The Crypt Trilogy Bundle

by Bill Thompson

  In the distance they could hear the two-tone sirens of police cars. Gunshots apparently brought the authorities into the ghetto when other crimes wouldn’t. They’d be here in moments. She stuck the gold bar in her coat pocket, kissed Nicu’s cheek and ran away. She would never see him again.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Adriana ran through the squalid streets of the Ferentari ghetto, glad she’d paid attention when they walked in a half hour ago. As she waited for the traffic light to change, a filthy, toothless man came up behind her and squeezed her buttocks roughly. She drew back in fright and ran directly into oncoming traffic, dodging angry drivers but getting away. Then it happened again. One of the addicts she passed on a stoop began to chase her. She was terrified – she knew better than to be a woman dressed in nice clothing, alone in the Ferentari. She ran and ran, hoping she was still going the right way.

  After three blocks she popped out onto a broad avenue with tall trees, free from the ghetto and her pursuer at last. She hailed a cab, went to her store and had him wait. She was inside less than five minutes. First she used a hammer to destroy her cell phone. The pieces went in the trash. She pulled the rolling suitcase from its hiding place and tossed her credit cards, passport and a wad of euros she kept hidden behind the toilet into it. She quickly gathered some toiletries and a clean set of underwear. She was leaving with little more than the clothes she was wearing – plus a fortune in gold – but there wasn’t time to spare for anything else. Except one thing, the most important thing of all. She pulled her drug paraphernalia and five small vials of liquid from her nightstand drawer and put everything in her suitcase. She couldn’t leave without the essentials.

  The vials would get her through until she was situated somewhere. She preferred the old-fashioned way: spoon, lighter, citric acid and water to create liquid heroin for the syringe. It was potent and more satisfying. Liquid O was a new thing, very popular with people who didn’t want to inject heroin. It was sold in eyedropper vials and inhaled. It was therefore easy to conceal and didn’t attract attention like drug paraphernalia did. When you wanted a quick fix – like she needed right this moment – it was perfect. She had a long night ahead of her, and Liquid O would have to do until she could get the real thing.

  She hadn’t given much thought to her departure from Romania except for Nicu’s admonition that it should happen quickly and simply. She had the taxi drop her at the station, where she looked at the massive departures board and picked the next train leaving to any destination to the west. She paid cash for a private sleeper berth on the overnight train to Budapest and sat for an hour gripping her suitcase, struggling to stop the alarming thoughts in her head. After the murder, how quickly had the desk clerk told the police about her? Were the authorities looking for her even now? What if they’d found her fingerprints at the hotel? What if she were caught with ten kilo bars of gold? How would she explain herself?

  The train pulled out of the massive station on time, beginning its sixteen-hour journey. Passengers were reminded that shortly after midnight, they must present themselves and their documents to officials at the border. So much for seamless border crossings in EU member countries. These Eastern European ones couldn’t get past the need to keep track of everybody. Adriana didn’t care – she just wanted to get out of Romania as quietly as possible, away from authorities who might be looking for an accomplice to a murder.

  It would have been nice to eat dinner in the comfort of the dining car, but she couldn’t leave the suitcase. She opted for privacy, buying a sandwich and a split of wine from the trolley and eating in her tiny room. She popped the first vial of Liquid O and inhaled it deeply, savoring the warmth and comfort she immediately felt. She put the bag next to her bed, covered herself and dozed a little until she felt the train begin to slow, then come to a full stop. An announcement in Hungarian and Romanian ordered all passengers to show their papers. This was the most terrifying moment of all. If they were looking for her, it would be all over in moments.

  She heard boots outside, then a knock. She opened the door to two soldiers with automatic rifles slung over their shoulders. They gave her passport a quick glance, nodded at her and left. She held her breath for twenty minutes until the train lurched, then started moving again. Within minutes Adriana was sound asleep for the first time since Nicu Lepescu had killed her drug dealer. She felt safe. She had gotten out of her home country and she was in Hungary.

  She awoke to the announcement that the train was thirty minutes out of Budapest’s Kaleti Station. She was surprised to see sunlight pouring through the windows. She’d slept well and felt good. She pulled her rolling bag down the hall to the bathroom, freshened up and had a quick coffee in her room.

  According to the board at the station, the next train to Linz departed in two hours. She bought a first-class ticket and walked out to the busy street. At a shop nearby she bought an outfit, put it on in the dressing room, then had breakfast at a brasserie. She bought a prepaid cell phone at a kiosk in the station and used it to call Nicu’s apartment, hoping Mrs. Radu would be there and could tell Adriana what had happened to Nicu. No one answered then or the two other times she tried that day.

  In the afternoon after an uneventful train ride, a decent lunch and another quick passport check at the Austrian border, her train chugged into the Linz station on time.

  Adriana was bone-tired – she’d have loved a couple of hours in a real bed – but she had a mission. She could sleep later. She looked at the paper Nicu had given her and showed the address to a policeman. He pointed to a nearby street and held up two fingers – two blocks. She confirmed she was going down the right street then began to look for number 153. As she stood at the door, she realized it certainly wasn’t what she had expected. From Nicu’s conversation she thought it was a bank. In fact, this was the banking district – from where she stood she could see at least a dozen. Her building was sandwiched in among them, but it bore no name.

