NINE

Piteşti was a wall of flame in the night. A solid wall of refinery towers, tanks, cooling towers, and silhouetted scaffoldings spread for miles across the northeastern horizon, flame rising from a thousand valves, dark domes, and black buildings. It was a refinery town, Kate knew, but it looked like Hell to her as they approached.

O’Rourke had stopped by his room in the UNICEF building on Ştirbei Vodă Street and changed into what he’d called his mutant ninja priest suit: black shirt, black coat, black trousers, Roman collar. He had led Kate to the small Dacia sedan parked behind the Gothic building and they had rattled across bricks and cobblestones to the Hotel Lido on Magheru Boulevard. Instead of stopping, O’Rourke had turned down Strada C. A. Rosetti and driven around the block, slowing each time he passed the darkened hotel.

“What are we—” began Kate the third time they inched past the hotel.

“Wait … there,” O’Rourke had said and pointed. A couple dressed in Western clothes had come out of the hotel, chatted with a tall man in a leather coat, and then all three got in the rear seat of a Mercedes waiting in the no-parking zone at the curb. O’Rourke had pulled the Dacia into the darkness under the trees on Strada Franklin and turned the lights out. A moment later, when the Mercedes pulled out into the thinning traffic, he followed.

“Friends of yours?” asked Kate, a little put off by this cloak-and-dagger nonsense.

O’Rourke’s teeth looked very white between the dark lines of his well-groomed beard. “Americans, of course. I knew they were meeting this guy about now.”

“Adoption?”

“Sure.”

“Are you involved in it?”

O’Rourke glanced at her. “Not yet.”

They had followed the Mercedes down Bulevardul Magheru until the street became Bulevardul Nicolae Bălcescu, swung west behind the Mercedes at the traffic circle in Plaza Universitatii, and followed it until the broad avenue of Bulevardul Republicii became Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej. Once across the cement-trenched canal that once had been the Dimboviţa River, they drove west through a section of Stalinist apartment buildings and electronics factories. The streets here were wide, littered with deep potholes, and largely empty except for clots of dark-garbed pedestrians, the occasional rushing taxi, and rattling trollies. The posted speed limit was fifty kilometers per hour, but the Mercedes soon accelerated to a hundred and O’Rourke flogged the Dacia to keep up.

“You’re going to get stopped by a traffic cop,” said Kate.

The priest nodded toward the glove compartment. “Four cartons of Kents in there if I do,” he said, swerving to avoid a group of pedestrians standing in the middle of the boulevard. The avenue was illuminated by the sick yellow glow of occasional sodium-vapor lamps that were very far apart.

Suddenly the ghastly apartment complexes grew fewer, then disappeared altogether, and they were suddenly out in the country, accelerating even faster to keep up with the Mercedes’ taillights. Kate saw a road sign flash by: A-1, AUTOSTRADA BUCUREŞTI-PITEŞTI, PITEŞTI, 113 KM.

The ride took a little more than an hour, and she and the priest spoke very little during it: Kate because she was so exhausted that she found it hard to form words, O’Rourke apparently because of a preoccupation with his own thoughts. The road was a shoulderless, potholed version of an American Interstate, although the countryside passing on either side was much darker than farmland Kate remembered in the States. Only the occasional village was visible in the distance from the highway, and even those glowed feebly, as if from a few kerosene lamps rather than electricity.

Piteşti was that much more of a shock with its wall of flame rising into the night.

The Mercedes took the first exit off the main highway into Piteşti and O’Rourke followed, accelerating now to close the distance. The access road soon took them to a dim avenue, then to a narrower street without streetlights. The apartment complexes here seemed grimmer than those in Bucharest; it was not yet ten P.M. but only a few lights glowed through curtains. The raw-cement buildings were backlighted by the pulsing orange glow reflected from low clouds. Kate and O’Rourke had rolled up the Dacia’s windows, but acrid fumes from the refineries still entered the car and made their eyes water and throats burn. Kate thought again of Hell.

The Mercedes pulled down an even narrower street and stopped. O’Rourke pulled the Dacia to the curb just beyond an intersection.

“What now?” said Kate.

“You can stay here or come into the building with me,” said O’Rourke.

Kate got out of the car and followed him around the corner, across the street to the hulk of the apartment complex. The sound of a few radios or televisions came from the darkened upper stories. The spring air was chilly here, despite the hellish glow above them. The elevator inside was out of order; they heard footsteps echoing on the stairs above them. The priest gestured for her to hurry and Kate followed him up the steps in a half-jog. They could hear the heavy scrape of four people above them, but O’Rourke’s footfalls were almost inaudible. She noticed that he had kept his Reeboks on and she smiled a bit even as she began to pant with the exertion.

