74

‘Someone needs to keep guard from one of the upper rooms.’

‘Keep guard? Keep guard for what?’

Alexi was toasting the newborn baby in a second bottle of Kvint brandy. Radu had joined him. Even Calque had cracked open a bottle of 2007 Romanian Cramele Rotenberg he had found in the cellar and was to be heard loudly proclaiming that it was not unlike a home-grown St Emilion he particularly favoured – not unlike it at all.

Alexi, for his part, was clearly getting into his stride. Drink always made him voluble – too much drink made him vainglorious. ‘Who is going to turn up here in the middle of the night, Damo? A bus-load of tourists perhaps? Or maybe some pilgrims to Voronet who have lost their way in the white-out? The only visitor we’re likely to get is a wolf, attracted by the smell of Yola’s cooking. And I can’t see him knocking on the door and asking to be let in.’ Alexi struck Radu on the shoulder, inordinately pleased with the image he had conjured up for himself. ‘No, Damo, if you feel the urge to go upstairs and stand guard over us like John Wayne, please be my guest. Me and Radu are going to get good and drunk. Maybe Captain Calque will get drunk too?’ Alexi grinned broadly. ‘Hey! Mr Policeman! Are you going to water the baby’s head with us?’

Calque, who was already on his third large glass of Merlot Captura, nodded sagely, as if he had just been asked to encapsulate the essence of Schopenhauer’s determinism in one easy-to-remember sentence.

The birth of the baby had had a strange effect on them all – Calque more than anyone. Sabir could see that his friend was in no mood to take responsibility for anything more that night. Nature, it seemed, had triumphed – for the time being at least – over rationalism. The men were celebrating both the birth of a baby and their own deliverance from evil – the urge was clearly an antediluvian one, shared by a thousand generations of scattergood forefathers. Sabir wondered why he was unable similarly to let go. Then, all of a sudden, he knew.

He shrugged, forcing the unwanted image of Lamia back out of his mind. Normality. Routine. Action. That’s what he needed. The shrug was his way of pretending that the steamroller that had flattened his life was made of cardboard, not steel.

They’d already settled Lemma and Lenis – Radu having drawn the line at the name Stentora despite Calque’s impassioned pleas – into the snugly heated parlour, and fastened the front door from the inside so that the lodge was sealed tight. Sabir, for his part, had located the main fuse box and tried the master electrical switch, but nothing had happened. It seemed that, in the depths of winter anyway, the entire grid for that part of the mountains was switched off.

After cleaning Lemma and the baby and making them as comfortable as possible, Yola had gone off to fire up a second wood-burning stove in one of the unoccupied rooms. This one had a convenient flat top with a couple of removable cooking grids. Now she was busy heating up the contents of some of the cans she had found, and melting snow in a never-ending stream on the second hob. She had also uncovered some old potatoes and a few desiccated apples in a forgotten vegetable tray – she was mixing these with some tinned pork and white beans to make a stew.

In other words everyone had decided on their respective roles bar Sabir.

Sabir understood himself well enough by now to know that he was incapable of winding swiftly down after the exertions of the last few hours. And drink alone had never punched his ticket. He clearly needed to find some other form of displacement activity.

He walked down the corridor and chose himself an exceptionally ugly Romanian-made Dragunov ‘Tigr’ hunting rifle from amongst the ordnance held in the armoury. The chain that ran through the trigger guards was attached to the walls with a set of four simple screws. It took him two minutes to unscrew them with his Swiss Army knife.

He scratched around and pocketed a box of 7.62mm ‘Russians’ that he intended to chamber later. After a moment’s hesitation he isolated three shotguns and two cartons of Brenneke-style shotgun slugs that were probably intended for the dispatch of large game that had not been killed outright by a visiting hunting party’s rifles. He leaned the shotguns up against the door next to the room they’d allocated for the nursery. Then he went upstairs.

He found the ideal observation spot in the central bedroom on the third floor of the house. With the shutters open he had a double-view across part of the lake and down the valley to the first blind corner. Nothing approaching the lodge from either the front or the sides could hope to get by unseen – and the back of the lodge was protected by the lake. The storm had gentled a little in the past half-hour, and now the moon’s reflection on the recently settled snow lit up the surroundings like a sports arena prior to shutdown.

Sabir grunted and hurried back downstairs. He ducked inside the armoury. Yes. There it was. An IOR 10x56 hunting scope. Pointless attaching it to his rifle – without zeroing in and matching to the rifle it was as good as useless. But he could use it in lieu of binoculars.

Alexi poked his head out of the room in which Yola was doing her cooking. Behind him, Sabir could hear the sound of raised voices and laughter.

‘Come on, Damo. Don’t be a killjoy. Come and have a drink with us. Supper’s going to be ready soon. You need to wet your whistle first.’

Sabir clambered back upstairs as if he hadn’t heard. If they’d all conveniently forgotten about Crusader Andrassy, Mihael Catalin, and the failed attack on Radu and Lemma, he hadn’t.