The Third Antichrist (50 page)

‘Disarm him, Radu. Then gag him. Do you understand me?’ He contrived a hoarse whisper, which he hoped wouldn’t carry out into the hall.

He waited until Radu had secured the man’s pistol before heading back into the corridor. He half expected to see de Bale running towards him with the same ‘berserker’ look his crazy elder brother had given him the previous summer. He edged back into the bathroom and slipped on his shoes. Then he waited.

The door to the second sitting room burst open. There was the sound of running feet.

Sabir edged the Dragunov around the door and fired blind.

The running stopped. There was the sound of a thud.

‘Don’t move. Stay right where you are. You are surrounded.’

Sabir waited for the inevitable string of return shots. Nothing happened. Then he heard Calque’s voice.

‘It’s okay, Sabir. You can come out. We have him.’

Sabir emerged from the bathroom doorway. He was holding the Dragunov straight out in front of him as if he intended to bayonet a dummy as part of some training exercise.

One man was lying on the floor. Another was pressed against the wall. Yola had hold of the flashlight. It was shaking.

‘Christ. I didn’t hit one of them, did I?’

Abi twisted his head from where he had been forced against the wall by Calque and the barrel of his shotgun. ‘Two sledges, not one. I should have guessed. Why would the Gypsy have collected two sledges and then abandoned one? What a fool.’ He shook his head. ‘Well, that was a nice little ambush you contrived there, Monsieur Sabir. Classic, I’d say. Diversion upfront. Main attack from behind. Shame about my friend here. Did you actually mean to kill him? Or was it just a freak shot? I couldn’t help noticing that you weren’t any too keen to put yourself in harm’s way. Let your friends take the strain, eh? But don’t feel guilty about shooting an innocent man. All great generals do it.’

Sabir stepped across to the dead man. He glanced down. Trakhtenberger’s head looked as if someone had tried to ram a hole through it with the sharp end of a crowbar. He forced back an overwhelming urge to gag. ‘I wish it had been you. I really do.’ He lifted the rifle and aimed it directly at Abi’s face.

Calque took a step towards him, one hand upraised. ‘Sabir. You can’t do this. Lower the rifle.’

Sabir ignored him. ‘On the ground, de Bale. Now. I’ve just killed one man. So it’s no big stretch...’

Abi dropped to his knees. ‘Sure. I’ll lie down, Sabir. Don’t get your knickers in a twist. I’ve been needing a break. It’s been a long hard day at the coalface.’

Calque gently eased the barrel of Sabir’s rifle to one side, so that it was not aiming directly at Abi.

Sabir made a disgusted face and began to back away. ‘Calque, you and Yola tie him up. I don’t want to touch the sonofabitch. And make sure to check him and the dead man for car keys. I saw the reflected lights of a vehicle earlier. They’ll have parked it back round the corner somewhere. But it won’t be far. It took them under a minute to return on foot from wherever they left it. Alexi, you stand over him with the dead man’s pistol while they do it. If he moves, let him have it.’

Alexi made a big to-do about re-cocking the semiautomatic. Each of his movements took up double the airspace they would normally have needed. ‘You see, Damo? I’ve remembered the lesson you gave me after that time I had a chance at this cocksucker’s brother. I botched it, remember? When I forgot to lock and load the pistol. I won’t miss this time.’ He prodded Abi with his foot. ‘Hey, man. You see these gold teeth? Your brother gave me these.’

Abi craned his neck round. ‘Rocha gave you some gold teeth? You’ve got to be kidding. He was tight as a duck’s arse.’

‘No, I mean he smashed in my teeth and then...’

Sabir turned and looked back. ‘Alexi?’

‘Yes, Damo?’

‘Shut up.’

81

They locked de Bale and Markovich in the cellar. The dead body of Trakhtenberger they left in the hall where it had fallen. There was no time anymore for sentiment.

‘Leave the shotguns and the rifles behind. They’ll weigh us down. We’ll take these pistols instead. But we need to make sure that all our prints are wiped off the long guns. The rest of the household stuff doesn’t matter.’

‘But the two down there will eventually get out. They’ll shop us to the authorities.’

‘They’ll get out. Yes. But we’ll be long gone by then. And they won’t have any transport, remember? And they certainly won’t shop us to the authorities. Catalin won’t want to start a paper trail that leads straight back to him. Not in a presidential election year.’

Calque stared down at Trakhtenberger’s body. ‘I hate leaving that bastard de Bale behind us. I wish you’d killed him instead of this man.’

‘So do I. But what alternative do we have? I noticed you weren’t any too keen on the idea of my shooting him when I threatened him with the rifle earlier. If you’ve changed your mind in the interim I can always hurry back down to the cellar and execute him. A single shot to the back of the neck is
de rigueur
, I gather. But then I’d have to kill the other man too. It would be absurd leaving witnesses, wouldn’t it? The upside would be that it would stand as my very first hat-trick as a hit man.’

