Instead, his terror was at a peak.
For a particularly horrifying thought had occurred to him. It derived from the fact that so far all the victims had been enlisted men. The officers had remained untouched. Why? It could be due purely to chance since enlisted men outnumbered officers by better than twenty to one in the keep. But deep within Kaempffer was a gnawing suspicion that he and Woermann were being held in reserve for something especially ghastly.
He didn't know why he felt this way, but he could not escape the dreadful certainty of it. If he could tell someone—anyone—about it, he would at least be partially freed of the burden. Perhaps then he could sleep.
But there was no one.
And so he would stand here at this window until dawn, not daring to close his eyes until the sun filled the sky with light.
TWENTY-THREE
The Keep
Friday, 2 May
0732 hours
Magda waited at the gate, anxiously shifting her weight from one foot to the other. Despite the morning sun, she was cold. The soul-chilling sensation of evil that had been confined to the keep before seemed to be leaking out into the pass. Last night it had followed her almost as far as the stream below; this morning it had struck her as soon as she set foot on the causeway.
The high wooden gates had been swung inward and now rested against the stone sides of the short, tunnellike entry arch. Magda's eyes roamed from the tower entrance where she expected Papa to emerge, to the dark opening directly across the courtyard that led down to the cellar, to the rear section of the keep. She saw soldiers at work there, hacking away at the stones. Where yesterday their movements had been lackadaisical, today they were frantic. They worked liked madmen—frightened madmen.
Why don't they just leave? She couldn't understand why they remained here night after night waiting for more of their number to die. It didn't make sense.
She had been feverish with concern for Papa. What had they done to him last night after finding the bodies of her two would-be rapists? As she had approached on the causeway, the awful thought that they might have executed him filled her mind. But that fear had been negated by the sentry's quick agreement to her request to see her father. And now that the initial anxiety had been relieved, her thoughts began to drift.
The cheeping of the hungry baby birds outside her window and the dull throb of pain in her left knee had awakened her this morning. She had found herself alone in her bed, fully clothed, under the covers. She had been so terribly vulnerable last night, and Glenn easily could have taken advantage of that. But he hadn't, even when it had been so obvious that she had wanted him.
Magda cringed inside, unable to comprehend what had come over her, shocked by the memory of her own brazenness. Fortunately, Glenn had rejected her . . .
No, that was too strong a word . . . demurred was a better way to put it. She wondered at that, glad he had held back, and yet slighted that he had found her so easy to refuse.
Why should she feel slighted? She had never valued herself in terms of her ability to seduce a man. And yet she heard this nasty whisper in a far corner of her mind hinting that she lacked something.
But maybe it had nothing to do with her. It could be he was one of those . . . those men who could not love a woman, only another man. But that, she knew, was not the case. She remembered their one kiss—even now it caused a wave of welcome heat to brush over her—and remembered the response she had felt on his part.
Just as well. Just as well he had not accepted her offer. How would she have faced him again if he had? Mortified by her wantonness, she would be forced to avoid him, and that would mean depriving herself of his company. And she so wanted his company.
Last night had been an aberration, a chance combination of circumstances that would not repeat itself. She realized now what had happened: Physical and emotional exhaustion, the near escape from the soldiers, the rescue by Molasar, Papa's rejection of her offer to stay by his side—all had combined to leave her temporarily deranged. That had not been Magda Cuza lying next to Glenn on the bed last night; it had been someone else, someone she did not know. It would not happen again.
She had passed his room this morning, limping from the pain in her knee, and had been tempted to knock on his door—to thank him for his aid and to apologize for her behavior. But after listening a minute and hearing no sound, she hadn't wanted to wake him.
She had come directly to the keep, not solely to see that Papa was well, but to tell him how much he had hurt her, how he had no right to treat her in such a manner, and how she had a good mind to heed his advice and leave the Dinu Pass.
The last was an empty threat, but she wanted to strike back at him in some way, to make him react, or at least apologize for his callous behavior. She had rehearsed exactly what she was going to say and exactly the tone of voice in which she would say it. She was ready.
