by Dan Simmons
“Eighteen years,” whispered Kate. She touched his chest with her fingertips. When she lifted her face from his chest to whisper something, he kissed her.
“Did you feel…” she began.
“As if we had been lovers for years?” he finished. “As if we were remembering times we had made love in the future? Yes, I did. Do.”
Kate shook her head. She did not believe in the supernatural, had never believed in miracles…but this physical telepathy made her shiver. O’Rourke pulled the blanket tighter and kissed her ear. “We’d better get dressed and find out if the ceremony is happening tonight,” he whispered.
It rushed in then: the alien place, the cold, the dark, the nightmare of Joshua in the hands of cruel strangers. “Hold me just another minute,” she whispered back, lowering her cheek to his chest again.
He held her.
Chapter Thirty
THE strigoi security forces began arriving sometime after ten-thirty, their dark vans, Mercedes, and military vehicles rumbling down the empty sidestreets of Tîrgovişte and taking up positions around the museum and old palace grounds. There had already been guards at the three gates, as well as razor wire atop the walls. Now the black-garbed figures with automatic weapons guarded the approaches, commandeered rooftops across nearby streets, and lit the torches within the compound around the Chindia Tower. There were few homes around the palace grounds—most of the buildings there were small businesses or related to the factories which surrounded the old section—but those few homes and shops were dark and empty: the people of Tîrgovişte, as if forewarned, had cleared the area before nightfall.
Kate and O’Rourke watched through the shattered wall on the third floor of a half-razed building half a block from the compound. They had seen the guards, checked the walls, and retreated before the rest of the security forces had arrived. Kate had been in favor of trying to get over the wall while there was still time, but O’Rourke had led her to a covered cistern behind the abandoned building. “This is a forgotten way into the compound. This dry cistern opens into a sewer that was part of the original complex. We can enter this way…one of the young priests crawled the entire way in as a lark. But it will be better if we try after dark.”
“How do you know this way in?” Kate had whispered.
He had told her then: His earlier trip to Tîrgovişte had been as much to reconnoiter the palace compound and meet with the Franciscan monks here as to check on the orphanage. The monks had shown him the area, produced old maps and architectural drawings done during the restoration of the palace compound fifty years earlier, and led him to this cistern.
Kate had pulled away from him then. “You knew the ceremony was going to be here,” she said. “You knew all about this stuff.”
O’Rourke shook his head. “Not all about it. We guessed that this would be the site for the second night of the Investiture Ceremony. The palace grounds were closed to the public yesterday and there’s been tight security.”
“Who’s we?” asked Kate.
“The other Franciscans. I swear, Kate, I never heard of any of this until I came to Romania two years ago.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
O’Rourke started to speak, then stopped. He touched her cheek, “I’m sorry. I should have. When you left the country with Joshua, I thought it was over with.”
Kate had balled her fists. “But you knew the danger! You knew they’d come after me!”
“No!” He took a step toward her and then stopped when she backed away. “No, I didn’t know the child had anything to do with the strigoi. You have to believe me on that, Kate.”
She stared at him. “You said that Lucian knew. He and the Order of the Dragon or whatever it’s called.”
O’Rourke shook his head. “Some of the monks who were arrested here today belong to the Order of the Dragon. It’s a real organization…secret all these centuries…but I had no idea Lucian had any contact with it. I’m still not convinced. It’s one of the reasons I called Father Stroicescu early this morning.”
“And what did he say?”
O’Rourke opened his hands. “He’s not in the Order. The priest that was a member was picked up here in Tîrgovişte. I don’t know if Lucian is lying.”
“Why should he be? He’s helped me, hasn’t he?”
O’Rourke said nothing.
“All right,” Kate had said. “I’ll trust you for now.” She closed her eyes. Her body could still feel the sensation of him inside her. My God, what have I done? “Let’s get into the compound.”
“Later,” O’Rourke said, and she could see him shiver. Their clothes were not quite dry and the night wind was cold. “When the VIPs begin arriving.”
