The Keep

"I think we shall have to go to the source," he said as his thoughts reached a dead end.

"And where's that?"

"Not where—who. I want to find the owner of the keep. This structure was built for a reason, and it is being maintained in perfect condition. There has to be a reason for that."

"Alexandra and his boys don't know who the owner is."

"So they say."

"Why should they lie?"

"Everybody lies. Somebody has to pay them."

"The money is given to the i

"Then we'll interrogate the i

"You might also ask him to translate the words on the wall."

Kaempffer started. "What words? What wall?"

"Down where your two men died. There's something written on the wall in their blood."

"In Romanian?"

Woerma

Kaempffer leaped to his feet. Here was something he could handle. "I want that i

The man's name was Iuliu.

He was grossly overweight, in his late fifties, balding on his upper pate, and mustachioed on his upper lip. His ample jowls, unshaven for at least three days, trembled as he stood in his nightshirt and shivered in the rear corridor where his fellow villagers had been held prisoner.

Almost like the old days, Kaempffer thought, watching from the shadows of one of the rooms. He was starting to feel more like himself again. The man's confused, frightened countenance brought him back to his early years with the SS in Munich, when they would roust the Jew shopkeepers out of their warm beds in the early morning hours, beat them in front of their families, and watch them sweat with terror in the cold before dawn.

But the i

It really didn't matter. Jew, Freemason, Gypsy, Romanian i

He let the i

When Major Kaempffer began to feel his own fingers tingle with cold despite his black leather gloves, he stepped out into the light of the corridor and faced Iuliu. At the sight of an SS officer in full uniform, Iuliu took a step backward and almost tripped over his ledgers.

"Who owns the keep?" Kaempffer asked in a low voice without preamble.

"I do not know, Herr Officer."

The man's German was atrocious, but it was better than working through an interpreter. He slapped Iuliu across the face with the back of his gloved hand. He felt no malice; this was standard procedure.

"Who owns the keep?"

"I don't know!"

He slapped him again. "Who?"

The i

"I don't know!" Iuliu cried.

"Who gives you the money to pay the caretakers?"

"A messenger."

"From whom?"

"I don't know. He never says. From a bank, I think. He comes twice a year."

"You must have to sign a receipt or cash a check. Whom is it from?"

"I sign a letter. At the top it says The Mediterranean Bank of Switzerland. In Zurich."

"How does the money come?"

"In gold. In twenty-lei gold pieces. I pay Alexandru and he pays his sons. It has always been this way."

Kaempffer watched Iuliu wipe his eyes and compose himself. He had the next link in the chain. He would have the SS central office investigate the Mediterranean Bank in Zurich to learn who was sending gold coins to an i

 And then what?

He didn't know, but this seemed to be the only way to proceed at the moment. He turned and stared at the words scrawled on the wall behind him. The blood—Flick's and Waltz's blood—with which the words had been written had dried to a reddish brown. Many of the letters were either crudely formed or were not like any letters he had ever seen. Others were recognizable. As a whole, they were incomprehensible. Yet they had to mean something.

He gestured to the words. "What does that say?"

"I don't know, Herr Officer!" He cringed from the glittering blue of Kaempffer's eyes. "Please ... I really don't!"

From Iuliu's expression and the sound of his voice, Kaempffer knew the man was telling the truth. But that was not a real consideration—never had been and never would be. The Romanian would have to be pressed to the limit, battered, broken, and sent limping back to his fellow villagers with tales of the merciless treatment he had received at the hands of the officer in the black uniform. And then they would know: They must cooperate, they must crawl over one another in their eagerness to be of service to the SS.

"You lie," he screamed and slammed the back of his hand across Iuliu's face again. "Those words are Romanian! I want to know what they say!"

"They are like Romanian, Herr Officer," Iuliu said, cowering in fear and pain, "but they are not. I don't know what they say!"

This tallied with the information Kaempffer had gleaned from his own translating dictionary. He had been studying Romania and its languages since the first day he had got wind of the Ploiesti project. By now he knew a little of the Daco-Romanian dialect and expected soon to be passably fluent in it. He did not want any of the Romanians he would be working with to think they could slip anything by him by speaking in their own language.

But there were three other major dialects which varied significantly from one another. And the words on the wall, while similar to Romanian, did not appear to belong to any of them.

Iuliu, the i

Kaempffer turned away from Iuliu and from the four einsatzkommandos around him. He spoke to no one in particular, but his meaning was understood.

"Teach him the art of translation."

There was a heartbeat's pause, then a dull thud followed by a choking groan of agony. He did not have to watch. He could picture what was happening: One of the guards had driven the end of his rifle barrel into the small of Iuliu's back, a sharp, savage blow, sending Iuliu to his knees. They would now be clustered around him, preparing to drive the toes and heels of their polished jackboots into every sensitive area of his body. And they knew them all.

"That will be enough!" said a voice he instantly recognized as Woerma

Enraged at the intrusion, Kaempffer wheeled to confront him. This was insubordination! A direct challenge to his authority! But as he opened his mouth to reprimand Woerma