He had gone on to explain how each quatrain in the cycle appeared to point towards the events in just one specific run-up year. The list, in its entirety, covered the first French nuclear test in Algeria, the serial end of the French and British Empires, the Berlin Wall, Yuri Gagarin’s trip into space, the Kennedy brothers’ assassinations, the Chinese Cultural Revolution, the Arab/Israeli Six Day War, the US Defeat in Vietnam, the Cambodian Genocide, the Mexico City earthquake, the First and Second Gulf Wars, the 9/11 Twin Towers Disaster, the New Orleans Floods and the Indian Ocean Tsunami.
According to Sabir’s theory of Nostradamus’s intentions, as each event unfolded just as the seer had predicted, the exact End date of the cycle would, in consequence, became ever more firmly fixed in people’s minds. This would then enable the world’s population to come to terms with what awaited them and – if at all possible – do something about it. This part of Nostradamus’s master plan had not worked out quite as the seer intended.
Instead of being one amongst millions in on the secret, Sabir was now the only man on earth who knew that the prophecy earmarked for the present year purported to describe the location of a new visionary who would either confirm or deny the end date – a person capable, like Nostradamus, of seeing into the future and channelling the information found there. Only this person could tell the world what awaited it – regeneration or apocalypse.
The final-but-one prophecy in the 52-year cycle went on to describe the birth and identity of the Second Coming and his symbolic role against the Antichrist. It described how the knowledge of the birth of the Second Coming would dilute the Antichrist’s power, and make him vulnerable. And how this knowledge would gather together both believers and non-believers in a tidal wave of righteousness combating the forces of evil.
This information Sabir kept rigorously to himself. There clearly had to be a reason why Nostradamus had given his prophecies to the Gypsies for safekeeping, and that reason was that the Second Coming, ergo the Parousia, was due to be born of the direct line of the guardians of the prophecies.
This child was now on the way, and Yola, Sabir’s blood sister, was to be its mother. She had conceived the child on the beach at Cargese, in Corsica, after her notional – although entirely voluntary – kidnap by her long-time sweetheart, Alexi Dufontaine. Yola had confided to Sabir that she had conceived the child at the exact moment she lost her virginity, just as a flight of ducks had cast their shadow over the mating couple. Later, after Alexi had symbolically plucked out her eyes – Yola had used the Gypsy euphemism for female sexual ecstasy when describing the event – a male dog had run up to her on the beach and had licked her hand. This was how she knew their child would be a son.
More than four centuries before, Nostradamus had given the Samana family the location and safekeeping of the prophecies precisely in order to protect them from the prophecies’ unintended consequences. The fact that the Parousia was to emerge from the most hated, reviled, and discriminated-against portion of the world population – people with no clear land of their own, and no clear identity beyond that which they carried with them – would form a necessary part of the supranational healing process. The Gypsies were a nomadic people, shunned and sidelined by virtually all established cultures. Always the optimist, Nostradamus must have reckoned that if the world were ever to accept a saviour from amongst such a company, it must first – almost by definition – have learned the virtues of tolerance and inclusiveness.
Sabir shook his head in despair. It was clear that the world simply hadn’t come that far yet. Forbearance and inclusiveness were as far off the agenda as they had been in Nostradamus’s time. People paid lip service to ideas of colour-blindness, religious tolerance, and fair play, but if ever their own little bailiwicks were threatened, they very swiftly reverted to racial protectionism and national isolationism – ‘strangers out’ still seemed to be the motto in extremis. As a result of this, nothing on earth would ever get Sabir to divulge Yola’s true identity and whereabouts, and through her, the identity of her unborn son. Not to Calque. Not to anybody.
The penultimate prophecy in the cycle went on to describe the Third Antichrist – a being who would, if nothing was done to prevent him, trigger 2012’s final holocaust. That, too, needed to be kept secret.
But Sabir had to have something to sell to his publishers and the public at large. A suitable hook on which to hang his story. Or what old-time comedians would have called a shtick.
The safest bet seemed to consist of the narrative of his search for the unique visionary Nostradamus had spoken of in that year’s prophecy. A person apparently so in tune with the matted web of time that they could disentangle its threads and read the future from them.
If this person existed then Sabir would find him. And to heck with the Countess, the Corpus Maleficus, and the de Bale twins.
8
Sabir straightened up from checking underneath his three-year-old Grand Cherokee. The garage had been locked tight. He didn’t think there had been any way that the twins could have gained access to his vehicle.
Still, forewarned is forearmed. Both Achor Bale and the French police had used electronic tracker systems during their pursuit of Sabir and his friends in France. Sabir had never encountered such systems before that time, but he would certainly not overlook them again. He needed his car to get to the airport, and he needed that car to be clean. The last thing he wanted was for the twins to dog his trail all the way to Saudi Arabia.
He locked and alarmed the garage door behind him and trudged back towards the house. Since the events of the night before he had taken to carrying the shotgun with him wherever he went, trusting that his neighbours wouldn’t think he was partly off his trolley, and call the cops. He’d worked out a possible cover story to deal with that eventuality – something about a rogue opossum that had been eating through his telephone wires – but he hadn’t had cause to try it out on anyone yet, as none of the neighbouring householders appeared to have noticed his new, military-style incarnation.
Once inside the house he flung a few articles of clothing into a carryall, and gathered up his emergency reserve of travellers’ cheques, his credit cards, his passport, and his cell phone charger. Then he stowed the shotgun back on its meat hook in the wine cellar, sealed the house as tightly as he was able, and started back towards the garage.
Halfway there he slowed down, ready to run again. A car was parked outside the garage door, completely blocking the entrance. There was no way on earth the gate could be swung up and over, as it was designed to be.
Sabir looked swiftly behind him. Surely they wouldn’t come at him here, out in the open?
The driver’s door of the car opened, and a familiar face appeared over the lip of the roof-rack.
Sabir dropped his carryall. ‘Captain Calque. Jesus H. Christ. You almost gave me a heart attack. I thought it was the twins again. What the heck are you doing here?’
‘The twins?’ Calque stepped away from the car, his facial expression taking on a new urgency. ‘The twins have been here already? And you are still alive?’
Sabir flashed Calque a look. ‘As luck would have it.’ He picked up his carryall and continued walking. He glanced inside Calque’s car. It was empty. ‘This an official visit of some sort? Tidying up loose ends?’ Sabir was trying hard to make his voice casual. He didn’t want Calque interfering in his plans. Muddying the waters. Queering his pitch for the new book.
Calque allowed his gaze to play up and down the road. He, too, was now busy playing a part. ‘No. I took early retirement. I was invalided out of the service. I’m working on my own time now.’