Dracula's Ghost - Afterimage: Chapter 10

Part II - The Thieves

I.

Alsergrund District, Vienna

1937

The Danube lay a quarter mile to the east, and to the north, Diels could see a bridge, one of several tall structures that spanned the river. Sigmund died on one of those bridges, he thought. The cemetery itself was peaceful, an oasis of green in a desert of brick and concrete.

“Tell me again why you wanted me here.”  His companion adjusted the wire-rimmed glasses.

“Because you have contacts that I don’t,” Diels said.

“I see. Do you mean that they wouldn’t trust you, or that it would reflect poorly if your masters in Berlin knew what you were doing?” 

“Neither. I need you for what comes afterward.” 

The plan comes to him at the end of another tedious city meeting, where the council members prattle on about widening a street here, installing a gas line there, and sending a policeman to roust the drunks over there. Diels ignores the droning voices of the city leaders, because he has other things on his mind. Rumors of an Anschluss are flying – the Austrians will hold a plebiscite, the Fuhrer will take Vienna by force, a National Socialist coup is in the works – and the news troubles him, for Rudolf Diels has a private debt to fulfill, and he has left something behind in Vienna.

The basement of the jail is a dismal place where water drips from overhead pipes and rats scurry through the dark corners. A trace of sewer gas assails his nostrils as Diels adjusts the folder beneath his arm and checks the warmth of the furnace. His prisoner sits on the opposite side of a small table, and Diels dismisses the guard before taking his own seat.

“Is that you, Diels?”  The prisoner adjusts his glasses. “How long has it been?”  

“Four years,” Diels said. “I arrested you in 1933 for speaking against the Fuhrer.” 

“That’s right. To speak against Herr Hitler’s treatment of the Jews is called sedition.”

A bearded rabbi passed through the cemetery gate, and Diels flinched at the long coat and broad-brimmed hat. The Jews frown upon disinterment of a body, he remembered, but he had brooked no disagreement from his companion. Reinhard Heydrich had taken everything from him, yet envy still caressed his enemy’s heart with its prickly fingers and breathed poison into his lungs. If he discovers the grave, he’ll dig up the body and mail me the skull, Diels thought. His companion nudged him with an elbow.

“The rabbi – he makes you uncomfortable?”

“He stands out,” Diels frowned. “Not the best means of survival in the Greater Reich.” 

“What’s the problem?”  He gazed innocently at Diels through the spectacles. “I bear him no ill will. Stay back and let me do the talking.” 

“You’ve done well under the new regime.”  The prisoner glances at his lapel pin, a black swastika on a red background. Diels finds the remark bitterly ironic, for he has been removed from any real power for the last three years, and the man who supplanted him is known throughout the Third Reich.

“Do you understand that I’ve done you a favor?” 

“How so?” 

“Germany is not the Soviet Union, where they shoot you for thinking the wrong thoughts. Here, you can live your life in peace if you keep your mouth shut and don’t stir up trouble in Berlin. There’s another warrant for your arrest, and if they see your prior record, you’re looking at a long stretch in a concentration camp.”  Diels opens the folder, where the prisoner’s arrest history is clearly visible, and slides the dossier across the table.

“That’s quite a favor, Herr Diels. Perhaps you can arrange to have me shot as well.” 

“In an unfortunate turn of events,” Diels says, “some of the Gestapo’s files vanished when I was dismissed. Without these, they don’t have the evidence to keep you behind bars for more than a couple of months. If you like, you can use those to paper your bedroom walls, but I suggest that we burn them in the furnace.”

“And what do I owe in return for this… favor? Do you want me to help an old lady across the street? Save a drowning child, perhaps?” 

“No,” Diels says. “I want you to rob a grave.” 

He stepped to one side as the gravediggers began their work and stared at the headstones with their unfamiliar lettering. By the end of the day, the box would board a southbound train, and his companion would assure its safe arrival. And if he has any brains, he’ll stay away from Germany for a while.

The prisoner gazes at the folder for a long time, then carries the bundle to the furnace. Rudolf Diels sits patiently until the papers are consumed and the prisoner returns to his seat.

“You know, Herr Diels, it’s no surprise that you’ve done so poorly in the last few years. You’re supposed to hold onto the papers as leverage until you get what you want. If you need me – of all people – to explain the finer points of blackmail, then you are in sorry shape indeed.”

