Children of the Night

by Dan Simmons

  Kate smiled. “The dog too?”

  A tug pushing a long barge up the river saluted the city with three long hoots. Traffic whirled around Clark Adam Ter below with a cacophony of horns, then swept across the Chain Bridge, tail lights blending with the red neon on the buildings across the river.

  Kate’s smile faded. “What do we do?”

  O’Rourke leaned on the railing with her and rubbed his hands. “Go on, I guess. Do you have any idea who might be following you?”

  Kate chewed a loose piece of skin on her lip. Her head ached less this evening, but her left arm itched under the short cast. She was so tired that concentrating was like driving a car on dark ice—a slow and skittish process. “Romanian Securitate?” she whispered. “The Gypsies? American FBI? Some Hungarian thug waiting to mug us? Why don’t we go ask him?”

  O’Rourke shrugged, smiled, and led her back toward the upper terrace. The man in black leather moved away from them slightly and continued to be absorbed by the view of Pest and the river.

  They continued strolling, arm-in-arm—just another tourist couple, Kate thought giddily—past the funicular station, across a wide space labeled Disz ter by the street sign, and down a street that O’Rourke said was named Tarnok utca. Small shops lined the cobblestoned way; most were closed on this Sunday evening, but a few showed yellow light through ornate panes. The gas streetlamps cast a soft glow.

  “Here,” said O’Rourke, leading her to the right. Kate glanced over her shoulder, but if the man in black leather was following, he was concealed by shadows. Carriages were lined along the small square here and the sound of horses chewing on their bits and shifting their hooves seemed very clear in the chill air. Kate looked up at the neo-Gothic tower of the small cathedral as O’Rourke led her to a side door.

  “Technically this place is named Buda St. Mary’s Church,” he said, holding the massive door for her, “but everyone calls it the Matthias Church. Old King Matthias is more popular in legend than he probably ever was in real life. Shhh…”

  Kate stepped into the nave of the cathedral as the organ music suddenly rose from silence to near-crescendo. She paused and her breathing stopped for a second as the opening chords of Bach’s “Tocatta and Fugue in D-minor” filled the incense-rich darkness.

  The interior of the old Matthias Church was illuminated only by a rack of votive candles to the right of the door and one large, red-glowing candle on the altar. Kate had an impression of great age: soot-streaked stone—although the soot may have been only shadows—on the massive columns, a neo-Gothic stained glass window over the altar, its colors illuminated only by the blood-red candlelight, dark tapestries hanging vertically above the aisles, a massive pulpit to the left of the altar, and no more than ten or twelve people sitting silently in the shadowed pews as the music soared and echoed.

  O’Rourke led the way across the open area in the rear of the church, down several stone steps, and stopped at the last row of pews in the shadows to the left and behind the seating area in the nave. Kate merely sat down; O’Rourke genuflected with practiced ease, crossed himself, and then sat next to her. Bach’s organ music continued to vibrate in the warm, incense-laden air. After a moment, the priest leaned closer to her. “Do you know why Bach wrote ‘Tocatta and Fugue’?”

  Kate shook her head. She assumed it was for the greater glory of God.

  “It was a piece to test the pipes in new organs,” whispered O’Rourke.

  Kate could see his smile in the dim, red light.

  “Or old organs for that matter,” he went on. “If a bird had built a nest in one of the pipes, Bach knew that this piece would blast it out.”

  At that second the music rose to the point that Kate could feel the vibrations in her teeth and bones. When it ended, she could only sit for a moment in the dimness, trying to catch her breath. The few others who had been there, all older people, rose, genuflected, and left by the side door. Kate watched over her shoulder as a white-bearded priest in a long, black cassock locked the door with the sliding of a heavy bolt.

  O’Rourke touched her arm and they walked back to the rear of the nave. The white-bearded priest opened his arms, he and O’Rourke embraced, and Kate blinked at the two—the modern priest still in his bomber jacket and jeans, the older priest in a cassock that came to his shoe-tops, a heavy crucifix dangling around his neck.

  “Father Janos,” said O’Rourke, “this is my dear friend Doctor Kate Neuman. Doctor Neuman, my old friend Father Janos Petofi.”

  “Father,” said Kate.

