The String Diaries (29 page)

Sebastien stumbled to the armchair and fell into it. He raised shaking hands to his face, covered his eyes.

‘Éva pleaded with you to forget her but you were heartbroken, devastated. You began researching the
hosszú életek
. Everything you could read, everything you could hear. Finally you stumbled across the Eleni. The organisation tasked with wiping out the
hosszú életek
was searching for its few survivors. Not to kill, this time: to exploit. But you didn’t care about any of that. You just wanted to find Éva.’

‘I did care,’ Sebastien croaked.

‘You rose up through the ranks and finally became
signeur
, right hand to the
Presidente
and responsible for finding the
hosszú életek
using whatever means possible. During one of your botched attempts, a young
hosszú élet
girl was killed. She was one year away from her first
végzet.
She might have met someone and fallen in love. She might have had children. She might have delayed the inevitable for another generation or more.’ Gabriel’s eyes narrowed. ‘So tell me again, Sebastien Lang. Tell me that I have no idea who you are.’

‘That girl was never meant to die,’ he whispered, raising his head to reveal eyes wet with tears. ‘It should never have happened. The whole thing was a disaster from the start.’

‘A disaster for us.’

‘You think I don’t know that? Why do you think I walked away?’

‘I’m not here to answer that,’ Gabriel replied. ‘I’m here to help Hannah.’

Hannah laid a hand on Sebastien’s shoulder. She didn’t like the animosity that was building between the two of them. To Gabriel, she asked, ‘How do you know so much about Seb?’

‘When your family – your society – is obliterated in a genocide that history charmingly labels a
cull
, you tend to keep a close eye on those who choose to do you harm.’

‘I never wished to do you any harm,’ Sebastien said. ‘God’s sakes, I was in love with her. I just wanted to find her again.’

As if he had never spoken, Gabriel said, ‘We don’t know the identity of all the Eleni Council members. But the ones we do are watched. When he relocated to Snowdonia, I agreed to keep an eye on him. I moved into a place across the valley from his cottage.’

‘How long ago?’ Hannah asked.

‘About eight years.’

‘Eight years? That’s a hell of a long time to live alone in a place like that, just to monitor the comings and goings of one old man.’

Gabriel shrugged. ‘Eight years isn’t so bad. It was an important thing to do.’

Hannah recalled how desperately lonely Gabriel had seemed during their ride up Cadair Idris. She wasn’t sure she agreed. ‘How do I know that any of this is true? How do I know that you’re not Jakab?’

‘Can we sit at the table?’

‘Why?’

‘If you’ll grant me just two minutes of grace, I’ll show you.’

Hannah looked from Gabriel to Sebastien, and then back to the Irishman. ‘Why should I trust you?’

‘You shouldn’t. But what have you got to lose?’

After staring at him a moment longer, Hannah pulled up a high-backed wooden chair and sat down at the table.

Gabriel sat opposite her. ‘There’s one thing you might not know about Balázs Jakab. A birth defect. Rare, and unfortunate.’

‘His eyes,’ she replied. ‘He couldn’t control their colour.’

‘Full marks. You’ve done your homework. But the
lélekfeltárás
– our term for it – is more than just a colour change, a means of disguise. It’s how we reveal ourselves to each other. You could say it’s our most intimate form of expression. There are different levels, of course. A full
lélekfeltárás
is shared only between lovers. Or potential lovers.’

‘Show me.’

He raised his eyebrows.

‘Don’t flatter yourself. Show me.’

Gabriel reached out and took her hands. She flinched at his first touch, forced herself to relax. She had to know. Had to see this.

His grip on her was soft, the tips of his fingers warm. ‘Look at me,’ he said. ‘Don’t think, don’t tense. Just open your eyes, and look into mine.’

Hannah gazed into pupils encircled by startling blue irises. She had read about the
lélekfeltárás
, having discovered a rambling passage on the subject in one of Hans Fischer’s diaries. As she concentrated, she noticed that the cobalt hue of Gabriel’s eyes was actually the dominant colouring of three distinct shades of blue. Deeper notes, of ultramarine and navy, were confined to the outer edges.

His eyes seemed to flare, to pulse, and as she watched, a wheel of golden points began to emerge around the borders of his pupils. The dots of fire grew brighter, detached themselves and floated like Chinese lanterns across an ocean towards the white of his sclera. She felt her heart quicken, her skin begin to tingle. Another ring of golden lights surfaced, broke loose and floated across Gabriel’s eyes. The cobalt hue began to darken, blushed with mauve.

Hannah’s hands tightened on his. The top of her head prickled. Her cheeks burned. Her breath came in quick shallow gasps. She was suddenly aware of every nerve ending in her body. She could feel the caress of the night air on her lips, the rub of her clothing against her breasts, the cold press of the chair upon her legs.

The golden points continued to emerge, detach and sail, and the colours at the edges of his irises began to rotate from deep blue to violet to indigo. Around her, the kitchen had ceased to exist. All she could see was the light, the dark, the colours and the gold. All she could hear was the thunder of her blood pounding in her ears.

