The Marks of Cain Read online

  ‘Aha. The Lovely Zealots.’ He slapped a hand down on the table, gleefully. ‘Chalk one up! I should have guessed. Bigtime zealots. With lots of money and powerful sympathizers. If not them then another church sect. Yep, the Catholic church was, as you know, one of the prime movers in the closing of Stanford; they hated us, too. Totally hated GenoMap. And of course, thinking about it, the Society would be the obvious people to do the dirty work for Il Papa. And I mean dirty work. Left footers versus web footers. Hah.’ He gulped beer, and continued. ‘Always fascinated me, the infinite human capacity for violence. Where does it come from? Frankly I blame the girls. The chicks. If it wasn’t for them men would just sit around having a nice pint and a chat about the fitba.’

  ‘Sorry? Girls?’ said Amy, a defensive tinge in her voice.

  David stared at the Scotsman, who was chewing almost as fast as he was talking. Nairn was consuming an enormous meal; yet he was so skinny. Angular cheekbones, wild red hair, green eyes a-glitter in the gloaming of the semi desert.

  ‘Yep,’ he said, tearing off another fistful of flatbread. ‘Women. The female of the species. They’re the ones who guide human evolution. Via sexual selection, no? And how do they steer our evolution? Towards nastiness – by choosing nasty guys. True or not? OK, yes, they all pretend they like metrosexual chardonnay sippers but they really go for the ruffians, don’t they? The bastards, the bad boys, the Miguel Garovillos – and so these bastards reproduce and so the evolution of man tends towards ever greater cruelty, perhaps explaining the pageant of blood that is twentieth-century history.’ He burped. ‘Thank God I take the Tube not the bus.’

  An animal barked in the gloomy depths beyond the camp. A jackal or a hyena. Angus was momentarily quiet, eating, drinking, smiling broadly and knowingly at Alphonse, his gracefully handsome helpmate. The rest of the camp dwellers seemed to have fled with the dying of the day. Disappeared unto their villages.

  Amy was asking questions: ‘So Eloise is safe but you’re still camped out here. Why?’

  ‘Coz I’m testing the last racial variants.’ Angus shrugged, contented. ‘Dotting some genetic i’s and crossing some chromosomal t’s. And we’re nearly done. The Spanish fucking Inquisition are too late. I’ve got the Namibian blood tests in the car, ready to go.’ He slugged some Tafel and burped robustly. ‘We just have to pack up tomorrow, head down to the Sperrgebiet. Get to safety.’ A pause. ‘We’ve got all we need down there. Kellerman Namcorp have been preparing for this, for years, just in case they closed down GenoMap. We’ve been setting up parallel facilities, in the Sperrgebiet, so we could finish off, if it came to it.’ He chortled. ‘And so it goes. We need a few more days, do the last tests on Eloise, and…Canasta! The Fischer experiments are reiterated.’

  He turned and looked solicitously at Alphonse. ‘Alphonse, have a bloody beer. You work too hard.’

  ‘Sure, Angus.’

  ‘Alfie, I mean it. C’m’ere.’ The Scotsman pulled the young ochre-skinned man towards him; Alphonse had glittering feline eyes, slender limbs. Angus kissed him on the lips.

  Alphonse laughed, and pushed him away – ‘Mad Scotsman!’ he said, and gestured at the diminishing food. ‘Did you eat all the kudu…Again? You’ll get fat!’

  ‘Me? Get fat? As if.’ The Scotsman lifted his T-shirt and slapped his white stomach. ‘The six-pack of Apollo!’ Then he glared at Alphonse as he sat down again. ‘Don’t make fun, my little bambusen, or I shall be forced to wield the sjambok.’

  ‘No. No, sir. White massa he very kind. He give me de good job picken de cotton.’

  The two men guffawed, then kissed again. Angus turned and offered Amy some of the kudu steak from the big steel bowl. David stared at Alphonse.

  Angus was turning:

  ‘Jesus, jesusfuck. What’s that?’

  The Scotsman stared down the valley. Now the noise was discernible. David realized he’d been hearing it for a while – but in the back of his mind he’d thought it a distant growling animal, or some effect of the wind in the thorn trees.

  There were cars. Big dark cars were sweeping suddenly, up the dry river bed: heading for them. A roar of engines and lights. David stared. The fear was like a physical pain.

