“But you said it a few minutes ago. He’d narrow down his … options.”
“Signore?”
“Nothing. I was thinking of—never mind. You see, he knows what not to look for. He knows that the vault was heavy; it had to be transported—mechanically. He starts with something besides the record book.”
“We weren’t aware of that.”
“He is.”
“It will do him little good in the darkness.”
“Look at the window,” said Adrian. Outside, the first morning light could be seen. “Tell me about this other man. The merchant.”
“Leinkraus?”
“Yes. How was he involved?”
“That answer went with his death. Even Francesca doesn’t know.”
“Francesca?”
“My sister. When my brothers died, she was the eldest. The envelope was given to her.…”
“Envelope? What envelope?”
“Your grandfather’s instructions.”
… Therefore, should Alfredo not be the eldest, look for a sister, as is the Italian-Swiss custom.…
Adrian unfolded the pages of his father’s testament. If such fragments of truth came through the distance of years with such accuracy, more attention had to be paid to his father’s disjointed remembrances.
“My sister has lived in Champoluc since her marriage to Capomonti. She knew the Leinkraus family better than any of us. Old Leinkraus died in his store. There was a fire; many thought it wasn’t accidental.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The family Leinkraus are Jews.”
“I see. Go on.” Adrian shifted the pages.
… The merchant was not popular. He was a Jew and for one who fought bitterly … Such thinking was indefensible.
Goldoni continued. The man who came to Champoluc and spoke of the iron crate and the long-forgotten journey and the old railroad clearing was to be given the envelope left with the eldest Goldoni.
“You must understand, signore.” The legless man interrupted himself. “We are all family now. The Capomontis and the Goldonis. After so many years and no one came, we discussed it between ourselves.”
“You’re ahead of me.”
“The envelope directed the man who had come to Champoluc to old Capomonti.…”
Adrian turned back the pages. If there were secrets to leave in the Champoluc, old Capomonti would have been a rock of silence and trust.
“When Capomonti died, he gave his instructions to his son-in-law, Lefrac.”
“Then Lefrac knows.”
“Only one word. The name Leinkraus.”
Fontine bolted forward in his seat. He remained on the edge, bewildered. Yet something was triggered in his mind. As in long, complex cross-examination, isolated phrases and solitary words were suddenly brought into focus, given meaning where no meaning had existed previously.
The words. Look to the words, as his brother looked to violence.
He scanned the pages in his hands, turning them rapidly until he found what he was looking for.
… There is a blurred memory of an unpleasant incident … what the unpleasant incident specifically entailed, I have no recall … serious and provoked my father … a sad anger … impression that details were withheld from me.…
Withheld. Anger. Sadness.
… provoked my father.…
“Goldoni, listen to me. You’ve got to think back. Way back. Something happened. Something unpleasant, sad, angry. And it concerned the Leinkraus family.”
“No.”
Adrian stopped. The legless Goldoni had not let him finish. “What do you mean ‘no’?” he asked quietly.
“I told you. I didn’t know them well. We barely spoke.”
“Because they were Jews? Is that the way it came down from the north in those days?”
“I don’t understand you.”
“I think you do.” Adrian stared at him; the Alpiner avoided his eyes. Fontine continued softly. “You didn’t have to know them—at all, perhaps. But for the first time, you’re lying to me. Why?”
“I’m not lying. They weren’t friends of the Goldonis.”
“Or the Capomontis?”
“Or the Capomontis!”
“You didn’t like them?”
“We didn’t know them! They kept to themselves. Other Jews came and they lived among their own. It’s that simple.”
“It’s not.” Adrian knew the answer was within reach. Hidden, perhaps, from Goldoni himself. “Something happened in July of 1920. What was it?”
Goldoni sighed. “I can’t remember.”
“July fourteenth, 1920! What happened?”
Goldoni’s breath was shorter, his large jaws taut. The massive stumps that once were legs twitched in his wheel-chair. “It doesn’t mean anything,” he whispered.
“Let me be the judge of that,” said Adrian.
“Times have changed. So much has changed in a lifetime,” said the Alpiner, his voice faltering. “The same was felt by everyone.”
“July fourteenth, 1920!” Adrian zeroed in on his witness.
“I tell you! It is meaningless!”
“Goddamn you!” Adrian leaped from the chair. Striking the helpless old man was not out of the question. Then the words came.
“A Jew was beaten. A young Jew who entered the church school … was beaten. He died three days later.”
The Alpiner had said it. But only part of it. Fontine backed away from the wheelchair. “Leinkraus’s son?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“The church school?”
“He couldn’t enter the state school. It was a place to learn. The priests accepted him.”
Fontine sat down slowly, keeping his eyes on Goldoni. “There’s more, isn’t there? Who gave the beating?”
“Four boys from the village. They didn’t know what they were doing. Everyone said so.”
“I’m sure everyone did. It’s easier that way. Ignorant children who had to be protected. And what was the life of one Jew?”
Tears came to the eyes of Alfredo Goldoni. “Yes.”
“You were one of those boys, weren’t you?”
Goldoni nodded his head in silence.
