by Dan Simmons
The priest glanced toward the street. “I know. If the Securitate know where we were staying, then the strigoi must know that we’re in the country…and why.”
“How?” said Kate. Her hands folded into fists.
O’Rourke shrugged. “Possibly Lucian. Maybe the Gypsies talked. Maybe some other loose end…”
“Your phone calls to the Franciscans?” said Kate.
“I doubt that. We speak in Latin, never use real names, and arrange the meetings through an old code we developed when I was working with the orphanages here.” He scratched his beard. “But it’s always possible…”
“And really doesn’t matter now,” said Kate. “I just don’t see what we can do next. If Lucian was captured—”
“Did you see him captured?”
“No, but—”
“If he was arrested by the police or Securitate, there’s nothing we can do,” said O’Rourke. “And if he escaped…which is likely…then he has an infinitely better chance than we do in Bucharest. It’s his city. And there’s his alleged Order of the Dragon.”
“Don’t make fun of it,” said Kate.
“I’m not.” Footsteps were approaching behind a hedge and O’Rourke pulled Kate farther back among the dripping trees. Two men in workers’ clothes walked past quickly without glancing beyond the hedge. “I’m not making fun of it, but I don’t think it’s a very efficient organization. It couldn’t even tell Lucian where the next night of the Investiture Ceremony is going to be held.”
Kate held back her anger. “Well, we didn’t do any better.”
“I did,” said O’Rourke. “Come on.” He took Kate’s arm and led her out through the gate and along the street to a parked motorcycle covered with a plastic tarp. The motorcycle had a sidecar and looked ancient to Kate, like something out of an old World War II movie. O’Rourke tugged off the plastic, folded it, and tucked it under the low seat of the sidecar. “Get in.”
Kate had never ridden in a sidecar…had only ridden on a motorcycle a few times with Tom…and found that it was a trick to fold oneself into the small space. The windscreen was chipped and discolored with age, the leather seat cracked and taped in a hundred places. When she had finally folded her legs well enough to fit in the egg-shaped pod, O’Rourke handed her a blanket and pair of goggles. “Put these on.”
Kate adjusted the goggles, imagining how she looked with her soaked peasant coat and scarf and these absurd things. Even the goggles were semi-opaque with age, “Where did you get all this?” she asked.
The priest was adjusting his own goggles and a leather flying helmet that made Kate want to giggle. “Father Stoicescu had offered this the other day,” he said. “One of the visiting fathers had purchased this while he was here and left it in a garage near the university. I didn’t see a need for it until today.” He turned a key, fiddled with a fuel valve on the side of the ancient machine, and leaped up to come down on a pedal. Nothing happened.
“Are you sure you know how to drive this thing?” Kate felt exposed and ridiculous sitting along the curb in the sidecar. She expected the Securitate Mercedes to arrive any second.
“I used to have one before I went to ’Nam,” muttered O’Rourke, fiddling with another lever on the side. He stood again, rose, dropped his weight on the pedal. Again nothing. “Shit on a stick,” grumbled the priest.
Kate raised an eyebrow but decided to say nothing.
O’Rourke tried again and was rewarded with a few pops from the cylinder, a backfire, and silence. “Damn cheap gas,” he said and fiddled with something above the engine.
“Did you say that you knew where the ceremony was tonight?” Kate said softly. It had begun to rain again and there were no pedestrians or traffic at the moment, but she still felt the urge to whisper.
O’Rourke paused in his fiddling to lean over and pull a map out of an elastic compartment on the inside of the sidecar. “Look,” he said.
Kate noticed it was a Kummerly + Frey roadmap, scale 1:1000000, and then she unfolded it, realized that half of it was of Bulgaria, folded it to have central Romania revealed, and saw the red pencil around several cities. “Braşov, Tîrgovişte, Sighişoara, and Sibiu,” she said. “They’re all circled. Which one is it…and why?”
O’Rourke tried the pedal again and the machine roared to life. He revved the throttle a few times until it was running smoothly, then throttled back and leaned her way. His finger stabbed down on Tîrgovişte, a city about fifty miles northwest of Bucharest. “These are all cities of special importance to the strigoi Family,” he said. “I think they’ll be the sites for the next four nights of the ceremony.”
