The Third Antichrist (29 page)

Lupei sniffed at the rapidly cooling air. His eyes were dead. ‘I repeat my question. What exactly do you want from me?’

Abi’s eyes hardened. ‘It’s simple. We know who is the mother of the real Second Coming. The one who has been predicted and pinpointed for the past 450 years – not dreamed up in the back room of a dirt farm in some one-horse town in the European equivalent of Outer Mongolia. We know exactly when he is due to be born. We also know that his mother is hiding out in a village somewhere in the north of Romania. We know who is with her. The Countess and I, representing the Corpus Maleficus, have a personal interest in these people. You need to have a similar interest. It is essential for all our plans that you kill this woman and her baby.’

‘Why?’

‘Do I really need to spell it out?’

Lupei made a sour face. ‘No.’

‘The Corpus don’t have enough people to find her. And we don’t know the country like you do. You have your Crusaders. They all speak Romanian. You can send them out looking for her without setting off alarm bells. Tell them she is the mother-to-be of a false prophet. Hell. Tell them she is the mother-to-be of the Third Antichrist. That should do the trick.’ Abi could feel Rudra stiffening beside him, but he refused to turn round. ‘Then kill her. You’ve killed before. It shouldn’t be so hard. God alone knows you’ve got the motive.’ Abi held Lupei’s eyes with his. ‘But listen. There are two men with her. An American and a Frenchman. They are called Adam Sabir and Joris Calque. Part of the deal is that you leave these men to me.’

‘What did they do to you?’

Abi hesitated. Then he shrugged. ‘They caused my twin brother to be killed.’

‘Ah. Revenge. That most exquisite of all callings. It humanizes one, doesn’t it?’ Lupei smiled. ‘I, too, have known the elusive joys of revenge.’

‘Are you trying to tell me something?’

‘No. I simply want to know what is the sum of money we are talking about in relation to your request? I need proof that you are serious. I need to know that you are not just dilettantes playing around with fire. If so, the fire will consume you, I can assure you of that. How would this money be transferred to me, for instance? And would I have full control in how to spend it?’

‘Full control. A private bank account. In Switzerland. In your name only. Fifty million euros.’

Lupei shook his head. ‘That will not be enough. I will have people to bribe. Gangs to suborn. Wages to bankroll. If I am to become President of my country, small as it is, I need to seduce the opposition with money. I need to flood them with largesse. Either that, or I need to kill them. Such services do not come cheaply. If you wish to purchase the right to blackmail the future President of a nominally democratic European country – which I assume you do – you will need to pay considerably more than fifty million euros for the privilege. I will also need to construct a fallback position for myself and my sister in case things go badly wrong. The account, for instance, needs to be in both our names, so that my sister can act as my courier – my representative – should things not go entirely as planned. You understand my reasoning?’

Abi grinned. ‘That’s my boy. I can see that we have chosen exactly the right man for the job. But let’s not say “blackmail”. Let’s say “influence”, shall we? And would one hundred million euros be more acceptable?’

‘Double that figure, and we have a deal.’

‘Ouch.’ Abi shrugged his shoulders. ‘You drive a hard bargain, Lupei. I can see exactly why the moneylenders ran when your predecessor chased them from the Temple precincts 2,000 years ago. Fifty million down, then. And fifty million more when you can prove the death of the Gypsy woman, Yola Dufontaine, and her unborn child. The remaining hundred million when you hand me over Adam Sabir and Joris Calque alive.’

‘And what else do you require for your money? Come on. I want to know what the catch is now. Before we begin our partnership.’

‘Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Just be yourself, Lupei. The Corpus Maleficus have perfect confidence in you. To our way of thinking, you won’t be able to resist stirring up a whole succession of hornet’s nests once you’ve secured power. And we in the Corpus have always been in the business of stirring up hornet’s nests. We are past masters at it. You will be our star pupil. Apart from the Gypsy girl and the two men, we are prepared to leave everything to your entire discretion. Agreed?’

Lupei’s eyes were dancing. ‘Agreed.’

Abi was pleasantly surprised. Privately, he had been convinced that Lupei would hold out for at least half a billion. Maybe the man was a cheapskate at heart? Either way, he, Abi, had fulfilled his part of the bargain.

Now, he would sit back and wait for Lupei to fulfil his.

46

‘Did you kill him?’

Antanasia stood by the bed she shared with her brother. Her face was white. As the focus of the cult, only she, her brother and his Crusaders had the right to remain unadorned. The remainder of the adherents all had to be tattooed with the patriarchal cross.

‘Who? Our father? You saw me kill him. You even helped me move his body.’

‘No. You know I’m not talking about him. I’m talking about the monk. And this other man the Frenchman mentioned. Did you kill him too?’

‘What’s the difference? Surely it’s a worse thing to kill one’s father than to kill a perfect stranger? You approve of me killing the one, and yet, I can see by your face, you disapprove of me killing the other.’

‘You killed our father to protect me.’

‘I killed our father because I hated him. Protecting you was secondary.’

Antanasia dropped her eyes. ‘But still.’

Lupei glared at his sister. ‘But still.’

She glanced up. There was a terrible expectancy in her face. ‘And the other men?’

‘Why, otherwise, should I allow myself to be blackmailed by these filth?’

‘Because you want their money.’

‘Do you know how much money they are offering me?’

Antanasia shook her head so violently that her hair broke free from its barrette. ‘It can never be enough.’

