The Fall. Book II of The Strain Trilogy

Setrakian said, “Shall I give you my local address?”

The broker waved his gloved hand brusquely. “I am to know nothing. Monsieur, I wish you every success.” He was starting away, back the way they came.

“But how will he contact me?” asked Setrakian, after him.

“I know only that he will,” the broker responded over a velvet-lined shoulder. “A very good evening to you, Monsieur Pirk.”

Setrakian watched the dapper man walk on, long enough to see him turn in toward the window they had passed and knock pleasantly. Setrakian turned up the collar of his overcoat and walked west, away from the inky water of the canals toward the Dam Platz.

Amsterdam, being a city of canals, was an unusual residence for a strigoi, forbidden by nature to cross over moving water. But all his years spent in pursuit of the Nazi doctor Werner Dreverhaven, the camp physician at Treblinka, had led Setrakian into a network of underground antique booksellers. That, in turn, had put him on the path to the object of Dreverhaven’s obsession, this extraordinarily rare Latin translation of an obscure Mesopotamian text.

De Wallen was known more for its macabre mix of drugs, coffee bars, sex clubs, brothels, and window girls and boys. But the narrow alleys and canals of this port city were also home to a small but highly influential group of antique book merchants who traded manuscripts all over the world.

Setrakian had learned that Dreverhaven — under the guise of a bibliophile named Jan-Piet Blaak — had fled to the Low Countries in the years following the war, traveling throughout Belgium until the early 1950s, crossing into the Netherlands and settling in Amsterdam in 1955. In De Wallen, he could move freely at night, along paths proscribed by the waterways, and burrow undetected during the day. The canals discouraged his staying there, but apparently the lure of the bibliophile trade — and the Occido Lumen in particular — was too seductive. He had established a nest here, and made the city his permanent home.

The middle of the town was island-like, radiating from the Dam Platz, surrounded in part, but not bisected by, the canals. Setrakian walked past three-hundred-year-old gabled buildings, the fragrance of hash smoke wafting out the windows with American folk music. A young woman rushed past, hobbling in one broken heel, late for a night of work, her gartered legs and fishnet stockings showing beneath the hem of a coat of faux mink.

Setrakian came upon two pigeons on the cobblestones, who did not alight at his approach. He slowed and looked to see what had captured their interest.

The pigeons were picking apart a gutter rat.

“I am told you have the Lumen?”

Setrakian stiffened. The presence was very near — in fact, right behind him. But the voice originated inside his head.

Setrakian half-turned, frightened. “Mynheer Blaak?”

He was mistaken. There was no one behind him.

“Monsieur Pirk, I presume?”

Setrakian jerked to his right. In the shadowy entrance to an alleyway stood a portly figure dressed in a long, formal coat and a top hat, supporting himself with a thin, metal-tipped cane.

Setrakian swallowed his adrenaline, his anticipation, his fear. “How did you ever find me, sir?”

“The book. That is all that matters. Is it in your possession, Pirk?”

“I… I have it near.”

“Where is your hotel?”

“I have rented a flat near the station. If you like, I would be happy to conduct our transaction there—”

“I am afraid I cannot travel that far conveniently, for I have a bad case of the gout.”

Setrakian turned more fully toward the shadowed being. There were a few people out in the square, and he dared to take a step toward Dreverhaven, in the manner of an unsuspecting man. He did not smell the usual earthy musk of the strigoi, though the hash smoke acted on the night like a perfume. “What would you suggest, then? I would very much like to conclude this sale this evening.”

“And yet, you would have to return to your flat first.”

“Yes. I guess I would.”

“Hmm.” The figure ventured forward a step, tapping the metal toe of its cane on a cobblestone. Wings fluttered, the pigeons taking flight behind Setrakian. Blaak said, “I wonder why a man traveling in an unfamiliar city would entrust such a valuable article to his flat rather than the security of his own person.”

Setrakian switched his portmanteau from one hand to the other. “Your point?”

“I do not believe a true collector would risk allowing such a precious item out of his sight. Or his grip.”

Setrakian said, “There are thieves about.”

“And thieves within. If indeed you want to relieve yourself of the burden of this cursed artifact for a premium price, you will now follow me, Pirk. My residence is just a few paces this way.”

Dreverhaven turned and started into the alley, using the cane but not reliant upon it. Setrakian steadied himself, licking his lips and feeling the bristles of his disguising beard as he followed the undead war criminal into the stone alleyway.

The only time Setrakian was allowed outside Treblinka’s camouflaged barbwire fences was to work on Dreverhaven’s library. Herr Doktor maintained a house just a few minutes’ drive from the camp, workers transported there one at a time by a three-man squad of armed Ukrainian guards. Setrakian had little contact with Dreverhaven at the house, and, much more fortunately, no contact with him whatsoever inside the camp surgery, where Dreverhaven sought to satisfy his medical and scientific curiosity in the manner of an indulged boy left alone to cut worms in half and burn the wings off flies.

Dreverhaven was a bibliophile even then, using the spoils of war and genocide — gold and diamonds stolen from the walking dead — to spend outrageous sums on rare texts from Poland, France, Great Britain, and Italy, appropriated with dubious provenance during the black market chaos of the war years. Setrakian had been ordered to do finish work on a two-room library of rich oak, complete with a rolling iron ladder and a stained-glass window portraying the rod of Asclepius. Often confused with the caduceus, the Asclepius image of a serpent or long worm coiled about a staff is the symbol for medicine and doctors. But the head of the staff on Dreverhaven’s stained-glass representation depicted a death’s head, the symbol of the Nazi SS.

Dreverhaven personally inspected Setrakian’s craftsmanship once, his blue eyes crystal-cold as his fingers traced the underside of the shelves, seeking out any rough spots. He praised the young Jew with a nod and dismissed him.

They met one more time, when Setrakian faced the “Burning Hole,” the doctor overseeing the slaughter with the same cold blue eyes. They did not recognize Setrakian then: too many faces, all indistinguishable to him. Still, the experimenter was busy, an assistant timing the interlude between the gunshot entering the back of the head and the last agonal twitching of the victim.

Setrakian’s scholarship in the folklore and the occult history of vampires dovetailed with his hunt for the camp Nazis in his search for the ancient text known as Occido Lumen.

Setrakian gave “Blaak” plenty of leeway, trailing him by three paces, just out of stinger range. Dreverhaven walked on with his cane, apparently unconcerned about the vulnerability of having a stranger at his back. Perhaps he laid his trust in the many pedestrians circling the Wallen at night, their presence discouraging any attack. Or perhaps he merely wanted to give the impression of guilelessness.

In other words, perhaps the cat was acting like a mouse.

Between two red-lit window girls, Dreverhaven turned a key in a door lock, and Setrakian followed him up a red-carpeted flight of stairs. Dreverhaven had the top two floors, handsomely decorated if not well-lived-in. The bulb wattage was kept low, downturned lamps shining dimly onto soft rugs. The front windows faced east. They lacked heavy shades. There were no back windows, and, in sizing up the room dimensions, Setrakian determined them to be too narrow. He remembered, at once, harboring this same suspicion at his house near Treblinka — a suspicion informed by camp rumors of a secret examining room at Dreverhaven’s house, a hidden surgery.

Dreverhaven moved to a lit table, upon which he rested his cane. On a porcelain tray, Setrakian recognized the paperwork he had earlier provided the broker: provenance documents establishing a plausible link to the 1911 Marseilles auction, all expensive forgeries.