I didn’t need to blackmail you, Diels thought. At the far end of the cemetery, the gravediggers lifted a box from the earth. I already knew that you would help, because you can’t pass up the opportunity to do a good deed.

II.

Budapest

1956

“What is it?”  The major’s face appeared sallow, and Yuri Andropov suspected that he had lost weight.

“A local policeman was murdered last night.”  The major slapped the report on his desk. “We need more troops, and we need to smash the uprising now, before things get out of control.” 

“For the time being, Moscow thinks otherwise.” 

“When Comrade Stalin was alive –”

Andropov cut him off with a raised finger. “Comrade Stalin is dead, and the Politburo doesn’t want a repeat of the 1930s. For now, the Hungarians are content to distribute samizdat literature and hang the occasional banner. However, we are preparing contingency plans if an intervention is necessary.” 

“What kind of plans?” the Major asked.

“You let me worry about that. That will be all.”

When the Major was gone, he read the report more carefully.  Exsanguination via two deep slashes to the carotid artery. They had arrested a suspect who had been sawing at the corpse’s neck with a kitchen knife. He made no attempt to hide his actions; indeed, he had enjoined the police to assist him in the grisly act. Andropov passed over the transcript of the peasant’s babbling. The lack of blood was an interesting detail, but the Major’s assertions notwithstanding, their killer was clearly a madman. The workers and students had been restless, and an influx of rural peasants added fuel to the volatile mixture, but to date, there had been no serious violence.

I don’t need every petty crime to land on my desk. Yuri Andropov placed the report in his desk drawer for later filing. One of the secretaries had failed to show up for work this morning, and they were short-handed again. We have enough problems already.

III.

Hof

They left the car at the end of the road and slipped into the trees. Rudolf Diels looked haggard, Cristofor thought, a man whose paradigm had shifted cataclysmically in the space of a single night, and the priest found that his own head was swimming.  In theory, he went forearmed against the forces of darkness, but their encounter in the church had left him deeply shaken. Now we go forth as soldiers in God’s army, he thought, but the platitude rang hollow, and he uttered a simpler expression, one more appropriate to his true feelings.

“Let’s get this over with.”

“I can’t wrap my head around the whole thing,” Diels said. “Heydrich knew the truth, and… what exactly? He wanted to bring those things back to Germany?” 

“Heydrich carried out mass murder,” Cristofor said. “I doubt that much was beyond him. But that’s not what’s bothering you, is it?” 

“No.”  Rudolf Diels took a long drag from his cigarette and pitched the stub into the road. “Someone wanted me to go there after sunset, and they expected me to be alone. That thing would have killed me if you hadn’t been there.” 

The coffin lay where they had abandoned it the previous night. Cristofor noted that the lid had been replaced, and the realization left an odd sensation, a sick feeling of disgust and unease, in the pit of his stomach. Rudolf Diels clutched the axe brought for the day’s work, his knuckles white from exertion.

Photo by Kristijan Arsov on Unsplash

“So, what now?”

“Now, we open the coffin,” the priest said, “and I’ll begin the rite of exorcism. When I give the signal, take the axe and use it as we discussed.”

“And this will work?”  Diels’s eyes alternated between his own face and the closed box.

“I think so. I’m no expert on the occult, but I’m reasonably certain that you can kill anything by chopping off its head.”

“Reasonably certain.”  Diels looked skeptical. “All right, I’m ready when you are.” 

They threw open the lid, and though Cristofor’s horror returned at the sight of the corpse, the words rolled easily from his tongue. “Pater noster, qui es in caelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum.”  Rudolf Diels swung the axe, and the eyes flew open as a glancing blow sheared through the neck muscles. Blood spurted from the wound, soaking the dead man’s shirt and seeping through the planks of the coffin.   The blow must have severed the vocal cords, for the mouth opened wide (Cristofor flinched as he caught a glimpse of the teeth), but there was no cry the from the dead throat, only a wet, crackling gurgle reminiscent of a death rattle. Its arms beat listlessly at the air, and the priest jumped away as a hand brushed his sleeve. “Panem nostrum quotidianum… For the love of God, finish him Rudolf!”

