The Gemini Contenders (48 page)

Through the frame of the open door’s window, Andrew had a clear view of the legless, former Alpine guide. The center of focus once again was the huge ledger in Goldoni’s arms, held almost desperately, though it were a thing of extraordinary value he dared not let go. Then Andrew realized there was something else in Goldoni’s arms, something infinitely more familiar to the soldier. A shaft of glistening metal was wedged between the large volume and the Alpiner’s thick chest. It was the barrel of a small, powerful shotgun; a model particularly identified with warring Italian families in the south. In Sicily. It was called the
lupo
, the “wolf.” It was without much accuracy beyond twenty yards, but at short range could blow a man ten feet off the ground.

Goldoni was guarding the volume in his arms with a weapon more powerful than the .357 Magnum in the soldier’s Alpine pack. Briefly, Andrew focused on Goldoni’s nephew; the man had a new addition to his garb. Jammed into his belt was a pistol, the large handle indicative of its heavy caliber.

Both Alpiners were guarding that ledger. No one could get near it. What was—

Christ! Suddenly, Fontine understood.
Records!
Records of
journeys into the mountains!
It couldn’t be anything
else! It never occurred to him—
or
to Victor—to ask if such records were kept. Especially in light of the years; it was simply not a consideration. My God, a half century had passed!

But according to his father, and
his
father, the Goldonis were the finest guides in the Alps. Such professionals with such a collective reputation to uphold
would
keep records; it was the most natural thing to do. Records of past trips into the mountains, going back decades!

Goldoni had lied. The information his visitor wanted was in that house. But Goldoni did not want the visitor to have it.

Andrew watched. The nephew collapsed the wheelchair, opened the trunk of the car, threw it in, and ran to the driver’s side. He climbed behind the wheel as Goldoni’s wife closed her husband’s door.

The car lurched out of the drive and headed north toward Champoluc. Goldoni’s wife returned to the house.

The soldier lay prone in the grass and slowly replaced the binoculars in the case as he considered his options. He could race to the hidden Land Rover and go after Goldoni, but to what purpose, and how great a risk? The Alpiner was only half a man, but the
lupo
in his hands more than made up for his missing legs. Too, the surly nephew wouldn’t hesitate to use the pistol in his belt.

If
the ledger carried by Goldoni was what he suspected, it was being rushed away to be hidden. Not to be destroyed; one did not destroy a record of such incalculable value.

If
. He had to be sure, certain of his judgment. Then he could move.

It was funny. He had not expected Goldoni to leave; he had expected others to come to him. That Goldoni did leave meant that panic had set in. A legless man who never went anywhere did not race away into the indignity and discomfort of the outside world unless the motive was extraordinary.

The soldier made up his mind. The circumstances were optimum; Goldini’s wife was alone. First, he would find out if that ledger was what he thought it was; then he would find out where Goldoni had gone.

Once he learned these things, the decision would be made: whether to follow or to wait.

Andrew rose from the grass; there was no point wasting time. He started for the house.

“There is no one here,
signore,”
said the stunned, gaunt woman, her eyes frightened. “My husband has gone with his nephew. They play cards in the village.”

Andrew pushed the woman aside without replying. He walked directly through the house to Goldoni’s room. There was nothing but old magazines and out-of-date Italian newspapers. He looked in a closet; it was at once ugly and pathetic. Trousers hung, the cloth folded, the folds held in place by safety pins. There were no books, no ledgers like the one the Alpiner had clutched in his arms.

He returned to the front room. The sullen, frightened wife was at the telephone, depressing the bar in short, panicked jabs with her bony fingers.

“The wire’s cut,” he said simply, approaching her.

“No,” the woman whispered. “What do you want? I have nothing!
We
have nothing!”

“I think you do,” answered Fontine, backing the woman against the wall, his face inches above hers. “Your husband lied to me. He said he couldn’t tell me anything, but he left in a hurry carrying a very large book. It was a journal, wasn’t it! An old journal that described a climb in the mountains fifty years ago. The journals! Show me the journals!”

