The Marks Of Cain Part 31

Across the equator, across all the darkness of Africa to Namibia.

They remained quiet and subdued, even with each other. Even when they were safely on the plane to Africa they hardly spoke, as if the momentousness of what they were doing barely needed explaining. Flying into the unknown.

While the plane traversed the vast and lightless Sahara David wondered what they would find in Africa would they locate Angus Nairn and Eloise? What if something had happened to them? What if they couldn't find them? What then? Just hide on a beach? Forever? That's if they survived any infection they had caught. From the corpses in the cellar.

He tried to stifle his fears. Whatever their fate, this mystery needed to be resolved so seeking out the centre of the mystery was the right thing to do. If they were being chased they may as well try and outflank their pursuers, get to the solution first. Another reason to take the gamble, to fly to Namibia.

Amy was dozing next to him. David picked up the inflight magazine and flipped to the atlas pages: Namibia was a huge country. A big orange rectangle. He scrutinized the names of the few towns indicated.

Windhoek. Uis. Luderitz. Aus. Very German. Relics of the German Empire. But there were so few few towns? A big empty nothingness. towns? A big empty nothingness.

For most of the twelve-hour flight, Amy slept. Sheer exhaustion. David watched her beloved face, and draped her with an airline blanket to keep her warm. Her breathing slowed into deeper unconsciousness.

Eventually David, too, shut his eyes, and waded into sleep.

The next time he woke, the sun was blazing hot through the opened portholes, and they were landing in an airport the likes of which he had never seen before.

It was desert. Even the airport was desert. A couple of pathetic palm trees fringed the grey dusty runway, but immediately beyond the tarmac huge sand dunes rose, like frozen orange tidal waves, with wisps of dust whipping off the top.

The groggy pa.s.sengers descended the ladder into the furious heat. The African sun burned as soon as it touched the skin. Amy lifted a magazine to s.h.i.+eld her face, David turned up his s.h.i.+rt collar to protect his neck. The airport the island of baking asphalt in a sea of hot sand was so tiny they could walk to the terminal in two minutes.

Pa.s.sport control was three impa.s.sive guys apparently speaking English; ten minutes later they were on Namibian territory. A smiling black taxi driver approached them as they exited the terminal building into the starkly sunlit car park. Where did they want to go?

Their furtive researches in the cybercafes of Biarritz had yielded some results: Swakopmund, the place Eloise was directing them, was on the coast, in the centre of the Namibian littoral. It was also, it seemed, where they might find people willing to take them into the deserts and the mountains. Trekkers and outfitters.

David said to the cab driver, 'Swakopmund. Please?'

'OK! Swakop!'

The bags were thrown casually in the boot. The taxi spun out of the car park and onto a road that cut through the desert. Through the dazzle of the clear African air, David could see a thin horizon of blue.

'Is that the sea?'

'Yes sir!' the taxi driver said. 'Walvis and Swakop by the sea. By the sea with many many flamingoes. But do not make schwimmen, very jellyfish and many many sharks.'

The car swerved, they were being buffeted by a fierce wind. The driver laughed.

'You come wrong season!'

'We have?'

'Winter is cold. Windy and maybe even rain.'

'Cold?'

'Yes sir. But Swakop always windy. But cold now. Benguela current.'

David stared out at the endless enormous undulating dunes; they were a harsh yellow-white in the remorseless sun. Sand was blowing across the road orange snakes of dust, writhing and dissolving.

Now they were here, the desire to find Eloise seemed a rather forlorn decision, almost quixotic. They were in a land of nothingness, a country of mighty desolation, with a population of barely two million scattered across a sun-crushed vastness the size of France and Britain combined; they were looking for one man and one woman. In the wilderness. Would this hotel even exist?

The cab driver was pointing. 'Swakop!'

David stared at the cityscape as they rolled down the streets. The sense of dislocation was profound. Looming suddenly from the sand was a pastiche Bavarian town: gingerbread houses, spired German churches, little Teutonic shops with curlicued Gothic signs for German newspapers and Becks bier. Yet the pavements were busy with black people, and orangey-beige people, and a few couples that looked American or maybe Australian, as well as obviously German people wearing...lederhosen?

The cab driver took them to the hotel Eloise had named; he approved of their choice because of his brother who had once stayed there and 'had so many oysters he was sick'. The hotel was big, white, scruffy and the paint was blistered by the wind but it was right on the sea, overlooking the pier and the wild, blue-grey ocean.

Some white guys were fis.h.i.+ng off the pier, in thick anoraks and jumpers. Bloodstained buckets of oily fish showed their success. They were talking in German and laughing. They were munching black cake.

