The Third Antichrist (31 page)

At first the Crusaders had only meant to teach the Walkie-Talkie a lesson – but the beating had spiralled out of hand. It had been Andrassy himself who kicked in the man’s head. As a young man he had perfected a party trick which involved the killing of a sheep with one backward-scything blow from the heel of his boot. The death blow came after a spirited Hopak dance, in which all the onlookers would be clapping Andrassy on, and shouting their encouragement of his ever more energetic kicks and stamps.

He had tried this same technique on the Jehovah’s Witness as soon as it became clear that the man was too far gone to be dumped at the local hospital’s emergency department. The other Crusaders, impressed by Andrassy’s irrepressible sense of humour, had stood by their comrade, faking the millenarian’s death as an automobile accident. Not one of them had cavilled at the contrivance, for all Crusaders were aware from the moment of their induction that killing in the service of their God was a very real possibility.

For the Bible, as Coryphaeus Catalin clearly explained to them, recounted many instances where God had given permission for his followers to kill – only
in extremis
, needless to say, and with the best possible of motives, but permission to kill nonetheless. The Great Flood of Noah, for example. And Abraham’s war to rescue Lot. And what about Sodom and Gomorrah, Catalin would tell the haverers? Or the permission God gave to Satan to kill all Job’s children and servants? Catalin cited one modern-day writer who had estimated that if one added up all the people who had been killed in the Bible exclusively in God’s name, that figure would be close to two and a half million souls (not including the future killings discussed at length in Revelation, and relating to Armageddon).

Killing was perfectly acceptable, then, if the orders came directly from God. And who better to express God’s will in this matter than His very own son?

As a result of this worldview – which might otherwise have been construed as clashing, in certain key ways, with the main thrust of Catalin’s ministry – Catalin was forced to keep his Crusaders rigorously apart from the main body of his followers, both via the non-wearing of the forehead tattoo, and via the money and privileges he lavished upon them in recompense for the special duties they were occasionally called on to perform. Nobody else in the COTRC was allowed to know of these privileges, nor of the wider obligations the Crusaders might be required to discharge. Potential Crusader recruits were handpicked by other Crusaders, and interviewed, in the first instance, by Catalin himself. They then went through a series of tests – akin to rites of passage – in which they were progressively introduced to certain of their confraternity’s more extreme methods of persuasive evangelizing.

Andrassy had passed through all these levels with flying colours. Until that moment his entire life had been consumed with the simple question of finding someone he could serve with a clear conscience and a dulled brain. And Coryphaeus Catalin was the perfect leader. It was he who thought things through. He who decided rights and wrongs. All Andrassy had to do was to follow and obey. He would have made the perfect concentration camp guard.

Dracul Lupei closed down Andrassy’s file on the computer in front of him. ‘Crusader Andrassy, I have a task for you.’

‘Yes, Coryphaeus.’

‘It is an important task. And one which entails the utmost secrecy.’

‘I live to serve you, Coryphaeus
.
We all do
.
’

At the other end of the cell phone Lupei smiled. How easy it was for a strong man to exert power over lesser souls. Particularly when one had a pre-eminent status and unlimited sums of money at one’s disposal. If only Antanasia were equally amenable.

Since his injudicious admission three months before that he had murdered both the old monk and the Russian VIP, Antanasia had refused to share his bed. At first Dracul had been tempted to use force to bring her to her senses, but had found himself constrained by the fact that Antanasia was now viewed as his main mouthpiece throughout Albescu and its surrounding area, and needed to be seen out and about. If he punished her as severely as he felt she deserved, questions might be asked.

Failing force, he next tried psychological pressure. But his sister remained adamant. She would serve him in public. She would evangelize for him. She would redouble her visible loyalty. But she would no longer sleep with him. Wouldn’t let him touch her. The private side of their life together was over and done with.

Lupei tried gentler methods of persuasion. He swore to her that he had changed his ways. Reiterated to her that he had been a very young man indeed when he had committed the murders, and that he was no longer the same flawed person he had been before. That he was now responsible for the lives of thousands of people who believed in him and looked to him for leadership. A man with that measure of responsibility needed a soul mate, surely? One that he could trust absolutely. And who better than his sister, who had seen him through the horrors of their early life and into the triumphant uplands of his enlightened ministry?

‘I am still your soul mate, Dracul. And I will always love you as my brother. But I realize now that what I let you and our father do to me was wrong. As the older of the two of us, I hold myself accountable for encouraging you, even if inadvertently, to consider that there were no moral barriers – no line to draw in the sand when you desired to get your way.’

Dracul shrugged. He had one final string to his bow. But he sensed, even then, that it was not made of maiden’s hair, but rather of the hair of fallen women – that it would part, in other words, at the final testing, just like the maiden-hair hawser that held the ship of the Norse Prince Breachan away from the whirlpool of the Gulf of Corrievrechan. Only one virgin needed to have been untrue for the hawser to part, which it did, sending the prince and all his entourage down to Davy Jones’s locker.

‘All right then. I shall find myself another woman.’

Antanasia turned away from her brother. ‘Please do.’

But both Antanasia and Dracul knew the impracticability of his claim. No other woman could match Antanasia in her brother’s eyes. At night, after abusing her in the most bestial way, he would weep in her arms, and tell her his innermost dreams, knowing that, come morning, she would never reveal his secrets to others. Such certainty could not exist elsewhere. It was the ultimate sadomasochistic trip.

