The iron bar came slicing through the air, creasing the skin of his left shoulder, tearing the sleeve half off his sweater. The shock sent him reeling back to the edge of the sheet of rock. He had brought the hand with the gun across his chest in panic; he knew the instant he did so it was the fraction of a second the soldier desperately needed. A wall of earth and stone came at him, the space between himself and the killer from Eye Corps was filled with debris. It smashed into him; sharp pieces of rock pummeled his face, his eyes. He could not see.
He fired. His hand recoiled violently from the explosion of the weapon; his fingers arched from the vibration.
He tried to get to his feet; a boot hammered into his neck. He caught the leg as he fell back, his shoulders over the edge of the sheet of rock. He rolled to his left, holding the leg until he felt the barrel of the gun against the flesh.
He pulled the trigger.
Flesh and bone and blood filled his universe. The soldier was blown off the ground, his right leg a mass of red-soaked cloth. Adrian started to crawl but he could not; there was no strength left, no air in his lungs. He raised himself on one hand and looked over at Andrew.
The major writhed back and forth, moans coming from his throat, his mouth filled with blood and saliva. He pushed himself off the ground, halfway to his knees, his eyes staring insanely at what was left of his leg. He looked over to his executioner. And then he screamed.
“Help me! You can’t let me die! You don’t have the right! Get me the pack!” He coughed, holding his shattered leg with one hand, his other trembling, gesturing at the Alpine pack against the coffin. The blood flowed everywhere, saturating his clothes. The poisons were spreading rapidly; he was dying.
“I don’t have the right to let you live,” said Adrian weakly, gasping for air. “Do you know what you’ve done? The people you killed?”
“Killing’s an instrument!” screamed the soldier. “That’s all it is!”
“Who decides when the instrument’s used? You?”
“Yes! And men like me! We know who we are, what we can do. People like you, you’re not—. For Christ’s sake, help me!”
“You make the rules. Everybody else follows.”
“Yes! Because we’re willing to! People everywhere, they’re not willing. They want the rules made for them! You can’t deny that!”
“I do deny it,” said Adrian quietly.
“Then you’re lying. Or stupid! Oh, Christ …” The soldier’s voice broke, interrupted by a spasm of coughing. He clutched his stomach and stared at his leg again, and then at the mound of dirt. He pulled his eyes away and looked at Adrian. “Here. Over here.”
The major crawled toward the grave. Adrian rose slowly to his feet and watched, mesmerized by the horrible sight. What was left of his compassion told him to fire the weapon in his hand, end the life that was nearly finished. He could see the vault from Salonika in the ground; slats of rotted wood had been pulled away, revealing the iron beneath. Strips of metal had been shattered by gunfire, a coil of rope lay on top. There were torn pieces of heavy cardboard with faint markings that looked like circles of thorns around crucifixes.
They had found it.
“Don’t you understand?” The soldier could barely be heard. “It’s there. The answer. The answer!”
“What answer?”
“Everything.…” For several seconds his brother’s eyes lost muscular control; they rolled in their sockets, and for an instant the pupils disappeared. Andrew’s speech had the inflections of an angry child; his right hand extended into the grave. “I have it now. You can’t interfere! Anymore! You can help me now. I’ll let you help me. I used to let you help me, remember? You remember how I always used to let you help me?” The soldier screamed the question.
“It was always your decision, Andy. To let me help you, I mean,” said Adrian softly, trying to understand the childlike rambling, hypnotized by the words.
“Of course my decision. It had to be my decision. Victor’s and mine.”
Adrian suddenly recalled their mother’s words … he saw the results of strength; he never understood its complications, its compassion.… The lawyer in Adrian had to know. “What should we do with the vault? Now that we’ve got it, what should we do with—”
“Use it!” The soldier screamed again, pounding the loose rock at the edge of the grave. “Use it, use it! Make things right! We’ll tell them we can ruin everything!”