When David saw the fish in the pail he thought of the elvers that Jose had cooked: his last meal. Then the gunshots, the suicide, the obscene blurt of blood on the wall. The body liquor squelched across the cellar floor.

They bought fleeces at the hotel shop. Then they showered and changed and began their quest. At once. They were tired, to the point of exhaustion but the need to find Eloise was urging them on. Driving the weariness away with two strong coffees, each, they attempted to do what they had come for. Find safety, find Eloise, find an answer.

Their 'contact' was a deputy manager at the hotel: Raymond. After a few minutes' searching they located him, a small, rather sad looking Namibian, peering at an aged computer screen in the office behind Reception.

He took one quick look at them a white man and a white woman asking for information about Eloise and he nodded, gravely. Then he said: 'I know what you have come for. But first you must tell me.' He almost bowed. 'What was Eloise doing the moment you first saw her?'

David came right back with the answer: 'She was in her house, with a shotgun, pointed at us.'

A knowing nod was their response. Raymond turned, and reached down to the drawer of his desk to retrieve, and hand over, a slip of paper. Written on it was a row of digits and letters. David recognized the style.

'GPS coordinates.'

'Yes.'

'But where?'

The deputy manager shrugged.

'Damaraland? The bush. That is all I know...Now please I work, I am sorry we are very busy. Swiss tourists.'

He glanced at them with a sharp, wary expression. He obviously wanted these worrying people with these strange arrangements out of his office. This was fair enough, but it didn't leave Amy and David much better off than before. A bunch of coordinates, pointing them into the wilderness? David knew from his reading that Damaraland was a truly vast expanse of desert and semi desert, north and east of Swakop. How could they find someone, one or two people, in the middle of that? Even with GPS?

They got straight to work, finding someone to take them in-country. But it was hard; it was impossible. They stepped into travel shops, car hire companies, outfitters for treks. When they explained their requirement, the shop managers and outdoorsmen openly laughed. One Australian guy, in shorts despite the cold, threw a manly arm around David's shoulder, and said: 'Listen, mate, Damaraland Damaraland? There are no roads. You need an expedition. You need two or three fourbys, and a f.u.c.king bunch of guns. This isn't Hyde Park. Try kitesurfing.'

And so it went, and so it continued, and then the fog came. They'd been there for two days of increasing anxiety and it was windy and cold throughout; and then the weather worsened. The Swakopmund fog descended: the infamous mists of the Skeleton Coast.

It was like Scotland in December: thick and dismal, shrouding the gay little cakeshops in dankness, sending the lederhosened German tour groups into their warm snug hotels, veiling completely the black factory boats that floated inert on the cold Namibian sea; only the yellow-orange men sitting on their haunches seemed impervious: narrowing their sunburned eyes, and sitting in their cardigans and holey jeans, staring at the grey damp nothing. They looked like the Basque men, in berets, staring at the mountain fog in the villages of the high Pyrenees.

On the foggiest night of all, as they were getting truly desperate, when they were s.h.i.+vering their way along Moltkestra.s.se, they found a bar they hadn't seen before: Beckenbauer Bar.

It was tiny and gabled and Bavarian-looking, and it was noisy, even from fifty metres away. Keen to escape the shrouding dampness they stepped inside the bar, which was giddy and packed; people were singing in German and ordering steins of lager and clas.h.i.+ng the steins together. Chortling.

Amy and David found a table in the corner and sat down, warm at last. A black waiter came over and he asked them, above the noise of the singing German voices, if they wanted anything.

David said, hesitantly: 'Ein bier...?'

The man smiled. 'It's OK. I speak English. Tafel or Windhoek?'

'Ah,' said David, slightly blus.h.i.+ng. 'Tafel, I guess.'

Amy was staring, with an expression of perplexity, at the exuberant and warbling German men. She motioned to the barman as he turned to go.

'Excuse me?'

'Yes, miss.'

'Why...' She was talking quietly. 'Why are they so happy?'

The waiter half shrugged.

'I think it is Ascenscion Day. I believe.'

Amy frowned.

'Ascension Day, that's forty days after Easter, isn't it? Usually in May.' Her frown deepened. 'This is September.'

The waiter nodded.

'No, not Jesus. Hitler.'

32.

Simon tried not to shout as he read the visitor's book: to shout in triumph. David's father had been here. had been here. His father had actually been here. Fifteen years ago. He'd worked out the same link. He was halfway through the same mystery. His father had actually been here. Fifteen years ago. He'd worked out the same link. He was halfway through the same mystery.

The last thunderclap abated. And then Simon's excitement faded. So David's father, Eduardo Martinez, was here fifteen years back? So what? That didn't mean he found anything.

To search is to find?

