"The Fall. Book II of The Strain Trilogy" - читать интересную книгу автора (del Toro Guillermo, Hogan Chuck)
Interlude II Occido Lumen: The Story of The Book
The brown-skinned broker in the black velvet Nehru jacket twisted a blue opal ring around the base of his pinkie finger as he strolled the canal. “I have never met Mynheer Blaak, mind you. He prefers it that way.”
Setrakian walked alongside the broker. Setrakian was traveling with a Belgian passport, under the name Roald Pirk, his occupation listed as “antique bookseller.” The document was an expert forgery.
The year was 1972. Setrakian was forty-six years old.
“Though I can assure you he is very wealthy,” the broker continued. “Do you like money very much, Monsieur Pirk?” 1 do.
“Then you will like Mynheer Blaak very much. This volume he seeks, he will pay you quite handsomely. I am authorized to say that he will match your price, which, itself, I would characterize as aggressive. This makes you happy?” Yes.
“As it should. You are fortunate indeed to have acquired such a rare volume. I am sure you are aware of its provenance. You are not a superstitious man?”
“In fact, I am. By trade.”
“Ah. And that is why you have chosen to part with it? Myself, I think of this volume as the book version of ‘The Bottle Imp.’ You are familiar with the tale?”
“Stevenson, wasn’t it?”
“Indeed. Oh, I hope you aren’t thinking that I am testing your knowledge of literature in order to gauge your bona fides. I reference Stevenson only because I recently brokered the sale of an extremely rare edition of The Master of Ballantrae. But in ‘Imp,’ as you evidently remember, the accursed bottle must be sold each time for less than it was purchased. Not so with this volume. No, no. Quite the opposite.”
The broker’s eyes flashed with interest at one of the brightly lit display windows they strolled past. Unlike most of the other showcases along De Wallen, the red-light district of Amsterdam, the occupant of this particular window was a ladyboy, not the usual female prostitute.
The broker smoothed his mustache and redirected his eyes to the brick-paved street. “In any event,” he continued, “the book has a troubling legacy. I myself will not handle it. Mynheer Blaak is an avid collector, a connoisseur of the first rank. His tastes run to the discriminating and the obscure, and his checks always clear. But I feel it is only fair to warn you, there have been a few attempts at fraud.”
“I see.”
“I, of course, can accept no responsibility for what became of these crooked sellers. Though I must say, Mynheer Blaak’s interest in the volume is keen, because he has paid half of my commission on every unsuccessful transaction. In order that I might continue my search and keep potential suitors arriving at his door, so to speak.”
The broker casually pulled out a pair of fine white cotton gloves and fitted them over his manicured hands.
“If you will forgive me,” said Setrakian, “I did not journey to Amsterdam to walk its beautiful canals. I am a superstitious man, as I stated, and I should like to unload myself of the burden of such a valuable book at the earliest convenience. To be frank, I am even more concerned about robbers than curses.”
“I see, yes. You are a practical man.”
“Where and when will Mynheer Blaak be available to conduct this transaction?”
“The book is with you, then?”
Setrakian nodded. “It is here.”
The broker pointed to the twin-handled, twin-buckled portmanteau of stiff, black leather in Setrakian’s hand. “On your person?”
“No, much too risky.” Setrakian moved the suitcase from one hand to the other, hoping to signal otherwise. “But it is here. In Amsterdam. It is near.”
“Please forgive my boldness then. But, if you are indeed in possession of the Lumen then you are familiar with its content. Its raison d’être, yes?”
Setrakian stopped. For the first time he noticed they had wandered off the crowded streets and were now in a narrow alley with no one in sight. The broker folded his arms behind his back as if in casual conversation.
“I do,” said Setrakian. “But it would be foolish for me to divulge much.”
“Indeed,” said the broker. “And we don’t expect you to do so but — could you effectively summarize your impressions of it? A few words if you would.”
Setrakian perceived a metallic flash behind the broker’s back — or was it one of the man’s gloved hands? Either way, Setrakian felt no fear. He had prepared for this.
“Mal’akh Elohim. Messengers of God. Angels. Archangels. In this case, Fallen Ones. And their corrupt lineage on this Earth.”