The VIPs began arriving an hour before midnight. The line of Mercedes glided between the barricades and guards and disappeared inside the main gate. Kate could see torchlight reflected on the top third of Chindia Tower visible above the compound walls. “It’s time,” she whispered.
O’Rourke nodded tersely and led her down the shattered stairway to the cistern in the dark courtyard. Even in the dim light she could see how pale he was.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
O’Rourke bit his lip. “Tunnel,” he said.
Kate produced the single flashlight she had packed in her bag. “We have this.”
“It’s not the darkness,” he said and clenched his jaws. Kate saw that his teeth were chattering and that there was a film of sweat on his forehead and upper lip.
“You’re ill,” whispered Kate.
“No.” O’Rourke turned away from the cistern and leaned against a wall. “The tunnel…” He clenched his teeth.
Kate understood. “You said that during the war… Vietnam…you were a tunnel rat. It’s where—”
O’Rourke wiped the sweat from his face. “I was checking out a tunnel complex that the platoon had found near a village.” His voice quavered, then steadied. “Tunnels branching from tunnels. Bazella and his boys had dropped in concussion and fragmentation grenades, but there were so many turns, so many ups and downs… Anyway, it’d been an NVA headquarters…infirmary, barracks, the whole bit. But the NVA—the North Vietnamese regulars—had cleared out. Except for one rotting corpse wedged in the tunnel a few meters from its exit point on the riverbank. I figured I could squeeze by…” O’Rourke stopped and stared at nothing.
“The body was booby-trapped,” whispered Kate. Her fingers held the memory of the scars on his back and upper legs.
O’Rourke nodded. “They’d hollowed out the guy’s stomach and rigged him with C-4 and a simple trip wire to the detonator. When I touched his leg, he blew mine off.” He tried to laugh but the sound was sad and hollow.
Kate moved closer and set her face against his neck.
“It’s not full-blown claustrophobia,” he whispered. “I mean, you’ve seen me on planes and trains. As long as I can see a way out…” He broke off. “I’m sorry.”
“No,” whispered Kate. “It’s good. I think it’s better that you wait here. It makes more sense. If I get in trouble, someone has to be out here to go for help.”
This time O’Rourke did laugh. “Go for help to whom? Where? We’re all there is, Kate.”
She managed a smile. “I know, but I keep waiting for the cavalry to come over the hill.”
“Give me a minute,” said O’Rourke. He took several deep breaths, swung his arms around a few times, and leaned out over the dry cistern. It was only eight or nine feet to the bottom and there were gaps and footholds in the loose stone. “Hold the light steady…good, there…that’s where Father Danielescu said the entrance was.”
Kate saw only stone and desiccated creepers.
“Hold it steady until I find a way into the old sewer line,” said O’Rourke. “Then hand down the light and join me.” He swung out over the wall and felt his way to the bottom. Once a stone tumbled to the littered floor of the cistern, but O’Rourke stepped down easily. Kate held the light on the wall whil
e he felt the stones, removed a penknife, and pried at one until it came loose. The others came out more easily.
“Light,” he said, standing and holding his hands high.
Kate dropped the flashlight to him. He held the beam on footholds while she descended. They crouched and peered into the hole.
“Ugghh,” said Kate, clenching her fists. Rats’ eyes had gleamed back and now she could hear the screeching of the things as they fled the light. The flashlight beam gleamed on their oily black backs. The sewer line—if that is what it was—was only three feet across, and it narrowed only a few yards in where the rats’ eyes had burned back at them.
“How can we go into that?” whispered Kate.
O’Rourke leaned close. “The good news is that I bet there’s not a single North Vietnamese in there. I’ll go first.” He found a sturdy stick on the floor of the cistern and held it in his right hand, the flashlight in his left. His body blocked the light when he forced his shoulders through the entrance.
Kate closed her eyes and thought of Joshua.