They paused on the sixth floor, what would have been the seventh floor in America. O’Rourke opened the door from the stairway and they were assaulted by old cooking smells almost as abrasive as the chemical stink outside. Voices echoed down the narrow corridor.

O’Rourke held up one hand, motioning her to stay in the pool of darkness by the stairway, and then he moved silently down the hall. Kate thought that “mutant ninja priest suit” was about right; the tall man blended into the shadows between the dim lights.

Despite his command to stay behind—or perhaps because of it—Kate followed him down the hallway, staying near the walls where it was darkest. She had a premonition of the scene she would see when she reached the open apartment door, and she was not disappointed.

Two Romanian men in leather jackets were standing with the American couple, translating and arguing with the man and woman who lived in the apartment. Three young children clung to their mother’s legs, and there was the cry of a baby from an open bedroom door. The apartment was small, cluttered, and dirty, with a threadbare carpet littered with pots and pans, as if toddlers had been playing with them on the floor a moment before. The air was thick with the odor of fried food and dirty diapers.

Kate glanced around the edge of the door again. O’Rourke actually stood in the shadows just inside the apartment, as yet unnoticed by the arguing adults in the lighted room. The two Romanian men who had brought the Americans here were the usual mafioso, money-changer type: greasy hair, one with a bandido mustache, the other with a three-day stubble, dressed in designer jeans and silk shirts under their leather jackets, both with a bullying, condescending attitude that Kate had seen on three continents.

The Romanian couple whose apartment it was were shorter, sallower, the wife hollow-eyed and frantic looking, the husband chattering away, his frequent smile little more than a facial tic. Amidst all of this, the American couple—young, blond, pink-cheeked and dressed in Lands’ End casual clothes—looked overwhelmed. The American woman kept crouching to hug or smile at the toddlers, none of whom were very clean, but the children kept slipping behind their parents or sliding away into the dark bedroom.

“How much for this one?” asked the American man, reaching out to tousle the hair of the three- or four-year-old clinging to his mother’s skirt. The boy pulled back quickly. The taller of the Romanian guides snapped a question, then cut the Romanian father off in mid babble.

“He says one hundred thousand lei and a Turbo,” said the tall guide, smirking.

“A Turbo?” said the American woman, blinking rapidly.

“Turbo automobile,” said the shorter and swarthier of the two guides. When he grinned, a gold tooth caught the light.

The American man pulled out a notebook calculator and tapped at it. “A hundred thousand lei would be about sixteen hundred and sixty-six dollars at the official exchange rate, honey,” he said to his wife. “Mmmm … but just about five hundred bucks at the black market rate. But the car … I don’t know…”

The taller guide smirked. “No, no, no,” he said. “They all ask for hundred thousand lei. No pay. These Gypsies … see? Very greedy people. Gypsy baby is not worth hundred thousand lei. Their little childrens worth even less. We offer thirty thousand, tell them that if they say no, we go somewhere else.” He turned and tapped the Romanian father on the chest, none too gently. The little man twitched a smile and listened to the barked flow of Romanian.

Kate understood only a few words—America, dollars, fool, authorities.

The young American wife had moved to the doorway of the darkened bedroom and was trying to coax the two-year-old girl out into the light. The husband was busy with his calculator; his forehead glistened with sweat under the bare bulb.

“Ahhh,” grinned the tall guide. “The little girl, very healthy, they agree to forty-five thousand lei. Can leave tonight. At once.”

The American woman closed her eyes and whispered, “Praise the Lord.” Her husband blinked and moistened his lips. The shorter of the two guides grinned at his colleague.

“This is illegal,” said O’Rourke, stepping into the apartment.

The Americans jumped and looked sheepish. The guides scowled and stepped forward. The Gypsy husband looked at his wife, and both of their faces showed the pure panic of loss.

“It’s illegal and it’s unnecessary,” said the priest, standing between the guides and the American couple. “There are orphanages where you can carry out a legitimate adoption.”

“Cine sînteţi dumneavoastră?” demanded the taller guide angrily. “Ce este aceasta?”

O’Rourke ignored him and spoke directly to the American wife. “None of these children are being put up for adoption or need to be adopted. The father and mother both work at the refinery. These two…” He gestured toward the guides with a dismissive wave of his left hand, as if too disgusted to look at them. “They’re punks … informers … thugs. They chose this family because others in this same building have been intimidated into selling their children. Please consider what you’re doing.”

“Well…” began the American man, licking his lips again and holding on to his calculator with both hands. “We didn’t mean…”

His wife appeared to be on the verge of tears. “It’s just so hard to get visas for the sick children,” she said. Her accent sounded like Oklahoma or Texas.

“Shut up!” shouted the taller of the guides. He was yelling at O’Rourke, not the couple. The guide took three fast steps forward and raised his fist as if he were going to hammer the priest into the floor.

