The Fifth House of the Heart

by Ben Tripp

  Then there was a whirl of blackness against the caramel night sky. Something soared down from one of the rooftops above Min and caught itself on the rotting Art Deco façade of an apartment house, hanging there for an instant, appraising Min, who skidded to a stop, pulling back against her momentum.

  It was a second vampire, a female, its white face and hair gleaming in the bilious light of the streetlamps. Min had never seen anything like this. Even vampire couples hunted alone.

  The creature bounded off the wall of the building a split second after it alighted, its black hooded robe luffing behind it, whirling through the air. Min’s heart was racing. She wanted to kill this new creature and the Russian as well, but the threat was too great. She had lost her strategic advantage. The female vampire hit the pavement on churning legs, catching up with its own speed, and before Yeretyik had time to react, they collided.

  Min’s shotgun split the thick night air. She was running again, and in full motion she fired three times. Hit nothing.

  The new vampire threw Yeretyik over her shoulder, and in a rattle of robe tails she was gone into the shadows, carrying the Russian down an alley with a swiftness and agility that defied the laws of physics.

  Nilu collapsed. There were street people on their feet now, pointing at Min, who was racing to Nilu’s side. No use pursuing the monsters; they would be gone by now, or waiting in ambush.

  Min knelt beside Nilu; the girl was perspiring, her eyes wide and bewildered. The trance was broken. She was present for what was happening now.

  Min didn’t care how many witnesses there were. She was nobody to them.

  She pressed the barrel of the shotgun against Nilu’s head. Better to blow her brains out before the inevitable vampire infection took her over.

  Nilu grasped the barrel in her hands, but she hadn’t the strength to push it away. She was begging in Hindi.

  Min didn’t care. She was about to squeeze the trigger when it occurred to her that she now had something Yeretyik wanted. Vampires didn’t leave half-finished victims behind them. Yeretyik had risked destruction to find Nilu again. He would keep trying as long as the girl lived. Wherever Min took her in the world, the monster would track Nilu down. Min could set up an ambush on her own terms. She’d kill the second vampire, too, if they both appeared. The advantage would be hers next time.

  She depressed the safety, shoved the shotgun back into its harness, and caught Nilu beneath her arms. Min hauled the girl upright, then propelled her away into the night, ignoring the jabber of excited onlookers.

  10

  * * *

  Rome

  “What is the Italian for peanut butter?” Sax asked.

  “Burro di arachidi,” Paolo said. “Why?”

  “I enjoy learning new things.”

  They had, as it was Sax’s ambition always to do, dined well. So well that Paolo nearly wept. Sax did the ordering, with the assistance of the owner of the place, Angelo, who remembered Sax from his last visit. How long had it been? A year or two? Sax was always struck by the power of recall that restaurateurs seemed to possess—but then, he could remember every chair he’d ever sold, and how much he’d made on each deal. What one remembers best is whatever one specializes in. Angelo’s specialty was returning customers.

  For l’antipasto, Angelo recommended a simple bruschetta—crusty bread with a coarse salsa of onions, tomatoes, garlic, olive oil, and balsamic vinegar spooned atop it, garnished with fresh leaves of basil and crumbs of bright salt.

  “O, tanto aglio,” Paolo said, in purely secular ecstasy. So much garlic.

  “Ammazzavampiri,” Angelo said.

  Paolo jumped in his chair and dropped his napkin. Angelo laughed, and Paolo laughed a moment later. Sax waited patiently for an explanation.

  “He says it will kill vampires,” Paolo said, laughing. “Vampires!”

  If it were only that easy, Sax thought. He didn’t find it funny.

  Sax had a single bite of the tangy bruschetta. It was enough. He savored it. An old man must pace himself. Paolo, however, consumed the rest with the appetite of a man rescued at sea, exclaiming over every mouthful. Sax admired the way the olive oil ran down Paolo’s chin and fingers and the black pepper reddened his lips. Extra virgin, Sax thought, his mind strictly on the oil.

