The Gemini Contenders (47 page)

Adrian put down the pages on the seat of the car. The remaining paragraphs described sketchily remembered hills and trails and views that seemed to overlap. The journey into the mountains had begun.

Specific information might well lie in these rambling descriptions. Isolated landmarks might be revealed, and a pattern emerge; but which landmarks, which patterns?

Oh, God! The painting on the wall. Andrew had the painting!

Adrian suppressed his sudden alarm. The painting from Savarone’s study might narrow down the location of a clearing, but what then? Fifty years had passed. A half century of ice and water and summer thaws and natural growth and erosion.

The painting on the wall might well be one clue, perhaps the most important. But Adrian had the feeling that there were others as vital as that painting. They were contained in the words of his father’s testament. Memories that survived fifty years of extraordinary living.

Something had happened fifty years ago that had nothing to do with a father and son going into the mountains.

He had found part of his mind again. He was exercising his ability to think. The shock and the horror were still there, but he was passing through to the beginnings of sanity.

 … 
Bear in mind, the contents of that vault are as staggering to the civilized world as anything in history
.…

He had to reach it, find it. He had to stop the killer from Eye Corps.

Andrew parked the Land Rover by a fence bordering a field. The Goldoni farmhouse was two hundred yards down the road, on the left; the field was part of the Goldoni property. There was a man driving the tractor along rows of upturned earth, his living body turned in the seat, watching the progress behind him. There were no other houses in the area, no other people in sight. Andrew decided to stop and speak to the man.

It was shortly past five in the afternoon. He had spent the day wandering about Champoluc, buying clothes, supplies, and climbing equipment, including the finest Alpine pack available, filled with those items recommended for the mountains, and one that was not. A Magnum .357-caliber pistol. He had made these purchases at the much-expanded shop referred to in his father’s recollections. The name was Leinkraus; it had a mezuzah on the doorframe of the front entrance. The clerk behind the counter allowed that Leinkraus had been selling the finest equipment in the Italian Alps since 1913. There were now branches in Gstaad and Lake Lucerne.

Andrew got out of the Land Rover and walked to the fence, waving his hand back and forth to get the attention of the man on the tractor. He was a short, stocky Italian-Swiss, ruffled brown hair above the dark eyebrows, and the rugged, sharp features of a northern Mediterranean. He was at least ten years older than Fontine; his expression was cautious, as if he were not used to unfamiliar faces.

“Do you speak English?” Andrew asked.

“Passably,
signore,”
said the man.

“I’m looking for Alfredo Goldoni. I was directed out here.”

“You were directed correctly,” replied the Italian-Swiss in more than passable English. “Goldoni is my uncle. I
tend his land for him. He can’t work for himself.” The man stopped, offering no further clarification.

“Where can I find him?”

“Where he always is. In the back room of his house. My aunt will show you to him. He likes visitors.”

“Thank you.” Andrew turned toward the Land Rover.

“You’re American?” asked the man.

“No. Canadian,” he replied, extending his cover for any of a dozen immediate possibilities. He climbed into the vehicle and looked at the man through the open window. “We sound the same.”

“You look the same, dress the same,” countered the farmhand quietly, eyeing the fur-lined Alpine jacket. “The clothes are new,” he added.

“Your English isn’t,” said Fontine. He turned the ignition.

Goldoni’s wife was gaunt and ascetic-looking. Her straight gray hair was pulled back, the taut bun a crown of self-denial. She ushered the visitor through the several neat, sparsely furnished rooms to a doorway at the rear of the house. There was no door attached; where once there’d been a sill in the frame, it had been removed, the floor leveled. Fontine walked through; he entered the bedroom. Alfredo Goldoni sat in a wheelchair by a window overlooking the fields at the base of the mountains.

He had no legs. The stubs of his once-massive limbs were encased in the folds of his trousers, the cloth held together by safety pins. The rest of his body, like his face, was large and awkward. Age and mutilation had extracted their price.

Old Goldoni greeted him with false energy. A tired cripple afraid of offending a newcomer, grateful for the all-too-infrequent interruption.

