The Gemini Contenders (20 page)

“What about you?”

“I’m to wait ten minutes and follow. I’m to ask for an Oberst Schneider, Block Five.”

Lübok seemed concerned. Victor understood. Never before had they been separated at their point of contact with the underground leaders. “This is an unusual procedure, isn’t it? You look troubled.”

“They must have their reasons.”

“But you don’t know what they are. And that fellow didn’t tell you.”

“He wouldn’t know. He’s a messenger.”

“Do you sense a trap?”

Lübok leveled his gaze at Fontine. He was thinking as he spoke. “No, that’s not really possible. The commandant of this sector has been compromised. On film. I won’t bore you with details, but his proclivity for children has been duly recorded. He’s been shown the results and told negatives exist. He lives in fear, and we live with
him
.… He’s a Berlin favorite, a close friend of Göring’s. No, it’s not a trap.”

“But you’re worried.”

“Needlessly. He
had
the codes; they’re complicated and very precise. I’ll see you later.”

Victor got out of the cramped sidecar and started across the boulevard toward the gates of the Casimir. He stood erect, the picture of arrogance, prepared to arrogantly display false papers that would gain him admittance.

As he walked across the Casimir’s floodlit grounds, he could see German soldiers strolling in pairs and threes down the paths. A year ago these men might have been students and professors, recapping the events of the academic day. Now they were conquerors, peacefully removed from the devastation that was everywhere outside the walls of the Casimir. Death, hunger, and mutilation were within the sound of their commands, yet they talked quietly on clean paths, oblivious to the consequences of their acts.

Campo di Fiori. There were floodlights at Campo di Fiori. And death with mutilation
.

He forced the images out of his mind; he could not allow his concentration to be weakened. The entranceway with the filigreed arch framing the thick double doors below the
number seven was directly ahead. A Wehrmacht guard stood at attention on the single marble step.

Fontine recognized him: the soldier who had whispered in Polish to Lübok on the Kraków Boulevard.

“You’re efficient,” said Victor softly in German.

The guard nodded, reached for the door and opened it. “Be quickly now. Do use the staircase to the left. You will be met on the first landing.”

Fontine walked rapidly through the door into the huge marble hall, crossed to the stairs, and started up. Halfway to the landing he slowed his pace. A silent alarm went off in his brain.

The guard’s voice, his use of German. The words were odd, strangely awkward.
Be quickly.… Do use the staircase
.…

Watch for the lack of idiom, the excessively grammatical, or conversely, unmatching end syllables
. Loch Torridon.

The guard was not German. Yet why should he be? He was from the
podziemna
. Yet, again, the
podziemna
would not take chances.…

Two German officers appeared on the landing, their pistols drawn and leveled down at him. The man on the right spoke.

“Welcome to the Casimir, Signor Fontini-Cristi.”

“Please don’t stop,
padrone
. We must hurry,” said the second man.

The language they spoke was Italian, but their speech was not native. Victor recognized the source. The officers above him were no more German than the guard was German. They were
Greek
. The train from Salonika had reappeared!

There was the crack of a pistol bolt behind him, followed by rapid footsteps. Within seconds, the barrel was jammed into the small of his back, propelling him farther up the staircase.

There was no way he could move, no diversion he could employ, to distract his confronters. Weapons covered him, eyes watched his hands, bullets were locked in chambers.

Above, somewhere in an unfamiliar corridor, he heard laughter. Perhaps if he shouted, raising alarms of an enemy within the enemy camp; the concentric circle of thought was numbing.

“Who are you?”
Words
. Begin with words. If he could raise his voice in sequence, natural sequence that would minimize the chance of triggers pulled. “You’re not German!”

Louder.
Now
louder.

“What are you
doing
here?”

The barrel of the pistol slid up his back and was jabbed into the base of his skull. The jolt caused him to stop. A closed fist punched him in the left kidney; he lurched forward, caught by the silent, staring Greeks in front of him.

He started to shout; there was no other way. The laughter above was growing louder, nearer. Other men were descending the staircase.

“I warn you—”

Suddenly, both his hands were yanked back, his arms bent and locked, the wrists turned inward. A large, coarse cloth was shoved into his face, saturated with acrid, foul-smelling liquid.

