The Gemini Contenders (2 page)

Father Petride turned to his brother. “When you picked up the train, did you speak with anyone?”

“Only the dispatcher. Naturally. We had black tea together.”

“What did he say?”

“Words I wouldn’t offend you with, for the most part. His papers said the cars were to be loaded by the fathers of Xenope in the outlying yards. He didn’t ask any questions.”

Father Petride looked over at the second freight car, on his right. In minutes all would be completed; they would be ready for the third car. “Who prepared the engine?”

“Fuel crews and mechanics. Yesterday afternoon. The orders said it was a standby; that’s normal. Equipment breaks down all the time. We are laughed at in Italy.… Naturally, I checked everything myself several hours ago.”

“Would the dispatcher have any reason to telephone the freight yards? Where supposedly we are loading the cars?”

“He was asleep, or practically so, before I left his tower. The morning schedule won’t start—” the engineer looked up at the gray black sky “—for at least another hour. He’d have no reason to call anyone, unless the wireless reported an accident.”

“The wires were shorted out; water in a terminal box,” said the priest quickly, as if talking to himself.

“Why?”

“In case you did have problems. You spoke to
no one
else?”

“Not even a drifter. I checked the cars to make sure none were inside.”

“You’ve studied our schedule by now. What do you think?”

The trainman whistled softly, shaking his head. “I think I’m astounded, my brother. Can so much be … so arranged?”

“The arrangements are taken care of. What about the time? That’s the important factor.”

“If there are no track failures the speed can be maintained. The Slav border police at Bitola are hungry for bribes; and a Greek freight at Banja Luka is fair game. We’ll have no trouble at Sarajevo or Zagreb; they look for larger fish than food for the religious.”

“The time, not the bribes.”

“They
are
time. One haggles.”

“Only if
not
haggling would seem suspicious. Can we reach Monfalcone in three nights?”

“If your arrangements are successful, yes. If we lose time we could make it up during the daylight hours.”

“Only as a last resort. We travel at night.”

“You’re obstinate.”

“We’re cautious.” Again the priest looked away. Freight cars one and two were secure, the fourth would be loaded
and packed before the minute was up. He turned back to his brother. “Does the family think you’re taking a freight to Corinth?”

“Yes. To Navpaktos. To the shipyards on the straits of Patrai. They don’t expect me back for the better part of a week.”

“There are strikes at Patrai. The unions are angry. If you were a few days longer, they’d understand.”

Annaxas looked closely at his brother. He seemed startled at the young priest’s worldly knowledge. There was a hesitancy in his reply. “They’d understand. Your sister-in-law would understand.”

“Good.” The monks had gathered by Petride’s truck, watching him, waiting for instructions. “I’ll join you at the engine shortly.”

“All right,” said the trainman as he walked away, glancing at the priests.

Father Petride removed the pencil light from his shirt pocket and in the darkness approached the other monks at the truck. He searched out the powerfully built man who was his driver. The monk understood and stepped away from the others, joining Petride at the side of the vehicle.

“This is the last time we speak,” said the young priest.

“May the blessings of God—”

“Please,” interrupted Petride. “There’s no time. Just commit to memory each move we make here tonight.
Everything
. It must be duplicated exactly.”

“It will be. The same roads, the same orders or trucks, the same drivers, identical papers across the borders to Monfalcone. Nothing will change, except one of us will be missing.”

“That’s the will of God. For the glory of God. It’s a privilege beyond my worth.”

There were two master padlocks on the truck’s panel. Petride had one key; his driver held the other. Together they approached the locks and inserted the keys. The irons sprung; the locks were lifted out of the steel hasps, the hasps slapped up, and the doors opened. A lantern was hung high on the edge of the panel.

Inside were the crates with the symbols of the crucifix and thorns stenciled on the sides between the strips of wood. The monks began to remove them, maneuvering like dancers—robes flowing in the eerie light. They carried the
cartons to the loading door of the third freight car. Two men leaped up into the heavy-beamed deck of the car and started stacking the boxes at the south end.