Normal women talked amongst themselves. Traded intimacies. Gossiped. Any woman chosen by the Coryphaeus would have enormous pressures placed on her. Her position could not, by its very nature, be explicit, for the Mihael Catalin his followers knew and venerated was renowned for his rigid adherence to sexual purity – it was one of his major selling points as a cult leader. He had made it a salient virtue to point to other cults whose leaders used and abused their followers. In his case, he would tell them, this had never been true.

None of his followers remotely suspected that he slept with his sister – it was beyond thinking of. And Antanasia, being of peasant stock, clearly understood what signs and signifiers to dispose of so that when it came to laundry time, the rota of women who cleaned the house would harbour no suspicions in their turn. The Mihael Catalin they knew never slept on the same sheets twice – each morning, after they had slept together, Antanasia would burn her brother’s sheets in the Romanian Kujundzic tiled stove in her bedroom.

And if another woman did fulfil all the necessary criteria? What of his Antanasia then? What position would she still be able to hold? No realm could function with two queens, just as no kingdom could flourish with more than one king. Lupei had read his Machiavelli – he knew this for a fact.

Privately, Antanasia viewed the temporary withdrawal of her favours as a necessary leavening of her brother’s absolute power over her. When he acknowledged his faults to her with an open heart – then, and only then, would she return to his bed. It pained her to have to admit it, but her brother was the only man in a lifetime of men who roused her on both a sexual and an emotional level. It was inconceivable to her that she should never again feel the urgency of his caresses, just as it was inconceivable to her that she could ever hope to find a similar satisfaction with another.

But Lupei, in his unwitnessed heart, had begun to formulate the view that if his sister had decided to shun him sexually, it must, by default, be because she desired another man more than she desired him. In Lupei’s experience every act was total – there were no half measures. He was entirely incapable, therefore, of understanding the female mind. But the male mind he understood clearly enough.

‘Do you like Gypsies, Crusader Andrassy?’

‘I hate them, Coryphaeus.’

‘Do you believe I am the Parousia?’

‘Yes, Coryphaeus. With all my heart and soul.’

‘This woman you are looking at – if she is indeed the Yola Dufontaine we are seeking – claims to be pregnant with the progeny of the Holy Spirit.’

‘This is impossible, Coryphaeus, for you are that progeny. Everybody knows that. They say that the Metropolitan himself does not dare to acknowledge the truth as it would mean the destruction of the Orthodox Church and of his position at its head. But that he visits you privately and weeps at your feet like a child. Is this true, Coryphaeus?’

‘It is true.’

‘I am at your service, Coryphaeus. You are my master and teacher. Order, and I will obey.’

‘Where are you at this exact moment?’

Andrassy’s voice swelled with excitement. ‘I am in the village of Brara. Opposite an abandoned Saxon house with a three-metre high carved wooden entranceway that the Gypsies have commandeered. You cannot mistake it, Coryphaeus, as the carving shows a dancing bear. The Gypsies are not living in the main house, however, but in the garden, like dogs. There are a number of tents, but only one seems to be in use at the moment. The house lies opposite the main bridge over the river that runs through the village. The houses nearby are all abandoned. Most people now live on the periphery of the village, near the fields. We are not overlooked in any way. People keep away from the Gypsies.’

‘Have you told anyone else where you are?’

‘No, Coryphaeus. I have not spoken to my Lieutenant for five days. He expects my report tomorrow. He has a list of the villages I am to visit, however.’

‘Good. That is not a problem. I will contact him myself and bring him up to date. No need for you to do so.’

‘Of course, Coryphaeus. What is it you wish me to do, Coryphaeus?’

Lupei hesitated. He knew that he was about to recross the invisible demarcation line he had first broached with the triple murders of the Russian VIP, the old priest, and his father – the line that marked the threshold between accepted and expedient morality. Other, strictly collateral deaths, such as that of the Jehovah’s Witness at Budopie and the rogue imam at Frabolul, didn’t count. Individually ordered deaths, however, were a scar on your immortal soul, and needed to be answered for. Well, thought Dracul – I will answer for them right enough. But not to God. No. Never Him. I will answer for them to my real master, the Devil.

‘I wish you to rid me of this woman, Crusader. I wish you to crush this interloper. Can you do this thing for me? Or shall I call in your comrades to take over from you?’

‘There is thick snow here, Coryphaeus. No one can travel either in or out of the village by car. My comrades would be unable to reach me. But my own vehicle is parked back up near the main highway. I walked in, Coryphaeus. I am in the perfect position to walk out again when I have ascertained the woman’s identity. You said “rid me of her”, Coryphaeus. What did you mean, exactly?’

‘I mean you to use your discretion in the matter. Then report directly to me. No one else must hear of this. If you please me in this thing you will be made Lieutenant.’ There was a pause. ‘After all, Crusader Andrassy, what is a mere Gypsy in the greater scheme of things?’

Andrassy grinned. His heart was soaring. ‘What indeed, Coryphaeus?’

49

Lemma, Radu’s wife, was close to nine months gone in her pregnancy. Two months or so ahead of Yola. Radu had worked it out on his fingers, and he now reckoned that Lemma had become pregnant that first night in May when he had taken her virginity. This made Radu very happy. It also pleased him that Lemma was to have her baby before Yola. This fact gave him a small edge over his cousin Alexi, who was nominally his senior in the Gypsy hierarchy that obtained in the Samois camp. Alexi had nearly left it too long with Yola. There was a five-year age gap between her and Lemma.