He was blinded; a breathless vacuum was being imposed on him, without light, without air. His tunic was ripped away, the cross strap pulled up from his chest. He tried to lash out his arms.

As he did so, he could feel the long needle entering his flesh; he was not sure where. Instinctively, he raised his hands in protest. They were
free;
and they were useless as his resistance was useless.

He heard the laughter again; it was deafening. He was aware of being propelled forward, and downward.

But that was all.

“You betray those who saved your life.”

He opened his eyes; images came into focus slowly. There was a burning sensation in his left arm, or shoulder. He reached for it; the touch was painful.

“You feel the antidote,” said the voice of the blurred figure somewhere in front of him. “It raises a welt, but it isn’t harmful.”

Fontine’s eyes began to clear. He was sitting on a cement floor, his back against a wall of stone. Across from him, perhaps twenty feet away, a man stood in front of an opposite wall. They were on some kind of raised platform in a large tunnel. The tunnel appeared to be deep underground, carved out of rock, both ends disappearing into darkness.
On the floor of the tunnel were old, narrow tracks; they were cracked, rusted. Light came from several thick candles inserted in ancient brackets on the walls.

His focus refined, Fontine concentrated on the man across from him. He wore a black suit; around his neck was a white collar. The man was a priest.

He was bald, but not from age. The head was shaved; the man was no more than forty-five or fifty, the face ascetic, the body slender.

Beside the priest was the guard in the Wehrmacht uniform. The two Greeks impersonating German officers stood by an iron door in the left wall facing the tunnel. The priest spoke.

“We’ve followed you since Montbéliard. You’re a thousand miles from London. The English can’t protect you. We have routes south they know nothing about.”

“The English?” Fontine stared at the priest trying to understand. “You’re from the Order of Xenope.”

“We are.”

“Why do you fight the English?”

“Because Brevourt’s a liar. He breaks his word.”

“Brevourt?” Victor was stunned; nothing made sense. “You’re out of your mind! Everything,
everything
he’s done in
your name!
For
you.”

“Not for us! For England. He wants the vault of Constantine for
England!
Churchill demands it! It’s a more powerful weapon than a hundred armies, and they all know it! We would never see it again!” The priest’s eyes were wide, furious.

“You believe that?”

“Don’t be an ass!” spat the monk from Xenope. “As Brevourt breaks his word, we broke Code
Maginot
. Messages were intercepted; communications between … shall we say, interested parties.”

“You’re
crazy!”
Fontine tried to think. Anthony Brevourt had faded away; there’d been no word from him—or about him—in months. “You say you’ve followed me since Montbéliard.
Why?
I don’t have what you want! I never did have it! I know nothing about that goddamned train!”

“Mikhailovic believed you,” said the priest softly. “I don’t.”

“Petride—” The sight of the child monk taking his
own life on the rocky ledge in Loch Torridon came back to Victor.

“Petride was not his name—”

“You killed him!” said Fontine. “You killed him as surely as if you’d pulled the trigger yourself. You’re insane! All of you.”

“He failed. He knew what was expected. It was understood.”

“You’re
sick!
You infect everyone you touch! You can believe me or not, but I’m telling you for the last time! I don’t have the information you want!”

“Liar!”

“You’re mad!”

“Then why do you travel with Lübok? Tell me that, Signor Fontini-Cristi! Why Lübok?”

Victor recoiled; the shock of Lübok’s name caused him to arch his back against the stone. “Lübok?” he whispered incredulously. “If you know his work, you know the answer to that.”

“Loch Torridon?” asked the priest sarcastically.

“I never heard of Lübok before in my life. I only know he does his job. He’s a Jew, a … he takes great risks.”

“He works
for Rome!”
roared the priest of Xenope. “He conveys offers to Rome!
Your
offers!”

Victor was silent; his astonishment was so complete he had no words. The monk of Xenope continued, his voice low, penetrating. “Strange, isn’t it? Of all the escorts in the occupied territories, Lübok is chosen. He just shows up in Montbéliard. Do you expect us to believe that?”

“Believe what you will. This is madness.”

