Kate frowned. “I didn't think that the Germans occupied Romania during the war.”
“They didn't.”
“Oh,” she said. “Go on.”
“Well, about a quarter of a million Gypsies identified themselves as Gypsies during the last Romanian census. But the majority don't want the government to know their background because of official persecution, so there are at least a million in the country.”
“What kind of persecution?”
“Officially,” said the priest, “Romania under Ceausescu didn't recognize Gypsies as a separate ethnic strainonly as a subclass of Romanian. The official policy was `integration' which meant that Gypsy encampments were destroyed, visas were denied, Gypsy workers were given secondclass citizenship and thirdclass jobs, Gypsy ghettos were created in the cities or Gypsy villages in the country were denied tax money for improvement, and Gypsy people were treated with contempt and viewed with stereotypes reserved for blacks in America seventy years ago.”
“And today?” said Kate. “After the revolution?”
O'Rourke shrugged. “Laws and attitudes are about the same. You saw yourself that a majority of the `orphaned babies' that the Americans were adopting were Gypsy children. “
“Yes,” said Kate. “Children sold by their parents.”
“Yeah. Children are the one commodity that Gypsy families have in abundance.”
Kate looked out at the darkness. “Didn't Vlad Tepes have some sort of special relationship with the Gypsies?”
O'Rourke grinned. “That was a while ago, but yes . . . I've read that, too. Old Vlad Dracula had Gypsy bodyguards, an allGypsy army at one point, and frequently used them for special assignments. When the boyars and other officials rose up against Dracula, his only allies were the Gypsies. It seems that they hated authority even then.”
“But Vlad the Impaler was authority.”
“For a few years,” said O'Rourke. “Remember, he spent more time fleeing for his life before and after his princely days than he did ruling. The one thing Dracula never failed to give his Gypsy followers was the one thing they have always responded togold.”
Kate made a face and tugged her purse closer. “Let's hope that two thousand American dollars is the kind of gold they still obey.”
Father Michael O'Rourke nodded and they sat in silence as the train rocked and clattered and roared toward the Romanian border.
Lokoshaza was a border town, but O'Rourke said the actual Customs inspections were in Curtizi, a Romanian town a few miles down the track. He said that it was evocative of the bad old dayssuspicious passport control officers banging on your compartment door at midnight or sunrise, depending upon which direction the train was. headed, guards with Sam Browne belts, automatic weapons, dogs sniffing under the train, and other guards tossing mattresses and clothes around the compartment as they searched.
She and O'Rourke did not wait for Customs. Most of the remaining Hungarian passengers were disembarking in Lokoshaza and she and O'Rourke joined them, hustling down the platform with the crowd, moving away from the streetlights when they got beyond the station. It was a small station and a small town, and two blocks from the railway they were nearing the edge of the village. It was very dark. A cold wind blew in from the fields beyond the empty highway. Dogs in the neighborhood were barking and howling.
“That's the cafe Cioaba described,” said O'Rourke, nodding toward a closed and shuttered building. The large sign in the window read ZARVA, which O'Rourke translated as “closed”; a smaller sign said AUTOBUSZ MEGALLO, but Kate did not really believe that any buses would be along that night.
They moved into the shadows of an abandoned cinderblock building across the street from the cafe and stood there, shifting from foot to foot to keep warm. “It feels more like December than early October,” whispered Kate after ten or twelve minutes had passed.
O'Rourke leaned closer. Kate could smell the soap and shavingcream scent of his cheek above the neatly trimmed beard. “You haven't sampled a Hungarian or Romanian winter,” he whispered. “Trust me, this is a mild October in Eastern Europe.”
They heard the train start up and move out of the station with much venting of steam and clashing of cars. A minute later a police car moved slowly down the highway, but Kate and O'Rourke were far back in the shadows and the vehicle did not pause.
“I think maybe Voivoda Cioaba decided that four hundred was enough,” Kate whispered a moment later. Her hands were shaking with cold and frustration. “What do we do
O'Rourke touched her gloved hand. The van was old and battered, one headlight askew so that it illuminated fields instead of the highway, and it pulled into the closed cafe's parking lot and blinked its lights twice.
“Onward,” whispered O'Rourke.
Voivoda Nikolo Cioaba drove them only ten or so kilometers from Lokoshaza before leaving the paved highway and bouncing down a rutted lane, past a huddle of Gypsy caravan wagons that Kate recognized from storybooks, and then down to the edge of a gulley where the rough track ended.
“Come,” he said, his gold teeth gleaming in the glow from a flashlight he held. “We walk now.”
Kate stumbled and almost fell twice during the steep descentshe had the insane image of walking all the way into Romania through this boulderstrewn darknessbut then they reached the bottom of the gulley, Voivoda Cioaba turned off the flashlight, and before her eyes could adapt, a dozen shielded headlights were turned on. Kate blinked. Six almost new Land Rovers were parked under camouflage netting hung from wooden poles. Twenty or more menmost dressed like Cioaba in heavy sheepskin coats and tall hatssat in the vehicles or lounged against them. All eyes were on Kate and O'Rourke. One of the men came forward: a tall, thin man with no beard or mustache; he wore a heavy wool blazer with a ragged sweater beneath it.
“My . . . chavo . . . son,” said Voivoda Cioaba. “Balan. “
“Pleased to meet you,” said Balan with a vaguely British accent. “Sorry I wasn't able to accompany my father to the meeting last night.” He extended his hand.
Kate thought that there was something salesmanlike in the handshake. Voivoda Cioaba showed his gold grin and nodded, as if proud of his son's language ability.
“Please,” said Balan, holding open the door of the lead Land Rover. “It is not a long voyage, but it is a slow one. And we must be many kilometers from the border by sunrise.” He took their bags from them and tossed the luggage in the rear of the vehicle as Kate and O'Rourke clambered into the backseat.
The other men had gotten in their Land Rovers with a great banging of doors. Engines roared. Kate watched as women in long robes appeared from the rocks and pulled down the poles and camouflage netting with practiced speed. Balan sat behind the wheel, his father in the leather passenger seat, as their vehicle led the way down the gulley and then out onto a flatter stretch of river valley. There was no road. Kate glanced over her shoulder but the other Land Rovers' headlights were almost completely covered with black tape, allowing only a thin crescent of light to escape.
The rest room on the Orient Express had been miserable, one of the filthiest lavatories Kate had ever seen in her travelsbut after a mile or two of kidney jarring, spineprodding travel, she was very glad that she had used it before reaching Lokoshaza. It would be embarrassing to have this caravan stop while she ran behind some boulder.
Kate was half asleep, the rhythmic bouncing and jarring almost hypnotic now, when Balan said, “If I may be so bold to ask . . . why do you choose to enter the People's Paradise in such a manner?”
Kate tried to think of something clever and failed. She tried to think of something merely misleading, but her mind had moved beyond fatigue to some region where thought flowed like cold molasses.