Dracula's Ghost: Apocalypse - Chapter 3

Part I: First Voyage of the Ceres

Table of Contents

I.

Van Helsing

In due time, the young woman’s illness will draw him into another world, a dark liminal space that will stagger his imagination for years afterward, but in the beginning, Abraham Van Helsing is drawn to London for a simple reason. Jack Seward has a sick patient, a young woman with baffling symptoms, and he requests a consultation from his old professor. As if I could do otherwise, he thinks as the boat rocks upon the North Sea, for Seward is like a son to him, far more so following the death of poor Isaak and his wife’s… illness. After his last visit to the asylum, during which Hanna emerged screaming from her catatonia and assaulted an orderly, Van Helsing had controlled the rising tide of his own hysteria for long enough to walk to a nearby park. There was a bench that overlooked the canal, and he had plopped into the seat, his entire body weak and boneless, and allowed the laughter to overtake him. It was awful, a sinusoidal fit of giggles that lasted for ten minutes, and when the laughter finally subsided, Van Helsing had given serious thought to chewing through his forearm until he reached the radial and ulnar arteries and bled to death on the spot. He travels for the sake of his friend, and for the sick girl, but also for his own sanity, which seems to hang by a thread. Get away from Amsterdam for a few days. His son is dead, and his wife is dead in all but name, but the sick girl is alive, and if he misses a séance or if the obscure texts in his library remain unread, Isaak will still be dead tomorrow.

His thoughts drift to his nephew, the only person who knows the true circumstances of Isaak’s death, but Pym Van Helsing is no longer speaking to him, and it is more productive to review the notes from Seward’s case. Abraham Van Helsing redirects his attention to the matter at hand. Periodic acute anemia of unknown etiology.

Very curious.

II.

Bucharest

1989

“Before we start, let’s set a few ground rules.” Lieutenant Albert Bud stood at attention, and Colonel Suta gestured for him to sit. “Nothing that we discuss is to leave this room. Understand?”

“Yes sir.”

Suta allowed himself a smile as the lieutenant’s eyes wondered about the office, for he had thoroughly searched the space for hidden microphones, and if the voice of his dead uncle cried out at the betrayal, Suta’s own conscience was clear – the Securitate would have to work damned hard to eavesdrop on their discussion. Iulian Vlad had placed him in an impossible situation, for he demanded a thorough investigation and absolute secrecy, and if Colonel Mihai Suta was unable to discover the truth, there was little to stop the Director General from singling him out for blame. He needed an ally, and where a more senior man might have called in favors from within the bowels of Romania’s bureaucracy, Suta had gone in the opposite direction. Lieutenant Albert Bud, aged twenty-seven. In a military force known for its lack of combat readiness, Lieutenant Bud was a good platoon leader, and the men under his command were relatively fit, fed, and well-armed. Outstanding work, when one considers the dismal state of the country. Better still, at least from Suta’s perspective, the lieutenant received only mediocre fitness reports because the commissars noted his lack of enthusiasm for political indoctrination and hinted darkly that the young lieutenant harbored doubts about the guiding hand of President Ceausescu.

“Three months ago, a midlevel bureaucrat in the Agriculture Ministry was arrested in connection with the Pacepa case from 1978. The Boss is still angry over the defection of his top spy, and the bureaucrat was picked up after some tangential connection to Pacepa was unearthed. Under normal circumstances, he would disappear into a labor camp, but the Boss must have been in a good mood when sentences were handed out – instead of ending up in prison, the bureaucrat was released and restored to his old position. Unfortunately, his daughter was placed in an orphanage while he was under interrogation, and that is where our involvement begins – she seems to have vanished.”

He paused to watch his subordinate’s reaction. In Romania, the most mundane conversations proceeded in a roundabout fashion, for each word was carefully chosen to avoid suspicion. Suta had spoken with enough frankness to land them both in a prison cell, and the necessity of their discussion – How else am I supposed to do my fucking job? – was no defense. He produced a photograph, an adolescent girl in a school uniform, and slid it across the desk. She had been pretty, Suta thought, a dark-eyed girl with brown hair, carefully knotted into the braid that hung between her shoulders. His stomach lurched as he thought of his own family.

“How old was she?” Albert Bud shifted nervously as he spoke.

“Thirteen. Her name was…is… Lucyna Wilk. What’s on your mind, lieutenant?”

“This seems like a matter for the police, sir.” Mihai Suta read the subtext in the lieutenant’s eyes. Are you certain that no one is listening?

“Indeed it does,” he said. “The girl was placed in an orphanage in Brasov, and the director insists that she was well-cared for and sent home upon her father’s release. They even returned the shoes that she had been wearing – almost certainly a lie, given the price that a good pair of shoes can fetch on the black market – but the rest of his story checks out.”

