She heard an engine outside and peered through the lace curtains to see her father arrive in the Bentley. Lucille was surprised; she had assumed he was asleep in his bedroom. But he had risen early and gone into Brasov to obtain papers for the vampire. No one could travel anymore about the countryside without the proper documents, and the partisans used a friendly printer in town to counterfeit any needed papers. The identification, ration and business card were made out for a Vlad Wallach, a mortician from Fantana Alba in Bukovina. Lucille smiled at her father’s sense of humour.
“I’ll give them to him,” she said and took the papers upstairs. She knocked first.
“You may enter,” the Prince announced in an imperious tone.
Stepping inside she found him smiling at a book. He held up the cover for her to see: The Pocket Book of Ogden Nash, an American poet and humourist.
“Most amusing, this fellow,” he said, closing and setting the book aside.
“You’ll lose your place,” she noted.
“I memorise the page number where I stopped reading,” he told her. “I’ve quite enjoyed many of the tomes you have recommended. A rich and enlightening repast. Thank you.”
“You’re quite welcome,” she said. “Just let me know when you need more. We have acquired some documents for you. To allow you to travel.”
She handed him the papers and he perused them with little interest, not commenting on the name, not even the profession.
“We’ll leave at dark,” she told him.
“I look forward to the journey,” the Prince replied. “And to punishing our enemies.”
“So do I,” she replied, and said it again to herself. So do I.
She left him to his reading and went back downstairs to find Horea, Closca, and Crisan had arrived. Her father called down for Harker and Renfield to come up. Lucille rummaged in the kitchen for something to feed everyone, and her father helped. This prompted a mundane conversation about the latest German demands from the Rumanian farmers: potatoes, sugar beet, and wheat stores that the locals had been holding for themselves.
“If they keep this up there will be not enough to feed our own people,” Crisan complained. “Our own production is already down, because so many young men have been taken off the farms and conscripted into the army.”
“That is part of the German plan,” Closca said. “Why they invaded, using us and the other countries they conquered as provender for their war machine.”
As they ate Lucille was very conscious of young Harker’s constant attention to her every word, her every move. At every chance he managed to brush up against her, touching her hand when she passed him the butter, laying a palm on her shoulder when he leaned over to pour her a glass of wine, searching, she knew, for a signal that what happened the other night was the beginning of something, not the end.
But Lucille, to his apparent dismay, acted as if the tryst had never occurred. She noticed her father was eyeing both of them, aware that there was some kind of perturbation in the ether around the two.
Later, when the sun began to disappear behind the mountains, they began loading their vehicles. All that Dracula carried, his only possessions in this new world, was a stack of books borrowed from Professor Van Helsing, the volumes bound by an old belt as a schoolboy would have done.
The Prince had to smile when he saw their transportation, which gave meaning to the profession noted on his newly minted documents. Horea had procured a hearse for the journey. That allowed her to use her nursing credentials and for them to pose as an improvised medical transport to a Bucharest hospital, their patient being the injured Renfield. Her father provided a vial of phenobarbital, with which she injected the demolitions expert so that he did not suddenly burst out into song at some inopportune moment and give away the game. The vampire would assume the role of hearse owner, allowing its use for this “emergency.” Taking into consideration the vampire’s sensitivity to daylight, the decision had been made to travel at night whenever possible. The romantically befuddled English Lieutenant drove. Horea, Closca, and Crisan followed at a discreet distance in a rusted old truck, carting a few boxes of pickles purportedly headed for the brinery near whatever village might be ahead.
Horea argued that it was the wrong time of year for pickles, and the shrivelled lot in the barrels would not pass inspection by any army roadblock, especially if the guard had any farm experience. This devolved into a useless argument among the Marx Brothers until Lucille finally put a stop to the debate with a few well-chosen words and the order to move out. Before they drove away she received a heartfelt farewell from her father with his request to be vigilant and careful.
Then forty kilometres down the road Harker had to stop the hearse when they saw the truck pulled over to the side of the road. Horea was quibbling with a farmer over a few barrels of last season’s apples. A deal was struck, and the pickles were dumped and replaced with the withered apples. The alibi now was that the Marx Brothers were on their way to a cider mill. This seemed to be an amiable solution for all three.
Lucille was too aggravated to even join the discussion.
The explosives and weapons had been packed into a hidden compartment under the floorboards of the hearse. Harker kept his pistol under his seat, but Lucille would not part with her Luger, keeping it at hand.
They were stopped only once, at the edge of Brasov. Vlad Wallach’s papers passed without comment, and from there they had an unimpeded drive. They had decided to begin their rebellious activities midway between Brasov and Ploesti, in a triangle of towns, Comarnic, Campina, and Targoviste, with a diversionary trip east to Valeni De Munte.
Multiple railroad lines ran north past these cities, carrying fuel, minerals, troops, and supplies for the soldiers gathering on the northern border, all in preparation for the coming invasion of the Soviet Union.
Lucille had a contact at the rail dispatch office in Bucharest who kept them informed about any potential targets for the Resistance, designating specific trains and cargo.
