Descendant (8 page)

“You can’t even give us a hint what they want you to do? Your own family?”

I shook my head. “They said if I told anybody—even you—they’d shoot me.”

“Oh my God,” said my mother. “They
threatened
you?
They come here, uninvited, into my house, and threaten to shoot you, my son, in my yard?”

“Hey, it’s my house, too,” my father protested. “And my son. And my yard, come to that.”

“We should complain to the army,” said my mother.

“They said I have to go to Washington next week,” I told her. “They’re going to pay my fare and everything.”

“They can’t coerce you,” said my father. “Is this why we pay taxes? Tell them you don’t want to go to Washington.”

I spooned a meatball out of my soup. “But I
do
want to go to Washington. I think this is going to be really, really interesting.”

“I see. It’s so interesting you can’t tell us what it is?”

“Dad—not only will they shoot me, they’ll probably shoot you, too.”

“Pah!” said my father, pushing his chair back in disgust, the same way he did when I beat him at chess.

But my mother was staring at me across the table and there was a look in her eyes which told me that she had guessed why the army had come looking for me. After all, what was the one thing that made me different from all of the rest of my college friends? I had a Romanian mother, who had told me all kinds of scary Romanian folk tales when I was little. None of my friends had been brought up on stories of
strigoi
and
strigoaica
, the creatures of the night, and none of my friends had researched Romanian legends as thoroughly as I had, and published a paper on them.

I have to admit that I decided to write a paper on
strigoi
out of perversity, almost as a joke. Everybody in my class thought that I was a clown, including my
professors, and I guess I decided to live up to their expectations. It’s difficult to grow up normal when your father expects you to recite Edward Arlington Robinson to amuse his lunch guests when you’re only four years old, and your mother sings you Romanian lullabies about what will happen to you if you betray love. “If you betray love, you will squirm like a snake, walk like a beetle, and you will own nothing but the dust of the land.”

Even though she told me so many stories about them, my mother never gave me the impression that she actually believed in the
strigoi
—and she was brought up in Tanacu, where they still cross themselves if a crow flies down their chimney, or a black dog urinates against their gatepost. As recently as the summer of 2005, a priest from the Holy Trinity monastery in Tanacu strangled and crucified a nun because he thought she was possessed by demons.

To begin with, I didn’t believe in the
strigoi
, either—but like I say, I thought it would be a terrific wheeze to write a paper that discussed them as if they
were
real. Only two or three weeks after I had started work on it, however, I began to come across credible documentary evidence that the
strigoi
might be more than imaginary—letters, newspaper reports, even some blurry old photographs. I couldn’t help asking myself: what if they
did
exist? Even more intriguing:
what if they still do
?

I studied the
strigoi
for nearly two years. I made scores of phone calls and talked in person to more than two hundred Romanian immigrants of all ages. I searched through private libraries and smelly old collections of rare
books. Without realizing it, day by day, I was becoming one of the world’s greatest experts on
strigoi
.

One of the elderly Romanian immigrants I interviewed for my college paper talked to me about his cousin, who became a
strigoi mort
. “He was the handsomest man you ever met. Tall, witty and irresistible to women. But he could be very melancholy, too. Once when he came to visit us I saw him standing by the window and there were tears in his eyes. I asked him what was wrong and he said, ‘Look.’ He reached out his hand and it passed straight through the glass of the window pane without breaking it. I could actually see his hand outside the window, still with his gold wedding band on it. Then he drew his hand back in again, and the glass was completely intact. I felt a chill like nothing I had ever felt before. He said, ‘I am dead, Daniel, and I can never go home again, ever.’ ”

It was this man who first drew me a picture of the wheel which the
strigoi mortii
wear around their necks—a diagonal cross to symbolize a kiss, with a circle around it to represent endlessness. Usually, the
strigoi mortii
fashion the wheels themselves. They use gold from any rings they wore when they were still human, with copper to enhance its electrical conductivity. The wheel is much more than symbolic: it gives the
strigoi mortii
exceptional night vision, and it contains the protective power of absolute evil. Several respected academics suggest that J. R. R. Tolkien was inspired by the wheel when he wrote
The Lord of the Rings
, and that the physical and spiritual degeneration of Gollum is a close parallel to what happens to people when they become infected by
strigoi
. You’ll remember that Gollum’s eyes lit up, so that he could see
better in the dark, just like the
strigoi mortii
when they wear the wheel.

