The Almanac of the Dead: A Novel (96 page)

Serlo had been interested in Beaufrey’s preoccupation with David’s girlfriend and David’s child. Serlo knew Beaufrey wanted Seese dead. He was curious to know what Beaufrey would do with the infant. If Beaufrey did not have the infant killed, Serlo wanted it raised by two men in what would be his institute’s first important experiment. The child was of common blood, but one did not waste aristocratic blood unnecessarily. Serlo did not bother with questions; whatever Beaufrey had done with the infant would undoubtedly be recorded on videotape or with photographs anyway.

Serlo had been watching David’s attentions toward him; odd how David had ignored Serlo until he saw the landing strip and the ranch buildings of the
finca.
David was street trash; street boys were the same the world over, whether they were from the U.S. or from downtown Bogotá. Serlo liked a good dog; a good dog wagged its tail when it sniffed fresh meat. Serlo was amused at U.S. street boys who called themselves “musicians” or “painters,” but not “prostitutes.” David had misunderstood his status entirely after the success of his one-man show. Of course Beaufrey used to play along to set them up. Beaufrey loved to see their faces fall and their eyes brim with tears, these street boys
who had thought they were his “equals.” Suddenly one day Beaufrey would put them in their place.

DAVID HATED SEESE so much he had failed to recognize how unlikely it would have been for Seese to stay off vodka and cocaine long enough to arrange to have them tracked to Cartagena. All David understood was his baby son, Monte, had been taken by kidnappers hired by that cunt Seese. David had even returned to San Diego once from the
finca
because the whore had insisted she did not have the baby. Beaufrey had stayed up all night with David, snorting cocaine and arguing about having the woman killed. If Seese were dead, they might find who was hiding the baby for her. But David had feared they might never find his baby with Seese dead.

Serlo hoped to wean Beaufrey gradually from street boys and psychodramas because they would spend most of the year living on the remote
finca.
Serlo had calculated David’s departure for later in the year. Although Beaufrey would deny it, Serlo knows Beaufrey is obsessed with David. Beaufrey confided he had felt strangely excited that he had stolen David’s son but David had no inkling, no suspicion. How Beaufrey relished the deceit. Beaufrey does not want to lose his plaything; otherwise, why bother to fabricate the kidnapping at the hotel, why let the child’s mother live any longer?

At the
finca,
Serlo and Beaufrey allowed nothing to interfere with horseback riding. Serlo and Beaufrey each had competed at the international level for equestrian teams—Serlo riding for Colombia and Beaufrey for Argentina. At first David had gone to his new darkroom, equipped with computerized color enlargers and color-processing systems, while Serlo and Beaufrey rode the practice course on their dressage horses. But after a few weeks, David could not bear to listen to the dinnertime conversations about their horseback rides together. Serlo secretly savored David’s feeling of isolation and purposely had launched dinner-table conversations about the Polish royal cavalries and the origins of dressage in the military use of horses.

Serlo had talked coyly about the “incomparable exhilaration” one experienced as one’s slightest touch commanded instant response from the powerful volatile animal quivering under one’s own body. David was determined not to be left out. Darkroom work bored him. Taking the photographs was more exciting. He wanted to ride horseback too, he had announced. The big Dutch dressage horses were too ugly and clumsy for David’s taste. In the pasture with the polo ponies David had noticed a small chestnut mare with four white feet;
that
was the horse he wanted. Serlo had watched David struggle to mount the small, nervous mare; no reasonable man would ever have chosen the crazy-eyed mare.

David did not ride gracefully, but he did not fall off either. David had chosen the worst horse on the
finca.
The undersized Thoroughbred mare had been too high-strung to use for polo. The open space and unfenced distances of plains to all horizons affected the mare strangely, and the grooms speculated the mare had been born and reared in box stalls then ridden indoors inside equestrian arenas until the mare had been sold to the
finca.
Once out of the box stalls and away from the confines of paddocks and fences and buildings, the mare had become increasingly excited. The grooms called the affliction “rapture of the plain” or “rapture of the wide-open spaces”; local people reported similar strange afflictions in dogs brought from the city accustomed only to enclosures. Unkenneled for the first time on the vast plain, the dogs bolted away, to run and run past exhaustion to death.

David had been able to hold the mare in check at a walk inside the exercise paddocks; but when he had allowed the horse more rein, she had taken both bits in her teeth and head high, she had bolted. Serlo thought David would fall, but the mare had not bucked, and David had clung to the mare as she raced around the paddock. Serlo had to check his horse sharply as it pulled at the bit to follow the mare. Beaufrey’s mount was well seasoned, and Beaufrey’s confidence soothed the horse. But Serlo was riding a less-finished horse, a recent purchase. Serlo had been buying different breeding stock so the
finca
would be self-sufficient, with different horses for different purposes. Serlo believed the day would come when the world was overrun with swarms of brown and yellow human larvae called natives. Serlo carefully planned and prepared for the days of chaos about to arrive. But Beaufrey himself was not so sure. Beaufrey had never voiced his doubts to Serlo, of course. Serlo was extremely sensitive about his global theories. He was a charter member of a secret multinational organization with a “secret agenda” for the entire world.