The broker’s eyes flared a moment, then were still. “Wonderful. Well, Mynheer Blaak is most interested to meet you, and will be in contact very soon.”
The broker offered Setrakian a white-gloved hand. Setrakian wore black gloves, and the broker certainly felt the crooked digits of his hand as they shook — but, aside from an impolite stiffening, did not otherwise react. Setrakian said, “Shall I give you my local address?”
The broker waved his gloved hand brusquely. “I am to know nothing. Monsieur, I wish you every success.” He was starting away, back the way they came.
“But how will he contact me?” asked Setrakian, after him.
“I know only that he will,” the broker responded over a velvet-lined shoulder. “A very good evening to you, Monsieur Pirk.”
Setrakian watched the dapper man walk on, long enough to see him turn in toward the window they had passed and knock pleasantly. Setrakian turned up the collar of his overcoat and walked west, away from the inky water of the canals toward the Dam Platz.
Amsterdam, being a city of canals, was an unusual residence for a strigoi, forbidden by nature to cross over moving water. But all his years spent in pursuit of the Nazi doctor Werner Dreverhaven, the camp physician at Treblinka, had led Setrakian into a network of underground antique booksellers. That, in turn, had put him on the path to the object of Dreverhaven’s obsession, this extraordinarily rare Latin translation of an obscure Mesopotamian text.
De Wallen was known more for its macabre mix of drugs, coffee bars, sex clubs, brothels, and window girls and boys. But the narrow alleys and canals of this port city were also home to a small but highly influential group of antique book merchants who traded manuscripts all over the world.
Setrakian had learned that Dreverhaven — under the guise of a bibliophile named Jan-Piet Blaak — had fled to the Low Countries in the years following the war, traveling throughout Belgium until the early 1950s, crossing into the Netherlands and settling in Amsterdam in 1955. In De Wallen, he could move freely at night, along paths proscribed by the waterways, and burrow undetected during the day. The canals discouraged his staying there, but apparently the lure of the bibliophile trade — and the Occido Lumen in particular — was too seductive. He had established a nest here, and made the city his permanent home.
The middle of the town was island-like, radiating from the Dam Platz, surrounded in part, but not bisected by, the canals. Setrakian walked past three-hundred-year-old gabled buildings, the fragrance of hash smoke wafting out the windows with American folk music. A young woman rushed past, hobbling in one broken heel, late for a night of work, her gartered legs and fishnet stockings showing beneath the hem of a coat of faux mink.
Setrakian came upon two pigeons on the cobblestones, who did not alight at his approach. He slowed and looked to see what had captured their interest.
The pigeons were picking apart a gutter rat.
“I am told you have the Lumen?”
Setrakian stiffened. The presence was very near — in fact, right behind him. But the voice originated inside his head.
Setrakian jerked to his right. In the shadowy entrance to an alleyway stood a portly figure dressed in a long, formal coat and a top hat, supporting himself with a thin, metal-tipped cane.
Setrakian swallowed his adrenaline, his anticipation, his fear. “How did you ever find me, sir?”
“The book. That is all that matters. Is it in your possession, Pirk?”
“I… I have it near.”
“Where is your hotel?”
“I have rented a flat near the station. If you like, I would be happy to conduct our transaction there—”
“I am afraid I cannot travel that far conveniently, for I have a bad case of the gout.”
Setrakian turned more fully toward the shadowed being. There were a few people out in the square, and he dared to take a step toward Dreverhaven, in the manner of an unsuspecting man. He did not smell the usual earthy musk of the strigoi, though the hash smoke acted on the night like a perfume. “What would you suggest, then? I would very much like to conclude this sale this evening.”
“And yet, you would have to return to your flat first.”
“Yes. I guess I would.”
“Hmm.” The figure ventured forward a step, tapping the metal toe of its cane on a cobblestone. Wings fluttered, the pigeons taking flight behind Setrakian. Blaak said, “I wonder why a man traveling in an unfamiliar city would entrust such a valuable article to his flat rather than the security of his own person.”
Setrakian switched his portmanteau from one hand to the other. “Your point?”
