The Gemini Contenders (51 page)

He had fantasized the presence of Eye Corps. Eye Corps the way it had been—efficient, strong, quick to maneuver.

He would build a new Corps one day, stronger and more efficient, without weakness. He would find the vault from Salonika, carry the documents out of the mountains, summon the holy men and watch their faces as he described the imminent, global collapse of their institutions.

 … 
The contents of that vault are as staggering to the civilized world as any in history
.…

That was comforting. It could not be in better hands.

They were on a flat stretch now, the first elevation to the west no more than a mile away. The girl fell to her knees, sobbing. Her brother looked at him, his eyes conveying hatred, fear, supplication. Andrew would kill them both, but not for a while. One disposed of hostages when they no longer served a purpose.

Only fools killed indiscriminately. Death was an instrument, a means to be used in reaching an objective or completing an assignment, and that was all it was.

Adrian drove the Fiat off the road into the fields. The rocks ripped the undercarriage. He could drive no farther; he had reached the first of several step hills that led to the first plateau described on the Leinkraus diagram. He was eight and a half miles north of Champoluc. The grave was precisely five miles beyond the first of the plateaus that were the landmarks of the journey to the burial ground.

He got out of the car and walked across the field of tall grass. He looked up. The hill in front of him sprang suddenly out of the ground, an impromptu bulge of nature, more rock than greenery, with no discernible path on which to scale it. He knelt down and retied the laces on his rubber-soled shoes as tightly as he could. The weight of the pistol was heavy in his raincoat pocket.

For a moment he closed his eyes.
He could not think. O God! Keep me from thinking!

He was a mover now. He got to his feet and started to climb.

The first two railroad clearings proved negative. There was no way animal or vehicle could traverse the routes from the Zermatt railway to the eastern slopes. Two more clearings remained. The names on the old Champoluc map were Hunter’s Folly and Sparrow’s Rook; no mention of hawk. Still, it had to be one of them!

Andrew looked at his hostages. Brother and sister sat together on the ground, talking in quiet, frightened whispers, their eyes darting up at him. The hatred was gone now, only fear and supplication remained. There was something ugly about them, thought the soldier. And then he realized what it was. Across the world in the jungles of Southeast Asia, people their age fought battles, weapons strapped to their backs over uniforms that looked like pajamas. They were his enemy over there, but he respected that enemy.

He had no respect for these children. There was no strength in their faces. Only fear, and fear was repulsive to the major from Eye Corps.

“Get up!” He could not help himself; he shouted angrily at the sight of these pampered, weak brats with no dignity in their faces.

Christ, he despised the spineless!

They would not be missed.

Adrian looked back across the ridge to the plateau in the distance, thankful that old Goldoni had given him gloves. Even without the cold, his bare hands and fingers would have been a bleeding mass of flesh. It wasn’t that the climb was difficult; a man used to minimum exercise in the mountains would find it simple. But he had never been in the mountains except on skis, where tows and trams did the uphill work. He was using muscles rarely employed and had little confidence in his sense of balance.

The last several hundred yards had been the most difficult. The trail in the Leinkraus diagram was landmarked: a cluster of gray rock at the base of a crystalline schistose embankment that all climbers knew should be avoided, for it cracked easily. The crystalline rock evolved into a cliff that rose about a hundred feet from the schist, its edge sharply defined. To the left of the crystalline sheet were abrupt, dense Alpine woods that grew vertically out of the slope, a sudden, thick forest surrounded by rock. The Leinkraus trail was marked off at ten paces from the embankment. It led to the top of the wooded slope whose ridge was the second plateau: the end of the second leg of the journey.

The trail was nowhere to be found. It had disappeared; years of disuse and overgrowth had concealed it. Yet the
ridge could be seen clearly above the trees. That he could see it was an indication of the angle of ascent.

He had walked into the dense Alpine underbrush and made his way, yard by yard, up the steep incline, through nettled bush and the skin-piercing needles of the pines.

