“I think there's one ahead of us,” he said, his voice absolutely flat. “Yes, a black Mercedes in front of the trolley. Four men in it, just like the cars behind us.”
Kate tried to quell a rising panic in her breast. “Isn't it good that it's Securitate?” she said. “Not strigoi?”
Lucian chewed his lip. “These Securitate probably are strigoi. Or they work for them.” He glanced at side streets but did not turn. The wagon had turned off behind them and the Mercedes were close enough now that Katecould see the cigarettes of the men in the front seat.
“How did they find us?” whispered Kate. She was clutching her travel bag, thinking of the vials of serum in it. To have come so far for nothing.
Lucian's voice was hard with tension. “Your priest maybe? Perhaps he ratted on us when we were close to sending the blood sample to the embassy. Maybe he's been Securitate all along. “
“No,” said Kate, but her mind whirled with dark possibilities. Where are you, O'Rourke? “Can we get away?” she said.
Lucian had chewed his lip until it was bloody. “They've probably got the city sealed,” he said, glancing in his mirror. Suddenly the streetcar rumbled into a side street and their Dacia was part of a convoy of black sedans. There were now two in front as well as the two immediately behind them.
“They'll stop us in a minute,” said Lucian. “Somewhere they can shoot if they have to . . . not that they wouldn't shoot in a crowd.” He quit chewing his lip and stared at nothing for a moment. “A crowd,” he whispered. “There was an antigovernment rally this morning. “ He grinned almost demonically. “Hang on, Kate.”
They were just corning up to Calea Victoriei when Lucian spun the wheel hard right and accelerated into the wide Piata GheorghiDej opposite the bulletriddled Art Museum and the Hall of the Palace of the Socialist Republic of Romania. Striped barricades blocked off the major part of the plaza, but Lucian accelerated again and smashed through the wooden barriers. Kate looked behind them in time to see all four Mercedes swing right, bounce across curbs, and come rushing after them. Pedestrians on Calea Victoriei leaped aside.
Kate turned to see the rally ahead of themperhaps three hundred people with as many police surrounding them. Trucks full of miners in overalls glowered at both police and protesters. Various flags and posters flew above the peaceful congregation, but the assemblage parted with shouts and screams as Lucian drove straight into the fringes of the crowd, steering wildly to avoid hitting people. Police whistles shrilled as Lucian drove the Dacia in a halfcircle, wheeling deeper into the confused mass of protesters and graycoated police.
“Out!” he shouted, opening his own door while the car was still moving. He had grabbed a heavy textbook from the seat and now dropped it onto the accelerator before rolling out the door.
Kate clutched her purse and bag and jumped out the passenger side, hitting the bricks hard and losing her footing. She rolled and tumbled into the backs of people's legs and at least one man and a woman went down with her. More people screamed as the Dacia cut its slow path through the crowd and the Mercedes screeched to a halt just beyond the fringes of the mob.
Getting shakily to her feet, Kate threw the strap of her duffel bag over her shoulder, checked to make sure she had her purse, and looked down at herself. Her coat was dusty and one knee was bleeding beneath her black polyester pants, but her clothes were not torn. Lucian had bought her local clothes upon arrival so that she could go out without attracting undue attention. Lucian.
She moved with the crowd now, craning to see him, but the crowd was ebbing back and forth like a single, panicked organism. The Dacia had gone up over the curb and rolled to a stop near the bulletscarred Athenee Place Hotel, and the Mercedes were moving through the plaza now like black sharks cruising among swimmers. But the source of the screams was behind her, and Kate wheeled to see the gray overalled miners leaping down from their trucks and wading into the protesters with clubs and metal pipes. Kate saw flags dip and fall as the people dropped them and fled, then watched as a woman carrying a small child was clubbed by two miners. She could not see Lucian anywhere.
Police were blowing whistles, soldiers had appeared from nowhere and were leaping from trucks, but they ignored the miners and the miners ignored them as the brutality and panic spread across the plaza. Kate ran wildly with two women in black and a professionallooking man with gray hair. Two young men with long hair joined them in their mad dash for the shelter of Calea Victoriei and the hotels there, but shots suddenly rang out and one of the young men fell as if tripped by a wire. Kate paused, started back for him, thinking of the few medical supplies in her bag, but then glanced back at the rushing police and miners crossing the plaza toward her and looked at the bloody mass that had been the back of the college student's head. She turned and ran with the screaming crowd again.
There were more police cars coming down Calea Victoriei, their sirens dopplering up and down the scale, lights flashing. Kate turned down Stirbei Voda and ran back the way she and Lucian had driven. Some of the people along the street here were pressing toward the plaza, but others were fleeing as they saw the miners out of control. Kate glanced back and saw one of the big men in gray overalls charging down the street toward an older woman trying to move quickly just behind Kate. The woman still clutched a placard to her chest that read FREEDOM in both English and Romanian.
Kate knew that the “miners” were often Securitate agents whom the new government used to terrorize the opposition just as Ceausescu had; and many of the miners were actually miners, brutal thugs who still toed the Communist and neo-Fascist party lines and were brought into the city as shock troops. They obviously enjoyed their work.
The miner rushing behind Kate grasped the older woman by the collar, threw her up against an iron fence, and began beating her with a thick wooden dowel. The woman screamed. Kate paused, knew that it was insanity to intervene, and then crouched between two parked cars to fumble in her big bag. Frightened pedestrians rushed past on the sidewalk and street, but no one stopped to help the woman being beaten. She had slumped against the fence now, but the miner had set his legs wide and was methodically clubbing her to the pavement.
Kate removed two disposable syringes of Demerol from her medkit, tossed away the wrappings, walked straight to the miner and plunged both needles into the back of the man's broad neck. She stepped back as the miner cursed, staggered back from the bleeding woman, and turned a shocked and infuriated face in Kate's direction. He spat and shouted something at her, raising the club.
Kate was wearing thicksoled peasant shoes that Lucian had bought her. They were as heavy as combat boots. Kate balanced on her left leg and kicked the miner in the balls with the same full followthrough that Tom had taught her in their touch football games in Boulder. She imagined a kick that would have to clear the crossbar from thirty yards out andput that much energy into it.
The big miner made no noise at all as he went down and curled up on the pavement. He did not get up. There were more screams and police whistles from up the street toward the plaza. More miners were chasing down fleeing protesters, and one of the black Mercedes was trying to force its way through stalled traffic on Stirbei Voda.
Kate knelt by the bleeding woman and helped lift her to her feet. It looked as if the woman's nose was broken, and there were teeth missing between pulped lips. Suddenly a man crossed the street and put his arm around the woman, speaking to her in encouraging tones. He was obviously a spouse or relative. Where were you when we needed you? Kate thought at the man and then left them, retrieving her bag and heading down the street in a fast walk.