“I do not believe a true collector would risk allowing such a precious item out of his sight. Or his grip.”
Setrakian said, “There are thieves about.”
“And thieves within. If indeed you want to relieve yourself of the burden of this cursed artifact for a premium price, you will now follow me, Pirk. My residence is just a few paces this way.”
Dreverhaven turned and started into the alley, using the cane but not reliant upon it. Setrakian steadied himself, licking his lips and feeling the bristles of his disguising beard as he followed the undead war criminal into the stone alleyway.
The only time Setrakian was allowed outside Treblinka’s camouflaged barbwire fences was to work on Dreverhaven’s library. Herr Doktor maintained a house just a few minutes’ drive from the camp, workers transported there one at a time by a three-man squad of armed Ukrainian guards. Setrakian had little contact with Dreverhaven at the house, and, much more fortunately, no contact with him whatsoever inside the camp surgery, where Dreverhaven sought to satisfy his medical and scientific curiosity in the manner of an indulged boy left alone to cut worms in half and burn the wings off flies.
Dreverhaven was a bibliophile even then, using the spoils of war and genocide — gold and diamonds stolen from the walking dead — to spend outrageous sums on rare texts from Poland, France, Great Britain, and Italy, appropriated with dubious provenance during the black market chaos of the war years. Setrakian had been ordered to do finish work on a two-room library of rich oak, complete with a rolling iron ladder and a stained-glass window portraying the rod of Asclepius. Often confused with the caduceus, the Asclepius image of a serpent or long worm coiled about a staff is the symbol for medicine and doctors. But the head of the staff on Dreverhaven’s stained-glass representation depicted a death’s head, the symbol of the Nazi SS.
Dreverhaven personally inspected Setrakian’s craftsmanship once, his blue eyes crystal-cold as his fingers traced the underside of the shelves, seeking out any rough spots. He praised the young Jew with a nod and dismissed him.
They met one more time, when Setrakian faced the “Burning Hole,” the doctor overseeing the slaughter with the same cold blue eyes. They did not recognize Setrakian then: too many faces, all indistinguishable to him. Still, the experimenter was busy, an assistant timing the interlude between the gunshot entering the back of the head and the last agonal twitching of the victim.
Setrakian’s scholarship in the folklore and the occult history of vampires dovetailed with his hunt for the camp Nazis in his search for the ancient text known as Occido Lumen.
Setrakian gave “Blaak” plenty of leeway, trailing him by three paces, just out of stinger range. Dreverhaven walked on with his cane, apparently unconcerned about the vulnerability of having a stranger at his back. Perhaps he laid his trust in the many pedestrians circling the Wallen at night, their presence discouraging any attack. Or perhaps he merely wanted to give the impression of guilelessness.
In other words, perhaps the cat was acting like a mouse.
Between two red-lit window girls, Dreverhaven turned a key in a door lock, and Setrakian followed him up a red-carpeted flight of stairs. Dreverhaven had the top two floors, handsomely decorated if not well-lived-in. The bulb wattage was kept low, downturned lamps shining dimly onto soft rugs. The front windows faced east. They lacked heavy shades. There were no back windows, and, in sizing up the room dimensions, Setrakian determined them to be too narrow. He remembered, at once, harboring this same suspicion at his house near Treblinka — a suspicion informed by camp rumors of a secret examining room at Dreverhaven’s house, a hidden surgery.
Dreverhaven moved to a lit table, upon which he rested his cane. On a porcelain tray, Setrakian recognized the paperwork he had earlier provided the broker: provenance documents establishing a plausible link to the 1911 Marseilles auction, all expensive forgeries.
Dreverhaven removed his hat and placed it on a table, yet still he did not turn around. “May I interest you in an aperitif?”
“Regrettably, no,” answered Setrakian, undoing the twin buckles on his portmanteau while leaving the top clasp closed. “Travel upsets my digestive system.”
“Ah. Mine is ironclad.”
“Please don’t deny yourself on my account.”
Dreverhaven turned around, slowly, in the gloom. “I couldn’t, Monsieur Pirk. It is my practice never to drink alone.”