“I think I can tell you what happened,” continued Adrian. “Leinkraus was threatened. His wife, his other children. Nothing was said, nothing reported. A young Jew had died, that was all.”
“So many years ago,” Goldoni whispered as the tears fell down his face. “No one thinks like that anymore. And we have lived with what we did. At the end of my life, it grows even more difficult. The grave is close at hand now.”
Adrian stopped breathing, stunned by Goldoni’s words. The grave is close.… The grave. My God! Was that it? He wanted to jump out of the chair and roar his questions until the legless Alpiner remembered! Exactly. But he could not do that. He kept his voice low, incisive.
“What happened then? What did Leinkraus do?”
“Do?” Goldoni shrugged slowly, sadness in the gesture. “What could he do? He kept silent.”
“Was there a funeral? A burial?”
“If there was, we knew nothing of it.”
“Leinkraus’s son had to be buried. No Christian cemetery would accept a Jew. Was there a burial place for Jews?”
“No, not then. There is now.”
“Then! What about then? Where was he buried? Where was the murdered son of Leinkraus buried?”
Goldoni reacted as though struck in the face. “It was said the father and the brothers—the men of the family—took the dead son into the mountains. Where the boy’s body would not be further abused.”
Adrian got out of the chair. There was his answer.
The grave of the Jew. The vault from Salonika.
Savarone Fontini-Cristi had found an eternal truth in a village tragedy. He had used it. In the end, not letting the holy men forget.
Paul Leinkraus was in his late forties, the grandson of the merchant and a merchant himself, but of a d
ifferent time. There was little he could relate of a grandfather he barely knew, or of an era of obsequiousness and fear he had never known. But he was a man of acumen, bespeaking the expansion for which he was responsible. As such, he had recognized the urgency and the legitimacy of Adrian’s sudden call.
Leinkraus had taken Fontine into the library, away from his wife and child, and removed the family Torah from the shelf. The diagram filled the entire back panel of the binding. It was a precisely drawn map that showed the way to the grave of Reuven Leinkraus’s first son, buried in the mountains on July 17, 1920.
Adrian had traced every line, then matched his drawing with the original. It was precise; he had his last passport. To where, he was certain. To what, he could not know.
He had made a final request of Leinkraus. An overseas telephone call to London for which, of course, he would pay.
“Your grandfather made all the payments this house can accept. Make your call.”
“Please stay. I want you to hear.”
He had placed a call to the Savoy in London. His request was uncomplicated. When the American embassy opened, would the Savoy please leave a message for Colonel Tarkington of the inspector general’s office. If he was not in London, the embassy would know where to reach him.
Colonel Tarkington was to be directed to a man named Paul Leinkraus in the town of Champoluc in the Italian Alps. The message was to be signed Adrian Fontine.
He was going into the mountains on the hunt, but he had no illusions. He was not ultimately a match for the soldier. His gesture might be only that: a gesture ending in futility. And very possibly his own death; he understood that, too.
The world could survive very well without his presence. He wasn’t particularly remarkable, although he liked to think he had certain talents. But he wasn’t at all sure how the world would fare if Andrew walked out of the Champoluc with the contents of an iron crate that had been carried on a train from Salonika over thirty years ago.
If only one brother came out of the mountains and that man was the killer of Eye Corps, he had to be taken.
The call finished, Adrian had looked up at Paul Leinkraus. “When Colonel Tarkington makes contact with you, tell him exactly what happened here this morning.”
Fontine nodded to Leinkraus in the doorway. He opened the door of the Fiat and climbed in, noticing that he had been so agitated upon his arrival that he’d left the keys in the car. It was the kind of carelessness no soldier would be guilty of.
The realization caused him to reach over and pull down the panel of the glove compartment. He put his hand inside and took out a heavy, black, magazine-clip pistol; the loading mechanism had been explained to him by Alfredo Goldoni.
He started the ignition and rolled down the window, suddenly needing the air. His breath came rapidly; his heartbeat vibrated in his throat. And he remembered.
He had fired a pistol only once in his life. Years ago at a boys’ camp in New Hampshire when the counselors had taken them to a local police range. His brother had been beside him, and they had laughed together, excited children.
Where had the laughter gone?
Where had his brother gone?
Adrian drove down the tree-lined street and turned left into the road that would take him north to the mountains. Above, the early morning sun was hidden behind a blanket of gathering clouds.
The sky was angry.
32
The girl shrieked and slipped on the rock; her brother whipped around and grabbed her hand, preventing the fall. The plunge was no more than twenty feet, and the soldier wondered whether it might be better to break the grip between them and let her fall. If the girl snapped an ankle or a leg, she wouldn’t go anywhere; she certainly could not make it down through the trails to the flat ground and the road below. It was twelve miles behind them now. They had covered the initial terrain during the night.
He could bypass the initial trails of that journey into the mountains fifty years ago. If others began the search, they wouldn’t know that; he did. He could read maps the way most men read simple books. From symbols, colors, and numbers, he could visualize terrain with the accuracy of a camera. There was no one better in the army. He was a master of everything real, from men to machines to maps.
