Stormchild by Bernard Cornwell Page A

wife’s death with a superb assurance. Most of us, confronted with the mention of death, become tongue-tied and confused, but von Rellsteb’s comforting sympathy had been instant and seemingly heartfelt, and I, at last, began to understand how my daughter could have been attracted to this gaunt man. I remembered how Joanna had described him as attractive, and I could begin to see why; his long, thin face had the appeal of sensitivity and intelligence, which made him appear competent to handle the secret hurts of those he met. “You must understand, though,” von Rellsteb continued, “that your daughter is frightened.”
    “Nicole? Frightened?” I asked.
    “She thinks you will not forgive her.” Von Rellsteb paused to frown in thought. “Sometimes, you know, we do things, and then we find they are gone too far to be retrieved. Do you know what I mean?”
    “Not really,” I said.
    Von Rellsteb gave me a swift, apologetic smile. “I do not always express myself well in English. Nicole is frightened because she did not write or talk to you for so long that each new day makes it harder for her to risk facing the disappointment she knows you must feel.”
    “But I love her.”
    “Of course you do.” He smiled, complicit with my grief, then stirred the air with his hand as if, frustrated in his efforts to find the right words, he might conjure them from the night’s darkness. “I think Nicole knows you love her, but she fears you will be angry because of her absence. She even told me that, perhaps, you had disinherited her!” Von Rellsteb offered a small shrug, as if to share with me the ridiculousness of such a notion, and I did not think to notice that even the mention of disinheritance was an oddity in this admittedly odd rendezvous.
    “Disinherit her?” I said instead. “Of course not.”
    “Not that it matters,” von Rellsteb said loftily. “We should be above such mundane matters, yes?”
    “And I want to see her!”
    “Naturally you do, naturally!” Von Rellsteb said with eager understanding. Behind me the lightning flickered eerily to blanch the rippling water in the mangrove channel. “But it’s difficult,” von Rellsteb murmured after a pause.
    “What is?” I sounded hostile.
    “I try to keep the Genesis community separate from the world.”
    “Why? I thought you wanted to save the world?”
    He smiled. “We are not apart from the world, but rather from the people who make the world unclean. The sins of the fathers, Mr. Blackburn, are being visited on their children, so we children must be pure if we are to redeem our fathers’ world.” His thin, expressive face was suddenly lit by another sheet of lightning which rampaged across the Everglades. “I am expressing myself badly,” von Rellsteb went on, “but what I am trying to say, is that we in Genesis have forsaken family, Mr. Blackburn. It is a measure of the seriousness of our purpose.”
    The pretensions of his words struck me as preposterous. “Seriousness?” I challenged him. “Stink bombs? Oil in a swimming pool?”
    He smiled at the accusation. “Of course stink bombs are a joke, but those people at the conference are so, what is the word? Complacent! They talk and talk and talk, and congratulate one another on the purity of their commitment, but while they talk the dolphins are dying and the world’s hardwoods are being cut down and oil is being spewed into the seaways. I think it will be the Genesis community, and groups like Genesis, who will cleanse the world, not these fashionable environmentalists with their shrill talk and soft hands. I wanted the journalists at that conference to be aware of the need for extreme measures if the world is to be saved, so I used stink bombs. Would you rather I had used real bombs?”
    “Could you have?” I asked him coldly.
    “No, Mr. Blackburn, no.” His voice was very gentle, as though he dealt with a fractious child.
    “Where is Nicole?” I asked him.
    “In the