Carpathian (14 page)

“Mr. Vajic, you have a visitor here to see you, sir.”

The Romanian-born Janos looked up from his work and he and Gina both saw the worried look on the trainee manager’s face as he stood before them wringing his hands.

“Well, bring them in,” Vajic said in annoyance.

The man looked back through the large plate glass window that separated the giant restaurant from the large bar.

“What in the hell is the matter with you?” Gina asked when the manager trainee didn’t speak. “Show whoever the hell it is in.”

“The gentleman is in the bar with some rather unscrupulous-looking men. I … I didn’t think you would want their kind in the restaurant.”

“Oh, for Christ sake,” Janos said as he tossed his pen down and stood and started to follow the man. “You would think you had Frankenstein’s monster in the barroom.”

Janos froze at the large sliding glass door that connected the restaurant with the barroom. The five men were standing at the bar dressed in black pants, black leather jackets of varying styles and lengths, and they all wore sunglasses. Vajic saw four men standing separate from the fifth, who leaned against the bar drinking from a glass slowly and deliberately while his companions were loud and boisterous.

As Gina slid in beside him and started to move forward trying to buffer her boss from these rather dubious-looking locals, Janos took her arm and stilled her. He nodded to the items leaning against the bar railing. Several large cases held what must have been very powerful weapons. There were more than fifteen different cases.

“I believe Mr. Zallas’s solution to our problems in the mountains has arrived,” he whispered.

Gina froze as she realized she was looking at men who were sent here by the Russian mob.

Janos took a deep breath and approached the five men. As he did, the solitary drinker looked up and into the gilded mirror behind the bar. He raised the large glass of water and drank. To Vajic’s surprise the ruffians were all drinking water. He had thought the men were tossing down vodka at an incredible rate. The man standing by himself straightened and turned to face his approaching host and hostess. His eyes lingered only a moment longer on Gina than on Janos.

“You are Janos Vajic?” the man asked, his face hidden behind a thick beard and mustache. The eyes were nowhere to be found hidden underneath the thick-lensed sunglasses. Vajic wondered how the man could see at all.

“I am he. And you are obviously Russian,” Janos said, not holding out his hand for the official introductions. “This is Ms. Louvinski, my general manager. We have many—”

“The general manager,” the man asked in passable Romanian. “So you are the person I am to see when this problem in your high country is solved?”

Gina looked from the small man with the beard to Vajic, who nodded his head that she should answer.

“Yes, whatever that problem is of course.”

“I suspect the men are frightened of the mountain dark. It is a dark that never ends.”

Gina looked at Vajic once more and rolled her eyes and stepped back.

“As I said, you are Russian,” Vajic repeated. “What makes you think you know this area well enough that you can solve something we don’t even know needs solving? This could be just a case of men working away from home and becoming homesick, it happens all the time.”

The man reached over and retrieved his black fur hat and then placed it on his head.

“As you said, I am indeed Russian, but my companions here are not. They are Romanian like yourself and Ms. Louvinski here. They are all former Departamentul Securit
ă
ţ
ii Statului, the now defunct department of state security. All of these men used to work directly for President Nicolae Ceau
ş
escu. I admit that they failed to protect him in the end, but then again it wasn’t really their job. What they do is special. These men, like me, hunt for a living. I admit that we usually hunt men,” here the small brute smiled for the first time, “but we can be persuaded to hunt myths and legends … or just see if every Romanian worker is scared of the darkness.”

“I take it you will start your search in the high country above Dracula’s Castle?”

The men all smirked at the name of the project they were sent here to protect.

“That is our concern, not yours,” the large Russian said as he reached over and gathered four of the gun cases and slung them over his shoulder.

“Well then, I guess we’ll leave it to you to do whatever it is you do,” Janos said as he half turned and then stopped. “By the way, my friend, I wouldn’t advertise the fact that these idiots used to work for one of the largest mass murderers in Romanian history if I were you, or there may be five more men missing in the high country. Nicolae Ceau
ş
escu wasn’t too popular, even in an inaccessible place like this. A lot of people are still angry at the deaths he caused just to remain in power—like another country I could mention.” Janos Vajic couldn’t help it. Romanian citizens just weren’t that fond of their former partners in communism and he had to get in a dig at the small man for his country’s transgressions against his nation.

