High Stakes Read online

  “Michael, my lad. What craziness are you up to this time?”

  “I wish I knew, Tom.”

  “Probably putting your neck on the block again for some ungrateful client. If I could give you one piece of—”

  “Tom! Stop talking. Just listen. I have about one minute. I’m coming down the Skywalk elevator. I’m being met and taken for a ride to some Romanian restaurant. I have no idea where.”

  “Who’s forcing you?”

  “It’s voluntary. I think. I want to be sure it stays that way. Can one of your boys put a tail on me? I can stall for just a few minutes.”

  I hit the stop button for one of the floors above ground level. I was alone on the elevator. When the door opened, I held it open.

  “No sweat, Mike. I have a man close by. He’ll pick you up when you leave the building. As soon as you know which exit, send me a one-word text—north or south. Give him three more minutes. Now, tell me more.”

  “It’d take me a half hour to fill you in. I’ll be with a man in his sixties, gray hair, a little hefty. The idea is lunch and a chat. I want insurance that someone knows where I am in case it becomes more than that.”

  “Rest easy. You’ll be on my radar as soon as you leave the building.”

  “You fulfill my every wish. Very important that your man stay out of sight.”

  “Mikey! What the hell! Do you think you dialed the wrong number?”

  “I’m sorry, Tom. I know. You’re the best there is. And so are your men. I just needed to say it. My lunch date is a godfather of some Romanian crime gang. As we speak, my guess is he’s personally arranging the demise of two ex-KGB killers. Oddly enough, I’m not totally comfortable.”

  “You do keep the strangest circle of friends.”

  “They say you can never have too many friends.”

  “In your case, there’s an exception.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind. Okay. Here goes, Tom. Last few floors. Is your man ready?”

  “You’re covered. Go easy. If things get dicey at lunch, hit the speed-dial. Give me one ring. It’ll be like the Marines landing on Okinawa.”

  A man in black pants and a black shirt was waiting when the elevator door opened. He bowed slightly. As nearly as I could understand through his accent, he was pleased to meet me, and asked me to follow him.

  Within a block, I was stepping into the nicely air-conditioned back seat of a black Lincoln Continental. Within another two minutes, the other half of the back seat was occupied by my smiling host.

  He said a few words to the driver in Romanian and settled back. “I suggest we relax and enjoy the ride through this beautiful city.”

  I nodded. As we approached the first traffic light, my host spoke again to the driver—this time in English, I assume for my benefit. “Drive slowly, Gregor. Don’t rush the traffic lights.”

  He turned to me. “We don’t want to make it difficult for your man to follow us.”

  I was about to make a pointless denial. George held up his hand and smiled. “Relax, Michael. There is nothing secretive about where we’re going. It’s for lunch, remember?”

  I had to know, if only to burst Tom Burns’ bubble. “How did you spot him?”

  The smile was still there. “I didn’t. Your man’s very good. You can tell him I said so.”

  “Then how did you know?”

  “Two things. Your elevator took three minutes longer than usual to reach the ground floor. I could only assume you used the time efficiently.”

  “And the second thing?”

  “Hah. It’s exactly what I would have done. I think neither of us would have lived to this age in our particular businesses without attention to details. Yes?”

  I sat back. I was beginning to smile myself. For some reason, I was becoming comfortable in George’s company.

  * * *

  The décor of the Wallachia Café on Centre Street in West Roxbury was warm, relaxed, and distinctly eastern European. The traditional Romanian garb on the bartender and waiters was colorful, but not overdone.

  It was clear that George was on his home turf. Within two minutes, every employee in the house found a reason to come by and welcome him.

  After an effusive greeting to both of us, the maître d’ escorted us to a small, warmly appointed, private dining room to the rear of the restaurant. George was truly in his “Marliave,” being treated like Lex Devlin.

  An older waiter delivered a basket of bread that could not have been out of the oven over a minute. He placed an unlabeled dark glass bottle in front of George with two glasses. Waving off the waiter’s offer to pour, George removed the carved glass top and held the bottle over my glass.