Kate watched as O’Rourke turned slowly and then moved very quickly, catching the guide’s raised arm at the wrist, and slowly lowering it. The guide shifted his left hand to grip O’Rourke’s wrist, but his arm continued downward. She could see the Romanian’s face growing redder as he struggled, could hear his heavy boots scraping the floor as he shifted for better leverage, but the captured wrist continued descending until O’Rourke held the arm and still-clenched fist immobile at the man’s side. The guide’s face had gone from red to something approaching purple; his entire body was shaking from the strain of attempting to break free. The priest’s face had never changed expression.

The smaller guide reached into his jacket and came out with a switchblade. The blade flicked out and he took a step forward.

The taller man snapped something even as the Romanian parents began shouting and the American wife began crying. O’Rourke released the first guide’s wrist and Kate saw the big man gasp and flex his fingers. He snarled something else and his shorter companion put away the knife and herded the confused Americans out of the apartment, the procession brushing past Kate in the doorway as if she didn’t exist. The children in the apartment were crying, as was the Gypsy woman. The father stood rubbing his stubbled cheek as if he had been slapped.

“Îmi pare foarte rău,” O’Rourke said to the Gypsy couple, and Kate understood it as I’m very sorry. “Noapte bună,” he said, backing out of the apartment. Good night.

The door slammed and he looked at Kate standing there.

“Don’t you want to catch the Americans?” she said. “Get them to ride back to Bucharest with us?”

“Why?”

“They’ll just go somewhere else with those … those creeps. They’ll end up stealing another child out of its bed.”

O’Rourke shook his head. “Not tonight, I don’t think. This sort of messed up the rhythm of their evening. I’ll call the Americans tomorrow at the Lido.”

Kate glanced at the dark stairwell. “Aren’t you afraid that one or the other of those two thugs will be waiting for you?”

She had the sense that the priest could not stop the smile of pure pleasure at the thought. She watched as he rubbed the smile away. “I don’t think so,” he said softly, with only a hint of regret audible. “They’ll be too busy herding their pigeons home, trying to calm them and set up another buying spree.”

Kate shook her head and walked down the stairs with him, out of the building smelling of garlic and urine and hopelessness.

*   *   *

Despite her exhaustion, they talked more on the ride back to Bucharest. The Dacia was an accumulation of gear rumbles, mechanical moans, and spring creakings, the air whistled in even through closed windows, but they raised their voices and talked.

“I knew that most of the American couples ended up paying for healthy children,” said Kate. “I didn’t know that the shopping trips were this cynical.”

O’Rourke nodded, his eyes still on the dark road. Piteşti was a receding wall of flame behind them. “You should see it when they take them to one of the poorer Gypsy villages,” he said softly. “It turns into an auction … a real riot.”

“Do they concentrate on Gypsies then?” Kate heard the thickness of pure tiredness in her own voice. She found herself longing for a cigarette even though she had not smoked since she was a teenager.

“Frequently. The people are poor enough, desperate enough, less willing to go to the authorities when bullied.”

Kate looked sideways at the sparse lights in a village a kilometer or two from the highway. Road flares flickered alongside the frequent vehicles broken down in the weeds alongside the road. She had counted at least one disabled truck or car every kilometer or two during the ride west. “Do these born-again Americans ever adopt from the orphanages?”

“Occasionally,” said the priest. “But you know the difficulties.”

Kate nodded. “Half of the children are sick. Most of the rest are retarded or emotionally crippled. The American Embassy won’t allow the sick ones a visa.” She laughed and was shocked by the harshness of the sound. “What a fuck-up.”

“Yes,” said O’Rourke.

Suddenly Kate found herself telling the priest about the children she had been trying to help, the children who had died through lack of appropriate medical care, or lack of supplies, or lack of compassion and competence on the part of the Romanian hospital staff. She found herself telling him about the baby in the isolation ward in District Hospital One; the abandoned, nameless, helpless little boy who responded to transfusions but who soon began wasting away again from some immune disorder that Kate could not isolate or diagnose with the primitive equipment available to her here.

“It’s not AIDS,” she said. “Not simple anemia or hepatitis, not any of the blood-related immune disorders that I’m familiar with—not even the rare ones. I’m convinced that in the States, with the equipment and people I have at Boulder CDC, I could isolate it, find it, and fix it. But this child has no family and this country would never pay for his transfer to Stateside, or even allow a visa if I paid for it.” She rubbed harshly at her cheek. “He’s seven months old and he’s depending on me and he’s dying … and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it.” She was amazed to find her cheek moist with tears. She turned her face farther from the priest.

“Why don’t you adopt him?” O’Rourke said softly.

She turned to stare at him in shock. He looked at her but said nothing more. Nor did she. They drove into darkened Bucharest in silence.