“Yes. Savarone was my grandfather.”
“A great padrone from the northern provinces. I remember him. Not well, of course. He stopped coming to Champoluc in the late twenties, I believe.”
“The Goldonis were his guides. Father and sons.”
“We were everyone’s guides.”
“Were you ever a guide for my grandfather?”
“It’s possible. I worked the mountains as a very young man.”
“Can’t you remember?”
“In my time I have taken thousands into the Alps—”
“You just said you remembered him.”
“Not well. And more by the name than by the person. What is it you want?”
“Information. About a trip to the mountains taken by my father and grandfather fifty years ago.”
“Are you joking?”
“Hardly. My father, Victor—Vittorio Fontini-Cristi—sent me from America to get that information. At great inconvenience to me. I haven’t much time, so I need your help.”
“It’s freely given, but I wouldn’t know where to begin. A single climb fifty years ago! Who would remember?”
“The man who led them. The guide. According to my father he was a son of Goldoni. The date is July fourteenth, 1920.”
Fontine could not be sure—perhaps the grotesque cripple merely suppressed a sharp pain from his massive stumps, or shifted his legless clump of a body in reflection—but Goldoni did react. It was the date. He reacted to the date. And immediately covered that reaction by talking.
“July of 1920. It’s two generations ago. It’s impossible. You must have something more, how do you say, specific than that?”
“The guide. He was a Goldoni.”
“Not I. I was no more than fifteen years old. I went into the mountains young, but not that young. Not as a prima guida.”
Andrew held the cripple’s eyes with his own. Goldoni was uncomfortable; he did not like the exchange of stares and looked away. Fontine leaned forward. “But you remember something, don’t you?” he asked quietly, unable to keep the coldness out of his voice.
“No, Signor Fontini-Cristi. There’s nothing.”
“Just a few seconds ago, I gave you the date: July fourteenth, 1920. You knew that date.”
“I knew only that it was too long ago for me to think about.”
“I should tell you, I’m a soldier. I’ve interrogated hundreds of men; very few ever fooled me.”
“It wouldn’t be my intention, signore. For what purpose? I should like to be helpful to you.”
Andrew continued to stare. “Years ago there were clearings on the railroad tracks south of Zermatt.”
“A few are left,” added Goldoni. “Not many, of course. They’re not necessary these days.”
“Tell me. Each was given the name of a bird—”
“Some,” interrupted the Alpiner. “Not all.”
“Was there a hawk? A hawk’s … something?”
“A hawk? Why do you ask that?” The outsized amputee looked up, his gaze now steady, unwavering.
“Just tell me. Was there a clearing with ‘hawk’ as part of its name?”
Goldoni remained silent for several moments. “No,” he said finally.
Andrew sat back in the chair. “Are you the eldest son of the Goldoni family?”
“No. It was obviously one of my brothers who was hired for that climb fifty years ago.”
Fontine was beginning to understand. Alfredo Goldoni was given the house because he had lost his legs. “Where are your brothers? I’ll talk with them.”
“Again, I must ask if you joke, signore. My brothers are dead, everyone knows that. My brothers, an uncle, two cousins. All dead. There are no Goldoni guides left in Champoluc.”
Andrew’s breathing stopped. He absorbed the information and inhaled deeply. His shortcut had been eliminated with a single sentence.
“I find that hard to believe,” he said coldly. “All those men dead? What killed them?”
“Avalanche, signore. A whole village was buried in sixty-eight. Near Valtournanche. Rescue teams were sent from as far north as Zermatt, south from Châtillon. The Goldonis led them. Three nations awarded us their highest honors. They were of little good to the rest. For me, they provide a small pension. I lost my legs through exposure.” He tapped the stumps of his once muscular legs.
“And you have no information about that trip on July fourteenth, 1920?”
“Without particular details, how can I?”
“I have descriptions. Written down by my father.” Fontine withdrew the Xeroxed pages from his jacket.
“Good! You should have said so before! Read them to me.”
Andrew did so. The descriptions were disjointed, the pictures evoked contradictory. Time sequences jumped back and forth, and landmarks seemed to be confused with each other.
Goldoni listened; every now and then he closed his puffed, creased eyes and turned his neck to one side, as though conjuring up his own visual recollections. When Fontine finished he shook his head slowly. “I’m sorry, signore. What you have read could be any of twenty, thirty different trails. Much that’s there doesn’t even exist in our district. Forgive me, but I think that your father has confused trails farther west in Valais. It’s easy to do.”
“There’s nothing that sounds familiar?”
“On the contrary. Everything. And nothing. Fragments of many locations for hundreds of square miles. I’m sorry. It’s impossible.”
Andrew was confused. He still had the gut feeling that the Alpiner was lying. There was another option to pursue before he forced the issue. If it, too, led nowhere, he would come back and face the cripple with different tactics.
… Should Alfredo not be the eldest, look for a sister.…
“Are you the oldest surviving member of the family?”
“No. Two sisters were born before me. One lives.”
“Where?”
“In Champoluc. On the Via Sestina. Her son works my land.”
“What’s the name? Her married name.”
“Capomonti.”