He sat on the ridge, breathing heavily, his shoulders aching from the constant tension. He estimated the distance from the first plateau to be at least three miles. It had taken nearly three hours. A mile an hour, over rocks and down miniature valleys, and across cold streams, and up endless hills. Just three miles. If that were so, he had two miles to go, perhaps less. He looked up. The overcast had lasted the entire morning. It would continue on throughout the day. The sky above was like the North Shore sky before a heavy squall.

They used to sail in squalls together. Laughing as they bested the weather, sure of their abilities in the water, pitting themselves against the rain and the wind of the Sound.

No, he would not think of that. He got to his feet and looked at his tracing of the Leinkraus diagram, copied from the inside binding of a family Torah.

The diagram was clear but the rising terrain beyond him wasn’t. He saw the objective—due northeast, the third plateau, isolated above a sea of Alpine spruce. But the ridge he was on swept to the right, due
east
, leading into the base of yet another mountain of boulders, away from any direct line to the pleateau in the distance. He walked around the ledge past the border of the dark, sloping woods he had climbed through. The drop below was sheer and the rocks beneath rose like a bubbling river of stone. The trail as marked in the diagram went from forest to ledge to forest; there was no mention of intersecting rock.

Geological changes had taken place in the intervening years since any member of the Leinkraus family had journeyed to the burial ground. A sudden shift of nature—a quake or an avalanche—had eliminated the trail.

Still, he could see the plateau. What separated him from it seemed impenetrable, but once through it—and over it—he could make out a winding trail on the higher ground that led to the plateau. It was doubtful that that had been altered. He slid down the embankment onto the river of stone, and awkwardly, trying to keep his feet from slipping
into a hundred miniature crevices, climbed toward the forest of spruce.

The third clearing was it!
Sciocchezza di Cacciatori!
Hunter’s Folly! Long abandoned but once perfect for removing the vault. The trail from the mountains to the Zermatt railway was passable, and the area around the tracks was flat and accessible. At first Andrew had not been sure; in spite of the level ground on either side of the tracks, the stretch was short, blocked by a curve. Then he remembered: his father had said that the train from Salonika had been a short freight. Four cars and an engine.

Five railway units could easily pull beyond the curve and come to a stop in a straight line. Whatever car the vault had been in could have been unloaded without difficulty.

But what now convinced him he was near his goal was an unexpected discovery. West of the tracks were the unmistakable signs of an abandoned road. The cut through the woods was defined, the trees in the cut shorter than those surrounding them, the brush closer to the ground. It was no longer a road—not even a path—but its former existence was undeniable.

“Lefrac!” he yelled at the eighteen-year-old. “What’s down there?” He pointed northwest, where the cut in the forest sloped.

“A village. About five, six miles away.”

“It’s not on the railroad line?”

“No,
signore
. It’s in farm country, below the mountains.”

“What roads lead into it?”

“The main road from Zürich and—”

“All right.” He stopped the boy for two reasons. He had heard what he wanted to hear, and twenty feet away the girl had gotten to her feet and was edging toward the woods on the eastern side of the tracks.

Fontine took out his pistol and fired two shots. The explosions thundered throughout the woods; the bullets detonated the ground on either side of the child. She screamed, terrified. Her brother lunged at him in a frenzy of tears; he sidestepped and smashed the barrel of his pistol on the side of the boy’s head.

Lefrac’s son fell to the ground, sobs of frustration and
anger filling the silence of the abandoned railroad clearing.

“You’re better than I thought you were,” said the soldier coldly, raising his eyes, turning to the girl. “Help him. He’s not hurt. We’re heading back.”

Give the captured hope, reflected the soldier. The younger and more inexperienced they were, the more hope they should be given. It reduced the fear which was, in itself, detrimental to rapid travel. Fear was an instrument, too. Like death. It was to be used methodically.

He retraced the trail from the Zermatt tracks for a second time. He was certain now. There was nothing that would prevent an animal or a vehicle from negotiating it. The ground was clear and mostly hard. And more important, the terrain rose directly toward the eastern slopes, into the specific trails recorded in the faded pages of the ledger. Light snow and layers of frost covered the earth. With every yard the soldier in him told him he was nearing the enemy zone. For that was what it was.

