Children of The Night

Chapter Thirteen

The Colorado extension of the Centers for Disease Control occupied a structure set in the foothills above Boulder on the greenbelt just below the geological formation known as the Flatirons. Locals still referred to the complex as NCAR, pronounced EnCar, because of its twenty-five-year stint as the National Center for Atmospheric Research. When NCAR had finally outgrown the complex the year before and moved into its new headquarters in the town below, CDC had been quick to recycle the center for its own use.

The building had been designed by I. M. Pei out of the same dark red Pennsylvanian and Permian conglomerates that had formed the great, titled slabs of the Flatirons which dominated the foothills above Boulder. His theory had been that the sandstonelike material of the structure would weather at the same rate as the Flatirons themselves, thus allowing the building to “disappear” into the environment. For the most part, Pei's theory had worked. Although the lights of the CDC were quite visible at night against the dark mass of the greenbelt forest and foothills, in the daytime a casual glance often left tourists thinking that the building was just another strange sandstone outcropping along this dramatic stretch of the Front Range.

Kate Neuman loved her office at CDC Boulder, and her return from Bucharest made her appreciate the aesthetics of the place almost as if she had never seen it before. Her office was on the northwest comer of the modern structurePei had designed it as a series of vertical slabs and overhanging shaleandsandstone boxes with large windowsand from her desk she could see the great wall of the first three Flatirons to the north, the undulating meadows and pine forests at the foot of the Flatirons, the hogback ridges of Fountain sandstone formations poking up through the thin soil of the meadows like a stegosaur's plates, and even the plains themselves, starting at Boulder and stretching away to the north and east as far as the eye could see. Her exhusband, Tom, had taught her that the Flatirons had once been layers of sediment beneath an ancient inland sea, up-thrust some sixty million years ago by the ferocious mountainbuilding going on in the Rockies to the west. Now Kate could never look at the Flatirons without thinking of cement sidewalk slabs upended by roots.

A trail began immediately outside the back door of the CDC, the larger Mesa Trail was visible beyond the next ridge, deer came down to graze immediately below her window, and her coworkers had informed Kate that a mountain lion had been seen that summer in the trees not a hundred feet from the building.

Kate was thinking of none of this. She ignored the stacks of papers on her desk and the blinking cursor on her computer screen, and she thought about her son. She thought about Joshua.

Unable to sleep that last night in Bucharest, she had taken all her bags, found a cab in the dark and rainy streets, and gone to the hospital to sit by Joshua's side until it was time to go to the airport. The elevator was out of order at the hospital and she had run up the stairs, suddenly sure that the crib in Isolation Ward Three would be empty.

Joshua was sleeping. The final unit of whole blood Kate had ordered for him the day before had brought him back to the appearance of rigorous health. Kate had sat on the cold radiator, her fist under her chin, and watched her adopted son sleep until the first light of dawn seeped through the dirty windows.

Lucian picked them up at the hospital. The lastvolley of paperwork there was less than Kate had feared. Father O'Rourke met them as promised. As she and the priest were shaking hands on the front steps, Kate surrendered to impulse and kissed him on the cheek. O'Rourke smiled, held her face in his hands for a long moment, and thenbefore Kate could think or protestblessed Joshua with a gentle touch of his thumb to the baby's forehead and a quick sign of the cross.

“I'll be thinking about you,” O'Rourke said softly and held the front door of the Dacia open for Kate and the baby. The priest looked at Lucian. “You drive carefully, hear?” Lucian had only smiled.

The highway to the airport was almost empty. Joshua woke during the drive but did not cry, merely stared up from the cradle of Kate's arms with his large, dark, questioning eyes. Lucian seemed to sense Kate's uneasiness. “Would you like to hear another Ceausescu joke I used to tell?”

Kate smiled wanly. The dilapidated wipers scraped tiredly at the rain. “Aren't you afraid there are microphones in your car?” she asked.

Lucian grinned. “They wouldn't work any better than the rest of this junkheap,” he said. “Besides, the National Salvation Front doesn't mind Ceausescu jokes. They just shit bricks when we tell NSF jokes.”

“Okay,” said Kate, tucking the baby deeper in his light blanket. “Let's hear your old Ceausescu joke.”

