The Third Antichrist (28 page)

‘Did you hit her?’

‘Didn’t need to.’

‘Good. We don’t want to alienate the clientele any more than necessary.’

Antanasia took a pace towards him. ‘You are making a big mistake. My brother will be very angry. He has many people around him. You won’t make it out of town if you are trying to kidnap me. You will be in prison within the hour. My brother will not pay.’

‘We’re not trying to kidnap you. What do you think we are? Siberian mafiosi? We simply need you to pass on a message for us.’

‘A message?’

‘We have heard that your brother is a difficult man to approach. We need to talk to him nonetheless. He’ll find that it’s as much in his interests as ours. You must call him and tell him that we need to see him privately. Without his Crusaders.’

‘I won’t do that.’

‘Oh yes, you will. Look at this.’ Abi held out his cell phone. ‘Look at the video recording. Listen to what this man says. If you do as we ask, no one has to see this but us. If you play hard to get, we will release this clip to the Russians just before the Moldovan presidential elections next year. The gentleman concerned has agreed to testify in open court that your brother murdered his boss, the former Russian Deputy Minister of Defence, Anatoly Karaev, twenty-eight years ago, at Orheiul Vechi. We are holding our witness in a safe house to protect him from... shall we call it disharmony? When the Russians see this video clip, your brother’s ambitions will be doomed. Him too. He’ll be lucky if they only do a Viktor Yushchenko on him, and leave it at that. If he’s truly the Second Coming, of course, he’ll be able to piss the dioxins they dose him with out of his system, no problem. Otherwise he’ll look like a salamander for the rest of his life. Is that a risk you’re willing to take?’

Antanasia watched the tape. The noise of Alatyrtsev’s voice was eerily amplified inside the white-tiled room.

‘This is not true. My brother did not kill this man.’

‘Bullshit. Neighbours say you even made a hand muff and matching jacket out of the guy’s astrakhan coat. Do you remember doing that, maybe? Of course, Lupei probably found the coat abandoned on the hillside after the police and investigators had left. That must have been it. And then, walking home, he must have fallen and injured himself, necessitating a two-week stay at the Orheiul Vechi cave monastery. Did you know that Karaev was the old monk’s brother, by the way?’

Antanasia snatched a hand up to her chest.

‘Yes. That was why the ex-Minister was visiting the monastery. To pay a visit to his brother, and try to persuade him to come on down out of his hidey-hole and act like a normal human being for a change. Their mother was dying. Karaev wanted his brother to come back to Russia with him in time for the funeral. Let’s face it, hermits are rarely at the ends of telephones.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘Oh, you can believe me. It’s all true. The old hermit saved your brother’s life, at the cost of his own kith and kin. Privately, he seems to have thought that his brother was an evil bastard, and that he’d contributed to the Cold War. So when he realized what had happened out on the plateau, he persuaded the chauffeur not to give your brother away.’

‘You can’t prove that.’

‘We don’t need to. We’ve got the chauffeur’s testimony about Karaev and the old monk. But then you suspected all this already, didn’t you? We’re just working from hearsay. But we’ll let the Russians check it out. They’re good at that. Especially when it comes to the unexplained deaths of their own people.’ Abi flipped the cell phone back on itself. ‘I’m sure they’ll give good old Dracul a clean bill of health when the investigation is over. He can always have another crack at the Presidency later on. Oh, and one more thing while I’m about it. We believe your brother killed the old monk too. Repaid him for all his goodness and forbearance by offing him and taking his place at the hermitage. But we can’t prove that either, of course. The monk has long since rotted into the ground. But certain people with your worst interests at heart are trying very hard to convince our investigators that Dracul went on to kill your father. That would be easier to follow up. We haven’t found the body yet, but it’ll only be a matter of time. It’s lurking out there somewhere. Did I tell you we have five investigators working on it as we speak? They’re scouring the hillside above Orheiul Vechi twenty-four hours by twenty-four. Your father disappeared on his donkey, apparently. I can’t see old Dracul digging a hole just to bury a donkey in, can you? No. I can see that much by your face. He would have used an already existing space. And Orheiul Vechi is honeycombed with caves and potential sepulchres. What do you reckon? Think we’re going to find them?’