The introductions over, the directions and the journey from town described, and wine brought by a sullen wife, Fontine sat down in a chair opposite the legless man. The stumps were within an arm’s reach; the word
grotesque
came repeatedly to his mind. Andrew did not like ugliness; he did not care to put up with it.

“You don’t recognize the name Fontine?”

“I do not, sir. It’s French, I think. But you’re American.”

“Do you recognize the name Fontini-Cristi?”

Goldoni’s eyes changed. A long-forgotten alarm was triggered. “Yes, of course, I recognize it,” replied the amputee, his voice also changing, his words measured. “Fontine; Fontini-Cristi. So the Italian becomes French and the possessor American. It’s been many years. You’re a Fontini-Cristi?”

“Yes. Savarone was my grandfather.”

“A great
padrone
from the northern provinces. I remember him. Not well, of course. He stopped coming to Champoluc in the late twenties, I believe.”

“The Goldonis were his guides. Father and sons.”

“We were everyone’s guides.”

“Were you ever a guide for my grandfather?”

“It’s possible. I worked the mountains as a very young man.”

“Can’t you remember?”

“In my time I have taken thousands into the Alps—”

“You just said you remembered him.”

“Not well. And more by the name than by the person. What is it you want?”

“Information. About a trip to the mountains taken by my father and grandfather fifty years ago.”

“Are you joking?”

“Hardly. My father, Victor—Vittorio Fontini-Cristi—sent me from America to get that information. At great inconvenience to me. I haven’t much time, so I need your help.”

“It’s freely given, but I wouldn’t know where to begin. A single climb fifty years ago! Who would remember?”

“The man who led them. The guide. According to my father he was a son of Goldoni. The date is July fourteenth, 1920.”

Fontine could not be sure—perhaps the grotesque cripple merely suppressed a sharp pain from his massive stumps, or shifted his legless clump of a body in reflection—but Goldoni
did react
. It was the
date
. He reacted to the date. And immediately covered that reaction by talking.

“July of 1920. It’s two generations ago. It’s impossible. You must have something more, how do you say, specific than that?”

“The
guide
. He was a Goldoni.”

“No
t
I. I was no more than fifteen years old. I went into
the mountains young, but not that young. Not as a
prima guida.”

Andrew held the cripple’s eyes with his own. Goldoni was uncomfortable; he did not like the exchange of stares and looked away. Fontine leaned forward. “But you remember something, don’t you?” he asked quietly, unable to keep the coldness out of his voice.

“No, Signor Fontini-Cristi. There’s nothing.”

“Just a few seconds ago, I gave you the date: July fourteenth, 1920. You knew that date.”

“I knew only that it was too long ago for me to think about.”

“I should tell you, I’m a soldier. I’ve interrogated hundreds of men; very few ever fooled me.”

“It wouldn’t be my intention,
signore
. For what purpose? I should like to be helpful to you.”

Andrew continued to stare. “Years ago there were clearings on the railroad tracks south of Zermatt.”

“A few are left,” added Goldoni. “Not many, of course. They’re not necessary these days.”

“Tell me. Each was given the name of a bird—”

“Some,” interrupted the Alpiner. “Not all.”

“Was there a
hawk?
A hawk’s … 
something?”

“A hawk? Why do you ask that?” The outsized amputee looked up, his gaze now steady, unwavering.

“Just tell me. Was there a clearing with ‘hawk’ as part of its name?”

Goldoni remained silent for several moments. “No,” he said finally.

Andrew sat back in the chair. “Are you the eldest son of the Goldoni family?”

“No. It was obviously one of my brothers who was hired for that climb fifty years ago.”

Fontine was beginning to understand. Alfredo Goldoni was given the house because he had lost his legs. “Where are your brothers? I’ll talk with them.”

“Again, I must ask if you joke,
signore
. My brothers are dead, everyone knows that. My brothers, an uncle, two cousins. All dead. There are no Goldoni guides left in Champoluc.”

Andrew’s breathing stopped. He absorbed the information and inhaled deeply. His shortcut had been eliminated with a single sentence.

“I find that hard to believe,” he said coldly.
“All
those men dead? What killed them?”

