Fontine crouched and weaved his way across the knoll toward the stable road. The early evening breezes bent the upper grass and the branches of trees; the professional soldier fell instinctively into the rhythm of their movement. The roofs of the stables came into view and he stepped silently down the incline toward the road.
In front of the stable door was a long steel-gray Maserati, its tires caked with mud. There were no voices, no signs of life; there was only the quiet hum of the surrounding woods. Andrew lowered himself to his knees, picked up a handful of dirt, and threw it twenty yards in the air across the road, hitting the stable windows.
No one emerged. Fontine repeated the action, using more dirt mixed with small pieces of rock. The splattering was louder; there was no way it could go unobserved.
Nothing. No one.
Cautiously, Andrew walked out on the road toward the car. He stopped before he reached it. The surface of the road was hard, but still partially wet from the earlier rain.
The Maserati was headed north; there were no footsteps on the passenger side of the car in front of him. He walked around the automobile; there were distinct imprints on the driver’s side: the shoe marks of a man. Dakakos had come alone.
There was no time to waste now. There was a picture on a wall to be taken, and a journey to Champoluc that had to begin. Too, there was a fine irony in finding Dakakos at Campo di Fiori. The informer’s life would end where his obsession had begun. Eye Corps was owed that much.
He could see lights inside the house now, but only in the windows to the left of the main entrance. Andrew kept to the wall, ducking under the ledges, until he was at the side of the window where the light was brightest. He inched his face to the frame and looked inside.
The room was huge. There were couches and chairs and a fireplace. Two lamps were lit; one by the far couch, the second nearer, to the right of an armchair. Dakakos was standing by the mantel, gesturing in slow, deliberate movements with his hands. The priest was in the chair, his back to Fontine, and barely visible. Their conversation was muted, indistinguishable. It was impossible to determine whether the Greek had a weapon; the assumption had to be that he did.
Andrew pried a brick loose from the border of the drive and returned to the window. He rose, the Beretta in his right hand, the brick gripped in his left. Dakakos approached the priest in the chair; the Greek was pleading, or explaining, his concentration absolute.
The moment was now.
Shielding his eyes with the gun, Fontine extended his left arm behind him, then arced it forward, hurling the brick into the center of the window, shattering glass and wood strips everywhere. On impact he smashed the remaining, obstructing glass with the Beretta, thrusting the weapon through the space, and screamed at the top of his voice.
“You move one inch, you’re dead!”
Dakakos froze. “You?” he whispered. “You were taken!”
The Greek’s head slumped forward, the gashes from the pistol barrel on his face deep, ugly, and bleeding profusely. There was nothing that so became this man as a painful death, thought Fontine.
“In the name of God have mercy!” screamed the priest from the opposite chair, where he sat bound and helpless.
“Shut up!” roared the soldier, his eyes on Dakakos. “Why did you do it? Why are you here?”
The Greek stared, his breathing erratic, his eyes swollen. “They said you were taken. They had everything they needed.” He could barely be heard, speaking as much to himself as to the man above him.
“They made a mistake,” said Andrew. “Their signals got crossed. You didn’t expect them to wire you their apologies, did you? What did they tell you? That they were picking me up?”
Dakakos remained silent, blinking from the rivulets of blood that rolled down his forehead into his eyes. Fontine could hear the Pentagon commanders. Never admit. Never explain. Take the objective, the rest is no strain.
“Forget it,” he said quietly, icily to Dakakos. “Just tell me why you’re here.”
The Greek’s eyes swam in his head; his lips moved. “You are filth. And we’ll stop you!”
“Who’s we?”
Dakakos arched his neck, thrusting it forward, and spat into the soldier’s face. Fontine swung the barrel of the pistol up into the Greek’s jaw. The head slumped forward.
“Stop!” cried the monk. “I’ll tell you. There’s a priest named Land. Dakakos and Land work together.”
“Who?” Fontine turned abruptly to the monk.