Instead of the time-worn strigoi Setrakian expected, he was stunned — though he tried to hide it — to find Dreverhaven looking exactly as he had decades before. Those same crystalline eyes. Raven-black hair falling over the back of his neck. Setrakian tasted a pang of acid, but he had little reason to fear: Dreverhaven had not recognized him at the pit, and surely would not recognize him now, more than a quarter century later.
“So,” Dreverhaven said. “Let us consummate our happy transaction then.”
Setrakian’s greatest test of will involved masking his amazement at the vampire’s speech. Or, more accurately, his play at speech. The vampire communicated in the usual telepathic manner, “speaking” directly into Setrakian’s head — but it had learned to manipulate its useless lips in a pantomime of human speech. Setrakian now understood how, in this manner, “Jan-Piet Blaak” moved about nocturnal Amsterdam without fear of discovery.
Setrakian scanned the room for another way out. He needed to know the strigoi was trapped before springing on him. He had come too far to allow Dreverhaven to slip free of his grasp.
Setrakian said, “Am I to understand, then, that you have no concerns about the book, given the misfortune that seems to befall those who possess it?”
Dreverhaven stood with his hands behind his back. “I am a man who embraces the accursed, Monsieur Pirk. And besides — it seems no misfortune has befallen you yet.”
“No… not yet,” lied Setrakian. “And why this book, if I may ask?”
“A scholarly interest, if you will. You might think of me as a broker myself. In fact, I have undertaken this global search for another interested party. The book is rare indeed, not having surfaced in more than half a century. Many believe that the sole remaining edition was destroyed. But — according to your papers — perhaps it has survived. Or there is a second edition. You are prepared to produce it now?”
“I am. First, I should like to see payment.”
“Ah. Naturally. In the case on the corner chair behind you.”
Setrakian moved laterally, with a casualness he did not feel, finding the latch with his finger and opening the top. The case was filled with banded guilders.
“Very good,” said Setrakian.
“Trading paper for paper, Monsieur Pirk. Now if you will reciprocate?”
Setrakian left the case open and returned to his portmanteau. He undid the clasp, one eye on Dreverhaven the entire time. “You might know, it has a very unusual binding.”
“I am aware of that, yes.”
“Though I am assured it is only partially responsible for the book’s outrageous price.”
“May I remind you, Monsieur, that you set the price. And do not judge a book by its cover. As with most clich$eAs, that is good advice often ignored.”
Setrakian carried the portmanteau to the table containing the papers of provenance. He pulled open the top under the faint lamp light, then withdrew. “As you will, sir.”
“Please,” said the vampire. “I should like you to remove it. I insist.”
“Very well.”
Setrakian returned to the bag and reached inside with his black-gloved hands. He pulled out the book, which was bound in silver and fronted and backed with smooth silver plates.
He offered it to Dreverhaven. The vampire’s eyes narrowed, glowing.
Setrakian took a step toward him. “You would like to inspect it, of course?”
“Set it down on that table, Monsieur.”
“That table? But the light is so much more favorable over here.”
“You will please set it down on that table.”
Setrakian did not immediately comply. He remained still, the heavy silver book in his hands. “But you must want to examine it.”
Dreverhaven’s eyes rose from the silver cover of the tome to take in Setrakian’s face. “Your beard, Monsieur Pirk. It obscures your face. It gives you a Hebraic mien.”
“Is that right? I take it you don’t like Jews.”
“They don’t like me. Your scent, Pirk — it is familiar.”
“Why don’t you take a closer look at this book.”
“I do not need to. It is a fake.”
“Perhaps. Perhaps, indeed. But the silver — I can assure you that the silver is quite real.”
Setrakian advanced on Dreverhaven, the book held out in front of him. Dreverhaven backed off, then slowed. “Your hands,” he said. “You are crippled.” Dreverhaven’s eyes went back to Setrakian’s face. “The woodworker. So it is you.”
Setrakian swept open his coat, removing from the interior left fold a sword with a silver blade of modest size. “You have become indolent, Herr Doktor.”
