Before the van stopped in front of the hotel, we caught a glimpse of uniformed soldiers leading away the probable informers, encouraging them with the butts of their automatic weapons while the crowd continued to spit and strike them.

“Can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs,” muttered our Professor Emeritus, while Father O'Rourke glared at him and Radu Fortuna chuckled appreciatively.

“You'd think Ceausescu would have been better prepared for a siege,” Dr. Aimslea said after dinner that evening. We had stayed in the dining room because it seemed warmer than our own rooms. Waiters and a few military men moved aimlessly through the large space. The reporters had finished their dinner quickly, with a maximum of noise, and left soon after to wherever reporters go to drink and be cynical.

Radu Fortuna had joined us for coffee, and now he showed his patented, gaptoothed grin. “You want to see how prepared, Ceausescu, he was?”

Aimslea, Father O'Rourke, and I agreed that we would like to see. Carl Berry decided to go to his room to get a call through to the States, and Dr. Paxley followed him, grumbling about getting to bed early. Fortuna led the three of us out into the cold and down shadowed streets to the soot-blackened shell of the presidential palace. A militiaman stepped out of the shadows, raised an AK47, and barked a challenge, but Fortuna spoke quietly and we were allowed to pass.

There were no lights in the palace except for occasional fires in barrels where militiamen and regular soldiers slept or huddled to keep warm. Furniture was tossed everywhere, drapes had been ripped from twenty-foot-tall windows, papers littered the floor, and the formal tiles were smeared with dark streaks.