Fortuna led us down a narrow hall, through a series of what appeared to be private residential rooms, and stopped at what seemed to be an unmarked closet. Inside the four-foot-square closet there was nothing but three lanterns on a shelf. Fortuna lighted the lanterns, handed one to Aimslea and one to me, and then touched the molding above the back wall. A sliding panel opened to a stone staircase.

“Mr. Trent,” began Fortuna, frowning at my walking stick and shaking, oldman arms. The lantern light tossed unsteady shadows on the walls. He held out his hand for the lantern. “There are many stairs. Perhaps . . .”

“I can make it,” I said through tensed jaws. I kept the lantern.

Radu Fortuna shrugged and led us down.

The next half hour was dreamlike, almost hallucinatory. The stairway led down to echoing chambers from which a maze of stone tunnels and other stairways branched. Fortuna led us deep into this maze, our lights reflecting off the curved ceilings and slick stones.

“My God,” muttered Dr. Aimslea after ten minutes of this, “these go for miles.”

“Yes, yes,” smiled Radu Fortuna. “Many miles.”

There were storerooms with automatic weapons on shelves, gas masks hanging from hooks; there were command centers with radios and television monitors sitting there in the dark, some destroyed as if madmen with axes had vented their wrath on them, some still covered with clear plash and waiting only for their operators to turn them on; there were barracks with bunks and stoves and kerosene heating units which we eyed with envy. Some of the barracks looked untouched, others obviously had been the site of panicked evacuation or equally panicked firefights. There was blood on the walls and floors of one of these chambers, the streaks more black than red in the light of our hissing lanterns.