“The Romanian constitution, the menu in a Polish restaurant, and the lifespan of a Chernobyl fireman.”

They sat in the darkness without speaking for several minutes. Rain beat a tattoo on the roof.

“What do you think will happen to Gorbachev and the U.S.S.R.? O'Rourke asked Lucian.

The medical student chuckled softly. “They are both extinct, but neither knows it yet. When Gorbachev came back from the attempted coup in August and announced that he still had faith in the Marxist system, he was announcing his own obsolescence.”

“And the nation?” said Kate.

Lucian shook his head. “There is no nation there, only an empire that can no longer cow its subjugated parts into submission. The Soviet Union is already on the scrap heap of history, just as socialist Romania is. Neither organism has had the decency to realize that it is dead . . . a nosferatu.” He tapped fingers on the plastic steering wheel. “But Russia has Yeltsin and he is an ambitious man . . . a very ambitious man. I see a glint in his eye that reminds me of our former leader here. Yeltsin will use Russian sovereignty to break up the U.S.S.R. by next spring.” .

“So soon?” said Kate.

“Sooner perhaps. I would not be surprised if the C.C.C.P. is officially buried by the new year.”

“But what if Gorbachev“ began O'Rourke.

Lucian held his hand up for silence, then leaned forward and cleaned the windshield of condensation.

The electric gates of Radu Fortuna's compound were opening. Kate sunk lower in her seat, knowing as she did so that it was silly to try to hide.

A black Mercedes slipped through the gates, turned left onto the street, and accelerated away. The headlights had passed over their Dacia without pausing.

“Is that him?” whispered Kate.

Lucian shrugged, started the Dacia after three grinding attempts, and pulled out just as the Mercedes turned out of sight. The Dacia rattled and squeaked as Lucian accelerated down the street at forty or fifty miles per hour, his headlights still off. They slid onto Strada Galati and saw the taillights of the Mercedes three blocks ahead. Lucian hunched over the wheel and floored the accelerator. The Dacia complained more loudly but roared and rattled down the empty street.

“Follow that car,” whispered Kate.

They kept the Mercedes in sight while driving north on Strada Galati, found a bit of midnight trafficmostly trucksto blend with going west on Bulevardul Ilie Pintilie, but almost lost the Mercedes when it disappeared around the traffic circle at Piata Victoriei. Lucian guessed correctly that the sedan had turned north onto soseaua Kiseleff, and after a moment of sickening tension the Mercedes was visible again splashing through an intersection two blocks ahead. Lucian whipped the Dacia up to almost ninety kph until the Mercedes was less than a block ahead, then he slowed to keep pace. It helped that the few other cars and trucks on the main boulevard were also ignoring all posted speed limits.

They stayed right again onto the BucharestPloiesti Road and passed out of the treelined sections of the city, past huge buildings and monuments dark and silent in the night, then they were in the countryside, with fields falling away on either side. The Mercedes passed the turnoff to Otopeni Airport without slowing, but Lucian brought the Dacia down to sixty kilometers per hour as they all caught sight of the usual military and police vehicles along the road to the international airport. Beyond Otopeni, he accelerated again, keeping only one truck between the Mercedes and Dacia.

“We don't even know if this is Radu Fortuna,” said O'Rourke from the backseat.

“Why did you know his name?” asked Kate. “Why did you laugh?”

The priest explained about his first trip to Romania two years earlier with the billionaire Vernor Deacon Trent's “assessment team.”

Lucian almost drove off the road. “Vernor Deacon Trent was here?” His voice was shaky.

“He may still be here,” said O'Rourke. “His foundation and corporation announced his illness weeks after the rest of us returned. To this day, no one knows where he is or in what condition. He's sort of the Howard Hughes of the nineties. “

Lucian shook his head. The single windshield wiper whipped back and forth in front of him. “Vernor Deacon Trent is no Howard Hughes,” he said tightly. “And how does Comrade Radu Fortuna figure in with Mr. Trent?”

O'Rourke explained about the opinionated ONT guide during that bizarre tour.

Lucian smiled with humor. “I suspect that Trent and Fortuna were having some fun with you.”

Kate looked away from the rain swept windshield and dark fields. “You're saying that Vernor Deacon Trent may be strigoi ?”

Lucian was silent for a long interval. “The Order has believed that Trent may have been one of the original Family members,” he said finally. “Perhaps the legendary Father.”

“Father?” said Kate, but at that moment the Mercedes ahead of them turned off the highway onto a secondary road.

“Shit,” said Lucian. He had followed the truck past the road and now he had to slow, find a place wide enough to turn around, and make a Uturn. The Mercedes was the dimmest of taillight glows by the time the Dacia was bouncing down the narrow, potholed lane after it. They passed village homes and low, “systematized” apartments on their left, all dark.

Kate glanced at the odometer again. They had come about thirty-five kilometers from Bucharest.

“I think I know where they're going,” said Lucian'

Kate saw the sign as they entered the second small village: Snagov.

“I've read about this place,” she said.

The Mercedes turned right at a fork in the road in the center of the village and sped up again. Lucian doused the headlights and followed as best he could. The bumpy road was almost invisible in the dark and rain.

“We'll lose them,” said O'Rourke as the taillights disappeared around a bend.

Lucian shook his head. A mile or so farther on and they could see the Mercedes' brake lights flare and then the headlights became visible to their left as the black sedan turned down an even narrower lane. Lucian let the Dacia slowly approach the turnoff.

“Hurry!” said Kate as the Mercedes dwindled down the long lane.

“Can't,” said Lucian. “It's a private road. See the checkpoint?”

Kate saw it then as the Mercedes stoppeda gate with several vehicles parked near it. Flashlights flared briefly as someone checked the identities of the Mercedes driver and occupants. Kate could make out the lights of a huge home a quarter of a mile or so beyond the checkpoint.

“Goddamn it,” breathed Kate. “Is there another way to that house?”

Lucian drummed his fingers on the wheel. “I don't think the house is the destination,” he said as if musing to himself. Headlights suddenly became visible far behind them. “Damn. Hang on.” With the headlights still off, he flogged the Dacia down the highway, squealing around turns and bouncing over sudden dips. The last lights fell away behind them and a forest closed in on either side.

“I want to go back,” said Kate, her heart pounding with frustration and anger. “If there's a chance that Joshua is at that house, I want to go back even if I have to cross the fields on foot. “

Lucian did not slow. “That compound was on the lake,” he said. “I know another way.”

There was no other traffic as they drove another mile or two alongside a railroad track, the road deteriorating the farther they got from the village, until finally, just as the lane crossed the tracks, Lucian turned left onto an even narrower road. Gravel and puddles made noise beneath the wheels. He turned on the parking lights as the Dacia crept forward under a dripping arch of bare branches.

“Sort of a national forest area,” he said, frowning as he concentrated on missing potholes the size of small lakes. Finally he cursed and turned on the headlights.