The Gemini Contenders Read Online Free PDF

telegram’s arrival in Milan. Other men would then be contacted, strategies analyzed, plans made. It was too late now.
    The wire had been sent to Savarone that afternoon. Vittorio must have received his cable by eleven. And yet his son had neither replied to Rome nor alerted him in Campo di Fiori. The end of the day was at hand. Too late.
    It was unforgivable. Men daily risked their lives and the lives of their families in the fight against Mussolini.
    It had not always been so, thought Savarone, as he stared at the office door, hoping that any second the secretary would reappear with news of Vittorio’s whereabouts. It had all been very different once. In the beginning, the Fontini-Cristis had endorsed
Il Duce
. The weak, indecisive Emmanuel was letting Italy die. Benito Mussolini had offered an alternative; he had come himself to Campo di Fiori to meet with the patriarch of the Fontini-Cristis, seeking alliance—as Machiavelli once so sought the backing of the princes—and he had been alive, and committed, and filled with promise for all Italy.
    That was sixteen years ago; since that time Mussolini had fed upon his own rhetoric. He had robbed the nation of its right to think, the people of their freedom to choose; he had deceived the aristocrats—used them and denied their common objectives. He had plunged the country into an utterly useless African war. All for the personal glory of this Caesar Maximus. He had plundered the soul of Italy, and Savarone had vowed to stop him. Fontini-Cristi had gathered the northern “princes” together, and quietly the revolt was taking place.
    Mussolini could not risk an open break with the Fontini-Cristis. Unless the charge of treason could be sustained with such clarity that even the family’s most avid supporters would have to conclude they had been—if nothing else—stupid. Italy was gearing for its own entry into the German war. Mussolini had to be careful. That war was not popular, the Germans less so.
    Campo di Fiori had become the meeting place of the disaffected. The sprawling acres of lawns and forests and hills and streams were suited to the clandestine nature of the conferences which generally took place at night. But not always; there were other gatherings that required the daylight hours, where younger men were trained by other experienced younger men in the arts of a new, strange warfare. The knife, the rope, the chain, and the hook. They had even coined a name for themselves:
partigiani
.
    The partisans. A name that was spreading from nation to nation.
    These were the games of Italy, thought Savarone. “The games of Italy” was what his son called them, a term usedin derision by an arrogant, self-centered
aristocratico
who took seriously only his own pleasures.… No, that was not entirely true. Vittorio also took seriously the running of Fontini-Cristi, as long as pressures of the marketplace conformed to his own schedules. And he made them conform. He used his financial power ruthlessly, his expertise—the expertise he had learned at his father’s side—arrogantly.
    The telephone rang; Savarone was tempted to pick it up, but he did not. It was his son’s office, his son’s telephone. Instead, he got out of the terrible chair and walked across the room to the door. He opened it. The secretary was repeating a name.
    “… Signore Tesca?”
    Savarone interrupted harshly. “Is that Alfredo Tesca?”
    The girl nodded.
    “Tell him to stay on the telephone. I’ll speak with him.”
    Savarone walked rapidly back to his son’s desk and the telephone. Alfredo Tesca was a foreman in one of the factories; he was also a
partigiano
.
    “Fontini-Cristi,” Savarone said.
    “Padrone?
I’m glad it’s you. This line is clear; we check it every day.”
    “Nothing changes. It only accelerates.”
    “Yes,
padrone
. There’s an emergency. A man has flown up from Rome. He must meet with a member of your family.”
    “Where?”
    “The Olona