The Third Antichrist (34 page)

It was almost dark when they started up the road. The snow was falling more heavily now, and the village had a hushed, muffled appearance. Radu made sure they skirted the arc of light emanating from each house – there was no point in asking for trouble. No person in their right mind would venture outside in this weather, and a man and woman seen travelling together in such conditions would surely be remarked on.

When they reached the outskirts of the village Lemma had to sit down and rest.

‘I will go on alone and fetch the car, Luludja. I will come back for you. You are too tired to continue.’

Lemma shook her head. ‘No, Radu. You will never make it back. Look at the road. You will get lost in a drift. Then I will be here alone. We shall go on together.’

Radu supported her as they walked. With Lemma on one side, the rucksack on his back, and a triple-layered refuse sack full of sleeping bags over his left shoulder, Radu couldn’t pretend that he was comfortable. His body ached where Andrassy had kicked and hit him, and his effective field of vision had narrowed down to about twenty feet. Being on the run wasn’t a recipe for physical wellbeing, he decided. Or for happiness.

When the cell phone he had taken from Andrassy rang, Radu froze in place. He procrastinated for a moment, and then frantically divested himself of the paraphernalia he was carrying and speared the phone from his pocket.

Lemma snatched at his arm. ‘Don’t answer it, Radu.’

‘Why not?’

‘I don’t think you should. If the phone is not answered, the person at the other end may think that the man is still busy killing us. Or burying us, maybe. It will give us more time.’

Radu gave Lemma a shocked look. ‘Luludja, that is brilliant. I would have answered and given us away.’

‘You do not use phones, Radu. We young women do.’

Radu sighed. He shook his head. He could just make out Lemma’s face in the darkness through his one good eye. ‘Lemma. I must tell you something.’

Lemma cocked her head at him. ‘What is that?’

‘I did a very wise thing indeed when I married you.’

Lemma pretended to be taken aback. ‘You have only realized that now? After you have already paid my bride price? You are a terrible bargainer.’

‘Yes. Only now. Before, I thought I had married a shrew. Like that woman of Zoltan’s – Striga.’

Lemma’s mouth fell open. ‘A shrew?’

‘Yes. I was convinced you would turn into a shrew, like Striga. I thought this happened to all women when they married.’

‘But Striga makes Zoltan pay whenever he wants to close her eyes. Do I make you pay?’

‘Not so far, Luludja. But there is always time.’

Lemma fell into his arms. He crushed her to him, and rocked her against him. ‘I will protect you and our baby. You know that, don’t you?’

‘I know that.’

‘I am sorry this is happening. You are cold and hurt and in pain.’

‘It is nothing.’

‘You are a queen.’

‘You are a king.’

Radu pocketed the cell phone and hoisted the rucksack onto his back. He swung the sleeping bags over his free shoulder and took Lemma’s hand. He felt stronger now – more able to cope with the situation they found themselves in. Only a woman’s love could do this for a man. ‘The contractions? How frequent are they?’

‘They are slow. Many minutes between each.’

‘Come then. I must get you to the car while we can still do this.’

‘There is a car, Radu? You are sure of this?’

Radu’s heart momentarily ceased beating in his chest. ‘I am sure, Luludja. Men do not carry car keys with them that they do not need.’

53

They found the Simca parked in a lay-by about half a kilometre short of the main road. It was facing away from the village. Radu swept the snow off the roof and bonnet and then tried the driver’s door. It was frozen shut. He tried all the other doors. The same.

‘Lemma, look away.’

Radu unzipped his flies and began a jerky circuit of the car. He peed on all the locks and down the cracks of the doors, grimacing as he adjusted his urine stream to each fresh target. He could hear Lemma giggling behind him. He zipped up his trousers and bent down to scrub his hands with fresh snow.

‘That was clever, Radu.’

‘Mama always said that the dangling object she noticed when I was born would come in useful one day.’

‘Maybe it will freeze off now?’

‘Do you want to warm it up for me?’

Lemma covered her face with her hands.

Radu walked to the rear of the car and yanked open both back doors. He helped Lemma onto the seat and covered her in a triple layer of sleeping bags. ‘You will get warm now. I will start the engine. You will see.’

‘I know.’

Radu mouthed a silent prayer as he inserted the key into the ignition. ‘O Del, if this engine starts, I will do anything you want me to do. O Del, if you protect Lemma and my baby, I will be faithful to you all my life.’ And then, swiftly. ‘O Del, I am sorry I just said that. I will be faithful to you whatever you decide. You may take everything. Lemma. Our baby. Me. I accept all you have in store for me. Thank you for protecting us so far. Thank you for your gifts. Thank you for your love. I am sorry for my past ungraciousness.’

‘What are you doing, Radu? Your lips are moving. And you have a strange expression on your face.’