“Then we find out who picked her up from the orphanage and haul him in for questioning.” Suta raised an eyebrow at the subtle change in the lieutenant’s words. We. “It sounds easy enough.”

“And that is where things become…sensitive.” Suta glanced around the room and prayed that he had overlooked no microphones. “The man who signed for her is in the upper echelons of the Securitate, and he has the president’s ear. That’s why they delegated the whole thing to the military – they don’t want to admit that one of their own could be involved, and they want someone to blame if things go wrong. If you’re up to the task, then we need to proceed very carefully.”

“Are you… asking me to volunteer?”

“My head is on the chopping block, not yours.” It wasn’t exactly true, for the lieutenant was now privy to a deadly secret, but Suta was desperately in need of an ally. “If you want to walk out the door, all I ask is that you keep quiet about our conversation.”

“All right,” he said, and Suta noted with a touch of admiration that the nervousness had vanished from the lieutenant’s voice. “Who are we looking for?”

“This man.” Suta opened the binder on his desk, and a dull photograph returned their stare. Acwulf Kiel was pale and thin, and a strand of receding hair was combed neatly over the liver spots that dotted the crown of the head. The overall impression, Suta thought, was of a once-handsome man who had suffered a long illness, or a prisoner kept in the dark with too little food. A pair of gray eyes, deeply-set in their sockets, gazed into the camera.

“This is Acwulf Kiel. On paper, he is employed by the Directorate of Internal Security, though he works with unusual freedom and disappears for extended periods of time. The Securitate thinks he’s in his mid-fifties by now, though I’d say he’s lived a difficult life if that picture is any guide.”

“Mid-fifties… They think?” Lieutenant Bud raised an eyebrow.

“It’s quite remarkable.” Suta grinned at his colleague. “The Securitate watches our citizens in granular detail but appears somewhat lax in certain areas. They insist – and oddly enough, I believe them – that his records have all vanished. Officially, no one by that name exists anywhere in the country.”

“It’s a German name,” the lieutenant said. “Maybe he’s from Banat or Crișana.”

“Maybe, but I’ve never met a Romanian named Kiel, even among the ethnic Germans.” He pulled a map from his desk. “See that city? My guess is that his origins are somewhere on the Baltic coast.”

Lieutenant Albert Bud’s eyes flickered from the map to his own face, and where a true believer would be goggle-eyed at the notion of a Western spy in Romania, the younger man betrayed nothing. Of course he doesn’t, Suta thought. There are no believers anymore, except within the walls of the presidential palace or the gray lands of the Securitate.

“What do we do with this… information?”

“I have contacts in Moscow, and I’ll call in a few favors.” Suta closed the binder. “For now, just keep your mouth shut. That will be all.” 

When the door was closed, he placed the binder into his safe and reconnected the detonator. A hidden panel in the cabinet contained a half-kilogram of Semtex, and if the Securitate decided to do a little safecracking, a nasty surprise awaited the burglar. Treachery, cried the voice of his dead uncle. Betrayal of Party and Motherland. He had been seven years old when Anghel Suta, along with an entire squad of secret police, was murdered in 1956, and the Securitate had questioned his family for months. What do we do with this information? The lieutenant’s question echoed in his own head. First, we find out if the accusations are true. He would punish no one, not even a member of the Securitate, for crimes that they had not committed. Find out if he is responsible for the child’s disappearance. And if he is guilty? The question hung unanswered in his mind.

III.

Amsterdam

1989

Sarah Spencer drifted in and out of consciousness as Alexandr Plekhanov held her hand. She feels so cold. They had survived imprisonment and worse, and he had counted their last three decades together as a gift, an unearned favor bestowed by the caprice of whatever gods looked down upon his existence. Not a gift, he thought, a loan.  And now the bill comes due. 

“Alexandr.” Her eyes fluttered open in a semblance of consciousness.

“What is it, love?”

“Van Helsing…”

“Eric? No darling, Eric is dead.”

“No… Van Helsing,” Plekhanov, whose grasp of English remained imperfect, struggled to make sense of her words. Eric Van Helsing had a daughter, a pretty girl with a somber disposition, but Plekhanov could not remember when he had last seen her. “She’s in danger… Tell her…”

“Tell her what, Sarushka?”

“Tell her…” Sarah’s eyelids fluttered as she half-drifted into sleep. “…Stay away from the ship.”

IV.

Bucharest

The phone rang, and Nicolae Ceausescu gave a terse command – let him in.  He sat behind a specially made desk, which rested on a raised platform to add a few inches to his height. 