Several minutes later half the truck was empty. In the center of the van, separated from the surrounding cartons, was a single crate draped in black cloth. It was somewhat larger than the cases of produce and not rectangular in shape. Instead, it was a perfect cube: three feet in height, three in width, and three in depth.

The priests gathered in a semicircle in front of the open panels of the truck. Shafts of filtered white moonlight mingled with the yellow spill of the lantern. The combined effect of the strange admixture of light, the cavernous truck, and the robed figures made Father Petride think of a catacomb, deep in the earth, housing the true relics of the cross.

The reality was not much different. Except that what lay sealed inside the iron vault—for that was what it was—was infinitely more meaningful than the petrified wood of the crucifixion.

Several of the monks had closed their eyes in prayer; others were staring, transfixed by the presence of the holy thing, their thoughts suspended, their faith drawing sustenance from what they believed was within the tomblike chest—itself a catafalque.

Petride watched them, feeling apart from them, and that was how it should be. His mind wandered back to what seemed only hours ago, but was in reality six weeks. He had been ordered out of the fields and taken to the white concrete rooms of the Elder of Xenope. He was ushered into the presence of that most holy father; there was one other priest with the old prelate, no one else.

“Petride Dakakos,” the holy man had begun, sitting behind his thick wooden table, “you have been chosen above all others here at Xenope for the most demanding task of your existence. For the glory of God and the preservation of Christian sanity.”

The second priest had been introduced. He was an ascetic-looking man with wide, penetrating eyes. He spoke slowly, precisely. “We are the custodians of a vault, a sarcophagus, if you will, that has remained sealed in a tomb deep in the earth for over fifteen hundred years. Within that vault are documents that would rend the Christian
world apart, so devastating are their writings. They are the ultimate proof of our most sacred beliefs, yet their exposure would set religion against religion, sect against sect, entire peoples against one another. In a holy war.… The German conflict is spreading. The vault must be taken out of Greece, for its existence has been rumored for decades. The search for it would be as thorough as a hunt for microbes. Arrangements have been made to remove it where none will find it. I should say, most of the arrangements. You are the final component.”

The journey had been explained. The
arrangements
. In all their glory. And fear.

“You will be in contact with only one man. Savarone Fontini-Cristi, a great
padrone
of northern Italy, who lives in the vast estates of Campo di Fiori. I, myself, have traveled there and spoken with him. He’s an extraordinary man, of unparalleled integrity and utter commitment to free men.”

“He is of the Roman church?” Petride had asked incredulously.

“He is of no church, yet
all
churches. He is a powerful force for men who care to think for themselves. He is the friend of the Order of Xenope. It is he who will conceal the vault … You and he alone. And then you … but we will get to that; you are the most privileged of men.”

“I thank my God.”

“As well you should, my son,” said the holy father of Xenope, staring at him.

“We understand you have a brother. An engineer for the railroads.”

“I do.”

“Do you trust him?”

“With my life. He’s the finest man I know.”

“You shall look into the eyes of the Lord,” said the holy father, “and you will not waver. In His eyes you will find perfect grace.”

“I thank my God,” said Petride once again.

He shook his head and blinked his eyes, forcing the reflections out of his mind. The priests by the truck were still standing immobile; the hum of whispered chants came from rapidly moving lips in the darkness.

There was no time for meditation or prayer. There was no time for anything but swift movement—to carry out the
commands of the Order of Xenope. Petride gently parted the priests in front of him and jumped up into the truck. He knew why he had been chosen. He was capable of such harshness; the holy father of Xenope had made that clear to him.

There was a time for such men as himself.

God forgive him.

“Come,” he said quietly to those on the ground. “I’ll need help.”

The monks nearest the truck looked uncertainly at one another. Then, one by one, five men climbed into the van.

Petride removed the black drape that covered the vault. Underneath, the holy receptacle was encased in the heavy cardboard, wood framing, and the stenciled symbols of Xenope; identical except for size and shape to all the other crates. But the casing was the only similarity. It required six strong backs, pushing and pulling, to nudge it to the edge of the van and onto the freight car.