“Capomonti? That’s the name of the people who run the inn.”
“Yes, signore. She married into the family.”
Fontine got out of the chair, putting the Xeroxed pages into his pocket. He reached the door and turned. “It’s possible I’ll be back.”
“It will be a pleasure to welcome you.”
Fontine got into the Land Rover and started the engine. Across the fence in the field, the nephew-farmhand sat motionless on the tractor and watched him, his vehicle idling. The gut feeling returned; the look on the farmhand’s face seemed to be saying, Get out of here. I must run to the house and hear what you said.
Andrew released the brake and pressed the accelerator. The Land Rover shot forward on the road; he made a rapid U-turn and started back toward the village.
Suddenly his eyes riveted on the most obvious, unstartling sight in the world. He swore. It was so obvious he had not taken notice.
The road was lined with telephone poles.
There was no point in looking for an old woman on the Via Sestina; she would not be there. Another strategy came to the soldier’s mind. The odds favored it.
“Woman!” shouted Goldoni.
“Quickly! Help me! The telephone!”
Goldoni’s wife walked swiftly into the room and gripped the handles of the chair. “Should I make the calls?” she asked, wheeling him to the telephone.
“No. I’ll do it.” He dialed. “Lefrac? Can you hear me? … He’s come. After all these years. Fontini-Cristi. But he does not bring the words. He seeks a clearing named for hawks. He tells me nothing else, and that’s nothing. I don’t trust him. I must reach my sister. Gather the others. We’ll meet in an hour.…. Not here! At the inn.”
Andrew lay prone in the field across from the farmhouse. He focused the binoculars alternately on the door and on the windows. The sun was going down behind the western Alps; it would be d
ark soon. Lights had been put on in the farmhouse; the shadows moved back and forth. There was activity.
A car was being backed out of a dirt drive to the right of the house; it stopped and the farmhand-nephew got out. He raced to the front door; it opened.
Goldoni was in his wheelchair, his wife behind him. The nephew replaced her and started wheeling his legless uncle across the lawn toward the automobile, whose motor was idling.
Goldoni was clutching something in his arms. Andrew focused the binoculars on the object.
It was a large book; but it was more than a book. It was some kind of heavy, wide volume. A ledger.
At the car Goldoni’s wife held the door while the nephew grabbed the grotesque amputee under the arms and swung the carcass across into the seat. Goldoni twitched and squirmed; his wife drew a strap across him and buckled it.
Through the frame of the open door’s window, Andrew had a clear view of the legless, former Alpine guide. The center of focus once again was the huge ledger in Goldoni’s arms, held almost desperately, though it were a thing of extraordinary value he dared not let go. Then Andrew realized there was something else in Goldoni’s arms, something infinitely more familiar to the soldier. A shaft of glistening metal was wedged between the large volume and the Alpiner’s thick chest. It was the barrel of a small, powerful shotgun; a model particularly identified with warring Italian families in the south. In Sicily. It was called the lupo, the “wolf.” It was without much accuracy beyond twenty yards, but at short range could blow a man ten feet off the ground.
Goldoni was guarding the volume in his arms with a weapon more powerful than the .357 Magnum in the soldier’s Alpine pack. Briefly, Andrew focused on Goldoni’s nephew; the man had a new addition to his garb. Jammed into his belt was a pistol, the large handle indicative of its heavy caliber.
Both Alpiners were guarding that ledger. No one could get near it. What was—
Christ! Suddenly, Fontine understood. Records! Records of journeys into the mountains! It couldn’t be anything else! It never occurred to him—or to Victor—to ask if such records were kept. Especially in light of the years; it was simply not a consideration. My God, a half century had passed!
But according to his father, and his father, the Goldonis were the finest guides in the Alps. Such professionals with such a collective reputation to uphold would keep records; it was the most natural thing to do. Records of past trips into the mountains, going back decades!
Goldoni had lied. The information his visitor wanted was in that house. But Goldoni did not want the visitor to have it.
Andrew watched. The nephew collapsed the wheelchair, opened the trunk of the car, threw it in, and ran to the driver’s side. He climbed behind the wheel as Goldoni’s wife closed her husband’s door.
The car lurched out of the drive and headed north toward Champoluc. Goldoni’s wife returned to the house.
The soldier lay prone in the grass and slowly replaced the binoculars in the case as he considered his options. He could race to the hidden Land Rover and go after Goldoni, but to what purpose, and how great a risk? The Alpiner was only half a man, but the lupo in his hands more than made up for his missing legs. Too, the surly nephew wouldn’t hesitate to use the pistol in his belt.
If the ledger carried by Goldoni was what he suspected, it was being rushed away to be hidden. Not to be destroyed; one did not destroy a record of such incalculable value.
If. He had to be sure, certain of his judgment. Then he could move.
It was funny. He had not expected Goldoni to leave; he had expected others to come to him. That Goldoni did leave meant that panic had set in. A legless man who never went anywhere did not race away into the indignity and discomfort of the outside world unless the motive was extraordinary.
The soldier made up his mind. The circumstances were optimum; Goldini’s wife was alone. First, he would find out if that ledger was what he thought it was; then he would find out where Goldoni had gone.
