The priest, the doctor, and I started up, lantern light throwing our shadows fifteen feet high on the curved stone walls above. Father O'Rourke stopped and looked down at Fortuna. “Aren't you coming?”
The little guide smiled and shook his head. “Tomorrow, we take you where it all began. Tomorrow we go to Transylvania. “
Dr. Aimslea gave the priest and me a smile. .”Transylvania,” he repeated. “Shades of Bela Lugosi.” He turned back to say something to Fortuna but the little man was gone. Not even the echo of footfalls or shimmer of lantern light showed which tunnel he had taken.
Chapter Three
We flew to Timisoara, a city of about 300,000 in western Transylvania, suffering the flight in an old recycled Tupolev turboprop now belonging to Tarom, the state airline. The authorities would not allow my Lear to fly from city to city in the country. We were lucky; the daily flight was delayed only an hour and a half. We flew through cloud for most of the way, and there were no interior lights on the plane, but that did not matter because there were neither flight attendants nor the interruption of a meal or snack. Dr. Paxley grumbled most of the way, but the scream of the turboprops and the groaning of metal as we bounced and bucked our way through updrafts and storm clouds muffled most of his complaints.
Just as we took off, seconds before entering the clouds, Fortuna leaned across the aisle and pointed out the window to a snowcovered island on a lake that must have been about twenty miles north of Bucharest. “Snagov,” he said, watching my face.
I glanced down, caught a glimpse of a dark church on the island before the clouds obliterated the view, and looked back at Fortuna. “Yes?”