The Gemini Contenders Read Free Page B

understood the chasm between them now. In Bitola and Banja Luka he had also insisted they rest, not talk. They would get little sleep once they crossed the borders at Monfalcone. In Italy there would be no sleep at all.
    The Lord God tested.
    In the silence between them, in the open cabin, the black sky above, the dark ground below, the incessant straining of the engine’s fires filling the night outside, Petride felt an odd suspension of thought and feeling. Thinking and feeling once-removed, as though he were examining another’s experiences from some isolated perch, looking down through a glass. And he began to consider the man he would meet in the Italian Alps. The man who had provided the Order of Xenope with the complicated schedules of transportation through northern Italy. The expanding circles within circles that led inexorably across the Swiss borders in a way that was untraceable.
    Savarone Fontini-Cristi was his name. His estate was called Campo di Fiori. The Elders of Xenope said the Fontini-Cristis were the most powerful family in Italy north of Venice. Quite possibly the richest north of Rome. The power and the wealth certainly were borne out by the twenty-seven separate papers in the leather pouch strappedso securely around his chest. Who but an extraordinarily influential man could provide them? And how did the Elders reach him? Through what means? And why would a man named Fontini-Cristi, whose origins had to be of the Roman Church, deliver such assistance to the Order of Xenope?
    The answers to these questions were not within his province, but nevertheless the questions burned. He knew what lay sealed in the vault of iron in the third freight car. It was more than what his brother priests believed.
    Far more.
    The Elders had told him so he would understand.
It
was the holiest of compelling motives that would allow him to look into the eyes of God without doubt or hesitation. And he needed that assurance.
    Unconsciously, he put his hand under the coarse shirt and felt the pouch. A rash had formed around the straps; he could feel the swelling and the rough, abrasive surface of his skin. It would be infected soon. But not before the twenty-seven papers did their work. Then it did not matter.
    Suddenly, a half mile away on the northern track, the Venice
Ferrovia
could be seen speeding out of Trieste. The Sezana contact raced out of the control tower and ordered them to proceed without delay.
    Annaxas fired up and throttled the idling locomotive as rapidly as possible and they plunged north behind the
Ferrovia
toward Monfalcone.
    The guards at the border accepted the manila envelope and gave it to their superior officer. The officer shouted at the top of his lungs for the silent Annaxas to fire up quickly.
Proceed!
The freight was part of the
Ferrovia!
The engineer was not to delay!
    The madness began at Legnago, when Petride gave the dispatcher the first of Fontini-Cristi’s papers. The man blanched and became the most obsequious of public servants. The young priest could see the dispatcher searching his eyes, trying to unearth the level of authority Petride represented.
    For the strategy devised by Fontini-Cristi was brilliant. Its strength was in its simplicity, its power over men based in fear—the threat of instant retaliation from the state.
    The Greek freight was not a Greek freight at all. It was one of the highly secretive investigating trains sent out byRome’s Ministry of Transportation, the inspectors general of the Italian rail system. Such trains roamed the tracks throughout the country, manned by officials ordered to examine and evaluate all rail operations and submit reports that some said were read by Mussolini himself.
    The world made jokes about
Il Duce
’s railroads, but behind the humor was respect. The Italian rail system was the finest in Europe. It maintained its excellence by the time-honored method of the fascist state: secret efficiency ratings compiled by unknown investigators. A