The moment it was in place, the dancelike activity resumed. Petride remained in the freight car, arranging the crates so that they concealed the holy thing, obscuring it as one among so many. Nothing unusual, nothing to catch the eye.

The freight car was filled. Petride pulled the doors shut and inserted the iron padlock. He looked at the radium dial of his wristwatch; it had all taken eight minutes and thirty seconds.

It had to be, he supposed, yet still it annoyed him: His fellow priests knelt on the ground. A young man—younger than he, a powerful Serbo-Croat barely out of his novitiate—could not help himself. As the tears rolled down his cheek, the young priest began the chant of Nicaea. The others picked it up and Petride knelt also, in his laborer’s clothes, and listened to the holy words.

But not speaking them. There was no
time! Couldn’t they understand?

What was happening to him? In order to take his mind off the holy whispers, he put his hand inside his shirt and checked the leather pouch that was strapped to his chest. Inside that flat, uncomfortable dispatch case were the orders that would lead him across hundreds of miles of uncertainty. Twenty-seven separate pages of paper. The pouch was secure; the straps cut into his skin.

The prayer over, the priests of Xenope rose silently. Petride stood in front of them and each in turn approached him and embraced him and held him in love. The last was his driver, his dearest friend in the order. The tears that filled the rims of his eyes and rolled down his strong face said everything there was to say.

The monks raced back to the trucks; Petride ran to the front of the train and climbed up into the pilot’s cabin. He nodded to his brother who began to pull levers and turn wheels. Grinding shrieks of metal against metal filled the night.

In minutes the freight was traveling at high speed. The journey had begun. The journey for the glory of one Almighty God.

Petride held on to an iron bar that protruded from the iron wall. He closed his eyes and let the hammering vibrations and rushing wind numb his thoughts. His fears.

And then he opened his eyes—briefly—and saw his brother leaning out the window, his massive right hand on the throttle, his stare directed to the tracks ahead.

Annaxas the Strong, everyone called him. But Annaxas was more than strong; he was good, When their father had died, it was Annaxas who had gone out to the yards—a huge boy of thirteen—and worked the long, hard hours that exhausted grown men. The money Annaxas brought home kept them all together, made it possible for his brothers and sisters to get what schooling they could. And one brother got more. Not for the family, but for the glory of God.

The Lord God tested men. As He was testing now.

Petride bowed his head and the words seared through his brain and out of his mouth in a whisper that could not be heard.

I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of all things both visible and invisible, and in one Lord, Jesus Christ, Teacher, Son of God, Only begotten of the Father. God of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God, begotten not made
.…

They reached the sidings at Edhessa; a switch was thrown by unseen, unauthorized hands, and the freight from Salonika plunged into the northern darkness. The Yugoslav border police at Bitola were as anxious for Greek
news as they were for Greek bribes. The northern conflict was spreading rapidly, the armies of Hitler were maniacs; the Balkans were next to fall, everyone said so. And the unstable Italians were filling the piazzas, listening to the screams of war mouthed by the insane Mussolini and his strutting
fascisti
. The talk everywhere was of invasion.

The Slavs accepted several crates of fruit—Xenope fruit was the best in Greece—and wished Annaxas better fortune than they believed he would have, especially since he traveled north.

They sped through the second night north into Mitrovica. The Order of Xenope had done its work; a track was cleared on which no train was scheduled and the freight from Salonika proceeded east to Sarajevo, where a man came out of the shadows and spoke to Petride.

“In twelve minutes the track will be shifted. You will head north to Banja Luka. During the day you’ll stay in the yards. They’re very crowded. You’ll be contacted at nightfall.”

In the crowded freight yards at Banja Luka, at precisely quarter past six in the evening, a man came to them dressed in overalls. “You’ve done well,” he said to Petride. “According to the dispatcher’s flagging schedules, you don’t exist.”