The Keep

Inside she saw nothing but an empty expanse of dirt floor. The scraping seemed to come from deep within the cavity. Far off to the right, perhaps fifty feet away, she noticed a dim glow. Dousing the flashlight confirmed it: There was light back there, faint, coming from above. Magda squinted in the darkness and dimly perceived the outline of a stairway.

Abruptly, she realized where she was. She was looking into the subcellar from the east. Which meant that the light she saw to her right was seeping down through the ruptured cellar floor. Just two nights ago she had stood at the foot of those steps while Papa had examined the...

... corpses. If the steps were to her right, then off to her left lay the eight dead German soldiers. And still that noise continued, floating toward her from the far end of the subcellar—if it had an end.

Repressing a shudder, she turned her flashlight on again and continued her climb. There was one last turn to go. She shone the beam upward to the place where the steps disappeared into a dark niche at the edge of the ceiling. The sight of it spurred her on, for she knew that the buttressed ceiling of the stairwell was the floor of the tower's first level. Papa's level. And the niche lay within the dividing wall of his rooms.

Magda quickly completed the climb and eased into the space. She pressed her ear to the large stone on the right; it was hinged in a way similar to the entrance stone sixty feet below. No sound came through to her. Still she waited, forcing herself to listen longer. No footsteps, no voices. Papa was alone.

She pushed on the stone, expecting it to swing open easily. It didn't move. She leaned against it with all her weight and strength. No movement. Crouching, feeling locked in a tiny cave, Magda's mind raced over the possibilities. Something had happened. Five years ago, she had moved the stone with little effort. Had the keep settled in the intervening years, upsetting the delicate balance of the hinges?

She was tempted to rap the butt of her flashlight against the stone. That at least would alert Papa to her presence. But then what? He certainly couldn't help her move the stone. And what if the sound traveled up to one of the other levels and alerted a sentry or one of the officers? No—she could not rap on anything.

But she had to get into that room! She pushed once more, this time wedging her back against the stone and her feet against the opposing wall, straining all her muscles to their limit. Still no movement.

As she huddled there, angry, bitterly frustrated, a thought occurred to her. Perhaps there was another way—via the subcellar. If there were no guards there, she might make it to the courtyard; and if the bright courtyard lights were still off, she might be able to steal across the short distance to the tower and to Papa's room. So many ifs ... but if at any time she found her way blocked, she could always turn back, couldn't she?

Quickly, she descended to the opening in the wall. The cold draft was still there, as were the far-off scraping sounds. She stepped through and began walking toward the stairs that would take her up to the cellar, making her way toward the light that filtered down from above. She played her flashlight beam down and just ahead of her, careful not to let it stray off to the left where she knew the corpses lay.

As she moved deeper into the subcellar, she found it increasingly difficult to keep up her pace. Her mind, her sense of duty, her love for her father—all the higher strata of her consciousness—were pushing her forward. But something else was dragging at her, slowing her. Some primal part of her brain was rebelling, trying to turn her around.

She pushed on, overriding all warnings. She would not be stopped now ... although the way the shadows seemed to move and twist and shift about her was ghastly and unsettling. A trick of the light, she told herself. If she kept moving, she'd be all right.

Magda had almost reached the stairs when she saw something move within the shadow of the bottom step. She almost screamed when it hopped up into the light.

A rat!

It sat hunched on the step with its fat body partially encircled by a twitching tail as it licked its claws. Loathing welled up in her. She wanted to retch. She knew she could not take another step forward with that thing there. The rat looked up, glared at her, then scuttled off into the shadows. Magda didn't wait for it to change its mind and come back. She hurried halfway up the steps, then stopped and listened, waiting for her stomach to calm.

All was quiet above—not a word, not a cough, not a footstep. The only sound was the scraping, persistent, louder now that she was in the subcellar, but still far away in the recesses of the cavern. She tried to block it out. She could not imagine what it might be and did not want to try.

Again she flashed her light around to make sure no more rats were about. Then she took the stairs, slowly, carefully, silently. Near the top, she peered cautiously over the edge of the hole in the floor. Through the ruptured wall to her right was the cellar's central corridor, alight with a string of incandescent bulbs, and apparently deserted. Three more steps brought her up to floor level, and another three took her to the ruined wall. Again she waited for the sound of guards. Hearing none, she peeked into the corridor: deserted.

Now came the truly risky part. She would have to travel the length of the corridor to the steps that led up to the courtyard. And then up those two short flights. And after that-One step at a time, Magda told herself. First the corridor. Conquer that before worrying about the stairs.

She waited, afraid to step out into the light. Until now she had moved in darkness and seclusion. Exposing herself under those bulbs would be like standing naked in the center of Bucharest at noon. But her only other alternative was to give up and go back.

She stepped forward into the light and moved quickly, silently, down the corridor. She was almost at the foot of the stairs when she heard a sound from above. Someone coming down. She had been ready to dart into one of the side rooms at the first sign of anyone approaching, and now she made that move.

Inside the doorway, Magda froze. She neither saw, heard, nor touched anyone, but she knew she was not alone. She had to get out! But that would expose her to whoever was coming down the steps. Suddenly, there was movement in the darkness behind her and an arm went around her throat.

"What have we here?" said a voice in German. A sentry had been in the room! He dragged her back toward the corridor. "Well, well! Let's have a look at you in the light!"

Magda's heart pounded with terror as she waited to see the color of her captor's uniform. If gray, she might have a chance, a slim one, but at least a chance. If it was black...

It was black. And there was another einsatzkommando ru

"It's the Jew girl!" said the first. His helmet was off and his eyes were bleary. He must have been dozing in the room when she slipped in.

"How'd she get in?" the second said as he came up.

Magda tried to shrink inside her clothes as they stared at her.

"I don't know," said the first, releasing her and pushing her toward the stairs to the courtyard, "but I think we'd better get her up to the major."

He leaned into the room to retrieve the helmet he had removed for his nap. As he did, the second SS man came alongside her. Magda acted without thinking. She pushed the first into the room and raced back toward the break in the wall. She did not want to face that major. If she could get below, she had a chance to reach safety, for only she knew the way.

The back of her scalp suddenly turned to fire and her feet almost left the ground as the second soldier yanked viciously on the fistful of hair and kerchief he had grabbed as she leaped past him. But he was not satisfied with that. As tears of pain sprang to her eyes, he pulled her toward him by her hair, placed a hand between her breasts, and slammed her against the wall.