The Third Antichrist (60 page)

When he approached the final turning into the camp, Amoy sat up and stretched, making a big deal out of straightening the jacket and trousers of his crumpled black suit. He wasn’t much of an actor, but he sensed his piece of theatre would suffice, as the motorhome was still a good half-kilometre behind him, and virtually lost in the burgeoning dusk.

Interesting, too, that the young leader hadn’t thought to put on his sidelights.

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Abi licked the envelope and secured it. ‘Here. Keep this safe.’

‘What is it?’

‘It’s in case something happens to me. You can read it then.’

‘Is something going to happen to you?’

‘No. It never has before. I don’t see why it should now.’ Abi checked his camouflage face-paint in the mirror. ‘I’m prepared. They’re not. This AK-47 is my favourite weapon. It fires at a rate of 600 rounds a minute. You tape an extra banana magazine upside down to the other one, like this. That way you don’t have to feel in your pockets if it comes to a firefight. When you run out of ammo you simply upend the magazine, slot it into place, and you’re back in action again. I’ve got four more magazines in this pouch on my hip. I could hold off a small army. The men I’m going up against only have pistols.’

‘And you’ve got your Wolf Pelt.’ Antanasia’s voice quavered a little as she spoke the words.

‘Yes. I’ve got my Wolf Pelt. My magic formula against bullets.’

‘Please don’t do this, Abiger.’

‘We’ve been over this a hundred times now. I can’t change. I won’t change. But one thing I’ll promise you. When this is over, I’ll never kill another man. If you’ll still have me after this, we’ll marry and you’ll be my countess. In a few years’ time you’ll forget this ever happened. You’ll come to realize how deeply unimportant it is in the general scheme of things.’

For a moment it looked as if Abi would reach forward and kiss her. Antanasia stood waiting. She would let him, she decided. Maybe kissing her for the first time would change something in him? But Abi let the moment slip by. He was too wound up in the prospect of action to care anymore about women. That would come afterwards. Antanasia sensed that much.

Abi would come back to the motorhome. They would drive away. He would be wound up after the killings. When he thought it was safe he would stop the vehicle and try to make love to her. Antanasia knew that she could not support this. It would mark a return to everything she despised about her past life. A return to the old ways, where her value to a man was nothing beyond the desire she elicited from him and the convenience she represented in the slaking of those desires.

Never again would she allow a man to take her without her permission. Never again would she allow herself to be used as a plaything. Not after what Dracul and her father had done to her. Not after that.

Antanasia watched Abi cutting through the scrub in the direction of the camp. She watched him all the way until he was out of sight.

Then she sat down and wrote her own letter.

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Abi stood behind a tree and watched the camp. He made a face. It was ten o’clock in the evening. Surely even Pikeys didn’t go to bed so early? And yet the camp was bare of people. Could they have sensed he was coming? Impossible.

It had to be a wedding then. Or a funeral. Something of that sort. Maybe they’d all traipsed out the front gate while he’d been asleep? With the benefit of hindsight maybe he should have kept watch. But how did anyone anticipate something like this? The place was like a cemetery. And he’d needed the sleep. It never did to go into combat with staring eyes and a muzzy head. And Benzedrine was for wusses.

Abi padded towards the camp, his weapon at port arms. He’d hold up the first person he saw and elicit information from them. Everyone here would know about the foreigners. And they’d be so surprised to see a fully armed man in camouflage gear they’d probably shit themselves. They’d reckon he was Romanian military, maybe, or police special operations – counter-terrorism, say, or customs ops. That should be enough to start a most satisfying riot. Surprise and chaos. That’s what was needed. Then he’d have everything on his side. And who would be the last to leave? Why pregnant women and those nursing babies. And their protectors, needless to say.

Abi stood in the centre of the camp and stared around himself. It was uncanny. Not a soul around. Not even an old crone. Could it possibly be a trap?

He ducked into the nearest caravan and checked it out. No one. Nothing. He felt the top of the cooker. Stone cold. So it had to be a wedding. The whole darned lot of them had hunkered off while he’d been asleep. What a fucking joke.

He stepped out of the caravan.

Amoy, surrounded by approximately fifty men from the camp, stood opposite him. About 30 metres away. Well inside the 300-metre range of the AK-47.