By the time I had finished writing my paper, I still hadn’t conclusively proved that the
strigoi
did exist (like, I had never knowingly
met
one) but I had a wealth of anecdotal evidence that they
might
. I ended up my paper by saying “on balance, it appears highly likely that the
strigoi
did once haunt the remoter regions of Transylvania and Wallachia, and a few may do so even today.”

And I was right. Which was why Lieutenant Colonel Bulsover and Major Harvey came knocking at my door to tell me that the joke was on me.

I flew to Washington, DC, on August 11th, 1943. It was the first time I had ever flown, and I saw mountains with scatterings of snow on them and fields of wheat that seemed to stretch forever, with cloud shadows moving over them slow and lazy, as if whales were swimming through the sky. Somewhere I still have the blue American Airways timetable with “Buy More War Bonds!” printed on the front.

I was met at Washington National Airport by a skeletally thin man in a flappy gray double-breasted suit and tiny dark glasses. He raised his hat to me and asked me to call him Mr. Corogeanu. He drove me to a large ivy-covered house on the outskirts of Rockville and it was there, during the next three months, that I was given my basic training in
strigoi
hunting.

Since I already knew a whole lot more about the
strigoi
than almost anybody else, what they were really giving me was military training. I was taught to fire a gun, and to read a map, and to climb over a ten-foot wall. I was also introduced to a laconic animal-trainer with no front teeth who had been specially recruited from Barnum & Bailey’s Circus. He gave me daily instruction in wielding
a bullwhip, which is a darn sight more difficult than it looks. I spent whole afternoons lashing my own calves until they looked like corned beef.

Meantime, the
strigoi
-hunting Kit was gradually being assembled, mostly according to the details I had provided in my college paper, although it was Mr. Corogeanu who suggested the black and white paint. According to him,
strigoi
are repelled by the sight of a dog with an extra pair of eyes painted above its real eyes.

It was during my training sessions that we started calling the
strigoi
“Screechers.” The word
strigoi
comes from the Romanian word
striga
meaning “witch,” and this in turn comes from the Latin cognate
strega
, which has its origins in
strix
, the word for a screech owl. Besides that, my side-arms instructor always used to say, “If you want to immobilize those creatures, you have to hit ’em dead center,” and the way he slurred his words always made it sound like “tho’ Screechers.”

I wish I knew where they acquired the nails from the crucifixion. I asked Lieutenant Colonel Bulsover several times but he always refused to tell me. All he said was, “It was a case of you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.” I always wondered if this meant that—in return for these priceless relics—the United States had agreed to support the creation of an independent State of Israel, but maybe I was reading too much into it.

Six weeks before D-Day, I was introduced to Corporal Little and Frank, so that Frank could get used to my smell and Corporal Little could be briefed on what he was supposed to be doing. Three weeks before D-Day, we were embarked from New York on the USS
New Hampshire
to sail to England. We were taken over to Normandy a week
after the first landings on Omaha Beach. We were all seasick, even Frank. The rest I’ve already told you.

Except that it didn’t end there. Nothing ends, when you get yourself involved with the
strigoi
. The
strigoi
are immortal, and their sense of grievance is immortal. That’s why, when two US Army officers drew up outside my house in New Milford, Connecticut, in July 1957, I almost felt a sense of relief, because I had always known in my heart of hearts that this was coming.

My wife Louise answered the door. The two officers stood on the veranda with their caps tucked under their arms, just as Lieutenant Colonel Bulsover and Major Harvey had done fourteen years before. It was a hot, bright day, and they were both in shirtsleeves.