The first step was to acquire a new radio transmitter for the English spy. A communiqué was sent via Turkey, and an airdrop was arranged by the SOE.
A few days later, on a chilly night, in a vacant field of clover outside Pucioasa, Harker directed the others to lay out a line of cans filled with petrol. When the plane engine was heard in the night sky, they quickly put an improvised torch to the fumes wafting from the cans. The pilot used this line of flaming dots to drop a large package by parachute. Inside was a new wireless disguised as an ordinary-looking continental suitcase.
The Prince, not participating in the preparation of the beacons—it being too much like peasant work, he said—watched the approach and passing of the plane with unmasked awe. He trotted over to where the parachute had landed and examined the silk, totally ignoring the radio, fingering the cloth appreciatively.
“Such fine material for such a mundane task,” he marvelled.
Harker gathered up his new transmitter like a woman reunited with her childhood doll. He showed the group how his SOE Camouflage Section had carefully aged the exterior of the luggage using spilled tea and sandpaper. The case was not light, weighing at least nine kilograms, but the radio did work. After the English boy made contact, another airdrop was made a few days later, this one containing more explosives and eccentric devices designed to cause mayhem.
During all of these preliminary preparations, the poor English lad constantly looked to Lucille for approbation. He was desperate for some kind of acknowledgement that the night in her bed was not an aberration. But Lucille was determined that her weakness on that lonely night was not going to be repeated.
She kept her emotions in check, purposely refraining from any encouragement for the suffering boy. Still her guilt was great, knowing that the raw wound in his heart was her fault, that she was the implement that caused him this pain.
She was also aware that she had begun referring to him, at least in her mental dialectics, as a “boy” a
lthough she was but three or four years older than Harker. Maybe it was his callow innocence in regard to war, his romantic notions of the forthcoming combat, his naivete and inexperience with women.
Possibly it was her instinctual rejection of that cow-eyed gaze she saw on his face every time she caught him staring at her. Like a lovesick adolescent in short pants.
It was depressing to see a poor fellow, whom you knew loved you honestly, going around looking all brokenhearted. This was a plight she had experienced ever since the first boy sent her a love note wrapped around a piece of Turkish Delight.
Finally Lucille could take it no more. Harker was at his radio, sending the intelligence he had gathered since his landing in Rumania. This took hours, transcribing his notes with his codebook then sending batches of transmission. He looked up at her when she stood next to him and she could see the hope in his eyes. Damn him.
“For the sake of time and to minimise your suffering, I think you should know that I—we—will not pursue our . . . intimacy,” she said. “From now on I think it would be best if we maintain a purely professional attitude. I also hope we can find a way to be friends.”
He stared at her for a moment, slowly assimilating her words and their meaning. There was the briefest flicker of pain across his face that he covered with the proverbial stiff upper lip.
“I see,” he said, nodding. “I see . . . I’m sure we can manage an impersonal arrangement and continue our duties.”
He turned away from her and resumed his radio procedures. Lucille knew he was hurt, and she tried to think of a way to leaven his pain, but nothing came to mind. Nothing ever had. She had been through this a multitude of times and had never found a way to reject a man’s attentions without causing pain or anger. Or both.
They continued to work together, but it was a stiff and sometimes difficult exchange. Considering how dangerous things were about to become, she could only hope that their relationship did not become a hindrance.
With the upcoming peril in mind, Lucille decided to create a protective charm for each of her band. They were hiding out in an abandoned farmhouse. The farmer, a widower, and his sons had been conscripted into the military, leaving the buildings empty, the fields fallow. The inside had been cleaned and left neat as a pin. She hoped that they would live to return to what was obviously a place they loved.
Above the door to a chicken coop a rack of deer antlers had been mounted. Lucille sawed off the tips of six antlers, each the length of her little finger. Using a small knife she inscribed the Chinese character for yongjiu (forever), then carved a crude chrysanthemum on one side and a broadsword on the other, the Chinese symbols for immortality and the God of War, respectively. For extra good luck she rubbed cinnamon into her etchings.
She searched the nearby stream and found six stones, then scratched the Chinese characters for longevity on the smooth surface of each rock. After drilling holes into the deer horn amulets and the longevity stones, she threaded them into a length of rawhide and presented each of the men with the hexed charms. Horea, Crisan, and Closca, being the typical superstitious Rumanians, accepted theirs with alacrity. Renfield allowed her to set the cord about his neck with no objection or even acknowledgement. Young Harker, brooding since her rejection of him, frowned, suspicious of her motives, but nevertheless, when she insisted, let her drape the charm around his neck.
The Prince refused her offer. “I put no worth in such beliefs,” he declared.
“That is strange,” she replied. “Since many would regard you with the same disbelief.”
“True,” he said, nodding. “And often I have relied upon just that. But, generally, superstition has been my enemy, not my ally.”
Lucille could not help but compare the Prince with the callow Englishman. It was not just the comparative ages; she did not really regard the Prince as old. He was instead cultured, confident sometimes to the point of arrogance. But there was no denying his mystery, outside the legend and peculiarity of his existence. The stories he could tell, what he had witnessed through, what, centuries? How had he become what he was now? How had he lived? How many had he outlived, loved, lost?