Then Papa appeared at the entrance to the tower with a soldier pushing his chair from behind. One look at his ravaged face and all the anger and hurt went out of her. He looked terrible; he seemed to have aged twenty years overnight. She hadn't thought it possible, but he looked more feeble.
How he has suffered! More than any man should. Pitted against his countrymen, his own body, and now the German Army. I can't side against him, too.
The soldier pushing him this morning was more courteous than the one who had wheeled him yesterday. He brought the wheelchair to a halt before Magda, then turned away. Wordlessly, she moved behind and began to push Papa the rest of the way. They had not gone a dozen feet when he held up his hand.
"Stop here, Magda."
"What's wrong?"
She didn't want to stop. She could still feel the keep here. Papa didn't seem to notice.
"I didn't sleep at all last night."
"Did they keep you up?" she asked, coming around to crouch before him, her fierce protective instincts kindling anger within her. "They didn't hurt you, did they?"
His eyes were rheumy as they looked into hers. "They didn't touch me, but they hurt me."
"How?"
He began speaking in the Gypsy dialect they both knew: "Listen to me, Magda. I've found out why the SS men are here. This is just a stop along their way to Ploiesti where that major is going to set up a death camp—for our people."
Magda felt a wave of nausea. "Oh, no! That's not true! The government would never let Germans come in and—"
"They are already here! You know the Germans have been building fortifications around the Ploiesti refineries; they've been training Romanian soldiers to fight. If they're doing all that, why is it so hard to believe that they intend to start teaching Romanians how to kill Jews? From what I can gather, the major is experienced in killing. He loves his work. He will make a good teacher. I can tell."
It couldn't be! And yet hadn't she also said that Molasar couldn't be? There had been stories in Bucharest about the death camps, whispered tales of the atrocities, of the countless dead; tales which at first no one believed, but as testimony piled upon testimony, even the most skeptical Jew had to accept. The Gentiles did not believe. They were not threatened. It was not in their interest—in fact it could well prove to their detriment—to believe.
"An excellent location," Papa said in a tired voice devoid of emotion. "Easy to get us there. And should one of their enemies try to bomb the oil fields, the resulting inferno would do the Nazis' job for them. And who knows? Perhaps the knowledge of the camp's existence might even cause an enemy to hesitate to bomb the fields, although I doubt it."
He paused, winded. Then: "Kaempffer must be stopped."
Magda shot to her feet, wincing at the pain in her knee.
"You don't think you can stop him, do you? You'd be dead a dozen times over before you could even scratch him!"
"I must find a way. It's no longer just your life I worry about. Now it's thousands. And they all hang on Kaempffer. "
"But even if something does . . . stop him, they'll only send anot
her in his place!"
"Yes. But that will take time, and any delay is in our favor. Perhaps in the interval Russia will attack the Germans, or vice versa. I can't see two mad dogs like Hitler and Stalin keeping away from each other's throats for too long. And in the ensuing conflict perhaps the Ploiesti Camp will be forgotten."
"But how can the major be stopped?" She had to make Papa think, make him see how crazy this was.
"Perhaps Molasar."
Magda was unwilling to believe what she had just heard. "Papa, no!"
He held up a cotton-gloved hand. "Wait, now. Molasar has hinted that he might use me as an ally against the Germans. I don't know how I could be of service to him, but tonight I'll find out. And in return I'll ask that he be sure to put a stop to Major Kaempffer."
"But you can't deal with something like Molasar! You can't trust him not to kill you in the end!"
"I don't care for my own life. I told you, there's more at stake here. And besides, I detect a certain rough honor in Molasar. You judge him too harshly, I think. You react to him as a woman and not as a scholar. He is a product of his times, and they were bloodthirsty times. Yet he has a sense of national pride that has been deeply offended by the presence of the Germans. I may be able to use that. He thinks of us as fellow Wallachians and is better disposed toward us. Didn't he save you from the two Germans you blundered into last night? He could just as easily have made you a third victim. We must try to use him! There's no alternative."
