The Gemini Contenders (44 page)

The uniformed chauffeur scrambled around to the trunk of the limousine, opened it, and called for skycaps to serve his very important passenger. Three large, white leather suitcases were stacked on a hand rack, to Adrian’s complaints that they were being scuffed.

He strode through the electronically parted doors and up to the SAS counter.

“I feel like hell!” he said scathingly, conveying the effects of a hangover, “and I would appreciate as little difficulty as possible. I want my luggage to be loaded last; please keep it behind the counter until the final baggage call. It’s done for me all the time. The gentleman yesterday assured me there’d be no trouble.”

The clerk behind the counter looked bewildered. Adrian slapped his ticket envelope down.

“Gate forty-two, sir,” the clerk said, handing back the envelope. “Boarding time is at ten o’clock.”

“I’ll wait over there,” replied Adrian, indicating the line of plastic chairs inside the SAS area. “I meant what I said about the luggage. Where’s the men’s room?”

At twenty minutes to ten, a tall, slender man in khaki trousers, cowboy boots, and an American army field jacket came through the doors of the terminal. On his face there was a pronounced chin beard; on his head a wide Australian bush hat. He entered the men’s room.

At eighteen minutes to ten, Adrian got out of the plastic chair and walked across the crowded terminal. He pushed the door marked “Hommes” and entered.

Inside a toilet stall they awkwardly manipulated the exchange of clothes.

“This is weird, man. You swear there’s nothing in that crazy coat?”

“It’s not even old enough to have lint.… Here are the tickets, go to gate forty-two. You can throw away the baggage stubs, I don’t care. Unless you want the suitcases; they’re damned expensive. And clean.”

“In Stockholm no one busts me. You guarantee.”

“As long as you use your
own
passport and don’t say you’re me. I gave you my tickets, that’s all. You’ve got my note to prove it. Take my word for it, nobody’ll press you. You don’t know where I am and there’s no warrant. There’s nothing.”

“You’re a nut. But you’ve paid my tuition for a couple of years, plus some nice living expenses. You’re a good nut.”

“Let’s hope I’m good enough. Hold the mirror for me.” Adrian pressed the beard on his chin; it adhered quickly. He studied the results and, satisfied, put on the bush hat, pulling it down on the side of his head. “Okay, let’s go. You look fine.”

At eleven minutes to ten, a man in a long white coat, matching white hat, blue scarf, and dark glasses strode past the SAS desk toward gate forty-two.

Thirty seconds later a bearded young man—obviously American—in a soiled field jacket, khaki trousers, cowboy boots, and bush hat slipped out the door of the men’s room, turned sharply left into the crowds, and headed for the exit door. Out on the pavement he rushed to a waiting taxi, got in and removed the beard.

“The name’s Llewellyn!” he shouted to the Air Afrique attendant at the lectern by the departure gate. “I’m sorry I’m late; did I make it?”

The pleasant-faced Black smiled and replied in a French accent. “Just barely,
monsieur
. We’ve given the last call. Do you have any hand luggage?”

“Not a thing.”

At twenty-three minutes past ten, the ten fifteen Air Afrique flight to Rome taxied out toward runway seven. By ten twenty-eight it was airborne. It was only thirteen minutes late.

The man who called himself Llewellyn sat by the window, the bush hat on his left in the adjacent, empty first-class seat. He felt the hardening globules of facial cement on his chin, and he rubbed them in a kind of wonder.

He had done it. Disappeared.

The man in the light-brown topcoat boarded the SAS flight to Stockholm at ten twenty-nine. Departure was delayed. As he walked toward the economy section, he passed the fashionably dressed passenger in the long white overcoat and matching white hat. He thought to himself that the man he followed was a fucking idiot. Who did he think he was, wearing that outfit?

By ten fifty the flight to Stockholm was airborne. It was twenty minutes late, not unusual. The man in the economy section had removed his topcoat and was seated in the forward area of the cabin, diagonally behind the target of his surveillance. When the curtains were parted—as they were now—he could see the subject clearly.

