The Third Antichrist (49 page)

Calque made a face. ‘Aren’t you taking one heck of a risk, Sabir?’

Sabir backed away. ‘Only one way to find out.’

79

Abi stood in front of the lodge. He pointed down at the ground. Then he beckoned Markovich forward so that he could whisper into his ear. ‘See. More sledge marks.’ He kicked at the snow. ‘This has all been stamped down. They’re in here all right.’

‘But how are we going to go in after them? They will have locked the door.’

Abi sighed. ‘We’ll go in through the back. Locks this age are not a problem to me.’

‘Maybe they have guns?’

‘Where from? They left their camp on the double and in the middle of the night. They’ve been on the run ever since. Do you think they had time to stop at a gun shop and weapon-up? Hey. That’s a thought. Maybe they’ll still have the kitchen knife they skewered your buddy Andrassy with?’ Abi mimicked the face of a frightened cat. ‘Christ. What’ll we do? We only have pistols.’

He frogmarched Markovich and Trakhtenberger to the rear of the lodge. He scanned the ground in front of him. ‘Good. No one’s been in or out through here yet.’

He took off his gloves and set to work, with Markovich aiming the flashlight over his shoulder. He had the lock unpicked in two minutes.

‘Listen. Don’t hang together when we go inside. You, Trakhtenberger, can take the left. Your boss can take the right. I’ll be checking ahead. You can forget about behind us. These people are total amateurs. Charmed fucking amateurs, but still amateurs. But keep quiet from now on in. Empty houses eat sound and spit it back at you again when you least expect it.’

Trakhtenberger looked ill. Markovich – in what may have been a final bid to regain the high ground – was copying the expression and body posture he had seen Russian Spetsnaz soldiers use in a recent documentary about the Chechnya crisis.

Abi was tempted to burst out laughing. Instead, he started up the corridor, the pistol held loosely ahead of him in one hand. No movie fakery for him. He had killed before and he would kill again – and killing, he knew, was a matter of will, not style. He could feel the anticipation burning in his gut. It was what he lived for. The two idiots behind him could go hang. He suspected they would be as much use in a crisis as Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

The doors along the main corridor were all open save one. Abi eased each door a little wider open with his hand as he passed by, and flashed a light through into the interior. Then he continued on his way. Sitting room. Dining room. Storeroom. Bathroom. He stopped outside the single remaining shut door.

He pointed to Trakhtenberger. Then pointed to the ground. Then back to Trakhtenberger. ‘You stay here,’ he mouthed. He made a circular movement with his forefinger. ‘Keep watch.’

Trakhtenberger nodded. He was more than happy to stand guard out in the corridor. ‘What the eye doesn’t see the heart doesn’t grieve over’ had pretty much summed up his philosophy of life from the age of about three onwards.

Abi tested the door handle. It gave. He threw open the door and bundled through, with Markovich keeping station close behind him. Abi was holding his flashlight tight to the barrel of his pistol.

He saw Lemma immediately. It was clear she was still asleep. Something was moving near her, though. Abi raised his pistol/flashlight combination. He instantly recognized the Gypsy they had kidnapped at Samois – the one who had given the girls the slip back at the border. He was briefly tempted to shoot him outright, but held fire because he still needed information. There would be plenty of time to take his revenge later. This time around he would flay the bastard alive and use his skin for sailcloth.

‘You. Up on your feet.’

Radu lurched upright. He began to rock like a man whose shoes are glued to the ground. Lemma was stirring in her bed. The baby began to cry.

‘What is wrong with you, man? You must have been expecting us. Stop weaving. You look as if you are about to piss yourself.’

Radu weaved a little more. He wasn’t pretending. He had drunk the best part of a bottle and a half of brandy.

‘Are you drunk or something?’ Abi stepped forwards. He sniffed Radu’s breath. ‘Jesus Christ.’ He turned round and shone his flashlight directly onto Lemma’s face. ‘Do something to stop that brat crying. Give it your tit, woman. Or I’ll beat its brains out against the wall over there.’

White-faced, Lemma pressed the baby to her breast. She looked helplessly at Radu. Her expression echoed exactly what she felt in her heart. She knew her husband’s every mood. Knew when he was out of his head with drink and when he was still in control. A single glance told her that he would be of no possible use to her in the crisis they now faced.

‘Where are the others?’

‘The others?’ Radu squinted at Abi. Abi aimed the flashlight square between Radu’s eyes. Radu threw his hand up in self-defence. ‘What others?’

‘Spare yourself a lot of grief and answer my question. What others do you think? Sabir. The policeman. Your pregnant girlfriend and her husband. Those others.’

Radu was weaving again. It was as if he was lurching in and out of the drunken state with each alternate breath. ‘They are back in Oponici. They have been visiting the market. Lemma and I did not have time to warn them.’ With each fraction of a sentence, Radu rocked some more. He sounded like a robot. ‘They must still be there. It is a three-day market. People come from all around. They bring horses. Chickens. Ducks...’

‘Shut up, you drunken fool.’ Abi rapped the side of Radu’s head with his pistol. Not enough to disable him, but hard enough to gain his attention ‘You. Gypsy. Listen to what I am saying. You stay exactly where you are. Do you get that? You don’t move one foot from here. Markovich, you stay and cover him. If he moves, blow his balls off.’