“Avalanche,
signore
. A whole village was buried in sixty-eight. Near Valtournanche. Rescue teams were sent from as far north as Zermatt, south from Châtillon. The Goldonis led them. Three nations awarded us their highest honors. They were of little good to the rest. For me, they provide a small pension. I lost my legs through exposure.” He tapped the stumps of his once muscular legs.

“And you have no information about that trip on July fourteenth, 1920?”

“Without particular details, how can I?”

“I have descriptions. Written down by my father.” Fontine withdrew the Xeroxed pages from his jacket.

“Good! You should have said so before! Read them to me.”

Andrew did so. The descriptions were disjointed, the pictures evoked contradictory. Time sequences jumped back and forth, and landmarks seemed to be confused with each other.

Goldoni listened; every now and then he closed his puffed, creased eyes and turned his neck to one side, as though conjuring up his own visual recollections. When Fontine finished he shook his head slowly. “I’m sorry,
signore
. What you have read could be any of twenty, thirty different trails. Much that’s there doesn’t even exist in our district. Forgive me, but I think that your father has confused trails farther west in Valais. It’s easy to do.”

“There’s nothing that sounds familiar?”

“On the contrary. Everything.
And
nothing. Fragments of many locations for hundreds of square miles. I’m sorry. It’s impossible.”

Andrew was confused. He still had the gut feeling that the Alpiner was lying. There was another option to pursue before he forced the issue. If it, too, led nowhere, he would come back and face the cripple with different tactics.

 … 
Should Alfredo not be the eldest, look for a sister
.…

“Are you the oldest surviving member of the family?”

“No. Two sisters were born before me. One lives.”

“Where?”

“In Champoluc. On the Via Sestina. Her son works my land.”

“What’s the name? Her married name.”

“Capomonti.”

“Capomonti? That’s the name of the people who run the inn.”

“Yes,
signore
. She married into the family.”

Fontine got out of the chair, putting the Xeroxed pages into his pocket. He reached the door and turned. “It’s possible I’ll be back.”

“It will be a pleasure to welcome you.”

Fontine got into the Land Rover and started the engine. Across the fence in the field, the nephew-farmhand sat motionless on the tractor and watched him, his vehicle idling. The gut feeling returned; the look on the farmhand’s face seemed to be saying,
Get out of here. I must run to the house and hear what you said
.

Andrew released the brake and pressed the accelerator. The Land Rover shot forward on the road; he made a rapid U-turn and started back toward the village.

Suddenly his eyes riveted on the most obvious, unstartling sight in the world. He swore. It was so obvious he had not taken notice.

The road was lined with telephone poles.

There was no point in looking for an old woman on the Via Sestina; she would not be there. Another strategy came to the soldier’s mind. The odds favored it.

“Woman!”
shouted Goldoni.

“Quickly! Help me! The telephone!”

Goldoni’s wife walked swiftly into the room and gripped the handles of the chair. “Should I make the calls?” she asked, wheeling him to the telephone.

“No. I’ll do it.” He dialed. “Lefrac? Can you hear me? … He’s come. After all these years. Fontini-Cristi. But he does not bring the words. He seeks a clearing named for
hawks
. He tells me nothing else, and that’s nothing. I don’t trust him. I must reach my sister. Gather the others. We’ll meet in an hour.…. Not
here!
At the inn.”

Andrew lay prone in the field across from the farmhouse. He focused the binoculars alternately on the door and on the windows. The sun was going down behind the western Alps; it would be dark soon. Lights had been put
on in the farmhouse; the shadows moved back and forth. There was activity.

A car was being backed out of a dirt drive to the right of the house; it stopped and the farmhand-nephew got out. He raced to the front door; it opened.

Goldoni was in his wheelchair, his wife behind him. The nephew replaced her and started wheeling his legless uncle across the lawn toward the automobile, whose motor was idling.

Goldoni was clutching something in his arms. Andrew focused the binoculars on the object.

It was a large book; but it was more than a book. It was some kind of heavy, wide volume. A ledger.

At the car Goldoni’s wife held the door while the nephew grabbed the grotesque amputee under the arms and swung the carcass across into the seat. Goldoni twitched and squirmed; his wife drew a strap across him and buckled it.