As Abi watched, the men filtered around him in a loose circle. Most of them carried pitchforks, staves, or machetes. One or two had pistols. One had an old Lee-Enfield .303 rifle. Probably pre-Great War.

He would be the first to go, thought Abi. You could count on that.

He felt like laughing out loud.

‘Any of you guys speak French?’ Silence. ‘English, maybe? I’m going to assume some of you speak English, then.’ Abi made sure the caravan he’d just inspected was tight against his back. It was a permanent structure – or at least as permanent as something like that could be, in that its wheels were off and it was set on a solid bed of bricks. This meant that nobody could shoot his legs out through the gap underneath. ‘There are a lot of you. True. But I have this.’ Abi tapped the AK-47. ‘And I’m prepared to use it. You people basically don’t stand a chance. But I don’t want to kill you. I want the two foreigners you have with you in the camp. If I get them I’ll leave the rest of you to go about your business. Nobody needs to be any the wiser.’

Abi could sense that something was about to happen. There was a smell in the air. He recognized it as the smell of fear. The fear that men exude when they know that some of them are about to die.

Abi had never had any intention of waiting for their answer. He began running and firing at the same time. The man with the Lee-Enfield was the first to fall, alongside two men who were foolish enough to be standing near him.

Abi made for the thinnest part of the line. He felt a pistol round snap into his vest and another graze his neck.

He cut down the men in front of him, smashed one man in the face with the stock of his weapon, then switched magazines at full sprint. As he was switching he caught sight of Sabir running parallel to him, surrounded by a group of men. Abi instantly knew that it was Sabir who had taken the two shots at him.

He was just about to turn and bring the AK-47 to bear when he heard Sabir’s voice rising over the surrounding clamour. ‘He’s wearing a Kevlar vest. Go for his head or his legs. If you hit his body it won’t hurt him.’ A second voice translated what Sabir had said into
erhari Romani.

Abi heard the shotgun go off behind him. He caught the full force of the blast on the back of his legs – lower buttocks and upper thigh. He pitched forwards onto his knees. Almost instantly he lurched up again and continued running. He needed to get out of there pronto. If the second shotgun barrel took him in the head he was done for.

He upended the AK-47 over his shoulder and fired behind himself as he ran. He could see the far edge of the camp now. He needed to get clear before anyone else got a lucky shot in. He could feel the blood cascading down the back of his legs. If the pikeys got hold of him now that he’d dry-gulched a few of them, they’d gut and joint him and feed him to their pigs.

The fresh magazine gave out and Abi threw both it and its taped twin away. He’d taped and loaded them wearing gloves, and he was wearing gloves now. There’d be nothing to identify him left in the camp. Nothing to DNA him with. His face was painted in thick stripes. He was wearing full camouflage. If they didn’t physically get their hands on him he was still home free. Antanasia could see to his wounds. She owed him that much.

He cut through the trees. The pikeys were keeping their distance now after finding out what he could do with the AK. Abi slowed and checked around himself. He was on the opposite side of the camp to the Mercedes. Well. He would simply have to work his way back round again.

He thrust one of his four remaining magazines into the weapon. He reached back and felt his legs. Dripping. Numb. But they’d hold him up for a while still. Fuck that man with the shotgun. There’d be cloth and filth and all sorts of junk in the pellet holes. Probably give him the mother of all infections.

He stopped by a tree and picked off two of the men following him. Trust Sabir to hide himself in the crowd.

Abi spat the foul taste out of his mouth.

He was half tempted to rush back towards the camp again. Catch them out that way. Take another dozen or so with him.

But his legs. How long would they carry him?

Best to cut around towards the Mercedes. But wide. Amoy and Sabir would have the entire camp out looking for him. So he’d work well to the side. Come back in from the far bank of the river.

No one had a clue who Antanasia was yet. They wouldn’t bother her if they found the Mercedes. She was just a happy camper bivouacking for the night.

Abi broke open a morphine auto-injector and injected his worst-affected leg through his combat trousers. He knew the morphine would mess up his respiratory rate, but the pain was becoming crippling, and he needed to do something about it fast. All the initial numbness had worn off now, and it felt like the back of his legs had been napalmed. Savaged by fire ants.

He checked behind him once more and struck out diametrically away from the Mercedes. An hour. Give me an hour, he said to himself, and I’ll make it back home.

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