“You wished to see me?” Iulian Vlad stood in the doorway and waited for a signal to enter, and the president did a silent three-count in his head – he found it pleasing to heighten each supplicant’s level of uncertainty – before waving him inward.

“Indeed I did.” The Director General studied him carefully behind a pair of wire-rimmed glasses, for he veered unpredictably between benign loquaciousness and volcanic rage. “It’s been three days, and you’ve given me no updates about the girl who was taken from the orphanage. I also hear that a heavy truck was stolen from a barracks near Târgoviște. Do you care to explain what’s going on?”

“We have elements following up on the girl now. As for the loss of the military truck, it was a matter of small importance, and I didn’t think it worthy of your attention.”

“Why not?” 

“Sir, you have an entire country to run, and I thought it best not to add to your list of worries.” 

“You mean that you thought it best to keep me in the dark.” 

“No, sir.” If the question rattled the Director General, he gave no sign – the forehead remained sweatless beneath the gray hair. “As you have just demonstrated, it is not possible to hide things from you. If we had picked up evidence of counterrevolutionary activity, I would have informed you at once, but you already have a heavy workload, and I did not wish to add to your burden.”

“What about the German?” Acwulf Kiel had rooted out more than one traitor, but he knew full well that Iulian Vlad hated the German. “What does he say?”

“He is busy with… other matters at this time. Regarding the issue at the orphanages –”

“Yes, the orphanages –best in all of Europe. Surely we are talking of one orphanage in particular, unless there are other problems of which you did not bother to inform me?”

“Of course not, sir.”

“Good. Keep me informed of your progress. Now, onto more pressing matters. Regarding this morning’s disaster in Hungary…”

The briefing continued for another hour, and after he dismissed the Director General, Nicolae Ceausescu sat behind his desk and massaged his temples. This morning, the government of Hungary had agreed to hold free elections, and though he had issued a special order for the arrest of any citizen caught listening to Hungarian radio broadcasts, the news weighed heavily upon him. Everything for which I have struggled is in jeopardy, and I am surrounded by enemies on every side.

V.

Hampstead Heath, London

Shadows gathered over the empty fields and around the edge of the bathing pond, and the trees beyond the water’s edge were sheathed in darkness.  A dim band of light remained visible on the western horizon, but the appearance of Venus marked the approaching night as Evangeline Morris lingered at the water’s edge. 

On the far side of the pond, a man emerged from the trees. 

Twilight and distance veiled his features, but the newcomer moved like a lion in tall grass, approaching her with a subtle encircling motion designed to cut off the retreat of a prey animal. As he closed the distance, the shape grew distinct in the dim light, and Evangeline made out a long overcoat and a broad-brimmed hat that partially obscured the face. A single red eye, the luminescent orb of a nocturnal animal, glinted on the right side of the face, and when he turned to face her directly, the left eye was missing entirely. The fading light seemed to bend around him, and the shadows stretched and pooled to lend gauntness to his appearance and draw out his frame to unusual height. In a tree at the water’s edge, an owl watched them intently from a low branch.

“Good evening.” The mustache twitched as one corner of the mouth turned upward. “How long has it been?”

“Three years,” she said, though Evangeline frequently spied his shadow in dark alleys or sensed his presence outside her window. Keeping tabs on his last living descendant, she thought.

“Of course – the year the war criminal from Amsterdam passed away. So fortunate that he was captured, or we would never have found his granddaughter… But I didn’t come here to reminisce. I need the ship.”

“When?” Her tone remained flat, businesslike, though Evangeline was certain that surprise registered on her face.

“Find a good crew and have it ready by the end of the month. And the Van Helsing girl – I’ll be needing her as well.”

“No.” Evangeline shook her head. “I’ll do whatever you need, but leave her out of this.”

“She is what I need. Why don’t you trust me?”

“I trust you with my own life, but with hers?” She paused, taking in the night air. “Why her?”

“I’ll tell you why.” His face darkened beneath the hat, and for a moment, Evangeline wondered whether she had given offense. “Harker, Holmwood, Morris, Van Helsing. The chain is already weakened by the passage of time, and if we lose another link, it will break entirely. Do you understand?”

“You know that I don’t.”

“Because when He was defeated, he was not bested by one man but through the bonds forged between us all. Those bonds transcend time and space in ways that are impossible to understand – I need the others. I need her.”

VI.

Romania

The man stood in the center of the room, and though his hands were bound, he had not been mistreated in any way, for to break his legs or prod his flesh with electrodes would have defeated the interrogator’s purpose. He knew only that he was whole and in good health, though the noose that ran from his neck to a beam in the ceiling hinted at the nature of his coming torment. Snug, but not taut, he thought. At least, not yet. He stood upright, as he had for the last two hours.