  “There is no better way for a Romanian to welcome a guest than to pour liberally from our national libation. Have you ever sampled tuica?”

  “Never. I like the aroma.”

  “Ah. That’s a mere beginning. Tuica is the purest essence of plums, as they can only be grown in our own Romanian soil. To offer it to a guest, particularly for the first time, is to offer our souls in friendship. May I?”

  “My pleasure. My honor.”

  “The honor is mine.”

  He poured, as he suggested, liberally, for both of us. We raised and touched our glasses with our eyes locked together. And we sipped.

  The aroma that reached my nostrils first suggested that the alcoholic content of tuica had to exceed fifty percent. That first sip placed the estimate over sixty percent. The taste and texture, however, were as smooth and cushioned on the palate as the finest Vermont maple syrup. One sip led to a second, and a third, until a faint but distinct buzz reminded me that I needed every brain cell intact for what might follow.

  What did follow was a procession of courses that could only have originated in the heart of a country that took the culinary arts seriously. My vocabulary and my girth grew simultaneously.

  Words and delicacies passed my lips such as mezeluri—salami, sausages, and cheese; ciorba—soup spiced with the tang of sauerkraut sauce; sarmali—stuffed cabbage; frigarui—chicken kebabs; mamaliga—polenta with sour cream and shredded goat cheese.

  The flavor of each morsel was lifted to new heights by another sip of the insidiously smooth tuica.

  The final blow to any doubt I could possibly have had about Romanian food was the rum-soaked savarina under a blanket of freshly whipped heavy cream.

  We spoke of nothing from appetizer to dessert, and when the last drop of tuica was poured, George settled back and caught my eye. I realized from his tone that everything to that point was prelude. “Do I have your attention, Michael?”

  “You do.”

  “That’s important. It’s more important than you realize. You have no understanding of what you’re involved in. That’s why we’re here.”

  I turned to face him directly. “In the last week, I’ve been that close to being killed four times. My wife was kidnapped and threatened with death. My home was broken into. My dog beaten and stolen. Three people have been murdered. I’m still in the crossfire of three crime gangs. And all of it over a damn violin. It’s been a curse since I first touched it. If you can give me a clue as to why, then you definitely have my full attention.”

  He wiped his lips, from which the smile was gone. “Tell me, what do you know about Dracula?”

  My disappointment at where this was going must have shown in my tone. “Ahh. You mean the vampire? Bela Lugosi? Bram Stoker’s novel about the so-called ‘undead.’ All that stuff about garlic necklaces and wooden stakes and …?”

  He held up his hand. “No. None of that. I’m talking about the real Dracula, flesh and blood, a very real person in our history. What do you know about him?”

  I was somewhat relieved by that turn. “Practically nothing. In fact, absolutely nothing. I didn’t know he existed.”

  “Then listen carefully. It might begin to explain what you’ve been going through.”

  He sat back, took a healthy sip of tuica, restored eye contact,
and began.

  “This man called Dracula. The word means ‘Son of the Dragon’ in Romanian. It also means ‘Son of Satan.’ He can be defined by three extremes. To most people in his time, he was the embodiment of the most unspeakable, inhuman evil the devil himself could inflict on his victims. Perhaps so. To the Christian people of Wallachia, the Romanian province he ruled, he was … no less than a Christian saint, worthy of a saint’s burial in the center of an Orthodox Christian monastery on the river island of Snagov. For the third extreme, we have history, where he is, as you can attest, almost entirely forgotten. Perhaps his reality has been eclipsed by the vampire myths.

  “Dracula ruled with the most powerful weapon of subjugation—abject fear. He made use of every extreme practice of sadistic torture conceivable. There were no prisons in his kingdom. Nor any need. The mere suspicion of disloyalty to the prince meant an excruciating death.

