Lucy was trying very hard not to be observed watching the vampire, but I could discern her sidelong glances and peering over her cup of wine, the subject of her attentions clear to me.
I know better than to broach this with Lucy, so I instead sidled up to the vampire. I sat on a stack of rye grain, and Dracula put down his book.
“My grandfather knew you as his enemy,” I said.
“He stood in the way of what I desired. At that time,” Dracula replied. “I hope you do not see me as such.”
“Oh, tish, we are allies, old stick,” I replied. “For the moment.”
“‘For the moment’? You envision our affiliation to change?” He fixed me with an imperious gaze.
“No, of course not.” I quickly left him to his books, feeling very much the coward. Why cannot I confront him on the subject so dear to me? Will we fight for Lucy’s hand?
As the last rays of sunlight faded, Horea gathered his gifts from Renfield and drove away with the vampire. Lucy collected the rest of us around a map laid out upon a pallet of wheat sacks. She began briefing us on the route to our ambush site. The timetable for the convoy would put them due at around ten p.m. I pointed out possible escape routes, taking over the briefing. Lucy has a habit of assuming command even though she has no military training, not to mention her feminine shortcomings.
I would mention this to her, but we are on such tremulous ground lately and I am afraid I might make matters worse.
The drive to the location was difficult; the roads around here were not marked, and none of us were familiar with the terrain. I had driven during our recce, but everything looked different in the dark, and there was such an overcast that landmarks were difficult to discern. To my embarrassment we found ourselves lost more than once.
Finally, once there, Renfield dug into his kit and again assumed his schoolteacher role, the don of destruction.
“The pull switch.” Renfield strung a wire from a telegraph pole to a tree trunk across the road, made it taut about a metre off the ground, and attached it to the pull switch. As usual he went on at length describing the particulars of this device. The sudden bouts of clarity were losing their charm.
The road was north of Gura Vitioarei, where intelligence had informed us that this Rumanian military convoy, carrying small arms and munitions to the Ukrainian border, was due. Closca waited in the belfry of a small church a quarter of a mile south of our ambush site. He was our lookout and early warning. The convoy was late. It was way past eleven when the church bell rang the once.
The rest of us all waited on the roof of a closed agricultural supply establishment so we could watch the oncoming cataclysm.
The first truck struck the wire, and the explosives we had buried in the road flipped the vehicle like a coin on a thumb. The gas tank blew with a great yellow billow of flame. The six trucks following skidded to tyre-burning stops. Then Renfield detonated the four other charges we had buried at five-metre intervals. Three of the vehicles suffered the same violent eruption of the first. Two of those were obviously carrying munitions as evidenced by the secondary explosions, artillery shells, and bullets popping and arcing into the sky, some with the neon trails of tracers.
These explosions engulfed the unharmed trucks and they, too, were soon ablaze and torn apart. Intermittent blasts continued the fierce destruction. At one point we had to flee the roof as rounds began landing about us. We dashed across the corrugated tin as bits of wood and metal rained down upon our shoulders.
The rest of the fireworks we watched from the safety of a hayloft half a kilometre away. I had become quite proficient at scouting our exit strategies, always planning at least two ways out of any situation we set up.
Returning to the warehouse we were all in a celebratory mood. But that joy was soon extinguished when we found Dracula, blood-drenched as usual after one of his outings, being guarded by a nervous Horea, who was pointing his pistol at the vampire.
“What happened?” Lucy demanded, standing over Dracula. The vampire refused to meet her eyes so she turned to Horea.
“He attacked me,” Horea began. I could see that he was on edge, frightened even, the gun trembling in his hand. “He goes to where the Germans sleep. I go to set bombs on the telephone switching equipment, to destroy them, right? I come back. There is screaming from inside. From the Germans. The Rumanian guards hear this and come running. I hide. Dracula comes out, attacks the soldiers. Nothing like this I have ever seen. Nothing.”
