The Keep

A movement caught the corner of his eye and he looked up. Magda followed his glance. Her eyes danced when she saw who it was.

"Gle

The red-haired man with the strange olive skin said nothing as he stood by the corner of the i

"It's a miracle! A true miracle! Now we'll be able to get away from here before—"

"What price have you paid?" Gle

Cuza stiffened and tried to hold Gle

"I've paid no price. Molasar did it for a fellow countryman."

"Nothing is free. Ever."

"Well, he did ask me to perform a few services for him, to help make arrangements for him after he leaves the keep since he ca

"What, specifically?"

Cuza was becoming a

"Odd, isn't it, to receive payment for a service you've not yet rendered, nor even agreed to render? You don't even know what will be required of you and yet you have already accepted payment."

"This is not payment," Cuza said with renewed confidence. "This merely enables me to help him. We've made no bargain for there is no need of one. Our bond is the common cause we share—the elimination of Germans from Romanian soil and the elimination of Hitler and Nazism from the world!"

Gle

"He promised you that?"

"It was not a promise! Molasar was incensed when I told him of Kaempffer's plans for a death camp at Ploiesti. And when he learned that there was a man in Germany named Hitler who was behind it all, he vowed to destroy him as soon as he was strong enough to leave the keep. There was no need of a deal or a bargain or payment—we have a common cause!"

He must have been shouting because he noticed that Magda took a step away from him as he finished, a concerned look on her face. She clutched Gle

"And what have you been doing with yourself since we parted yesterday morning, child?"

"Oh, I—I've been with Gle

She needed to say no more. He knew. Yes, she had been with Gle

... taken care of...? He didn't even know what he meant by that. He wondered at the scope of his hostility toward Gle

"But don't you see what this means?" Magda was saying, obviously trying to soothe him. "We can leave, Papa! We can escape down into the pass and get away from here. You don't have to go back to the keep again! And Gle

"Of course. But I think you'd better ask your father first if he wants to leave."

Damn him! Cuza thought as Magda turned wondering eyes on him. Thinks he knows everything!

"Papa...?" she began, but the look on his face must have told her what the answer would be.

"I must go back," he told her. "Not for myself. I don't matter anymore. It's for our people. Our culture. For the world. Tonight he will be strong enough to put an end to Kaempffer and the rest of the Germans here. After that, I just have to perform a few simple tasks for him and we can walk away from here without worrying about hiding from search parties. And after Molasar kills Hitler—!"

"Can he really do that?" Magda asked, her expression questioning the enormity of the possibility he was describing.

"I asked myself that very question. And then I thought about how he has so terrified these Germans until they are ready to shoot at each other, and has eluded them in that tiny keep for a week and a half, killing them at will." He held up his hands bare to the wind and watched with a renewed sense of awe as the fingers flexed and extended easily, painlessly. "And after what he has done for me, I've come to the conclusion that there is very little he ca

"Can you trust him?" Magda asked.

Cuza stared at her. This Gle

"Can I afford not to?" he said after a pause. "My child, don't you see that this will mean a return to normalcy for us all? Our friends the Gypsies will no longer be hunted down, sterilized, and put to work as slaves. We Jews will not be driven from our homes and our jobs, our property will no longer be confiscated, and we will no longer face the certain extinction of our race. How can I do anything else but trust Molasar?"

His daughter was silent. There was no rebuttal forthcoming, for no rebuttal existed.

"And for me," he continued, "it will mean a return to the university."

"Yes ... your work." Magda seemed to be in a sort of daze.

"My work was my first thought, yes. But now that I am fit again, I don't see why I should not be made chancellor."

Magda glanced up sharply. "You never wanted to be in administration before."

She was right. He never had. But things were different now.

"That was before. This is now. And if I help rid Romania of the fascists ruining it, don't you think I should deserve some sort of recognition?"

"You will also have set Molasar loose upon the world," Gle

Cuza felt his jaw muscles bunch in anger. Why didn't this outsider just go away? "He's already loose! I'll merely be cha

"Terms?" Gle

"Something can be arranged."

"What, specifically?"

"I don't know—we can offer him the Nazis who started this war and who run the death camps. That's a good start."

"And after they're gone? Who next? Remember, Molasar will go on and on. You will have to provide sustenance forever. Who next?"

"I will not be interrogated like this!" Cuza shouted as his temper frayed to the breaking point. "Something will be worked out! If an entire nation can accommodate itself to Adolf Hitler, surely we can find a way to coexist with Molasar!"

"There can be no coexistence with monsters," Gle

He turned and strode away. Magda stood still and quiet, staring after him. And Cuza in turn stared at his daughter, knowing that although she had not run after the stranger in body, she had done so in spirit. He had lost his daughter.

The realization should have hurt, should have cut him to the bone and made him bleed. Yet he felt no pain or sense of loss. Only anger. He felt two steps removed from all emotions except rage at the man who had taken his daughter away from him.