  “The name, ‘Dracula,’ was a title. He was known during his reign by his true name, Vlad—Vlad Tepes—Vlad the Impaler. He earned the title. His personal method of execution was to drive a sharpened wooden stake through the victim’s torso, entering the lowest natural opening of the body and exiting at a small point in the neck. The stake was then driven into the ground with the victim suspended. His genius was to avoid puncturing any vital organ. Vlad could then enjoy at his leisure the three or more hours or days of suffering it would take for the blood to drain the life out of his suspended victim.

  “When his pleasure had ended, Dracula would have the dead bodies removed from the stakes and cast into the river. The bodies would drift downstream to the villages below. They’d be pulled out by villagers who would find these dead bodies, completely drained of blood, with no visible wound but a small hole in their necks where the impaling stake came through. This was the 1450s. What conclusion do you suppose superstitious people in those dark times came to about the prince upstream?”

  “A vampire.”

  “Exactly. The ‘undead’, who supposedly lived on by sucking the blood out of his victims. Those people were not without imagination. As the legend grew, details were filled in. The vampire lives and kills in the dark of night. He seals himself in a casket during the day to avoid the sun. A clove of garlic around the neck or a Christian cross can drive him away. He can only be killed by driving a wooden stake through his heart. The whole fantasy was ripe for Bram Stoker four hundred years later to turn it into a novel. From that point on, the memory of the flesh and blood Dracula was all but submerged under the tales of the vampire.”

  “I understand.”

  “I think not. Not yet. Not the depth of his sadistic depravity. On one occasion, Dracula invited hundreds of boyars, the aristocracy of his province, to his palace in his capital of Tirgoviste. He trusted none of them. He sensed that they were taking his absolute reign lightly. It’s told that with his eyes flashing with delight, he gave an order. The hall was surrounded. Over five hundred boyars, as well as their wives, children, and attendants, were immediately impaled and left to the ravage of blackbirds.”

  “Unbelievable.”

  “No, quite believable. The stories abound. Envoys of the Turkish Sultan once brought the official greetings of the Sultan to his throne hall. When they bowed to him, they refused to remove their turbans. He asked them why they would so insult a great ruler. They said it was the unbreakable custom of their country. Dracula replied, ‘I wish to strengthen your law so that you may be even more firm in your custom.’ He ordered that their turbans be nailed to their heads. Once done, he sent them back to the Sultan with the message that while the Sultan might be accustomed to enduring such shame, he was not.”

  “I’m beginning to get the point.”

  “Then I’ll spare you any further details. But rest assured, I have scarcely scratched the surface of the ingenuity of his sadistic delights.”

  “You mentioned another extreme. You said he was regarded as some kind of Christian saint by his people.”

  “Exactly, and given a saint’s burial.”

  “Your people have an imaginative definition of a saint?”

  “Perhaps. But you have to understand the times. Dracula’s longest reign ran from 1456 to 1462. In the spring of 1462, Sultan Mehmed II invaded Wallachia. His plan was to turn the Christian province into a part of his growing Muslim Turkish empire.

  “The Sultan led his army across the Danube. Dracula knew he was outmanned. He began strategic retreats to draw the Sultan deeply into his territory. As Dracula moved further back into the Carpathian Mountains, he actually burned each of his own cities. He poisoned their wells, killed all of his people’s cattle. He left nothing for the Turks to eat or drink in the midst of the most intense heat of the scorching sun.

  “During his retreat, Dracula even dressed some of his people who were infected with diseases like leprosy, bubonic plague, and tuberculosis in the clothing of the Turks. He sent them into the Turkish ranks to spread the diseases. Probably the first use of germ warfare. By the time the Turks reached Vlad’s capital of Tirgoviste, the plague had broken out widely among the Turkish soldiers.”

  “And that won the day?”

  “No. It was a factor. But what ultimately penetrated the heart of the Sultan, what actually drove him to withdraw from the attack, was a sight that you and I can’t even imagine. When the Turkish army passed through the smoking desolation of that abandoned city, stretched out ahead of them was a mile-long gorge, lined on both sides with more than twenty thousand impaled corpses. The Sultan realized that he could never win victory over a man who could do such things.”

