“Thank you.”
“Some of my home-brewed coffee?”
“Fine.”
She watched him as he walked through the connecting door into his office. A strange man. Rough, rude. And yet, there was his patience with Beth and Tim.
When he returned with two cups of coffee, Mary said, “Do you have children?”
The question caught Mike Slade off guard. “I have two boys.”
“Where—?”
“They’re in the custody of my ex-wife.” He abruptly changed the subject. “Let’s see if I can set up that appointment with Ionescu.”
The coffee was delicious. Mary was later to remember that this was the day she realized that having coffee with Mike Slade had become a morning ritual.
Angel picked her up in the evening at La Boca, near the waterfront, where she was standing with the other putas, dressed in a tight-fitting blouse and jeans that were cut off at the thighs, showing off her wares. She looked no older than fifteen. She was not pretty, but that did not bother Angel.
“Vámanos, querida. We will entertain each other.”
The girl lived in a cheap walk-up apartment nearby, consisting of one dirty room with a bed, two chairs, a lamp, and a sink.
“Get undressed, estrellita. I want to see you naked.”
The girl hesitated. There was something about Angel that frightened her. But it had been a slow day, and she had to bring money to Pepe or she knew she would be beaten. Slowly, she began to undress.
Angel stood watching. Off came the blouse and then the jeans. The girl was wearing nothing underneath. Her body was pale and thin.
“Keep your shoes on. Come over here and kneel down.”
The girl obeyed.
“Now here is what I want you to do.”
She listened and looked up with frightened eyes. “I’ve never done—”
Angel kicked her in the head. She lay on the floor, moaning. Angel picked her up by the hair and threw her on the bed. As the girl started to scream, Angel punched her hard across the face. She moaned.
“Good,” Angel said. “I want to hear you moan.”
A huge fist slammed into her nose and broke it. When Angel was finished with her thirty minutes later, the girl lay on the bed, unconscious.
Angel smiled down at the battered figure of the girl and threw a few pesos on the bed. “Gracias.” Angel smiled.
Mary spent every possible moment she could with the children. They did a lot of sight-seeing. There were dozens of museums and old churches to visit, but for the children, the highlight was the trip to Dracula’s castle in Brasov, located in the heart of Transylvania, a hundred miles from Bucharest.
“The count was really a prince,” Florian explained on the drive up. “Prince Vlad Tepes. He was a great hero who stopped the Turkish invasion.”
“I thought he just liked to suck blood and kill people,” Tim said.
Florian nodded. “Yes. Unfortunately, after the war Vlad’s power went to his head. He became a dictator and he impaled his enemies on stakes. The legend grew that he was a vampire. An Irishman named Bram Stoker wrote a book based on the legend. A silly book, but it has done wonders for tourism.”
Bran Castle was a huge stone monument high in the mountains. They were all exhausted by the time they climbed the steep stone stairs leading to the castle. They went into a low-ceilinged room containing guns and ancient artifacts.
“This is where Count Dracula murdered his victims and drank their blood,” the guide said in a sepulchral voice.
The room was damp and eerie. A spiderweb brushed across Tim’s face. “I’m not scared of anything,” he said to his mother, “but can we get out of here?”
Every six weeks an American Air Force C-130 plane landed at a small airfield on the outskirts of Bucharest. The plane was loaded with food and luxuries unavailable in Bucharest that had been ordered by members of the American embassy through the military commissary in Frankfurt.
One morning, while Mary and Mike Slade were having coffee, Mike said, “Our commissary plane is due in today. Why don’t you take a ride out to the airport with me?”