“How do you know?”
O’Rourke glanced over his shoulder and pulled out into the street with a roar and a cloud of exhaust fumes. Kate hung on to the edge of the sidecar with her free hand. She found the sensation of riding in the low pod singularly unpleasant. “How do you know?” she repeated in a shout.
“Let me explain later,” he yelled back. He turned into traffic on Bulevardul Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, then turned north again on Bulevardul Nicolae Bălcescu through the center of town.
“Just tell me how you know that Tîrgovişte is the place for tonight’s ceremony,” demanded Kate, leaning closer to him as they paused for a red light just past the Intercontinental Hotel.
O’Rourke rubbed his cheek. Kate thought that he looked very little like a priest with his beard, helmet, and goggles. “Father Stoicescu mentioned the Tîrgovişte monastery I visited two days ago,” he said. The light changed and they moved ahead with the thin traffic. It was still drizzling. “There’s no phone contact with them.”
“So?” Kate did not have to shout as long as they were moving this slowly.
“They were arrested,” he said. “Securitate just rounded them up. After all these centuries of being tolerated by the authorities, the monastery was suddenly cleaned out. One of the monks was out shopping for groceries in the marketplace, returned just in time to see his fellow monks loaded aboard police vans, and managed to get into Bucharest to inform the Franciscan headquarters here.”
“I don’t understand,” shouted Kate. They had passed the Triumphal Arch in the north part of town and were headed past Herăstrău Park on Şoseaua Kiseleff. To their right she could see only bare chestnut trees and brown grass. There were no black Mercedes behind them.
“The Franciscans know of the strigoi,” O’Rourke shouted back. “The Tîrgovíşte monastery has monitored the strigoi Family for centuries. If the Securitate is rounding up the priests…even for a short detention…it may be because there’s something happening in Tîrgovişte tonight that they don’t want us to know about.”
Kate said nothing but felt little confidence in this analysis. “What about Lucian?” she shouted over the engine roar. She noticed that they had changed from the Kiseleff Road to one labeled “Chitilei.”
O’Rourke leaned her way without taking his eyes off the road and traffic ahead. “If he’s free and if his Order of the Dragon is real…or even if it’s not…the best bet on our meeting up is being at the next site for the ceremony.”
Kate used her hand to rub her goggles free of a film of muddy water. She could imagine what her face looked like. Again, the logic left something to be desired, but she had no better suggestion. They had just passed the last row of Stalinist apartments and the ring roads at the edge of the city when the motorcycle engine pitch dropped and O’Rourke began to brake. Kate saw the cars backed up ahead a moment after she saw the signs pointing straight ahead to PITEŞTI and TÎRGOVIŞTE.
“Accident?” she said. Police flashers were visible a block ahead.
O’Rourke stood on the pedals. “Shit,” he whispered to himself. Then, “Sorry.”
“What is it?”
“A roadblock. Police seem to be inspecting papers.”
Kate looked behind her and saw the traffic backing up there as well. Three cars back there was a black Mercedes with four dark figures in it.
Chapter Twenty-nine
THE police ahead, not content to wait until the traffic reached their roadblock, were moving down the line of cars, peering in windows and demanding papers. O’Rourke revved the motorcycle and began turning around on the narrow stretch of road.
Kate tugged at his sleeve.
“I see the Mercedes,” he said, the loose strap of his flying helmet flapping. “Well just have to risk it.”
Kate used both hands to clutch the rim of the sidecar, lowered her head so that little more than her scarf and goggles were visible, and peered to her left as they roared back the way they had come.
The four men in the Mercedes did not glance up as they passed. Looking back, Kate could see the Mercedes sweep out of line and drive on the left side of the road to the barricades. The police saluted and let it through. Other cars and a few motorcycles were turning back from the roadblock.
O’Rourke pulled over when they were in the fringe of the city again, parking near some workers’ apartments. Kate studied the grim Stalinist buildings, each with its complement of empty shops on the ground floor, while the priest studied the map. She shifted her legs in the tight pod and turned back to him. “What next?”