  ‘The tents – the guns are in the tents –’

  Angus was up and moving – but then a rifle shot split the still and sultry air. It whipped the sand between the tables and the tents. A warning shot.

  Angus sat down, very slowly.

  David looked the opposite way. More dust clouds. More. Two more. Coming at them. From every direction, looming out of the murky shadows. The largest car, a black car with black windows, swept up to the camp and parked in a savage curve. Spraying sand over the food with a kind of bullying contempt.

  A tall lean figure climbed out, his gait and his twitch and his pale scarred face quite distinctive, even in the darkness.

  Miguel stared at them.

  ‘Found you.’

  35

  The last Vespers had been sung in the chapel. The last pilgrims had retreated to their cells.

  Simon crossed the refectory, and climbed the sloping corridors. He shut the narrow door of his cell; and waited. Mind racing, mind racing. The pyramid. He’d got lucky. He’d got very lucky. He had maybe found in a day what Eduardo Martinez had failed to find in a week. The pyramid. The archives. Concealed in the prim and creepy pyramid, peeping from the centre of the building. Obvious yet discreet.

  For a moment he admired the dark artistry of the design. It had a sinister genius.

  Then he lay back on the bed.

  The first snores and echoes of the nightwatch rattled through the priory. Simon sighed, and fretted about Tim, as he stared at the absurdly low ceiling. It felt like the ceiling was actually descending upon him – if he looked away, then looked back, he got the distinct impression the concrete ceiling was edging down, millimetre by millimetre.

  Eventually it would crush him. Like a witch killed by the laying of stones. Squassation. He could feel the pressure of the stones on his chest. More and heavier stones. Till the ribcage collapsed. Like Tomasky lying on top of him, pressing down the knifepoint.

  Enough!

  He had to do his task. Just do it. Have one attempt. Then go home and protect his son and wife and save his brother.

  He rose and stepped outside. The corridor was midnight dark. The monastery was creaking and whispering, like an Elizabethan galleon riding the oceans. Creaks and groans and weird distant noises. From this vantage, he could hear a hundred people breathing in their sleep. Like the entire building was respirating. Like it was a huge concrete lung. With a malignancy at its heart. A black mass on the scan.

  The walk to the reception room took him two minutes. And yes, the key was hanging there, from its hook, it was actually marked Pyramide.

  But the glass keycase was locked. Of course.

  Simon looked left and right and, absurdly, up and down, and he unclasped a Swiss Army knife. He prised at the latch of the door. He heard a noise. He turned. Sweating. The rooms and corridors were empty. Clammy with tension, he returned to his task: he jemmied the knife-blade viciously.

  The glass door swung open. Half panicked, he grabbed at the key on its hook, then scuttled out into the dark empty corridor.

  He was ready. Running very stealthily he made his way down the darkened steps, down some more empty steps, down towards the longest sloping corridor.

  A sharp voice stopped him. It froze through him, made him shrink against a wall. He stared, panicked, into the gloom. But then Simon realized: this stupid building. The voice was probably three floors up. Maybe just the drunken archivist, yelling in his faithless sleep. Cursing the god of nightmares.

  The concrete ramp led to the huge bronze door of the basement chapel. It was unlocked; it didn’t even seem to possess a lock. Indeed it swung open to the touch, with surprising grace and ease: beautifully balanced. As it turned on an axis, in the middle of the door space, it became a vertical bronze line.

>   Behind the door was a horizontal window, filtering silver moonlight. The two lines formed a cross.

  An electrifying sensation.

  Simon gazed about him; he couldn’t help it – this was the first time he’d had a serious look at the chapel, when it was quiet, and solemn, and unused – and now he realized: it was purely beautiful. The lofty concrete space was set with serene wooden pews, and an archaic altar; on the far side, the slots of stained glass windows tinted the external starlight – speckling the imperious chamber with exquisite parallels of colour.

  He felt a strange desire to pause. Here. Forever.

  But his conscience stabbed at his heart.

  The Pyramid.

  The chapel ran the length of the building, and there had to be an entrance somewhere in the rear, which would direct him to the mysterious inner sanctum of the building.

  He searched for two minutes, and found it quite easily: a small metal door, in the dry shadows of a corner. Simon reached in his pocket, and slotted the key. He could hear another noise. From somewhere. An edgy scraping noise. Echoing down the concrete corridors.