The detailed map used by climbers in the Champoluc district showed the railroad from Zermatt angling west around the curve of the mountains. It straightened out for approximately five miles before the station at Champoluc. The areas directly east of the final flat stretches of track were heavily traversed throughout the year. These were the first trails described in Goldoni’s journal. No one concealing anything of value would consider them.
Yet farther north, at the start of the railroad’s western curve, were the old clearings that led to the numerous trails specifically listed in the pages he had ripped out of the Goldoni ledger for July 14 and 15 of 1920. Any of these might be the one. Once he saw them in daylight, and studied the possibilities, he could determine which of the trails he would trace.
Those selections would be based on fact. Fact one: The size and weight of the vault mandated vehicle or animal transportation. Fact two: The train from Salonika made its journey in the month of December—a time of year when the weather was bitter cold and the mountain passes clogged with snow. Fact three: The spring and summer thaws, with their rushing waters and erosion of earth, would call for a recess in the high ground to hide the vault, enveloped by rock for protection. Fact four: That recess would be away from frequently traveled areas, high above an established route, but with an offshoot trail that could be negotiated by an animal or a vehicle. Fact five: That trail had to emanate from a section of the track where a train could pull to a stop, the ground level on both sides flat and straight. Fact six: The specific clearing, in current use or abandoned, would lead into the crisscrossing trails recorded in the Goldoni ledger. By retracing each one to the tracks and picturing the feasibility of traveling over it—in the cold and snow, by animal or vehicle—the number of trails would be further reduced until there was one that led to the hiding place.
He had time. Days, if he needed them. He had supplies for a week strapped to his back. The stump, Goldoni, the woman, Capomonti, and Lefrac and his family were too frightened to make a move. He had covered himself brilliantly. The unseen was always more effective than the observable in combat. He had told the terrified Swiss that he had associates in Champoluc. They would be watching; they would get word to him in the mountains should a Goldoni or a Capomonti or a Lefrac reach the police. Communications were no problem for soldiers. And the result of their reaching him would be the execution of his hostages.
He had fantasized the presence of Eye Corps. Eye Corps the way it had been—efficient, strong, quick to maneuver.
He would build a new Corps one day, stronger and more efficient, without weakness. He would find the vault from Salonika, carry the documents out of the mountains, summon the holy men and watch their faces as he described the imminent, global collapse of their institutions.
… The contents of that vault are as staggering to the civilized world as any in history.…
That was comforting. It could not be in better hands.
They were on a flat stretch now, the first elevation to the west no more than a mile away. The girl fell to her knees, sobbing. Her brother looked at him, his eyes conveying hatred, fear, supplication. Andrew would kill them both, but not for a while. One disposed of hostages when they no longer served a purpose.
Only fools killed indiscriminately. Death was an instrument, a means to be used in reaching an objective or completing an assignment, and that was all it was.
Adrian drove the Fiat off the road into the fields. The rocks ripped the undercarriage. He could drive no farther; he had reached the first of several step hills that led to the first plateau described on the Leinkraus diagram. He was eight and a half miles north of Champoluc. The grave was precisely five miles beyond the first of the plateaus that were the landmarks of the jo
urney to the burial ground.
He got out of the car and walked across the field of tall grass. He looked up. The hill in front of him sprang suddenly out of the ground, an impromptu bulge of nature, more rock than greenery, with no discernible path on which to scale it. He knelt down and retied the laces on his rubber-soled shoes as tightly as he could. The weight of the pistol was heavy in his raincoat pocket.
For a moment he closed his eyes. He could not think. O God! Keep me from thinking!
He was a mover now. He got to his feet and started to climb.
The first two railroad clearings proved negative. There was no way animal or vehicle could traverse the routes from the Zermatt railway to the eastern slopes. Two more clearings remained. The names on the old Champoluc map were Hunter’s Folly and Sparrow’s Rook; no mention of hawk. Still, it had to be one of them!
Andrew looked at his hostages. Brother and sister sat together on the ground, talking in quiet, frightened whispers, their eyes darting up at him. The hatred was gone now, only fear and supplication remained. There was something ugly about them, thought the soldier. And then he realized what it was. Across the world in the jungles of Southeast Asia, people their age fought battles, weapons strapped to their backs over uniforms that looked like pajamas. They were his enemy over there, but he respected that enemy.
He had no respect for these children. There was no strength in their faces. Only fear, and fear was repulsive to the major from Eye Corps.
“Get up!” He could not help himself; he shouted angrily at the sight of these pampered, weak brats with no dignity in their faces.
Christ, he despised the spineless!
They would not be missed.
Adrian looked back across the ridge to the plateau in the distance, thankful that old Goldoni had given him gloves. Even without the cold, his bare hands and fingers would have been a bleeding mass of flesh. It wasn’t that the climb was difficult; a man used to minimum exercise in the mountains would find it simple. But he had never been in the mountains except on skis, where tows and trams did the uphill work. He was using muscles rarely employed and had little confidence in his sense of balance.
The Gemini Contenders: A Novel Page 39