“Maybe take the main road to Piteşti,” he said. “Take E 70 to this village… Petreşti, south of Găeşti…and then follow 72 north to Tîrgovişte.”
“What if they have E 70 blocked?” asked Kate.
O’Rourke tucked the map back in its elastic slot. “We’ll deal with that when it happens.”
E 70 was blocked. The line ran back almost two miles. The priest understood enough Romanian to decipher the grumbles of truckdrivers walking back to their rigs: the police were examining papers at the point the street left the city and became a four-lane highway to Piteşti.
O’Rourke turned the motorcycle around and drove back into the city. It was already early afternoon and Kate’s stomach was growling. She had eaten no real breakfast and she could remember only a few spoonfuls of soup the night before.
There were bread shops along this main street of Bulevardul Pacii, but they were empty and had been since seven A.M. Aggressive streetcars, ignoring other traffic, made O’Rourke swerve across uneven brick and cracked asphalt, and Kate thought that the sidecar was going to flip over more than once. She saw a truckers’ restaurant open near the railroad tracks and pointed it out to the priest. Once in the parking lot, with the motorcycle engine quieted, O’Rourke took off his flying helmet and rubbed a sweaty forehead.
“Do we dare go in?” asked Kate.
“If you’re as hungry as I am, you’ll dare,” said O’Rourke. They left their goggles and his helmet in the sidecar and went inside.
The space was cavernous, cold, and filled with smoke from a hundred cigarettes. Waiters hurried from table to table, carrying large bottles of beer. Each trucker had half a dozen empty beer bottles in front of him and seemed intent upon ordering half a dozen more.
“Why so many at once?” whispered Kate as they found a table near the kitchen.
O’Rourke smiled. Kate noticed for the first time that he had removed his Roman collar and was wearing just a dark shirt and pants under the heavy wool coat. “They’re afraid the place will run out of beer,” he said. “And they will before dinnertime.” He tried to wave down a waiter but the men in dark vests and grimy white shirts ignored him. Finally the priest stood and planted himself in front of one of the hurrying men.
“Daţi-ne supă, vă rog,” said O’Rourke. Kate’s stomach rumbled at the thought of a large bowl of soup.
The waiter shook his head. “Nu…” He snapped off an angry string of syllables, obviously expecting O’Rourke to move aside. He did not.
“Mititei? Brînză? Cîrnaţi?” asked the priest.
As nervous as Kate was, her mouth watered at the thought of sausage and cheese.
“Nu!” The waiter glared at them. “American?”
Kate stood and took a twenty-dollar bill from her purse. “Ne puteţi servi mai repede, vă rog, ne grăbim!”
The waiter reached for the bill. Kate folded it back between her fingers. “When we get the food,” she said. “Mititei. Brînză. Salam. Pastrama.”
The waiter glared again but disappeared into the kitchen. O’Rourke and Kate stood until he returned. Truck drivers stared at them.
“Nothing like being inconspicuous,” whispered the priest.
Kate sighed. “Would you rather we starved?”
The waiter returned with a less surly manner and a greasy white bag. Kate looked in, saw the wrapped sausages, stuffed eggs, and slices of salami. He reached for the twenty dollars again but Kate held up one finger. “Băutură?” she said. “Something to drink?”
The waiter looked pained.
“Nişte apă,” said Kate. “Apă minerală.”
The waiter nodded tiredly and looked at O’Rourke. “Beer,” said the priest.
The waiter returned a minute later with two large bottles of mineral water and three bottles of beer. He obviously wanted the transaction to be over. O’Rourke took the bottles; the waiter took the twenty-dollar bill. The truckers resumed their conversations.
Outside, it was drizzling again. Kate stuffed the food and bottles under the cowl of the sidecar. O’Rourke was out on the street and headed east in a minute. “I don’t know what to do except head back into town,” he shouted.
Kate was watching the trolley and train tracks that ran parallel to the road here. There were graveled ruts running alongside them. “The tracks run west here!” she shouted and pointed.
