The Gemini Contenders (49 page)

Only silence now. Nothing.

He stepped back onto the grass and walked to the lighted windows. He put his face against the glass and tried to see through the white sheer curtains beyond. They were in opaque folds. The blurred images inside were further distorted by the thick glass of the Alpine window.

Then he saw it, and for a moment—as his eyes adjusted to the blurred distortion—he thought he had lost his mind for the second time that night.

At the far left side of the room was the figure of a legless man writhing in short, spastic twitches across the floor. The deformed body was large from the waist up, dressed in some kind of shirt that ended at the huge stumps, what remained of the legs hidden in the cloth of white under-shorts.

The legless one
.

Alfredo Goldoni. Adrian watched now as Goldoni maneuvered himself into a dark corner at the far wall. He carried something in his arms, clutching it as though it were a lifeline in a heavy sea. It was a rifle, a large-barreled rifle. Why?

“Goldoni! Please!”
Fontine cried out at the window. “I just want to
talk
to you. If the watchman called you, he must have told you that.”

The report was thunderous; glass shattered in all directions, fragments penetrating Adrian’s raincoat and jacket. At the last instant he had seen the black barrel raised and had lurched to the side, covering his face. Thick, jagged points of glass were like a hundred pieces of ice across his
arm. But for the heavy sweater he had bought in Milan, he would have been a mass of blood. As it was, his arms and neck were bleeding slightly.

Above, through the billows of smoke and the shattered glass of the window, he could hear the metallic snap of the rifle; Goldoni had reloaded. He sat up, his back against the stone foundation of the house. He felt along his left arm and removed as much of the glass as he could. He could feel the rivulets of blood on his neck.

He sat there, breathing heavily, ministering to himself, then called out again. Goldoni could not possibly negotiate the space between the dark corner and the window. They were two prisoners, one intent on killing the other, held at bay by an invisible, unclimbable wall.

“Listen to me! I don’t know what you’ve been told, but it’s not true! I’m not your enemy!”

“Animale!”
roared Goldoni from within. “I’ll see you dead!”

“For God’s sake, why? I don’t want to harm you!”

“You are Fontini-Cristi! You are a killer of women! An abductor of children!
Maligno! Animale!”

He was too late. Oh, Jesus! He was
too late!
The killer had reached Champoluc before him.

But the killer was still loose. There was a chance.

“One last time, Goldoni,” he said, without shouting now. “I’m a Fontini-Cristi, but I’m not the man you want dead. I’m not a killer of women and I’ve abducted no children. I know the man you’re talking about and he’s not me. That’s as clear and as simple as I can put it. Now, I’m going to stand up in front of this window. I haven’t got any gun—I’ve never owned one. If you don’t believe me, I guess you’ll have to shoot. I haven’t got time to argue any longer. And I don’t think you do, either. Any of you.”

Adrian pressed his bleeding hand on the ground and rose unsteadily. He walked slowly in front of the shattered glass of the window.

Alfredo Goldoni called out quietly, “Walk in with your arms in front of you. There’s no way you’ll live if you hesitate or break your step.”

Fontine came out of the shadows of the darkened back room. The legless man had directed him to a window through which he could enter; the cripple would not risk
the manipulations required of him to open the front door. As Adrian emerged from the darkness, Goldoni cocked the hammer of the rifle, prepared to fire. He spoke in a whisper.

“You’re the man and, yet, you are not the man.”

“He’s my brother,” said Adrian softly. “And I have to stop him.”

Goldoni stared at him in silence. Finally, his eyes still concentrated on Fontine’s face, he uncocked the rifle and lowered it beside him in the corner.

“Help me into my chair,” he said.

Adrian sat in front of the legless man, bare to the waist, his back within the reach of Goldoni’s hands. The Italian-Swiss had removed the fragments of glass, applying an alcohol solution that stung but did its work; the bleeding stopped.

