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Part One

A COMMON CAUSE

PROLOGUE

LERA LOOKED AT Victor and srown-up, there was still a little boy Victor enty-five years old and of, course, he was grown-up Valeria was prepared to insist on that with all the conviction of a nineteen-year-old woman in love

'Dungeons,' she said straight into Victor's ear 'Dungeons and dragons Oo-oo-oo!'

Victor snorted They were sitting in a roo all around them were excited children and adults with ee decorated withflowing black cloak wasfaces He was lit up froht bulbs

'Now you are going to learn what real horror is like!' the young h! Even I feel afraid at the thought of what you are going to see!'

He spoke with the precise articulation that only dralish, could understand every word

'I like the dungeons in Budapest,' she whispered to Victor

'They have real old dungeons there it's very interesting And all they have here is one big "room of horror"'

Victor nodded guiltily and said:

'But at least it's cool in here'

Septeh had turned out hot Victor and Lera had spent the e They had had a bite to eat and had drunk a pint of beer each in one of the countless pubs And then they had found somewhere to take shelter from the midday sun

'Sure you haven't changed your minds?' the actor in the black cloak asked

Lera heard so quietly behind her She turned round and was surprised to discover that it was a grown girl, about sixteen years old Standing there with her mother and little brother Several attendants surfaced out of the darkness and quickly led the entire family away

'There you have the other side of European prosperity, 'Victor said didactically 'Would any grown girl in Russia be frightened by a "room of horror"? Westerner's lives are too calm and peaceful, it makes them afraid of all sorts of nonsense'

Lera frowned Victor's father was a politician Not a very i every chance to des of Western civilisation But that hadn't stopped hih University

And Victor, who spent ten months of the year away from his homeland, stubbornly repeated his father's rhetoric You would have to look very hard to find another patriot like hiht it was funny, and sory

Fortunately the introduction was over now, and the slow procession through the 'Dungeons of Scotland' began Under a bridge beside the railway station so people had partitioned off the bleak concrete preht bulbs and draped tattered rags and artificial cobwebs everywhere On the walls they had hung portraits of the h over its long history And they had started entertaining children

'This is the bootikin!' howled a girl dressed in rags - their guide for this room 'A terrible instrument of torture!'

The children squealed in delight The grown-ups exchanged e soap bubbles or playing with dolls To avoid getting bored, Lera and Victor stood at the back and kissed while the guides babbled They had been together for six e feeling that this ro special

'Noe'll go through the uide announced

Strangely enough, this turned out to be really interesting Lera had always thought that those descriptions of mirror mazes in which you could lose your way and run your forehead straight into the glass were exaggerated Hoas it possible not to see where there was a mirror and where there was an empty space that you could walk into?

It turned out that it was possible In fact, that it was very possible indeed They laughed as they jostled against the cold mirror surfaces and waved their arroup, which had suddenly been transformed from a handful of people into a crowd At one point Victor waved in greeting to soot out of the azed around for a long time

'Who are you looking for?' Lera asked

'Ah, it's nothing,' Victor said, with a smile 'Just nonsense'

Then there were a few s of medieval prisons, and then ?the 'River of Blood' The hushed children were loaded into a long metal boat that set off slowly across the dark water to the 'Castle of the Vahter and s flapped above their heads, water gurgled The impression was only spoiled by the fact that the boat sailed about five metres at the very most ?after that the illusion ofair into their faces

But even so Lera suddenly felt afraid She was asha on the last bench, there was no one else beside the as they pretended to be vampires, and behind them

Behind the