  I was stunned. I had no words. I think George, who had probably heard these stories from childhood, was silenced for the moment himself.

  The first thought that I could express was, “And this is your idea of a saint?”

  “Not mine. But think of the times. This Christian country was about to be overrun by the Muslim Turks. Christianity itself was in danger. Whatever his methods, he stopped it.”

  “Somehow, I still can’t …”

  “There’s more to the story. Earlier, in 1453, the center of the Roman Empire, Constantinople, had been taken by the Muslim Ottoman army under the same Sultan Mehmed II. Pope Pius II saw the twenty-one-year-old sultan as a disastrous threat to the entire Christian world. He made an urgent call at the Council of Mantua to all of the Christian leaders to join his crusade against the Turks. The other leaders pitched in with kind words. Nothing more. Dracula was the only one to pledge his full support to the pope’s crusade, military and financial.”

  I think George could see by my expression that I was still not about to begin praying to this particular “saint.” He added one last point.

  “He was a complex figure. For example, after he killed one of his mistresses by impaling her for infidelity to him, he provided for the survival of her soul in the afterlife by giving her a full Christian burial.”

  “How sweet of him. Does this smack of hypocrisy, to use a kind word?”

  George was able to smile. “Of course. But he was consistent in this respect. He always surrounded himself with priests, confessors, bishops. He built monasteries and endowed them heavily. These were pre-Lutheran times. People thought that good works and a proper ritual at the time of death could wipe out a multitude of sins.”

  George looked at my questioning expression. He laughed. “Fear not, Michael. I’m not trying to bring you into his camp.”

  “Good. You haven’t.”

  “So why did I tell you this distressing tale? There is one point I haven’t mentioned. When the Turks entered Tirgoviste, they found it totally abandoned. They also found something else missing. For the six years of Dracula’s reign over Wallachia, he extracted immense tribute from his Wallachian people. He received lavish gifts from neighboring rulers—even the Turkish Sultan. His capital city was incredibly rich in holy relics and artistic treasures.

  “But, when the Turks arrived, every speck of that immeasurable treasure was gone. Dracula, V
lad Tepes, had taken it all.”

  “Taken it where?”

  “As always, you go directly to the jugular, Michael. To this day, it has never been found.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  THIS TIME I took a healthy sip of the tuica.

  “At last, a ray of light.”

  “Indeed.”

  On the other hand, the thought of an immeasurable treasure at the root of the past week’s intrigue only flooded my mind with more questions. George sat back and waited for the floodgates to burst open.

  “I don’t know which question to ask first.”

  “Start anywhere you like. I’ll tell you anything I know.”

  I took a minute to let my mind sort out the logjam. George gave me the moments in silence.

  “Let’s start with the obvious. I take it I’m in the crossfire of three gangs because of some hope of finding Dracula’s hidden treasure. So far, so good?”

  “So far, absolutely. No question. Go on.”

  “And the treasure is somewhere in Romania.”

  “Possibly.”

  “Dead end there, I see. Do you actually know where it is? Do any of the three gangs know where it is?”

  “If any did, it would be long gone, and you’d cease to be the center of attention. Maybe even cease to be at all, depending on the gang. I think you know that.”

  “Then that brings us back to that damn violin. Is that the connection?”

  George leaned back and smiled. “Now you’re asking the right question.”

  He took a small sheaf of papers out of his suitcoat pocket and set them on the table between us, facedown.

  “Do I read these?”

  “In a minute. Let me fill in some pieces. We’re dealing with a span of centuries.”

  He rapped on the table. A waiter appeared within moments. George held up the empty bottle of tuica with a questioning look to me. I considered the buzz already ringing in my consciousness and opted for coffee. What came in a steaming cup was strong enough to walk on, and a potent antidote to the buzz.