The Third Antichrist (23 page)

Calque had tried to pierce through Sabir’s carapace on a number of occasions in the preceding days, but he had got nowhere. Sabir was as opaque as a starred mirror – little shafts of light would reflect off him, true. But they meant nothing, disconnected, as they were, from a discernible whole.

‘Sabir?’

Sabir jerked his head up from his contemplation of the fire. ‘What?’

‘Did you hear Alexi?’

‘I heard him.’

‘Then you owe him an explanation. Our silence over this matter has been putting everybody at risk. It must be clear, even to you, that this is no longer acceptable.’

Sabir nodded. ‘I see that. I recognize that. I’m just working out how best to phrase it.’

‘Well, I’m glad you’re doing something.’ Calque glanced at Yola and made a ‘what if?’ face.

Yola placed her hand on her heart and shook her head. Then she motioned downwards, silently indicating to Calque that he should not pressurize Sabir anymore than was strictly necessary. She knew Sabir well enough by this time to sense that he still intended to hide something from them. Something he believed might cause them pain. And that his silence covered the working out of a strategy. But Yola also knew that people only spoke when they had to. That there were lies and lies – their quality depended on the motive which lay behind them. Yola had learned the hard way not to force issues when there was no need. Sabir would enlighten them when he was good and ready. She could wait.

Sabir straightened up. He seemed completely unaware of any hidden subtexts going on around him. ‘How many of the de Bale family do we now think are dead?’ His voice strengthened. ‘Or, to put it another way, how many of the bastards do we reckon are left? It amounts to pretty much the same thing.’

Calque cleared his throat. Despite the change in Sabir’s demeanour, he was still a little hesitant about his friend’s state of mind – still a little anxious that Sabir had not grasped the full severity of their situation. ‘We think there are four out of thirteen of the main group still left after their disaster with the Mexican
narcotraficantes
and their subsequent run-in with us at the old quarry. From what I can work out from Radu’s description, the ones we are dealing with are Abiger, Rudra, Dakini and Nawal. There is also the Countess and her manservant, Milouins. And that secretary woman of hers – Madame Mastigou. Plus a variety of other more or less unimportant minions at the Domaine de Seyème. And the Countess’s fortune, of course, which can be used to buy any number of willing accomplices. But Abiger is the real danger. He’s an unpredictable son of a bitch.’

‘So Abiger’s twin brother is dead?’

‘Vaulderie? Yes. It would appear so. Killed by the
narcotraficantes
. But you knew this, Sabir.’

Sabir ignored him. It was as if he had to work out everything afresh after a fortnight spent sleeping under the influence of unnamed soporifics. ‘Abiger will hate us for that.’

‘He hates us already. You may have forgotten this too, but he was preparing to have me tortured to death when the
cacique
’s men attacked their own crystal meth laboratory. I still haven’t got back the full use of my shoulder. If I was required to give a Hitler salute, I wouldn’t manage to get my arm much above half mast.’

Sabir smiled for the first time. ‘No. I haven’t forgotten. But Vaulderie’s death gives Abiger a special reason to damage us.’

‘You’re probably right. Yes. No doubt.’ Calque raised his eyebrows at Yola.

Yola gave him an even more vehement shake of the head.

This time Sabir picked up the exchange of glances between Calque and Yola. He hooded his eyes and pretended to ignore them. ‘What was that you said about Moldova, Radu? About what Dakini said to her sister about Moldova, just before they were going to shoot you?’

Radu looked to the others for guidance, but no one seemed anymore certain than he was about where Sabir was heading with his questioning. ‘Why is this so important, Damo? They are coming after you here. This is the place you must worry about. You are safe for now. But they will not give up looking. Maybe it takes days. Maybe it take months. But they will find you. Of that I am sure.’

Sabir shook his head. He seemed almost irritated. ‘Moldova, Radu. Tell me about Moldova.’

Radu sighed. He took another sip of
horinca
. It was clear that he, too, believed that Sabir had lost control of himself – that he was no longer capable of thinking rationally in the intensity of his loss. ‘Very well then. The long-haired woman with the angry face spoke to the other woman – the hairy one – and said, “And so? We are ten hours driving time away from Moldova. Away from what Madame, our mother, ordered us to do.”’

‘Those were the exact words she used?’

‘The exact words. Yes. I remember everything she said – each word is seared into my memory as if it was burned there by a brand from this fire. All the time we were in the car I thought they were going to kill me. To torture me, like they tortured Babel. To take me away from the world. From Lemma. From my unborn child. So I focused on these people and what they said like a frightened dog focuses on the man who intends to strike him.’ Radu see-sawed his head as if he was trying to rid himself of his memories. ‘But what importance has Moldova? I do not understand. This is another thing entirely. Surely it is?’

‘No, it isn’t, Radu.’ Sabir made a cutting motion with his hand, as if he were ridding it of water. ‘Moldova is not another thing entirely.’ He raised his head and fixed each person around the fire with his haunted gaze. ‘It is the main thing. For it is the place where, in a moment of unforgivable weakness, I told my death bride, Lamia de Bale, that the man who will become the Third Antichrist might be found.’

39

The church clock struck four. Despite the warmth given off by the fire, Yola had long since been forced to fetch extra blankets for everyone so that they could insulate themselves against the deep autumn chill. The first snows of the season might not yet have arrived in the Maramure
ş
, but they would not be long in coming.

Alexi threw off his blanket and crossed himself with an extravagant, throw-away gesture. He had been feeding the fire with dry sticks throughout the night, and feeding
horinca
to himself and Radu at the same time. Both men were now rocking on the spot like old women. ‘This is impossible. How can a child of mine be the Second Coming? Am I then the Holy Spirit? Or the Angel...’ He hesitated, a vacant expression on his face.

