crisscrossing his chest. His black boots, Eph saw, were fronted with toe-plates of white-spattered silver.
“You Dr. Goodweather?” he said.
Eph nodded.
“My name is Augustin Elizalde,” the kid said. “The pawnbroker sent us to get you.”
Alongside Fet, Setrakian entered the lobby of Sotheby’s headquarters at 77th Street and York, asking to be shown to the registration room. He presented a bank check, drawn on a Swiss account, which, after a landline telephone call, cleared instantly.
“Welcome to Sotheby’s, Mr. Setrakian.”
He was assigned paddle #23 and an attendant showed him to the elevator to the tenth floor. They stopped him outside the door to the auction floor, asking that he check his coat and his wolf-handled staff. Setrakian did so reluctantly, accepting a plastic ticket in return and slipping it inside the watch pocket of his vest. Fet was admitted inside the auction gallery, but only those with paddles were allowed into the seated bidding area. Fet remained behind, standing in back with a view of the entire room, thinking it was perhaps better this way.
The auction was held under intense security. Setrakian took a seat in the fourth row. Not too close, not far away either. He sat on the aisle with his numbered paddle resting on his leg. The stage in front of him was lit, a white-gloved steward pouring water into a glass for the auctioneer, then disappearing into a concealed service entrance. The viewing area was stage left, a brass easel awaiting the first few catalog items. An overhead video screen showed the Sotheby’s name.
The first ten or fifteen rows were nearly full, with intermittent empty chairs in back. And yet some of the participants were clearly seat-fillers, employees hired to fill out the bidding audience, their eyes lacking the steely attentiveness of a true buyer. Both sides of the room between the row ends and the moveable walls—set far back for maximum occupancy—were packed, as was the rear. Many of the spectators wore masks and gloves.
An auction is as much theater as marketplace, and the entire affair had a distinctly fin-de-siecle feel: a final burst of flamboyant spending, a last-gasp display of capitalism in the face of overwhelming economic doom. Most of the attendees were gathered simply for the show. Like well-dressed mourners at a funeral service.
Excitement mounted as the auctioneer appeared. Anticipation rippled throughout the room while he ran through his opening remarks and the ground rules for bidders. And then he gaveled the auction underway.
The first few items were minor baroque paintings, hors d’oeuvres to whet the bidders’ appetites for the main course.
Why did Setrakian feel so tense? So out of sorts, so paranoid suddenly? The deep pockets of the Ancients were today his deep pockets. It was inevitable that the long-sought book would soon be in his hands.
He felt strangely exposed, sitting where he was. He felt… observed, not passively, but by knowing eyes. Penetrating and familiar.
He located the source of his paranoia behind a pair of smoke-tinted glasses, three rows behind him on the opposite aisle. The eyes belonged to a figure dressed in a suit of dark fabric, wearing black leather gloves.
Thomas Eichhorst.
His face appeared smoothed and stretched, his body overall looking too well-preserved. It was flesh-colored makeup and a wig, certainly… yet there was something else besides. Could it have been surgery? Had some mad doctor been retained to keep his appearance close to that of a human, in order that he might walk and mix with the living? Even though they were hidden behind the Nazi’s glasses, Setrakian felt a chill knowing that Eichhorst’s eyes had connected with his.
Abraham had been merely a teen when he entered the camp—and so it was with young eyes that he looked upon the former commandant of Treblinka now. He experienced that same spike of fear, combined with an unreasonable panic. This evil being—while he was still a mere human—had dictated life and death inside that death factory. Sixty-four years ago… and now the dread came back to Setrakian as though it had been yesterday. This monster, this beast—now multiplied a hundredfold.
Acid burned the old man’s throat, nearly choking him.
Eichhorst nodded to Setrakian, ever so gently. Ever so
Setrakian turned back to face the dais. He hid the trembling of his crooked hands, an old man ashamed at his boyhood fright.
Eichhorst had come for the book. He would battle for it in the place of the Master, bankrolled by Eldritch Palmer.
Setrakian went into his pocket for his pillbox. His arthritic fingers worked clumsily and doubly hard, as he did not wish Eichhorst to see and enjoy his distress.
He slipped the nitroglycerin pill discreetly beneath his tongue and waited for the pill to take effect. He pledged to himself that, even if it took his very last breath, he would beat this Nazi.
Setrakian did not react outwardly to the voice invading his head. He worked hard to ignore this most unwelcome guest.
In his vision, the auctioneer and the stage disappeared, as did all of Manhattan and the continent of North America. Setrakian saw for the moment only the wire fences of the camp. He saw the dirt muddied with blood and the emaciated faces of his fellow craftsmen.
He saw Eichhorst sitting atop his favorite steed. The horse was the only living thing inside the camp to which he showed any hint of affection, by way of carrots and apples—enjoying feeding the beast right in front of starving prisoners. Eichhorst liked to dig his heels into the horse’s sides, making him whinny and rear up. Eichhorst also enjoyed practicing his marksmanship with a Ruger while sitting atop the riled horse. At each assembly, a worker was executed at random. Three times it was a man standing directly next to Setrakian.
Did he mean Fet? Setrakian turned and saw Fet among the onlookers standing in back, near a pair of well- tailored bodyguards flanking the exit. In his exterminator’s coveralls, he appeared completely out of place.
The beast’s words unnerved Setrakian. Because he hated their source, and because they had, to Setrakian’s ear, the ring of truth.
In the camp of his mind’s eye, he saw a large man wearing the black uniform of the Ukrainian guards, dutifully gripping the bridle of Eichhorst’s mount with gloves of black leather, handing the commandant his Ruger.
Setrakian closed his eyes on Eichhorst’s taunts. He cleared his mind, returning his focus to the task at hand. He thought, in a mind-voice as loud as he could make it, in the hope that the vampire would hear him:
Nora dug out the night-vision monocular and hung it over the Mets ball cap on her head. Closing one eye turned the North River Tunnel green. “Rat vision,” Fet liked to call it, but was she ever grateful for this invention at that moment.
The tunnel area was clear ahead of her, into the intermediate distance. But she could find no exit. No hiding place. Nothing.
She was alone now with her mother, having put enough space between them and Zack. Nora tried not to look at her, even with the scope. Her mother was breathing hard, barely able to keep pace. Nora had her by her arm, practically carrying her over the stones between the tracks, feeling the vampires at their back.
Nora realized she was looking for the right place to do this. The best place. This thing she was contemplating was a horror. The voices in her head—no one else’s but her own—offered countervailing arguments:
You cannot hope to save both your mother and Zack. You have to choose.