  Angelo was apologetic. He was supposed to be creating winter dishes, but it was like summer outside. So he would be mixing the seasons a little. For the fall, the first course (il primo) was a soup that Sax had never encountered before, the primary ingredient being rare agnolotti del plin, tiny hand-folded ravioli no bigger than a fingernail. Angelo had gotten them fresh from his cousin in Piedmont. He prepared these in a broth of vegetable stock flavored with a few scraps of thinly shaved black truffle. Sax was unable to resist eating his entire portion; it was a time for truffles, it seemed. Paolo raised his bowl to his lips with both hands and drank, moaning. Sax felt a note of triumph: He had found Paolo’s weakness. Seduction by gluttony.

  They ordered a good Carmignano wine on the recommendation of Angelo. Paolo enjoyed it immoderately, becoming ever more voluble concerning the food and life in general.

  “I have some people for you to meet,” he said, abruptly breaking his concentration on the meal.

  “Ah,” said Sax, not sure what people Paolo meant.

  “They have themselves experience in the business of—” Here Paolo made a crick noise from the side of his mouth and ran an oily finger across his throat. “The things we hunt,” he added, when Sax still didn’t comprehend.

  “Oh, that, Sax said. “Those. Yes. Yes yes yes. I have some specific requirements we should discuss first, but I’m not sure if this is the correct . . . venue, you understand.” Sax looked around the small, whitewashed stone room with its beams and yellow parchment lamps, the little flock of tables crammed together so the waiters might tiptoe through. Sax’s plans included bloodshed and evil hearts bursting beneath silver hammers, screaming and dying and fire. Better if the other customers thought he was merely some old sinner taking his confessor out for a meal, not a cross between Quentin Crisp and Torquemada.

  When il secondo arrived, in the form of ossobuco alla Milanese, a rich winter dish, Sax ate a few slow bites of his own portion, then offered the rest to Paolo, who consumed it after he had finished his own. Even with the sparing amounts Sax allowed himself to eat, he was still sweating by the end of the course, overwhelmed by the food.

  “There is a woman,” Paolo said. Sax’s grizzled eyebrows knotted themselves into a frown. “I know. You do not wish to speak of business. But I cannot enjoy such a meal unless I am paying for it in some way.”

  “You’ll drive yourself round the bend with that sort of talk, young man,” Sax said. “Even a priest must get the occasional evening off, must he not?”

  Paolo shook his head, splashing more wine into their glasses from the pigeon-breasted decanter that, like so many things, mocked Sax with its faint resemblance to the accursed ormolu clock.

  “It is not a job in that way. It is the same for artists, I am told. They are never free from their vocation. It is their calling. It is part of them and with them always. The artist cannot look at a landscape and merely see it; he bears witness to it, he interprets it. My calling as well is that way.”

  Sax nodded. He knew the feeling. He was not himself an artist, but he was certainly alive to the arts, a disciple. He lived in a world not of objects but of creations, and in each he saw reflected the skill and context and the act of creating it. Sometimes he yearned for a table to be just a table. Then he could get rid of that beastly Art Deco Hoffmann in his living room.

  “Yes,” he said.

  After their labors at the table, the two men rested, refreshing their palates with a cold glass of tart limoncello made on the premises. Angelo approached them almost apologetically, his hands clasped in supplication, and had to tease Sax into ac
cepting suggestions for il dolce—the dessert; Paolo did not hesitate, bold and valiant in youth as he was, and also at his ideal body weight. Out came bleeding wedges of Roman cherry tart, dashed with a reduction of cherry liqueur and chocolate. “Christ in heaven,” Sax breathed, and Paolo did not chide him for it.

  “Right,” said Sax, when at last they left the osteria with loud promises to return. “To business.”

  He was pleased to see Paolo was no longer enthusiastic about the prospect of discussing work; the rich and plentiful meal had taken the edge off his customary appetite for business. Everyone had a sin; the trouble with gluttony was Sax couldn’t keep up with it.

  They did need to talk things over, and there was some urgency to it. But every activity had a right time, just as everything had a right place, unless it was do-it-yourself Scandinavian flat-pack furniture, in which case it had neither. Sax knew just what Paolo needed—he took him to the first busy bar they encountered on the walk back toward the hotel, where they consumed thimble-sized espressos like rocket fuel.