Calque rolled his eyes. ‘Gabriel.’

Alexi punched himself on the palm of his hand. ‘Gabriel. Gabriel. Do I look like this Gabriel to you?’

It was at least the fifth time in the last few hours that Alexi had used those exact words, and ended on the same dying fall. Before then he had somehow managed to convince himself that the Corpus had been pursuing him and Yola purely for purposes of revenge.

Riding shotgun to this flight of fancy had been the idea that, before his untimely death, Achor Bale might, for some obscure reason, have felt constrained to admit to his brothers and sisters how a certain Manouche Gypsy – Alexi Dufontaine by name – had singlehandedly hijacked him at the Black Virgin’s shrine at Rocamadour, courageously depriving him of both his pistol and his wallet. And this despite the fact that the hijacking had cost Alexi two cracked ribs, a fractured jaw, and various of his teeth, which had needed to be replaced with a number of handsome, if expensive, gold implants – implants which Adam Sabir had generously funded from the unlimited stash of dollars that Alexi fondly imagined all Americans held at their disposal.

It was becoming clear to everyone that Alexi – vainglorious at the best of times – had felt considerably more comfortable fantasizing that the Corpus might want him dead too, and not simply be targeting his pregnant wife to the exclusion of other, no doubt equally culpable, parties. To discover that he was to be the father of the Parousia, and, in consequence, a mere third down the list of the Corpus’s intended targets, constituted a step too far. It didn’t tie in with Alexi’s self-image at all.

‘In addition, if the Corpus knew that I, Alexi Dufontaine, had killed their dwarfish sister...’ He hesitated again, flailing around for a name.

‘Athame.’

‘... Athame, with my throwing knife. They would not be quite so happy.’

Radu jerked out of his doze like a man who has just caught himself stumbling off a kerb during the course of a daydream. ‘But they do know, Alexi.’ Radu’s voice was slurred from the
horinca
, so that the x in Alexi’s name came out as a double ess. ‘They do know because I told them. When I was trying to work out how to escape.’ Radu barely managed to finish his sentence before his eyes closed and he lurched forwards again. He had been catnapping for some time now. This time he managed to achieve the full monty, as it were, on the hoof.

‘Ha!’ Alexi narrowed his eyes. He swept his index finger in a dramatic semi-circle around the fire. ‘Ha! You hear what Radu says? This is why they mean to kill us. I knew it. Well, I will wait for them here with my knives. No one will get past me. I will be like John Wayne at the Alamo.’

Sabir gave an infinitesimal sigh. ‘But he died, Alexi.’

‘What? What’s that?’

‘At the Alamo. John Wayne died. In fact all the Texians died. Davy Crockett. Jim Bowie. Sam Houston. Even the film died. Christ, even the remake died.’

Alexi did a swift double take. He had become so unused to Sabir grasping the conversational initiative in the past few weeks that for a moment it left him speechless. ‘Then I, too, will die. This will make of me a legend. Gypsies will speak of me...’ Alexi tried to work something out in his head – ‘... many years from now.’

Sabir groaned. He, like Radu, was perilously close to exhaustion – but in his case without the aid of alcohol. He had tried to explain everything to the others as best he could, but the traumas of the past few weeks had taken a fearful toll on him. Guilt, at not coming clean to Alexi about the possible significance of his child, and further guilt at withholding details of the Third Antichrist from everybody bar the one person he should have withheld it from – his lover, Lamia – had compounded the issue. The fact that the Corpus knew the Antichrist’s whereabouts clearly confirmed Lamia’s betrayal. There was no room anymore for doubt. Radu was the living proof of that. Sabir had to accept the fact that Lamia had played him for a sucker and move on.

And yet. Lamia had given her life for him, hadn’t she? How did one account for it? Could someone love you at the very same time as they betrayed you? Was that possible? Maybe Lamia’s decision to throw herself in the way of the knife had simply been an instinctual mistake? Or had she really loved him after all?

Sabir dragged both hands down his face. He couldn’t go on in this way. It was making him ill. He had to do something – anything – to clear the logjam.

Calque glanced across the fire at his friend. It was clear that Sabir was suffering the torments of the damned. Calque decided that now was the ideal time to step in and encapsulate the position they found themselves in, much as he’d done for the Halach Uinic and Ixtab following their communal, hallucinogen-induced dream journey in the Mayan
temazcal
sweat lodge a few weeks earlier. This time, however, he had a crucial new piece of information at his disposal.

‘Alexi. Yola. Radu. Listen up. It is best we get this thing out into the open. Sabir. Don’t you wander off on me. You’re next on the list of speakers.’

Sabir was gazing into the fire with his head in his hands. He didn’t look up.

Calque curbed his frustration. He had already made up his mind to play things as if he were lecturing his subordinates at the precinct on their duties for the coming week – something he had done every working Monday for the past twenty years. This, he felt, was the only sensible way to avoid presenting a disunited front to the enemy. He would therefore ignore Sabir’s lowering presence, and forge on with his plan.

‘Right. It must be obvious to everybody that we are all now a part of something far bigger than ourselves. Something that has been lost and simmering for 450 years. Something that, to most normal people, would seem like a bad dream.’ Calque raised his eyebrows like a Marine Corps Sergeant Major. Yola seemed to be the only one giving him her full attention. Calque soldiered on regardless. ‘What we are in fact experiencing is the culmination of an age-old process that no one person fully understands. That no one really ought to understand. But one which has already resulted in a plethora of deaths. All that matters now is that we recognize the forces ranged against us, and do our best to try and avoid them. That much we can do. That much is clear.’