Dreverhaven lashed out with his stinger. Not full-length, merely a feint, the bloated vampire leaping backward against the wall, and then quickly down again.
Setrakian anticipated the ploy. Indeed, the doctor was considerably less agile than many others Setrakian had encountered. Setrakian stood fast with his back to the windows, the vampire’s only escape.
“You are too slow, doctor,” Setrakian said. “Your hunting here has been too easy.”
Dreverhaven hissed. Concern showed in the beast’s eyes as the heat of exertion began to melt its facial cosmetics.
Dreverhaven glanced at the door, but Setrakian wasn’t buying. These creatures always built in an emergency exit. Even a bloated tick like Dreverhaven.
Setrakian feigned an attack, keeping the strigoi off-balance, forcing him to react. Dreverhaven snapped out his stinger, another aborted thrust. Setrakian responded with a quick sweep of his blade, which would have lopped it off at full length.
Dreverhaven made his break then, rushing laterally along the back bookcases, but Setrakian was just as fast. He still held the book in one hand, and hurled it at the fat vampire, the creature recoiling from its toxic silver. Then Setrakian was upon him.
He held the point of his silver blade at Dreverhaven’s upper throat. The vampire’s head tipped back, its crown resting against the spines of his precious books along the upper shelf, his eyes staring at Setrakian.
The silver weakened him, keeping his stinger in check. Setrakian went into his deepest coat pocket — it was lead-lined — and removed a band of thick silver baubles wrapped in a mesh of fine steel, strung along a length of cable.
The vampire’s eyes widened, but it was unable to move as Setrakian lay the necklace over its head, resting it upon the creature’s shoulders.
The silver collar weighed on the strigoi like a chain of hundred-pound stones. Setrakian pulled over a chair just in time for Dreverhaven to collapse into it, keeping the vampire from falling to the floor. The creature’s head dipped to one side, its hands shivering helplessly in its lap.
Setrakian picked up the book — it was, in fact, a sixth-edition copy of Darwin’s Origin of the Species, backed and bound in Britannia silver — and dropped it back into his portmanteau. Sword in hand, he returned to the bookcase toward which the desperate Dreverhaven had lunged.
After some careful searching, wary of booby-traps, Setrakian found the trigger volume. He heard a click and felt the shelf unit give, and then shoved open the swinging wall on its rotating axis.
The smell met him first. Dreverhaven’s rear quarters were windowless and unventilated, a nest of discarded books and trash and reeking rags. But this was not the source of the most offensive stench. That came from the top floor, accessible via a blood-spattered staircase.
An operating theater, a stainless-steel table set in black tile seemingly grouted in caked human blood. Decades of grime and gore covered every surface, flies buzzing angrily around a blood-smeared meat refrigerator in the corner.
Setrakian held his breath and opened the fridge, because he had to. It contained only items of perversion, nothing of real interest. No information to further Setrakian’s quest. Setrakian realized he was becoming inured to depravity and butchering.
He returned to the creature suffering in the chair. Dreverhaven’s face had by now melted away, unveiling the strigoi beneath. Setrakian stepped to the windows, dawn just beginning to filter in, soon to trumpet into the apartment, cleaning it of darkness and of vampires.
“How I dreaded each dawn in the camp,” said Setrakian. “The start of another day in the death farm. I did not fear death, but I did not choose it either. I chose survival. And in doing so, I chose dread.”
I am happy to die.
Setrakian looked at Dreverhaven. The strigoi no longer bothered with the ruse of moving his lips.
All my lusts have long since been satisfied. I have gone as far as one can go in this life, man or beast. I hunger for nothing any longer. Repetition only extinguishes pleasure.
“The book,” said Setrakian, daringly close to Dreverhaven. “It no longer exists.”
It does exist. But only a fool would dare to pursue it. Pursuing the Occido Lumen means you are pursuing the Master. You might be able to take a tired acolyte like myself but if you go against him, the odds will certainly be against you. As they were against your dear wife.
So indeed the vampire had a little bit of perversion left in him. He still possessed the capacity, however small and vain, for sick pleasure. The vampire’s gaze never left Setrakian’s.