Antanasia hugged herself. ‘What do you want? Why are you doing this?’

‘What do we want? That’s simple. We want you to call your brother on this cell phone. Don’t explain too much. Who knows who’ll be listening? Just enough to ensure he doesn’t call his minions down on us. Tell him you’re coming with us. That we’ll all be waiting for him a few miles outside his bailiwick. At... what’s it called?’ He turned to Rudra.

‘The Virgin Mary’s footprint.’

‘Yes. That’s it. The Virgin Mary’s footprint. Near the Saharna Monastery. No one can creep up on us there. It’s far too open and well used. And it’s only a skip and a leap from Orheiul Vechi, in case Dracul spontaneously admits to your father’s murder, and wants to lead us to the place of concealment himself. Do you think you can persuade him? We’d be very disappointed indeed if he let us down.’

‘I think I can persuade him. In the circumstances.’

‘That’s my girl. I knew we could trust you to do the right thing. I mean, as the sister of the Second Coming – the sister of the founder of the Church of the Renascent Christ – what else could you do?’

45

‘Hell of a waterfall. Must be all of 20 metres high.’

‘What did you expect, Rudi? Niagara? Anyway, I’d have thought you’d have had quite enough of water for the time being.’

Rudra shook his head unbelievingly. He and Abi stepped through into the chapel that housed the glassed-in shrine to the Virgin Mary’s footprint.

Rudra gazed at the shrine. ‘Do you think it’s real?’

Abi gave his brother a disbelieving grunt. ‘Of course it’s real. But it’s also bullshit. Complete hokum. They call these things Petrosomatoglyphs. You find them all over Europe. Images of hands and feet were carved into the rock in megalithic times as an adjunct to the crowning of kings. The Catholic Church then hijacked them – as they hijacked and transformed all pagan images – and sucked the life out of them. This one was happened upon by a lucky monk. There’s one in the Ukraine, too, at Pochayiv Lavra. Even the Welsh got into the act. They’ve arrogated the knees and breasts of the Virgin Mary to themselves at a place called Llanfair. That Lady really got around some. Though why she should visit Wales, or the Ukraine, or here, come to think of it, is quite beyond me. And what was the Mother of God doing anyway, stark naked, and kneeling on the ground with her bottom in the air? Can you answer me that one?’

‘Don’t you take anything seriously, Abi?’

Abi pointed through the open door of the shrine. ‘Our friend. The one who’s coming up the track to meet us. I take him seriously.’

Both men stepped out onto the footpath.

Dracul Lupei strode up the slope towards them. His long hair fell to his shoulders. It was parted in the centre. He had grown a small, neatly tended beard, mildly forked in the middle. He was wearing casual clothes, which didn’t suit him, surmounted by a white tracksuit top with a hood. Publicity pictures always showed him dressed in flowing white robes, with a circular, embroidered collar, and an image of the Sacred Heart, encompassed by a crown of thorns, on his chest. As he approached Abi and Rudra, Lupei slipped the hood over his head. As the trio were entirely alone on the plateau, the movement seemed a little redundant.

‘Are you people mad? Why have you called me here? To such a place? I will be recognized.’

Abi smiled. ‘You know, I’ve been asking myself that question all morning. And I’ve got no answer for it. I’ve got another question for you, though. One that has been bothering me for years. The question is this. Why is Jesus Christ always shown wearing a beard? Why should that be, I wonder? I bet you’ve got the inside track on that one.’

Lupei stopped in front of the two men. He watched them for a moment, his head tilted to one side, and then he looked around himself. ‘Where is my sister? You say that you haven’t kidnapped her, and yet I see no sign of her.’