The man just smiled and then moved toward the door.

“The main cable cars are now functional and moving up the mountain so that will save you time in your climb to the castle.”

At first both Janos and Gina thought the man was going to leave without comment to Gina’s information, then the man stopped amid his companions and they all looked back at Janos and Gina.

“No cable cars and no hot meals at the castle. We will walk, study, and learn more in our travel up the mountain than you have ever known about this region in your years of building here. No, we walk.”

As the men filed out of the bar Gina shook her head.

“I hate those goddamn secret police bastards.”

“Cheer up, maybe they’ll find what it is they seek.”

*   *   *

The Russian and his men were going to a region of Romania once known to the world at the time of the dark ages as the Transylvanian Ridge, a little known name for the most inaccessible area that hosts the bleakest, darkest mountains in the entire world—a place where men have always feared to tread. This was the ancient mountain that guarded the southern approach to Romania from the Danube River. In the Old World tongue of ancient Wallachia, the language of the Boyars and Vlad himself, it was also known as the Land of the Blood Moon.

3

EVENT GROUP COMPLEX, NELLIS AIR FORCE BASE, NEVADA

Niles Compton watched as Professors Pete Golding and Charles Hindershot Ellenshaw III slowly walked out of his expansive office as if they had just witnessed their puppy being put to sleep. Niles had read them the riot act, but despite his earlier promise to crucify them both for assisting Alice with her Vatican break-in, he let them off with a written warning and a write-up in their 201 file. The one thing Niles realized about both brilliant men, neither one refused to say that they would not help Alice in the future, nor would they refuse anyone in their small group of managers. To Compton that was good enough. He allowed them to leave with the warning to stay clear of Colonel Collins for a while, and it was that alone that hurt their feelings more than anything.

After his punishment had been meted out, Niles turned and went back to his desk to finish his paperwork. He looked down at the forms on his otherwise clean desk and then he threw off his glasses once more and placed his hands so they covered his face as he realized how badly he had hurt Alice by his refusal to move on her Event. He just hoped Collins could find something in her files to help him help her.

Niles needed Jack Collins to help him find the provenance to move on this possible Event; if not he would seriously have to consider retiring Alice Hamilton. And that would eventually lead to Niles Compton resigning from the Group.

*   *   *

Jack Collins looked up from his chair at a small table inside the Group’s single place to relax and have a drink after their working hours: the Ark, named after Department 5656’s most prized and the very first artifact ever collected by the Event Group in 1864.

Jack reached for the cup of coffee he had allowed to go cold in front of him. He closed his eyes and then pushed the cold coffee away. He reached out and opened the thick folder and what Alice thought was evidence of either a lost or extinct animal or proof of a massive hoax perpetrated by a long-ago prankster. The first picture he saw was the photo that had been forwarded through their man, Second Lieutenant DeSilva, inside the Vatican archives. He examined the skull and read the exhibit note under the skull.

S
PECIMEN EXCAVATED IN
1567
NEAR
V
ENICE,
I
TALY.

S
KULL RECOVERED FROM RUINS OF ESTATE OWNED BY
R
OMAN SENATOR
M
ARCUS
P
ALETERNUS
T
APIO.

Collins then picked up Alice’s notes on the Italian find. He noted that the report had been written in 1966.

After exhaustive on-site research and unauthorized archaeological digging, it is concluded at this time that Roman senator Marcus Paleternus Tapio was indeed a Roman senator from year
AD
19 to 27. Further research has shown that Senator Tapio was also a military leader who achieved the rank of centurion before family wealth pushed him into the Senate and the life of politics. Further notes as more information becomes available as to Marcus Paleternus Tapio’s military campaign assignments: it must be noted that the animal skull, which I believe to be a species of large timber wolf, may have been a gift to Tapio when he was a senator. However, it is my theory that Centurion Tapio, not Senator Tapio, recovered the skull on one of his many military excursions for Emperor Augustus Caesar.