“Okay. Well, not long before the revolution, the Big C wakes one morning in a good mood and goes out on his balcony to greet the sun. `Good morning, sun,' he says. Imagine his surprise when the sun says. `Good morning, Mr. President.' Ceausescu rushes back inside and wakes up Elena. `Wake up!' he says. `Even the sun respects me now.' `That's nice,' says the wife of our Supreme Leader. And she goes back to sleep. Ceausescu thinks maybe he's going a little crazy, so at noon he goes out on the balcony again. `Good day, sun,' he says. Again the sun answers in a respectful voice. `Good day, Mr. President . . .' “

“Does this have an ending?” asked Kate. She could see the exit for the airport less than a kilometer ahead of them. The rain was falling more heavily now. She wondered if the PanAm flight to Warsaw might be canceled.

“ `Good day, Mr. President,' the sun said at noon,” continued Lucian. He tapped the turn signal but there was no click, no blinking light. He ignored it and took the exit into the long airport drive. “Ceausescu is so excited, he tries to get Elena out on the balcony, but she is busy putting on her makeup. Finally, at sunset, he convinces her to come out on the balcony. `Watch. Listen,' he says to his wife, who is also the Chairman of the National Science and Technology Council. `The sun respects me.' He turns toward the beautiful sunset. `Good evening, sun,' he says. `Fuck you, asshole,' says the sun. Ceausescu is upset. He demands an explanation. `This morning and at noon you addressed me with respect,' he splutters. `Now you insult me. Why?' “

Kate saw a parking place along the row of cars and cabs lining the curved drive to the terminal, but before she could point to it, Lucian stopped and parallel parked with some skill. He did not break the rhythm of his story.

“ `Why do you insult me now?' Our Leader demands. `You dumb shit,' answers the sun, `I'm in the West now.' “

He came around to the passenger side and held an umbrella above them while she and the baby got out. Kate smiled her appreciationmore of his kindness than of the joke. They walked toward the terminal together, Lucian carrying one of her suitcases and holding the umbrella in place, Kate carrying her lighter carryon bag and the baby.

“The Transylvanians have a proverb about jokes like mine,” said Lucian. “Ridem noi ridem, dar purceaua e moarta in cosar. “

“Which means?” Kate blinked in the dimness as they came in under the heavy concrete overhang of the terminal. Gray-uniformed guards with automatic weapons stared impassively at them.

“Which means . . . we are all laughing, but the pig is dead in the basket.” Lucian lowered the umbrella, shook it, folded it, and opened the door to the terminal with his shoulder:

The place was as dismal as Kate remembered it from her arrival in the country: a cavernous, concrete, echoing space, rimmed with dirt and debris, guarded by soldiers. To her left, the long, scarred tables and inoperable conveyer belts of incoming Customs lay empty. There were no incoming flights. Straight ahead, security checkpoints and curtained booths marked the beginning of the gauntlet she and Joshua would have to run before boarding the PanAm plane.

Lucian set her bags on the first inspection table and turned toward her. Nonpassengers were not allowed beyond this point.

“Well . . .” he began and stopped.

Kate had never seen her young friend and translator at a loss for words. She threw her free arm around his neck and kissed him. He blinked and then touched her back gently, tentatively. An official behind the counter marked CONTROLUL PASAPOARTERLOR snapped something and Lucian pulled away, still looking at her. Kate thought that there was a question in Lucian's eyes and that those eyes looked strangely like Joshua's for that moment.

The official said something more loudly. Lucian finally broke the gaze and snapped back at the man. “Lasama in pace!”

For an instant the man behind the passport control counter stared as if in shock at Lucian's insolence. Then he recovered and snapped his fingers; three uniformed thugs moved quickly across the concrete floor.

Kate thought she saw something like wildness in Lucian's eyes. She hugged him again, putting her body and the baby's body between Lucian and the guards. At the same time she had fumbled out her American passport and held it toward the guards as if it were a magic amulet.

The magic worked . . . at least temporarily. The guards hesitated. The passport control officer snarled something at Lucian and crossed his arms. The guards looked at him and then back at Lucian and Kate.

“I'm sorry,” Kate said to the guards. “But my fiancé gets very emotional. We hate being separated. Lucian, tell the gentleman that we have something for him . . .”