  “I require only a few assistants for this matter,” Sax said, once they had resumed their stroll, Paolo now sufficiently restored for the purpose. Sax’s cane tapped along like a stork seeking frogs.

  “We recently sent a team of seven men to Finland,” Paolo said. “They are not all back yet. One of them is missing. So we are less of staff.” He said this in a confessional manner. Sax guessed it had been Paolo who’d sent them on their way.

  “I want as few people as possible,” Sax said. “Consider me the brains of the operation, seeing as that’s all I have left. I’m not keen on having you along, but I suppose that’s none of my business. Still, you can handle the coordination and so forth, see to that side of things. I will also require the most seasoned burglar you can get your fine muscular hands upon, preferably with experience in this kind of project; he should fear death and dismemberment only sufficiently to make him cautious, and he should bring his own tools.”

  “That will require recruitment outside our usual resources,” Paolo said. He looked thoughtful.

  “And—” Sax said, and paused.

  He intended no aposiopesis, but there was a bit of food under his dental bridge. He greatly desired to pick it out. His vanity, however, overcame the irritation. If he could just conceal his disgusting weaknesses and deformities for a few days, perhaps Paolo would come to see him in an avuncular light, as did Emily. Then, if they survived the adventure, Sax could invite Paolo to his most recent villa in France and all of Sax’s old friends would assume the worst and burst with jealousy. He gave up attempting to suck the morsel out from under the superstructure holding his tooth in place.

  “And,” he said, resuming, “I need at least one proper vampire killer. A sociopath would be ideal, but not a psychopath. It is an important distinction.”

  “I have just the person,” Paolo said, brightening.

  “What a treat,” Sax replied. “I’ll need in addition one chap with extensive special operations training. The sort that goes down ropes on cliffs and swims across rivers with a knife in his teeth and so forth. That should do the trick. We’re going to keep this fast, violent, and quiet.”

  “What is your plan, Mr. Saxon-Tang?” Paolo asked. There was a note in his voice Sax didn’t like. It was admiration, he thought. The sound of trust. It was something Sax seldom heard, unless from Emily in unguarded moments.

  The name Tang was like a withered limb in Sax’s estimation. “Please call me Sax,” he said. He mentioned this primarily to gain some time to compose his answer to the question: in truth, his scheme was vague at best. He would begin with the background and maybe a proper plan would emerge.

  “This vampire. I’ve collected some information about her. Female, yes. Wealthy, as they usually are. Most of the pieces she’s bought are European, which of course suggests she’s spent at least the last couple of centuries here. Also, she was in Europe during the Second World War, because it was directly thereafter that most of these objects appeared, which tells me she lost them during the festivities.”

  “Brilliant,” Paolo said, failing to see what a tissue of conjecture it all was.

  “Indeed,” Sax muttered. “Now, I became aware of this creature when I won at auction a clock with an interesting history, at least up until 1939. It was owned by Jean Cocteau, the great dramatist and filmmaker. Cocteau dropped out of sight for two years, and the clock as well, and after that, he no longer had it. It turned up again after the war in a respectable American diplomat’s household in New York, and remained there until recently, when the diplomat’s effects were auctioned off, his heirs having fallen into, ah, reduced circumstances, as seems to be the vogue.”

  “So what is the plan?” Paolo said. They were now strolling down one of the avenues that led to the Piazza San Pietro, lined with handsome apartment buildings and occasional small palaces with their own wooded grounds, mostly converted into condomini.

  “Getting to that,” Sax barked. Only Emily knew how to listen. “I was able to determine where the diplomat was stationed during the war and his whereabouts after that while he was still in Europe. I’ve got that narrowed down to Wolfsburg, in Lower Saxony. Where they make Volkswagen automobiles. The diplomat was sent there to oversee conversion of factories from wartime production to civilian stuff that could be exported to the United States on the cheap. He made use of his dollar salary, his connections to the U.S. Army, and Germans in need of many favors. He ended up with a great deal of what one might call the spoils of war, if pillage is too strong a word.”