The poor man visibly shivered, then continued. “He kills them all. Maybe eight, maybe ten. I go to him. We must put the bodies inside and burn down the building, right? To hide what has happened. He attacks me. I shoot him. Nothing happens. Bullets do nothing to him. I, I am going to die, I think. Then he stops. Like he wakes up. I bring him back here. But I don’t trust him. I keep a gun on him all the way.”
“But you said bullets did him no harm,” I said.
“What am I going to use?” he answered. “A harsh word?”
The vampire regarded us with a forlorn look. I could see bullet holes in his shirt, each circled by a black cloud of unburnt gunpowder. He had been shot at close range. And survived. There seemed to be no apparent harm to him. How was this possible?
“I am ashamed and bereft,” Dracula whispered.
“Horea, go get something to drink,” Lucy said, laying a hand on the man’s gun arm. Horea put the pistol away and walked to the other end of the warehouse where Closca was opening the brandy.
Lucy turned to me. “Join the others,” she told me. I acceded. But sipping my drink, I watched as she knelt at the vampire’s side, speaking softly into his ear. Then she embraced him. I felt like someone had just kicked me in the chest.
EXCERPTED FROM THE UNPUBLISHED NOVEL THE DRAGON PRINCE AND I
by Lenore Van Muller
The Prince’s sudden relapse was a surprise. He usually appeared to be so much in control that it was difficult for her to imagine him losing his composure. Evidently he was quite shaken by this recent reverse.
“You lost control again?” she asked.
“One cannot lose what one never has,” he told her. His defeat seemed total. She could not think of what to say, so she reached out and took him into her arms. He folded into her like a bereft child. She whispered into his ear.
“You wonder if you have lost your humanity,” she said. “But your feelings now are evidence to the contrary. What you now feel, regret, guilt, sadness, defeat—all are human. At the core of us all. You are not so removed from us as you think.”
He did not reply but also did not pull away. The next thing Lucille knew, she was waking, curled between two oat sacks, the Prince watching over her, book in hand. Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad. She smiled at him and he smiled back. She had not had such a feeling of contentment since before the war.
Before she could relay the feeling to the Prince there was a commotion at the door. Lucille rushed over to find Crisan and Closca confronting a young schoolgirl, eight or nine, sporting a Catholic school uniform. Red-cheeked and big blue eyes under a fringe of dark brown hair, she wiped her nose on the back of her hand and insisted on speaking to Lenore Van Muller. Lucille introduced herself as that person, and the imp demanded identification. With some amusement for all, Lucille showed her fake papers and received a folded slip of paper in return. The child did a neat curtsy and ran away. Harker came over as Lucille read the missive to all.
Word had come down the partisan grapevine that it was time to move on. The local Rumanian Army detachment had organised a large unit whose sole mission was to find and eliminate the team that had ambushed their convoy and killed so many soldiers.
The team immediately packed the hearse and lorry to travel southwest, where they set up a new base. After calling for an airdrop, they began reconnaissance along the Arges River, studying the rail lines that ran along the waterway. This rail system was a major supply line from Yugoslavia to Northeast Rumania, where the Russian invasion was being
staged.
It was soon apparent that the military had modified their tactics on rail transport, most likely the result of the recent sabotage by Lucille and her team. Search parties were being sent ahead of any important train, tasked to spot bombs or disturbances along the rails—or to get blown up instead of the more valuable train following. “Bait,” Crisan called them. “Goats staked out to tempt the tiger.” The enemy’s cynical plan was to sacrifice a few men for the sake of vital supplies. Soon the soldiers assigned to this hopeless, suicidal job began to mutiny, so the army began to send a solo engine in front of the priority locomotive to detonate any charges laid down.
But the clever men had not counted on an even more clever group. Young Harker contacted his superiors and briefed them on the problem. The wizards at the SOE pondered and acted.