“It’s all I know. The name! They’ve been in contact for years.”
“Who is he? What is he?”
“I don’t know. Dakakos doesn’t say.”
“Is he waiting for him? Is this priest coming here?”
The monk’s expression suddenly changed. His eyelids quivered, his lips trembled.
Andrew understood. Dakakos was waiting for someone, but not a priest named Land. Fontine raised the barrel of the pistol and shoved it into the mouth of the semiconscious Greek. “All right, Father, you’ve two seconds to tell me who it is. Who’s this son of a bitch waiting for?”
“The other one.…”
“The other what?”
The old monk stared at him. Fontine felt a hard emptiness in his stomach. He removed the pistol.
Adrian.
Adrian was on his way to Campo di Fiori! His brother had broken away and sold out to Dakakos!
The picture! He had to make sure the picture was there! He turned, looking for the door of the.…
When the blow came it was paralyzing. Dakakos had snapped the lamp cord binding his wrists and lunged forward, his first pummeling into Andrew’s kidney, his other hand wrapped around the Beretta’s barrel, twisting Fontine’s forearm until he thought his elbow would crack.
Andrew countered by falling sideways, rolling with the force of Dakakos’s lunge. The Greek sprang on top of him, crushing him like some elephantine hammer. He smashed Fontine’s knuckles against the floor until the gun exploded, the bullet embedding itself in the wooden arch of the doorway. Andrew brought his knee up, pounding the base of Dakakos’s groin, crushing the Greek’s testicles until he arched his back, grimacing in torment.
Fontine rolled again, freeing his left hand, clawing the bleeding face above, tearing at the hanging flesh. Still, Dakakos would not retreat, would not let up; he slammed his forearms into Andrew’s throat.
It was the instant! Andrew arched forward, sinking his teeth into the flesh of Dakakos’s arm, biting deeply, as a mad dog would bite, feeling the warm blood glowing into his throat. The Greek pulled his arm up—his hand away—and it was the space Fontine needed. He crashed his knee up once again in Dakakos’s groin, and slid his whole body under the giant; as he did so he shot his left hand into the well of Dakakos’s armpit, and pressed the nerve with all the force he could summon.
The Greek raised his right side in agony. Andrew rolled to his left, kicking the heavy body away, pulling his arm free.
With the speed born of a hundred fire fights, Fontine was on his haunches, the Beretta leveled, spitting bullets into the exposed chest of the informer who had come to close to killing him.
Dakakos was dead. Annaxas was no more.
Andrew rose unsteadily; he was covered with blood, his whole body wracked. He looked at the priest of Xenope in the chair. The old man’s eyes were closed, his lips moving in silent prayer.
There was one shell left in the Beretta. Andrew raised the gun and fired.
28
Stunned, Adrian took the cablegram held out for him by the desk clerk. He walked toward the front entrance of the hotel, stopped, and opened it.
Mr. Adrian Fontine
Excelsior Hotel
Rome, Italy
My dear Fontine:
It is urgent we confer, for you must not act alone. You must trust me. You have nothing to fear from me. I understand your anxieties, consequently there will be no intermediaries, none of my people will intercept you. I will wait for you alo
ne and alone we can make our decisions. Check your source.
Theo Dakakos
Dakakos had traced him! The Greek expected to meet. But where? How?
Adrian knew that once he passed through customs in Rome, there was no way he could stop those looking for him from knowing he’d come to Italy; it was the reason for the next step in his strategy. But that Dakakos would openly contact him seemed extraordinary. It was as though Dakakos assumed they were working together. Yet it was Dakakos who had gone after Andrew; gone after his brother relentlessly, ingeniously, wrapping up Eye Corps in a seditious ribbon that had eluded the combined efforts of the inspector general and the Justice Department.
The sons of Victor Fontine—the grandsons of Savarone Fontini-Cristi—were after the vault. Why would Dakakos stop one and not the other?
