u’ve got a warrant from a civilian court, you’re going to march into a civilian police station.”

  The colonel undid one button on his tunic, reached inside, and took out a pistol. He snapped the safety catch and leveled the weapon.

  Adrian held the telephone in his left hand, his right poised above the dial. Stunned, he stopped all movement; the expression on the officer’s face had not changed.

  “You listen to me,” said the colonel softly. “I could shoot both your kneecaps off just for looking like him. Can you understand that? I’m a civilized man, a lawyer like you; but where Eye Corps’ Major Fontine is concerned, all the rules go out the window. I’ll do anything to get that son of a bitch. Do you read me?”

  Adrian slowly put down the telephone. “You’re a maniac.”

  “Minor compared to him. Now, you tell me where he is.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Wait a minute!” In his shock, Adrian had not been sure of what he’d heard. Now he was. “What do you know about Eye Corps?”

  “A lot more than you paranoid bastards want me to know. Did you two really think you could pull it off?”

  “You’re way off base! You’d know that if you knew anything about me! About Eye Corps we’re on the same side! Now, for God’s sake, what have you got on him?”

  The officer replied slowly. “He killed two men. A captain named Barstow, and a legal officer named Tarkington. Both killings were made to look kai-sai—whore-and-booze oriented. They weren’t. In Tarkington’s case it was inconsistent. He didn’t drink.”

  “Oh, Christ!”

  “And a file was taken from Tarkington’s Saigon office. Which was consistent. What they didn’t know was that we had a complete copy.”

  “Who’s ‘we’?”

  “The Inspector General’s Office.” The colonel did not lower his pistol; his answers were delivered in a flat Southwestern drawl. “Now, I just gave you the benefit of a doubt. You know why I want him, so tell me where he is. My name’s Tarkington, too. I drink and I’m not mild-mannered and I want the son of a bitch who killed my brother.”

  Adrian felt the breath leave his lungs. “I’m sorry—”