The Gemini Contenders (21 page)

“Fly
out?” Victor removed his hands. “On a German plane?”

“Courtesy of a very distraught Warsaw commandant. He’s seen too many motion pictures in which he was a prominent player. Sheer pornography.”

The trimotored Fokker was stationary as maintenance crews checked the engines and a fuel truck filled the tanks. They were in Munich; they had left Warsaw early in the morning with a stop at Prague. Most of the passengers had gotten off at Munich.

Müllheim was next, the last leg of their journey. Victor sat uncomfortably beside a seemingly relaxed Lübok in the quiet cabin of the aircraft. There was one other passenger: an aging corporal on leave to Stuttgart.

“I’d like it better if there were a few more hitchhikers,” whispered Lübok. “With so small a number, the pilot may insist everyone stay on board at Müllheim. He could gas up quickly and be on his way. He takes on most of his passengers in Stuttgart.”

He was interrupted by the sound of clattering footsteps on the metal stairs outside the aircraft. Raucous, uninhibited laughter accompanied the unsteady clattering and grew louder as the new passengers approached the cabin door. Lübok looked at Fontine and smiled in relief. He returned to the newspaper provided by the attendant and sank back in the seat. Victor turned; the Munich contingent came into view.

There were three Wehrmacht officers and a woman. They were drunk. The girl was in a light-covered cloth coat; she was pushed through the narrow door by two of the Wehrmacht and shoved into a seat by the third. She did
not object; instead she laughed and made funny faces. A willing, participating toy.

She was in her late twenties, pleasant-looking but not attractive. There was a frantic quality in her face, an intensity that made her appear somehow frayed. Her light-brown, windswept hair was a little too thick; it had not fallen free in the wind. The mascara about her eyes was too pronounced, the lipstick too red, the rouge too obvious.

“What are
you
looking at?” The question was shouted above the roar of the revving motors. The speaker was the third Wehrmacht officer, a broad-chested, muscular man in his thirties. He had walked past his two comrades and addressed Victor.

“I’m sorry,” said Fontine, smiling weakly. “I didn’t mean to be rude.”

The officer squinted his eyes; he was a brawler, it was unmistakable. “We’ve got a
fancy
one. Listen to the lace-pants!”

“I meant no offense.”

The officer turned to his comrades; one had pulled the not-unwilling girl over on his lap, the other was in the aisle. “The lace-pants meant no offense! Isn’t that nice?”

The two fellow officers groaned derisively. The girl laughed; a little too hysterically, thought Victor. He turned front, hoping the Wehrmacht boor would go away.

Instead, a huge hand reached over the seat and grabbed him by the shoulder blade. “That’s not good enough.” The officer looked at Lübok. “You two move up front.”

Lübok’s eyes sought Victor’s. The message was clear: Do as the man ordered.

“Certainly.” Fontine and Lübok rose and walked swiftly up the aisle. Neither spoke. Fontine could hear the uncorking of bottles. The Wehrmacht party had begun.

The Fokker sped down the runway and left the ground. Lübok had taken the aisle seat, leaving him the window. He riveted his eyes on the sky, withdrawing into the cocoon of himself, hoping to produce a blankness that would make the journey to Müllheim pass more swiftly. It could not pass swiftly enough.

The blankness would not come. Instead, involuntarily, he thought of the Xenope priest in the underground tunnel of the Casimir.

You travel with Lübok. Lübok works for Rome
.

Lübok.

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

Salonika. It was never far away. The vault from Constantine was capable of violently dividing men who fought a common enemy.

He heard laughter from the rear of the cabin, then a whispered voice behind him.

“No!
Don’t turn around.
Please!”
It was the flight attendant, barely audible through the narrow space between the seats. “Don’t get up. They’re
Kommandos
. They just let off steam, so don’t concern yourselves. Pretend there is nothing!”

“Kommandos?”
whispered Lübok. “In Munich? They’re stationed north, in the Baltic zones.”

“Not these. These operate across the mountains in the Italian sectors. Execution teams. There are many—”

The words struck with the impact of silent thunderbolts. Victor inhaled; the muscles of his stomach hardened into a wall of stone.