“In the mountains blood is precious. Our countrymen in the north call this fluid
leimen
. It’s better than the powder. I doubt the medical doctors approve, but it does the trick. Put on your shirt.”

“Thank you.” Fontine rose and did as he was told. They had spoken only briefly of things that had to be said. With an Alpiner’s practicality, Goldoni had ordered Adrian to remove his clothes where the glass had penetrated. A wounded man, uncared for, was of little good to anyone. His role of rural physician, however, did not lessen his anger or his agony.

“He’s a man from hell,” said the cripple as Fontine buttoned his shirt.

“He’s sick, though I realize that’s no help for you. He’s looking for something. A vault, hidden somewhere in the mountains. It was carried there years ago, before the war, by my grandfather.”

“We know. We’ve known someone would come someday. But that’s all we know. We don’t know where in the mountains.”

Adrian didn’t believe the legless man and yet he could not be sure. “You said killer of women. Who?”

“My wife. She’s gone.”

“Gone? How do you know she’s dead?”

“He lied. He said she ran away down the road. That he took chase and caught her and keeps her hidden in the village.”

“It’s possible.”

“It is not. I can’t walk,
signore
. My wife can’t run. She has the swollen veins in her legs. She wears thick shoes to get around this house. Those shoes are in front of your eyes.”

Adrian looked down where Goldoni gestured. A pair of heavy, ugly shoes were placed neatly at the side of a chair.

“People do things they don’t think they can do—”

“There’s blood on the floor,” interrupted Goldoni, his voice trembling, pointing to an open doorway. “There were no wounds on the man who calls himself a soldier. Go! Look for yourself.”

Fontine walked to the open door and went inside the small room. A glass bookcase was smashed, sharp fragments everywhere. He reached inside and removed a volume behind one of the shattered panels. He opened it. In clear handscript were pages detailing successive climbs into the mountains. The dates extended back beyond 1920. And there was blood on the floor by the door.

He was too late.

He walked swiftly back into the front room.

“Tell me everything. As quickly as you can.
Everything.”

The soldier had been thorough. He had immobilized his enemy, rendered them helpless through fear and panic. The major from Eye Corps had mounted his own invasion of the Capomonti inn. He had done so swiftly, without a wasted move, finding Lefrac and the members of the Capomonti and Goldoni families in an upstairs room where they were holding their hastily summoned conference.

The door of the room had crashed open, a terrified desk clerk propelled through it so harshly he fell to the floor. The soldier entered quickly, closing the door before any in the room knew what was happening, and held them all rigid at the point of a gun.

The soldier then issued his demands. First, the old ledger describing a journey into the mountains over fifty years ago. And maps. Minutely detailed maps used by climbers in the Champoluc district. Second, the services of either Lefrac’s son or eighteen-year-old grandson to lead him into the hills. Third, the granddaughter as a second hostage. The child’s father had lost his head and lunged at the man
with the gun; but the soldier was expert and the father subdued without a shot.

Old Lefrac was ordered to open the door and call for a housemaid. Proper clothing was brought to the room and the children dressed under gunpoint. It was then that the man-from-hell told Goldoni his wife was a prisoner. He was to return to his house and remain there alone, sending his driver—his nephew—away. If he stopped to reach the police, he would never see his wife again.

“Why?” asked Adrian quickly. “Why did he do that? Why did he want you back here alone?”

“He separates us. My sister returns with my nephew to her house on the Via Sestina; Lefrac and his son remain at the inn. Together we might make each other bold. Apart we’re frightened, helpless. A gun against a child’s head is not easily forgotten. He knows that alone we’ll do nothing but wait.”

Adrian closed his eyes. “God,” he said.

“The soldier’s an expert, that one.” Goldoni’s voice was low, the hatred seething.

Fontine glanced at him.
I have run with the pack—in the middle of the pack—but now I have reached the edges and I will peel away
.

“Why did you shoot at me? If you thought it was him, how could you take the chance? Not knowing what he did.”

