The Romanian Question

COLD LONELY NIGHTS

Mr Iliescu, the son of a railway worker and a one-time favourite of Ceausescu, was not specific about who would be recruited into the new force, designed to deal with political violence. Already many miners have volunteered. Some opposition politicians and student leaders have likened it apprehensively in advance to a modern version of the Nazi brownshirts. “We shall have to see about that,” the president replied when asked about its composition.

The Times, 25 June 1990

THE MILES OF underground concrete, like some vast, unpopu-lated parking garage, were lit by busy gas jets set at alarming intervals. Between them were shadows, the stink of blood, the horribly uncleansable miasma of terror. He had to be in the foundations of some evil, if monumentally unimaginative, fortress. He had almost certainly made it to Ceausesculand.

Propping the bike against a malodorous pillar, he swung off his rucksack.

Beneath his sandwiches and his thermos he dis-covered a psychic map of the city. It was not as out-of-date as he had feared and Jerry found it easy to follow into the 90s. He paused to do the last of his Columbian Silver. At moments like this, grit and integrity only came in powder form. In some ways, he thought, it was like sniffing the dust of some ancient and forgotten empire; the nearest he got to dreaming these days.