Stalemate. And too late, anyway.

Harry felt the first tug of a force he couldn't resist, a force that drew him as a compass is drawn northwards. Harry Jnr was stirring again, coming awake for his scheduled feed. For the next hour or so the father must merge again with the id of his infant son.

The tugging strengthened, an undertow that began to draw Harry along with it. He searched for a Möbius door, found one and started towards it.

In that same instant of time, as he made to enter the Möbius continuum, something other than Harry Jnr stirred, something in the earth where the rubble of

Thibor's tomb lay scattered. Perhaps the concentrated mental uproar had disturbed it. Maybe it had sensed events of moment. Anyway, it moved, and Harry Keogh saw it.

Great stone slabs were shoved aside; tree roots snapped loudly where something massive heaved its bulk beneath them; the earth erupted in a black spray as a pseudopod thick as a barrel uncoiled itself and lashed upwards almost as high as the trees. It swayed there among the treetops, then was drawn down again.

Harry saw this — and then he was through the door and into the Mobius continuum. And incorporeal as he was, still he shuddered as he sped across hitherto hypothetical spaces towards the mind of his infant son. And uppermost in his own mind this single thought: ‘Ground to clear', indeed!

Sunday, 10.00 A.M. Bucharest. The Office of Cultural and Scientific Exchanges, (USSR), housed in a converted museum of many domes, standing conveniently close to the Russian University. The wrought-iron gates being opened by a yawning, uniformed attendant and a black Volkswagen Variant accelerating out into the quiet streets and heading for the motorway to Pitesti.

Inside the car Sergei Gulharov was driving, with Felix Krakovitch as front-seat passenger, and Alec Kyle, Carl Quint and an extremely thin, hawk-faced, bespectacled, middle-aged Romanian woman in the back. She was Irma Dobresti, a high-ranking official with the Ministry of Lands and Properties and a true disciple of Mother Russia.

Because Dobresti spoke English, Kyle and Quint were a little more careful than usual how they spoke to each other and what they said. It was not that they feared they'd let something slip about their mission, for she would see more than enough of that, but simply that they might err and make some comment about the woman herself. Not that they were especially rude or churlish men, but Irma Dôbresti was a very different sort of woman.

She wore her black hair in a bun; her clothes were almost a uniform: dark grey shoes, skirt, blouse and coat. She wore no make-up or jewellery at all and her features were sharp and mannish. Where womanly curves and other feminine charms were concerned, Nature seemed to have forgotten Irma Dobresti entirely. Her smile, showing yellow teeth, was something she switched on and off like a dim light, and on those few occasions when she spoke her voice was deep as any man's, her words blunt and always to the point.

‘If I were not thinly,' she said, making a common enough mistake in her attempt at casual conversation, ‘this long ride is most uncomfortable.' She sat on the extreme left, Quint in the middle and then Kyle.

The two Englishmen glanced at each other. Then Quint smiled obligingly. ‘Er, true,' he said. ‘Your thinlyness is most accommodating.'

‘Good.' She gave a curt nod.

The car sped on out of the city, picked up the motorway. .

Kyle and Quint had spent the night at the Dunarea Hotel in the city centre, while Krakovitch had spent most of it up and about making connections and arrangements. This morning, looking haggard and hollow-eyed, he'd tuned them for breakfast. Gulharov had picked them up and they'd driven to the Office of Cultural and Scientific exchanges where Dobresti had been getting her instructions from a Soviet liaison officer. She had met Krakovitch ‘lie night before. Now they were on their way into the Romanian countryside, following a route Krakovitch knew fairly well.

‘Actually,' he said, stifling a yawn, ‘this not too surprising. Coming here, I mean.' He turned to look at his guests. ‘I know this place. After that business at (Château Bronnitsy, when Party Leader Brezhnev give tie my appointment, he ordered me to find out everything I could about... about what happened. I suspected Dragosani was at root of it. So I came here.'

‘You followed his old tracks, you mean?' said Kyle.

Krakovitch nodded. ‘When Dragosani have holiday, he always come here, to Romania. No family, no friends, but he come here.'

Quint nodded. ‘He was born here. Romania was home to him.'

‘And he did have one friend here,' Kyle quietly added. Krakovitch yawned again, peered at Kyle through eyes which were a little red in their corners. ‘So it would seem. \anyway, he used to call this place Wallachia, not Romania. Wallachia is a country long gone and forgotten, Hut not by Dragosani.'

‘Where exactly are we going?' Kyle asked.

‘I was hoping you could tell me!' said Krakovitch. ‘You said Romania, a place in the foothills where Dragosani was a boy. So that is where we are going. We'll stay at a little village he liked off the Corabia-Calinesti highway. We should be there in maybe two hours. After that,' he It rugged, ‘your guess is as good as mine.'

Oh, we can do better than that,' said Kyle. ‘How far is Slatina from this place where we're staying?'

‘Slatina? Oh, about —,

‘One hundred twenty kilometres,' said Irma Dobresti. Krakovitch had earlier told her the name of the place they were staying — a difficult and meaningless name to the two Englishmen — but she had known it fairly well. A cousin of hers had lived there once. ‘About an hour and half to travelling.'

‘Do you want to go straight to Slatina?' Krakovitch asked. ‘What's in Slatina, anyway?'

‘Tomorrow will do,' said Kyle. ‘We can spend tonight making plans. As for what's in Slatina,

‘Records,' Quint cut in. ‘There'll be a local registrar, won't there?'

‘Pardon?' Krakovitch didn't know the word.

‘A person who registers marriages and births,' Kyle explained.

‘And deaths,' Quint added.

‘Ah! I begin to see,' said Krakovitch. ‘But you are mistaken if you think a small town's records will go back five hundred years to Thibor Ferenczy.'

Kyle shook his head. ‘That's not it. We have our own vampire, remember? We know he, er, got started out here. And we more or less know how. We want to find out where Ilya Bodescu died. The Bodescus were staying in Slatina when he had some sort of skiing accident in the hills. If we can trace someone who was involved in the recovery of his body, we'll be within an ace of finding Thibor's tomb. Where Ilya Bodescu died, that's where the old vampire was buried.'

‘Good!' said Krakovitch. ‘There should be a police report, statements — perhaps even a coroner's report.'

‘Doubting,' said Irma Dobresti, shaking her head. ‘How long ago this man die?'

‘Eighteen, nineteen years,' Kyle answered.

‘Simple death — accident.' Dobresti shrugged. ‘Not suspicious — no coroner's report. But police report, yes. Also, ambulance recovery. They make report, too.'

Kyle began to warm towards her. ‘That's good reasoning,' he said. ‘As for getting hold of those reports through the local authorities, that's your job, Mrs er

‘Not Mrs. Never had time. Just call me Irma, please.' She smiled her yellow-toothed smile.

Her attitude in all of this puzzled Quint a little. ‘You don't think it's a bit odd that we're here hunting for a vampire, er, Irma?'

She looked at him, raised an eyebrow. ‘My parents come from the mountains,' she said. ‘When I am little they sometimes talk about wampir. Up there in Carpatii Meridionali, old people still believe. Once there were great bears up there. And sabretooth tigers. Before that, big lizards — er, dinosaurs? Yes. They are no more — but they were. Later, there was plague that swept the world. All of these things, gone. Now you tell me that my parents were right, there were vampires, too. Odd? No, I not think so. If you want hunt vampires, where better than Romania, eh?'