They passed under a sagging wooden arch with faded letters, and the lane dwindled to little more than a wide path through the thick forest. Just as Kate was ready to ask if Lucian knew where he was, the lane opened up onto an asphalt surface again and they drove past a dark and silent stucco building on their left.
“Restaurant and guesthouse,” said Lucian, not even glancing toward it. “It's been shut since Ceausescu died.” Several smaller lanes led to their right and left, but Lucian kept the Dacia on the. .widest of them. Kate could see overturned picnic tables and weedcluttered grassy areas now. The area looked like an American state park that had been abandoned for decades.
Suddenly Lucian slowed, stopped, backed the Dacia, and turned left down an asphalt lane no wider than a footpath. The lane ended a hundred yards downhill, and gravel hissed under the wheels. Kate could see a faint gleam of water between the trees ahead.
Lucian parked the car. “We need to hurry.” He reached into the glove compartment and pulled out a flashlight and something heavier. Kate blinked when she realized that the second object was a pistol of some sorta semiautomatic from the shape of it. Lucian tucked the pistol away in his jacket and tried the flashlight. The beam was strong. “Let's go,” he said.
They went another hundred feet downhill through wet grass and suddenly there was a low wire fence in front of them. There was a gate to their left, but it was locked. Lucian clambered over the gate and Kate followed. O'Rourke's artificial leg obviously gave him some problem, but he made no noise as he used his upperbody strength to pull himself up and over. The three crouched on what appeared to be a small, grassy peninsula with a dock, a shack, and heaps of what Kate realized were rowboats stacked upside down. The rain had stopped but the forest dripped behind them. Cuckoos and bullfrogs were making noise from the swampy inlet to their left.
Lucian leaned close to whisper. “I don't think they still keep a guard in the shack, but let's be as quiet as we can.” He motioned to O'Rourke and the two men lifted the top rowboat, righted it, and carried it to the gravel loading area near the dock. Lucian gestured for silence again and disappeared in the shadows near the shack, returning with two heavy oars.
Kate clambered aboard first and settled into the bow while Lucian locked the oars in and O'Rourke pushed them off and lifted himself into the stern. They floated past the dock and Lucian rowed almost silently until they were far out past the dock and the darkened shack.
Kate's eyes had adjusted to the dark now and she realized that they were in a wide lagoon. A large, dark building obviously the restaurant/guesthouse they had driven by, terminated one end of the lagoon a few hundred yards to their left, and Kate could see weedlittered steps coming down to the water there. Ahead of them, a dark line of trees was the source of more swamp sounds. Kate realized how loud the cacophony was now, and Lucian's stronger strokes with the oars were muted by the bullfrog and cuckoo noises from three sides.
Lucian aimed the rowboat between two treelined points, out into what Kate realized was the actual lake. It seemed very wide in the darkness, the opposite shoreif it was the opposite shorethe smallest of tree lines across the horizon.
They had passed out of the entrance to the lagoononly a hundred and fifty feet or so across thereand into the choppy waves, strong currents, and cold winds of the main lake when Kate looked down, lifted wet feet, and said, “We're shipping water.”
“La naiba!” said Lucian. “Sorry. Can you two bail?”
“With what?” said O'Rourke. “All we have is our hands.” The priest leaned over the side a minute. “It doesn't look too deep here. I think I see weeds or something in the water. “
Kate heard Lucian chuckle. “The lagoon was a few meters deep,” he said. “Out here it's a bit deeper. Lake Snagov is said to be the deepest lake in all of Europe. As far as I know, they've never plumbed its depths. “
There was silence for a minute except for frog and cuckoo sounds. O'Rourke said, “Shall we make for the shore?”
“No,” said Kate. “We'll bail with our hands if we have to.”
Lucian rowed. The lagoon entrance receded and then was lost to sight as they pulled to their left, deeper into the dark expanse of lake. Kate could see the bright lights of a large building a mile or two across the water. “Is that the place where Radu Fortuna's Mercedes was headed?” she whispered to Lucian.
The young man grunted. “We're not headed there, though,” he whispered. “We're going to the island.” He nodded toward a dark hump which Kate only now realized was not part of the north shore. It was still half a mile or more away.
“But if Fortuna is at the house on shore“ she began, then stopped as sounds of a large boat's engine coughing to life crossed the water to them. She turned around and watched from the bow as a ship's running lights came on below the brightly lit estate. Suddenly there were more lights and three small speedboats roared away from the distant dock and pounded out into the lake.
“Shit,” whispered Lucian and shipped his oars. The three of them crouched expectantly and watched as the speedboats growled their way toward them. Searchlights stabbed out and across the water.
“Down!” whispered Lucian, and they all crouched in three inches of water, only the tops of their heads above the gunwales.
The speedboats crossed and crisscrossed the half mile of water between the estate and the opposite side of the island, then swept around to the other side, their searchlights probing both the shore and the expanse of lake beyond. One of the boats roared out toward the lagoon they had just rowed from, its searchlight on and the smacking of its hull sharp and clear across the dark water. The boat swerved and seemed headed straight toward them.
Kate crouched and found that she was whispering to herself, citing a litany to the darkness, the clouds above, and the low profile of their rowboat. The speedboat roared closer.
“If they shoot, go into the water,” whispered Lucian. He racked the slide on the automatic pistol.
Kate wondered if O'Rourke could swim well with his artificial leg.. Well, she was a good swimmerthree times a week she swam laps at the Boulder Rec Centerand if need be, she'd drag both men back to shore. Joshua, she thought, adding his name to her whispered litany.
The speedboat arced to its right and passed them sixty yards to their left. The waves were higher now as a wind came up, and their little rowboat could not have been more than the briefest of silhouettes against an equally dark shoreline. Kate, O'Rourke, and Lucian crouched in the lapping water as the speedboat roared into the lagoon, stabbed searchlights along the shore therevisible as a glow through autumnbare treesand then pounded its way back out and around the perimeter of the lake, occasionally checking out something along the shore with its light. Once there was the rattle of smallarms fire, sharp and metallic and clear across the water, and then the boat completed its circuit and roared back toward the island.
The large boatsome sort of cruiser forty or fifty feet long by the looks of itwas chugging its way toward the island now, all three speedboats as escort. Kate moved back to the bow of the rowboat, feeling the water lapping above her ankles. She .was soaked and cold. Above them, the clouds made gaps through which she could see the stars. A cold wind blew at them from the north.
Lucian began rowing again. When he paused to gasp for breath, O'Rourke said, “Let me take a turn,” and moved to the center seat. Kate was shivering now, wishing that she had volunteered first, but she wanted to stay in the bow and watch the island.
The large boat had tied up at a dock on the left point of the island while two of the speedboats also put in. The third one continued to orbit. Kate heard shouts and then saw flashlights gleam on the dock. They were doused and suddenly torches flared to life. Dark figures beneath the line of torches were clearly visible as they filed from the dock up under the trees onto the island proper.