Abi began a brisk tour of the room. He aimed his flashlight at everything. Checked over every surface. Squatted under every table. ‘Where did you both eat? You must have eaten? I can see no plates or leftovers here.’

Radu ran his hands down the numb expanse of his face. A thin trickle of blood had started from the corner of his eye. ‘I didn’t want to upset Lemma with the smell. So I cooked in another room. Down the corridor.’ He was slurring badly, as though the increased oxygen he had been gulping in was magnifying the effect of the brandy. ‘There is another wood heater. With a hob. I found tins in the storeroom. I made pork stew.’

‘How many doors back down the corridor is this other room? The one with the hob?’

‘This side. Second door.’ Radu bent down and began to throw up. Long, uncontrollable spasms that made him grip his stomach as if his guts would follow the stream of vomit out onto the floor. If he hadn’t convinced Abi of his drunkenness before, he had convinced him now.

‘What a fucking loser.’ Abi stood with the pistol held down at his side. ‘Markovich, stay with them. If the baby cries anymore, shoot that. This idiot is not worth wasting a bullet on.’ Abi hitched his chin at Radu. ‘Did you hear what I said, Pikey? There is going to be no more sparing of children on my watch. I’m going outside to check on your story. When I get back you’d better have something specific to tell me. Like exact details of where I can find Sabir and Calque and the expectant parents – not just some vague crap about a duck market. Otherwise your wife is going to wish she had suffered a miscarriage back there in the car. We’ve been here before, remember?’

Abi strode into the corridor. He waved his pistol at Trakhtenberger. ‘Anything moving out here?’

‘Nothing, boss. It’s quiet as the grave.’ Trakhtenberger swallowed. He didn’t like pistols being waved at him. Neither did he enjoy standing in a pitch-dark corridor being ordered around by a mad Frenchman whom he had clearly heard talking about killing babies. Trakhtenberger liked babies. He and his wife had had three of them. He was beginning to get a very bad feeling indeed. And he desperately wanted to pee.

‘Come with me. I don’t trust that drunken arsehole of a Gypsy further than I can throw him. We need to sift through this place with a toothcomb.’

He started up the corridor, the beam from his flashlight carving a disorderly arc in front of him.

Trakhtenberger hesitated for a fraction of a second. But what else could he do? It wasn’t as if he could run outside and hail a passing taxicab.

He hurried up the corridor after Abi.

80

Sabir was faced with a dilemma. The last thing he had expected was for the three men to split up so quickly. The fact that Abiger de Bale was running the show didn’t bode well either. When they had last met, three months before, in Mexico, de Bale had ordered Calque to be hoisted up to the roof, strappado-style, as a direct prelude to a particularly unpleasant form of torture which involved scissors and boiling water. If the
narcotraficantes
hadn’t opened fire a few moments later – giving Sabir the opportunity to take Calque’s entire bodyweight onto his shoulders – Calque would have been crippled for life. That was the quality of the man they were facing.

De Bale and his cohort skirted the bathroom where Sabir was hiding. Sabir had heard every word de Bale had said to Radu. He knew the two men were on their way to check out the second sitting room. He also knew that the third man was back in the main salon covering Radu and Lemma. Should he wait for them to congregate together again? More importantly, was there anything in the second sitting room that could give away their numbers? Maybe he should try to get the dropdown on de Bale now, and to hell with the consequences? Not leave things to chance?

Each second he failed to act increased the danger they were facing. He had heard Radu being sick. Knew he couldn’t count on any real support from that quarter. Alexi would be in a similar condition if the empty bottles he had cleared away in his rush to disguise their presence were anything to go by. If only those two bloody fools had been able to curtail their celebratory urges for the span of one night. If only the people who owned the lodge hadn’t left their bloody cellar stacked with booze. If only wishes were horses.

At least Calque and Yola were compos mentis. Calque, he knew, could shoot, but Yola had probably never heard of a safety catch, let alone a double-trigger. She’d point the shotgun, pull the first thing that came to hand, and nothing would happen. She’d be better off throwing the thing at her assailants and then legging it.

Sabir’s mind seethed with possibilities. Should he wait for the two to enter the second sitting room and then hurry across into Lemma’s room and try to bushwhack her assailant? Or should he wait for them to come back down the corridor? Catch them in a nutcracker action between him and Calque? But what about the man watching Radu and Lemma?

Abi had a flashlight. He would search the room and find the extra sleeping bags behind the sofa. He’d be out in two minutes, on the run. In anything like a fair fight, Sabir knew that he and his companions wouldn’t stand a chance.

Fuck... Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

Sabir took off his shoes and laid them beside the bathtub. He waited until he heard Abi and his companion enter the second sitting room. Then he padded across into Lemma’s room.

A man he did not recognize was holding a gun on Radu and Lemma, his face livid in the light thrown by the paraffin lamp near Lemma’s bed.

Sabir raised his rifle and pointed it directly at the man’s head. He dropped his right hand from the stock and held it to his lips. Then he made a falling motion, pointing at the pistol in the man’s hand. He was moving forward all the time on his stockinged feet, just like he’d seen it done in the movies.