Diels swung the axe again, a second blow, then a third, and the head fell away from the body. The change was immediate and dramatic – the torso bloated, then deflated as putrescent fluid poured from the wounded neck. The hands blackened, then withered as the flesh of the arms wasted away, and the hair fell away from the head as the eyes retreated into the skull. Cristofor stared in amazement – a moment earlier, the corpse had been preserved as one freshly dead, but now the clothing hung limply about the torso, and little more than bone remained. Rudolf Diels bent at the waist, hands on his knees.

“Are you all right?” 

“Never better,” Diels said. “What now?” 

“We need to search for other houses nearby.”  Cristofor gazed at the broken wall, perhaps appreciating the morning sunlight. “We need to find out if anyone else was harmed.” 

“And if they were?”

“You’d better bring the axe.” 

IV.

Near Minsk

Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic

Sarah did not regain consciousness as they were loaded onto the boat, but she moaned aloud, perhaps dreaming, as they drifted downriver. Plekhanov pressed his own body against hers and she became still as the warmth of his body eased the shiver that wracked her body.  She felt his belly rumble, and though Sarah could smell the vodka and black bread upon which the thieves subsisted, they offered him nothing.  She registered all of these things despite her catatonic state, for such is the nature of those who live on the boundary between life and death.   Their captors continued to talk, their voices distant, as the boat drifted on the current.

“A day’s journey, then we disembark.” 

“We should wake her up and have some fun while we wait.” 

“I heard she killed the guards with her bare hands…”

V.

50 miles south of Madrid

The hospitality was excellent, in true Spanish fashion, but the food and accommodations did not ease his mind. The note had listed the address of a hotel in Madrid, so Archie Spencer had arrived early, booked a different hotel, and spent the next morning conducting a discrete reconnaissance of the rendezvous location. Just before noon, a police officer tapped his shoulder. “Senor? Ven conmigo, por favor.” Now, they ate on the veranda and sipped cognac as he enjoyed the warmth of the afternoon sun. In the war’s aftermath, plenty of German expatriates had made their way to the Iberian Peninsula, so Archie had made a point of easting well. If it was to be his last meal, he would make damned sure to enjoy his food.

“It’s pretty, isn’t it? Different from my boyhood in Austria, but still nice. Do you know who I am?” 

“I should. They sent me to find you when you escaped.”

“I would be insulted with anything less.”  Otto Skorzeny regarded him with bright green eyes. “You and I aren’t that different, you know? You’re a private citizen who received not-quite official status, plenty of cash, and free reign to do as you saw fit at a very young age. From what I hear, you used that freedom quite ruthlessly in France. How are you different from me?” 

“Six million dead Jews, for one thing.”

“Of course.”  The older man grinned, as if he found humor in the punchline of some unknown joke. “It always comes back to the Jews, doesn’t it? Of course, I didn’t bring you here to rehash the past, so let’s get down to business – the Russians have a prisoner in Budapest who claims to be your mother.” 

Archie willed his own expression to remain impassive, to betray no hint of his own thoughts.  “I don’t see how that concerns you.” 

“If you mean that I am not welcome in Moscow, you are absolutely correct.”  Skorzeny used the stub of his cigarette to light another. “Still, there can be areas of mutual interest between former enemies. I heard that you hired Rudolf Diels, the kindest man the Third Reich ever produced, to find her, and what did you get for your money? Did he find her retired on some beach in St. Tropez? If he did… let’s just say that it’s a bad idea to leave him unattended with a woman.” 

Archie stood. “I believe we’re done here.” 

“Sit down, please.”  Otto Skorzeny made no move to rise from his own chair. “Here’s the thing. Your mother is… what’s the polite word in English? Unwell. No one, not even the Russians, wants to hurt a sick old woman, but she was living illicitly in the eastern bloc, and they don’t look kindly on lawbreakers, especially foreign ones. I have a few contacts on the other side of the Iron Curtain, and the Russians want her gone – quietly – before they have to deal with it in an official capacity. Understand?” 

“I suppose.”  Archie returned to his seat. “So what do they want from me?” 

“They want you to make a discreet trip to Budapest,” Skorzeny said, “and get her out of the country. In the old days, they would shot her and buried the body in an unmarked grave, but secrets aren’t as easily kept as they once were. They would prefer to avoid any embarrassment.”