“I do not know what you talk about,
signore!
We have nothing! We live on a
pensionare!”

“Shut up! Give me those records!”

“Per favore
.…”

“Goddamn you!” Fontine grabbed the woman’s straight gray hair and yanked it forward, then suddenly, brutally backward, crashing her head into the wall. “I haven’t got time. Your husband lied to me. Show me where those books are!
Now!”
He wrenched the hair again, and again slammed her skull into the wall. Blood appeared on her wrinkled neck, tears welled in her unfocused eyes.

The soldier realized he had gone too far. The combat option was now defined; it wouldn’t be the first time. There’d been no lack of uncooperative peasants in Nam. He pulled the woman away from the wall.

“Do you understand me?” he said in a monotone. “I’ll light a match in front of your eyes. Do you know what
happens then? I’m asking you for the last time. Where are those records?”

Goldoni’s wife collapsed, sobbing. Fontine held her by the cloth of her dress. With a trembling arm and frenzied, shaking fingers, she pointed to a door in the right wall of the room.

Andrew dragged her across the floor. He withdrew his Beretta and smashed the door with his boot. It crashed open. There were no one inside.

“The light switch. Where is it?”

She raised her head, her mouth open, the breath coming shorter, and moved her eyes to the left.
“Lampada, lampada,”
she whispered.

He pulled her inside the small room, releasing the cloth of her dress, and found the lamp. She lay trembling, curled up on the floor. The light reflected off the glass-enclosed bookcase on the opposite wall. There were five shelves, and on each a row of books. He rushed to the case, grabbed a knob in the middle and tried to raise the pane of glass. It was locked; he tried the others. All locked.

With his Beretta he smashed the glass of two panels. The light from the lamp was dim but sufficient. The faded, handwritten letters and numbers on the brown binding were clear enough.

Each year was divided into two six-month periods, the volumes differing in thickness. The books were handmade. He looked at the upper left panel; he had not broken the glass and the reflection of light obscured the lettering. He smashed it, clearing the fragments of glass away with repeated thrusts of the steel barrel.

The first volume read 1907. There was no month noted underneath; that was a system which had evolved.

He raced the barrel over the volumes to the year 1920.

January to June was there.

July to December was missing. In its place, filling the space, was a hastily inserted volume dated
1967
.

Alfredo Goldoni, the legless cripple, had outrun him. He had removed the key from the locked door that held the secret of a journey into the mountains fifty years ago, and raced away. Fontine turned to Goldoni’s wife. She was on her knees, her gaunt arms supporting her shaking, gaunt body.

It would not be difficult to do what he had to do, learn what had to be learned.

“Get up,” he said.

He carried the lifeless body across the field and into the woods. There was still no moon; instead the air smelled of impending rain, the sky pitch black with clouds, no stars in evidence. The beam of the flashlight wavered up and down with his footsteps.

Time
. Time was the only thing that counted now.

And shock. He would need shock.

Alfredo Goldoni had gone to the inn of the Capomontis, according to the dead woman. They had all gone there, she said. The
consigliatori of Fontini-Cristi
had gathered together. A stranger had come among them bringing the wrong words.

Adrian drove back to Milan but he did not go to the hotel, he followed the highway signs to the airport, not entirely sure of
how
he was going to do what he had to do, but certain that he would do it.

He had to get to Champoluc. A killer was loose and that killer was his brother.

Somewhere in the vast complex of the Milan airport was a pilot and a plane. Or someone who knew where both could be found, for whatever price was necessary.

He drove as fast as he could, all the windows open, the wind whipping through the car. It helped him control himself; it helped him not to think, for thought was too painful.

“There’s a small, private field on the outskirts of Champoluc, used by the rich in the mountains,” said the unshaven pilot who had been awakened and summoned to the
airport by a well-tipped clerk on the night shift for Alitalia. “But it’s not operational at these hours.”

“Can you fly in?”

“It’s not so far away, but the terrain’s bad.”

“Can you
do
it?”

