had their own rationale for doing things, an idiosyncratic frivolity that could encompass any reason from Czech or Hungarian-or Serbian or Moldavian or Venetian-nationality to a personal opinion that the Emperor was an old fuddy- duddy whom they disdained to serve.
And indeed, whatever promises the government made, Asher knew the vampires were right to guard their anonymity. Having been a spy for seventeen years, he knew too well that no government-certainly not his own-could be trusted to keep any promise it made.
It still didn't explain why an English, rather than a French or a German, vampire had been approached.
Or had they? He paused in the act of dismembering the key-wound bear, a half- farcical vision rising in his mind of the sealed baggage car stacked high with coffins and trunks in which slumbered the vampires of Paris; of himself, strolling innocently into the restaurant car to face table after table of chalk- white, bone-thin faces and a sea of eyes that burned like actinic flame. When it came down to it, what the hell was he going to do once he reached Vienna? Try to hand the problem over to another incompetent and reluctant Department head? Get some other young novice killed?
He unfolded his bunk, undressed, and slept again, to wake from uneasy dreams with the sensation he'd had in dealing with vampires before, of having had his mind momentarily blanked. In silence he swiftly rolled from his bunk, the compartment around him lit only by the yellow glow from the passage leaking around the edges of the curtain. It showed him an empty compartment-certainly there was nowhere to hide, for there was barely room for one person, let alone two- and he pressed his face to the edge of the door, moving the curtain just enough to see past it.
Karolyi and Ernchester were walking up the corridor, Karolyi speaking with eloquent gestures of his white-gloved hands, Ernchester expressionless, very small and thin beside him.
"It does not do, you understand, to spend the entire journey in one's compartment. For one thing, the porters gossip."
"I see no reason why the prattle of groundlings touches us." Ernchester's voice was so low as to be almost inaudible, and Asher wondered why the elongated ou and open- ended ea rang so familiar in his ear. Who had he heard recently, he wondered, speaking with that archaic inflection? "There is nothing in this 'train' "-he spoke the word as if it were foreign to him-"of interest to me. If, as you say, we shall be in Vienna some days..."
They passed beyond his hearing. Asher found his watch, angled it to the slit of incoming light. It was a few minutes past six-thirty, Vienna time. Karolyi must have just released Ernchester from the baggage car, once more replacing a seal with a duplicate. It was the subtle touch of the vampire's mind on all those in the car that he had felt in his sleep. Outside Asher's window the Alps glimmered eerie blue under the stars.
He dressed swiftly and stole down the corridor, listening for voices in the other compartments. Silence reigned. Most of them, he guessed, were already at dinner. The lock on Karolyi's compartment yielded readily to the wire tools he'd constructed from the innards of donkey and bear. He searched deftly, thoroughly, though he knew Karolyi wasn't a man to leave information lying around. No notebooks, no letters, no addresses. A great deal of money in the valise, which Asher opened after carefully inspecting its lock and frame for bits of hair, wood chips, or gum; he abstracted two hundred florins in notes and also two of the dozen or so duplicate baggage-room seals.
Under the false bottom Asher found ten small boxes of wax and wood, which contained impressions of keys, probably to the baggage car-possibly to all baggage cars in use on the line. Asher pocketed them and replaced the clothing. By the time Karolyi noticed they were gone, they'd be off the train.
The valise also contained two folded Personals sections of the London Times from successive dates, and these he dared not take away with him. Time was passing swiftly; he didn't have time to scan them, knowing that there would be no mark on the advertisement. He made a note of the dates, folded them as they had been, and replaced the valise above the velvet seat.
A traveler's chess set stood on the table, its men neatly ranked for a game. Ernchester's old-fashioned, fiddlebacked greatcoat hung near the door beside