‘Agent provocatrice. Who taught you your French?’
Sabir laughed. ‘My mother. But her heart wasn’t in it. She wanted me to be an All-American, like my father. But I let her down. I turned into an All-or-Nothing instead.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Neither do I.’
They’d reached Bouboul’s caravan. The picket where the three horses should have been tethered was conspicuously empty.
‘Great. Someone’s made off with the bloody lot. Or maybe Bouboul’s sold them for dog meat? Do you know what shanks’s pony is, Yola?’
‘Wait. There’s Bouboul. I’ll ask him what happened to them.’
Yola hurried across the road. Watching her, Sabir realised that he was missing something – some clue that she had already picked up. He crossed the road behind her.
Bouboul threw his hands up in the air. He was talking in Sinti. Sabir tried to follow but was unable to do more than understand that something unexpected had happened and that Bouboul was loudly disclaiming any responsibility for it.
Finally, tiring of Bouboul’s harangue, Sabir drew Yola to one side. ‘Translate, please. I can’t make out a word of what this guy is saying.’
‘It is bad, Damo. As bad as it could be.’
‘Where have the horses gone?’
‘Alexi took one. Twenty minutes ago. He was exhausted. He had been running. According to Bouboul he was so worn out he could hardly mount the horse. Thirty seconds later another man came running up. This man was not tired at all. He had strange eyes, according to Bouboul. He didn’t look at anybody. Talk to anybody. He simply took the second horse and rode off after Alexi.’
‘Jesus Christ. That’s all we needed. Did Bouboul try and tangle with him?’
‘Does he look like a fool? They were not Bouboul’s horses. They weren’t even ours. Why should he risk himself for someone else’s property?’
‘Why indeed?’ Sabir was still trying to figure out what might have triggered the chase. ‘Where is the third horse? And was Alexi carrying anything? Ask him.’
Yola turned to Bouboul. They exchanged a few brief sentences in Sinti. ‘It’s worse than I thought.’
‘Worse? How can it be worse? You already said it was as bad as it could be.’
‘Alexi was carrying something. You were right. A bamboo tube.’
‘A bamboo tube?’
‘Yes. He had it clutched to his chest like a baby.’
Sabir grabbed Yola’s arm. ‘Don’t you see what that means? He found he prophecies. Alexi found them.’
‘But that is not all.’
Sabir closed his eyes. ‘You don’t need to tell me. I picked up the name while you were talking. Gavril.’
‘Yes, Gavril. He was following both of them. He arrived about a minute after the eye-man. It was he who took the third horse.’
37
Gavril was twenty minutes out of Les Saintes-Maries when he remembered that he didn’t have a weapon. He had thrown it at Stefan in the scuffle.
The thought struck him with such an impact that he actually stopped his horse, mid-canter and spent a full half minute debating with himself whether to turn back.
But the thought of Badu and Stefan persuaded him to continue. The pair of them would be baying for his blood. They would be out scouring the streets of Les Sainte-Maries for him at this very moment – or else having their knives sharpened at Nan Maximoff’s pedal-stone. At least, on horseback, in the middle of the Marais, no one would have a hope in Hell of catching him.
The two men in front of him had no idea that he was following them. In fact, now that they’d finally left the roadway, he didn’t need to get within five hundred metres of them, such was the impact of the trail they were leaving behind them through the brush. Two galloping horses churned up the ground in a very satisfactory manner and Gavril could easily tell new horse tracks from old ones.
He would simply follow Alexi and the gadje ’s trail and see what occurred. If the worst came to the worst and he lost them, he could always ride on through to the outskirts of Arles and hop on a bus. Make himself scarce for a while.
After all, what did he have to lose?
38
Alexi was making up some ground ahead of the eye-man – but not quite as fast as he had hoped. The mare had had ample time to recuperate from that morning’s ten-kilometre ride, but Alexi suspected that Bouboul had neither fed nor watered her, for her tongue was already hanging loose at the side of her mouth. She was clearly on her last legs.
His only comfort lay in the knowledge that the gelding the eye-man was riding would be in a similar condition. The thought of being forced back on foot, however, in such an isolated environment and pursued through the marshes by a madman with a pistol, didn’t bear contemplation.
So far he had stuck to the exact reverse of the path that they had followed that morning, on their way from the house. But Alexi knew that he would soon have to veer off and strike out into the unknown. He couldn’t risk leading the eye-man back to their base – for when Sabir and Yola discovered the two horses gone, they would have no option but to return to the one place they knew he might come back.
His only hope lay in eluding the eye-man completely. To have any chance at all of doing this, Alexi knew that he needed to gather his wits about him. To control his rising sense of panic. To think clearly and constructively and at full gallop.
On his left, beyond the Etang des Launes, was the Le Petit Rhone. Alexi knew it well, having fished there with a succession of male relatives on and off since childhood. To his knowledge, there was only one ferry-crossing nearby – at the Bac du Sauvage. Saving that, you were forced to cross the long way round, by road, maybe ten kilometres further upriver, at the Pont du Sylvereal. There was, quite literally, no other way into the Petite Camargue – unless you flew, of course.
If he could time the ferry exactly right, he might stand an outside chance. But what were the odds? The ferry made the trip every half-hour, on the half-hour. It might already be positioned on the far side of the river, gearing up for the return journey – in which case he was trapped. The river, as he remembered it, was about two hundred metres wide at that point and flowed far too strongly for an exhausted horse to manage. And he didn’t have a watch. Should he throw all his eggs into one basket and try for the ferry? Or was he mad?
The mare stumbled and then caught herself. Alexi knew that if he carried on in this way she would simply burst her heart – he had heard of horses doing this. She would drop like a stone and he would break his neck in a flat-out fall over her shoulders. At least that way the eye-man would be saved the trouble of having to torture him, as he’d obviously done with Babel.
Alexi was two minutes ride from the ferry-crossing. He simply had to chance it. He cast one final, despairing glance over his shoulder. The eye-man was fifty metres behind him and gaining. Perhaps the gelding had snatched a drink of water at Bouboul’s? Perhaps that was why he wasn’t tiring as fast as the mare?
The barriers were down at the ferry-crossing and the ferry was just putting off from the shore. There were four cars and a small van on board. The crossing was so short that no one had bothered to climb out of their cars. Only the ticket collector saw Alexi coming.
The man raised a warning hand and shouted, ‘ Non! Non! ’
