“Who?” whispered Kate.

O'Rourke slipped the photographs back in his coat pocket. “A gentleman I originally traveled to Romania with almost two years ago . . . a gentleman whose name you've probably heard. “

Two men began arguing loudly in German just behind O'Rourke's chair. A man and a woman, Americans from the looks of their casual clothes, stood three feet away watching Kate and the priest, obviously waiting impatiently for the table.

O'Rourke stood up and extended his hand to her. “Come on. I know a quieter place.”

Kate had seen pictures of the big wheel before; everyone had. But it was somehow more charming when encountered in reality. She and O'Rourke were the only passengers in an enclosed car that could have easily held twenty people. The car behind them, although empty this evening, was actually filled with dining tables set with linen and china. Slowly, the wheel rotated their car two hundred feet to its highest point and then stopped as other people loaded far below.

“Neat Ferris wheel,” said Kate.

“Riesenrad,” said the priest, leaning on a railing and looking out the opened window at the fall foliage burning in last glow of autumn twilight. “It means giant wheel.” As .he said that, the glow on the clouds faded and the sky began to pale and then darken. The car moved slightly around, swept down past the loading point, and then climbed above the treetops again.

Lights were coming on all over Vienna. Cathedral towers were suddenly illuminated. Kate could see the modernistic towers of UNO City off toward the Danube; Susan McKay Chandra had once described to Kate the excitement of attending a conference there at the headquarters of the United Nations Commission for Infectious Diseases.

Kate winced, closed her eyes a second, and then looked at O'Rourke. “All right, tell me about this man.”

“Vernor Deacon Trent. You've heard the name?”

“Sure. He's the Howard Hughesstyle reclusive billionaire who made his fortune in . . . what? . . . appliances? Hotels? He has that big art museum named after him near Big Sur.” Kate hesitated. “Didn't he die last year?”

O'Rourke shook his head. The car swooped low and the sounds of the few rides still operating came more clearly through the open window. Their car rose again. “Mr. Trent bankrolled the mission that brought me and a bunch of other guysa WHO bigwig, the late Leonard Paxley from Princeton, other heavy hittersinto Romania right after the revolution. I mean right after. Ceausescu wasn't cold yet. Anyway, I went back to the States in February of last year, 1990, to try to round up 'some Churchsponsored aid for the orphanages over here, and before I left Chicago in May of that year, I'd read that Mr. Trent had suffered a stroke and was in seclusion somewhere in California. But he was still in Romania the last time I saw him.”

“That's right,” said Kate. “Time had a thing about the corporate battle over control of his empire. He was incapacitated but not dead. “ She shivered at the suddenly cool breeze.

O'Rourke pulled the window almost shut. “As far as I know, he still hasn't died. But I was struck at the time we first came to Bucharest how much Mr. Vernor Deacon Trent looks like that old portrait of Vlad Tepes.”

“A family resemblance,” said Kate.

The priest nodded.

“But the painting we saw today was a copy . . . done a century after Vlad Tepes lived. It may be inaccurate.”

O'Rourke nodded again.

Kate looked at the lights of the old city. Screams came up from the looptheloop roller coaster below. “But if it is a family resemblance, then it may have some connection with . . . something. “ She heard how lame that last word sounded, even to herself, and she closed her eyes.

“There are about twenty-four million people in Romania,” O'Rourke said softly. “It has an area of . . . what? . .. . somewhere around a hundred thousand square miles. We have to start somewhere, even if all of our theories are halfassed.”

Kate opened her eyes. “Do you have to say a Hail Mary or something when you swear, O'Rourke? I mean, do penance?”

He rubbed his cheek but did not smile. “I give myself a dispensation . . . since I can't give myself absolution.” He glanced at his watch. “It's after six, Neuman. We'd better find a place to eat and get to bed early tonight. The hydrofoil is scheduled to leave at eight and the Austrians are nothing if not prompt. “

THE hydrofoil was sleek and enclosed, the forward compartment holding half a dozen rows of no more than five seats per row on each side of the aisle, the curving Perspex windows giving a panoramic view of both banks of the Danube as the engines fired to life and moved the boat out carefully from the dock. The old city fell away quickly and within moments the only signs of habitation were the elevated fishing and hunting shacks along either side of the river; then these also fell behind and only forest lined the shores.

Kate looked at her DonauDampfschiffahrtsGesellschaft schedule, saw that it would take about five hours to travel down the Danube to Budapest, and said to O'Rourke, “Maybe we should have flown directly.”

The priest turned in his seat. He was dressed in jeans, a denim shirt, and a wellbrokenin leather bomber jacket. “Directly to Bucharest`”

Kate shook her head. “I still don't think they would let me in the country. But we could have flown directly to Budapest. “

“Yes, but the Gypsies wouldn't meet with us before tonight. “ He turned back to watch the south shore as the hydrofoil accelerated to thirty-five knots and rose on its forward fins. The ride was perfectly smooth. “At least this way we get to see the sights.”

The warm sunlight fell across their row of seats and Kate halfdozed as the hydrofoil carried them northeast around the curve of the Danube near Bratislava, then southeast until a young woman announced over the intercom that the shore to their right now belonged to Hungary, with Czechoslovakia still on the left. The forest along the river seemed more advanced into autumn here, with many of the trees bare. As they turned south,. the sky began to cloud up and the warm band of sunlight across Kate first dimmed and then disappeared. Warm air began to blow out of the ship's ventilators to make up for the sudden chill outside.

O'Rourke had thought to have the hotel pack a lunch for them, and they opened the sealed containers and munched on salad and roast beef as the Danube hooked south into Hungary proper. Just as they had finished their lunch, O'Rourke said, “This area is known as the Danube Bend. It's been important since Roman times . . . the Romans actually had summer homes along here. It was the border of the Empire for centuries. “

Kate glanced at the forested riverbanks and could easily imagine the northeast shore being the edge of the known world. The cold wind spiraled leaves onto the gray arid choppy surface of the Danube.

“There,” said O'Rourke, pointing to their right. “That's Visegrad. The Hungarian kings built that citadel in the thirteenth or fourteenth century. King Matthias occupied it during the height of the fifteenthcentury Renaissance.”

Kate barely glanced to her right. She saw the ancient fortification on the hill and a broad wall running down to an even olderlooking tower near the riverbank.

“That's where our friend Vlad Dracula was imprisoned from 1462 to 1474,” said the priest. “King Matthias had him under house arrest for most of the last years of his life.”

Kate swiveled in her seat to watch the old wall and tower fall behind on the right. She continued staring even after the fortifications were out of sight. Finally she turned back to her companion. “So you don't think I'm completely crazy to be interested in the Dracula family? Tell me the truth, O'Rourke. “