The Keep

Cuza paused to let this settle in. He didn't want to overburden the major with information. After sufficient time, he added:

"If I were you, Major, I would ask the gentleman to stop in tomorrow for a chat. Maybe he would be good enough to tell us something."

Kaempffer sneered. "You aren't me, Jew! I do not waste my time asking dolts to visit—and I don't wait until morning!" He turned and gestured to Sergeant Oster. "Get four of my troopers down here on the double!" Then back to Cuza: "You'll come along with us to assure we arrest the right man."

Cuza hid his smile. It was all so simple—so hellishly simple.

"Another objection that my father has is that you're not a Jew," Magda said. The two of them were still seated amid the dying leaves, facing the keep. Dusk was deepening and the keep had all its lights on.

"He's right."

"What is your religion?"

"I have none."

"But you must have been born into one."

Gle

"How can you forget something like that?"

"Easy."

She was begi

"Do you believe in God, Gle

He turned and flashed the smile that never failed to move her. "I believe in you... isn't that enough?"

Magda leaned against him. "Yes. I suppose it is."

What was she to do with this man who was so unlike her yet stirred her emotions so? He seemed well educated, even erudite, yet she could not imagine him ever opening a book. He exuded strength, yet with her he could be so gentle.

Gle

She didn't understand how this man could affect her so. All she knew was how she felt ... and she desperately wanted to be with him. Always. To cling to him through the night and bear his children and see him smile at her the way he had a moment ago.

But he wasn't smiling now. He was staring at the keep. Something was tormenting him terribly, eating away at him from the inside. Magda wanted to share that pain, ease it if she could. But she was helpless until he opened up to her. Perhaps now was the time to try...

"Gle

Instead of answering, he pointed to the keep. "Something's happening."

Magda looked. In the light that poured from the main gate as it opened, six figures could be seen on the causeway, one of them in a wheelchair.

"Where could they be going with Papa?" she asked, tension tightening her throat.

"To the i

"They've come for me," Magda said. It was the only explanation that occurred to her.

"No, I doubt that. They wouldn't have brought your father along if they meant to drag you back to the keep. They have something else in mind."

Chewing her lower lip uneasily, Magda watched the knot of dark figures move along the causeway over the rising river of fog, flashlights illuminating their way. They were passing not twenty feet away when Magda whispered to Gle

"Let's stay hidden until we know what they're after."

"If they don't find you they may think you've run off ... and they may take their anger out on your father. If they decide to search for you, they'll find you—we're trapped between here and the edge of the gorge. Nowhere to go. Better to go out and meet them."

"And you?"

"I'll be here if you need me. But for now I think the less they see of me the better."

Reluctantly, Magda rose and pushed her way through the brush. The group had already passed by the time she reached the road. She watched them before speaking. There was something wrong here. She could not say what, but neither could she deny the feeling of danger that stole over her as she stood there on the side of the path. The SS major was there, and the troopers were SS, too; yet Papa appeared to be traveling with them willingly, even appeared to be making small talk. It must be all right.

"Papa?"

The soldiers, even the one assigned to pushing the wheelchair, spun around as one, weapons raised and leveled. Papa spoke to them in rapid German.

"Hold—please! That is my daughter! Let me speak to her."

Magda hurried to his side, skirting the menacing quintet of black uniformed shapes. When she spoke she used the Gypsy dialect.

"Why have they brought you here?"

He answered her in kind: "I'll explain later. Where's Gle

"In the bushes behind me." She replied without hesitation. After all, it was Papa who was asking. "Why do you want to know?"

Papa immediately turned to the major and spoke in German. "Over there!" He was pointing to the very spot Magda had told him. The four troopers quickly fa

Magda gaped in shock at her father. "Papa, what are you doing?" She instinctively moved toward the brush but he gripped her wrist.

"It's all right," he told her, reverting to the Gypsy dialect. "I learned only a few moments ago that Gle

Magda heard her own voice speaking Romanian. She was too appalled by her father's treachery to reply in anything but her native tongue.

"No! That's—"

"He belongs to a group that directs the Nazis, that is using them for its own foul ends! He's worse than a Nazi!"

"That's a lie!" Papa's gone mad!

"No it's not! And I'm sorry to be the one to tell you. But better you hear it from me now than later when it's too late!"

"They'll kill him!" she cried as panic filled her. Frantically, she tried to pull away. But Papa held her tight with his newfound strength, all the time whispering to her, filling her ears with awful things:

"No! They'll never kill him. They'll just take him over for questioning, and that's when he'll be forced to reveal his link with Hitler so as to save his skin." Papa's eyes were bright, feverish, his voice intense as he spoke. "And that's when you'll thank me, Magda! That's when you'll know I did this for you!"

"You've done it for yourself!" she screamed, still trying to twist free of his grip. "You hate him because—"

There was shouting in the brush, some minor scuffling, and then Gle

"Leave him alone!" Magda cried, lunging toward the group. But Papa's grip on her wrist would not yield.

"Stay back, Magda," Gle

"How gallant!" Kaempffer said from behind her.

"And all a show!" Papa whispered.

"Take him across and we'll find out what he knows."

The troopers prodded Gle