Alan Furst - Kingdom of Shadows

“And Janos Polanyi,” Hrubal said. “He’s in good form?”

“Always up to something.”

Hrubal laughed. “The King of Swords-that’s his tarot card. A leader, powerful, but dark and secretive. His subjects prosper but regret they ever knew him.” The prince laughed again, fondly, and patted Morath’s shoulder. “Hasn’t killed you yet, I see. But have no fear, Nicky, he will, he will.”

Dinner for twelve. Venison from Hrubal’s forest, trout from his stream, sauce from his red currants and sauce from his figs, a traditional salad-lettuce dressed with lard and paprika-and burgundy, Bull’s Blood, from the Hrubal vineyards.

They ate in the small dining room, where the walls were lined with red satin, sagging, here and there, in melancholy folds and well spotted with champagne, wax, and blood. “But it proves the room,” Hrubal said. “Last burned in 1810. A long time, in this part of the world.” Dinner was eaten by the light of two hundred candles, Morath felt the sweat running down his sides.

He sat close to the head of the table, between Annalisa, the prince’s friend from Rome-pale as a ghost, with long white hands, last seen in the April Vogue -and the fiancee of the Reuters correspondent in Bucharest, Miss Bonington.

“It is miserable now,” she said to Morath. “Hitler is bad enough, but the local spawn are worse.”

“The Iron Guard.”

“They are everywhere. With little bags of earth around their necks. Sacred earth, you see.”

“Come to Rome,” Annalisa said. “And see them strut, our fascisti. Chubby little men, they think it’s their time. ”

“What are we supposed to do?” Miss Bonington said, her voice shrill. “Vote?”

Annalisa flipped a hand in the air. “Be worse than they are, I suppose, that’s the tragedy. They have created a cheap, soiled, empty world, and now we are to have the pleasure of living in it.”

“Well, personally, I never imagined-”

“ Basta, ” Annalisa said softly. “Hrubal is looking at us. To talk politics with food is against the rules.”

Miss Bonington laughed. “What then?”

“Love. Poetry. Venice.”

“Dear man.”

The three of them turned their eyes to the head of the table.

“I loved the life there,” Hrubal said. “On Saturday afternoon, the big game. That’s what they called it-the big game! As for me, well, I was their saber champion, what else, and only our girlfriends came to the matches. But we all went to see the football. I had a giant horn, for cheering.”

“A giant horn?”

“Damn. Somebody …”

“A megaphone, I think,” said the Reuters man.

“That’s it! Thank you, for years I’ve wanted to remember that.”

A servant approached the table and whispered to Hrubal. “Yes, very well,” he said.

The string quartet had arrived. They were shown into the dining room and the servants went for chairs. The four men smiled and nodded, wiping the rain from their hair and drying their instrument cases with their handkerchiefs.

When everyone had gone to their rooms, Morath followed Hrubal to an office high in a crumbling turret, where the prince opened an iron box and counted out packets of faded Austrian schillings. “These are very old,” he said. “I never know quite what to do with them.” Morath converted schilling to pengo as the money went into the briefcase. Six hundred thousand, more or less. “Tell Count Janos,” Hrubal said, “that there’s more if he needs it. Or, you know, Nicholas, whatever it might be.”

Later that night, Morath heard a soft tapping and opened his door. After venison from Prince Hrubal’s forest and trout from his stream, a servant girl from his kitchen. They never spoke a word. She stared at him with grave, dark eyes and, when he’d closed the door, lit the candle by his bedside and pulled her shift over her head. She had a faint mustache, a lush body, and wore knitted, red-wool stockings that came to midthigh.

A sweet morning, Morath thought, riding through the orange leaves on the floor of the forest. Delicately, the mare walked across a wide stream-a few inches of fast silver water-then down a series of rocky ledges. Morath kept the reins loose, let her find her own way. It was an old Magyar cavalryman who’d taught him that a horse can go anywhere a man can go without using his hands.

Morath kept his weight balanced, steadied the briefcase on the saddle, tugged a gentle reproach when the mare saw something she wanted for breakfast. “Manners,” he whispered. Did she speak Hungarian? A Transylvanian horse, she must.

Up ahead, Hrubal’s head groom rode his bay gelding. Morath pulled up for a moment and whistled softly, the groom half turned in the saddle to look back at him. He thought he’d heard other horses, not far away, but, when he listened, they weren’t there. He rode up even with the groom and asked him about it.

“No, your excellency,” the groom said. “I believe we are alone.”

“Hunters, perhaps.”

The groom listened, then shook his head.

They rode on. Morath watched a bank of mist as it drifted over the side of a mountain. He looked at his watch-a little after noon. The groom carried a picnic hamper of sandwiches and beer. Morath was hungry, but decided to ride for another hour.

In the forest, somewhere above him on the gentle slope, a horse whickered, then stopped, abruptly, as though someone had put a hand over its muzzle.

Morath rode even with the groom. “Surely you heard that.”

“No, your excellency. I did not.”

Morath stared at him. He had a sharp face, with gray hair and beard cut short, and there was something in his voice, subtle but there, that suggested defiance: I chose not to hear it.

“Are you armed?”

The groom reached under his shirt, held up a large revolver, then put it away. Morath wanted it.

“Are you able to use it?” he asked.

“Yes, your excellency.”

“May I see it for a moment?”

“Forgive me, your excellency, but I must decline.”

Morath felt the heat in his face. He was going to be murdered for this money and he was very angry. He threw the reins over hard and dug his heels in the horse’s side. She sped off, dead leaves whispering beneath her hooves as she galloped down the slope. Morath looked back and saw that the groom was following him, his horse easily keeping pace. But there was no revolver to be seen, and Morath let the mare slow to a walk.

“You’d better go back now,” he called out to the groom. “I’ll go on by myself.” He was breathing hard, after the gallop.

“I cannot, your excellency.”

Why don’t you shoot me and get it over with? Morath let the mare walk downhill. Something made him look back once more, and he saw, through the bare trees, a horse and rider, then another, some way up the slope. When they realized he’d seen them they walked their horses into cover, but seemed to be in no great hurry. Morath thought of tossing the briefcase away, but by then he knew it wouldn’t matter. He called up to the groom, “Who are your friends?” his voice almost mocking, but the man wouldn’t answer.

A few minutes later he came to the road. It had been built in Roman times, the stone blocks hollowed and cracked by centuries of horse and wagon traffic. Morath turned toward Kolozsvar. When he looked up into the forest, he caught an occasional glimpse of the other riders, keeping pace with him. Directly behind him was the groom, on the bay gelding.

When he heard the automobile, sputtering and tapping, he stopped, and stroked the mare on her heaving side. A gentle animal, she’d done her best, he hoped they wouldn’t shoot her. It was an old Citroen that appeared from a grove of birch trees by the side of the road. There was mud spattered on the doors and the wheel guards, a brown sweep across the windshield where the driver had tried to clear the dust with the single wiper.