‘I am praying to O Del that this car will start.’ Radu twisted the key. The engine turned over a few times and then stopped. He tried again. Same thing. His mouth went dry. He could still taste the blood where Andrassy had hit him. ‘There must be a choke around here somewhere. I am not familiar with these cars. If the battery dies on us, we will freeze to death.’ By the time he realized what effect his words might have on Lemma, it was too late to repair the damage. He groped around beneath the dashboard, found a lever, and pulled it. Then he tried the engine again. It coughed into life. ‘Ya! Ya! Ya! Listen, Luludja. Doesn’t that sound sweet?’ Radu waited until the mixture was exactly right, then he pushed the choke half in. The Simca settled down to a steady tick-over.

‘Will it make it out through the snow?’

‘No problem now. I checked in the back. There are snow chains for the front wheels in case we get into difficulties. And two sleeping bags. A paraffin heater, too, and a canister of fuel. Dried fruit. Honey. Blankets. This man came prepared. We will surely make Oponici at least. After that, who knows?’

‘Why do you not put the snow chains on now?’

Radu shook his head. ‘Because I am too cold, Luludja. And too tired. And we are in a hurry. It would take at least an hour to put the chains on with my frozen hands. And it would mean stopping the car again to do it. I cannot risk it.’

‘You decide, Radu. I am warm here now. I am feeling much better already.’

‘The snow hasn’t compacted yet. The tyres will cut through the fresh snow as long as I don’t over-rev the engine. I have done this sort of thing before.’ Radu was not quite as sure of himself as he sounded – he was used to driving trucks, not sardine cans. But he knew how frightened Lemma must be, and how bravely she was covering it up. He would not make the same mistake again of adding to her fear with his rash comments. He forgot, sometimes, that she was only eighteen. Often, when he looked at her, she still seemed like a child to him.

He depressed the throttle as gently as he was able. The Simca spun a little, and then began to feel its way through the virgin snowfall and towards the main road.

Le Domaine De Seyème, Cap
Camarat, France
Friday, 5 February 2010

54

Abiger de Bale watched Madame, his mother, through the V-shape made by his partially opened knees. He was sprawled across one of the leather armchairs in her afternoon salon, his back against one arm of the chair, his legs thrown over the other, just as he imagined Boris Drubetskoy, his favourite character in Tolstoy’s
War And Peace
, would have learned to sprawl on his ambition-fuelled flight to the top of the military tree.

Abiger knew that the Countess disapproved of sprawling. But in the past ten weeks or so, their relationship had undergone something of a sea change, insofar as the Countess no longer insisted that a third party be present at each of their daily meetings. The softening of her previously entrenched position had come as a welcome change to Abi, who had spent eight weeks out of the past ten glowering, first at Madame Mastigou, then at Milouins, both of whom were lamentably prone to formality when given free rein – in short, it was impossible to relax with either one or the other of them around. But with his mother alone, Abi was able to switch on the charm and get away with murder. Well. In a manner of speaking.

Once the deal with Mihael Catalin had been sealed, and his evangelical Crusader hounds loosed after Sabir and his Gang of Three, Abi had hurried home from Romania in the fond hope that Milouins might still be tied up babysitting the drunkard Alatyrtsev somewhere in the Ukraine, allowing Abi the necessary gap in the curtain in which to kill his mother and secure whatever remained of her fortune after comrade bloody Antichrist Catalin had got his grimy little mitts on it.

But it was not to be. Alatyrtsev had – unsurprisingly, given Milouins’s neanderthal proclivities – succumbed to terminal alcoholism barely a day after making the confessional film Abi had shown to Catalin. The man had apparently drunk four straight bottles of 60 per cent proof Vodka on the trot, thrown up his arms, and died. So Milouins had arrived home ahead of him after all.

Abi had to laugh. He briefly wondered how Milouins had done it. But then he remembered reading a short story called
The Leathern Funnel
by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, at the instigation of his father, the Count, when he was eight or nine years old. The story spoke of the trial and
tormenta de toca
– more euphemistically known as the putting to the ‘Extraordinary Question’ or water-boarding – of an eminent member of the Corpus Maleficus, Marie-Madeleine-Marguerite D’Aubray, Marquise de Brinvilliers, who had been accused of the murder by Tofana poisoning (a mixture of arsenic, lead, and belladonna, devised by the famous Italian poisoner, Giulia Tofana) of her father and two brothers, as a means of inheriting their estate.

The ‘Ordinary Question’, as Abi remembered it, consisted of eight pints of water being poured down the distended gullet of the victim, and the ‘Extraordinary Question’ to precisely double that figure. Abi grinned. One could always count on the Catholic Church to bureaucratize persecution – in fact they were very like the CIA in that regard. Give something a fancy name, and people soon forgot what it really consisted of. He privately decided that a paltry four bottles of vodka, in the case of Alatyrtsev, must have seemed like something of a rest cure to the man. What a splendid way to go, though.

Then another thought occurred to him. Maybe Milouins had opted to use the wooden horse and the distending rings to add a little extra spice to his undertaking? To squeeze every last piece of information out of Alatyrtsev? On balance, Abi decided, probably not. I mean, why? It would have smacked of unnecessary sadism, and might have left marks – not to mention the cost in extra time. But with a bastard like Milouins one never quite knew.

‘Is your tame Antichrist really going to become President of Moldova, do you think? Or is he simply going to go on a gigantic beano with your 200 million euros and buy himself a television station?’