There was little use in bringing a genetically superior man into a world crowded and polluted by the degenerate masses. The history of the secret agenda had begun with the German Third Reich, but it had not ended with Hitler’s death. The group’s secret agenda had been right on schedule actually because European Jewry had been destroyed. Jewish holocaust survivors were too few and too haunted to reproduce themselves effectively in Europe any longer. For all practical purposes Jews were extinct in Poland. But the most persuasive evidence of the Third Reich’s success could be seen in Israel, where Palestinians kept in prison camps were tortured and killed by descendants of Jewish holocaust survivors. The Jews might have escaped the Third Reich, but now they had been possessed by the urge to inflict suffering and death. Hitler had triumphed.

If the Israelis wished to incite the Moslems in order to justify a war to wipe them off the face of the earth, then all the better for the hidden agenda. Yellows, browns, and blacks, let them slaughter one another. The agenda was concerned with survival, not justice. The old man had taught Serlo years before that to kill a man was unjust in the first place, so why bother about rules of “fair play”? A bullet in the ear or a bomb under the front car seat was not fair, but it was final.

THE OLD MAN did not attempt to hide the nature of his relationship with Serlo. His parents were divorced and neither had wanted him. The old man did not consider massaging the boy’s arms and legs at night homosexuality. Homosexuality involved others, other men who attempted to penetrate or who wanted to be penetrated. Serlo had learned sexual penetration was silly, unnecessary, and rotten with disease.

One night when Serlo was thirteen, the old man coughed three times then lost control of his bladder and died. Serlo had not allowed another human being to touch him in a sexual way since his grandfather’s death. Serlo had battled constantly to protect his cleanliness and health. Beaufrey had first sought Serlo in Paris because rumors claimed Serlo was
the last and oldest boy virgin on the Continent. Serlo had been ahead of his time with his fetishes of purity and cleanliness; there were insinuations his sex organ touched only sterile, prewarmed stainless steel cylinders used for the artificial insemination of cattle. Tantalizing gossip had circulated throughout the long Mediterranean coast about Serlo, the pale eyes and milky skin, the pride of European nobility reared on the remote plains of Colombia.

Ordinarily Beaufrey had not sought out “celebrities” of sexual kinks, but he found the stories about Serlo irresistible.

Serlo’s grandfather had been a science enthusiast. The old man had ordered artificial insemination implemented for the cattle herds on all his vast
fincas.
The old man had practiced only masturbation into steel cylinders where his semen was frozen for future use. His grandfather had influenced him, Serlo admitted. The old man had dreamed that someday nobility and monarchy would be restored in Europe. The old man had left behind his seed of noble blood so the masses of Europe might someday be upgraded through the use of artificial insemination. The old man had looked far into the future and had seen that reproduction needn’t involve the repulsive touch and stink of sex with a woman.

Beaufrey and Serlo had argued over tactics; the group that Serlo met with had wanted to focus upon “positive” action—research laboratories and sperm banks where a superior human being would be developed. The group had obtained reports from research scientists working to develop an artificial uterus because women were often not reliable or responsible enough to give the “superfetuses” their best chance at developing into superbabies. Yes, Serlo admitted, he was saving all his sperm in a freezer for use in future generations. Nothing was impossible, Europe was full of living monarchs; Serlo had loved to rattle off the list—all of them his distant cousins: Michael in Romania, Otto in Austria, Niko in Montenegro, Simeon in Bulgaria, and of course dear Constantine in Greece. Serlo was anxious to get his institute under way and to obtain sperm contributions from European males of noble birth lest rare and distinguished lineages disappear without issue.

Although they required time, biological and chemical agents were far superior to bullets and bombs because they worked silently and anonymously. No one could prove a thing. The AIDS virus, HIV, had not been detected for years, and by then the targeted groups had been thoroughly infected. Beaufrey had claimed the U.S. CIA developed HIV, but Serlo knew that was a lie. Years of research into rare cancers, rare
viruses, and
hepatitis
had been required; followed by radical experiments in cloning bacteria and viruses. Researchers in Johannesburg had experimented with monkey viruses. The great biological bomb that had exploded was the result of international collaboration. It had been determined the first biological bomb should be detonated in Africa where researchers hoped malnutrition would enhance the virus’s power. Hepatitis B had been the model they had followed to plot the spread of the immune-deficiency virus. In Africa they had simply contaminated whole blood and blood plasma supplies to be sent to remote hospitals where patients were primarily women who had just given birth. Thus husbands and subsequent newborns were infected. They had modeled their immune-deficiency virus on hepatitis B because the targeted groups had already proven their susceptibility to hepatitis B.

Serlo had learned a great deal about virology and molecular biology from attending the group’s meetings. Serlo was able to appreciate the beauty of HIV in a way that Beaufrey could not understand. Hepatitis B was a disease of the poor, the nonwhite, the addicted, and the homosexual, but hepatitis B was curable. HIV had no cure. Members of the research team bragged that they had created the first “designer virus” specifically for targeted groups. The filthy would die. The clean would live. “Think of the greatest army on earth!” one of the researchers had exclaimed. “Imagine an army of billions and billions of deadly troops! What do we have? Yes, gentlemen! We have the virus army! Deadly and silent!” Of course Serlo and his associates had always been acutely aware secrecy was the group’s cornerstone, but at their core lay the conviction that an endangered species fought for survival with no holds barred. HIV was the perfect weapon for those who found themselves vastly outnumbered in a final battle for survival.