Lucian was glaring at the passport control officer but he snapped out of it when Kate pinched his forearm. “What? Oh.... aveti dreptate, imi pare rau . . . Avem ceva pentru dumnneavocestra. “

Kate heard Lucian's apology and the phrase that meant “I've been thinking of you,” which was the polite precursor to bribery, baksheesh, the universal Romanian game of paying off those in authority. She fumbled three cartons of Kents out of her carryon baggage and handed them to Lucian, who handed them to the passport control man.

The guard blinked and scowled, but whisked the cartons out of sight, dismissed the three security men, gave Kate's luggage a cursory inspection while he snapped questions. at her, and then tossed her bags on a battered luggage cart and waved her through. She automatically took a step forward and was startled when a barrier slammed shut behind her.

Kate turned toward Lucian and found herself suddenly too filled with emotion to speak. Joshua stirred and fretted in her arms, his face reddening in preparation for tears. “I . . .” she began and had to stop. She felt like an idiot but did not try to hide the tears. Kate could not remember the last time she had cried in public.

“Hey, it's all right, babe,” said Lucian in his best imitation of Southern California surferspeak. “I'll catch you and Josh when I come to the States to do my residency. 'Later, dudes . . .” He reached across the barrier and touched his fingertips to hers.

The passport control officer snapped something and Lucian nodded without taking his eyes off Kate and the baby. Then Lucian turned and walked across the empty terminal space without looking back.

Kate carried Joshua through the security aisles, down a narrow corridor, and into the arrival and departure area. Hidden speakers carried recordings of what may have been children singing traditional Romanian folk songs, but the voices were so shrill, the recording so scratched and distorted, that the effect was far from quaint or pleasant; Kate thought of choruses of torture victims screeching. There were a dozen other passengers waiting for the boarding call, and Kate could tell from their illfitting clothes that they were either Romanian officials traveling to Warsaw or Poles returning home. She saw no Americans, no Germans, no Britsno tourists other than herself.

She stood a little apart from the group and glanced nervously around the terminal. The space was huge, designed for hundreds of people, the arched ceiling rising sixty feet or more overhead, and every squeak of shoes or cough echoed mercilessly. There were a few booths against the north wall, a counter to change money at the official rate, a dusty sign for the National Tourist Officebut they were empty. Most of the waiting passengers were smoking and glancing furtively at the armed guards who stood by the stairway to the lower level, by the security gates, and by the Customs counters. More guards wandered across the cavernous space in teams of two, their automatic weapons slung under their arms:

Joshua was still fretting but Kate rocked him rapidly, cooed to him, and offered him a pacifier. He sucked on the plastic and held off the tears. Kate wished that she had a pacifier herself to calm her nerves, and in that second of silliness she had a very real insight into why so many people in East European police states were chainsmokers.

She wandered over to one of the tall strips of window. There were two aircraft on the tarmac near the terminal: the smaller one obviously an official government jet of some sort; the other plane, the one resembling a DC9, waiting to take Joshua and her to Warsaw, where they would continue on to Frankfurt. Several armored personnel carriers lumbered between the jets, their thick exhaust rising in the steaming air. Kate could see tanks parked along the edge of the runway and made out artillery pieces under camouflage netting near a line of trees. Grayuniformed soldiers huddled by their trucks or around a fire in a barrel.

Much farther away, a line of Tarom airline jets sat along a weedinfested taxi strip. These jets looked like crude Boeing 727s that had seen better days before being abandoned: they were rusted, there were patches on the wings and fuselage, and one had two flat tires. Kate suddenly noticed the armed guards pacing beneath the planesthe bored men trying to keep out of the heavy rainand she realized with a start that these aircraft were almost certainly still in service.

She was very glad that she had paid almost twice as much to fly PanAm to Warsaw and Frankfurt rather than take the Romanian national airline.

“Mrs. Neuman?”

She whirled to find two security men in black leather coats standing behind her. Three soldiers with automatic weapons stood nearby. “Mrs. Neuman?” the taller of the two security men said again.

Kate nodded. She found it impossible not to think of old war movies where the Gestapo interdicted travelers. She shivered inwardly as she thought of traveling in such a society with a yellow Star of David on one's coat, the word Juden stamped in one's passport. She expected these latter=day Gestapo types to ask for her papers.

“Your passport,” snapped the tall man. His face showed the cratered terrain of a smallpox survivor. His teeth were brown.