The answer had to be that he was trying to do just that. Carrots held out in front of the donkey’s nose; offers of safety and trust that were translated to mean control, confinement.
… I will wait for you alone and alone we can make our decisions. Check your source.…
Was Dakakos on his way to Campo di Fiori? How was that possible? And what was the source? An IG colonel named Tarkington with whom Dakakos had set up lines of communication to trap Eye Corps? What other source did he and Dakakos have in common?
“Signor Fontine?” It was the Excelsior manager; the door to his office was open behind him. He had come out quickly.
“Yes?”
“I tried your room, of course. You were not there.” The man smiled nervously.
“Right,” said Adrian. “I’m here. What is it?”
“Our guests are always our first consideration.” The Italian smiled again. It was maddening.
“Please. I’m in a hurry.”
“A few moments ago we had a call from the American embassy. They say they are calling all the hotels in Rome. They are looking for you.”
“What did you say?”
“Our guests are always—”
“What did you say?”
“That you had checked out. You have checked out, signore. However, if you wish to use my telephone.…”
“No, thank you,” said Adrian, starting toward the entrance. Then stopped and turned to the manager. “Call the embassy back. Tell them where I’ve gone. The front desk knows.”
It was the second part of his strategy in Rome, and when he conceived it, he realized it was merely an extension of what he had done in Paris. Before the day was over the professionals who followed him would know exactly where he was. Computers and passport entries and international cooperation made for swift relays of information. He had to make them all think he was going somewhere that he wasn’t.
Rome was the best place to start. Had he flown to Milan, the IG men would dig into their files; Campo di Fiori would appear. He could not allow that.
He had asked the front desk of the Excelsior to draw up a route for a drive south. To Naples, Salerno, and Policastro, along roads that would take him east through Calabria to the Adriatic. He had rented a car at the airport.
Now Theodore Dakakos had joined the hunt. Dakakos, whose relays of information were faster than those of United States Army Intelligence, and far more dangerous. Adrian knew what the United States Army wanted: the killer for Eye Corps. But Dakakos wanted the vault from Constantine. It was a greater prize.
Adrian drove through Rome’s melodramatic traffic back to Leonardo da Vinci Airport. He returned the rented car and bought a ticket on Itavia Airlines for Milan. He stood in line at the departure gate, his head down, his body slouched, seeking the protective cover of the crowd. As he was jostled forward—and for reasons he didn’t know—the words of an extraordinary lawyer came back to him.
You can run with the pack, in the middle of the pack, but if you want to do something, get to the edges and peel away. Darrow.
In Milan he would call his father. He’d lie about Andrew; he’d invent something, he couldn’t think about that now. But he had to know more about Theodore Dakakos.
Dakakos was closing in.
He sat on his bed in Milan’s Hotel di Piemonte as he’d sat on the bed at the Savoy in London, staring at papers in front of him. But these were not airline schedules, they were the Xeroxed pages of his father’s recollection of fifty years ago. He was rereading them—not for any new information; he knew the contents—but because the reading postponed the moment when he would pick up the phone. He wondered how thoroughly his brother had studied these pages, with their rambling descriptions and hesitant, often obsure reflections. Andrew would probably pore over them with the scrutiny of a soldier in combat. There were names. Goldoni, Capomonti, Lefrac. Men who had to be reached.
Adrian knew he could not procrastinate any longer. He folded the pages, put them in his jacket pocket, and reached for the telephone.
Ten minutes later the switchboard called him back; the phone 5,000 miles away in the North Shore house was ringing. His mother answered and when she said the words, she did so simply, without the trappings of grief, for they were extraneous, the grief private.
“Your father died last night.”
Neither spoke for several moments. The silence conveyed a sense of love. As though they were touching.
“I’ll come home right away,” he said.
“No, don’t do that. He wouldn’t want you to. You know what you have to do.”
Again there was silence. “Yes,” he said finally.