  I guess that isn’t such a surprise. What did I expect – a big sign that says Bank of the Nazis?

  It was an inconspicuous stone structure with gold numbers “153” above the door. She looked for a buzzer, but there wasn’t one. She noticed a simple card reader on one side of the entryway and remembered Nicu’s instructions. She pulled out the black card, inserted it in the slot, and the door swung open silently.

  She entered, rolling her suitcase behind her, pushed open another door and found herself in what appeared to be a small ATM lobby. There were several machines, each in its own three-sided privacy booth. A chair sat in front of each machine. No one else was in the room and she noticed several cameras above her near the ceiling. Unsure exactly what to do, she chose a booth, took a seat and inserted the card in the machine.

  “Welcome. Please choose from the selection below.” The words appeared on the screen in Romanian, followed by a list of choices.

  She found it interesting that the card had triggered the words in Nicu’s native language. Another visitor, she presumed, would have seen the welcome greeting in his own language. Very sophisticated, but once Nicu had explained exactly what this was all about, she expected nothing less. It was a bank of sorts, but unlike any other she’d encountered.

  She perused the list and selected the first choice. Confirm account balance.

  She was prompted to enter the six numbers Nicu had required her to memorize.

  Although nothing about Nicu Lepescu should have surprised her, the next screen that appeared certainly did. She’d calculated the value of the thirteen gold bars Nicu had converted into cash and deposited into his account here. After fees and whatever, she expected the account to contain around $450,000.

  USD1,496,388

  This amount does not include accrued interest since the beginning of the last quarter.

  Adriana began to hyperventilate. What the hell? Once again Nicu had done something remarkable for her. When he converted the thirteen gold bars into cash, he’d put the funds here, but his a
ccount had already held over a million dollars. Now that money was hers too.

  Once again she cried. She hadn’t heard anything since she left Bucharest, but she was certain he’d been arrested. He didn’t need the assets now – both of them had known that even before he killed Denis – but she was still amazed at the sheer volume of what he’d accumulated. Where it came from, he never said. She knew his background. He’d been big in the Reich regime – an SS storm trooper, a concentration camp official and a stationmaster in Bucharest. Those were important positions, but they didn’t make one wealthy. After the war he’d been convicted of his crimes and spent twenty years in prison. When he was released, he never worked again. Yet somehow he now had millions of dollars of assets.

  Deep inside, Adriana knew how. She just didn’t know exactly how. And she chose not to think about it anymore. She couldn’t do anything more for the Jews. She didn’t care about the Nazis from whom Nicu had probably stolen the gold. She had to let it go. This was her life now.

  She went back to the previous screen, chose the line speak with a representative and received an immediate response.

  A representative will be with you shortly.

  Without a sound, a young man entered the room and motioned for her to follow him. They walked down a short hallway past closed doors – she was reminded of a funeral parlor, it was so quiet – then he opened one and stood back so she could enter. He closed the door softly behind her.

  An impeccably dressed man in his fifties pulled out a chair, seated her and said, “May I have your card, please?”

  The man inserted the black card into his computer and looked at the screen. Then he asked her to enter her numeric password on a keypad in front of her. When she was finished, he checked the screen again.

  “Thank you. Everything is in order. How may I help you?”

  Nicu had told her what to say. “I have ten one-kilo bars of gold. I would like to convert them into US dollars and deposit the funds into this account.” She pulled the bars from her suitcase and put them on his desk.

  He picked up one bar and examined it closely. Unlike the clerk at the bank in Romania, the word Reichsbank didn’t faze him. His fingers flew over the keyboard. Within seconds the same young man from earlier entered, put the bars in a briefcase and left.

  The transaction took less than five minutes and involved no signatures, no identification and no names. The older man appeared to neither know nor care who she was, and he never told her how much money she was getting. Nicu had assured her as long as she had the card and the password, everything would work perfectly. He’d also told her to trust these people without hesitation. And as usual, he was right. Everything couldn’t have gone better.

  The man returned the black card to her. “Is there anything else?”

  “Where may I access my account in other cities?”

  He pulled a business card from his desk and handed it to her. It had one line: www.2f8d8k4h.com

  “That website will give you what you need to know.”

  He stood and ushered her back into the first room she’d entered, turned without a word and went back to his office.

  This place is perfect for people who don’t like to talk to each other, she thought. While accomplishing a large financial transaction, she and the man had exchanged maybe twenty words total.

  Curious about the gold sale, she went back into a booth and checked her balance again. It was larger by $364,750.

  The gold had now become cash. That simply and that quickly. Unbelievable.

  Thank you, Nicu. Again.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  After a long night on the train from Bucharest to Linz, then going straight to the strange building where her black card worked miracles, she was exhausted. She needed to rest. She stopped at an ATM, inserted the black card and punched in her numeric password. Within seconds she had withdrawn five thousand euros.