‘That’s not funny, Sabir.’

‘You don’t say? Hey. Don’t tell me. You were a policeman in a former life? Maybe you want to turn me in yourself after what I did to this man?’ Sabir could scarcely bring himself to look down at Trakhtenberger. His guilt about the man was making him angry. ‘I’ve been directly or indirectly responsible for the deaths of three people in the past year, Calque. How do you think I feel about it?’ Sabir held up both hands. ‘You can handcuff me now if you want. I’ll go quietly.’

‘That’s exactly what you said to me last summer, Sabir. When I asked you to hand over Achor Bale’s pistol. My answer is the same now as it was then.’

‘And what’s that?’

‘Don’t be absurd. It was either them or us. I have no problem at all with anything you have said or done in the interim, Sabir. You may be something of a loose cannon, but your recent vigilance – when all I could think of to do was to take a drink – has just saved all our lives. And I, for one, am not going to forget it.’ He sighed. ‘I suspect, though, that the man down there in the cellar is going to cause us more problems before he’s finished.’

‘We could always lobotomize him from a distance. Alexi’s wonderfully good with knives, I hear.’

Calque laughed. ‘Sabir, in his present condition, Alexi couldn’t hit a seagull on a barn door.’

82

They found the Lada Niva parked fifty yards below the final bend before the lake. The engine was still warm. Sabir got into the car and turned the key in the ignition. The motor caught straight away and settled into a steady diesel rattle. Sabir checked the gauges. The gas tank was almost full. He slapped the steering wheel with both hands and offered up a fervid prayer of thanks.

He knew that he didn’t dare risk the car off-road. The slope down to the front of the lodge hadn’t been cleared for months. He stopped 50 metres short of the entrance and flashed his lights.

Radu and Alexi were definitely soberer than they had been half an hour before, but they were still rocky on their legs. Sabir hurried down to help them carry Lemma and her baby across to the car. Given the sheen of sweat on the two men’s faces, he reckoned they needed complete rehydration and approximately ten hours of uninterrupted sleep before they would be of use to either man or beast. If this happened every time a baby was born, God alone knew what their livers would look like in fifteen years’ time.

‘Are you sure you know where this camp is, Radu? The one that gave you shelter when you were wounded.’

‘I know exactly.’

‘And you think we’ll be safe there?’

‘I know we’ll be safe there.’ Radu was still having trouble getting his mouth to coordinate with his brain. ‘It’s a big community. Amoy is a senior man amongst the C
ă
ld
ă
rari elders. I told his wife, Maja, about Lemma and our baby. Maja has had many babies. Maja is a good woman. She saved my life, you know? She will look after Yola and her baby when the time comes. Trust me in this.’

‘Right. Take this map and see if you can plot us out a route. You can read a map, can’t you?’

Radu shrugged.

‘Because if you can’t, you must describe all you know about the place to Calque, and he will work it out for you.’

‘I can read a map. I am not an illiterate, like Alexi.’

Alexi pretended to cuff his cousin, but his heart wasn’t in it. To Alexi, the term ‘illiterate’ was a compliment – it described someone who had not wasted the better part of their lives learning
payo
nonsense they would neither need nor use.

‘I suggest the rest of you settle back and get some sleep. All of you.’ Sabir eased the Lada across the crest of the F
ă
g
ă
ra
ş
an Pass and down towards the valley below. ‘But before you do, look over there, everyone. Do you see what I see?’

‘See? What do you see?’ Alexi was staring nervously out of the window.

‘Daylight, Alexi. I see daylight.’

83

Early on during the fracas in the hall, when it had become clear that he was surrounded and had no backup left, Abi had made effective use of the darkness by secretly palming his penknife. He had fancied that he might be able to reach across and slit Sabir’s throat when the bastard was least expecting it. But the opportunity hadn’t arisen.

Although the ex-policeman – Claque or Catafalque or whatever his name was – had clearly received training in how to deal with potentially dangerous men, he didn’t know diddly-squat about conducting body searches in the dark. He had overlooked not only the penknife in Abi’s hand, but also his picklocks and the fighting baton concealed up his sleeve. It was almost as if the man desired him to escape.

Abi turned that thought over in his head for a moment and then discarded it. Wishful thinking. The guy just wasn’t that bright.

Abi eased the penknife open behind his back and began to saw at the clothesline the policeman had bound his hands with. Markovich was sitting opposite him in the darkened cellar. Abi could just make out the Crusader’s face in the burgeoning dawn that was even now pinking the cellar’s frosted windows. He made very sure indeed that Markovich did not see his movements.