The two helicopters returned, one hovering above them while the larger Jet Ranger circled, hovered, and settled onto its skids fifteen yards away. The blast from the rotors threw dust and gravel over O'Rourke and Kate.
She pivoted, thought about running toward the barn, saw the blackclad figures already there, saw more of them moving through the yard and up the road. The black helicopter buzzed above them, darting back and forth.
“Marina turned the radio up so we wouldn't hear the phone call,” said O'Rourke. “Or the trucks coming. Goddamn her.” He gripped Kate's hand. “I'm sorry.”
The door of the Jet Ranger opened; three men jumped out and walked quickly toward them. O'Rourke whispered the name of the short man: Radu Fortuna. The second man was the darkeyed stranger Kate had seen twice beforeonce in her son's bedroom, once on the night they tried to kill her. The third man was Lucian.
Radu Fortuna stopped three feet from them and smiled. He had a slight gap between his strong front teeth. “I think you have created much mischiefs, yes?” He smiled at O'Rourke, shook his head, and made a clucking sound. “Well, the time for mischiefs is over.” He nodded and the men in black jogged forward, pinning O'Rourke's arms, grabbing Kate's wrists. She wished Lucian would come closer so she could spit in his face.
He looked at her with no expression and kept his distance.
Radu Fortuna snapped something at one of the men and he jogged back to the house and gave something to Ana and Marina. Fortuna smiled at Kate. “In this country, Madame, one out of every four peoples works for the secret police. Here we are all either the . . . how do you say it? . . . the informed or the informed on.”
Radu Fortuna nodded. Kate and O'Rourke were suddenly grabbed and halfdragged, halfcarried toward the waiting helicopter.
Chapter Thirty-three
Romania from the air was beautiful. The helicopter stayed low, below a thousand feet, following the upper regions of the Olt River northwest and then swinging northwest up a broad valley. Kate saw a ribbon of highway below, sparsely traveled, and thought it must be the highway from Brasov to Sighisoara. The valley gave way to a high plateau which was still green in places, relatively free of trees except where thick copses grew on hilltops, and ridged with passes connecting the snow clad Fagaras and Bucegi ranges in the south to the unnamed mountain wilderness stretching as far north as Kate could see. The helicopter wove its way up the ascending plateau, often flying past tumbledown castles, huge stone abbeys that looked as if no one had visited for centuries, and medieval keeps that sat atop hilltops and crags which dominated the valley below. There were few farms in the valley and those few were collective monstrosities that seemed to be nothing more than a collection of long barns and stone buildings. Villages were small and scarce. The rest of the scenery was forest, mountain slopes, steep canyons boiling with low clouds, and ancient ruins. It was dramatic and beautiful.
Kate Neuman did not give a good goddamn about the scenery.
She and O'Rourke sat on a padded bench in the rear of the Jet Ranger cabin, their wrists still tied uncomfortably behind them. No one had tightened their seat belts, and the updrafts, thermals, crosswinds, and other vagaries of small aircraft travel jostled them and left them lurching uncomfortably. Kate especially hated the nauseating feeling when the helicopter dropped suddenly and she lifted a bit off her seat. She had always hated roller coasters.
They did not talk. The sound of the jet engine and rotors was simply too loud to carry on a conversation even if anyone had wanted to. Radu Fortuna sat in the front right seat where a copilot would normally sit, Lucian was belted into a jump seat behind the pilot, facing backward, and the dark man whom Kate thought of only as the intruder sat between O'Rourke and her. The man was firmly strapped in. Lucian was looking out the window to his right with a calm, almost distracted expression. Kate tried not to look at him. Her mind was rushing but it found no answers, no clever plans, and very few branches of hope to cling to.
The helicopter banked left, Kate gasped as she slid helplessly against the strigoi intruderhe smelled of musk and sweatand then they were rushing down a narrower valley with higher peaks on either side. A thin ribbon of highway ran along another river below. The roar of the engine and rotors made Kate's headache almost intolerable. Her left arm, still bandaged and aching, throbbed in unison with her migraine.
Radu Fortuna was wearing a communications headphone, and now he slid one of his earphones off, put his hand over the mike, twisted in his seat, and shouted, “Sighisoara.”
Kate looked out and ahead with dull eyes.
The town was like a fairy tale city: perched on a small mountain between taller ones, bound about with high stone walls and battlements, its steep hillsides pocked with crenellated towers, steep slate roofs, cobblestone streets, covered walkways, and tall tan and yellow homes that had been built almost a thousand years earlier.
Then the chopper banked and Kate caught a glimpse of the socialist reality of “new Sighisoara. “ Industry on the out skirts of town, a single highway lined with cheap cinderblock structures, and a few Nomenclature estates sitting fat and arrogant on opposing hillsides. But unlike so much else in Romania, this intrusion of postwar ugliness made no real dent in the atmosphere of the medieval city proper. The highest hill was all Old City, and the Old City must appear much as it had when Vlad Tepes' father first rode into it and established his headquarters there in 1431.
The helicopter banked again and this time Kate saw the military vehicles along the roads, the police cars at the roadblocks, and the almost total absence of vehicles within the city.
“You see, it would not have been too easy for uninvited peoples to visit us tonight,” shouted Radu Fortuna. “Yes?” Kate did not answer and he put the earphones back on and said something to the pilot.
They came in over the Old City on the hill, and the towers, red tile roofs, narrow streets, tiny courtyards, and steep stairways became larger and more real. Kate saw that Sighisoara proper had been laid out within its protective walls, and although steps and a few winding roads connected it to the larger village below, both the wall and the Old City remained intact. They flew over the wall, banked sharply around a tower with a large clock face, slowed with a suddenness that almost sent Kate lurching off the bench, and then settled with a jar, a slight rising again, and then a solid thump as the machine lost its ability to fly. The pilot threw switches while Lucian and Radu Fortuna were out of the machine and moving away in a crouching run. The second helicopter, the strange little bubblecockpitted black machine, buzzed angrily overhead and disappeared behind the tower.
The strigoi in the middle shoved Kate out and then O'Rourke. Kate almost tripped and landed face first on the sharp cobblestones, but the man's strong hand seized her roughly by the upper arm and pulled her upright.
They had landed in a grassy area near the edge of the fortifications, a small square looking down on the Old City walls which offered a view of the New City below, a river, and the wooded hills across the valley. Behind them, ancient Sighisoara stacked its steeproofed homes up the mountainside. Kate saw a church spire through the trees above them. She tried to see everything, to get her bearings now, in case she escaped and needed to know which way to run.
She did not know which way to run.
Lucian took a step in her direction as if he were going to say something. If he had come any closer, she would have kicked him, but he paused and then turned away, walking to a waiting car and talking to the swarthy man. Radu Fortuna came up to her, saw the direction and intensity of her gaze, and said, “Oh, you think that your friend is a part of our Family, eh? No, no, no. “ He shook his head and showed his broad grin. “The young student works for money, just as so many do in our country. He has served his purpose.”