They reached the first intersecting trail described by the Goldoni guide on the morning of July 14, 1920. To the right, the trail angled downward into some kind of forest, a thick wall of dark green, laced with a roof of white. It seemed impenetrable.

It was a possible hiding place. That mountain forest would not be tempting to the casual climber, and without interest for the experienced. On the other hand, it
was
forest—wood and earth, not rock—and because it was not rock he could not accept it. The vault would be protected by rock.

To the left, the trail continued up, veering obliquely into the side of a small mountain above them. The trail itself was wide, on solid rock, and bordered by foliage. Boulders rose sharply to the right, forming an abrupt sheer of heavy stone. An animal or a vehicle still had space to walk or roll; the direct line from the Zermatt tracks was unbroken.

“Move it!” he shouted, gesturing to the left. The Lefrac children looked at each other. To the right was the way to Champoluc—the way back. The girl grabbed her brother; Fontine stepped forward, broke the grip, and propelled the girl forward.

“Signore!”
The boy shouted and stepped between them, his arms raised in front of him, his young palms flat—a
very penetrable shield. “Don’t do that,” he stammered, his voice low, cracking with young fear, his own anger challenging himself.

“Let’s go,” said the soldier. He had no time to waste on children.

“You hear me,
signore!”

“I heard you. Now, move.”

At the western flank of the small mountain the width of the rising trail abruptly narrowed. It entered an enormous, natural archway cut out of the boulders and led to the face of a hill of sheer rock. The geologically formed archway was not only the logical extension of the trail, but the mountain of rock beyond must have been irresistible to novice climbers. It could be scaled without great effort, but was sufficiently awesome by its breadth and height to be a good start for the higher regions. Perfect for an enthusiastic seventeen year old, under the watchful eye of a guide and a father.

But the width under the arch
was
narrow, the rock floor too smooth, especially when heavier snows fell. An animal—a mule or a horse—might cross under but there was considerable danger that hooves would slip.

No vehicle could possibly get through.

Andrew turned and studied the approach they had just made. There were no other trails, but about thirty yards back on the left the ground was flat and filled with Alpine brush. It extended to a short wall of rock that rose up to the ridge of the mountain. That wall, that short cliff, was no more than twenty feet high, almost hidden by shrubs and small, gnarled trees growing out of the rock. But the ground beneath that cliff, beneath that ridge, was flat. Natural obstructions were everywhere else, but not there, not in that particular spot.

“Walk over there,” he ordered the young Lefracs, both to keep them in sight and to provide perspective. “Go into that flat area between the rocks! Spread the bushes and walk in! As far as you can!”

He stepped back off the trail and studied the ridge above. It, too, was flat, or at least appeared so. And it was something else, something that might not be noticed except, perhaps, from where he stood. It was … defined. The edge, though jagged, formed a nearly perfect semicircle. If that circle continued, the ridge itself was like a
small, out-of-the-way platform on a small, unimportant mountain, but still high above the lower Alpine hills.

He judged the height of Lefrac’s son as five-ten or -eleven. “Raise your hands!” he shouted.

Arms extended, the boy’s hands were just below the midpoint of the short cliff.

Suppose the method of transport was not an animal but a vehicle. A heavy-wheeled piece of machinery, the carriage a plow, or a tractor. It was consistent; there was no part of the route from the Zermatt tracks or up the Goldoni trail that such a piece of equipment could not traverse. And plows and tractors had winch machinery.…

“Signore! Signore!”
It was the girl; her shouts conveyed a strange exaltation, a cross between hope and desperation. “If this is what you
look
for, let us
go!”

Andrew raced back into the trail and toward the Lefracs. He sped into the tangled shrubbery to the face of the rock.

“Down there!” The girl shouted again.

On the ground in the light snow, barely seen through the underbrush, was an old ladder. The wood was rotted, the steps swollen out of their sockets in half a dozen places. But otherwise it was intact. It was not now usable, but neither had it been abused by man. It had lain in that shrubbery for years, perhaps decades, untouched except by nature and time.