“Awfully kind of them.”

“Don’t joke. If the Russians have to handle it themselves, your mother disappears, and you never see her again. You can leave her to rot, for all I care, but make a decision now.”

“I suppose I don’t have much choice,” Archie said. “What happens next?” 

“I’ll arrange for you to get across the border,” Skorzeny said, “Again, we’re doing this quietly, so not everything will be above board. Meanwhile, I suggest that you stop wasting time with Rudolf Diels.” 

Archie slept poorly that night. Why in God’s name would she be in Budapest? It made little enough sense, but if someone had wanted him dead, Otto Skorzeny could have obliged them over dinner. Danger lurked around the next bend in the road, he was certain of that, but Archie could discern neither its shape nor its intent. He was contemplating a snare set by a madman, a machine whose gears moved in accordance with a logic known only to their maker.

VI.

Hof

Diels walked quickly, and Cristofor marveled at his pace – the old spy was remarkably fast for a man who subsisted on cigarettes and liquor. They passed through an open field, and at the far end, he could see the high fence topped with barbed wire. Guard towers were posted at regular intervals, and it occurred to Cristofor that they could be shot if they continued their present course toward the border. A hundred meters from the fence, Diels stopped abruptly. The trees to their right were immature, a dense cluster of second growth forest, and a path disappeared into the brush.

“If he hurt anyone else, we’ll have to do it again, won’t we?”  Diels looked hesitant. “The same thing that we did in the old church.” 

“Maybe,” Cristofor said. “There are a lot of old legends about the rising of the dead, and some of them are contradictory. They might get better on their own if they survived the attack.”

“Might?” 

“About two hundred years ago, in the Hapsburg Empire, a young man named Arnold Paole claimed to have been attacked by a vampire. When he broke his neck in a fall, some forty-odd years later, people in his village began to sicken and die shortly after his burial. When the authorities opened his grave, they found him untouched by decomposition with fresh blood in his mouth. A scary story, if true.”

Diels frowned. “I think I’ve seen enough evidence to convince me.”

“I’m not arguing against what we saw. I’m simply saying that we don’t know what, if anything, will happen to his victims.”

“There’s another thing that bothers me,” Diels said. “That thing could have killed undetected during wartime, but if a string of bodies – or ghouls – turned up now, I think we would notice it. It was sealed up so that it couldn’t get free, wasn’t it?”

Cristofor nodded. “That’s another old legend. Place iron bands or chains on the coffin, and the vampire can’t escape.”

“That means that someone let it out.”  Diels started into the forest. “Come on. I don’t want to waste all day talking.”    

The house, little more than a squatter’s shack, was hidden by a hundred meters of underbrush and abutted a tall section of border fence. Father Cristofor could hear the hum of electric wires. Somewhere on the other side of that demarcation, guard dogs and armed patrols awaited those desperate enough to flee. Rudolf Diels took a deep breath and pushed the door open.

“Mary, Mother of God.”

The room was sparsely furnished, with a woodstove to the left of the door and a military cot on the opposite wall. A small table was placed beneath the window and covered by a tablecloth, a cheerful red-and-white checkerboard. A mug and soup bowl were placed on the table, and Cristofor guessed that the occupant, who lay dead on the floor, had been attacked as he sat for a meal.

“I suppose it’s good news.”  Diels’s scarred face was drained of color. “At least now, we won’t have to cut off his head.” 

Cristofor forced himself to study the scene. A crude circle had been drawn around the dismembered corpse, and a series of odd runes decorated the perimeter. A severed head, placed carefully atop the torso, regarded him indifferently.

“You asked about Dracula,” he said quietly. “That name has some associations with the old legends of the dead rising, and more.” 

“What do you mean?”  Diels’s voice was devoid of its usual good cheer.

“There is an old legend in Romania about Scholomance, a school of black magic where the devil claims every tenth scholar as its own. Some claim it is on the shores of a lake in the Carpathians, others say that it corresponds to no earthly geography. One of the Drăculești, perhaps Vlad the Third, perhaps not – was rumored to have studied there.”

“I don’t see what that has to do with –”

“Our vampire did not do this,” Cristofor said. “He was a hungry ghost, a void seeking to be filled – nothing more. What do you know of necromancy?”