  Father Janos Petofi looked a bit like Santa Claus to Kate, with his trimmed white beard, pink cheeks, and bright eyes, but there was little of Santa Claus in the way the older man took her hand and bent over to kiss it. “Charmed to meet you, Mademoiselle.” His accent sounded more French than Hungarian.

  Kate smiled, both at the kiss and the honorific that gave her the status of a young unmarried woman.

  Father Janos clapped O’Rourke on the back. “Michael, our…ah… Romany friend is waiting.”

  They followed Father Janos to the rear of the cathedral, through a heavy curtain that passed for a door, and up a winding stone staircase.

  “Your playing was magnificent, as always,” O’Rourke said to the other priest.

  Father Janos smiled back over his shoulder. His cassock made rustling sounds on the stone steps. “Ah…rehearsal for tomorrow’s concert for the tourists. The tourists love Bach. More than we organists, I think.”

  They emerged onto a choir loft thirty feet above the darkened vault of the church. A large man sat at the end of one pew. Kate glimpsed a sharp face and heavy mustache under a wool cap pulled low and a sheepskin coat buttoned high.

  “I will stay if you need me,” offered Father Janos.

  O’Rourke touched his friend on the shoulder. “No need, Janos. I will talk to you later.”

  The older priest nodded, bowed toward Kate, and disappeared down the stairway.

  Kate followed O’Rourke to the pew where the swarthy man waited. Even with her eyes adapted to the candlelight in the church, it was very dark up here.

  “Dobroy, Doctor New—man?” said the man to O’Rourke in a voice as sharp-edged as his face. His teeth gleamed strangely. He looked at Kate. “Oh…rerk?”

  “I’m Doctor Neuman,” said Kate. The echo of Bach’s music still vibrated in her bones through layers of fatigue. She had to concentrate on reality. “You are Nikolo Cioaba?”

  The Gypsy smiled and Kate realized that all of the man’s visible teeth were capped in gold. “Voivoda Cioaba,” he said roughly.

  Kate glanced at O’Rourke. Voivoda. The same word that had been under the Vienna portrait of Vlad Ţepeş.

  “Beszel Romany?” asked Voivoda Cioaba. “Magyarul?”

  “Nem,” replied O’Rourke. “Sajnalom. Kerem…beszel angolul?”

  The gold teeth flashed. “Yesss…yesss, I speak the English…Dobroy. Velcome.” Voivoda Cioaba’s dialect made Kate think of an old Bela Lugosi movie. She rubbed her cheek to wake up.

  “Voivoda Cioaba,” said Kate, “Father Janos has explained to you what we want?”

  The Gypsy frowned at her for a moment and then the gold teeth glimmered. “Vant? Igen! Yes…you vant to go Romania. You come from…Egyesult Allamokba… United States…and you go Romania. Nem?”

  “Yes,” said Kate. “Tomorrow.”

  Voivoda Cioaba frowned deeply. “Tomarav?”

  “Hetfo,” said O’Rourke. “Tomorrow. Monday night.”

  “Ahhh…hetfo…yesss, ve cross tomarav night… Monday. It isss…iss all…how do you say?…arranged.” The Gypsy swirled fingers in front of his face. “Sajnalom…my son, Balan…he speak the English very good, but he…business. Yesss?”

  Kate nodded. “And have we agreed on how much?”

  Voivoda Cioaba squinted at her. “Kerem?”

  “Mennyibe kerul?” said O’Rourke. He rubbed his thumb and fingers together. “Penz.”

  The Gypsy threw his hand
s apart as if brushing away something in the air. He held up one finger and pointed at Kate. “Ezer…you.” He pointed at O’Rourke. “Ezer…you.”

  “One thousand each,” said O’Rourke.

  “U.S. American dollars cash,” said Voivoda Cioaba, enunciating carefully.

  Kate nodded. It was what Father Janos had communicated to O’Rourke earlier.

  “Now,” added the Gypsy. His teeth flashed.

  Kate shook her head slowly. “Two hundred for each of us now,” she said. “The rest when we meet our friend in Romania.”

  Voivoda Cioaba’s eyes flashed.

  “Ketszaz ejszakat…ah…tonight,” said O’Rourke. “Nyolcszaz on erkezes. Okay?”

