Angelopolis A Novel Page 0,64

asked.

“That would certainly be useful for our purposes,” Sveti said.

“Everyone has their own ideas about what he’s doing up there,” Azov said. “He’s up there with only the most essential modern conveniences. No telephone line, no electricity. He heats his house with wood and carries water from a well. He’s nearly impossible to get to. I’m in the same country as the man, and I’ve been to his fortress—it is the only way to describe what he’s built in Smolyan—only a handful of times, always to exchange and discuss seeds. By reputation he is an explorer and a man of science, but in person he’s more like a Bulgarian goat herder—difficult to rile and terrifying in his vengeance toward those he believes would cross him. He’s tough as nails, even at one hundred years old.”

Vera looked at Azov, astonished. “He’s one hundred years old?”

“Yes,” Azov said. “The first time I met him, in 1985, he looked every bit like the seventy-six-year-old man he was. Later, after we began sharing the antediluvian seeds, he had the appearance of a man no older than fifty. Now he lives with a woman who is forty-five. She became pregnant with his child ten years ago.”

“He is ninety years older than his daughter?” Sveti said. “It’s completely impossible.”

“Not if he’s been using the seeds for his own purposes,” Azov said.

Vera said, “There were rumors in the nineties that Valko was supplying his second wife Gabriella with vials of a liquid distillation from the plants in his garden. Well into her eighties she was actively fighting the Nephilim, going out on missions, enduring the hardships that agents half her age struggled to endure. She died during a mission. Nobody understood how she had the strength to even participate. She seemed to defy her body. The seeds you gave Raphael Valko are the only explanation. He must be growing his own antediluvian garden up there.”

“Whether he is mixing their oils or growing the seeds into plants, it is impossible to say. You should remember that the seeds Valko has cultivated are the very same ones that Noah grew before the Flood, and Noah—as you know—lived to be nearly one thousand years old. It is impossible to know what nutritional substances the plants contained or what their effects would be, but it is obvious that Valko has used them to his advantage.”

“Have you considered that he may have already found the formula for Noah’s medicine?” Vera asked.

Azov sighed, as if he had considered the question many times before. “The truth is that any number of things could be happening in Raphael Valko’s workshops. He is the man who discovered the location of the Watchers’ prison in 1939. He is also the man who organized and sustained the society’s resistance during the Second World War. Dr. Raphael Valko is not a man who leaves anything to chance. I’m certain that whatever he’s doing up there in the Rhodopes, he’s approaching it with the same single-minded drive that has always allowed him to succeed where many others have failed.”

“Aren’t you afraid that one of these days you will go up there and find him dead?” Vera asked.

“Not in the least,” Azov said. “But I’m very much concerned that he’ll turn us away when we get there. There’s no guarantee that he’ll help us with this concoction at all. Although he’s connected to the society through various unofficial channels—myself included—he left angelology decades ago. There’s every chance that he won’t want to provide the missing element—the Valkine—even for something as alluring as the elusive medicine of Noah.”

Vera drove onward, moving into the foothills of the Rhodope Mountains. While her inclination was to get to the village of Smolyan as fast as possible, the terrain worked against her. As they climbed higher and higher, the roads cut through increasingly steep passes, forging a sloped conduit overhung by rock on one side and a steep drop into an abyss on the other. She forced herself to glance at the ravine, the precipice opening over a tumbling darkness that, with one wrong turn, would take them over the edge. Even in daylight, when she could anticipate the tight hairpin turns, the drive would have been daunting. She kept the gear low and powered up the Range Rover, keeping a slow, steady speed.

Cresting the peak of a ridge, the jeep was suddenly awash in the light of a full moon, which illuminated a forest of birch and oak and pines sloping off beyond them. The