Once he learned these things, the decision would be made: whether to follow or to wait.
Andrew rose from the grass; there was no point wasting time. He started for the house.
“There is no one here, signore,” said the stunned, gaunt woman, her eyes frightened. “My husband has gone with his nephew. They play cards in the village.”
Andrew pushed the woman aside without replying. He walked directly through the house to Goldoni’s room. There was nothing but old magazines and out-of-date Italian newspapers. He looked in a closet; it was at once ugly and pathetic. Trousers hung, the cloth folded, the folds held in place by safety pins. There were no books, no ledgers like the one the Alpiner had clutched in his arms.
He returned to the front room. The sullen, frightened wife was at the telephone, depressing the bar in short, panicked jabs with her bony fingers.
“The wire’s cut,” he said simply, approaching her.
“No,” the woman whispered. “What do you want? I have nothing! We have nothing!”
“I think you do,” answered Fontine, backing the woman against the wall, his face inches above hers. “Your husband lied to me. He said he couldn’t tell me anything, but he left in a hurry carrying a very large book. It was a journal, wasn’t it! An old journal that described a climb in the mountains fifty years ago. The journals! Show me the journals!”
“I do not know what you talk about, signore! We have nothing! We live on a pensionare!”
“Shut up! Give me those records!”
“Per favore.…”
“Goddamn you!” Fontine grabbed the woman’s straight gray hair and yanked it forward, then suddenly, brutally backward, crashing her head into the wall. “I haven’t got time. Your husband lied to me. Show me where those books are! Now!” He wrenched the hair again, and again slammed her skull into the wall. Blood appeared on her wrinkled neck, tears welled in her unfocused eyes.
The soldier realized he had gone too far. The combat option was now defined; it wouldn’t be the first time. There’d been no lack of uncooperative peasants in Nam. He pulled the woman away from the wall.
“Do you understand me?” he said in a monotone. “I’ll light a match in front of your eyes. Do you know what happens then? I’m asking you for the last time. Where are those records?”
Goldoni’s wife collapsed, sobbing. Fontine held her by the cloth of her dress. With a trembling arm and frenzied, shaking fingers, she pointed to a door in the right wall of the room.
Andrew dragged her across the floor. He withdrew his Beretta and smashed the door with his boot. It crashed open. There were no one inside.
“The light switch. Where is it?”
She raised her head, her mouth open, the breath coming shorter, and moved her eyes to the left. “Lampada, lampada,” she whispered.
He pulled her inside the small room, releasing the cloth of her dress, and found the lamp. She lay trembling, curled up on the floor. The light reflected off the glass-enclosed bookcase on the opposite wall. There were five shelves, and on each a row of books. He rushed to the case, grabbed a knob in the middle and tried to raise the pane of glass. It was locked; he tried the others. All locked.
With his Beretta he smashed the glass of two panels. The light from the lamp was dim but sufficient. The faded, handwritten letters and numbers on the brown binding were clear enough.
Each year was divided into two six-month periods, the volumes differing in thickness. The books were handmade. He looked at the upper left panel; he had not broken the glass and the reflection of light obscured the lettering. He smashed it, clearing the fragments of glass away with repeated thrusts of the steel barrel.
The first volume read 1907. There was no month noted underneath; that was a system which had evolved.
He raced the barrel over the volumes to the year 1920.
January to June was there.
July to December was missing. In its place, filling the space, was a hastily inserted volume dated 1967.
Alfredo
Goldoni, the legless cripple, had outrun him. He had removed the key from the locked door that held the secret of a journey into the mountains fifty years ago, and raced away. Fontine turned to Goldoni’s wife. She was on her knees, her gaunt arms supporting her shaking, gaunt body.
It would not be difficult to do what he had to do, learn what had to be learned.
“Get up,” he said.
He carried the lifeless body across the field and into the woods. There was still no moon; instead the air smelled of impending rain, the sky pitch black with clouds, no stars in evidence. The beam of the flashlight wavered up and down with his footsteps.
Time. Time was the only thing that counted now.
And shock. He would need shock.
Alfredo Goldoni had gone to the inn of the Capomontis, according to the dead woman. They had all gone there, she said. The consigliatori of Fontini-Cristi had gathered together. A stranger had come among them bringing the wrong words.
31
Adrian drove back to Milan but he did not go to the hotel, he followed the highway signs to the airport, not entirely sure of how he was going to do what he had to do, but certain that he would do it.
He had to get to Champoluc. A killer was loose and that killer was his brother.
Somewhere in the vast complex of the Milan airport was a pilot and a plane. Or someone who knew where both could be found, for whatever price was necessary.
He drove as fast as he could, all the windows open, the wind whipping through the car. It helped him control himself; it helped him not to think, for thought was too painful.
“There’s a small, private field on the outskirts of Champoluc, used by the rich in the mountains,” said the unshaven pilot who had been awakened and summoned to the airport by a well-tipped clerk on the night shift for Alitalia. “But it’s not operational at these hours.”
“Can you fly in?”
“It’s not so far away, but the terrain’s bad.”
The Gemini Contenders: A Novel Page 37