  Kate extended the envelope with the four hundred dollars in it, Voivoda Cioaba lifted it with nimble fingers and slid it out of sight under the sheepskin jacket without glancing within, and there came the flash of gold. “Okay.” His hand came out with a map and he spread it on the pew.

  Kate and O’Rourke leaned closer. The Gypsy’s blunt finger stabbed at Budapest and began following a rail line southeast across the country. Voivoda Cioaba’s voice had the hypnotic lilt of litany as he recited the names of stops along the way. Kate closed her eyes and accepted the litany in the incense-smelling darkness of the cathedral.

  “Budapest…Újszász… Szolnǒk… Gyoma-endrőd Békéscsaba… Lǒkǒsháza…”

  Kate felt the vibration through her leg as the Gypsy’s finger stabbed heavily at the map. “Lǒkǒsháza.”

  Chapter Twenty-three

  KATE knew the Orient Express from the Agatha Christie book and from countless movies: plush cars, elegant dining, luxurious fittings everywhere, and stylish but mysterious passengers.

  This was the Orient Express, but not that Orient Express.

  She and O’Rourke had arrived early for the seven P.M. departure from Budapest’s Keleti Railway Station, The place had been bustling and echoing, a huge, outdoor, iron-and-glass open shed that reminded Kate of etchings of train stations from the previous century. She knew the terminal at the opposite end of this trip—Bucharest’s Gara de Nord Station—because she and other World Health Organization workers had gone there in May to document the hundreds of homeless children who lived in the station itself, sleeping in broken lockers and begging from hurrying passengers.

  She and O’Rourke had prepaid Ibusz, the Hungarian state tourism agency, for two first-class apartments on this Orient Express, but when they checked in there was only one apartment available for them, and “first class” meant a narrow, unheated cubicle with two bunks, a filthy sink with printed warnings that the water—if available—was dangerous and undrinkable, and only enough room for O’Rourke to sit on the low sink while Kate slumped on the bunk, their knees almost meeting. Neither complained.

  The train started with a jolt, leaving the station on time. Both watched in silence as they sped out of Budapest, past the rows of Stalinist apartments on the outskirts, then through sparsely lighted cinderblock suburbs, and then into the darkness of the countryside as the train barreled south and east. Wind whistled through the loosely fitted windows and both Kate and O’Rourke huddled in overcoats.

  “I forgot to bring food,” said the priest. “I’m sorry.”

  Kate raised her eyebrows. “There’s no dining car?” Despite the squalor of the “first-class apartment,” she still had an image of elegant dining amid linen and porcelain vases holding fresh flowers.

  “Come,” said the priest.

  She followed him into the narrow corridor. There were only eight apartments in this “first-class” car and all the doors were shut. The train rocked and bounced as they careened around curves at twice the speed of an American train. The sensation was that the car was going to leave the narrow-gauge rails at every turn.

  O’Rourke slid back the heavy, scarred door at the end of the compartment; rows of heavy twine had been tied across the entrance. “The other end is the same,” said the priest.

  “But why…” Claustrophobia surged in Kate like nausea.

  O’Rourke shrugged. “I’ve taken this train from Bucharest west, and it’s the same coming the other way. Maybe they don’t want the other travelers mixing with first class. Maybe it’s some security precaution. But we’re sealed in…we can get off the train when it stops, but we can’t go from car to car. But it doesn’t matter, because there’s no dining car.”

  Kate felt like crying.

  O’Rourke rapped on the first door. A heavyset matron with a permanent frown answered.

  “Egy uveg Sor, kerem,” said the priest. Kate heard the first word as “edge.” O’Rourke looked over his shoulder at Kate. “I think we need a beer.”

  The frowning woman shook her head. “Nem Sor… Coca-Cola…husz Forint.”

  O’Rourke made a face and handed across a fifty-forint bill. “Kettő Coca-Colas,” he said and held up two fingers, “Change? Ah…Fel tudya ezt váltani?”

  “Nem,” said the frowning woman and handed across two small Coke bottles. She slid her door shut.

  Back in the compartment, Kate used the Swiss Army Knife that Tom had given her to open the bottles. They sipped Coke, shivered, and watched black trees whip by the windows.

  “The train gets into Bucharest about ten in the morning,” said O’Rourke. “Are you sure you don’t want to stay on it?”

