Kate had been to the Swiss Alps before, and the scenery here rivaled anything she had seen there. It was just the gray people shuffling along the highway, the empty shops, the decaying estates, the disintegrating apartment buildings, and the filthy industry pouring black smoke at the mountains that reminded her she was in an environment that no self-respecting Swiss would tolerate for an hour.

There was no gas station in Sinaia, and Kate pressed on toward Brasov thirty miles to the north. The road continued to follow the river, with cliffs and breathtaking views on either side. Kate was not looking at the view. When the truck traffic thinned out, she throttled back so that she could be heard. “O'Rourke,” she shouted. When he looked up from whatever thoughts he was lost in, she went on. “Why don't you trust Lucian?”

He leaned closer as they rumbled past a closeddown Byzantine Orthodox church and followed the highway around a long bend in the river. “At first it was just instinct. Something . . . something not right.”

“And then?” said Kate. Clouds continued to pour between the mountains to the west, but occasional shafts of sunlight would illuminate the valley and the narrow river.

“And then I checked on something when I went back to the U.S. Before I went to Colorado and . . . before I saw you in the hospital there. Do you remember telling me that Lucian said he'd learned his idiomatic English during a couple of visits to the States? When he'd gone with his parents?”

Kate nodded and maneuvered to miss a Gypsy wagon and a small herd of sheep. She swerved back to the right lane just as a logging truck roared by in the opposite direction. It was half a mile before they escaped its blue exhaust fumes. “So?” she said.

“So I called my friend's office in Washington . . . Senator Harlen from Illinois? . . . and Jim promised to check on it for me. Just look at the visa records and so forth. But he didn't get back to me before you and I left for Romania.”

Kate didn't understand. “So you didn't learn anything?”

“I told him to contact the embassy in Bucharest when he did get the records and have them leave word with the Franciscan headquarters there,” O'Rourke shouted over the engine. “They'd gotten the message when I spoke to Father Stoicescu the other morning. The morning after Lucian showed us the bodies of his parents and the thing in the tank at the medical school. “

Kate glanced at him but said nothing. The valley was widening ahead.

“Visa records show that Lucian visited the United States four times in the last fifteen years. The first time he was only ten. The last time was in late autumn of 1989, just two years ago.” O'Rourke paused a minute. “He didn't go with his parents any of those times. Each time he came alone and was sponsored by the World Market and Development Research Foundation.”

Kate shook her head. The vibration and engine roar were giving her a headache. “I never heard of it.”

“I have,” said O'Rourke. “They called my superior in the Chicago archdiocese almost two years ago and asked if the Church would suggest someone to go on a factfinding trip to Romania that the foundation was sponsoring. The archbishop chose me. “ He leaned up out of the sidecar so that Kate could hear better. “The foundation was started by the billionaire Vernor Deacon Trent. Lucian went to the States four times at the invitation of Trent's group . . . or perhaps at the old man's personal invitation.”

Kate found a wide enough spot in the shoulder to pull over and did so. The river rushed past to their right. “You're saying that Lucian knows Trent? And that Trent is probably the leader of the strigoi Family? Maybe even a direct descendant of Vlad Tepes?”

O'Rourke did not blink. “I'm just telling you what Senator Harlen's office found out.”

“What does it prove?”

He shrugged. “At the very least it proves that Lucian was lying to you when he said he traveled to the States with his parents. At the worst“

“It says that Lucian is strigoi, “ said Kate. “But he showed us that blood test . . .”

O'Rourke made a face. “I thought he went to rather great pains to disprove something we hadn't even suggested. Blood tests can be faked, Kate. You of all people should know that. Did you watch carefully when he did the test?”

“Yes. But the slides or samples could have been switched when I was distracted.” A heavy truck rumbled past. Kate waited for the roar to fade. “If he's strigoi, why did he shelter us and take us to Snagov Island to see part of the Ceremony and“ She took a deep breath and let it out. “It would be an easy way for the strigoi to keep tabs on us, wouldn't it?”

O'Rourke said nothing.

Kate shook her head. “It still doesn't make sense. Why did Lucian run away when the Securitate or whoever it was were chasing us in Bucharest? And why would he allow us to be separated like we are if his role was to keep tabs on us?”

“I don't think we have any real understanding of the power struggles going on here,” said O'Rourke. “We've got the government versus the protesters versus the miners versus the intellectuals, and the strigoi seem to be pulling most of the strings on each side. Maybe they're fighting among themselves, I don't know.”

Kate angrily stepped off the bike and looked out at the river. She had liked Lucian . . . still liked him. How could her instincts have been so wrong? “It doesn't matter,” she said aloud. “Lucian doesn't know where we are and we don't know where he is. We won't see him again. If his job was to keep track of us, they probably fired him.” Or worse.

O'Rourke had uncoiled himself from the sidecar and was checking the gas tank. There was a fuel gauge on the narrow console between the handlebars, but it had no needle and the glass was broken. “We need gas,” he said. “Do you want to drive us into Brasov?”

“No,” said Kate.

They got no gas in Brasov.

Foreigners in Romania could notat least theoretically buy gas at the regular pumps using Romanian lei. Laws still required tourists to use their own hard currency to purchase petrol vouchers at hotels, the few car rental agencies, and Office of National Tourism outletseach voucher good for two litersand to exchange these for gas at special ComTourist pumps set aside at the fewandfarbetween gas stations.

That was the theory. In practice, O'Rourke explained, the ComTourist pumps usually sat idle while the gas station manager waved tourists to the front of the inevitable line at the regular pumps. This involved hateful stares from the people in the long lines while the timeconsuming voucher paperwork was done, as well as baksheesh to the person whose job it was to pump the gas (never the manager of the station and all too frequently a woman in six layers of coats and stained coveralls).

Brasov itself was a oncebeautiful medieval city which had been covered with industry, Stalinist apartment tracts, half finished Ceausescustarted construction, abandoned systematization projects, and even more industry like barnacles on a sunken ship. It may have been possible to find some streets or vistas of former beauty, but Kate and O'Rourke certainly did not during their ride down the busy Calea Bucurestilor and Calea Fagarasului boulevards in search of the Sibiu/Sighisoara highway and the gas stations the map promised.

One of the gas stations was closed and derelict, windows broken and pumps vandalized. The other, just past the turnoff from the boulevard to the Sibiu/Sighisoara highway, had a line that stretched more than a mile back into the city proper.

“Merde,” whispered O'Rourke. Then,. “We can't wait. We'll have to try the ComTourist pump.”

A fat man in stained coveralls came out to squint at them. Kate decided to hunker down in the sidecar and be invisible while O'Rourke handled things; few things were more conspicuous in Romania than a takecharge Western female.