Twelve minutes into the flight the pilot turned off the seat-belt sign. The fashionably dressed subject in the first-class section rose from his aisle seat and removed the long white overcoat and matching white hat.

The man diagonally behind in the economy section bolted forward in his seat, stunned.

“Oh, shit,” he muttered.

Andrew peered through the windshield at the sign caught in the dull wash of the headlights. It was dawn but pockets of fog were everywhere.

MILANO 5 KM
.

He had driven through the night, renting the fastest car he could find in Rome. The journey at night minimized the risk of being followed. Headlights were giveaways on long stretches of dark roads.

But he had not expected to be followed. In Rock Creek Park, Greene said he was marked. What the Jew did not know was that if IG wanted him that quickly, they could have picked him up at the airport. The Pentagon knew exactly
where he was; a cable from the secretary of the army had brought him back from Saigon.

So the word to take him had not been given. That it would within days, perhaps hours, was not the issue; of course it would. But he was the son of Victor Fontine. The Pentagon would not be hasty issuing any formal orders for arrest. The army did not bring charges against a Rockefeller or a Kennedy or a Fontine lightly. The Pentagon would insist on flying back the Eye Corps officers for corroborating testimony. The Pentagon would leave nothing to chance or error.

Which meant he had the time to get out. For by the time the army was prepared to move, he would be in the mountains tracing a vault that would change the ground rules as they had never been changed before.

Andrew stepped on the accelerator. He needed sleep. A professional knew when the body hungered for rest in spite of the high-pitched moment, and the eyes became aware of their sockets. He would find a small boardinghouse or country inn and sleep for most of the day. Late in the afternoon he would drive north to Campo di Fiori and find a picture on the wall. The first clue in the search for a vault buried in the mountains.

He drove by the crumbling stone gates of the entrance without slowing down, and continued for several miles. He allowed two cars to pass him, observing the drivers; they were not interested in him. He turned around and went past the gates a second time. There was no way to tell what was inside; whether there were any security measures—trip alarms or dogs. All he could see was a winding paved road that disappeared into the woods.

The sound of an automobile on that road would be its own alarm. He could not chance that; he had no intention of announcing his arrival at Campo di Fiori. He slowed the car down, and turned into the bordering woods, driving as far off the road as possible.

Five minutes later he approached the gates. By habit he checked for wires and photoelectric cells; there were none, and he passed through the gates and walked down the road cut out of the woods.

He stayed at the edge, concealed by the trees and the
overgrowth until he was in sight of the main house. It was as his father had described: more dead than alive.

The windows were dark, no lamps were on inside. There should have been. The house was in shadows. An old man living alone needed light; old men did not trust their eyes. Had the priest died?

Suddenly, out of nowhere, there came the sound of a voice, high-pitched and plaintive. Then footsteps. They came from the road beyond the north bend of the drive; the road he remembered his father describing as leading to the stables. Fontine dropped to the ground, below the level of the grass, and remained motionless. He raised his head by inches; he waited and watched.

The old priest came into view. He was wearing a long black cassock and carried a wicker basket. He spoke out loud, but Andrew could not see who he was talking to. Nor could he understand the words. Then the monk stopped and turned and spoke again.

There was a reply. It was rapid, authoritative, in a language Fontine did not immediately recognize. Then he saw the monk’s companion and instantly appraised him as one might an adversary. The man was large, the shoulders wide and heavy, encased in a camel’s hair jacket above well-tailored slacks. The last rays of the sun illuminated both men; not well—the light was at their backs—but enough to distinguish the faces.

Andrew concentrated on the younger, powerfully built man walking behind the priest. His face was large, the eyes wide apart, beneath light brows and a tanned forehead that set off short, sun-bleached hair. He was in his middle forties, certainly no more. And the walk: It was that of a deliberate man, capable of moving swiftly, but not anxious for observers to know it. Fontine had commanded such men.

The old monk proceeded toward the marble steps, shifting the small basket to his left arm, his right hand lifting the folds of his habit. He stopped on the top step and turned again to the younger man. His voice was calmer, resigned to the layman’s presence or instructions or both. He spoke slowly and Fontine had no trouble now recognizing the language. It was Greek.