Magda stood before him and searched for another option. She could not find one. And although she was repelled by it, Papa's scheme did offer a glimmer of hope. Was she being too hard on Molasar? Did he seem so evil because he was so different, so implacably other? Could he be more of an elemental force than something consciously evil? Wasn't Major Kaempffer a better example of a truly evil being?
She had no answers. She was groping.
"I don't like it, Papa," was all she could say.
"No one said you should like it. No one promised us an easy solution—or any solution at all, for that matter." He yawned. "And now I'd like to go back to my room. I need sleep for tonight's encounter. I'll require all my wits about me if I'm to strike a bargain with Molasar."
"A deal with the devil," Magda said, her voice falling to a quavering whisper. She was more frightened than ever for her father.
"No, my dear. The devil in the keep wears a black uniform with a silver Death's Head on his cap, and calls himself a Sturmbannführer. "
Magda reluctantly had returned him to the gate, then watched until he was wheeled back into the tower. She turned and hurried toward the inn in a state of confusion. Everything was moving too quickly for her. Her life until now had been filled with books and research, melodies, and black music notes on white paper. She was not cut out for intrigue. Her head still spun with the monstrous implications of what she had been told.
She hoped Papa knew what he was doing. Instinctively, she had opposed his planned liaison with Molasar until she had seen that look on Papa's face. A spark of hope had glimmered there, a shining fragment of the old zest that had once made his company such a pleasure. Papa saw a chance to do something rather than just sit in his wheelchair and have things done to him. He desperately needed to feel he could be of some use to his people . . . to anybody. She could not rob him of that.
As she approached the inn, Magda felt the chill of the keep finally slip away. She strolled around the building in search of Glenn, thinking he might be taking the morning sun at the rear. He was not outside, nor was he in the dining alcove when she passed. She went upstairs and stopped at his door, listening. Still no sound from within. He hadn't struck her as a late riser; perhaps he was reading.
She raised her hand to knock, then lowered it. Better to run into him around the inn than come looking for him—he might think she was chasing him.
Back in her room she heard the plaintive cheeping of the baby birds and went to the window to look at the nest. She could see their four tiny heads straining up from the nest, but the mother wasn't there. Magda hoped she hurried back—her babies sounded terribly hungry.
She picked up her mandolin but after a few chords put it down again. She was edgy, and the constant noise of the baby birds was making her more so. With a sudden surge of determination, she strode out into the hall.
She rapped twice on the wooden door to Glenn's room. No answer, no sound of movement within. She hesitated, then gave way to impulse and lifted the latch. The door swung open.
"Glenn?"
The empty room was identical to her own; in fact she had stayed in this room on the last trip she and Papa had made to the keep. Something was wrong, though. She studied the walls. The mirror—the mirror over the bureau was gone. A rectangle of whiter stucco marked its former spot on the wall. It must have been broken since her last visit and never replaced.
Magda stepped inside and walked in a slow circle. This was where he stayed, and here was the unmade bed where he slept. She felt excited, wondering what she would say if he came back now. How could she explain her presence? She couldn't. She decided she'd better leave.
As she turned to go, she saw that the closet door was ajar. Something glittered from within. It was pressing her luck, but how much could a quick peek hurt? She pulled the door open all the way.
The mirror that was supposed to hang over the bureau lay propped up in the corner of the closet. Why would Glenn take down the mirror? Maybe he hadn't. Maybe it had fallen off the wall and Iuliu had yet to rehang it. She noted a few items of clothing in the closet and something else: A long case of some sort, nearly as long as she was tall, stood in the other corner.
Curious, Magda knelt and touched its leather surface—rough, warped, puckered. Either very old or poorly cared for. She could not imagine what could be in it. A quick look over her shoulder assured her that the room was still empty, the door still open, and all quiet in the hallway. It would take only a second to release the catches on the case, peek inside, reclose it, then be on her way. She had to know.