“Adrian?”
“Yes?”
“I have two things to tell you, but I don’t want to discuss them. Can you understand that?”
Adrian paused. “I think so.”
“An army officer came to see us. A Colonel Tarkington. He was kind enough to speak only with me. I know about Andrew.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Bring him back. He needs help. All the help we can give him.”
“I’ll try.”
“It’s so easy to look back and say ‘Yes, I see now. I realize.’ He always saw the results of strength; he never understood its complications, its essential compassion, I think.”
“Let’s not discuss it,” reminded the son.
“Yes. I don’t want to discuss—. Oh, God, I’m so frightened!”
“Please, mother.”
Jane breathed deeply, the sound carried over the wire. “There’s something else. Dakakos was here. He spoke to your father. To both of us together. You must trust him. Your father wished it; he was convinced of it. So am I.”
… check your source.…
“He sent me a cable. He said he’d be waiting for me.”
“At Campo di Fiori,” completed Jane.
“What did he say about Andrew?”
“That he thought your brother might be delayed. He didn’t elaborate; he talked only about you. He used your name repeatedly.”
“You’re sure you don’t want me to come home?”
“No. There’s nothing you can do here. He wouldn’t want it.” She paused for a moment. “Adrian, tell your brother his father never knew. He died thinking both his Geminis were the men he believed them to be.”
“I’ll tell him. I’ll call again soon.”
They said quiet good-byes.
His father was dead. The source was gone, and the void was terrible. He sat by the telephone, aware that perspiration had formed on his forehead, though the room was cool. He got up from the bed; there were things to do and he had to move quickly. Dakakos was on his way to Campo di Fiori. So was the killer of Eye Corps, and Dakakos did not know that.
So he sat down at the desk and began writing. He might have been back in his Boston apartment, jotting down items in preparation for the next day’s cross-examination.
But in this case it was not the next day. It was tonight. And very few items came to mind.
He stopped the car at the fork in the road, picked up the map, and held it under the dashboard light. The fork was detailed on the map. There were no other roads until
the town of Laveno. His father had said there were large stone gateposts on the left; they were the entrance to Campo di Fiori.
He started the car up, straining his eyes in the darkness, waiting to catch a glimpse of erected stone in the wall of forest on his left. Four miles up the road he found them. He stopped the car opposite the huge, crumbling stone pillars and aimed his flashlight out the window. There was the winding road beyond as his father had described it, angling sharply, disappearing into the woods.
He swung the automobile to the left and drove through the gates. His mouth was suddenly dry, his heart accelerated, its beat echoing in his throat. It was the fear of the immediate unknown that gripped him. He wanted to face it quickly, before the fear controlled him. He drove faster.
There were no lights anywhere.
The enormous white house stood in eerie stillness, a deathlike splendor in the darkness. Adrian parked the car on the left side of the circle, opposite the marble steps, shut off the motor and, reluctantly, the headlights. He got out, took the flashlight from his raincoat pocket, and started across the rutted pavement toward the stairs.
Dull moonlight briefly illuminated the macabre setting and then disappeared. The sky was overcast but no rain would come; the clouds were everywhere above, but thin and traveling too fast. The air was dry; everything was still.
Adrian reached the bottom step and switched on his flashlight to look at his watch. It was eleven thirty. Dakakos was not there. Nor his brother. Either or both would have heard the car; neither nor both would be asleep at this hour. That left the old priest. An old man in the country would have gone to bed by now. He called out.
“Hello in there! My name is Adrian Fontine and I’d like to talk to you!”
Nothing.
And not nothing! There was movement. A pattering, a series of scratches accompanied by tiny, indistinguishable screeches. He swung the flashlight to the source. In its beam was caught the blurred, rushing figures of rats—three, four, five—scampering over the ledge of an open window.
He held the flashlight steady. The windows was smashed; he could see jagged edges of glass. He approached it slowly, suddenly afraid.