She handed him her passport and tried not to flinch with anxiety when he put it in his jacket pocket without glancing at it.

“This way,” he said, and gestured her toward a curtained alcove in the security area she had just passed through.

“What is this . . .” began Kate and then broke off as the other security man touched her elbow. She pulled her arm away and followed the taller man across the littered floor. The other passengers watched passively, smoke rising from their cigarettes.

There was a woman security guard waiting in the curtained alcove. Kate thought that the woman looked like a humorless version of Martina Navratilova with a bad haircut. Then all flippant comparisons fled as Kate was overcome with the certainty that this butch monstrosity was going to stripsearch her.

The pockmarked security man pulled her passport out, inspected it for a long momenttaking care to look at the seams where the document was stitchedand then snapped something in Romanian to the other two guards. He turned toward Kate. “You are adopted child, yes?”

Kate was puzzled for a moment, not certain if the man was making a bizarre joke or not. Then she said, “I have adopted this child, yes. He is my son now.”

Both men peered at the passport and the wad of papers and carbons that were tucked into it. Finally the tall, pockmarked one looked up and stared at her. “There is no parent sign.”

Parent signature, Kate realized he was saying. New Romanian laws demanded the signature of at least one of the biological parents whenever a Romanian child was adopted. Kate had wholeheartedly agreed with the law. “No, there is no signature,” she said, speaking slowly and enunciating carefully, “but that is only because no biological parents were ever found. He is a child of an orphanage. Abandoned.”

The pockmarked security man squinted at her. “For baby to adopt, you must have parent sign.”

Kate nodded and smiled, using all of her will to keep from screaming. “Yes, normally,” she said, “but it is believed that this child has no parents. No parents.” She reached out and touched the documents. “You see, there is a waiver here saying that no parent signature is required in this case. It is signed . . . here . . . by the Deputy Minister of the Interior. And here by the Minister of Health . . . you see, here.” She pointed to the pink form. “And here it is signed by both the administrator of the original orphanage where Joshua was found . . . and here by the Commissioner of District Hospital One. “

The security man scowled and riffled through the documents almost contemptuously. Kate sensed the dirtdeep stupidity under the thug's arrogant demeanor. Oh, God, she thought, I wish Lucian were here. Or someone from the embassy . . . or Father O'Rourke. Now why did I think of O'Rourke? She shook her head and stared at the three security people, showing a calm defiance but no provocation. “Alles ist in Ordnung,” she said, not even realizing that she had slipped into German. Somehow it seemed appropriate to the moment.

The female guard held out her hands and said something.

“The baby,” said the pockmarked man. “Give her the baby.”

“No,” Kate said calmly but firmly. She felt anything but calm. Saying no to Securitate thugs was still an invitation to violence, even in postCeausescu Romania.

The two male guards scowled and stared. The woman snapped her fingers with impatience and extended her arms again.

“No,” Kate said firmly. She had the image of the female guard carrying Joshua through the doorway while the other two restrained her. She realized how easy it would be for her never to see her son again. “No,” Kate said again. Her insides were quaking but her voice remained firm and calm. She smiled at the two men and nodded toward Joshua. “You see, he's sleeping. I don't want to wake him. Tell me what you need and I'll do it, but I'll keep holding him.”

The taller guard shook his head and said something to the female. She folded her arms and snapped something at him. The tall man responded harshly, tapped Kate's passport, rustled her other documents, and said, “Take baby's blanket and clothes off.”

Kate blinked, felt the anger hanging in the air like charged ions before a storm, and said nothing. She removed Joshua's blanket and unsnapped his terrycloth jumper.

The baby awoke and began to cry.

“Shhhh,” whispered Kate. With her free hand she set the blanket and jumper on the filthy counter.

The woman guard said something. “Diapers off,” translated the security man.

Kate looked from face to face, trying to find a smile. There were none. Her fingers trembled ever so slightly as she undid the safety pinseven the embassy had not been able to provide her with disposable diapersand lifted Joshua free. The baby looked even more frail without his clothes, his skin pale, ribs visible. There were bruises on his skinny arms where the i.v.drip and transfusion needles had been. His tiny penis and scrotum were shrunken in the cold, and as Kate watched, goosebumps broke out on his arms and upper chest.