  Come on, come on, come on.

  The lock yielded. He stepped down the narrow, almost totally blackened passageway. Advancing into this space was like squeezing into a tube. Simon wondered if this was what it was like: being in his brother’s mind. The walls closing in, the darkness pressing on all sides, every day and forever.

  The walls tapered so severely he had to turn edgeways to shuffle through, then at last the passage concluded at another rusty steel door, barely visible in the gloom; Simon pushed it.

  He fell into a bright pyramidal whiteness.

  Simon protected his dazzled eyes with a hand.

  Sitting on a chair in the middle of the room was the archivist monk. Brother McMahon. His teeth were red from wine.

  ‘There are two keys to the pyramid, Mister Quinn.’

  36

  In the gloom of the Damara twilight, Miguel looked older, more savage, even feral. The jentilak. He had a gun levelled at David’s head. Boots clattered on the sand as four, six, and now eight men got out of the black-windowed cars. One of them spoke, with an American accent. Enoka lurked at the back.

  ‘So that’s Angus Nairn,’ the American said. ‘And David Martinez and Amy Myerson?’

  Miguel nodded. ‘Yes. But the Cagot girl, Eloise? Where is she?’

  The accomplice shrugged.

  ‘Can’t see her – anywhere.’

  Miguel spat the words:

  ‘Check! Check the cars and the camp. Alan! Jean Paul! Enoka!’

  The men did as they were ordered; they moved swiftly between the Land Rover and the pink nylon tents, pitched along the dry river bed. The search took them barely half a minute, to confirm that it was just Alphonse and David, and Amy and Angus.

  The tallest accomplice, Alan, spoke up. ‘Sorry, Mig. No sign. Must’ve moved her.’

  ‘We will find her. Mierda. Pincha puta! We will find her.’ Miguel scowled at the sky – and then seemed to master himself. ‘Cuff them.’

  Someone came at David from the side. He was pulled to his feet, and his hands were yanked down and roughly hand-cuffed behind his back. The same was happening to Alphonse, Angus and Amy. Then he was rotated, facing away from the table, so he couldn’t see what was happening. Now he was staring out into the nocturnal silence of the desert; the blackness was darkened by the contrast of the car headlights.

  ‘Amy?’

  ‘I’m here,’ she said, her voice directly behind. ‘What are they doing? David?’

  Her question was overcut by a louder voice. Miguel was interrogating Angus. Slapping him. David could just about see this for himself: it was happening to his left.

  ‘Tell me. Where is Eloise?’

  Angus shook his head. Enoka came over. Once again the squat little man appeared painfully subordinate to Miguel – a cub seeking the approval of the alpha, the dominant male, the leader of the wolf pack. Miguel nodded.

  Enoka grabbed Angus’s hand and bent back the fingers.

  Angus grimaced with the pain.

  Miguel stood close. ‘Tell me. Where is she? Have you done the testing yet? Have you?’

  Angus spat a dusty answer: ‘Get to fuck.’

  ‘Just tell us. Or we will hurt you. More and more. And more.’

  ‘If you kill us you will never know. Do what you like.’

  Miguel’s face twitched; he walked a few metres away, then turned.

  ‘Why are you in Damaraland? You haven’t finished the tests…have you?’

  David craned to his left to see.

  There were men surrounding the Kellerman Namcorp Land Rover, searching inside. A different voice, this time French accented, called across.

  ‘Nous avons! We have the blood samples, Miguel.’

  Garovillo smiled. ‘Milesker. Make sure you get all the test tubes.’

  The men continued their search.

  Again David called, quietly: ‘Amy?’

  He still couldn’t see her, she was right behind him. The dazzling headlights shone in the darkness, trained on the central drama. It was like a spotlit stage-set, in the very darkest of theatres.

  And Miguel was the actor, the tragic hero, smiling wistfully into the moonlight. He gazed at David. He looked at Alphonse. His smile widened. He looked at Alphonse again, as if confirming a suspicion. He spoke, to no one in particular.

  ‘Ezina, ekinez egina…All we need to do is find Eloise. They haven’t finished the experiments. They still have the blood tests from their Namibian researches, still here – still to be analyzed. This much is clear.’ He moved towards Amy. ‘This is good. And yes…Amy Myerson, very nice of you to let my father kill himself. And my mother. Jakina…the little Zulo.’ Amy was visibly trembling, perceptibly terrified.

