“‘Helen,’ I said, but she was moving forward. After a second my light reached a table that had not been illuminated before, a great stone table. It was not a table, I saw an instant later, but an altar-no, not an altar, but a sarcophagus. There was another nearby-had this been a continuation of the monastery’s crypt, a place where its abbots could rest in peace, away from Byzantine torches and Ottoman catapults? Then we saw beyond them the largest sarcophagus of all. Along the side ran one word, cut into the stone:DRACULA. Helen raised her gun, and I gripped my stake. She took a step forward and I kept close to her.
“At that moment we heard a commotion behind us, at a distance, and the crash of footsteps and scrambling bodies, which almost obscured the faint sound in the darkness beyond the tomb, a trickling of dry earth. We leaped forward like one being and looked in-the largest sarcophagus had no covering slab and it was empty, as were the other two. And that sound: somewhere in the darkness, some small creature was making its way up through the tree roots.
“Helen fired into the dark and there was a crashing of earth and pebbles; I ran forward with my light. The end of the library was a dead end, with a few roots hanging down from the vaulted ceiling. In the niche on the back wall where an icon might once have stood, I saw a trickle of black slime on the bare stones-blood? An infiltration of moisture from the earth?
“The door behind us burst open and we swung around, my hand on Helen’s free arm. Into our candlelight came a strong lantern, flashlights, hurrying forms, a shout. It was Ranov, and with him a tall figure whose shadow leaped forward to engulf us: Géza József, and at his heels a terrified Brother Ivan. He was followed by a wiry little bureaucrat in dark suit and hat, with a heavy dark mustache. There was another figure, too, one who moved haltingly, and whose slow progress, I realized now, must have hampered them at every step: Stoichev. His face was a strange mixture of fear, regret, and curiosity, and there was a bruise on his cheek. His old eyes met ours for a long sorrowful moment, and then he moved his lips, as if thanking his God to find us alive.
“Géza and Ranov were on us in a fraction of a second. Ranov had a gun trained on me and Géza on Helen, while the monk stood openmouthed and Stoichev waited, quiet and wary, behind them. The dark-suited bureaucrat stood just out of the light. ‘Drop your gun,’ Ranov told Helen, and she let it fall obediently to the floor. I put my arm around her, but slowly. In the gloomy candlelight their faces looked more than sinister, except for Stoichev’s. I saw that he would have hazarded a smile at us if he had not been so frightened.
“‘What the hell are you doing here?’ Helen said to Géza before I could stop her.
“‘What the hell are you doing here, my dear?’ was his only answer. He looked taller than ever, dressed in a pale shirt and pants and heavy walking boots. I hadn’t realized at the conference that I actually hated his guts.
“‘Where is he?’ Ranov growled. He looked from me to Helen.
“‘He’s dead,’ I said. ‘You came through the crypt. You must have seen him.’
“Ranov frowned. ‘What are you talking about?’
“Something, some instinct I owed to Helen, perhaps, stopped me from saying more.
“‘Whom do you mean?’ Helen said coldly.
“Géza trained his gun a little more exactly on her. ‘You know what I mean, Elena Rossi. Where is Dracula?’
“This was easier to answer, and I let Helen go first. ‘He is not here, evidently,’ she said in her nastiest voice. ‘You may examine the tomb.’ At this the little bureaucrat took a step forward and seemed about to speak.
“‘Stay with them,’ Ranov said to Géza. Ranov moved carefully forward among the tables, glancing around at everything; it was clear to me that he’d never been here before. The dark-suited bureaucrat followed him without a word. When they reached the sarcophagus, Ranov held up his lantern and his gun and looked cautiously inside. ‘It is empty,’ he threw back to Géza. He turned to the other two, smaller sarcophagi. ‘What is this? Come here, help me.’ The bureaucrat and the monk stepped obediently forward. Stoichev followed more slowly and I thought I saw a light in his face as he looked around him at the empty tables, the cabinets. I could only guess what he made of this place.
“Ranov was already peering into the sarcophagi. ‘Empty,’ he said heavily. ‘He is not here. Search the room.’ Géza was already striding among the tables, holding his light up to every wall, opening cabinets. ‘Did you see him or hear him?’
“‘No,’ I said, more or less truthfully. I told myself that if only they didn’t injure Helen, if they let her go, I would consider this expedition a success. I would never ask life for anything else. I also thought, with fleeting gratitude, of Rossi’s delivery from this whole situation.
“Géza said something that must have been a curse in Hungarian, because Helen nearly smiled, despite the gun aimed at her heart. ‘It is useless,’ he said, after a moment. ‘The tomb in the crypt is empty, and this one is also. And he will never return to this place, since we have found it.’ It took me a moment to digest this. The tomb in the crypt was empty? Then where was Rossi’s body, which we’d just left there?
Ranov turned to Stoichev. ‘Tell us about what is here.’ They had lowered their guns at last and I drew Helen to me, which made Géza give me one sour look, although he said nothing.
“Stoichev held his lantern up as if he had been waiting for this moment. He went to the nearest table and tapped it. ‘These are oak, I think,’ he said slowly, ‘and they could be medieval in their design.’ He looked under the table at a leg joint, tapped a cabinet. ‘But I do not know much about furniture.’ We waited, silently.
“Géza kicked the leg of one of the ancient tables. ‘What am I going to say to the Minister of Culture? That Wallachian belonged to us. He was a Hungarian prisoner and his country was our territory.’
“‘Why don’t we quarrel about that when we find him?’ Ranov growled. I realized suddenly that their only common language was English, and that they loathed each other. At that moment I knew whom Ranov reminded me of. With his heavyset face and thick dark mustache, he looked like the photographs I’d seen of the young Stalin. People like Ranov and Géza did minimal damage only because they had minimal power.
“‘Tell your aunt to be more careful with her phone calls.’ Géza gave Helen a baleful look and I felt her stiffen against me. ‘Now leave this damned monk to guard the place,’ he added to Ranov, and Ranov issued a command that made poor Brother Ivan tremble. At that moment, the light from Ranov’s lantern suddenly fell in a new direction. He had been raising it here and there, examining the tables. Now his light slanted across the face of the dark-suited, severely hatted little bureaucrat, who was standing silently by Dracula’s empty sarcophagus. Perhaps I wouldn’t have noticed his face at all if it hadn’t been for the strange expression it wore-a look of private grief suddenly illuminated by the lantern. I could see plainly the bone-thin face under the awkward mustache, and the familiar glitter of the eyes. ‘Helen!’ I shouted. ‘Look!’ She stared, too.
“‘What?’ Géza turned on her in an instant.
“‘This man -’ Helen was aghast. ‘That man there-he is -’
“‘He’s a vampire,’ I said flatly. ‘He followed us from our university in the United States.’ I had barely begun to speak before the creature was in flight. He had to come straight toward us to get out, barreling into Géza, who tried to seize him, and pushing past Ranov. Ranov was quicker on his feet; he grabbed the librarian, they collided hard, and then Ranov leaped back from him with a cry and the librarian was in flight again. Ranov turned and shot the hurtling figure before it was many feet away. It didn’t falter for a second-Ranov might have been shooting into air. Then the evil librarian was gone, so suddenly that I wasn’t sure whether he’d actually reached the passage or vanished before our eyes. Ranov ran after him, through the doorway, but returned almost immediately. We all stood staring at him; his face was white, and where he grasped the torn cloth of his jacket, a little blood was already trickling between his fingers. After a long minute Ranov spoke. ‘What the hell is this about?’ His voice trembled.