The Keep

Outside, the keep lights were on full force, the men on guard in pairs, armed to the teeth and ready to shoot at the slightest provocation. Woerma

He had developed his own theory about the keep, not one he took seriously, but one that fit most of the facts and explained most of the mysteries. The keep was alive. That would explain why no one had even seen what killed the men, and why no one could track it down, and why no one had been able to find its hiding place despite all the walls they had torn down. It was the keep itself doing the killing.

One fact was left dangling by this explanation, however. A major fact. The keep had not been malevolent when they had entered, at least not in a way one could sense. True, birds seemed to avoid nesting here, but Woerma

No one had fully explored the subcellar. There really didn't seem to be any reason to. Men had been on guard in the cellar while a comrade had been murdered above them, and they had seen nothing coming or going through the break in the floor. Maybe they should explore the subcellar. Perhaps the keep's heart lay buried in those caverns. That's where they should search. No ... that could take forever. Those caverns could extend for miles, and frankly, no one really wanted to search them. It was always night down there. And night had become a dread enemy. Only the corpses were willing to stay.

The corpses ... with their dirty boots and smudged shrouds. They still bothered Woerma

Those dirty, muddy boots. They made him uncomfortable in a way he could not pin down.

He continued to sit and stare at the painting.

Kaempffer sat cross-legged on his cot, a Schmeisser across his knees. A shiver rippled over him. He tried to still it but didn't have strength. He had never realized how exhausting constant fear could be.

He had to get out of here!

Blow up the keep tomorrow—that's what he should do! Set the charges and reduce it to gravel after lunch. That way he could spend Saturday night in Ploiesti in a bunk with a real mattress and not worry about every sound, every vagrant current of air. No more would he have to sit and shake and sweat and wonder what might be making its way down the hall to his door.

But tomorrow was too soon. It wouldn't look good on his record. He wasn't due in Ploiesti until Monday and would be expected to use up all the available time until then to solve the problem here. Blowing up the keep was the last resort, to be considered only when all else failed. The High Command had ordered that this pass be watched and had designated the keep as the chosen watchpoint. Destruction had to be the last resort.

He heard the measured treads of a pair of einsatzkommandos pass his locked door. The hallway out there was doubly guarded. He had made sure of that. Not that there was the slightest chance a stream of lead from a Schmeisser could actually stop whatever was behind the killings here—he simply hoped the guards would be taken first, thereby sparing him another night. And those guards had better stay awake and on duty, no matter how tired they were! He had driven the men hard today to dismantle the rear section of the keep, concentrating their efforts on the area around his quarters. They had opened every wall within fifty feet of where he now huddled, and had found nothing. There were no secret passages leading to his room, no hiding places anywhere.

He shivered again.

The cold and the darkness came as they had before, but Cuza was feeling too weak and sick tonight to turn his chair around and face Molasar. He was out of codeine and the pain in his joints was a steady agony.

"How do you enter and leave this room?" he asked for want of anything better to say. He had been facing the hinged slab that opened into the base of the watchtower, assuming Molasar would arrive through there. But Molasar had somehow appeared behind him.

"I have my own means of moving about which does not require doors or secret passages. A method quite beyond your comprehension."

"Along with many other things," Cuza said, unable to keep the despair from his voice.

It had been a bad day. Beyond the unremitting pain was the sick realization that this morning's glimmer of hope for a reprieve for his people had been a chimera, a useless pipe dream. He had pla

In the long run there was nothing a crippled history professor could do that would make the least bit of difference.

And worsening it all was the insistent knowledge that Molasar feared the cross ...feared the cross!

Molasar glided around into his field of vision and stood there studying him. Strange, Cuza thought. Either I've immersed myself in such a morass of self-pity that I'm insulated from him, or I'm getting used to Molasar. Tonight he did not feel the crawling sensation that always accompanied Molasar's presence. Maybe he just didn't care anymore.

"I think you may die," Molasar said without preamble.

The bluntness of the words jolted Cuza. "At your hands?"

"No. At your own."

Could Molasar read minds? Cuza's thoughts had dwelt on that very subject for most of the afternoon. Ending his life would solve so many problems. It would set Magda free. Without him to hold her back, she could flee into the hills and escape Kaempffer, the Iron Guard, and all the rest. Yes, the idea had occurred to him. But he still lacked the means ... and the resolve.

Cuza averted his gaze. "Perhaps. But if not by my own doing, then soon in Major Kaempffer's death camp."

"Death camp?" Molasar leaned forward into the light, his brow furrowed in curiosity. "A place where people gather to die?"

"No. A place where people are dragged off to be murdered. The major will be setting up one such camp not far south of here."

"To kill Wallachians?" Sudden fury drew Molasar's lips back from his abnormally long teeth. "A German is here to kill my people?"

"They are not your people," Cuza said, unable to shake his despondency. The more he thought about it, the worse he felt. "They are Jews. Not the sort you would concern yourself with."

"I shall decide what concerns me! But Jews? There are no Jews in Wallachia—at least not enough to matter."

"When you built the keep that was true. But in the following century we were driven here from Spain and the rest of western Europe. Most settled in Turkey, but many strayed into Poland and Hungary and Wallachia."

" 'We?' " Molasar looked puzzled. "You are a Jew?"

Cuza nodded, half expecting a blast of anti-Semitism from the ancient boyar. Instead, Molasar said, "But you are a Wallachian, too."