Lupei laughed. ‘Oh yes, it can.’ He hesitated, more aware of his sister’s anguish than he cared to acknowledge. ‘We have agreed on 200 million euros. A joint account. Held in Switzerland. With you and I as individual signatories with full fiscal control. If anything happens to me, Antanasia, you will be a very rich woman indeed.’

Antanasia caught her breath. ‘This is impossible.’

Lupei shrugged. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘But why? Who has such huge sums of money at their fingertips?’

Lupei made a dismissive motion with his hand. ‘Not every country in the world is subject to the same endemic corruption we are.’

‘And yet you encourage that corruption.’

‘Only because it is in our best interests.’

‘Your best interests.’

Lupei strode across the room until he stood directly in front of his sister. For a moment it seemed as if he was about to strike her. ‘Don’t you value the position I have given you? Don’t you value the esteem in which you are held by our people?’ He threw his arms into the air. ‘All this is my doing. Everything we possess stems from decisions I have made. Don’t tell me you regret giving up your old life, Antanasia? Did you enjoy being the plaything of any man our father chose to sell you to? Something he could offer to his friends like a bag of sweets?’

Antanasia could scarcely bring herself to speak. She had spent her lifetime being dominated, first by her father, then by her brother. Both had pimped her out to others. Both had abused her. Her only weapons had been the quality of her submission, and the single-minded love that she bore for Dracul, which had persisted in spite of all he had done – and witnessed done – to her. It was the sort of unconditional love more commonly found between a mother and her terminally errant son.

But there was something unholy and alienating about this new face her brother was showing her. Before the foreigners had arrived, she had been able to feign indifference to Dracul’s methods. They were cruel, she had convinced herself, only to be kind. Her brother had benefited more people than he had disenfranchised. The town he had ordered his followers to build was a magnificent going concern – a beacon of light in a country doomed to poverty by its own recalcitrance. But now? What pact with the Devil was he signing? Why was he allowing himself to be so easily bribed? ‘So what they told me was true? You did kill this Russian Minister?’

‘I was twelve years old. The man struck me. Harder than any man had ever struck me before. I was bewildered. When I ran at him on the plateau I did not expect to kill him.’

‘What did you expect then?’

Lupei said nothing. He canted his head upwards, effectively phasing out his sister, just as he would do to his audiences in the full flow of a homily. To any neutral onlooker it would seem as if Lupei had been called on to commune with a higher power from whom he hoped to derive strategies for dealing with the hoi polloi spread out in front of him.

Antanasia knew the trick of old and was no longer taken in by it. In recent years she had taken to calling it his ‘miracle-worker’s gaze’. ‘And the monk? The old man who cared for you and healed you? The one whose place you took at the hermitage? The one who saved your life?’

Lupei hadn’t struck his sister for a number of years. He was briefly tempted to raise his hand to her and secure her compliance that way. But the moment passed. She was a mature woman now, with a dignity all of her own. People looked up to her. Even Dracul had to admit that, although she still shared his bed, she was no longer the callow young woman he and his father had found so easy to quail and to mould to their wills. Perhaps he should lie to her, and lull her suspicions that way? But he had become so used to total obedience – to the instant acceptance of himself as immaculate and all-knowing – that he was no longer able to haunt contrivances.

For many years now, everyone he met had looked up to Dracul and approved his every word and deed. There was a component in his character that required unswerving obedience from everyone around him – and from Antanasia most of all. Whatever he did must be right by her. However gross his actions – however perverse his motivations – she, above all people, must accept him for what he was. And why was this? Dracul knew the answer only too well. The thought burnt through his guts like nitric acid. Like molten lead through cardboard.

Antanasia was all he had. Was all he would ever have. She was the only person who really knew him. The only one before whom he need wear no mask.

‘Yes, I killed him. The old goat was dying anyway. I went to see him one night, while our father was having his way with you in his usual obnoxious manner. I ordered the monk to acknowledge me as his spiritual heir. To proclaim me as the Second Coming. Such a proclamation, coming from a man like him, would have strengthened my hand immeasurably. I would have achieved my ends far sooner than I in fact did. Instead, the old fool treated me to a deathbed diatribe. Tried to convince me that he had inferred who and what I was – and what I would become – by a sort of mystical osmosis. That he considered it his life’s duty to convert me to the ways of righteousness – for one devil converted, according to him, was worth a hundred saints. So I converted him instead. Into a cadaver. I folded a potato sack across his face. He scarcely struggled. As I said, he was as good as dead anyway.’

Antanasia took a step backwards. ‘But he called you a devil, Dracul. And you killed him for it. This is a terrible thing for you to acknowledge. What did he think you would become?’

‘Me? Become?’ Dracul laughed. ‘There’s no point listening to an old fool like that. He was out of his head. Seeing visions. You remember what the place was like, don’t you? The walls leached doom and gloom. Imagine living there for fifty years and scarcely talking to a soul. You’d be seeing devils too. I lived there for long enough myself. The cold ate into your bones like cancer and coloured everything you saw.’

‘What did he see? What did he say you would become?’ Antanasia had instinctively begun to edge further away from her brother.

Lupei shrugged. ‘I suppose it will do no harm now. What does it matter what an old man said nearly thirty years ago?’ He looked across at his sister – it was as if he was weighing up just how far he could test her – just how far she would be prepared to go in his service. ‘He said I was setting myself up in opposition to God. That I was arrogating Christ’s light to myself. That I would be like a dark mirror with no reflection to the people who would follow me. Those were his words. That was what he said.’