“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 laterit may only have been minutes, but neither of their watch faces 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 Tepes' 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.”

“Iron doesn't have to be thick.” O'Rourke's voice was flat. She could see the palest glow where his face was.

“Iron rusts like a sumbitch,” hissed Kate. “Come on, set your legs up . . . like this . . . with your knees against it. Yeah, wedge your body like mine so all your weight's on your back. Okay, on the count of three, we push until it breaks or we do.”

O'Rourke grunted his way into position. “Just a second,” he whispered. There was an almost inaudible muttering.

“What?” said Kate. Her back was already hurting.

“Praying,” said O'Rourke. “All right, I'm ready. One . . . two . . . three.” Kate strained and arched until she felt muscles tearing, and even when she could strain no more she continued straining. She felt rust falling into her eyes and mouth, felt the rough rocks of the tunnel floor cutting through her coat and blouse into her back, felt her neck twist as if a hot wire were being pulled through the nerves . . . and still she strained. Next to her, Mike O'Rourke was straining even harder.

The grille did not break, it ripped out of the encircling stone and cheap cement like a cork coming out of a champagne bottle. Kate went up and out first, lying on the cool stones and breathing in cool air for a full fifteen seconds before lowering her arm to help O'Rourke up. He had to take off his jacket and rip his shirt, but he squeezed through the irregular hole into blackness.

They hugged there on the floor of the crypt of the chapel, their exaltation slowly changing to anxiety as they waited for blackclad guards to come in to check on the terrible noise of their entry. Although distant sounds of the Investiture Ceremony were audible to them, no footsteps or alarms sounded.

After a moment they rose, held each other steady, and went up stairs and through an unlocked door into the chapel proper.

Torchlight bled colors through a few stained glass windows. Kate looked at O'Rourke, saw his streaked and lacerated face, his tom and smeared clothes, and had to smile. She must look even worse. The chapel was small and almost circular, empty in the way only archaeological sites can be empty, but there was a door with a single clear pane which looked out on Chindia Tower less than fifty yards away. The grass lanes and palace ruins between them and the tower were filled with torches, human figures, the same black guards they had seen at Snagov Island, and even a parked helicopter and two long Mercedes limousines.

Kate saw none of this. She had eyes only for the clump of redcowled figures walking slowly past the chapel toward the base of the tower. One of them carried a bundle which night have been mistaken for a package wrapped in red sills. But Kate made no mistake; she had seen the flash of pink cheek and dark eyes by torchlight as the men carried the bundle past the chapel, past chanting clumps of other cowled figures.

O'Rourke held her back, restrained her from ripping open the door and running into the crowded torchlight.

“It's my baby,” gasped Kate, finally falling back against the priest but never removing her eyes from the door of the tower where the men and bundle had disappeared. “It's Joshua.”