Kate saw a parking place along the row of cars and cabs lining the curved drive to the terminal, but before she could point to it, Lucian stopped and parallel parked with some skill. He did not break the rhythm of his story.
“ `Why do you insult me now?' Our Leader demands. `You dumb shit,' answers the sun, `I'm in the West now.' “
He came around to the passenger side and held an umbrella above them while she and the baby got out. Kate smiled her appreciationmore of his kindness than of the joke. They walked toward the terminal together, Lucian carrying one of her suitcases and holding the umbrella in place, Kate carrying her lighter carryon bag and the baby.
“The Transylvanians have a proverb about jokes like mine,” said Lucian. “Ridem noi ridem, dar purceaua e moarta in cosar. “
“Which means?” Kate blinked in the dimness as they came in under the heavy concrete overhang of the terminal. Gray-uniformed guards with automatic weapons stared impassively at them.
“Which means . . . we are all laughing, but the pig is dead in the basket.” Lucian lowered the umbrella, shook it, folded it, and opened the door to the terminal with his shoulder:
The place was as dismal as Kate remembered it from her arrival in the country: a cavernous, concrete, echoing space, rimmed with dirt and debris, guarded by soldiers. To her left, the long, scarred tables and inoperable conveyer belts of incoming Customs lay empty. There were no incoming flights. Straight ahead, security checkpoints and curtained booths marked the beginning of the gauntlet she and Joshua would have to run before boarding the PanAm plane.
Lucian set her bags on the first inspection table and turned toward her. Nonpassengers were not allowed beyond this point.
“Well . . .” he began and stopped.
Kate had never seen her young friend and translator at a loss for words. She threw her free arm around his neck and kissed him. He blinked and then touched her back gently, tentatively. An official behind the counter marked CONTROLUL PASAPOARTERLOR snapped something and Lucian pulled away, still looking at her. Kate thought that there was a question in Lucian's eyes and that those eyes looked strangely like Joshua's for that moment.
The official said something more loudly. Lucian finally broke the gaze and snapped back at the man. “Lasama in pace!”
For an instant the man behind the passport control counter stared as if in shock at Lucian's insolence. Then he recovered and snapped his fingers; three uniformed thugs moved quickly across the concrete floor.
Kate thought she saw something like wildness in Lucian's eyes. She hugged him again, putting her body and the baby's body between Lucian and the guards. At the same time she had fumbled out her American passport and held it toward the guards as if it were a magic amulet.
The magic worked . . . at least temporarily. The guards hesitated. The passport control officer snarled something at Lucian and crossed his arms. The guards looked at him and then back at Lucian and Kate.
“I'm sorry,” Kate said to the guards. “But my fiancé gets very emotional. We hate being separated. Lucian, tell the gentleman that we have something for him . . .”
Lucian was glaring at the passport control officer but he snapped out of it when Kate pinched his forearm. “What? Oh.... aveti dreptate, imi pare rau . . . Avem ceva pentru dumnneavocestra. “
Kate heard Lucian's apology and the phrase that meant “I've been thinking of you,” which was the polite precursor to bribery, baksheesh, the universal Romanian game of paying off those in authority. She fumbled three cartons of Kents out of her carryon baggage and handed them to Lucian, who handed them to the passport control man.
The guard blinked and scowled, but whisked the cartons out of sight, dismissed the three security men, gave Kate's luggage a cursory inspection while he snapped questions. at her, and then tossed her bags on a battered luggage cart and waved her through. She automatically took a step forward and was startled when a barrier slammed shut behind her.
Kate turned toward Lucian and found herself suddenly too filled with emotion to speak. Joshua stirred and fretted in her arms, his face reddening in preparation for tears. “I . . .” she began and had to stop. She felt like an idiot but did not try to hide the tears. Kate could not remember the last time she had cried in public.
“Hey, it's all right, babe,” said Lucian in his best imitation of Southern California surferspeak. “I'll catch you and Josh when I come to the States to do my residency. 'Later, dudes . . .” He reached across the barrier and touched his fingertips to hers.
The passport control officer snapped something and Lucian nodded without taking his eyes off Kate and the baby. Then Lucian turned and walked across the empty terminal space without looking back.
Kate carried Joshua through the security aisles, down a narrow corridor, and into the arrival and departure area. Hidden speakers carried recordings of what may have been children singing traditional Romanian folk songs, but the voices were so shrill, the recording so scratched and distorted, that the effect was far from quaint or pleasant; Kate thought of choruses of torture victims screeching. There were a dozen other passengers waiting for the boarding call, and Kate could tell from their illfitting clothes that they were either Romanian officials traveling to Warsaw or Poles returning home. She saw no Americans, no Germans, no Britsno tourists other than herself.
She stood a little apart from the group and glanced nervously around the terminal. The space was huge, designed for hundreds of people, the arched ceiling rising sixty feet or more overhead, and every squeak of shoes or cough echoed mercilessly. There were a few booths against the north wall, a counter to change money at the official rate, a dusty sign for the National Tourist Officebut they were empty. Most of the waiting passengers were smoking and glancing furtively at the armed guards who stood by the stairway to the lower level, by the security gates, and by the Customs counters. More guards wandered across the cavernous space in teams of two, their automatic weapons slung under their arms:
Joshua was still fretting but Kate rocked him rapidly, cooed to him, and offered him a pacifier. He sucked on the plastic and held off the tears. Kate wished that she had a pacifier herself to calm her nerves, and in that second of silliness she had a very real insight into why so many people in East European police states were chainsmokers.
She wandered over to one of the tall strips of window. There were two aircraft on the tarmac near the terminaclass="underline" the smaller one obviously an official government jet of some sort; the other plane, the one resembling a DC9, waiting to take Joshua and her to Warsaw, where they would continue on to Frankfurt. Several armored personnel carriers lumbered between the jets, their thick exhaust rising in the steaming air. Kate could see tanks parked along the edge of the runway and made out artillery pieces under camouflage netting near a line of trees. Grayuniformed soldiers huddled by their trucks or around a fire in a barrel.
Much farther away, a line of Tarom airline jets sat along a weedinfested taxi strip. These jets looked like crude Boeing 727s that had seen better days before being abandoned: they were rusted, there were patches on the wings and fuselage, and one had two flat tires. Kate suddenly noticed the armed guards pacing beneath the planesthe bored men trying to keep out of the heavy rainand she realized with a start that these aircraft were almost certainly still in service.
She was very glad that she had paid almost twice as much to fly PanAm to Warsaw and Frankfurt rather than take the Romanian national airline.
“Mrs. Neuman?”
She whirled to find two security men in black leather coats standing behind her. Three soldiers with automatic weapons stood nearby. “Mrs. Neuman?” the taller of the two security men said again.