“It’s wide enough,” came O’Rourke’s taut whisper. “Father Danielescu said that it went all the way through, and I think he’s right. Come on, I’ll hold the light.”
Kate tried to estimate the distance they would have to crawl. A foot-ball-field’s length? Two-thirds that distance? It was endless. The ancient tunnel could collapse and no one would ever know they were there. The rats would eat their eyes. This was insane.
“Coming,” she whispered and crawled into the hole.
Except for the terror of the fire and the death of Tom and Julie, the hundred yards of tunnel was the most terrible and horrifying experience of Kate’s life. She could hear O’Rourke’s panting, could see the tremor of incipient panic in his body silhouetted against the flashlight glow ahead, but the rest was sharp rock and mud and the scurry of rats and darkness made all the worse by the heightening sense of claustrophobia as the narrow passage grew narrower, each tight section tighter. Occasionally O’Rourke would stop and she would grasp his leg or, if the tunnel was wide enough there, force a hand forward to hold his hand, but they spoke little and their panting took on a more desperate rhythm the deeper they crawled into the darkness.
“What about bad air?” she whispered after they forced a particularly narrow point where the old rock-lined sewer had collapsed. They had squeezed between mud and roots, and Kate could not imagine making it backward through that bottleneck. The thought took her breath away and left her panting in short, sharp gasps.
“Rats live here,” gasped O’Rourke. Kate could hear them scurrying ahead of him and down side passages that were no wider across than her thighs. “If they can breathe, I guess we can.”
“Was your priest friend sure that this was passable?”
O’Rourke paused in his crawling. “Well, I didn’t actually speak to that young priest…”
“But you know that he did make it all the way into the compound?” demanded Kate. Her chest felt constricted, as if someone were pulling a metal band tight there.
“Yes!” said O’Rourke and began crawling forward again, muttering something Kate did not catch.
“What was that?”
“I said that the priest crawled in here when he was a boy,” said O’Rourke, pushing fallen rocks out of the way. The flashlight created a corona around his beard and hair.
“When he was a boy!” Kate grabbed O’Rourke’s boot. “How small a boy, goddamn it?”
The priest paused to gasp for breath again. “I don’t know. Not too small, I think. I hope.” He began moving forward again, his shoulders scraping rock on both sides.
A few minutes later Kate was pushing a root out of her way, wondering at the strange, bifurcated shape of the thing, when she rested on her elbows and said, “O’Rourke… Mike…shine the light back here, would you?”
She was holding a human forearm, the space between the radius and ulna packed solid with dirt. She dropped it quickly, wiggling to one side to crawl past it.
“This is good,” whispered O’Rourke. “We must be in the cemetery within the compound. Right behind the church.”
Kate nodded and brushed her hair out of her eyes. She had handled cadavers as a medical student, had helped with autopsies as a doctor, and held no undue fear of the dead. She just preferred to know ahead of time when she was going to handle a corpse.
It was at this moment that the flashlight went out. Kate froze and felt O’Rourke’s body freeze into immobility for several seconds. “Shit,” he whispered and banged the flashlight with the heel of his hand. Not even a glimmer. Kate grasped O’Rourke’s right ankle while he fiddled with the batteries and tapped the flashlight again. Nothing. She could feel the tension coursing in him like an electric current; his skin became clammy and his muscles grew as rigid as marble. It was as if both legs were now prostheses.
“O’Rourke,” she whispered. “Mike?”
Silence. She felt him shift positions, lying on his back now, and from the slight rustlings and shifts in his body, she could imagine his hands lifted, his fingers tapping against the rough roof of the tunnel as if it were a coffin. His breathing was shallow and far too rapid.
“Mike?” she whispered again, reaching higher to touch his arm. She could feel the vibration building deep within him, like the first tremors of tectonic plates slipping after years of mounting pressure.
“O’Rourke,” she snapped. “Talk to me.”
He made a noise that was somewhere between a clearing of his throat and a gasp.
