July 15, 1937
Cluj-Napoca, Transylvania, Kingdom of România
Being here has Elena in my thoughts again. She said in some ways this was more of a home to her than Bra?ov, because of all the years she spent attending university here and then doing fieldwork for the ancient history department. If it weren’t for that work, we may have never met.
Left the hotel earlier with the intention of going to visit Elena’s old mentor, Dr. Toma Mitu, her college archaeology professor, while Jean-Bernard was sleeping in late. Mitu has been writing me for months, pestering me for a telephone call. Said he’d been doing research on a side project and found something important. Granted, every history professor I’ve met thinks their research is earth-shattering, and it almost never is. Anyway, when I got to the university, I just couldn’t make myself go inside. Maybe I’m a coward. Maybe I just can’t handle listening to an old man dig up memories about Elena that I’d rather stay buried. Hurts too much. Isn’t that strange? All these years later, it still hurts as if she died yesterday. Grief is a rotten, stinking bastard of a thing.
When I got back to the hotel, I told J.B. that I was done with the whole damn chase for this ring. I wasn’t even convinced it existed, to be honest. So we’re leaving Romania today and heading down to Athens as we originally planned. Rothwild can keep his damn money. I’m out.
18
THE WOLF PACK NEVER RETURNED.Not that we knew of anyway. We both dozed off and on, taking turns adding logs to the fire when it died down... and returning to each other’s arms. But once daylight shone through cracks in the walls, we separated without a word.
We’d survived the night. Now we had to get out of the forest.
Huck bravely volunteered to step outside and check around the area to ensure we were alone as I watched from the door. No ghosts or rabid animals—no traps either, which was good, because I was worried our friendly skeleton had booby-trapped the area. However, after we both went in different directions to take care of nature’s call in private, what Huckdidfind was a rustic but passable bridge over the river, just past the cabins. So we gathered up our things and wasted no time using it.
Hiking through even a little snow isn’t easy; hiking through snow-covered bramble and underbrush was harder. We trudged along for a couple of hours, shoes soaked and feet numb with cold, and spotted seven red deer, ten squirrels, and one unidentified furry animal that may have been a marten or a weasel, or simply a large rat.
Just after nine o’clock in the morning by Huck’s wristwatch, we found a dirt road (no more brambles!) then a paved one—no more mud! And when we stepped around a sharp bend in the road, an entire city sprang to life as if by magic.
Cluj. Unofficial capital of the Transylvania region. Home to Romanian revolutionaries, a large Hungarian population, and Bohemian expats.
And what a city it was, one that teemed with history—baroque buildings, heroic statuary, and Gothic spires. Sunshine glinted off sloping roofs dusted in snow, and traffic along the streets was lazy. It wasn’t as big or bustling as Bucharest, but it had an old-world charm that was appealing.
We hiked through a neighborhood lined with quaint shops and restaurants that were just opening for the day, and on a not-as-quaint side street, I spotted a dark storefront with dirty windows. Big red letters were painted on the glass:AMANET. Pawnshop, last hope of the downtrodden and destitute. We didn’t have enough money to send a transatlantic cable to Foxwood to beg Father’s butler to wire cash, nor even to send a simple telegram to Paris—not to mention that it felt crude to ask Jean-Bernard’s man for money when his employer was on a hospital bed. No. We’d gotten ourselves into this situation and depleted our resources. Best to climb out on our own four feet.
So I did the only thing I knew Icoulddo:
I pawned my precious Leica camera.
I clicked through half a dozen blank photos to finish up the roll of film inside, removed it, and relinquished the best present my father had ever given me, RIP. Maybe some local university student would buy it and take award-winning photographs.
“I’m so sorry, banshee,” Huck said after we’d exited the shop with a handful of lei. “I know you loved that camera.”
But what else could we do? Even if the pawnshop owner gave us a quarter of what that camera was worth, the man was saving our rumps. And we were lucky he traded with us at all, because we looked like the devil’s own rejects, booted from the second circle of hell—Huck with his ripped clothes and me with my black eye. Because,oh, was it black. And bloodshot. I looked like a drunk racoon that had wandered out into the street and gotten clipped by a motorcycle.
Four down, seven letters: H-A-G-G-A-R-D.
No matter. We’d gained enough coin from the pawnshop to feel momentarily wealthy, and that was something.
After stopping at a tinyfarmaciato buy aspirin for our aches and iodine for our cuts and scratches, we hiked several blocks to the central railway station, where we purchased bus tickets to Bra?ov—because the bus was cheaper and faster than the local train. Then we sent a telegram to Jean-Bernard’s house, inquiring about his condition. We had only a few hours before our train departed, but maybe we’d hear something. Promising the telegram window agent we’d return later, we walked across the street and found a window table inside a cozy and very warm café, where we ate a late breakfast: giant bowls ofmamaliga, a creamy polenta dish, with cheese and a butter-fried egg on top. It was heavenly. I licked the spoon when I was finished; Huck ran his finger around his bowl. And when the dishes were being cleared away and we still had time to waste, something struck me.
“Father came here this summer,” I said. “It’s in the journal. He said he’d planned to go drop in on my mother’s old professor at the university, that the professor had something important to talk about, but Father changed his mind at the last minute. Maybe it’s nothing, but that was the entry before the torn-out page.”
“Huh,” Huck said. “Did Fox give a hint about what was so important that this professor wanted to discuss?”
“Something the professor was researching? He teaches history and archaeology. Father wrote in the journal that they’d been corresponding by mail, but he’s never mentioned that to me.” Then again, he never told me anything, so that wasn’t a big surprise. “Dr. Mitu—that’s the name of the professor—was my mother’s mentor. She practically worshipped him. Nice man. I haven’t seen him since... well, since my mother died. He came to New York for her funeral.”
“Could have been anything, I suppose,” Huck said. “If this man studies archaeology, he may have uncovered a lead about some hidden treasure or tomb somewhere that could interest Fox. Might be as simple as that.”
Perhaps. “Might be. Father apparently lost his nerve after making plans to visit him. Guess it dredged up old feelings for Mother.”
“Fox hates feelings.”
“Loathes them.”
“Unless they’re angry feelings. He quite enjoys grumbling and shouting.”