As he listened to the priest he reached another, equally
obvious conclusion. The powerfully built man was Theodore Annaxas Dakakos.
He is a bull
.

The priest continued across the wide marble porch to the doors; Dakakos climbed the steps and followed. Both men went inside.

Fontine lay in the grass on the border of the drive for several minutes. He had to think. What brought Dakakos to Campo di Fiori? What was here for him?

And as the questions formed, the single answer was apparent. Dakakos, the loner, was the unseen power here. The conversation that had just taken place in the circular drive was not a conversation between strangers.

What had to be established was whether Dakakos had come alone to Campo di Fiori. Or had he brought his own protection, his own firepower? There was no one in the house, no lights in the windows, no sounds from inside. That left the stables.

Andrew scrambled backward in the wet grass until all sightlines from the windows were blocked by the over-growth. He rose behind a clump of bushes and removed a small Beretta revolver from his pocket. He climbed the embankment above the drive and estimated the angle of the stable road across the knoll. If Dakakos’s men were in the stables, it would be a simple matter to eliminate them. Without gunfire; that was essential. The weapon was merely a device; men collapsed under its threat.

Fontine crouched and weaved his way across the knoll toward the stable road. The early evening breezes bent the upper grass and the branches of trees; the professional soldier fell instinctively into the rhythm of their movement. The roofs of the stables came into view and he stepped silently down the incline toward the road.

In front of the stable door was a long steel-gray Maserati, its tires caked with mud. There were no voices, no signs of life; there was only the quiet hum of the surrounding woods. Andrew lowered himself to his knees, picked up a handful of dirt, and threw it twenty yards in the air across the road, hitting the stable windows.

No one emerged. Fontine repeated the action, using more dirt mixed with small pieces of rock. The splattering was louder; there was no way it could go unobserved.

Nothing. No one.

Cautiously, Andrew walked out on the road toward the
car. He stopped before he reached it. The surface of the road was hard, but still partially wet from the earlier rain.

The Maserati was headed north; there were no footsteps on the passenger side of the car in front of him. He walked around the automobile; there were distinct imprints on the driver’s side: the shoe marks of a man. Dakakos had come alone.

There was no time to waste now. There was a picture on a wall to be taken, and a journey to Champoluc that had to begin. Too, there was a fine irony in finding Dakakos at Campo di Fiori. The informer’s life would end where his obsession had begun. Eye Corps was owed that much.

He could see lights inside the house now, but only in the windows to the left of the main entrance. Andrew kept to the wall, ducking under the ledges, until he was at the side of the window where the light was brightest. He inched his face to the frame and looked inside.

The room was huge. There were couches and chairs and a fireplace. Two lamps were lit; one by the far couch, the second nearer, to the right of an armchair. Dakakos was standing by the mantel, gesturing in slow, deliberate movements with his hands. The priest was in the chair, his back to Fontine, and barely visible. Their conversation was muted, indistinguishable. It was impossible to determine whether the Greek had a weapon; the assumption had to be that he did.

Andrew pried a brick loose from the border of the drive and returned to the window. He rose, the Beretta in his right hand, the brick gripped in his left. Dakakos approached the priest in the chair; the Greek was pleading, or explaining, his concentration absolute.

The moment was now.

Shielding his eyes with the gun, Fontine extended his left arm behind him, then arced it forward, hurling the brick into the center of the window, shattering glass and wood strips everywhere. On impact he smashed the remaining, obstructing glass with the Beretta, thrusting the weapon through the space, and screamed at the top of his voice.

“You move one inch, you’re dead!”

Dakakos froze.
“You?”
he whispered. “You were
taken!”

The Greek’s head slumped forward, the gashes from the pistol barrel on his face deep, ugly, and bleeding profusely.
There was nothing that so became this man as a painful death, thought Fontine.

“In the name of God have
mercy!”
screamed the priest from the opposite chair, where he sat bound and helpless.