  “Shameful,” Paolo said.

  “Shameful? The man was a genius.”

  “So you know where she is,” Paolo said, betraying a whiff of impatience. He stopped walking, as they were now close to Sax’s hotel, and rested his haunches against a raised triangular plot of grass in a stone bed, presumably some relic of antiquity. Lovers and tourists in various combinations were strolling past at the uniquely Roman pace, like snails.

  “I know where the monster was. In 1945, at least. Or where she probably was. None of this is certain. Listen. A lot of things flowed through Wolfsburg then on the railway lines. It’s only a clue: her location was connected to that city. So it’s a point on the map. Her location is connected to these objects as well. They may have been purchased with mechanisms to keep the buyer secret, but they all had to be shipped somehow. And shipping agents are less discreet.”

  All in a moment, the complete plan appeared in Sax’s head. He now knew what to do. And at the same time, he wasn’t going to tell it to Paolo. Not because it was disagreeable in any way, or stupid, or dangerous, although those were all aspects of the thing. Rather, it was because nobody was discreet—possibly including Paolo. It wasn’t in the human genetic code.

  Vampires, though, were discreet by nature, and very good listeners indeed. Sax’s fiend would already know he was in Europe, for example, although given his frequent travels, she might not have known why. But it wouldn’t take long. Then all he would have to keep himself and his team alive long enough to get to the source of things, the only real advantage, would be—

  “Do you know what a secret is?” Sax said.

  Paolo looked confused. “A secret? Something kept from knowledge?” he suggested valiantly.

  Sax shrugged. “A secret is a baby conspiracy. It’s an infant when one man knows it, a child amongst two men, and when three men know it, it’s old enough to make its own way in the world. I’m not going to tell you my plan. Not yet. Not until I’m prepared for the vampire to know it, too.”

  The next day, Sax’s reticence concerning his brilliant plan paid off early. He sprang from his bed at the crack of ten, and an hour later was sufficiently awake to proceed across the way to the church where Paolo had his office.

  Paolo had not been idle. He was, as Sax had suspected, in constant communication with his superiors. This didn’t make him
underhanded; it was an aspect of being a part of the Church hierarchy that one had no secrets from one’s betters. Their response upon hearing that Sax would not reveal his scheme wasn’t, as Sax assumed it would be, to wish him the best of luck and withdraw Paolo from the operation. Instead, good old Achenbach opened an expense account for Paolo, from which he could draw cash for whatever contingencies might arise. Sax’s list of contingencies quadrupled in an instant upon hearing this news.

  Paolo had made his inquiries and tracked down the people Sax would need to retain, insofar as he was able. Sax sat in one of the puritanical chairs on the other side of Paolo’s desk and listened to him talk on the telephone and clatter away at his computer keyboard. Sax drank a series of coffees relayed in by one or another of the monks of the Ordine dei Cavalieri Sacri dei Teutonici e dei Fiamminghi, Special Branch. Sax thought pleasantly that they should pose for a calendar someday, hairy chests coyly apeep beneath their vestments, doing monkish things like treading grapes in bare feet or scrubbing floors with their bottoms in the air. It could raise a fortune for orphans and the like. Monks on every wall; have you seen Fra October? What a bel figo! Sax realized he was daydreaming, almost asleep despite the coffee.

  “The personnel files are coming,” Paolo said, interrupting the reverie.

  A moment later, the door opened, and a monk with curly auburn hair entered with a stack of file folders of the type that close with a flap and red string. Paolo extracted dossiers from them and slipped glossy black-and-white photographs across the desk to Sax. He fanned the pictures out: his first hand of cards in the game.

  “This is Min Hee-Jin, from South Korea. She is our vampire killer,” Paolo said.

  “Is she not a trifle too small for the work?” Sax asked.

  “The bigger ones are all psychopaths, which you said was no good. She is very good,” Paolo said, as if enticing Sax to sample a morsel of cake. “She may be only this tall, but she’s killed four vampires.”