 … 
execution teams
.…

He gripped the armrests of his seat and arched his back. Then, pressing his back into the seat, he stretched his neck and turned his eyes toward the rear of the cabin, over the metal rim of the headrest. He could not believe what he saw.

The wild-eyed girl was on the floor, her coat open; she was naked except for torn undergarments, her legs spread, her buttocks moving. A Wehrmacht officer, his trousers and shorts pulled down to his knees, lowered himself on her, his penis stabbing. Kneeling above the girl’s head was a second Wehrmacht, his trousers removed, an erection protruding from the opening in his shorts. He held the girl by the hair and lanced his erection around the flesh of her face; she opened her mouth and accepted it, moaning and coughing. The third Wehrmacht was sitting, bent over on the armrest above the rape. He was breathing in gasps through parted lips, his left hand extended, rubbing the girl’s naked breasts in a rhythm that matched the masturbating motions of his right hand.

“Animali!”
Fontine lunged from the seat, ripping Lübok’s fingers from his wrist, hurling himself forward. The Wehrmacht were stunned beyond movement, their
shock total. The officer on the armrest gaped. Victor’s open hand gripped his hair and crashed the man’s head into the steel rim of the seat. The skull cracked; an eruption of blood sprayed the face of the Wehrmacht lying between the spread legs of the girl. The officer caught his knees in his trousers; he fell forward on top of the girl, his hands lashing out to grab support. He rolled on his back, crushing the girl in the narrow aisle. Fontine raised the heel of his right boot and propelled it into the soft throat of the Wehrmacht. The blow was pulverizing; the veins in the German’s neck swelled into huge tubes of bluish-black under the skin. His eyes rolled up into his sockets, the eyeballs white gelatine, blank and horrible.

The screams of the girl beneath were now mingled with the cries of agony from the third officer, who had sprung forward, propelling himself off the Fokker’s deck toward the rear bulkhead. The man’s underwear was matted with blood.

Fontine lunged; the German rolled hysterically away. His bloody, trembling hand reached under his tunic; Victor knew what he was after: the four-inch
Kommando
knife, strapped next to his flesh beneath his armpit. The Wehrmacht whipped out the blade—short, razor sharp—and slashed it diagonally in front of him. Fontine rose from his crouch, prepared to leap.

Suddenly an arm was lashed around Victor’s neck. He struck back with his elbows, but the grip was unbreakable.

His neck was yanked back and a long knife sped through the air and imbedded itself deep in the German’s chest. The man was dead before his body slumped to the floor of the cabin.

Abruptly Fontine’s neck was released. Lübok slapped him across the face, the blow powerful, stinging his flesh.

“Enough!
Stop it! I won’t die for
you!”

Dazed, Victor looked around. The throats of the other two Wehrmacht had been cut. The girl had crawled away, vomiting and weeping between two seats. The flight attendant lay sprawled in the aisle—dead or unconscious, there was no way to tell.

And the old corporal who had stared at nothing—in fear—only minutes ago, stood by the pilot’s cabin door, a pistol in his hand.

Suddenly the girl started screaming as she got to her feet. “They’ll
kill
us! Oh, God! Why did you do it?”

Stunned, Fontine stared at the girl and spoke quietly with what breath he had left.
“You?
You can ask that?”

“Yes! Oh, my God!” She pulled her filthy coat around her as best she could. “They’ll kill me. I don’t want to die!”

“You don’t want to live like
that.”

She returned his stare maniacally, her head trembling. “They took me from the camps,” she whispered. “I understood. They gave me drugs when I needed them, wanted them.” She pulled at her loose right sleeve; there were scores of needle marks from her wrist to her upper arm. “But I understood. And I lived!”

“Basta!”
roared Victor stepping toward the girl, raising his hand. “Whether you live or die is immaterial to me. I didn’t act for you!”

“Whatever you did is done, Captain,” said Lübok quickly, touching his arm. “Snap out of it! You’ve had your confrontation, there can be no more. Understand?”

Fontine saw the strength in Lübok’s eyes. Breathing heavily, Victor pointed in astonishment at the fortyish corporal who stood silently by the cabin door, his weapon drawn. “He’s one of you, isn’t he?”