  Miguel spat his anger.

  ‘Aizu! We need to persuade Angus Nairn to tell us where Eloise is. And for that we need help. I see you have a bonfire ready. The desert night is cold, no?’ The terrorist frowned and smiled, at the same time. ‘Let us go and warm up…’

  David observed, quite helpless. Amy was being brusquely shoved along; then he felt a kick at his own calves, forcing him to move. They were being shunted into the wider clearing, away from the table, into the space between all the cars. A large unlit campfire had been set, already, by Alphonse and the other assistants. David stared at the pyre of dry wood, and wondered where those other camp-helpers might be. Probably sitting happily in their village huts, asleep or eating. Oblivious to this fatal encounter several miles away, way up the shallow canyon.

  They were alone with Miguel and his men. They had no chance of rescue.

  The four of them were forced to kneel in the dust. Like captives of some Islamic cult, kneeling in the dust, waiting to be decapitated. Nearby was the unlit bonfire, the pyramid of desiccated firewood.

  They waited. The desert wind was cold now. Their captors were sitting and smoking in the doorways of their vehicles; still other men were minutely searching the Namcorp Land Rover.

  ‘Are they going to kill us?’

  Amy’s voice was strained with tension. David felt a yearning to hug her, protect her, save her. The same old hunger. But he was hand-cuffed and kneeling. All he could do was lie. He lied to Amy.

  ‘No. They need us to find Eloise…What’s the point in killing us?’

  ‘What the fuck are you talking about? Of course they will fucking kill us.’ Angus was laughing. ‘We’re dead. We’re geology. We’re French fucking toast. You were witness to his father’s suicide! He probably thinks you caused it. He knows you know his terrible secret. The darkness of the Garovillos!’ His laughter was replete with anger. ‘They will torture us first, try and find out where Eloise is. Then they will murder us. Out here in the desert. But, hey, there are worse places to die. Cumbernauld. You ever been to Cumbernauld?’

  Amy was crying.

  Angus laughed: ‘In fact I’d rather fucking die here than live in Cumbern
auld.’

  Garovillo had returned.

  ‘Good. Jenika. Noski. And now…’ He looked at Angus Nairn, and then at Amy and Alphonse, and David. Then back at Angus. ‘Doctor Nairn. We really need to know where Eloise is, so I am going to rip it out of you. Rip it out of your fucking heart.’

  ‘Fuck you.’

  The terrorist’s smile flickered with barely repressed anger, then he pointed at Alphonse.

  ‘Take him. The boyfriend. The sexuberekoi. Him.’

  Miguel’s assistants dragged Alphonse to his feet. The young Namibian’s knees were trembling. Miguel glanced at each of the captives in turn. And spoke.

  ‘I always wonder…the witch burning stories, just a legend, no?’

  A shrivel of fear tightened inside David.

  ‘But now I wonder –’ Miguel’s smile was deep and sad ‘– what was it like? Watching someone burn to death? Haven’t you ever wondered? You must have done your research? Ez? The witch burnings?’

  Miguel put his face two inches from Angus’s face.

  ‘If you don’t tell us where Eloise is, we shall tie your little beige bumboy to a stake. And burn him alive. You like the pretty Baster boys, don’t you? The little ecru bastards? The marikoi coon?’ He swivelled. ‘So we cook him! A real faggot, fresh on the fire.’

  David flashed a glance of horror at Angus. The Scotsman’s face was impassive, and yet riven with fury.

  Then Angus spoke: ‘Cagot cunt.’

  Garovillo’s eyes burned.

  ‘Que?’

  ‘We know you are a Cagot. A shit person. Like your dad. Cagot.’

  Miguel’s face was twitching.

  ‘Absurd. But what do I care?’ He gestured, wildly. ‘Burn the boy. Agur.’

  Behind him his men were hammering a stake into the dust, in the middle of the dry tinderwood. A big wooden stake.

  Alphonse was writhing in the clutches of the silent men. His protestations were incoherent mumbles: he seemed over-whelmed by the horror, he was bleating, mewling. The stake was driven further. The moon was bright. Nightbirds scattered from dark trees somewhere out there in the wilderness. The Damara riverlands of dry canyons and camelthorns stretched all around, in the intensity of the dark.