“Suppose we can’t? Suppose it doesn’t matter? Maybe there’s nothing there.”
“We tell them there is! You don’t know how to do it. We tell them anything we want to tell them! They’ll crawl, they’ll whine.…”
“You want them to do that? To crawl and whine?”
“Yes! They’re weak!”
“But you’re not.”
“No! I’ve proved it! Over and over and over again!” The soldier’s neck arched and then snapped forward convulsively. “You think you see things I don’t see. You’re wrong! I see them but they don’t make any difference, they don’t count! What you think’s so goddamned important … doesn’t … matter!” Andrew spaced out the words; it was a child’s cry of defiance.
“What’s that, Andy? What is it I think is so important?”
“People! What they think! It doesn’t count, doesn’t matter. Victor knows that.”
“You’re wrong; you’re so wrong,” interrupted Adrian quietly. “He’s dead, Andy. He died a couple of days ago.”
The soldier’s eyes regained part of their focus. There was elation in them. “Now everything’s mine! I’ll do it!” The coughing returned; the eyes wandered again. “Make them understand. They’re not important. Never were.…”
“Only you.”
“Yes! I don’t hesitate. You do! You can’t make up your mind!”
“You’re decisive, Andy.”
“Yes, decisive. That’s important.”
“And people don’t count, so naturally they can’t be trusted.”
“What the hell are you trying to say?” The soldier’s chest expanded in pain; his neck arched back, then shot forward, mucus and blood coughed through his lips.
“That you’re afraid!” shouted Adrian. “You’ve always been afraid! You live scared to death that someone’ll find that out! There’s a big crack in your armor … you freak!”
A terrible, muted cry came from the soldier’s throat; it was at once guttural and clear, a cross between a roar of final anger and a wail. “That’s a lie! You and your goddamned words.…”
Suddenly there were no more words. The unbelievable was happening in the blinding Alpine sunlight, and Adrian knew only that he would move or die. The soldier’s hand was in the grave. He whipped it out. In his grip was a rope; he lurched off the ground, swinging the rope violently. Tied to the end was a grappling hook, its three prongs slashing through the air.
Adrian sprang to his left, firing the enormous weapon at the crazed killer from Eye Corps.
The soldier’s chest exploded. The rope, held in a grip of steel, swung in a circle—the grappling hook spinning like an insanely off-course gyroscope—around the soldier’s head. The body shot forward, over the sheet of rock, and plummeted down, its scream echoing, filling the mountains with its pitch of horror.
With a sudden, sickening vibration the rope sprang taut, quivering in the thin layer of disturbed snow.
There was the sound of cracking metal from the grave. Adrian whipped his eyes over to its source. The rope had been lashed to a steel band around the vault. The band snapped. The vault could be opened.
But Adrian did not go to it. He limped to the edge of the plateau and looked over the sheet of rock.
Suspended below was the soldier’s body, the grappling hook imbedded in his neck. A prong had plunged up through Andrew’s throat, its point protruding from the gaping mouth.
He filled the large Alpine pack with the three steel, airtight containers from the vault. He could not read the ancient writing etched in the met
al. He did not have to; he knew what each container held. None were large. One was flat, thicker than the other two: within it were the documents compiled by the scholars of Constantine 1,500 years ago, studies that traced what they believed was a theological inconsistency—raising a holy man to one substance with God. Questions for new scholars to ponder. The second container was short, tubular; it held the Aramaic scroll that had so frightened powerful men thirty years ago that strategies of global war were secondary to its possession. But it was the third container, thin, no more than eight inches wide, ten high, that held the most extraordinary document of all: a confession written on a parchment, taken out of a Roman prison nearly 2,000 years ago. It was this receptacle—black, pitted, a relic of antiquity—that was the essence of the vault from Salonika.
All were the denials; only the confession on the Roman parchment could produce an agony beyond men’s minds. But that was not for him to judge. Or was it?