And now, as if the swirling colours were a whirlpool tumbling her inexorably towards a vacuum at the heart of him, she felt pulled, drawn,
dragged
, into the darkness of those pupils, leaving the wonder of the shifting hues behind, reducing her world to a terrifying void that rushed at her, called to her, clamoured for her.

Hannah shuddered, squirmed, felt her fingers twitch and stutter in Gabriel’s grip. She felt her throat constricting, a scream building. She tried to look away. Couldn’t.

It seemed like an age, a lifetime, and perhaps it was no more than the merest of moments, but finally Gabriel flung away her fingers and lurched up from the table.

Their link broken, Hannah jerked back in her chair. Gasping for breath, raising her hands to her face, she felt the tracks of tears on her cheeks. ‘My God,’ she breathed. ‘I felt . . .’

Gabriel studied her from the far side of the kitchen, shaken. ‘Are you all right?’

‘I thought I was losing myself.’

‘I’m sorry. It’s the first time I’ve ever done that. I forgot that you – that you’re not . . .’

‘
Hosszú élet
.’

He stared at her, his expression hollow.

Hannah wiped perspiration from her forehead. She stood up. Dizziness assailed her and she gripped the table for support. Breathing heavily, she turned to Sebastien. ‘It’s not him. It’s not Jakab.’

With a last look at Gabriel, she fled to the hall and climbed the stairs to the first-floor landing. A window there was open to the night. She was grateful for the movement of air against her flushed cheeks. As the tingling faded from her skin, as her fear receded, she felt a warmth flooding her, as if someone had opened the top of her head and filled her with heated syrup.

Leah’s bedroom was a boxroom, containing a single bed that stretched the length of the far wall. The shutters above it were closed. The girl lay beneath them, cocooned in an embroidered quilt.

On a side table, in a pile, lay the diaries started by Hans Fischer. The string that usually bound them was balled on the floor.

So Leah had finally read them. Perhaps, she thought, it was time.

Hannah walked into the room, sank down on to the bed and curled around her daughter’s body.

‘I thought you were dying,’ Leah whispered into the darkness. ‘I kept coming to see you but you never wanted to wake up.’

‘I’m here now. And I’m going nowhere. I’m here and you’re safe.’

She turned over. ‘I cooked you some eggs but you didn’t eat them,’ the girl said. ‘I didn’t know what else to do.’

Hannah pulled her close, bowing her head so that she could fill her nose with the scent of Leah’s hair. The warmth that had immersed her still radiated. Now, with her daughter in her arms, she felt a moment of calm for the first time since Nate’s death.

For three days and nights, she had replayed the moment when her father had risen to his feet and shot her husband dead. The image played every time she closed her eyes. For three days and nights, she had asked herself what she could have done to stop Jakab, how she could have prevented him from killing Nate.

Here, in the sanctuary of her daughter’s bedroom, that scene had temporarily lost its power to torment her. The questions faded from her mind. She breathed the fragrance of Leah’s hair, felt the heat of her body, reached out for sleep.

Jakab was coming. She knew that. The only remaining uncertainty was how many people would die when he arrived, and whether Hannah could ensure that he was one of them.

C
HAPTER
22

Snowdonia

Now

Dániel Meyer watched as his
second
, Nikola Pálinkás, shovelled the last spade of earth over the grave and tamped it down. Pálinkás was in his late thirties, six foot five, with a weightlifter’s chest. It seemed the only areas of his body not covered with wild black hair were the two triangles of skin beneath his eyes, currently hidden behind gold-framed Aviators. His beard reminded Dániel of the bristles of a boar’s fur.

This place was so cold.

The first flakes of snow were beginning to fall from a tombstone sky, and the temperature had plunged below freezing. But it was the wind and the damp that wrapped around Dániel’s limbs and squeezed his bones until they ached. Beneath his feet, the ground was as hard as steel.

Despite the conditions, sweat had beaded on Pálinkás’s brow. Dániel clapped the man on the back. He blew air into his cupped hands and turned. Behind them, in the lap of the mountain, stood the farmhouse of Llyn Gwyr, a sad and silent monolith. Whether it was the building’s empty windows or something else, he did not know, but ever since they had arrived, Dániel had felt
watched
. It was not a pleasant feeling.

They had discovered Professor Charles Meredith moments after turning on to the track that served the farm. His corpse, frozen and white, reclined against the sign exactly where Sebastien had directed them.

Lifting the cadaver into the back of their rented 4x4 had caused them some difficulty – manoeuvring it into the farmhouse had been even harder. Once inside Llyn Gwyr’s kitchen, they’d had to prop his body on a chair in front of a crackling fire for two hours before he thawed enough to enable them to prise the booklet from his fingers and unbend his limbs until they lay flat.

A series of burns decorated the professor’s chest. Two of his fingers had been snipped off. But however agonising those injuries, they had not been life-threatening. Dániel had not been able to pinpoint the cause of death.

They decided to bury him next to the grave of Nathaniel Wilde, the husband of the girl Sebastien had brought to them. Hannah Wilde. Poor thing, to be caught up in something as awful as this.

‘I’ll be inside.’ Dániel walked towards the building, studying its blank windows. So much loss, he thought. Such a melancholy place.