“I’ll have enough petrol to return if I cannot. That will will be my decision, not yours. But not one
lira
will be given back; is that understood?”

“I don’t care.”

The pilot turned to the Alitalia clerk, speaking authoritatively, obviously for the benefit of the man who would pay such money for such a flight. “Get me the weather. Zermatt, stations south, heading two-eighty degrees sweep to two-ninety-five out of Milan. I want radar fronts.”

The Alitalia clerk shrugged and sighed.

“You’ll be paid,” said Adrian curtly.

The clerk picked up a red telephone.
“Operazioni,”
he said officiously.

The landing at Champoluc was not as hazardous as the pilot wanted Adrian to believe. The field, it was true, was not operational—there was no radio contact, no tower to guide a plane in—but the single strip was outlined, the east and west perimeters marked by red lights.

Adrian walked across the field toward the only structure with lights on inside. It was a semicircular metal shell, perhaps fifty feet long, twenty-five feet high at its midpoint. It was a hangar for small private aircraft. The door opened, brighter light spilled out on the ground, and a man in overalls was silhouetted in the doorway. He hunched his shoulders, peering out into the darkness; then he stretched, stifling a yawn.

“Can you speak English?” asked Fontine.

The man did—reluctantly and poorly, but clearly enough to be understood. And the information Adrian was given was pretty much what he expected. It was four in the morning and there was no place open at all. What pilot was crazy enough to fly into Champoluc at such an hour? Perhaps the
polizia
should be called.

Fontine withdrew several large bills from his pocket and held them in the light of the doorway. The watchman’s eyes riveted on the money. Adrian suspected it was over a month’s pay for the angry man.

“I came a long way to find someone. I’ve done nothing wrong except hire a plane to fly me here from Milan. The police are not interested in me, but
I must
find the person I’m looking for. I need a car and directions.”

“You’re no criminal? Flying up at such an hour—”

“No criminal,” interrupted Adrian, suppressing his impatience, speaking as calmly as he could. “I’m a lawyer. An … 
avvocato,”
he added.

“Avvocato?”
The man’s voice conveyed his respect.

“I must find the house of Alfredo Goldoni. That’s the name I’ve been given.”

“The legless one?”

“I didn’t know that.”

The automobile was an old Fiat with torn upholstery and cracked side windows. The Goldoni farmhouse was eight to ten miles out of town, according to the watchman, on the west road. The man drew a simple diagram; it was easy to follow.

A post-and-rail fence could be seen in the glare of the headlights, the outlines of a house farther in the distance. And there was a dim wash of light coming from the house, shining through windows, dimly illuminating cascading branches of pine trees that fronted the old building near the road. Adrian removed his foot from the Fiat’s accelerator, wondering whether he should stop and walk the rest of the way on foot. Lights on in a farmhouse at a quarter to five in the morning was not what he expected.

He saw the telephone poles. Had the night watchman at the airport called Goldoni and told him to expect a visitor? Or did farmers in Champoluc normally rise at such an early hour?

He decided against approaching on foot. If the watchman had telephoned, or the Goldonis were starting their day, an automobile was not the alarming intruder a man alone, walking quietly in the night, would be.

Adrian turned into a wide dirt path between the tall pines; there was no other entrance for a car. He pulled up parallel to the house; the dirt drive extended far back into the property, ending at a barn. Farm equipment could be seen through the open barn doors in the wash of the headlights. He got out of the car, passed the lighted front windows covered by curtains, and walked to the front door. It was a farmhouse door—wide and thick, the upper section a
panel by itself, separated from the lower to let in the summer breezes and keep the animals out. There was a heavy, pitted brass knocker in the center. He used it.

He waited. There was no response, no sounds of movement within.

He rapped again, louder, with longer spaces between the sharp metallic reports.

There was a sound from behind the door. Indistinct, brief. A rustle of cloth or paper; a hand scratching on fabric? What?

“Please,” he called out courteously. “My name’s Fontine. You knew my father, and his father. From Milan. From Campo di Fiori. Please let me speak to you! I mean no harm.”