  Kate bit her lip. “It seems nuts to get off in the middle of the night, doesn’t it? Do you think I’m nuts?”

  The priest drank the last of his soft drink and then paused another thirty seconds. “No,” he said at last. “I think the border crossing might well be the end of the trip. Lucian warned us.”

  Kate looked out at darkness as the train lurched around another bend at high speed. “It’s paranoid, isn’t it?”

  O’Rourke nodded. “Yes…but even paranoids have enemies.”

  Kate glanced up.

  “Joke,” said the priest. “Let’s follow the plan.”

  Kate set her bottle down and shivered. She could not imagine traveling in this nightmare train during the dead of winter. The only illumination was from a single, sickly 10-watt bulb set into the ceiling. “What’s to keep the Gypsies from robbing and killing us?” she said.

  “Nothing,” said O’Rourke. “Except for the fact that Janos has done business with them before and would tell the authorities if we just disappeared. I think we’ll be all right.”

  The headlight on the train illuminated trees passing in a strobe effect. Suddenly a pasture opened up into blackness and the sudden absence of trees made Kate dizzy. “Tell me about the Gypsies, O’Rourke.”

  The priest rubbed his hands and blew into them for warmth. “Ancient history or recent?”

  “Whichever.”

  “European Gypsies or our Romanian variety?”

  “Romanian.”

  “They don’t have an easy time of it,” said O’Rourke. “They were slaves until eighteen fifty-one.”

  “Slaves? I thought European countries outlawed slavery long before that.”

  “They did. Except for Romania. Except for Gypsies. They haven’t fared much better during modern times. Hitler tried to solve the ‘Gypsy Question’ by murdering them in concentration camps all over Europe. Over thirty-five thousand were executed in Romania during the war just for the crime of being Gypsies.”

  Kate frowned. “I didn’t think that the Germans occupied Romania during the war.”

  “They didn’t.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Go on.”

  “Well about a quarter of a million Gypsies identified themselves as Gypsies during the last Romanian census. But the majority don’t want the government to know their background because of official persecution, so there are at least a million in the country.”

  “What kind of persecution?”

  “Officially,” said the priest, “Romania under Ceauşescu didn’t recognize Gypsies as a separate ethnic strain—only as a subclass of Romanian. The official policy was ‘integration’�
��which meant that Gypsy encampments were destroyed, visas were denied, Gypsy workers were given second-class citizenship and third-class jobs, Gypsy ghettos were created in the cities or Gypsy villages in the country were denied tax money for improvement, and Gypsy people were treated with contempt and viewed with stereotypes reserved for blacks in America seventy years ago.”

  “And today?” said Kate. “After the revolution?”

  O’Rourke shrugged. “Laws and attitudes are about the same. You saw yourself that a majority of the ‘orphaned babies’ that the Americans were adopting were Gypsy children.”

  “Yes,” said Kate. “Children sold by their parents.”

  “Yeah. Children are the one commodity that Gypsy families have in abundance.”

  Kate looked out at the darkness. “Didn’t Vlad Ţepeş have some sort of special relationship with the Gypsies?”

  O’Rourke grinned. “That was a while ago, but yes… I’ve read that, too. Old Vlad Dracula had Gypsy bodyguards, an all-Gypsy army at one point, and frequently used them for special assignments. When the boyars and other officials rose up against Dracula, his only allies were the Gypsies. It seems that they hated authority even then.”

  “But Vlad the Impaler was authority.”

  “For a few years,” said O’Rourke. “Remember, he spent more time fleeing for his life before and after his princely days than he did ruling. The one thing Dracula never failed to give his Gypsy followers was the one thing they have always responded to—gold.”

  Kate made a face and tugged her purse closer. “Let’s hope that two thousand American dollars is the kind of gold they still obey.”

  Father Michael O’Rourke nodded and they sat in silence as the train rocked and clattered and roared toward the Romanian border.

  Lŏkŏsháza was a border town, but O’Rourke said the actual Customs inspections were in Curtizi, a Romanian town a few miles down the track. He said that it was evocative of the bad old days—suspicious passport control officers banging on your compartment door at midnight or sunrise, depending upon which direction the train was headed, guards with Sam Browne belts, automatic weapons, dogs sniffing under the train, and other guards tossing mattresses and clothes around the compartment as they searched.