Diels shook his head, and the priest took a deep breath, carefully measuring his words.

“It’s an old form of divination. Practitioners say that you can use the dead to look into the past, to glimpse the future – perhaps even to change it. I think that whoever did this opened the coffin with the intent to kill you.”  Cristofor pushed a severed hand aside. “What do you make of these?” 

“It’s a photo of me at the Nuremburg trials,” Diels said. He looked away quickly, as if the photograph troubled him more than the mess on the floor. “Testifying for the prosecution.” 

“What about the other one? My English is not so good.” Cristofor laid out the bloody scrap of newspaper on the floor.

“It says, ‘Daughter of London Solicitor Lost at Sea’,” Diels said. “It means that someone else is looking for my missing person.” 

VII.

They buried the remains in a shallow grave, and the priest anointed the ground with holy water. By some unspoken agreement, neither man suggested calling the police, for there was simply too much that they could not explain. Besides, Diels had an urgent cable to send, and he was anxious to get back to Cologne. No need for codes and secret messages now, Diels thought. I’ll tell him that she is dead. Archie Spencer might think him a poor excuse for a detective, but whatever force had driven Sarah Spencer from London was likely unfathomable to the rational mind, and it was better if the truth remained undiscovered. No one can help her now.

The woman that Archie had known, in all likelihood, was gone entirely.

VIII.

Near Minsk

The dreams came with the rising sun, vivid nightmares of sickness and pain, of a thin man with burning eyes. Plekhanov’s body remained pressed against her own, and Sarah clutched at his arm and entwined her fingers in a callused hand. The sun moved across the sky, and the thieves drank more vodka, ignoring the twitching of her limbs as a measure of strength returned to her body. How much longer until sunset? She closed her eyes again and willed her mind to rest. 

“Get up.”  Sarah was hauled upright, and the knots on her legs were untied. A short noose was thrown about her neck like a dog’s leash, and the thief held up a large knife. “You’re going to walk until I tell you to stop. If you fight or run away, I take this and stick it in your friend. Understand?” 

Sarah nodded. In the west, she watched the thin band of red where earth met sky. She remained weakened by her fall into the water, and the feeling of certainty that accompanied every setting sun remained elusive. The rocking motion of the boat made her stomach churn, and if she went into the water again, there would be no return. You won’t get a second chance, she thought.

As the sun vanished, Sarah twisted her hands against the bonds that held her wrists, and the rope shredded like tissue.

A thief yanked the noose that secured her neck, but Sarah planted her feet and ignored the pressure under her jaw. She gripped the line with both hands, pulled, and the thief stumbled forward, thrown off-balance by the unexpected resistance. Sarah grasped his neck and twisted, unnatural strength flowing through her arms, until muscles and tendons gave and his neck broke with a loud crack. A second man drew a blade and charged, and though Sarah knew no technique or training, the encroaching darkness lent speed to her movements. A step to one side, and the knife met only empty air; a flashing movement of her hands, and the thief was disarmed; with her third move, the blade severed his neck. Conscious thought ceased, and the who of Sarah Spencer faded as the what – her senses, movements, and instincts – were honed to a fine edge. A wave of joy surged through her body.

The remaining thief was kneeling over Plekhanov, looking away from her. As Sarah gripped the knife with bloody hands, she realized that she was smiling.

IX.

The thief dug into his windpipe with meaty fingers, and Plekhanov struggled in vain against the ropes as an old refrain echoed in his mind. A partisan can’t expect to die in bed. When the pressure on his neck vanished, he wondered if his oxygen-starved brain was deceiving him. Plekhanov drew a ragged lungful of air as Sarah Spencer held the thief upright with her left hand, her right holding the knife that protruded from the thief’s belly. The thief’s lips opened and closed, the reflexive gasping of a beached fish.

“Who sent you?”  Sarah’s voice was toneless and a little unnerving, the final judgement of an angel of death.

“Soviet embassy in Budapest… The German hired us to find you before KGB.”

“Why?”

“Don’t know. The German wants you alive.”

