thought of it, I could have gone on with you to Athens and flown home from there. But things have happened so quickly I… I don't like seeing you go off like this, on your own, Harry.'
He held her very close and kissed her, then turned to Darcy and Manolis. 'Listen, I'm coming back, I promise you. But if I should be delayed, go ahead and finish things as best you can. And good luck!'
That's my middle name,' Darcy told him. 'Take care of yourself, Harry.'
Sandra hugged him again, and then he stood back, nodded, turned and followed the crowd out onto the dusty concourse, towards the landing strip.
Among the many people there to see friends off, a man in flip-flops, bright Bermuda shorts and an open- necked white shirt watched Harry's plane take off. He was a Greek who ran the occasional errand for the Russians. Now all he had to do was discover Harry's destination and pass it on.
Not too difficult. His brother worked at the passenger information desk.
Harry made his Athens connection and landed in Bucharest at 5:45. The airport and its perimeter were thick with lightly armed soldiers in grey-green shirts, drab olive trousers and scuffed boots; but their presence seemed pointless and the men themselves aimless. This was a duty of long standing, out of which nothing had ever come. They didn't expect anything to come out of it and in all honesty weren't much interested. They were there because they'd been told to be.
As Harry passed through customs, the official stamping passports scarcely looked at him; all eyes were turned towards the three or four members of some foreign delegation or other, who were being given red-carpet treatment through the airport and out into the 'freedom' of Romania. Harry reckoned he was lucky.
Manolis had fixed him up with one hundred and fifty American dollars, which he'd sworn were good as gold. He caught a taxi, dumped his holdall on the back seat and told the driver: 'Ploiesti, please.'
'Eh? Ploiesti?'
'Right.'
'You English?'
'No, Greek. But I don't speak your language.'
'Hah! Is funny! We are both speaking English, yes?' The man was unkempt and his breath was bad, but he seemed amiable enough.
'Yes,' said Harry, 'it's funny. Er, do you take dollars? American?' He showed him some green.
'Eh? Eh? The dollars?' His eyes stood out. 'Sure, by gosh! I take it! Ploiesti is — I don't know — sixty kilometres? Is, er, ten dollars?'
'Are you asking?'
'Fine!' Harry handed over the money. 'Now I sleep,' he said, leaning back and closing his eyes. He didn't intend to sleep, but neither did he want to talk…
The Romanian countryside was boring. Even in springtime merging with summer there wasn't anything much of green to be seen. Plenty of browns and greys: piles of sand and cement, cheap breeze-blocks and bricks. Enough building going on to rival all the coastal regions of Spain, Turkey and the Greek islands put together. Except that this had nothing to do with tourism, for there was plenty of wrecking, too. The grotesque, inhuman mechanics of Ceausescu's agro-industrial policy: save money by cramming more and more people under one roof, like cattle in pens. Goodbye to peasant autonomy, the picturesque settlements and village life; hello to the ugly, rearing tower blocks. And all the while the reins of political control drawn tighter.
Through eyes three-quarters shuttered, Harry scanned the land as it sped by beyond the windows of the car. The roadside en route from Bucharest to Ploiesti looked like a landscape in the aftermath of war. Bulldozers worked in teams in the poisonous blue haze of their rumbling exhausts, erasing small farming communities wholesale to fashion empty, muddy acres in their place; while other machines stood idle or exhausted alongside huge iron diggers with their bucket heads lifted and stretching forward, almost as if watching. And where once there were villages, now there was only earth and rubble and desolation.
'More than ten thousand villages in old Romania,' Harry's driver, perhaps sensing that he was still awake, told him out of the corner of his mouth. 'But old President Nicholae reckons that's about five thousand too many. What a madman! Why, he'd flatten the very mountains if someone would tell him how to go about it!'
Harry made no answer, continued to nod — but he wondered:
If so, then how might Harry find it again? The last time he was here he'd come via the Mobius Continuum, homing in on Faethor's telepathic voice. (Or rather, his necroscopic voice, for it was only the dead Harry could speak to in this way; he wasn't a true telepath.) Faethor had spoken to him, and Harry had tracked him down. Now was different: he would only recognize Faethor's place, know it for sure, when he got there. As to its precise location: he knew only that the birds didn't sing there, and that the trees and bushes and brambles grew no flowers, developed no fruit. For the bees wouldn't go near them. The place was in itself Faethor's tombstone, bearing his epitaph which read:
This Creature was Death! His Very
existence was a Refutation
of Life;
wherefore he now lies Here,
where Life Itself refuses to
Acknowledge him.
As the taxi passed a signpost stating that Ploiesti lay ten kilometres ahead, Harry shook himself, yawned, and pretended to come more properly awake. He looked at his driver.
'There were some rich old houses once on the outskirts of Ploiesti. The homes of the old aristocracy. Do you know where I mean?'
'Old houses?' The man squinted at him. 'Aristocracy?'
'Then the war came and they were bombed,' Harry continued. 'Reduced to so much rubble. The authorities never touched the place; it was left as a sort of memorial — until now, anyway.'
'Ah! I know it — or used to. But not on this road, no. On the old road, where it bends. Now tell me quick — is that where you want to go?'
'Yes. Someone I know used to live there.'
'Used to?'
'Still does, as far as I know,' Harry corrected himself.
'Hold on!' said the other, hauling his steering wheel hard right. They bumped off the road onto a cobbled avenue that wound away at a tangent under huge chestnuts.
'It's along here,' said Harry's driver. 'Another minute and I'd passed it and would need to turn around and come back. Old houses, the old aristocracy, aye. I know it. But you came at the right time. Another year and it's gone. Your friend, too. They just knock 'em flat, these old places, and whoever lives there moves on or gets knocked down with 'em! Oh, the bulldozers will be here soon enough, wait and see…'
Half a mile down the road and Harry knew that this was it. The shells of old buildings began rising left and right behind the chestnuts, dilapidated places mainly, though a few of the chimneys still smoked. And: 'You can drop me here,' he said.
Getting out of the taxi and picking up his holdall, he asked, 'How about buses? I mean, if I stay with my friend overnight, how will I go about getting back into town tomorrow morning?'
'Walk back to the main road, towards Bucuresti,' the other told him. 'Cross over onto the right and keep walking. Every kilometre or so, there's a bus stop. You can't miss 'em. Except — don't go offering dollars! Here, you've got some change coming. Banis, my Greek friend. Banis and leu — else people will wonder what's up!' And waving, he drove off in a cloud of dust.
The rest of it was instinct; Harry just followed his nose; he would soon discover he'd been a mile or so off target, but time and distance were passing quickly enough and he sensed he was walking in the right direction. He saw few signs of humanity: smoke from distant chimney-stacks, and an old peasant couple who passed him going in the opposite direction. They looked weary to the bone and pushed a cart piled high with sticks of furniture and personal belongings; without knowing them or their circumstances, still Harry felt sorry for them.
Pretty soon he felt hungry, and remembering a pack of salami sandwiches and a bottle of German beer in his