  Now that she had plenty of money, she walked into a Hyatt, the first nice hotel she saw. She strolled through the quiet lobby to the front desk and asked for a room. No, she advised, she didn’t have a reservation and she would be paying cash. When she heard that, the clerk called over her supervisor.

  “We can, of course, accept cash as long as you present your identity card and passport,” the lady assured Adriana. “I assume that will be no problem, Miss … uh…”

  Adriana swallowed hard but said nothing.

  The supervisor spoke more harshly this time. “It’s the law in the EU. We don’t accept guests without identification. Period.”

  Adriana was spooked. She was afraid the Romanian authorities would trace her. In an attempt to appear unconcerned, she breezily said, “No, thanks,” and left, rolling her suitcase behind her. As she walked the sidewalks aimlessly, she knew she had to have a new identity. How the hell would she get that done? She was so tired she couldn’t think. She walked away from the main business area into a section of restaurants, storefronts and less expensive hotels. She chose one, walked up a flight of stairs and looked around the lobby. It wasn’t the Hyatt, but it certainly wasn’t that sleazy hotel in the ghetto either. This was a perfectly acceptable second-class hotel, and she was intent on making this work.

  There was no one in the lobby except her and a man behind the desk who was maybe twenty years old. She told him her luggage had been stolen and she had only this rolling bag she’d bought and a little cash she fortunately had hidden in her sock.

  “I’m willing to do whatever it takes to get a room, after what I’ve been through,” she said sweetly, laying a hundred-euro note on the counter. “This is for your help in getting me situated.”

  Since he earned about thirty euros a day, the clerk was instantly motivated. “I’ll need your passport before you leave,” he told her as the note went smoothly into his pocket. “As long as your bill is paid in full, if you happened to leave without remembering to come by and give it to me, there’s not much we can do, is there?” He smiled, took the payment for her room, and handed her a key.

  Wishing she had the real thing, Adriana settled for a vial of Liquid O, slept for five hours, went out for an early dinner and a bottle of Gewürztraminer wine, came back, popped another vial and slept until morning. She’d intended to leave Linz today, and maybe it could still happen. First she had something to do. Would it work? She had no idea. Nicu had led her to believe this little black card could solve any problem. Today she’d find out if that was true.

  Two hours later she sat at another man’s desk in that same anonymous building where she had converted her gold. It was time to see just how many services this strange, secretive firm actually could provide.

  As before, she handed over her black card and entered her passcode. The man glanced at his computer screen then back to her.

  “Everything is in order. How may I help you?”

  She took a deep breath and said, “I need a new identity.”

  ——

  She didn’t leave Linz that day, nor the next. Two days and fifty thousand dollars later, Adriana Creed was past history. Now she was Carey. Armed with a Dutch birth certificate and identity card, an EU passport and a credit card, she took the train to Vienna, then a taxi to the airport. A two hour first-class plane ride landed her in her new home, Amsterdam.

  Carey Apostol rented a room in a cozy boutique hotel in Old Town, telling the clerk she’d be here a week, maybe two. Without hesitation or fear she handed over her new passport and credit card, and everything went perfectly.

  Adriana had chosen the name Carey because it was Western. She hated the Romani names that branded you a gypsy. If she was going to start over, it would be as a Western European. Choosing a last name was easy – she simply used the middle name she’d been given at birth, a name almost no one knew.

  Now she was Carey from the Netherlands.

  Carey Apostol.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Almost three weeks after his cremation, Nicu Lepescu’s grandchildren sat in the pew along with his
housekeeper in Biserica Curtea Veche, the oldest Orthodox church in Bucharest. Although the old man hadn’t seen the inside of a church in fifty years, his will provided for a small contribution to the church and instructed that his funeral be held here.

  Being gypsies, the Lepescu family cared little about religion. Ciprian, the father of Milosh, Philippe and Christina, had never taken his children to church at all. Today there was no casket. Nicu’s body had been cremated, prompting a caustic comment from Christina about how ironic it was that he’d sent so many Jews to the crematoria, and now it was his time to burn.

  Since it was an historic site, the old church remained open to tourists during weddings and funerals. Today groups of sightseers dutifully tromped through the back of the ancient building as the service was being held up front. There were only the four mourners, if they could even be called that. According to Mrs. Radu, Nicu had had no friends; he was 105 years old and hadn’t exactly been a social person anyway. In truth, what friends there might have been had abandoned him long ago when he went to prison. When he was arrested in 1951, everyone deserted him for fear the authorities would discover they’d been monsters too.

  No one else came to pay their respects to the former SS officer – the man who’d made sure the trains of death were packed full and ran on time from Bucharest to the Nazi camps, the man who had smiled and shook his head as Jews, stuffed into steamy boxcars, begged for water. He was the person who could have done something but instead ignored these men, women and children who were heading to hell on earth. Society said Nicu Lepescu had paid the price – he served nearly twenty years at hard labor – but no time in a cell could undo the horrors he had perpetrated on an entire class of people who were his own countrymen.