“No,” said Lübok. “He’s a German with a conscience. He doesn’t know who or what we are. At Müllheim he’ll be unconscious, an innocent bystander who can tell them whatever he likes. I suspect it will be nothing. Stay with the girl.”

Lübok took charge. He went back to the bodies of the Wehrmacht and removed identification papers and weapons. In the tunic of one, he found a hypodermic kit and six vials of narcotics. He gave them to the girl, who sat by the window next to Fontine. She accepted them gratefully and without so much as looking at Victor, she proceeded to break a capsule, fill the hypodermic, and insert the needle into her left arm.

She carefully repacked the kit and shoved it into the pocket of her bloodstained coat. She leaned back and breathed deeply.

“Feel better?” asked Fontine.

She turned and looked at him. Her eyes were calmer now, only contempt showing in them. “You understand,
Captain. I don’t
feel
. There are no feelings. One just goes on living.”

“What will you do?”

She took her eyes away from him and returned to the window. She answered him quietly, dreamily—out of contact. “Live, if I can. It’s not up to me. It’s up to you.”

In the aisle the flight attendant stirred. He shook his head and got to his knees. Before he could focus, Lübok was in front of him, his gun at the attendant’s head.

“If you want to stay alive, you’ll do exactly as I say at Müllheim.”

Obedience was in the soldier’s eyes.

Fontine got up. “What about the girl?” he whispered.

“What about her?” countered Lübok.

“I’d like to bring her out with us.”

The Czech ran an exasperated hand through his hair. “Oh, Christ! Well, it’s that or killing her. She’d identify me for a drop of morphine.” He looked down at the girl. “Get her to clean up. There’s a raincoat in the back. She can put it on.”

“Thanks,” said Victor.

“Don’t,” replied Lübok. “I’d kill her in a second if I thought it was a better solution. But she could be valuable; she’s been with a
Kommando
unit where we didn’t know one existed.”

The Resistance fighters met the automobile on a back road of Lörrach, near the Franco-Swiss border. Victor was given clean but ragged clothes to replace the German uniform. They crossed the Rhine at nightfall. The girl was taken west to a Resistance camp in the hills; she was too drugged, too erratic to make the trip south to Montbéliard.

The flight attendant was simply taken away. Fontine kept his own counsel. There’d been another corporal from another army on a pier in Celle Ligure.

“I leave you now,” said Lübok, crossing to him on the riverbank. The Czech’s hand was extended.

Fontine was surprised. The plan had been for Lübok to go with him to Montbéliard; London might have new instructions for him. He took Lübok’s hand, protesting.

“Why? I thought—”

“I know. But things change. There are problems in Wiesbaden.”

Victor held the Czech’s right hand with his own, covering it with his left. “It’s difficult to know what to say. I owe you my life.”

“Whatever I did, you would have done the same. I never doubted that.”

“You’re generous as well as brave.”

“That Greek priest said I was a degenerate who could blackmail half of Berlin.”

“Could you?”

“Probably,” answered Lübok quickly, looking over at a Frenchman who was beckoning him to the boat. He acknowledged with a nod of his head. He turned back to Victor. “Listen to me,” he said softly, removing his hand. “That priest told you something else. That I worked for Rome. You said you didn’t know what that meant.”

“I don’t, specifically. But I’m not blind; it has to do with the train from Salonika.”

“It has
everything
to do with it.”

“You do work for Rome, then? For the church?”

“The church is not your enemy. Believe that.”

“The Order of Xenope claims
it
is not my enemy. Yet certainly I have one. But you don’t answer my question. Do you work for Rome?”

“Yes. But not in the way you think.”

“Lübok!” Fontine grabbed the middle-aged Czech by the shoulders. “I
have
no thoughts! I don’t
know!
Can’t you understand that?”

Lübok stared at Victor; in the dim night light his eyes were searching. “I believe you. I gave you a dozen opportunities; you seized none of them.”

“Opportunities?
What
opportunities?”

The Frenchman by the boat called again, this time harshly. “You! Peacock! Let’s get out of here.”

“Right away,” replied Lübok, his eyes still on Fontine. “For the last time. There are men—on both sides—who think this war is insignificant compared to the information they believe you have. In some ways I agree with them. But you don’t have it, you never did. And this war must be fought. And won. In fact, your father was wiser than all of them.”