The Third Antichrist (42 page)

Markovich bit his lip. He knew that he must very soon complete his written report to Coryphaeus Catalin. He also knew that he needed to provide his leader with something concrete in the report or else his stock would drop vertiginously. The three Crusaders he had managed to pull in from the surrounding district had clomped pretty much everywhere in the village asking their questions, but to no real effect. There had been fresh snowfall in the past few hours, and this had complicated matters further.

At this time of the year, as Markovich knew very well from memories of his own extended family, the local people hibernated. And such people weren’t much interested in the problems of the Roma at the best of times. Come early spring, half the village would have been standing here musing on the situation, and adding their ten
bani-
worth to the communal pot – but in the dead of winter they kept to their homes, not even bothering to eavesdrop on the strangers through the frosted windows of their hermetically sealed houses.

This thing with Andrassy and the pregnant Gypsy woman, though – the one they had all been asked to search for – was clearly important, or the Coryphaeus would not have dragged Markovich away from his duties to investigate it. So what was he to tell the Coryphaeus? Cosmin Markovich was at a complete loss. Never in his life had he been faced with such a thought-provoking conundrum.

And this man – this jumped-up European aristocrat named de Bale whom the Coryphaeus had sicced on him with no warning at all – he wasn’t helping much either. The man made Markovich uneasy. He was so overwhelmingly confident – so certain of his right to instant obedience, that it hit Markovich’s top note. When Markovich had questioned his presence on the scene in an early leg-lifting bid to establish dominance, de Bale had simply told him to call his leader. That all would be explained to him then and there. And when Markovich did as he was told and called up the Coryphaeus on the dedicated Crusader line, the Coryphaeus had seemed almost irritated to hear from him.

‘Yes, of course I told the Count de Bale all that had happened. He is to be afforded every courtesy by you and your men. And you are to follow his orders to the letter. He and his family are major contributors to our Church and I have no wish to antagonize them. At least not at this early stage in the proceedings. Finding the woman and neutralizing her is part of an extended agreement we have with him – if this is carried out effectively, funds will be forthcoming. Funds that this Church desperately needs if it is to continue its work of enlightened evangelization. Eggs need to be broken in order to make an omelette, Crusader.’

‘Yes, Coryphaeus.’

‘Now listen to me carefully, Markovich. I don’t want you to bother me again. My sister is very ill. I am required to look after her and heal her. All my energies are focused towards this aim. De Bale will be the one to tell you what to do about the Gypsy and her companions. Obey him in everything. Treat him as you would treat me. Use the connections we have inside the Romanian police to locate Andrassy’s car and to trace where he went after he left Brara. Next time you feel the need to communicate with me, use e-mail. Only phone me in emergencies. Otherwise, wait for me to telephone you. Is that understood, Markovich? E-mail only. Written reports. That’s the way to go.’

‘Yes, Coryphaeus.’

‘Excellent. I’m relieved that I can count on you. Your wife will receive a side of Aberdeen Angus beef from my butcher at the earliest convenience.’

The connection was cut and Markovich was back on his own again. Or at least, not exactly on his own, but with this Frenchman from out of nowhere – and who seemed to have so much clout with the Renascent Christ – peering over his shoulder. What was he to do?

Well it was obvious, wasn’t it? Even to an idiot. Obey.

66

Abiger de Bale watched Markovich from the very spot that Andrassy had used to spy on Lemma all those hours earlier. He was trying to work out in his head whether Markovich would be worth the bloody trouble or not. Whether it would be better to dump him and his bevy of spotty, blank-faced young assistants, or use them as cannon fodder.

On the whole he decided it would be wiser to keep them on board. They all possessed firearms – and, presumably, knew how to use them. And any scruples they may have had about killing in the cause of their faith had clearly been corrupted long ago. Lupei/Catalin, on the other hand, was manifestly not only corrupt but also barking mad, and therefore not to be trusted with anything beyond the securing of the Moldovan Presidency from the equally corrupt camarilla of crooks he was up against. Any real challenge – the murder of a Gypsy woman and her unborn child, for instance – was clearly beyond him.

The prospect of letting a man like that loose with a trio of nuclear-tipped Kh-55s when the Russians were camping just across the border in Transnistria was ludicrous. According to the Countess, the Corpus saw themselves as ‘the absolute defenders of chaos on earth’. Well, chaos was all very well in its place – but if, after dealing with Sabir and his cabal, Abi wanted to retire from the fray and enjoy the late Madame, his mother’s, money at his leisure, a nuclear war in central Europe was the very last thing he needed.

Abi stared down at his feet. He had made the dreaded phone call to the Countess two hours before, using as his pretext that the Romanian police had contacted him about the tragedy that had befallen his family because his was the only number – apart from that of his two dead sisters – on Rudra’s airport-purchased pay-as-you-go cell phone. All lies, of course – but the world revolved around lies, and he revolved with it.