The thief screamed as she drew the knife upward and entrails, translucent gray in the twilight, spilled from the wound. Sarah released her grip, and the body crumpled to the deck. Plekhanov struggled to a sitting position as she cut the ropes that bound his wrists. To his surprise, she began to cry as she sank to the deck, and he placed an arm around her shoulders. 

“When I was a boy, my grandmother told me tales of Koschei the Deathless and Baba Yaga.”  Plekhanov winced as the circulation returned to his fingers. “Sarah, what happened to you?” 

“A long time ago, I met a man in the forest.”  She took his hand in her own.  

“And the German?” 

“I don’t know who he is.”  She shook her head. “But he is taking me to meet someone.”

“The man from the forest?”

“No,” she said. “Someone far worse.”

She folded into his arms, and Plekhanov held her for a long time as the boat drifted downriver and the bodies cooled on the deck.  

X.

Budapest

“Well? Where is he?”

“I don’t know.”  The junior lieutenant stared into the blackness. “He wasn’t at his post at half-past twelve. I came as soon as I found out –”

“And that’s when you called me,” the Major said. “Now, since it’s your responsibility to maintain the watch, answer my question – where is your soldier?” 

“I don’t know, Comrade Major. Private Sokolov was always reliable.” 

“And yet, we find him absent from his post, and you don’t have an explanation.”

“No, Major. He said…”  The Major stared at him with barely concealed impatience. “He said that someone had been watching him from the streetcorner.”

“And you didn’t see fit to include this in your report?” 

“No sir. I thought that he was seeing things in the dark.” 

“Of course. And now that he has gone missing, what do you think? Was he seeing things in the dark? Or is it possible that he was murdered by one of the subversives that have been working in Budapest? Perhaps you are a poor judge of character, and Private Sokolov was less reliable than you thought.”  The Major tapped at his chest. “Comrade Junior Lieutenant, if you don’t want your next assignment to be a guard on a Siberian prisoner transport, I suggest that you go out there and retrieve your wayward private. Now, please.”

The junior lieutenant passed into the darkness beyond the streetlights. How am I supposed to find anything out here? He carried no electric torch, for a light in the darkness made an easy target for snipers, but there was no moon, and the stars were obscured by thick clouds. Private Sokolov could be lying in the middle of the street, and he would pass by unawares.

And the man who lurked in the shadows could be waiting for him.

He had come to the streetcorner on three occasions, always to investigate the same report. Someone was watching, never quite visible but always present. At first, the junior lieutenant had put the whole affair down to a simple case of nerves, or fear of the dark. But Sokolov wasn’t the only one, was he? He had quizzed several of the men, and they all reported the same experience. Someone is out there. One of them, a junior sergeant with scarred knuckles and an utter lack of imagination, even claimed to hear singing voices. The junior lieutenant had quizzed him at some length, but the enlisted man had blushed and refused to say more.

A rat scurried across his path, and he jumped away, disgusted and slightly afraid. His uncle had been part of the Red Army’s final drive on Berlin, and of all the grisly stories that he told, the rats were always the worst. They came out at night to feed on the corpses, and the unlucky soldier who fell asleep at his post might awaken to the sensation of a rat crawling up his trouser leg or licking the open sore on his arm. God help the man who was wounded and left behind – the rats gathered around as your limbs grew heavy with shock, waiting for your final breath. Sometimes, they scurried forward while you were still alive.

And sometimes, they followed you down a darkened street.  

The clouds parted, but the stars in the sky brought no comfort. The junior lieutenant feared to look about, lest he see thousands of tiny eyes reflecting the starlight in pinpricks of red. Through the pounding of his own heart, he heard the scurrying of tiny feet on the cobblestones. He began to walk faster and then to run. The junior sergeant heard singing, he thought between gasping breaths. Perhaps the cacophony of a thousand hungry rats took on a musical quality.

He turned a corner and stopped dead. The alley smelled of old garbage and shit, and the junior lieutenant was glad that he had not eaten. The scurrying of the rats fell silent, and a single pair of red eyes stared at him from the darkness. It is beautiful, he thought. He could not make out the words, but in the musical voices, he could envision the drive on Berlin – the looted farms and slaughtered families, concentration camps with their walking dead, an army of rats feeding upon the spoils of war. The words were unutterably foul, but the music was enchanting.

He continued to stare at the red orbs as the rats watched and the shadow drew closer.