“‘How do you know?’
“He lowered his voice. ‘One man Hungarian, but they speaksAnglisch together.’ That was all he would say, despite my increasingly threatening questions. Since he had apparently decided he’d given me enough information for the number of forints I’d handed over, I might never have heard another word from him had it not been for something that seemed suddenly to catch his attention. He was looking past me, and after a second I turned, too, to follow his gaze through the great window by the hotel door. Through it, for a split second, I saw a hungry, hollow-eyed countenance I’d come to know much too well, a face that belonged in a grave, not on the street. The clerk was spluttering, clinging to my arm. ‘There he is, with his devil face-theAnglischer man!’
“With what must have been a howl, I shook off the clerk and ran for the door; Hugh, with great presence of mind (I later realized), plucked an umbrella from the stand by the desk and bolted after me. Even in my alarm, I kept a tight grip on my briefcase, and that slowed me down as I ran. We turned this way and that, dashed up the street and back, but it was no use. I hadn’t even heard the man’s footsteps, so I couldn’t tell which way he’d fled.
“Finally, I stopped to lean against the side of a building, trying to catch my breath. Hugh was panting hard. ‘What was it?’ he gasped.
“‘The librarian,’ I said when I could manage a few words. ‘The one who followed us to Istanbul. I’m sure it was him.’
“‘Good Lord.’ Hugh wiped his forehead with his sleeve. ‘What’s he doing here?’
“‘Trying to get the rest of my notes,’ I wheezed. ‘He’s a vampire, if you can believe that, and now we’ve led him to this beautiful city.’ Actually, I said more than that, and Hugh must have recognized from our common language all the American variants of infuriation. The thought of the curse I was trailing almost brought tears to my eyes.
“‘Come, now,’ Hugh said soothingly. ‘They’ve had vampires here before, as we know.’ But his face was white and he stared around him, gripping the umbrella.
“‘Blast it!’ I beat the side of the building with my fist.
“‘You’ve got to keep a close eye out,’ Hugh said soberly. ‘Is Miss Rossi back?’
“‘Helen!’ I hadn’t thought of her at once, and Hugh seemed on the verge of a smile at my exclamation. ‘I’ll go back now and check. I’m going to call Professor Bora, too. Look, Hugh-you keep a close eye out, too. Be careful, all right? He saw you with me, and that doesn’t seem to be good luck for anyone these days.’
“‘Don’t worry about me.’ Hugh was looking thoughtfully at the umbrella in his hand. ‘How much did you pay that clerk?’
“I laughed in spite of my breathlessness. ‘Yes, keep it on you.’ We shook hands heartily, and Hugh vanished up the street in the direction of his hotel, which wasn’t far. I didn’t like his going on his own, but there were people in the street now, strolling and talking. In any case, I knew he’d always go his own way; he was that sort of man.
“Back in the hotel lobby, there was no sign of the terrified clerk. Perhaps it was only that his shift had ended, for a clean-shaven young man had taken his place behind the counter. He showed me that the key to Helen’s new room was on its hook, so I knew she must still be with her aunt. The young man let me use the phone, after a careful arrangement for the cost, and then it took me a couple of tries to make Turgut’s number ring. It galled me to call from the hotel phone, which I knew could be bugged, but it was the only possibility at this hour. I would have to hope our conversation would be too peculiar to be understood. At last I heard a clicking on the line, and then Turgut’s voice, far away but jovial, answering in Turkish.
“‘Professor Bora!’ I shouted. ‘Turgut, it’s Paul, calling from Budapest.’
“‘Paul, my dear man!’ I thought I’d never heard anything sweeter than that rumbling, distant voice. ‘There’s some problem on the line-give me your number there in case we are cut asunder.’
“I got it from the hotel clerk and shouted it to him. He shouted back. ‘How are you? Have you found him?’
“‘No!’ I shouted. ‘We are fine, and I’ve learned a little more, but something awful has happened.’
“‘What is that?’ I could hear his consternation, faintly, over the line. ‘Have you been hurt? Miss Rossi?’
“‘No-we’re fine, but the librarian has followed us here.’ I heard a swell of words that could have been some Shakespearean curse but was impossible to distinguish from the static. ‘What do you think we should do?’
“‘I don’t know yet.’ Turgut’s voice was a little clearer now. ‘Do you carry all the time the kit I gave you?’
“‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But I can’t get close enough to this ghoul to do anything with it. I think he searched my room today while we were at the conference, and apparently someone helped him.’ Perhaps the police were listening in at this very moment. Who knew what they would make of all this anyway?
“‘Be very careful, Professor.’ Turgut sounded worried. ‘I do not have any wise advice for you, but I shall have some news soon, maybe even before you return to Istanbul. I am glad you called tonight. Mr. Aksoy and I have found a new document, one neither one of us has ever seen before. He found it in the archive of Mehmed. This document was written by a monk of the Eastern Orthodox Church in 1477, and it must be translated.’
“There was static on the line again, and I had to shout. ‘Did you say 1477? What language is it in?’
“‘I cannot hear you, dear boy!’ Turgut bellowed, far away. ‘There was a rainstorm here. I will call you tomorrow night.’ A Babel of voices-I couldn’t tell whether they were Hungarian or Turkish-broke in on us and swallowed his next words. More clicking followed, and then the line went dead. I hung up slowly, wondering if I should call back, but the clerk was already taking the phone from me with a worried expression and adding up my bill on a scrap of paper. I paid glumly and stood there for a moment, not liking to go up to my bare new room, to which I’d been allowed to take only my shaving instruments and a clean shirt. My spirits were sinking rapidly-it had already been a very long day, after all, and the clock in the lobby said nearly eleven.
“They would have sunk lower still if a taxi hadn’t pulled up at that moment. Helen got out and paid the driver, then came through the great door. She hadn’t noticed me by the desk yet, and her face was grave and reticent, with the melancholy intensity I’d sometimes noticed in it. She had wrapped herself in a shawl of downy black-and-red wool that I had never seen before, perhaps a gift from her aunt. It muted the harsh lines of her suit and shoulders and made her skin glow white and luminous even under the crude lighting of the lobby. She looked like a princess, and I stared unabashedly at her for a moment before she saw me. It was not only her beauty, thrown into relief by the soft wool and the regal angle of her chin, that kept me riveted. I was remembering again, with an uneasy quiver inside, the portrait in Turgut’s room-the proud head, the long straight nose, the great dark eyes with their heavy, hooded lids above and below. Perhaps I was just very tired, I told myself, and when Helen saw me and smiled, the image vanished again from my inner sight.”
Chapter 43
If I hadn’t shaken Barley awake, or if he had been alone, he would have passed in slumber across the border into Spain, I think, to be rudely awakened by the Spanish customs officers. As it was, he stumbled onto the platform at Perpignan half asleep, so that I was the one who asked the way to the bus station. The blue-coated conductor frowned, as if he thought we should be at home in the nursery by this hour, but he was kind enough to find our orphaned bags behind the station counter. Where were we going? I told him we wanted a bus to Les Bains, and he shook his head. For that we would have to wait till morning-didn’t I know it was almost midnight? There was a clean hotel up the street where I and my-“Brother,” I supplied quickly-could find a room. The conductor looked us over, observing my darkness and extreme youth, I supposed, and Barley’s lanky blondness, but he only made a clicking sound with his tongue and walked on.