Kate hugged him close and glared at the woman. “All right? Satisfied that we aren't smuggling any state secrets or gold bullion?”

The female guard gave Kate a blank look, pawed through the jumper and blanket, carefully avoided the diaper, said something to the pockmarked man, and left the booth.

“It's cold,” said Kate. “I'm going to put his clothes back on.” She did so quickly. Beyond the curtained alcove, the shrill public address system announced her flight in a burst of static. She heard the other passengers clattering down the stairs to the boarding area.

“Wait,” said the pockmarked guard. He set Kate's passport and papers on the counter and left with the other man.

Kate rocked Joshua and peered out through the curtain. The departure area was empty. The single clock above the door read 7:04 A.m. The flight was scheduled to leave at 7:10. None of the three security guards who had been with her in the booth were visible.

Kate took a ragged breath and patted the baby. His breathing was rapid and liquid, as if he were catching another cold. “Sshhh,” whispered Kate. “It's all right, Little One.” She knew that the tractor that pulled the passenger trailer out to the aircraft would be leaving in a moment. As if to confirm that, an unintelligible but urgent announcement echoed out of the terminal speakers.

Without looking back, Kate grabbed her papers, held the baby tightly, left the booth, and walked across the endless expanse of terminal with her head high and eyes forward. Two lounging guards at the head of the stairs squinted through cigarette smoke as she approached.

Briskly, but not as if she had to hurry, Kate flashed her passport and boarding pass. The young guard waved her by.

At the bottom of the stairs there was another counter, another security guard. Kate could see the last of the passengers boarding the transfer, jitney outside. The tractor engine started in a rush of smoke. Kate focused on the outside door and started to walk past the guard.

“Stop!”

She stopped, turned slowly, and forced a smile on her face. Joshua squirmed but did not cry.

The guard had a fat face and small eyes. His pudgy fingers tapped the counter. “Passport.”

Kate set it down without comment and tried not to fidget while the fat man looked it over carefully. There were footsteps and voices just out of sight up the stairs.

Outside, the last of the passengers and baggage had been loaded on the two trailers. The tractors roared their engines. “We'll be late,” Kate said quietly to the guard.

He lifted his pig eyes and scowled at her and the baby.

She held his gaze in silence for the better part of a minute. The baggage jitney pulled away. The passenger jitney waited to follow it the hundred yards out to the aircraft.

When she had been a practicing surgeon, Kate had often commanded colleagues or nurses to hurry with nothing more than the strength of her gaze above the surgical mask. She did so now, putting every once of authority she had earned in her life and career into the look she gave the guard.

The fat man looked down, stamped the passport a final time, and brusquely handed it to her. Kate forced herself not to run with Joshua in her arms. The jitney had already begun rolling toward the aircraft, but it stopped and waited while she caught up and stepped aboard. The Polish and Romanian passengers stared at her.

They were on the aircraft twelve minutes before it taxied to the head of the runway, but Kate was sure that her watch had stopped. It seemed like hours, days. She watched out the streaked window as two security men in leather jackets joked and smoked at the foot of the stairs. They were not the two men from the terminal. But they carried handheld radios. Kate closed her eyes and came as close to praying as she had since she was ten.

Three airport workers rolled away the stairs. The plane taxied to the end of the deserted runway. No aircraft had taken off or landed since they had boarded. The plane accelerated down the patched runway.

Kate did not breathe deeply until the landing gear was up and Bucharest was a scatter of white buildings rising above chestnut trees behind them. Her hands continued to tremble until she knew they must be out of Romanian airspace. Even at the Warsaw airport she felt her heart pounding until they changed crews and lifted off for Frankfurt.

Finally the pilot's voice came over the intercom. He had an American accent. “Ladies and Gentlemen, we've just leveled off at our cruising altitude of twenty-three thousand feet. We've just passed over the city of Lodz and should be coming up on the German border in . . . oh . . . five minutes or so. We've had a bit of rough weather, as I'm sure you noticed, but we've just passed the tail end 'of that front and Frankfurt informs us that it's sunny and very warm there, temperature thirty-one degrees Centigrade, winds out of the west at eight miles per hour. We hope you enjoy the rest of the flight.”

Sunlight had suddenly streamed through the small window. Kate kissed Joshua and allowed herself to cry.