“Captain Falcon?”

I came out of my study and put my arm around Louise’s shoulders. “Help you?” I asked them. I didn’t like the sound of “Captain.”

“Like to have a few words with you, Captain, if that’s OK.”

“Sure. What’s it about?”

“Maybe we could come inside?”

I invited them into the living room. The dark oak floor was highly polished and the sun was shining on it, so that when they sat on the couch opposite me it was difficult for me to make out their faces. They were both young, though. One was sandy-haired and the other was wearing black-rimmed eyeglasses like Clark Kent.

“We’re from counterintelligence at Fort Holabird, sir. We need to speak to you in confidence.”

I turned to Louise and said, “How about some coffee, honey?”

“OK,” she agreed, although she wasn’t especially happy about it. Louise was very petite, with bouncy brunette hair and an Audrey Hepburn look about her, but she had her own opinions about almost everything, which were usually the exact opposite of mine, and she never allowed me to treat her as if she were a “little woman.”

She went into the kitchen and started a percussion solo for spoons and cups and coffee percolator. The officer in the black-rimmed eyeglasses leaned forward and said, sotto voce, “We’ve had a communication from British intelligence, Captain—MI6. It concerns a series of incidents in the suburbs south of London, England.”

“Incidents? What kind of incidents?”

The sandy-haired officer said, “Homicides. Well, I say they’re homicides, but they’re practically massacres, to be honest with you. Thirteen people killed at a business conference; six children killed at an orphanage; nine women killed at a social club. Altogether, seventy-three people dead in the space of five weeks.”

I slowly sat back. I didn’t say anything. I had already guessed what was coming.

“MI6 have kept all of these killings out of the news. They’ve been telling relatives that there’s some kind of bug going around—Korean Flu, something like that. In fact they’re actually calling their investigation ‘Operation Korean Flu.’ ”

The officer in the eyeglasses said, “It’s not a bug, though, Captain. All of the victims were cut open and
the blood drained out of them. Exact same scenario as Operation Screecher, during the war.”

Louise came in with a tray of coffee and gingersnaps, which she passed around with a tight, shiny smile. “Gingersnap? They’re homemade. Not by me, I’m afraid, my mother.” While she did so, none of us said anything, except, “Thank you.”

When she had finished pouring coffee, Louise waited for a while, and all three of us looked at each other in uncomfortable silence. At last she said, “Maybe I’ll go outside and cut some roses.”

“Sure, good idea,” I told her. She hesitated a moment longer, but the officer in the eyeglasses raised his eyebrows at her expectantly, and she left. I could see her through the French windows, snipping away at the rose bushes as if she were giving all three of us vasectomies.

“Before we tell you any more, Captain, we have to remind you that you are still bound by the same rules of confidentiality that you were during Operation Screecher.”

“Maybe I’d prefer it if you didn’t tell me any more. We’re not at war now, are we?”

“Well, yes, Captain. I’m afraid we are. It may not be an all-out fighting war, but it’s still a war, and your country needs your help.”

“What if I decline to give it?”

“We don’t actually think that you will, Captain.”

“I see,” I told him. I wasn’t stupid. However callow these officers looked, they worked for one of the most secret and highly specialized counterintelligence units in the Western world, and I could tell when I was being seriously threatened.

The officer in the eyeglasses said, “According to our
records, you were in Antwerp, Belgium, in the winter of 1944, searching for a Romanian national by the name of Dorin Duca.”

“That’s right. I never found him, though. Or
it
, I should say. I always assumed that he was killed by a V-2.”

“In actual fact, sir, Duca escaped to the Netherlands. He was located by another operative from Operation Screecher and detained.”

I frowned at him. “I didn’t know there
were
any other operatives in Operation Screecher. I thought that I was the only one.”

“No, Captain, not exactly. Other operatives were occasionally brought in as and when the situation called for it.”