He put the plastic bottles of medicine into his pockets, threw the pack down on the ground, lowered himself over the edge of the sheet of rock—next to the soldier’s body—and dropped to the earth beneath. He strapped the heavy pack on his back and started down the trail.
The boy was dead. The girl would live. Together they would somehow walk out of the mountains, of that Adrian was convinced.
They traveled slowly—a few steps at a time—down the trail toward the Zermatt tracks. He held the girl so that as little weight as possible was forced on her wounded legs.
He looked back up the mountain trail. In the distance the soldier’s body hung suspended against the white sheet of rock. It could not be seen clearly—only if you knew where to look—but it was there.
Was Andrew the final death demanded by the train from Salonika? Were the documents in that vault worth so much life? So much violence for so many years? He had no answers.
He only knew insanity was given unearned stature in the name of holy things. Holy wars were primeval; they always would be. And he had killed a brother for their part of an unholy war.
He felt the terrible weight on his back. He was tempted to remove the steel containers and heave them into the deepest gorge in the mountains. Broken, left to wither into nothing with the first touch of air. Swept away by the Alpine winds into oblivion.
But he would not do that. The price had been too steep.
“Let’s go,” he said to the girl, gently placing her left arm around his neck. He smiled at the child’s frightened face. “We’re going to make it.”
PART
FOUR
34
Adrian stood by the window overlooking the dark expanse of Central Park. He was in the small staff lounge at the Metropolitan Museum. He held the telephone to his ear and listened to Colonel Tarkington in Washington. Across the room sat a priest from the Archdiocese of New York, the monsignor named Land. It was shortly past midnight; the army officer in Washington had been given the private number of the museum. He was told that Mr. Fontine expected his call, regardless of the hour.
Official documentation of events surrounding Eye Corps would be issued by the Pentagon in due time, the officer told Adrian. The administration wanted to avoid the scandal that would result from charges of corruption and insurrection within the armed forces. Especially as a prominent name was involved. It did not serve the interests of national security.
“Stage one,” said Adrian. “Cover-up.”
“Perhaps.”
“You’re going to settle for that?” asked Fontine quietly.
“It’s your family,” replied the colonel. “Your brother.”
“And yours. I can live with it. Can’t you? Can’t Washington?”
There was silence on the other end of the line. Finally the officer spoke. “I got what I wanted. And maybe Washington can’t. Not now.”
“It’s never ‘now.’ ”
“Don’t preach to me. Nobody’s stopping you from holding a press conference.”
It was now Adrian who was momentarily silent. “If I do, can I demand official documentation? Or would a dossier suddenly appear, describing—”
“Describing in psychiatric detail,” interrupted the colonel, “a very disturbed young man who ran around the country living in hippie communes; who aided and abetted three convicted army deserters in San Francisco. Don’t kid yourself, Fontine. It’s on my desk.”
“I thought it might be. I’m learning. You’re thorough, aren’t you? Which brother’s the lunatic?”
“It goes much further. Family influence used to avoid military service; past membership in radical organizations—they’re using dynamite these days. Your odd behavior recently in Washington, including a relationship with a Black attorney who was killed under strange circumstances, said Black lawyer suspected of criminal activities. Lots more. And that’s only you.”
“What?”
“Old truths—documented truths—are dragged up. A father who made a fortune operating all over the world with governments many believe are inimicable to our interests. A man who worked closely with the Communists, whose first wife was killed years ago under very odd circumstances in Monte Carlo. That’s a disturbing pattern. Questions are raised. Can the Fontines live with that?”
“You make me sick.”
“I make myself sick.”
“Then why?”
“Because a decision had to be made that goes beyond you and me and our personal revulsions!” The colonel raised his voice in anger, then controlled himself. “I don’t like a lot of bullshit players upstairs. I only know—or think I know—that maybe it isn’t the time to talk about Eye Corps.”