She donned the Prince’s charm herself.
FROM THE WAR JOURNAL OF J. HARKER
(transcribed from shorthand)
I now have a transmitter and am finally in contact with my handlers and superiors. They are excited about our sabotage mission and welcome the intelligence about the Rumanian and German military movements and armament that I have forwarded.
I did not mention the vampire. For obvious reasons. They would think me dotty and thereafter view all of my intelligence with suspicion, I am sure. I am confused myself, this whole vampire business finding me well beyond my remit.
I have prodded the Prince with question after question about his encounters with my grandfather. His responses are terse, and I feel he is embarrassed by the experience, if not ashamed. Fair Lucy has had no more luck than I with her own inquiries.
As for her sudden turnabout in regards to our incipient romance, I am still bewildered. It really takes the biscuit. This cannot be happening. I am sure that she shares my feelings, that this rejection is a wily subterfuge to disguise our courtship and hide it from her comrades so as not to cause internecine disunity. Or she prefers to maintain a professional attitude during times of duress, as we are sure to sustain in the weeks ahead.
Whatever her reasons, I refuse to accept that our dalliance was nothing but that. I am convinced that we are destined to have a future together. My love is unabated.
And a sure sign of her thawing, today she presented me with a hand-wrought totem of friendship. I was wondering what she was toiling at in the corner of our hideout, and when she presented me with a necklace of her own design I was flabbergasted. She does care. And if I am not mistaken the deer horn is a symbol of sexual virility. She has not forgotten our night of lust! She’s a corker, all right.
EXCERPTED FROM THE UNPUBLISHED NOVEL THE DRAGON PRINCE AND I
by Lenore Van Muller
Damned Harker continued to be moon-eyed whenever Lucille found herself alone with him. He was indeed quite capable in many areas, but he seemed to find a variety of ways to vex her, among them his irksome habit of lecturing her and the others.
“Our mission is to undermine the enemy economy, disrupt their transport and communications, interrupt vital supplies and production, destroy them root and branch, and to deteriorate morale as much as we can,” he told them, not twice but three times.
What did he think Lucille and her compatriots had been doing for the last year, playing Ring a Ring o’ Roses?
The second airdrop delivered a pair of tubular containers almost two metres long, each hitched to a parachute. Renfield opened them like a child on his birthday. Besides the demolition supplies, he produced a bundle of pamphlets for the partisans to distribute among their fellows. Lucille inspected them, the writings of so-called SOE experts: “Art of Guerilla Warfare,” “The Partisan Leader’s Handbook,” and “How to Use High Explosives.” She laughed until her sides ached; the first two were handsomely printed in the Polish language and the third in French, all of little use to the Rumanian underground. The Prince was particularly amused.
But the pamphlets did prove to be very flammable and warmed them for a cold night in a damp stable. The team moved every day or so, trying not to spend more than a night or two in any one place. They slept in garages, basements, barns, and the homes of a few brave souls sympathetic with the cause. Lucille found herself in bed with a restless six-year-old one night, an incontinent octogenarian the next, then amid a clutch of chickens. She preferred the birds.
Quite often the unhinged Sergeant Renfield would choose to sleep outside. He could not bear to be enclosed in any place without light. Darkness made him craven and he would quake with alarm. A light had to be on at all times, or he insisted upon having the open sky as his roof. Because they rested in the day, this proved no great difficulty. But once, in the
midst of a rainstorm, they took cover in a potato bin. When the lid was shut, turning the inside into a Stygian box, the Brit went into such a terror-stricken wail that they had to seek another form of shelter.
The airdrop contained the tools of Renfield’s trade, more explosives and such. Lucille made contact with her Bucharest informant, and now that they were properly provisioned, it was time to act.
Their target—the rail lines.
DATED: 16 MAY 1941
TO: CSS REINHARD HEYDRICH, RSHA, REICHSFUHRER-SS
FROM: SS MAJOR WALTRAUD REIKEL
CC: HEINRICH HIMMLER, REICHSFUHRER-SS
(via diplomatic pouch)
MOST SECRET
STATUS COMMUNIQUÉ--Brasov, Rumania
I am happy to report that resistance activities around Brasov and vicinities in the south of Rumania have declined. For the most part, this subsidence is a direct result of the rigid terms of our governance and a few object lessons to demonstrate our intent: to punish severely and without reservations any unrest or sedition.
Certain suspicious individuals have been taken into custody and interviewed. A variety of interrogation methods have produced actionable intelligence and provided the names of other members of the opposition. They in turn have directed us to more such terrorists, and we have been able to discover a chain of personages who may be involved in a variety of rebellious activities. Thusly we have been able to disrupt if not destroy three of the cells in the terrorist hierarchy. Regrettably at this point we have not been able to follow this chain to the primary cell leadership.
By my honor, we will persist until every terrorist is in custody or has been punished for their transgression against our Fuhrer and the Reich.
We also assure you that we have been monitoring the reports from Ploesti and the municipalities in close proximity. Any attendant unrest in that area will have my immediate attention.
Dracula vs. Hitler Page 17