“I saw your face against the glass. I wanted to blind you, not to kill you. A dead man can’t tell me where he’s taken my wife. Or the body of my wife. Or the children. I’m a good shot; I fired inches above your head.”

Fontine crossed to the chair where he had thrown his jacket and took out the Xeroxed pages of his father’s recollections of fifty years ago. “You must have read that journal. Can you remember what was written?”

“You can’t go after him. He’ll kill.”

“Can you
remember?”

“It was a two-day climb with many crossing trails! He could be anywhere. He narrows down the place he seeks. He travels blindly. If he saw you, he’d kill the children.”

“He won’t see me. Not if I get there first! Not if I
wait
for him!” Adrian unfolded the Xeroxed pages.

“They’ve been read to me. There’s nothing that can help you.”

“There has to be! It’s
here!”

“You’re wrong,” said Goldoni, and Adrian knew he was not lying. “I tried to tell
him
that, but he wouldn’t listen. Your grandfather made his arrangements, but the
padrone
did not consider unexpected death, or human failing.”

Fontine looked up from the pages. Helplessness was in the old man’s eyes. A killer was in the mountains and he was helpless. Death would surely follow death, for surely his wife was gone.

“What were these arrangements?” asked Adrian softly.

“I’ll tell you. You’re not your brother. We’ve kept the secret for thirty-five years, Lefrac, the Capomontis, and ourselves. And one other—not one of us—whose death came suddenly, before he made his own arrangements.”

“Who was that?”

“A merchant named Leinkraus. We didn’t know him well.”

“Tell me.”

“We’ve waited all these years for a Fontini-Cristi to come.” So the legless man began:—

The man they—the Goldonis, Lefrac, and the Capomontis—expected would come quietly, in peace, seeking the iron crate buried high in the mountains. This man would speak of the journey taken so many years ago by father and son, and he would know that journey was recorded in the Goldoni ledgers—as all who employed the Goldoni guides would know. And because that climb lasted for two days over considerable terrain, the man would specify an abandoned railroad clearing known as
Sciocchezza di Cacciatori
—Hunter’s Folly. The clearing had been left to nature over forty years ago, long before the iron crate had been buried, but it had existed when father and son journeyed to Champoluc in the summer of 1920.

“I thought those clearings were given—”

“The names of birds?”

“Yes.”

“Most were, not all. The soldier asked if there was a clearing known by the name of the hawk. There are no hawks in the mountains of Champoluc.”

“The painting on the wall,” said Adrian, more to himself than for the benefit of the Alpiner.

“What?”

“My father remembered a painting on a wall in Campo
di Fiori, a painting of a hunt. He thought it might be significant.”

“The soldier did not speak of it. Nor did he speak of why he sought the information; only that he had to have it. He wouldn’t mention the
search
to me.
Or
the ledgers. Or the reason why the railroad clearing was important. He was
secretive
. And, clearly, he did not come in peace. A soldier who threatens a legless man is a hollow commander. I didn’t trust him.”

Everything his brother had done was contrary to the memory of the Fontini-Cristis as these people remembered them. It might have been so simple had he been open with them, had he
come in peace;
but the soldier couldn’t do that. He was always at war.

“Then the area around this abandoned clearing—Hunter’s Folly—is where the vault is buried?”

“Presumably. There are several old trails to the east that lead away from the tracks, up to the higher ridges. But which trail, which ridge? We do not know.”

“The records would describe it.”

“If one knew where to look. The soldier doesn’t.”

Adrian thought. His brother had traveled across the world, eluding the Intelligence network of the most powerful nation on earth. “You may be underestimating him.”

“He’s not one of us. He’s not a man of the mountains.”

“No,” mused Fontine quietly. “He’s something else. What would he
look
for? That’s what we have to think about.”

“An inaccessible place. Away from the trails. Ground that would not be traveled easily for any of several reasons. There are many such areas. The mountains are filled with them.”

“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.”