That means you are prohibited from divulging any of this information to anybody. Your father, your mother, your best friend, even your family cat. If we discover that you have been giving anybody else even the faintest hint of what we are going to discuss with you, you may discover that your life is forfeit.”
“What?”
“You’ll be shot,” said Major Harvey.
I stared at him in disbelief. “I’ll be
shot
? Are you
serious
? In that case, excuse me, I don’t want to hear it.”
“You
have
to hear it, James,” said Lieutenant Colonel Bulsover, firmly. Then, in a quieter tone, “You have to. You’re the only person we’ve been able to find who seems to have a comprehensive knowledge of the particular problem we’re faced with. The only person of an appropriate age, anyhow.”
“I don’t understand. I don’t know anything about any military stuff.”
“I know that. But you know all about these.” With that, Lieutenant Colonel Bulsover reached inside his coat and produced a sharply folded sheaf of papers.
I didn’t have to open them to recognize what they were. They were tear sheets of my paper “The Strigoi: myth versus reality in popular Romanian folk-culture.” I had written it for my anthropology exam in the summer, and Professor Ewan had been so impressed with it that he had submitted it to the
North American Journal of Ethnography
. Admittedly, the
Journal
’s circulation was only a little over 2,500 copies, so it wasn’t exactly like being published in
Life
magazine, but it was first article I had ever gotten into print, and I was seriously proud of it. I even had some cards printed,
James R. Falcon Jr., Author and Anthropologist
, and handed them out to all of my friends, until my father told me to stop acting so swell-headed.
“The
strigoi
?” I said, cautiously. I was strongly beginning to suspect this was a practical joke, set up by some of my friends at Berkeley. “What do the
strigoi
have to do with the war in Europe?”
“More than you’d think. In August of 1940, under the terms of the Vienna Diktat, Germany forced Romania to give up the territory of Northern Transylvania toHungary, which Hungary had been claiming for centuries was theirs.”
“Well, sure, I know that.”
“What you may
not
know is that the Romanians would have had to surrender Southern Transylvania, too, but they made some kind of offer to the Germans, which the Germans accepted, and allowed them to keep it.”
Major Harvey said, “We’ve been trying for three years to find out exactly what this offer was. It was codenamed
Umarmung
, which didn’t mean anything to us, at the beginning.”
“
Umarmung
,” I repeated. “Embrace.”
“That’s right. And how many times does the word ‘Embrace’ appear in your article, James? Forty-seven, to be exact. And according to what you’ve written here, the Embrace is the way in which the
strigoi
initiate humans into becoming one of them.”
I shrugged. “Could be a coincidence. I mean, ‘embrace,’ that’s a pretty common word, wouldn’t you say? You can embrace all kinds of things, you know—like a religion, or a philosophy. Or your next-door-neighbor’s wife.”
“True. And the Romanians embraced Nazism. They still chose to fight on the German side, even though the Germans made them surrender all of that territory. But after we received this report from Belgium, we’re pretty sure now that ‘Embrace’ means something very specific. We think it’s the kind of embrace that
you
were writing about.”
I kept a straight face for about ten seconds longer, and then I burst out laughing. “God, you guys are good! You even sound like you know what you’re talking about!Who set this up? I’ll bet it was Stradlater, wasn’t it? Tell me it was Stradlater!”
“James—” said Lieutenant Colonel Bulsover, but I interrupted him.
“ ‘How many times does the word “Embrace” appear in your article, James?’ ” I mimicked him. “
“What?”
“You’ll be shot,” said Major Harvey.
I stared at him in disbelief. “I’ll be
shot
? Are you
serious
? In that case, excuse me, I don’t want to hear it.”
“You
have
to hear it, James,” said Lieutenant Colonel Bulsover, firmly. Then, in a quieter tone, “You have to. You’re the only person we’ve been able to find who seems to have a comprehensive knowledge of the particular problem we’re faced with. The only person of an appropriate age, anyhow.”
“I don’t understand. I don’t know anything about any military stuff.”
“I know that. But you know all about these.” With that, Lieutenant Colonel Bulsover reached inside his coat and produced a sharply folded sheaf of papers.
I didn’t have to open them to recognize what they were. They were tear sheets of my paper “The Strigoi: myth versus reality in popular Romanian folk-culture.” I had written it for my anthropology exam in the summer, and Professor Ewan had been so impressed with it that he had submitted it to the
North American Journal of Ethnography
. Admittedly, the
Journal
’s circulation was only a little over 2,500 copies, so it wasn’t exactly like being published in
Life
magazine, but it was first article I had ever gotten into print, and I was seriously proud of it. I even had some cards printed,
James R. Falcon Jr., Author and Anthropologist
, and handed them out to all of my friends, until my father told me to stop acting so swell-headed.
“The
strigoi
?” I said, cautiously. I was strongly beginning to suspect this was a practical joke, set up by some of my friends at Berkeley. “What do the
strigoi
have to do with the war in Europe?”
“More than you’d think. In August of 1940, under the terms of the Vienna Diktat, Germany forced Romania to give up the territory of Northern Transylvania toHungary, which Hungary had been claiming for centuries was theirs.”
“Well, sure, I know that.”
“What you may
not
know is that the Romanians would have had to surrender Southern Transylvania, too, but they made some kind of offer to the Germans, which the Germans accepted, and allowed them to keep it.”
Major Harvey said, “We’ve been trying for three years to find out exactly what this offer was. It was codenamed
Umarmung
, which didn’t mean anything to us, at the beginning.”
“
Umarmung
,” I repeated. “Embrace.”
“That’s right. And how many times does the word ‘Embrace’ appear in your article, James? Forty-seven, to be exact. And according to what you’ve written here, the Embrace is the way in which the
strigoi
initiate humans into becoming one of them.”
I shrugged. “Could be a coincidence. I mean, ‘embrace,’ that’s a pretty common word, wouldn’t you say? You can embrace all kinds of things, you know—like a religion, or a philosophy. Or your next-door-neighbor’s wife.”
“True. And the Romanians embraced Nazism. They still chose to fight on the German side, even though the Germans made them surrender all of that territory. But after we received this report from Belgium, we’re pretty sure now that ‘Embrace’ means something very specific. We think it’s the kind of embrace that
you
were writing about.”
I kept a straight face for about ten seconds longer, and then I burst out laughing. “God, you guys are good! You even sound like you know what you’re talking about!Who set this up? I’ll bet it was Stradlater, wasn’t it? Tell me it was Stradlater!”
“James—” said Lieutenant Colonel Bulsover, but I interrupted him.
“ ‘How many times does the word “Embrace” appear in your article, James?’ ” I mimicked him. “
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