A novice brought glasses and a bottle of vinars, a brandy made in the monastery and popular throughout Moldavia. Sarah and Ethan were still deeply shocked by Ilona’s news. Almost as shocking as the deaths was the radio news that no one in Sancraiu would tell the police who had been responsible for the killings. Aehrenthal had walked away from yet more deaths, as a man walks from a field where he has shot birds all day.
‘Take your time,’ said Gavril. ‘I have lost good friends to this man. I know a little of what you have gone through. Start at the beginning. For the moment, there is no rush.’
By the time they reached halfway, they were joined by six visitors, all summoned by Father Gavril. Two were monks from Bistrita, the other four came from neighbouring monasteries, from Agapia and Secu, further north, near Târgu-Neamt, and from Papgarati and Horaita, nearer at hand. They were introduced in turn as they arrived, and Ethan forgot each name within minutes. He went on with his story.
Sometime just before noon, there was an interruption. Father Gavril was summoned outside and did not return for twenty minutes. When he did so, his face was ashen, and he had to steady himself as he took his place at the table again. He seemed not to recognise anyone at first, then he started speaking in Romanian. Whatever he said, it seemed to shock the other monks as badly as it had shocked him.
He looked up and caught sight of Ethan and Sarah, as if they had been ghosts and only become visible to him now.
‘You can see there has been more bad news,’ he said. ‘This is a blow for all of us. Father Iustin has been murdered in Putna. They have flogged him to death. If you are up to it, I would like you to join us and the other monks to pray for his soul. If he revealed anything about where you were headed, then we are all of us dead already.’
They spent over an hour in the church. Ethan and Sarah stood at the back, watching the monks and hieromonks gather to pray. Vast clouds of incense enveloped the nave, and beyond the iconostasis the voices of the mourners rose and fell.
They brought the sacred icon of St Anne that had been presented to the monastery long years ago by the learned ruler of the Byzantine Empire, whose son, Constantine XI, sat on the throne when Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. The icon was reputed to work miracles, and as it was presented to each of the monks in turn, Ethan could almost believe it held some redemptive power. He held Sarah’s hand, at first to convey a sense of comfort and, as time passed, with greater warmth than either of them might have expected.
At the end of the first hour, Father Gavril summoned his six companions and beckoned to Ethan and Sarah to come with them.
‘We have to leave here now,’ he said. ‘I do not believe Father Iustin will have said anything. But not all of us are strong all of the time. Your young friend is not fit to travel; I spoke to the doctor earlier, and he was adamant. There’s a small nunnery near here where she’ll be well looked after. Someone will take her there.’
They said goodbye to Ilona, in moments snatched from the urgency of their departure. She seemed dead to them, her whole world ripped away. It was not simply grief she suffered, for she had lost what was beyond grief and the passing of nature. Her face was red and swollen, and she could say nothing to them in English. Ethan felt a terrible guilt, for he’d brought her into this ravenous thing without thinking. Her willingness to help had destroyed her life and the lives of her family. Sarah sat beside her on the bed, telling her of her undying gratitude, trying to explain what it meant for Ilona to have done so much towards putting an end to Aehrenthal and his insane mission.
‘I’ll kill him for you,’ Sarah said, not knowing if she could.
Ilona said nothing, but she pressed Sarah’s hand. Next moment, they were gone.
They had enough cars to travel in, and the monastery supplied them with warm clothes and food.
‘Where are we going?’ Ethan asked.
‘Back to Transylvania. Don’t worry, I have no intention of taking you back to Sancraiu or anywhere near it. We will go to Sighisoara. You will like Sighisoara, it is very medieval, very touristic. You can walk in the streets and people will say, here is just another tourist come to look at the famous Clock Tower. You and Sarah can stroll hand in hand in Citadel Square like lovers.’
‘Why would you call us that? Lovers.’
‘Because when I saw you both at the back of the church just now, I sensed something between you. Just because I’m a monk doesn’t mean I’m not sensitive to such things. Our priests marry here, like your Anglicans. Well, perhaps I was mistaken.’
‘Why Sighisoara?’
‘The Church has a retreat house just outside town. The last group left there about a week ago, and no one else is expected to arrive until the end of January. Maybe not even then if the weather is bad. I want to have a base to work from. Others will arrive to join us, once word gets out. We need to know what Aehrenthal is doing. If he cannot find you, he cannot get the coordinates to find the lost city. That will give us time.’
Ethan shook his head.
‘Sarah started to keep a journal while we were in the hut near Sancraiu. It got left behind when we had to run. She was using it to get her head together, to help her make sense of the rapes…of all that. But this morning she remembered something. She mentioned my grandfather’s letter and the fact it held the coordinates. She thought it was still in England, in the library at Woodmancote where we left it. But I brought it with me. We have the coordinates of Ain Suleiman.’
23
A Call to Arms
The Wolf’s Lair
Castel Lup
Sancraiu
Romania
To all soldiers of the Legion of Longinus, all Pauperes commilitones Christi Templique Solomonici, poor fellow soldiers of Christ and the Temple of Solomon, knights of the Novo Ordi Templi, troopers of the Nyilaskeresztes Párt, warriors of the Vaterländische Front, all you gods and demons of the new Reich, Illuminati of the New Day, Aryan upholders of true morality, all you who struggle with your hearts and souls to bring about the Day of Justice, the New Order, the Final Triumph.