O’Rourke understood immediately. He wheeled the motorcycle in front of an oncoming streetcar, bounced across a curb, pounded across a littered field, and swerved onto the graveled track. In a minute they were echoing between the backs of Stalinist apartment buildings. The priest tried to avoid the broken bottles and jagged bits of metal along the track.
Near the edge of town, the graveled path turned to mud and then died out altogether. “Hang on!” shouted O’Rourke and jerked the motorcycle up onto a crossing, then down onto the railroad ties. Kate’s sidecar hung over the rail.
They bounced along for three or four miles, Kate sure every inch of the way that her fillings were going to vibrate out. She could not imagine how O’Rourke could see; her own vision was a vibrating triple image dulled by the goggles and drizzle. “What if a train comes?” she shouted as they passed the last of the outlying peasant homes. Only a few old men in their gardens had looked up.
“We die!” O’Rourke shouted back.
Five miles out of the city and at least three miles beyond the roadblock, they stopped at a junction with a muddy dirt road that led north and south. Ahead of them, around a thick copse of trees, a train’s whistle seemed very loud.
“Guess we get off here,” said O’Rourke and swung north on the road. The track was muddy and Kate had to get out and push twice before they reached a junction with Highway E 70, running northwest like an abandoned and unpatched Interstate. It seemed like a century since O’Rourke had driven her to Piteşti along this road to see the baby-buying in action last May.
There were no police cars on the westbound lane. They saw no black Mercedes when they switched to a narrow and bumpy Highway 72 beyond the large village of Găeşti. The sign said TÎRGOVIŞTE 30 KM.
No longer speaking above the engine roar, Kate’s head throbbing from the beating along the railroad tracks, they drove north toward the mountains and the gathering dark.
They stopped to eat along the Dimboviţa River, less than ten kilometers from Tîrgovişte. Highway 72 was narrow, winding, and unencumbered by villages larger than a few modest homes tucked next to the road. O’Rourke parked the motorcycle deep under the trees, near the slow-moving river. The cheese was sharp, the sausage old, and the ouă umpluţi—the stuffed eggs—stuffed with something neither of them recognized. The meal was one of the most delicious Kate could ever remember, and she drank straight from the mineral water bottle to wash it down. The rain
had stopped, and although the sun showed no sign of coming out, it seemed warmer than it had been in days. Kate found bits of her clothing that were actually dry.
“Your Romanian seems to have worked back at the restaurant,” said O’Rourke. He seemed to be savoring the beer.
Kate licked her fingers. “Basic survival tactics last spring. Not all my meals were at the hospital restaurant.” She paused before attacking her last bit of stuffed egg. “I hope those truckers were at the end of their haul rather than the beginning.”
O’Rourke nodded. “The beer, you mean? Yes. Well, driving sober is a rarity in this country.” He glanced at his own almost-empty bottle. “I guess I’ll stop with one.”
Kate took off her scarf. “You said ‘shit’ twice today and now you’re swilling beer. Hardly the behavior of a proper priest.”
Instead of laughing, O’Rourke looked out at the river. His eyes were a lustrous gray and in that second Kate caught a glimpse of the handsome boy in the tired and bearded face of the man. “It’s been a long time,” he said, “since I was a proper priest.”
Kate hesitated, embarrassed.
“If the Romanian trip hadn’t come up two years ago, putting me in touch with the orphan problem here,” he went on, “I would have resigned then.” He took another drink.
“That sounds funny,” Kate said. “The word ‘resigned,’ I mean. One doesn’t think of priests resigning.”
O’Rourke nodded slightly, but kept his eyes on the river.
“Why would you leave the priesthood?” Kate said very softly. There was no traffic on the road and the river made little noise.
O’Rourke spread his fingers and Kate realized how large and strong his hands looked. “The usual reason,” he said. “Inability to suspend one’s disbelief.” He lifted a stick and drew geometric shapes in the soft loam.
“But you said once that you believed—” began Kate.
“In evil,” finished the priest. “But that hardly qualifies me to be a priest. To administer sacraments. To act as a sort of half-assed intermediary between people who believe much more than I and God…if there is a God.” He tossed the stick into the river and both of them watched it whirl out of sight in the steady current.