“So it goes on and on. You don’t sound like the man I talked to in a hotel room.”
“Maybe I’m not. I only hope for the sake of your righteous indignation you’re never put in a position like this.”
Adrian looked at the priest across the room. Land was staring at the dimly lit white wall, at nothing. Yet it was in his eyes, it’s always in the eyes. A desperation that consumed him. The monsignor was a very strong man, but he was frightened now. “I hope I never am,” he said to the colonel.
“Fontine?”
“Yes?”
“Let’s have a drink sometime.”
“Sure. We’ll do that.” Adrian hung up.
Was it up to him now? wondered Adrian. Everything? Was the time ever right to tell the truth?
There’d be one answer soon. He’d gotten the documents from the vault out of Italy with the colonel’s help; the colonel owed him that much, and the colonel did not ask questions. The colonel’s payment was a body suspended in front of a sheet of rock in the mountains of Champoluc. Brother for brother. Debt paid.
Barbara Pierson had known what to do with the documents. She contacted a friend who was a curator of relics and artifacts at the Metropolitan. A scholar who had devoted his life to study of the past. He had seen too much of antiquity to make judgments.
Barbara had flown down from Boston; she was in the laboratory with the scholar now. They’d been there since five-thirty. Seven hours. With the documents from Constantine.
But there was only one document that mattered now. It was the parchment taken out of a Roman prison 2,000 years ago. The parchment was everything. Everything. The scholar understood that.
Adrian left the window and walked across the room to the priest. Two weeks ago, when his father was close to death, Victor drew up his list of men to whom the vault of Constantine was to be delivered. Land’s name was on that list. When Adrian contacted him, Land began saying things to him he had never said to Victor Fontine.
“Tell me about Annaxas,” said Adrian, sitting down opposite the priest.
The monsignor looked away from the wall, startled. Not by the name, thought Fontine, but by the intrusion. His large, penetrating gray eyes under the dark brows were momentarily unfocused. He blinked, as if remembering where he was.
“Theodore Dakakos? What can I tell you? We first met in Istanbul. I was tracing what I
knew was false evidence. The so-called destruction by fire of the Filioque documents. He found out I was there and flew up from Athens to meet the interfering priest from the Vatican archives. We talked; we were both curious. I, why such a prominent man of commerce was so interested in obscure theological artifacts. He, why a Roman scholar was pursuing—allowed to pursue, perhaps—a thesis hardly in the Vatican’s interests. He was very knowledgeable. Each of us manuevered throughout the night, both of us finally exhausted. I think it was the exhaustion that caused it. And the fact that we thought we knew one another, perhaps even liked one another.”
“Caused what?”
“The train from Salonika to be mentioned. Strange, I don’t remember which of us said it first.”
“He knew about it?”
“As much, or more, than I. The trainman was his father, the single passenger; the priest of Xenope, his father’s brother. Neither man ever returned. In his search he found part of the answer. The police records in Milan contained an old entry from December 1939. Two dead men on a Greek train in the freight yards. Murder and suicide. No identification. Annaxas had to know why.”
“What led him to Milan?”
“Over twenty years of asking questions. He had reason enough. He watched his mother go insane. She went mad because the church would give her no answers.”
“Her church?”
“An arm of the church, if you will. The Order of Xenope.”
“Then she knew about the train.”
“She was never supposed to have known. It was believed she didn’t. But men tell things to their wives they tell no one else. Before the elder Annaxas left early that morning in December of 1939, he said to his wife that he was not going to Corinth, as everyone believed. Instead, God would look favorably on them for he was joining his brother Petride. They were going on a journey very far away. They were doing God’s work.”
The priest fingered the gold cross hanging from a cord on the cloth beneath his collar. His touch was not gentle; there was anger in it.
“From which he never came back,” said Adrian quietly. “And there was no brother in the church to reach because he was dead.”
The Gemini Contenders Page 42