Adolf Hitler was right. Right about the Communists, right about the homosexuals, right about the Gypsies, right about the leftist intellectuals, the so-called writers, the poets, the painters, the jazz musicians. Yet what do we see all around us today? Rights for homosexuals, rights for women as if they are men, rights for intellectuals, rights for ‘artists’. We see, do we not, the results of the British, American, and Soviet attacks in the World War against the Reich. Fornication, sleaze, corruption, and fatal diseases spread by whores and gays and rapists everywhere. The rise of Russia, the spectre of communist China, the jumped-up Arab states, the arrogance of Israel.
Hitler was especially right about the Jews. Of all races, the most perfidious; of all peoples, the most corrupt; of all nations, the most tainted by lies and conspiracies and double-dealing. We read of them in Mein Kampf and in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, where their scheming, their cunning, and their devilish conspiracies are revealed. Is there any war they did not provoke? Any rebellion they did not unleash? Is there any plot they did not contrive, any assassin they did not arm, any well they did not poison, any child whose blood they did not spill to make Passover matzos?
Hitler was right about the Jews, but his enemies defeated him in war and left him powerless. He killed six million of the devils; but he did not live to finish the job.
That is for us to do. That will be our first accomplishment. What the Arabs have failed to do for over sixty years, we shall achieve in minutes. Do you doubt it? Can you doubt it? If so, you are no friend of mine, and a traitor to our common interest.
Why do I make such a claim in the first place? Because I am a prophet? I have never said so. Because God has bestowed unique insight upon me? I think no such thing. Because an angel comes and whispers in my ear? I have no such pretensions.
I say it now because great things have come to pass, and greater are expected soon. I have now in my possession the L
ance of Longinus. Not a fake. Not some product of the Middle Ages. The true relic. With it I have the Grail, fresh from the lips of Christ. I have the Crown of Thorns. The titulus. The nails.
But it will not end here. One of my trusted lieutenants has just returned from England, where he has found a journal, and in that journal he has found the location of the place where Christ is buried and where his bones lie to this day.
It is time to make your preparations. The leaders who have been at the Wolf’s Lair will now return to you in order to begin preparations for phase one. The five relics will go with one of them, for you to see and touch. They will be taken from place to place so that all may share in their power. In the meantime, I shall head for the place where the tomb is situated. When I return, I shall bring with me the bones of Christ and the bones of his family.
This is our destiny. Our struggle. Our resurrection. A new order will arise from the ashes of the old, and we shall live to see it. The shadows of the old world are passing, and soon there will be bright sunshine for all coming generations.
Sieg Heil
Grand Master Egon von Aehrenthal
24
Love Lies Bleeding
‘If I’m to be honest,’ said Gavril, ‘there’s not much our little society can do in the event that Aehrenthal steps up to the plate and starts batting.’
The monk had done much of his schooling at the American International School in Bucharest and had acquired an American accent, American mannerisms, and a brain full of American information, from baseball scores to the films of Bruce Willis. But Ethan had heard him speak in Romanian to his fellow monks. He was a tall man. His body bore not an ounce of extra flesh, his face was gaunt and ascetic, his eyes seemed to stare out of another world. When he spoke, a great passion seemed to be stored within him.
They were in a small room normally used for lectures during the retreats. Someone had painted the walls salmon pink, and in the watery light of mid-January, the room seemed bathed in its steady glow, as if the walls were coral and the three of them creatures of the sea. On one wall hung a brightly coloured calendar on which the main festivals had been highlighted in yellow.
‘There are only two hundred of us,’ he went on. Sarah sat across the table, her eyes resting on the stern monk, then moving away to rest on Ethan.
‘We call ourselves Ostea Domnului, the Host of the Lord. We possess weapons, but we are not an army in any real terms. Aehrenthal and his associates make up a much more formidable force. We could never hope to defeat them in direct combat. And though it pains me to say it, we cannot defeat them through the power of prayer alone. I’m a priest, but I’m also a pragmatist.’
‘What will they do if they find out where Wardabaha is?’
Gavril shrugged.
‘They will take the bones. At the very least the bones of Jesus. But I suspect all the family, to give more chance of finding old tissue from which to start the cloning. They’ll get them back here for that. Aehrenthal has a laboratory in Bucharest. He bought it several years ago, and he has had scientists working there since then. Very low-grade stuff to begin with, straightforward somatic cell nuclear transfers. But they’ve been learning. Rapidly. He brought in some researchers from the Kichijoji Institute in Kyoto and gave them all the money and all the toys they might need to take their work further. They have already cloned seven human embryos and grown them to six months. A second batch is on the way, and they are confident they will reach full term. They have human volunteers who have the foetuses implanted in their wombs at an early stage, and who carry them until they miscarry. Of course, all that will change when the first one gives birth. I believe there’s some sort of competition between the women.’
Sarah shook her head. She couldn’t see just where this was leading.