Morning was upon them now, the sun appearing at an angle through the windows. Setrakian stood and suddenly grasped the back of Dreverhaven’s chair, tipping it onto its hind legs and dragging it through the bookcase to the hidden rear quarters, leaving twin scores in the wood floor.
“Sunlight,” Setrakian declared, “is too good for you, Herr Doktor.”
The strigoi stared at him, eyes full of anticipation. Here, finally for him, was the unexpected. Dreverhaven longed to be part of any perversion, no matter the role he might play.
Setrakian remained in tight control of his rage.
“Immortality is no friend to the perverse, you say?” Setrakian put his shoulder to the bookshelf, sealing out the sun. “Then immortality you shall enjoy.”
That’s it, woodworker. There is your passion, Jew. What have you in mind?
The plan took three days. For seventy-two hours, Setrakian worked nonstop in a vengeful daze. Dismembering the strigoi upon Dreverhaven’s own operating table, severing and cauterizing all four stumps, was the most dangerous part. He then procured lead tulip planters in order to fashion a dirt-less coffin for the silver-necklaced strigoi, in order to cut off the vampire from communication with the Master. Into the sarcophagus he packed the abomination and its severed limbs. Setrakian chartered a small boat and loaded the planter onto it. Then he sailed alone deep into the North Sea. After a struggle, he managed to put the box overboard without sinking the boat in the process — thereby stranding the creature between land masses, safe from the killing sun and yet impotent for all eternity.
Not until the box sank to the ocean floor did Dreverhaven’s taunting voice finally leave Setrakian’s mind, like a madness finding its cure. Setrakian looked at his crooked fingers, bruised and bleeding, stinging with the salt water — and clenched them into tangled fists.
He was indeed going the way of madness. It was time to go underground, he realized, just as the strigoi had. To continue his work in private, and to await his chance.
His chance at the book. At the Master.
It was time to repair to America.
The Master-Part II
The master was, above all things, compulsive in both action and thought. The Master had considered every potential permutation of the plan. It felt vaguely anxious for this all to come to fruition, but one thing the Master did not lack was conviction.
The Ancients would be exterminated all at once, and in a matter of hours.
They would not even see it coming. How could they? After all, hadn’t the Master orchestrated the demise of one of them, along with six serfs, some years ago in the city of Sofia, Bulgaria? The Master itself had shared in the pain of the anguish of death at the very moment it occurred, feeling the maelstrom pull of the darkness — the implacable nothing — and savoring it.
On the 26th of April, 1986, several hundred meters below at the center of the Bulgarian city, a solar flash — a fission approximating the power of the sun — occurred inside a vaulted cellar within fifteen-foot-thick concrete walls. The city above was shaken by a deep rumble and a seismic movement, its epicenter tracked to Pirotska Street — but there were no injuries, and very little damage to property.
The event had been a mere bleep in the news, barely worth mentioning. It was to become completely overshadowed by the meltdown of the reactor at Chernobyl, and yet, in a manner unknown to most, intimately related to it.
Of the original seven, the Master had remained the most ambitious, the hungriest — and, in a sense, the youngest. This was only natural. The Master was the last one to arise, and from whence it was created was the mouth, the throat, the thirst.
Divided by this thirst, the others were scattered and hidden. Concealed, yet connected.
These notions buzzed inside the great consciousness of the Master. Its thoughts wandered to the time the Master first visited Armageddon on this Earth — to cities long forgotten, with pillars of alabaster and floors of polished onyx.
To the first time it had tasted blood.
Quickly, the Master reasserted control over its thoughts. Memories were a dangerous thing. They individuated the Master’s mind, and when that happened, even in this protected environment, the other Ancients could hear too. For in those moments of clarity, their minds became one. As they once had been, and were meant to be forever.
They were all created as one, and, thus, the Master had no name of its own. They all shared the one — Sariel — just as they shared one nature and one purpose. Their emotions and thought were naturally connected, in exactly the way the Master connected with the brood it was fostering, and all that would spring forth after that. The bond between the Ancients could be blocked but could never be broken. Their instincts and thoughts naturally yearned for connection.
In order to succeed, the Master had to subvert such an occurrence.