The next airdrop gifted their little sabotage team with a new pressure switch. This switch was activated after a designated number of train cars passed. These switches could be set for a number of car passings, up to eight. The pressure rod could even distinguish between axles or whole trains, indexed by a ratchet wheel on the side of the device.
Renfield used it to massive effect. At least a half-dozen supply trains were turned into twisted steel wrecks and their freight dumped into the adjacent river or strewn across fields.
Lucille took great delight at the results. Not only were valuable locomotives, cars, and their contents destroyed, but the massive wreckage had to be removed, a laborious process, taxing the enemy with a drain on their manpower. The tracks, curled and mangled, resembling noodles left on a plate to dry, had to be removed, the bed restored, new rails brought in, resulting in delays that left long lines of rail cars sitting on the tracks for days. And these stationary targets proved too tempting for the team to resist.
One such chain of cars, filled with diesel fuel, inspired the two British agents.
“A combined explosive-incendiary device,” Renfield explained. “The explosive ruptures the tank. Another device placed in an opportune location explodes and disperses the diesel oil intae a fine mist that is henceforth ignited by the incendiary. And then just watch the bliddy fun.”
Which they did as twenty fuel tankers erupted into voluminous gouts of fire. Columns of flame, swirling like tornadoes, leapt thirty feet, forty feet, into the air, the conflagration writhing like a living beast eager to devour the world. Night became day for miles around.
Gazing into the fiery maelstrom, Lucy thought she could see Satan. If he existed he certainly resided therein. This she related to Crisan, who replied, “You know there is no devil—just God when he’s drunk.”
The beauty of the balefire was profound, like malicious marigolds instantly blooming in the black night, something maybe only a madman like Van Gogh could render properly.
Nobody enjoyed the results of their labours more than Renfield, whose jubilance was vocal to the extreme. He squealed with delight, screamed in paroxysms of triumph. On more than one occasion his shouts of glee would draw the attention of the local gendarmes or soldiers responding to the calamity. At these times Crisan would clamp a hand over Renfield’s mouth, stifling the shrieks of joy while Harker led them into the shadows and away.
After more than one narrow escape caused by Renfield’s celebratory outbursts, Lucille started to administer a small dose of the tranquillizer to Renfield, after he had set his charges, of course, and this proved to be sufficient to calm the excitable bomb maker.
They demolished trains and railways in Titu, working their way north to do the same in Gaesti, Cateasua, and Pitesti, cutting telephone and telegraph lines whenever the opportunity presented itself. They blew up power stations supplying military bases and vital factories. Havoc was raised, as Harker exclaimed after every incident. And with every airdrop the SOE delivered a new bag of tricks.
And some of what they supplied proved to be just that, tricks. Lucille and Harker managed to close some of the emotional distance between them as they both took childish delight in various acts of minor sabotage. Particular pleasure was found tossing caltrops across the road; a caltrop was a tetrahedral-like instrument, small, sharpened triangles with knife edges, which when scattered upon a flat surface always presented a sharp point aimed upward.
Lucille and Harker would laugh like schoolkids pranking the teacher as they seeded the roads before a coming military convoy, watching as tyre after tyre burst, popping like balloons at their own private party. They told themselves that this was a ruin of precious rubber products, that this resulted in the enemy taking time and resources to repair or replace the tyres, besides the strike against enemy morale. But the truth of the matter was that it was simply outrageous fun.
The cunning explosives disguised as lumps of coal were tossed into barracks coal chutes by undercover partisan operatives. An even a more sinister explosive had been created to look like a dead rat. These remarkable facsimiles they placed in woodpiles, waiting for the natural human inclination to toss the horrid, deceased pest into the nearby furnace. The thought of bursting stoves and heating systems was enough to bring a smile any day.
One airdrop delivered a container of itching powder, and Closca scoffed at any possibility that the substance could be of any use. But Horea found a confederate working in an army uniform factory. She was able to sprinkle the evil ingredient (the barbed seeds of the Mucuna plant, dispensed in a talcum tin) onto the clothing.