Feeling the delicious apprehension of a naughty, inquisitive child exploring a forbidden area of the house, she reached for the three brass clasps; they grated as she opened them, as if they had sand in their works. The hinges made a similar sound as she swung the cover open.
At first Magda did not know what it was. The color was blue, a deep, dark, steely blue; the object was metal, but what type of metal she could not say. Its shape was that of an elongated wedge—a long, tapering piece of metal, pointed at the top and very sharp along both its beveled edges. Like a sword.
That was it! A sword! A broadsword. Only there was no hilt to this blade, only a thick, six-inch spike at its squared-off lower end, which looked like it was designed to fit into the top of a hilt. What a huge, fearsome weapon this would make when attached to its hilt!
Her eyes were drawn to the markings on the blade—it was covered with odd symbols. Not merely etched into the shiny blue surface of the metal, they were carved into it. She could slip the tip of her little finger along the grooves. The symbols were runes, but not like any she had ever seen. She was familiar with Germanic and Scandinavian runes, which went back to the Dark Ages, back as far as the third century. But these were older. Much older. They possessed a quality of eldritch antiquity that disturbed her, seeming to shift and move as she studied them. This broadsword blade was old—so old she wondered who or what had made it.
The door to the room slammed closed. "Find what you're looking for?"
Magda jumped at the sound, causing the lid of the case to snap closed over the blade. She leaped to her feet and turned around to face Glenn, her heart thumping with surprise—and guilt.
"Glenn, I—"
He looked furious. "I thought I could trust you! What did you hope to find in here?"
"Nothing . . . I came looking for you."
She did not understand the intensity of his anger. He had a right to be annoyed, but this—
"Did you thi
nk you'd find me in the closet?"
"No! I . . ."
Why try to explain it away? It would only sound lame. She had no business being here. She was in the wrong, she knew it, and she felt terribly guilty standing here after being caught in the act. But it wasn't as if she had come here to steal from him. As she felt her own anger begin to grow at the way he was overreacting, she found the will to meet his glare with her own.
"I'm curious about you. I came in to talk with you. I—I like to be with you, and yet I know nothing about you." She tossed her head. "It won't happen again."
She moved toward the hall, intending to leave him with his precious privacy, but she never reached the door. As she passed between Glenn and the bureau, he reached out and gripped her shoulders, gently but with a firmness that was not to be denied. He turned her toward him. Their eyes locked.
"Magda . . ." he began, then he was pulling her to him, pressing his lips against hers, crushing her against him.
Magda experienced a fleeting urge to resist, to pound her fists against him and pull away, but this was mere reflex and was gone before she could respond to it, engulfed in the heat of desire that surged over her. She slipped her arms around Glenn's neck and pulled closer to him, losing herself in the enveloping glow. His tongue pushed through to hers, shocking her with its audacity—she hadn't known anyone kissed like this—and jolting her with the pleasure it gave. Glenn's hands began to roam her body, caressing her buttocks through the layers of her clothes, moving over her compressed breasts, leaving tingling trails of warmth wherever they went. They rose to her neck, untied her kerchief and hurled it away, then came to rest on the buttons of her sweater and began opening them. She didn't stop him. Her clothes had shrunken on her and the room had grown so hot . . . she had to be rid of them.
There came a brief moment then when she could have stopped it, could have pulled back and retreated. With the parting of the front of her sweater a small voice cried out in her mind—Is this me? What's happening to me? This is insane! It was the voice of the old Magda, the Magda who had faced the world since her mother's death. But that voice was swept away by another Magda, a stranger, a Magda who had slowly grown amid the ruins of everything the old Magda had believed in. A new Magda, awakened by the vital force that burned white hot within the man who now held her. The past, tradition, and propriety had lost all meaning; tomorrow was a faraway place she might never see. There was only now. And Glenn.
Adversary Cycle 01 - The Keep Page 26
