“I will stay with Sam,” Radu said.
Heinz had a lot of things to sort out ant to make sure his name was not associated with Greta’s and Igor’s misdeeds. And least of all he wanted to be lugged in with the Black Sun and their reckless pursuits for power. After the trip back to Germany there was the autopsy and the opening of Greta’s will to take care of. He was not sure if he should keep Radu, because the boy seemed so at home with the Gypsies and had no desire to live in luxury. He told Sam to call him should the boy decide to return to Germany.
After Sam had told them everything, Petra stood frozen.
“So Igor has the Deck?” she asked, her arms folded as she always stood when she was being serious. Sam nodded. The professor shook her head, “After all I have dragged you all through to get the deck…”
“Hey, you paid us to help you,” Nina reminded her, “So we should feel shite for failing to get the cards.”
“But we know where he is, Petra. I know the lads who have him in custody. I’ll give Paddy a call and ask him to return the stolen property.” Sam winked. Petra patted him on the back and smiled.
“Good old Sam, always ready to make a girl feel better,” she said with innuendo, and pulled Mihail’s wife away to get some drinks.
Radu was home. He loved the people. He loved the elders, who welcomed him without hesitation even knowing that he was the son of the most hated man ever to have lived among them. He wanted to stay in Baciu. Cluj-Napoca was a city, a cold and indifferent place with no empathy for a hungry, destitute boy. There was no way he was going back there. And in Romani culture it was not difficult to wedge into a commune. They were all considered family; here in the place his mother came from, where his father met her.
Mihail watched the young boy all night long. He could not help but find something off about him, but he had nothing to go on.
“He is a child. You cannot judge him by his father’s deeds,” Stefan told Mihail.
“I am not. That’s the thing. It is like looking at an eye,” Mihail said. “But if you cannot see the rest of the face you don’t know what animal it is.”
Across the fire the two stared each other down. Radu was sitting with Sam and Nina, but he saw the look in the mechanic’s eye. He did not trust him. Sam could not call Paddy from Baciu. He had to wait until he could call him from somewhere where he had better cell reception, so he had no idea that Igor did not have the deck anymore.
The following day Professor Petra Kulich, Sam Cleave and Dr. Nina Gould left Romania. They may have left empty handed, but they took with them a new view on physics and the possibilities of teleportation, not to mention a different perception of what people construed as the paranormal or the supernatural.
Petra would not rest until she found the deck and destroyed it, but it had vanished as if Hoia Baciu had swallowed it too. Every time she had the profound reliving of déjà vu, she wondered if it was the work of the devilish cards and their dealer. But their dealer was happily living his youth in Baciu, where he had rediscovered his roots and his family. Now he was exactly where he belonged, in the place where he had been conceived.
Here he would bide his time until he was of age, all the while practicing his story making skill until he was ready to take his power into his own hands, expose his true calling and reinvent the world — his way.