In the kitchen, he gazed again at the shattered windows, the broken glass on the flagstones. He went down the hall and into the dining room, where he saw the broken line of shotgun cartridges that snaked across the table.

It was going to be a last stand. Yet they managed to escape. Although not without a price
.

Dániel shivered, his thermal layers inadequate inside this draughty mausoleum. He heard footsteps in the hall. Pálinkás came into the room.

The big man nodded towards the windows. ‘Chopper approaching.’

Dániel moved to the sill and looked out. He could already hear the distant beat of rotor blades. ‘Is it finished?’

‘It’s not pretty, but it’ll keep the scavengers off him.’

‘We’ve done what we can.’

‘Did you ever meet him?’ Pálinkás asked.

‘Once. A long time ago now. Just after his wife died. He was half mad with grief, suddenly responsible for the safety of a fifteen-year-old girl who half loved him, half hated him for what had happened. I didn’t think they had a chance. It’s a miracle he stayed alive as long as he did.’

The helicopter, a Bell 206 JetRanger, appeared over the trees and arced around the front of the building, a growling beast of black and silver. The bass thrum of its engine and the
whup-whup-whup
of its blades seemed wrong in the funereal stillness of the valley: obscene. Llyn Gwyr was a cemetery now. Its dead begged for silence.

The helicopter circled the house, hovered and began to descend, stirring the snowflakes into a maelstrom. Seconds after landing, its doors opened and three men jumped out. All of them wore insulated winter clothing. Dániel recognised one of them. He stiffened.

Benjámin Vass, chubby-faced
second
to the
signeur
, leaned back inside the craft and removed a wheelchair. His two associates helped a fourth man out of the aircraft and into it. This time Dániel blew air from his cheeks.

Károly Gera.

The Eleni
signeur
looked about as alive as the corpse they had buried earlier. The thick padding of his jacket did little to disguise the frailty of his body. His eyes held a dangerously fanatical shine.

Pálinkás appeared at Dániel’s side. ‘This isn’t good.’

‘No.’

‘You want me to call Lorant?’

‘There’s nothing the
Presidente
can do from Budapest.’

Pálinkás nodded. They both watched the four men approach the farmhouse.

Benjámin Vass pushed the
signeur
’s chair into the dining room and parked him in front of the fire. When he turned to face Dániel he was smiling, face shiny with perspiration. He clapped his hands, two hard punctuations, and rubbed them together. ‘Nice place. Remote, admittedly. Basic. But I could grow to appreciate it. Perhaps. What do you think, Dániel?’

‘About what?’

‘About your farmhouse, of course. Let me guess. Holiday home? Investment property? Just somewhere you can come to get away from it all? I’m presuming that’s why you’re here.’

‘I’m sure you know that’s not why I’m here.’

Vass went to the sideboard, picked up a china figurine, studied it. ‘Ah. Of course. There’s been some trouble, I understand. Two fresh graves by the lake. Perhaps not such a nice place after all. Oh, well. I’m not intending to stay long. Just long enough, in fact, for you to tell me where I can find Hannah Wilde and that cantankerous old goat, Sebastien.’

Dániel felt his temper rising. ‘You forget yourself, and you forget your position, Benjámin. People have died here. I’ve no wish to listen to your insolence.’

‘Insolence? Oh, Dániel, I can’t express how much that hurts. Every morning I wake up and tell myself how I need to win the respect of my
acadeim
, win the trust of the loyal, unimpeachable Dániel Meyer. And now you cut me like that.’

Károly gripped the armrests of his wheelchair with clawed fingers. His voice was a rasping whip. ‘God damn you both,
stop it
!’ The words seemed to exhaust him. He collapsed back in his chair. ‘Dániel, come here. Sit down. Listen to me. We know what happened. The important part, at least. We need to know where they went.’

‘
Signeur
, I can’t tell you that.’

‘The woman and the girl are in danger.’

‘I know.’ He glanced across at Vass, who was staring out of the window. ‘I’m trying to ensure we don’t add to it.’

‘Your motives are good, Dániel, but you’re not making the right decisions. We can protect them.’

‘Sebastien is already protecting them.’

Vass turned from the window. ‘I know that one of those graves contains the woman’s husband. I’m guessing the other contains her father. Dropping like flies, aren’t they? If that’s the kind of protection Sebastien’s providing, it makes me feel a little sorry for her.’

‘Benjámin, that’s enough!’ the
signeur
barked. ‘Dániel, you’re not a fool. I admit we have a chance to turn this to our advantage. But the positive side effect is that we can save the lives of this woman and her daughter. I know I speak as only one
ülnök
. I can dial Földessy right now and give you a majority decision if you wish. But I believe we’re beyond Eleni politics at this point. It’s become a very simple choice. Whose side do you want to be on?’

The
signeur
studied Dániel’s face. He seemed disappointed with what he saw. Sighing, he inclined his head at his
second
.

Dániel felt Vass approach him from behind. The man’s breath, spicy and meaty, filled his nostrils.

‘It’s unpleasant being on the other side, Dániel,’ he said. ‘If you’re interested in seeing
how
unpleasant, I’d be more than happy to demonstrate.’