Kate Neuman blinked away the glare from the sunlight that had made its way through Boulder CDC's tinted windows and answered the phone. She honestly could not have said how long it had been buzzing. She vaguely remembered her secretary sticking her head in the office to announce she was running down to the cafeteria for lunch.

“Doctor Neuman,” said Kate.

“Kate, this is Alan down in Imaging. I have the newest pictures from your son's last workup.”

“Yes?” Kate realized that she had been doodling circles within circles until her memo pad was almost black. She set the pen down. “How do they look, Alan?”

There was the briefest hesitation and Kate could imagine the redheaded technician sitting in the glare of his multiple display monitors, a halfeaten corned beef sandwich on the terminal in front of him.

“I think you'd better come down, Kate. You should see this yourself.”

There were six video monitors set into the long console and each of them displayed a slightly different view of nine-monthold Joshua Neuman's internal organs'. These were not X rays but complex images built up by Alan's magnetic resonance imaging equipment. Kate was able to make out her child's spleen, liver, the sinuous curves of the upper small intestine, the lower curve of his stomach ....

“What is that?” she asked and stabbed a finger at the center monitor.

“Exactly,” said Alan, pushing his thick glasses up and taking a bite of his corned beef sandwich. “Now, watch when we run the sequence with the CT data from three weeks ago. “

Kate watched the primary VDT as the images coalesced, rotated in three dimensions, zoomed in for a closer look on the lower curve of the stomach, differentiated layers of stomach lining with false colors, and then ran a timelapse sequence with digital enhancement.

A small appendix or abscess seemed to grow in the wall of Joshua's stomach.

“Ulcer?” said Kate, knowing that it was not one even as she said the word. The magnetic resonance imaging showed solid structure in the anomaly. She felt her heart sink.

“No,” said Alan, taking a sip of cold coffee. Suddenly he saw Kate's face and he jumped to his feet and slid a chair under her. “Sit down,” he said. “It's not a tumor either.”

“It's not?” Kate felt the vertigo lessen. “But it has to be.” “It's not,” said Alan. “Trust me. Watch. This is the CTenhanced series from this week's MR imaging.”

The lower curve of stomach was normal again. Colored layers proliferated, the abscess or whatever it was appeared, grew as substantial as an appendix, and then began to shrink.

“A separate growth?” said Kate.

“Same phenomenon, different time period.” Alan pointed to the data column to the right of the image. “Notice the correspondence?”

For a moment Kate did not. Then she leaned closer and rubbed her upper lip. “The same day that Josh received the plasma. . . “ She wheeled her chair over to the monitor where the previous cycle had been frozen on the screen. Running her finger down the screen, she said, “And the same date three weeks ago that he had a transfusion. These images show some change in the baby's gut whenever he receives blood?”

Alan took a healthy bite of sandwich and nodded. “Not just a change, Kate, but some sort of basic adaptive process. That structure is there at other times, it just becomes more visible when it's absorbing blood . . .”

“Absorbing blood!” Kate's shout surprised even herself. She modulated her voice. “He's not absorbing blood through the stomach wall, Alan. We give Joshua intravenous injections . . . we don't give him a baby bottle with blood in it!”

Alan missed the irony. He nodded and finished chewing. “Of course, but the adaptation . . . organ . . . whatever it is does absorb blood, there's no doubt about it. Look here.” He touched buttons and all six of the monitors blinked red near the abnormal swelling. “The gut wall there is rich with veins and arteries. It's one of the reasons an ulcer is such a problem there. But this”he touched the image of the tumor like structure“ this thing is fed by a larger arterial network than I've ever seen. And it is absorbing blood, there's no doubt about that.”

Kate pushed her chair back. “My God,” she whispered.

Alan was not listening. He shoved his glasses higher on his nose. “But look at the other data, Kate. It's not the absorption of blood that's interesting. Look at the most recent MR series. What happens next is unbelievable.”

Kate watched the new series of MR images and flickering data columns with eyes that did not blink. When it was finished she sat in silence for a full minute.

“Kate,” whispered Alan. His voice was almost reverent. “What's going on here?”

Kate's eyes never left the screen. “I don't know,” she said at last. “I honest to God do not know.” But somewhere, deep in the creative subconscious that had made her one of CDC's finest diagnosticians, Kate Neuman did know. And the knowledge both scared her to death and filled her with a strange exhilaration.