‘Surely,’ she said, ‘surely half the genes would come from the women. They could be from anywhere. They might not even be Jewish, let alone…’
‘Aehrenthal would never employ Jewish women, not even for this purpose. In any case, the women are irrelevant. One will be chosen to bear the Christ child, and it would be a great honour for her, but she would contribute nothing to the bloodline. The embryo will be created in test tubes before it’s inserted into her uterus. If he can get cells from Mary’s bones and Jesus’s too, it would be an ideal combination.’
‘Isn’t this all years away?’ asked Ethan.
‘The cloning? Not at all.’
‘No, I mean the child. He has to grow before it can mean anything.’
‘Not for Aehrenthal’s devotees. If they believe he has the Christ child in his possession, they’ll throw themselves at his feet. He wants to rule himself, for as long as he can.’
‘And if the child grows up…well, like Christ?’
‘Then he may well have an accident. Now – I have to attend weapons practice. You two should stay here.’
For the rest of that week, there were weapons training sessions in the hills above the retreat. Ethan had gone out with them a few times, and passed on his own firearms expertise, such as it was. Sarah had insisted on being shown how to operate each of the guns they used. There was no time for her to become proficient, but she mastered the basic techniques and could shoot anything from a pistol to a sub-machine gun with reasonable accuracy.
Gavril went out with the other monks. Their faces were grim. They knew that Aehrenthal must be aware that Sarah and Ethan were the only other people who knew of the existence of the oasis of Ain Suleiman and the lost city of Wardabaha that lay beneath its sands. Killing them and anyone associated with them would be one of his priorities. If he found them, they would have to fight for their lives against killers who cared nothing for any human being unlucky enough to get in their way.
The retreat was a ramshackle building with a wooden tiled roof, built in the 1920s in the traditional Moldovian fashion and designed by a pupil of Alexander Bernardazzi. The original building had been added to over the years. Twisting corridors branched from one another and branched again, doors opened onto unexpected passages, windows revealed fresh vistas. Most of the residents slept in a dormitory, all men or all women depending on the retreat. More senior residents had small rooms to themselves. And there were two bedrooms for married couples, which were used from time to time for visiting priests with wives. These last two had been given to Sarah and Ethan; the beds were larger and the mattresses thicker, they had two armchairs each, and little tables. The walls were studded with icons, like most walls in the house.
From the kitchens came the sound of pans clanging and cooks exchanging banter.
‘Let’s go down to the lounge,’ said Ethan. ‘I want to talk about Ilona.’
There was a room towards the front of the house that was used for silent prayer and meditation sessions in small groups. Usually, it was reserved for the senior clerics, but it had become a meeting room for Gavril and his friends. Unlike most of the other rooms, it had only one icon on the wall, a nineteenth-century copy of the famous Holy Virgin of Vladimir, which shows the Christ child with one arm about his mother. This copy was heavily masked by an oklad, a gilded frame of metal that revealed only the faces and hands of the sacred pair, and the feet of the Christ child. Sarah had been captivated by it from the moment she stepped into the room.
The room was set as far away from the kitchens as possible, in order to preserve the silence so necessary for the monks’ meditations.
An old sofa had been placed opposite the Virgin. They sat down wearily.
‘Are you feeling any better?’ Ethan asked.
‘I think so. I feel better every day. Except for the nightmares. I still have those.’
‘I’ve told you. I’m willing to sit with you at night. In case you wake.’
‘I do wake. Several times a night. I don’t always dream, or I don’t remember. It’s all right during the day. I have you, for one thing. You make me feel safe.’
‘Speaking of safety, they tell me Ilona’s safe at the nunnery. They’re loo
king after her well. One of them is a retired psychologist and is treating her. Aehrenthal won’t be able to reach her there. And you’ll be all right here.’
She took his hand.
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she said, and her grey eyes looked at him and looked away again. ‘I’m not happy when you aren’t around. If I look up and you aren’t there, I feel sad.’
He squeezed her hand.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘That will pass. It won’t be long before you can get about perfectly well on your own.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake, Ethan,’ she spat, tearing her hand away. ‘You’re the most perverse, obtuse, short-sighted creature I’ve ever come across. Why the hell I ever fell in love with you, I can’t begin to imagine.’
He stared at her as if she had just confessed to a small murder or a gigantic perversion, the wilful killing of small birds or a longing to be whipped by slave boys wearing leather clothes.
She felt the sudden anger drop from her as quickly as it had come. His face was an exercise in perplexity.
‘Don’t tell me you didn’t know,’ she said. ‘I’ve known what I feel about you for ages. Since Christmas Eve.’
His mouth fell half open. His eyes blinked as if he fought back tears.
‘You were so… They hurt you so much,’ he said, as if explaining.
She shook her head, then leant forward and kissed him softly.
‘They hurt me a little,’ she said, pulling back to look at him again. ‘Now I need you to make things better.’
He drew her to him, one hand behind her head. There had been several women before this, he thought, several promising beginnings that had led to nothing. She was no more beautiful than any of them, no more intelligent than some, no more warm-hearted than others, yet he loved her out of all measure. He had wanted her since that first night as well, and had only held back out of his original fear of incest.
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