Descendant

“But what possible use could a Screecher be to us, once the war was over?”

The officer took off his eyeglasses. “The opinion was that we needed to maintain our edge over the Russkies, Captain. It was all part of Operation Paperclip.”

“I don’t know what Operation Paperclip was.”

“That was the code name we used for bringing Nazi scientists and intelligence experts to the United States after the war. Not even the State Department knew about it, to begin with. None of them had visas, and most of them had their files altered to conceal the fact that they were hundred percent Nazi sympathizers, or worse.”

“You’re talking about people like Wernher von Braun?”

“Exactly. Von Braun developed the V-2 for Hitler, and now he’s developing rockets for the Army Ballistic Missile Agency. Then there’s Hans von Ohain, who used to design jet engines for Heinkel — he’s Director of the US Air Force Aeronautical Laboratory — and Alexander Lippisch, who did the same for Messerschmitt — he’s in Cedar Rapids, designing jet fighters for Convair. Reinhard Gehlen used to be in charge of intelligence for the Wehrmacht, and he’s set us up with the most effective counter-espionage network that we’ve ever had. Kurt Blome — he used to test plague vaccines on concentration-camp victims. Now he works for the US Army Chemical Corps.”

“There were seven hundred sixty of them altogether,” put in the sandy-haired officer.

“But Duca? Duca isn’t even human!”

“We’re aware of that, Captain, but it made good military sense to bring him over here, too. If the Russkies got hold of him, think of the damage that they could do to our intelligence-gathering.”

Louise was standing in the sunshine, not clipping roses any more, but raising her face to the sky, with her eyes closed, as if she were enjoying the warmth of the sun, or praying. I had a terrible sinking feeling that I was about to let her down, and very badly, but not through any fault of my own. I stood up and walked to the French windows and lifted my hand up, pressing it against the glass. But her eyes were still closed and she didn’t see me.

“You’d better tell me what happened,” I said.

Lost and Found

“Duca was sealed into a casket and flown out of Holland on the night of December 17, 1944, along with two marines, a lieutenant from the counterintelligence detachment and the operative who had managed to detain him.”

“Do you know how Duca was caught?” I asked him. “We looked all over northern Belgium and Holland for him, for weeks, and we didn’t even get a sniff of him.” I called Duca “him” because these officers did, but I always thought of any strigoi as an “it,” especially a strigoi mort. They weren’t people. They weren’t even ghosts of people. They were things. They could be deeply sentimental, but they only looked like people.

The sandy-haired officer unbuckled his briefcase. “From all the reports I’ve read, Captain, they caught him mostly by sheer chance. He was hiding in the cellar of a house in Breda when it was shelled by British artillery, and he was trapped. The Dutch resistance had been looking for him, and they had the good sense not to let him out of that cellar but to give his location to US counterintelligence.”

“So why the hell didn’t they tell me? I was the one who was hunting for Duca.”

“They didn’t tell you, Captain, because they knew what you would do to him, and they wanted him — well, alive isn’t quite the word for it, is it? But they didn’t want him destroyed.”

“So this female operative somehow managed to seal Duca up in a box? I can’t imagine how she did it but I’m very impressed. What happened to him after we flew him to England?”

“That’s the problem, Captain. When they took off from Holland it was snowing very hard — blizzard conditions. They were supposed to fly to Biggin Hill airfield in Kent but their plane never arrived. The Royal Navy sent out air-sea rescue boats to search for it, but they couldn’t find any trace at all, nothing.”

He took a photograph out of his briefcase and passed it over to me. It showed the muddy fuselage of a DC3 on the back of a trailer.

“Last May, though, a dredger was clearing the Thames Estuary near a place called Leigh-on-Sea, and it struck one of the plane’s propellers. The aircraft must have hit the water at full speed and buried itself in the mud. That British air ace — what was her name, Amy Johnson — she disappeared in almost the same place in 1941, and they still haven’t found her plane, either.”

“So they dug the plane up and found Duca’s casket?” I asked him.

“That’s right.”

“And nobody realized what was in the casket, so they opened it?”

“Right again.”

“Jesus,” I said.

“MI6 are very, very anxious to get this situation under control as quick as possible,” said the officer.

“I’ll bet they are.”

“It’s not just a question of innocent lives being lost, Captain. It’s a question of national security. Think of what could happen if the Russkies get wind of this and track Duca down before we do. British intelligence has more holes in it than a Swiss cheese, so it’s a distinct possibility. If we lose Duca to the communist bloc — well, to put it bluntly, we’re in very deep doo-doo.”

“Oh, you bet we are,” I told him. “And if the press find out that US counterintelligence were covertly trying to smuggle a strigoi into the country at the end of the war, without the knowledge or approval of the State Department, and in complete disregard of the very obvious dangers to public safety, some pretty important heads are going to be rolling, don’t you think?”

“You can’t tell anybody about this,” said the officer. “Not even your wife. Nobody.”

“So what do you want me to do?”

“You’re booked already on a TWA Starliner from Idlewild to London. You leave tomorrow evening at nineteen-forty-five.”

“What about a man-trailer?”

“A dog? British quarantine laws won’t allow you to take a dog with you. You’ll be met in London by somebody from MI6 who will brief you more fully and provide you with a tracker dog and a trained handler.”

I sat down again and I didn’t say anything for a long time. The two officers watched me tensely, almost as if they expected me to make a run for the door.

At length, I said, “Supposing I say no?”

“Saying ‘no’ is not actually one of your options,” said the sandy-haired officer.

“What am I going to tell my company? I can’t just disappear without telling them where I’m going, or how long I’m going to be away.”

“We’ll take care of that, Captain.”

“OK — but I’ll have to get some stuff together. Silver mirror, compass, Bible, all that kind of thing. And I need the nails they used to crucify Christ. Where am I going to find those?”

“We have your Kit already, Captain,” said the officer with the eyeglasses. “Everything’s in there, just the way it was when you handed it in, including the nails. All you need is some fresh garlic”

“You think this is funny?”

“No, Captain. Not in the slightest.”

“So you want me to eliminate Duca, if I can find it. You don’t want me to bring it back here to the States?”

“I’m afraid you don’t have the expertise to detain him, Captain. Nobody does. Nobody that we can find, anyhow.”

“So — this female operative who did detain it? Do you have any idea who she was?”

The sandy-haired officer said, “Yes, Captain, actually we do. That was one of the things I was instructed to tell you about. You were bound to find out, sooner or later.”

I looked from one officer to the other. Both of them looked highly embarrassed.