“It is
betrayal!”
the priest shouted again, taking several steps away from the wall. “A degenerate who can pick up a telephone and blackmail half of Berlin! And most outrageous—for you—a dog who works for the monster of—”

“Fontine! Dive!”
The piercing command came from the black hole of the tunnel. It was screamed in Lübok’s high-pitched voice, the sound bouncing off the receding walls of rock, overriding the shouts of the priest.

Victor reeled and sprang forward, rolling down the stone wall, crashing from the platform to the hard ground by the old rusted track. Above him he heard the spits of bullets shattering the air, followed by two thunderous explosions of unsilenced Lugers.

In the flickering light he could see the figures of Lübok and several others lurch out of the darkness, angling their weapons, taking rapid, accurate aim; firing and spinning back into the protection of the rock.

It was over in seconds. The priest of Xenope had fallen; he was hit in the neck, his left ear blown off his head. He had crawled to the ledge of the platform, dying, staring down at Fontine. In imminent death his whispered voice was a rasp.

“We … are not your enemies. For the mercy of God, bring the documents to us—”

A final, muted spit was heard; the priest’s forehead exploded above his staring eyes.

Victor felt a grip on his left arm; it caused shooting pains throughout his shoulder and chest. He was being yanked to his feet.

“Get up!”
was Lübok’s command. “The shots may have been heard. Run!”

They raced into the tunnel. The beam of a flashlight pierced the black, held by one of Lübok’s men up ahead. The man whispered his instructions in Polish. Lübok translated for Fontine, who ran beside him.

“About two hundred yards down there’s a monks’ cave. We’ll be safe.”

“A
what?”

“Monks’ cave,” answered Lübok, breathing heavily. “The history of the Casimir goes back centuries. Escapes were needed.”

They crawled on their hands and knees through a narrow, dark passageway cut out of rock. It led to the depths of a cave. The air was instantly different; there was an opening somewhere beyond in the darkness.

“I have to talk to you,” said Victor quickly.

“To answer your questions, Captain Hans Neumann is a devoted officer of the Reich with a cousin in the Gestapo. Oberst Schneider wasn’t on the roster; that was sticky. We knew it was a trap.… In all honesty we didn’t expect to find you in the tunnel. That was a stroke of luck. We were on our way to Block Seven.” Lübok turned to his comrades. He spoke first in Polish, then translated for Fontine. “Well stay here for a quarter of an hour. That should be time enough. Then we’ll proceed to the rendezvous in Seven. You’ll conduct your business on schedule.”

Fontine grabbed Lübok’s arm and led him away from the
podziemna
men. Two of the men had turned on their flashlights. There was enough light to see the middle-aged courier’s face, and Victor was grateful for that.

“It wasn’t a German trap! Those men back there were Greek! One was a priest!” Fontine whispered, but there was no mistaking his intensity.

“You’re mad,” said Lübok casually, his eyes a perfect blank.

“They were from
Xenope.”

“From what?”

“You heard me.”

“I heard you, but I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about.”

“Goddamn you, Lübok! Who are you?”

“Many things to many people, thank heavens.”

Victor grabbed the blond-haired Czech by the lapels of his jacket. Lübok’s eyes became suddenly distant, filled with cold anger. “They said you worked for Rome. That you would convey offers to Rome!
What
offers? What does it mean?”

“I don’t know,” replied the Czech slowly.

“Who do you work for?”

“I work for many people.
Against
the Nazis. That’s all you have to know. I keep you alive and see that you complete your negotiations. How I do it is none of your business.”

“You know
nothing
about Salonika?”

“It is a city in Greece, on the Aegean Sea.… Now, take your hands off me.”

Fontine relayed his grip but still held on. “Just in case—in
case
—the many people you speak of include men interested in that train from Salonika. I know
nothing
. I never did.”

“If the subject ever comes up, and I can’t imagine why, I’ll convey the information. Now may we concentrate on your negotiations in Warsaw? We must complete them tonight. In the morning arrangements have been made for two couriers to fly out on the Berlin military shuttle. I’ll check the airfield myself before daybreak. We’ll get off at Müheim. It’s near the Franco-Swiss border, a night’s trip to Montbéliard. Your business in Europe is finished.”