“Hello Petre.” The hood was removed from his head, and the interrogator stared at him from deep-set gray eyes. Petre Corbu had been aware of his approach for several minutes, though he had heard no footsteps – the smell that wafted through the room had given him away. “Do you know where you are?”

“In prison.” The steadiness of his own voice surprised him. “I don’t know why.”

“Not just any prison.” The interrogator moved closer, and Corbu winced at the rancid smell of the interrogator’s breath. “This is a very special prison, unlike any other in the country, for not even the Securitate knows of its existence. It’s a prison that I established solely for my own use, and it currently houses only one inmate. And I’m sure that you know why you are here.”

“I don’t.” His tongue probed the fringes of dry lips. “Can I have some water?”

“Perhaps – after we talk for a little longer.”

A bead of sweat ran down Petre Corbu’s forehead as the interrogator studied him with interest. His legs ached, but the real measure of his endurance would be determined in another eight hours, or twelve, or twenty. Eventually, the need for sleep would become overwhelming, his head would fall to his chin as his knees buckled… and the rope would draw taut about his neck.

“What… what do you want to know?”

“You care for the orphans in Brasov, correct?”

“I do maintenance – fix the plumbing, deliver food when it’s available…”

“When it’s available?” The interrogator frowned. “Spreading false rumors about the economy is a serious offense. For the moment, however, I am concerned with other matters. A lowly maintenance man hears the conversations of nurses, administrators, and the like as he wanders the hallways, and I’m curious to know what you might have heard about a young girl that went missing.”

“I don’t know anything about that – please can I have some water? My throat is dry.”

“Soon enough. The Securitate asked about a girl, didn’t they? She was the daughter of a criminal, and she came to the orphanage when her father was arrested. Do you remember?”

“Not Securitate.” A muscle in his calf began to cramp. “Army. Two men in army uniforms. The director was out, and they made an appointment to return in two days.”

“Good.” The interrogator smiled, and Petre noticed the prominence of his teeth. “See? You do remember. Now – and this is very important – tell me what they discussed.”

“Don’t know. Please, I’m very thirsty…”

“Not yet. Tell me…”

“I don’t know!”

Bony fingers gripped at his chin, forcing his head downward, and Petre’s eyes widened as he stared at the floor. The circle drawn about his feet was rust-brown in color, a solid line inscribed at the edge with unfamiliar runes. A few flies settled at its periphery.

“Do you know anything about necromancy, Petre? It’s an old science, now mostly forgotten, that allows one to speak to the dead. You see, I believe you when you say that you don’t remember, but all that information is locked away in your mind, easily discoverable by those with the proper tools. Of course, these methods work best when the method of death is drawn out and painful, and when the subject has ample time to experience the fear that comes at the end.”

“Please.”

“Were I in your position, I believe I could stand for days, but I find that most subjects don’t have the same level of endurance.” Acwulf Kiel gave him a lingering smile, then drew the hood over his head. “When you are ready, we will talk again.”

The foul odor receded, and there was only silence. Petre Corbu stood perfectly still, willing himself not to struggle against the rope, as the minutes ticked away in the empty room.

VII.

London and Beyond

1975

The dockyards at the Pool of London had done little business for the past ten years, and as the bigger shipping companies took their business to Purfleet or Thurrock, their absence carved out a smaller niche of markets unsuited for economies of scale. A modest tramp steamer operated by a small firm in London, the Ceres barely registered on the radar of modern commerce, and if a containership passed her on the open sea, its captain, bound from Tokyo or Freemantle, might cast a wistful glance in her direction, for the tiny steamer surely carried fewer responsibilities than his own vessel. That same captain would not consider that the ship was crewed mostly by criminals and renegades, worthy seaman whose greatest talents were discretion and distrust of the authorities.

In early summer, the ship sailed a different route, one that carried it past Gibraltar to the port of Valencia. Its hold was filled with wool from Snowdonia, but its real cargo was buried under the heavy bales, for smuggling was a dangerous undertaking in Falangist Spain – the Caudillo was in the final months of his own life, but he maintained strict controls to ensure that bombs, pornography, and Communist propaganda were apprehended at the border. The owner of the Ceres cared nothing for politics or vice, but he paid handsomely to ensure that no prying eyes would witness the arrival of the ship or the unloading of one special item. That item, a large wooden crate, was placed onto a truck bound for Madrid, and the harbormaster regarded the ship with a touch of unease. Ceres – the Roman goddess of the underworld. It was an odd name, one chosen specifically by the owner for reasons known only to himself.