Caught up in the mischief, Crisan sought out a contact who was employed in a factory manufacturing condoms. What Closca called “preservatives” and Horea “happy hats” were destined for troops along the Soviet line and also sent to the German Army occupying France. There seemed to be such a need in Paris that German manufacturers alone could not keep up with demand.
It was Crisan’s brilliant idea to introduce the same irritant into the condoms. After that, the mere mention of the words “happy hat” was enough to produce childish chuckles from the entire team.
Harker’s reports about these more mundane but insidious actions prompted the SOE to drop a shipment of something called carbachol, a powerful purgative. This was distributed by the team to others in the Resistance who then slipped it into the salt supplies at a variety of Rumanian military posts. The after-reports were vivid descriptions of Herculean bowel evacuations, another cause for amusement among the team.
Some of the tricks were not as successful, like the incendiary arrow, resembling a large safety match, eighteen inches long, a percussion fuse on the head, fired by a bow, supposedly with a range of fifty metres or so. The contrivance only worked half the time, and Lucille could throw the damned thing farther than the strongest man could fire it with the bow.
During this series of raids, sabotage, harassment, and hijinks, the Prince remained at their various base hideouts. He had not exactly refused to go out on his own missions, but no one had asked or assigned him one, either. The one thing Lucille knew was that Horea would never accompany the Prince again. He had told her this outright and had obviously been traumatised by his last encounter with the vampire.
Lucille wanted to comfort the Prince, help him find some relief from his turmoil, but he met all advances with a cold indifference. The intimacy of that one night in the grain warehouse was not to be repeated. And Lucille became so busy with their clandestine work that she had little time to coax him out of his doldrums. She was not the mothering type and felt that war was not a place for coddling.
And she had a feeling that such counseling was not something the Prince wanted. He was the type of man who needed to work out these internal problems for himself. And she was willing to allow him that privacy.
In the meantime, their efforts were proving to have a major impact upon military shipping operations in the area, which was demonstrated by the increased patrols—and those very patrols became targets for the team. Harker was also making regular reports to his minders—troop movements, manufacturing and utility locations to be marked for bombing at a later date—and any intell
igence or rumour (denoted as such) was broadcast over his transmitter.
The nocturnal existence was taking a toll on them, the constant moving and the ever-present stress an exhausting strain on the entire team, that and living in each other’s pockets. At the same time they knew they were making substantial contributions to the Resistance effort.
They decided to take a much needed rest at an old country estate presided over by a fascist-hating Grande Dame, one Zsusanna Karoli, a rather rotund little woman in her nineties, who insisted that everyone call her Tanti Zasu. She was much impressed by the courtly manners of the Prince and more so by his title. His solicitous attentions toward the dowager only gilded the lily.
On the afternoon of the second day of respite, Lucille came back from phoning her contacts to find young Harker on the transmitter receiving orders from his handlers in Britain. She watched him at his codebook, transcribing the message. His excitement grew with every word.
When he gathered the team together he could barely contain his joy.
“The German Gestapo have set up a training facility in Buzau. There they give instruction to specially selected Rumanians, teaching them the various methods of torture, censorship, how to search for Jews, gypsies, other enemies of the regime. Detention and deportation are also part of the curriculum. A school for cruelty and ethnic elimination.”
“How many?” Crisan asked.
“Two dozen Germans,” Harker answered. “They have commandeered a former girls’ finishing school. Very small, two buildings. They reside in the attached dormitory. Out in the country north of the city. The big, fat fly in the ointment is that the entire place is surrounded by a Rumanian military camp, permanent buildings and temporary tent quarters.”
“Dangerous,” Lucille remarked. “Hard to get in, harder to get out.”
“Not our kind of game,” Closca added. “If we can’t attack the oil fields, this is also beyond our scope.”
Dracula vs. Hitler Page 20