Why the question mark? What did that mean? If Eduardo Martinez had actually found something surely he would have put To search is to find. To search is to find. Just that with no question mark. But then, why did he leave a comment at all? He must have felt he was at least searching for something. It was no Just that with no question mark. But then, why did he leave a comment at all? He must have felt he was at least searching for something. It was no coincidence coincidence he'd been here. he'd been here.

Simon was glad when a buzzer sounded the monastic signal for dinner. He was hungry, as well as confused. And he could still hear the ceaseless prayer of his conscience: go home, go home, go home. Find Tim, find Tim, find Tim.

At the rasping sound of the buzzer the whole monastery had come alive. From all the concrete corners, from the chapel and the roof and the cells and the gardens, monks and pilgrims and retreaters were all gathering in the big refectory, to drink from jugs of local wine and eat salad and lamb from the long steel buffet.

Feeling an almost first-day-at-school bashfulness, Simon sat at the longest table with the most people. His shyness fought with his anxious need to get information. Quickly. He had one evening. Then leave before dawn. He wanted to drink wine. He drank water. Between courses he texted his wife: any news? any news? She texted back: She texted back: no news. no news.

At the other end of the long table, the monks sat and ate. Some conversed with the visitors, some stayed quiet and contemplative; one bald monk in his sixties with a sorrowful face talked, very pa.s.sionately, with a young blond man, evidently a visitor. The monk was in his ordinary day clothes like the other monks; the sad old monk seemed to be drinking a lot of wine.

Simon spoke with people on his own table. A Slovakian artist, seeking inspiration. A Belgian dentist having a religious breakdown. Two Danish students who were apparently here for a lark: the scary monastery that sent people mad! A couple of earnest Canadian pilgrims. Believers.

The storm had pa.s.sed; blue and purple darkness enveloped the depths of rural France. Simon had finished his dinner and was again despairing. He had a few hours to go. He was sitting forward, feeling lonely, sipping coffee. Yet again he texted Suzie.

Sorry no news.

But then, as he sat there, hunched forward, muscles tensed, he overheard it, the telling phrase: Pius the Tenth. Pius the Tenth.

The journalist edged slightly nearer this overheard dialogue, even as he stared resolutely ahead.

Two people were chatting next to him. A fortyish monk, and a pilgrim: an older woman. American, or Canadian maybe. He listened in.

'Brother McMahon has been here eight years now.'

'Uh-huh?'

'As I said, Miss Tobin, the previous librarian was...well...rather a bad influence. Member of the Society before they were excommunicated.

'Gotcha. And this was when? When you were a seminarian?'

'Yes. Many young monks trained here in the 1990s. But the librarian was like a malignancy, in his teaching. The Society had a lot of influence here, in those days. He taught injudiciously. From inappropriate texts and materials. But now we have Brother McMahon. And we are no longer a teaching inst.i.tution. Would you care for some more wine?'

The woman proffered her gla.s.s. Their dialogue dwindled.

Simon finished his coffee, not even tasting it; he tasted a very small triumph instead. So that was it the explanation. Tomasky had been here, an eager young Catholic seminarian. And he'd learned something from the librarian.

But what was it? What What changed changed people? There were supposedly secrets in this monastery which could induce a severe religious militancy, even murderous violence. people? There were supposedly secrets in this monastery which could induce a severe religious militancy, even murderous violence.

And yet there was no sign of the archives themselves.

He stood up and got ready to leave the refectory maybe he should do another search through the books in the library. Perhaps the archives were hidden in the books: in a foreign language. Greek. Arabic. Or in code code?

Of course this was desperate, but he was desperate. He had one evening and that was that: go home and hug Conor and find Tim. Simon turned for the exit and he saw the young blond visitor, the man who had been chatting with a monk, was now sitting at the long table, on his own.

Pensive.

What had the two of them been discussing so pa.s.sionately? The man and the monk?

The journalist took the opportunity and extended a hand. The young man smiled cheerily.

'Guten tag. Julius Denk!'

'Sssimon ah...Edgar Harrison.'

A stupid mistake. But Julius Denk didn't seem to notice or care. He was animated and yet distracted. His thin-rimmed spectacles reflected the lamplight. He spoke good English; he said he was a trainee architect from Stuttgart, interested in Le Corbusier. The journalist knew just enough about architecture, from his father, to sound like he was also an architect, albeit a pretty stupid one. They swapped opinions.

Then Julius talked of the balding monk: their conversation at dinner.

'That monk. Very unhappy. American Irish. He drinks. Has been here seven years.'

'Yea?'

'Ja. I think he is the archivist. He says he is having a crisis of faith. He is losing his faith in G.o.d. Not so good for a monk I think!' The young German laughed. 'I feel sorry for him you know. But he talk too much. The wine is good, nicht wahr nicht wahr?'