‘Where are your men?’

‘What men?’

‘Your Crusaders?’

‘I came alone, as requested. At the instigation of my sister.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘I don’t believe you either.’

Both men weighed each other up. ‘Your sister is safe. Here.’ Abi handed Lupei his cell phone. ‘Dial this number. You can talk to her. We keep her with us until you and I have come to some sort of understanding. Then you can have her back with our compliments. We’ll be partners by then, anyway. You can count on it.’

Lupei brushed away the cell phone. ‘I don’t need this. I control all modes of communication in and around Albescu personally. I have, of course, been monitoring all your calls. I have also seen the film clip you downloaded via my server at the Crusader Coffee Bar.’

‘We assumed as much. We thought it would save time.’

Lupei threw his head back in mild surprise. ‘It did. Tell me what you want from me? Not money, surely? That would be asinine.’

‘No. We don’t want money. On the contrary. We want to give it to you. Lots of it. We want to help you become President of Moldova.’

Lupei nodded his head slowly. ‘So that is why you conducted the lengthy conversation with the woman you call the Countess in my coffee bar?’

‘We thought it would speed negotiations up. Yes. Clear the air a little. Clarify our intentions.’

‘What do you want for your money? Do you wish to control me? Is that it? To turn me into some sort of a gangster?’

‘Just the opposite. We want you to remain entirely true to yourself. That’s the deal. We assumed you would understand that much from overhearing the conversation I had with the Countess.’

‘But you must want something more than this? Money rarely falls out of the sky like manna.’

‘Well, you’d know something about manna, wouldn’t you, Lupei?’

Lupei stared at Abi. It was clear that neither man would back down in front of the other.

Abi was the first to break the deadlock. ‘All right. Let’s agree to cut the bullshit. We know what you are. And thanks to your impressive monitoring of our communications – we expected no less, by the way – you know who we are. We hold Alatyrtsev. And twenty minutes ago I heard that our operatives had discovered two skeletons – one belonging to a donkey, one to a man – in a hidden cave up at Orheiul Vechi. I don’t suppose you picked that up with your communications snooper? We’re way too far outside your bailiwick here.’ Abi raised his hands and turned, widdershins, in a circle. ‘But with our help, all this can be your bailiwick too. In fact the whole fucking country can belong to you. Then you can quietly rebury your father and his donkey, with our compliments, and have Alatyrtsev dispatched with an overdose of morphine. We’ll even provide the morphine. And the syringe. Whether or not you use a spirit swab will be up to you.’

‘This is all very witty. Very amusing.’ Lupei wasn’t smiling when he said the words. He threw off his hood and shook his hair out like a woman. The plateau was still markedly empty of tourists.

‘Ah. A signal. Very neat.’ Abi cast a sidelong glance at Lupei. ‘Your Crusaders have done a great job sealing off the place, by the way. I suspect that the Virgin Mary is going to have a seriously bad foot day.’

Lupei surveyed the scenery without seeing it. ‘How do you know the body is that of my father?’

‘At this precise moment, it’s only a guess. But we’ve just taken a sample of hair from your sister. What do you reckon it will show? But hell. Maybe you’ll strike lucky. Maybe your father wasn’t your father at all. Maybe someone else in the village impregnated your mother. That way the cosy relationship your neighbours tell us you’ve been having with your sister over the years will seem a little less – what shall we call it? – incestuous.’

Lupei fixed Abi with his eyes.

Abi clapped a hand to his mouth in an outrageously melodramatic gesture. ‘But Jesus Christ. I completely forgot. It was the Holy Spirit who climbed down from the Pantecrator and fucked your mother, wasn’t it? And not your father at all. Hey, Lupei. It’s all a mix-up. A tragic misunderstanding. We’re out of here. You’re in the clear. You can have your sister back and everything. Just get on with your life as if this didn’t ever happen. We’re sorry we bothered you.’