Collins shook his head after reading Alice’s beautiful handwriting. He once more looked at the picture of the wolf skull that for some reason the Vatican archives, or maybe even the pope himself, had sealed away and buried among whatever else they had hidden from the rest of the world.

Jack was ready to close the folder and head for the Europa clean room to better understand what it was he was supposed to be reading, when a small padded plastic box fell out of the thick file. Collins picked it up and examined it. The case contained a small chunk of stone. It was only seven inches square and looked as if it were a carving of some kind. Jack read the words on the tag that had been attached to the plastic box since 1949.

Recovered by Senator Garrison Lee the night of April 1, 1949, aboard the vessel
Golden Child
inside Hong Kong harbor. Special note to self—the bone inside the relief has been proven to contain residue of bone marrow. Must have further analysis done to determine gene structure when and if possible.

Jack examined the piece of stone. He turned it over in his hand and then once more. The piece looked as if it had been broken from something far larger, and what was the most amazing thing about this small stone was the fact that where the break in the stone had been severed from its parent stone to his astonishment there looked to be a bone underneath the broken area of petrified skin and hair.

“What the—”

“Can I join you?”

Collins had been so intent on studying the small piece of stone that he failed to see Sarah McIntire walk up to his table. He smiled at her and then self-consciously slid the small stone back into the file folder. He looked Sarah over. She was wearing her blue military jumpsuit.

Jack held Sarah’s eyes for the longest time. He knew the confrontation was upon him over the nonuse of Event Group personnel in the search for his sister, Lynn’s, murderer. The real conversation with Sarah would not be just the exclusion of his friends in his personal search for killers, with Sarah it was her relationship with one Henri Farbeaux. The man had been a pain in the side of every Event Group security director since 1992. Garrison Lee announced before his death that the Frenchman was a direct threat to the security of the United States due to his proclivity of stealing the world’s heritage. The problem with Sarah was that she had become attached to Farbeaux in a special way. Without moving, Jack lightly kicked out the chair opposite him with his shoe. The invitation to sit was offered.

Sarah kept her eyes on the man she had fallen in love with the first time she had seen his gruff exterior. The small scars etched on Jack’s face like a road map declared to anyone who met him that yes, indeed, Colonel Jack Collins had done his thing for king and country. She slowly slid into the chair.

Jack watched Sarah as he moved Alice’s thick file aside.

“I thought you were teaching a class at five this afternoon?” Collins asked.

“I had my assistant take it for me. We need to talk about Henri.”

“I don’t think I want to discuss the Frenchman at the moment, short stuff. Whatever the reasons you may have for wanting to help him is your discussion.”

“Because the man went to Mexico and saved my life, and I ask you for a favor that shouldn’t have been asked and you allowed Henri to escape—for me. I appreciated it, but all you had to say was no. And now I suspect…” She stopped and rubbed a small hand over her face and then slowly looked into Jack’s blue eyes. “You didn’t even do it for me, you did it because you need him. You didn’t let him go because he saved my life, Jack, you let him go because you need him more than you need us to find Lynn’s killer. How’s that for a forensic analysis?”

Collins didn’t respond. He reached out and took the thick file folder from the tabletop while pushing his chair back.

“We just want to help, and I deserve to be let in.”

“I think we need to be somewhere we can discuss this in private.”

With that Jack took Sarah by the arm and instead of going out the front door Collins escaped with his charge through the back.

*   *   *

Seven hours later Jack awoke. Sarah was lying next to him and he couldn’t help staring at her sleeping form. Collins had just broken a cardinal rule of the Group and especially the military—no private liaisons will be tolerated at the complex, and surely not with a junior officer, as Sarah was. As he looked at Sarah he knew there were no rules when it came to the small geologist. He knew he had been far too hard on her and he also knew there was no way around it—he loved the woman sleeping in his bed more than anything in the world and he didn’t know how to handle it. He studied her breathing and smiled when she snored a second, rubbed her nose, and drifted back off.