“Talk to me,” she whispered again, her voice less sharp. “It’s all right. We can get there without the light. We just keep crawling, right?” She squeezed his arm. It was like touching a granite statue that was vibrating slightly.
He made another noise, then whispered something unintelligible.
“What?” Kate was stroking the back of his clenched fist.
His voice was tense, taut with control. “Too many tunnels under the compound. Only this one opens into the church.”
Kate squeezed his hand. “So? We stay in this one. No problem.”
He was shaking as if from fever. “No. We could crawl right under the grate and into one of the other sewers.”
“Won’t we see light?” whispered Kate. She could hear rats scrabbling behind her. Without the flashlight to keep them away, they could crawl over her legs…her face.
“I…don’t…know…” His whisper trailed off and the shaking grew worse.
Kate squeezed his leg above the knee. “Mike, was tonight the first time you’ve made love since you became a priest?”
“What?” The syllable was exhaled.
Kate forced her voice to be conversational, almost whimsical. “I just wondered if this was something priests do regularly…violate their vows, I mean. You must have plenty of opportunities, what with all the lonely young wives in a parish. Or the lonely young volunteers and Peace Corps girls in Third World countries.”
“God…damn…it,” breathed O’Rourke. He jerked his leg away from her touch. She could hear his arm rise as if he were clenching his fist. “No,” he said, his voice growing firmer, “it’s not a habit of mine. I haven’t been with anyone since…since before I got blown apart in ’Nam. I wasn’t a good priest, Kate…but I was an earnest one.”
“I know that,” she whispered, her voice soft. She found his hand, pulled it down, scrunched forward in the darkness, and kissed it.
His breathing was rapid but more regular now. She could feel the tremors passing out of his body like slow aftershocks, Kate rubbed her cheek against his open palm.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I see what you were doing. Thank you.”
Kate kissed his fingers. “Mike, we’re almost there. Let’s keep moving.” Something brushed her legs and she heard a rat scurry back down the tunnel. She hoped it was only a rat. The raw earth here smelled of decay.
O’Rourke tried the flashlight again, gave up on it, tucked it in his belt, rolled
over on his stomach, and kept inching forward. Kate followed, keeping her head up and eyes open for any slight gleam of light despite the grit that kept falling into her hair and eyes.
They saw it sometime later—it may only have been minutes, but neither of their watchfaces was luminous, and their sense of time was out of kilter. The gleam would have been so faint as to be invisible in a normally dark room, but to their eyes, adapted to absolute darkness, it was like a beacon. They clawed the last ten yards and stared up at the grate in the roof of the tunnel. The sewer was wider here, and Kate could almost crawl abreast of O’Rourke. They lay on their backs and reached up to the outlined metal grid.
“An iron grille,” whispered O’Rourke. “They must have put it here since Father Chirica crawled in this way years ago. Probably to keep the rats out.” He threaded fingers through the heavy grille and pulled. Kate could hear his teeth gnash and could smell the sweat from him. The grille did not budge.
O’Rourke pulled his hands away with a groan. Kate felt the panic threatening to carry her away then, pure fear rising like nausea in her throat. She honestly did not believe that they could make the trip backward through the long tunnel. “Is there another entrance?” she whispered.
“No. Only the one opening into the cellar of this church. It was part of Vlad Ţepeş’ palace once…there were underground cells and passages…” O’Rourke snarled and attacked the grille again with his hands. Flakes of rust fell like snow but the metal did not budge.
“Here,” whispered Kate and grabbed at the grille. “Let’s push instead of pull.” They set the heels of their hands against the grille and pushed until their arms were numb. They lay there panting, with scrabbling coming closer in the tunnel.
“It must be set in cement,” whispered O’Rourke, feeling around the edge of it. “And it would be barely wide enough for our shoulders. Mine at least.”
Kate tried to slow her panting. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “We’re going out through it.” She raised her face to the grille. The room above was dank, smelling of wet stone, but the air was infinitely sweeter up there. “The metal’s old and rusted,” she whispered. “The bars aren’t very thick.”
