Redcowled figures stepped through the door onto the platform above the crowd. A great cheer went up from the men below. Then Kate gasped as she saw one of the menwas it Radu Fortuna? She could not tell for surehold a silk wrapped bundle out over the railing as if offering it to the crowd below. The bundle stirred, and Kate gripped O'Rourke's arm, sure that Joshua was going to be dropped.
The figures on the balcony seemed to listen to the cheering for a minute and then they stepped back through the arched doorway. Kate thought of some mad parody of a pope's appearance. The music ended and the crowd below mingled, broke into clumps, and moved away from the tower. Kate saw cigarettes being lit and cowls being taken off. None of the faces looked familiar, although none were close enough to see too clearly. The feeling in the courtyard was like some Rotary meeting after business was finished.
But no one left yet.
It was twenty or thirty minutes later when the group of men came out of the tower. Kate strained but could not make out the baby for a minute. Dad they leave him in there? Is someone or something in there with him? Her heart pounded. Then she saw the fifth man in the procession carrying something awkwardly, and could make out the red bundle in the redclad arms.
Those in the courtyards made way, allowing a corridor through the crowd, and Kate's view was blocked again. She had never felt so futile and frustrated.
Now the guards in black were making a cordon around the redandwhitestriped helicopter. A starter coughed, the rotors began to turn slowly, and the mob moved back instinctively, making a wider circle around the machine. Kate saw the doors close on several of the VIPs in red and then the engine sound filled the palace grounds, rotors blurred, the helicopter shuddered, seemed to lean forward on its skids, and then rose, dipped to the left, and climbed quickly above the bare trees to the north, navigation lights flashing. The crowd watched the lights until they disappeared in cloud, and then the men began filing back to their limousines, chauffeurs holding doors open and guards slouching at attention.
“Was that some sort of government helicopter?” whispered Kate. She wondered if it was headed back to Bucharest. It had been flying northwest, away from the capital, when it disappeared in the low clouds.
“It's a Jet Ranger, American made,” whispered O'Rourke. “I don't know what kind of choppers the government uses, but I doubt if they'd be American. My guess is that it's privately owned. “
Kate nodded. She was not surprised that O'Rourke could identify the machine: males seemed so proud of their ability to give the proper name to the proper piece of machinery.
Especially aircraft and war machines. Kate wished she had a dollar for every time she would be watching some silly war movie with Tom on cable and he would say something like, “Look at that! It's supposed to be an old Sherman tank but they're using an M60.” Or “Do they really expect us to think that F5 is a MiG29?” It was all nonsense to Kate. She thought that boys learned all of that trivia because they loved to build models and never really grew out of the pride of naming exotic machinery.
Still, wanting to keep talking while the courtyards emptied and the last guards moved farther from their chapel, her chest aching from the sense of loss and futility, Kate whispered idly, “How do you know it was a whatchamacallit . . . a Jet Ranger?”
O'Rourke surprised her. “I've flown one.”
She glanced at him in the dim light. His hair and beard were caked with rock dust and rust. She imagined her own hair. “Flown one?”
He turned and grinned, bobbing his head in a boyish way. “When I was in Vietnam, I was the only grunt I knew who actually enjoyed riding in slicks.”
“Slicks?” Kate ran her fingers through her hair, brushing out things she did not want to think about.
“Helicopters. Hueys.” O'Rourke looked back at the cars driving out through the guarded main gate. “Anyway, I knew a warrant officer there who flew slicks into the A Shau Valley and still enjoyed the flying. He gave me a few checkout, rides there, and later, after I'd gotten the new leg, it turned out that he was opening a flying service in California near where I was spending time in a VA hospital. “ O'Rourke rubbed his beard as if embarrassed by telling such a long story. “Anyway, he gave me lessons.”
“Did you get a license?” asked Kate. She was watching the exodus, wondering how they might find out where the next night's ceremony was. The town, the lovemaking, the tunnel, the torches, and the music were all unreal. Joshua was real. She forced herself to focus.
“No,” he said, testing the door. It was locked but only with a padlock and rusty hasp on the outside that could be kicked open. “I didn't think there was a big market for one legged chopper pilots, so I went into the seminary instead.” Suddenly he pulled her low and dragged her back into the smaller room, keeping her head low. “Shhh!” he whispered.
A minute later the padlock was tried and opened, flashlight beams swept the main chapel area, and then Kate heard the sound of the door being shut and locked again. They waited five minutes before either spoke again.
“Final check, I'd guess,” whispered O'Rourke. They crept back to the door. The courtyard was empty and dark. The main and secondary gates closed. Chindia Tower was only a dark silhouette against low clouds lit by fires and lights from the chemical plants to the northeast.
They waited another twenty minutes, Kate rubbing her face to fight off the numbness of exhaustion, and then O'Rourke kicked the door open, the hasp tearing out of rotten wood.
“The museum people may be upset at what we're doing to their chapel,” whispered Kate. It was a weak joke, but she felt weak at the relief of knowing they didn't have to go back out through the tunnel.
They moved slowly, keeping low behind tumbled stone walls and bloomless rosebushes, but there were no guards inside the palace grounds and no traffic on the streets beyond. It was as if they dreamt the entire ceremony.
The walls were still topped by razor wire and broken glass, but O'Rourke found a low pedestrian gate in the back of the compound that was climbable. Kate tore her slacks again as she went over the top.
The streets of Tirgoviste were still silent and empty after the evening's invasion of strigoi VIPs, but Kate and O'Rourke kept to the shadows and alleys. Even the city's dogs were not barking tonight.
The motorcycle was still in the barn. While O'Rourke fiddled with the balky machine, Kate climbed the ladder to retrieve her travel bag and the blanket from the loft. The reflected lights from the petrochemical plant came through the dusty window and illuminated the nest in the straw where she and O'Rourke had made love only hours before. Did that really happen? Kate sighed tiredly, folded the blanket, and went back down the ladder.
O'Rourke had the doors open and was pushing the clumsy machine outside.
“I'd give a thousand dollars for a bath tonight,” she said, still brushing muck from her hair and clothes. “Five hundred just for an indoor toilet.”
“Get your checkbook out,” said O'Rourke and gunned the engine to life.
The Franciscan monastery was in a section of Tirgoviste so old that the streets were not wide enough for more than one Daciasized car at a time. There were no Dacias or any other type of automobiles on the streets. The motorcycle exhaust sounded obscenely loud to Kate as it echoed back off the ancient stoneandwood buildings. The motorcycle's weak headlight revealed that every house here seemed to have some personal touch which belied the poverty and socialist drabness that had been imposed from above for so long; bits of brightly covered trim, splendidly arched windows on an ancient home little more than a hovel, intricate stonework on the bottom third of an old house, skillfully executed ironwork on a gate connected to a sagging fence, even the glimpse of elaborate linen curtains in a window of what could have passed for a farm shed in the States.