Necroscope II: Wamphyri!

The curator shrugged again. ‘Oh, ten minutes, maybe. But at least I can tell you where they went.'

‘I would be very grateful, Comrade,' Dolgikh told him, following him into his private rooms.

‘Comrade?' The curator glanced at him, his eyes bright and seeming to bulge behind the dense glass of his spectacles. ‘We don't hear that term too much down here on the border, so to speak. Might I inquire who you are?'

Dolgikh presented his KGB identification and said, ‘That makes it official. Now then, I've no more time to waste. So if you'll just tell me what they were looking for and where they went.

The curator no longer beamed, no longer seemed happy. ‘Are they wanted, those men?'

‘No, just under observation.'

‘A shame. They seemed pleasant enough.'

‘One can't be too careful these days,' said Dolgikh. ‘What did they want?'

‘A location. They sought a place at the foot of the mountains called Moupho Aide Ferenc Yaborov.'

‘A mouthful!' Dolgikh commented. ‘And you told them where to find it?'

‘No,' the other shook his head. ‘Only where it used to be — and even then I can't be sure. Look here.' He showed Dolgikh a set of antique maps spread on a table. ‘Not accurate, by any means. The oldest is about four hundred and fifty years old. Copies, obviously, not the originals. But if you look there' — he put his finger on one of the maps — ‘you'll see Kolomyya. And here —,

‘Ferengi?'

The curator nodded. ‘One of the three — English, I believe — seemed to know exactly where to look. When he saw that ancient name on the map, "Ferengi", he grew very excited. And shortly after that they left.'

Dolgikh nodded, studied the old map very carefully. ‘It's west of here,' he mused, ‘and a little north. Scale?'

‘Roughly one centimetre to five kilometres. But as I've said, the accuracy is very suspect.'

‘Something less than seventy kilometres, then,' Dolgikh frowned. ‘At the foot of the mountains. Do you have a modern map?'

‘Oh, yes,' the curator sighed. ‘If you'll just come this way…'

Fifteen miles out of Kolomyya a new highway, still under construction, sped north for Ivano-Frankovsk, its tarmac surface making for a smooth ride. Certainly to Krakovitch, Quint and Gulharov the ride was a delightful respite, following in the wake of their bumpy, bruising journey from Bucharest, through Romania and Moldavia. To the west rose the Carpathians, dark, forested and brooding even in the morning sunlight, while to the east the plain fell gently away into grey-green distance and a far, hazy horizon.

Eighteen miles along this road, in the direction of Ivano-Frankovsk, they passed a fork off to the left which inclined upwards directly into misty foothills. Quint asked Gulharov to slow down and traced a line on a rough map he'd copied at the museum. ‘That could be our best route,' he said.

‘The road has a barrier,' Krakovitch pointed out, ‘and a sign forbidding entry. It's disused, a dead end.'

‘And yet I sense that's the way to go,' Quint insisted.

Krakovitch could feel it too: something inside which warned that this was not the way to go, which probably meant that Quint was right and it was. ‘There's grave danger there,' he said.

‘Which is more or less what we expected,' said Quint. ‘It's what we're here for.'

‘Very well.' Krakovitch pursed his lips and nodded. He spoke to Gulharov, but the latter was already slowing down. Up ahead the twin lanes narrowed into one where a construction gang worked to widen the road. A steam roller flattened smoking tarmac in the wake of a tar spraying lorry. Gulharov turned the car about-face and, at Krakovitch's command, brought it to a halt.

Krakovitch got out, went to find the ganger and speak to him. Quint called after him, ‘What's up?'

‘Up? Oh! I mean to see if these people know anything about this area. Also, perhaps I am able to enlist their aid. Remember, when we find what we're looking for, we still have to destroy it!'

Quint stayed in the car and watched Krakovitch stride towards the workmen and speak to them. They pointed along the deserted road to a construction shack. Krakovitch went that way. Ten minutes later he came back with a bearded giant of a man in faded overalls.

‘This is Mikhail Volkonsky,' he said, by way of introduction. Quint and Gulharov nodded. ‘Apparently you are right, Carl,' Krakovitch continued. ‘He says that back there, up in the mountains, that's the place of the gypsies.'

‘Da, da!' Volkonsky growled and nodded his concurrence. He pointed westward. Quint got out of the car, Gulharov too. They looked where the ganger pointed. ‘Szgany!' Volkonsky insisted. ‘Szgany Ferengi!'

Beyond the foothills, rising out of the thin morning mist, the blue smoke of a wood fire climbed almost vertically into the still air. ‘Their camp,' said Krakovitch.

‘They… they still come.' Quint shook his head in disbelief. ‘They still come!'

‘Their homage,' Krakovitch nodded.

‘What now?' asked Quint, after a moment's silence.

‘Now Mikhail Volkonsky will show us the place,' said Krakovitch. ‘That blocked off road we passed back there goes to within half a mile of the castle's site. Volkonsky has actually seen the place.'

All three searchers got back into the car, the huge foreman with them, and Gulharov began to drive back the way they'd come.

Quint asked, ‘But where does the road go?'

‘Nowhere!' Krakovitch answered. ‘It was meant to cut through the mountains to the railhead at Khust. But a year ago the pass was declared unworkable because of shale, sliding scree and badly fractured rock. To force it through would constitute a major engineering feat, and there'd be little real benefit to show from it. As an alternative, and to save face, the road will be driven through to Ivano-Frankovsk instead; that is, the existing road will be widened and improved. All on this side of the mountains. There is already a railway route, however tortuous, from Ivano-Frankovsk through the mountains. As for the fifteen miles of new road already built' — he shrugged — ‘eventually there may be a town out there, industrial sites. It won't have been a total waste. Very little is wasted in the Soviet Union.'

Quint smiled, however wryly.

Krakovitch saw it, said, ‘Yes, I know — dogma. It's a disease we all seem to catch sooner or later. Now it appears I have it too. There is great waste, not least in the mass of words from which we build our excuses.

Gulharov stopped the car at the new road's barrier; Volkonsky got out, swivelled the barrier to one side, waved them through. They picked him up again and headed up into the mountains.

No one noticed the battered old Fiat parked a half-mile down the road back towards Kolomyya, or the blue exhaust fumes and cloud of dust as it rumbled into life and followed in their tracks.

Guy Roberts had eaten two British Rail breakfasts, washed down with pints of coffee, and by the time his train pulled out of Grantham he was half-way through the day's first packet of Marlborough Kings. He was huge, red eyed and whiskery, and no one bothered him much. He had his corner of the carriage all to himself. No one looking at him would ever have guessed he possessed the talent of some primal wizard, or that his mission was to slay a twentieth-century vampire. Indeed the thought might be amusing — if it wasn't so very desperate. There were too many desperate things, too much to do, and no time to do it all. It was so very tiring.

Thinking back on the events of last night, he lay back in his seat and closed his eyes. He and Layard had stayed with it right through the night, and it had been one strange, strange night for both of them. Kyle, for instance, at the Château Bronnitsy. As the sky had brightened into dawn, so Layard had found it increasingly difficult to locate Alec Kyle. In his own words it had been like ‘the difference between finding a live man and a dead one, with Kyle somewhere in between'. That didn't bode at all well for INTESP's Number One.