His mother’s response had been predictable – eerie, but predictable. Nothing, but nothing, must be allowed to get in the way of the Corpus’s big moment. Not even the tragic deaths of three out of four of her remaining adopted children.

Abi decided that his mother was as mad in her way as Catalin. Neither of them would be dangerous in the normal run of things, but when you factored in money, ambition and hubris on the part of the Countess, with power, vainglory, and a seriously loose hinge on the part of Catalin, you created a hazardous catalyst – somewhat along the lines of heating a mixture of tetrachlorobenzene and methyl alcohol over an open flame and praying it wouldn’t explode.

And now the power that Catalin already possessed was set to increase exponentially with the injection of the Countess’s millions. Giving him another 150 million euros, on top of the 50-million-euro down payment he had already received for simply signing along the dotted line, struck Abi as adding insult to injury.

He shrugged and glanced back across the road. First things first. This was the exact spot he would have chosen for himself had he wished to overlook the Gypsy camp without being seen, so it seemed the obvious place for him to start his investigation. The snow had covered up all the tracks, true, but Abi soon found the used butt of a cigarette jammed into a crack in the stone. Then, when he scrabbled in the snow, he discovered an empty crumpled pack of Moldovan Temp cigarettes which exactly matched the used butt, and which hadn’t yet had time to deteriorate into pulp.

He stood up and strode towards the wooden entranceway Sabir and the others had been using. There were two tents in the orchard. Gypsies lived in tents by preference, and not in houses – and the house was a wreck anyway. Abi stopped dead in his tracks.

But Sabir and Calque weren’t Gypsies. They wouldn’t choose to live in a tent if they could possibly avoid it. They would find themselves a roof and four walls.

Abi switched direction and headed for the house. He was beginning to work out what might have happened in his head.

It soon became clear where Sabir and Calque had been living. Three connecting rooms at the back of the ruined house were still habitable. One had been transformed into a bathroom, complete with zinc bathtub, basin, and slop bucket, and the other two rooms had been converted into more or less useable bedrooms. Abi decided then and there that he would never, ever, go on the run. What a comedown for Sabir compared to his bijou little home in Massachusetts. Abi still regretted not burning the place to the ground while he had the chance.

He rifled through what remained of the two men’s possessions without finding anything of note. But one thing did interest him – there were scarcely any clothes left. But he had seen clothes, surely? He walked back to the door. Yes. They’d been bundled up and then abandoned, as if someone had changed their minds at the very last moment and thrown them to one side. That was significant in itself. If the tents were equally bereft, much would be answered.

Abi started through the ruined front of the building. Then he stopped. There was a pile of rubble and broken furniture near the shattered entranceway. He stood and looked at it.

‘Markovich!’

‘Yes, Sir?’

‘Was it snowing yesterday. When Andrassy was here?’

‘Please speak slower, Sir. My English is not good.’

‘Snow.’ Abi made sprinkling motions with his hands. ‘Did it snow when Andrassy was here?’

‘Yes, Sir.’

‘Has it been snowing since?’

‘Yes, Sir. Many times.’

‘Look over there. At that pile of junk.’

‘Yes, Sir. I’m looking.’

‘You see the drifted snow next to it? The moving snow?’

‘I do. Yes, Sir.’

‘That’s taken weeks to build up, hasn’t it?’

‘Probably, Sir, yes. The wind does this sometimes.’

‘But there’s no drift on the pile. Just a light covering of fresh snow. Is that likely given the recent conditions?’

Markovich shrugged his shoulders. He didn’t really understand what the Frenchman was going on about, but he thought it best to humour him.

‘Start digging, Markovich. I think we’ve just found your missing colleague.’

Transf
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an Pass, Romania
Saturday, 6 February 2010

67

The wind chill outside the Simca had to be felt to be believed. Sabir and Alexi stared at each other like two golfers unexpectedly caught beneath an isolated tree in an electrical storm. Both men ducked their heads and began to ascend along the serpentine tracks left by the runaway car.

Sabir was the first to unravel his scarf and tie it over his ears and across his mouth, leaving only a small gap to see through. Alexi soon followed suit. He looked like a wild man with a toothache.

They trudged round the first corner, hunched forward like a pair of geriatrics. Ahead of them the road snaked onwards and upwards.

‘Half an hour,’ Sabir shouted. ‘That’s tops. Lemma won’t be able to survive more than half an hour out in this wind, even if we bundle her up and carry her. If we find nothing by then we come on down again and build the ice palace. Agreed?’

‘Agreed.’

Privately, Sabir thought the whole expedition a waste of time. They’d freeze their bollocks off trudging uphill, and then they’d freeze their arses off coming back down again. Who in their right minds would build a hut all the way up here? In the summer, people had their cars. In the winter, they kept away from the place. The whole thing was futile. Lemma would probably have had her baby and celebrated its first birthday by the time they got back down again.

He checked his watch. Twenty minutes into their walk. It felt like two hours. He could feel his nose and ears beginning to liquefy.