But the innkeeper was no Jew.
It really didn't matter. Jew, Freemason, Gypsy, Romanian innkeeper, what really mattered to Kaempffer was the victim's sense of complacency, of self-confidence, of security; the victim's feeling that he had a place in the world and that he was safe—that was what Kaempffer felt he had to smash. They had to learn that there was no safe place when he was around.
He let the innkeeper shiver and blink under the naked bulb for as long as his own patience would allow. Iuliu had been brought to the spot where the two einsatzkommandos had been killed. Anything that had even remotely resembled a ledger or a record book had been taken from the inn and dropped in a pile behind him. His eyes roamed from the bloodstains on the floor, to the bloody scrawl on the rear wall, to the implacable faces of the four soldiers who had dragged him from his bed, then back to the bloodstains on the floor. Kaempffer found it difficult to look at those stains. He kept remembering the two gashed throats that had supplied the blood, and the two dead men who had stood over his bed.
When Major Kaempffer began to feel his own fingers tingle with cold despite his black leather gloves, he stepped out into the light of the corridor and faced Iuliu. At the sight of an SS officer in full uniform, Iuliu took a step backward and almost tripped over his ledgers.
"Who owns the keep?" Kaempffer asked in a low voice without preamble.
"I do not know, Herr Officer."
The man's German was atrocious, but it was better than working through an interpreter. He slapped Iuliu across the face with the back of his gloved hand. He felt no malice; this was standard procedure.
"Who owns the keep?"
"I don't know!"
He slapped him again. "Who?"
The innkeeper spat blood and began to weep. Good—he was breaking.
"I don't know!" Iuliu cried.
"Who gives you the money to pay the caretakers?"
"A messenger."
"From whom?"
"I don't know. He never says. From a bank, I think. He comes twice a year."
"You must have to sign a receipt or cash a check. Whom is it from?"
"I sign a letter. At the top it says The Mediterranean Bank of Switzerland. In Zurich."
"How does the money come?"
"In gold. In twenty-lei gold pieces. I pay Alexandru and he pays his sons. It has always been this way."
Kaempffer watched Iuliu wipe his eyes and compose himself. He had the next link in the chain. He would have the SS central office investigate the Mediterranean Bank in Zurich to learn who was sending gold coins to an innkeeper in the Transylvanian Alps. And from there back to the owner of the account, and from there back to the owner of the keep.
And then what?
He didn't know, but this seemed to be the only way to proceed at the moment. He turned and stared at the words scrawled on the wall behind him. The blood—Flick's and Waltz's blood—with which the words had been written had dried to a reddish brown. Many of the letters were either crudely formed or were not like any letters he had ever seen. Others were recognizable. As a whole, they were incomprehensible. Yet they had to mean something.
He gestured to the words. "What does that say?"
"I don't know, Herr Officer!" He cringed from the glittering blue of Kaempffer's eyes. "Please ... I really don't!"
From Iuliu's expression and the sound of his voice, Kaempffer knew the man was telling the truth. But that was not a real consideration—never had been and never would be. The Romanian would have to be pressed to the limit, battered, broken, and sent limping back to his fellow villagers with tales of the merciless treatment he had received at the hands of the officer in the black uniform. And then they would know: They must cooperate, they must crawl over one another in their eagerness to be of service to the SS.
"You lie," he screamed and slammed the back of his hand across Iuliu's face again. "Those words are Romanian! I want to know what they say!"
"They are like Romanian, Herr Officer," Iuliu said, cowering in fear and pain, "but they are not. I don't know what they say!"
This tallied with the information Kaempffer had gleaned from his own translating dictionary. He had been studying Romania and its languages since the first day he had got wind of the Ploiesti project. By now he knew a little of the Daco-Romanian dialect and expected soon to be passably fluent in it. He did not want any of the Romanians he would be working with to think they could slip anything by him by speaking in their own language.
But there were three other major dialects which varied significantly from one another. And the words on the wall, while similar to Romanian, did not appear to belong to any of them.
Iuliu, the innkeeper—probably the only man in the village who could read—did not recognize them. Still, he had to suffer.
Kaempffer turned away from Iuliu and from the four einsatzkommandos around him. He spoke to no one in particular, but his meaning was understood.
"Teach him the art of translation."
There was a heartbeat's pause, then a dull thud followed by a choking groan of agony. He did not have to watch. He could picture what was happening: One of the guards had driven the end of his rifle barrel into the small of Iuliu's back, a sharp, savage blow, sending Iuliu to his knees. They would now be clustered around him, preparing to drive the toes and heels of their polished jackboots into every sensitive area of his body. And they knew them all.
"That will be enough!" said a voice he instantly recognized as Woermann's.
Enraged at the intrusion, Kaempffer wheeled to confront him. This was insubordination! A direct challenge to his authority! But as he opened his mouth to reprimand Woermann, he noticed that the captain's hand rested on the butt of his pistol. Surely he wouldn't use it. And yet...
The einsatzkommandos were looking to their major expectantly, not quite sure of what to do. Kaempffer longed to tell them to proceed as ordered but found he could not. Woermann's baleful stare and defiant stance made him hesitate.
"This local has refused to cooperate," he said lamely.
"And so you think beating him unconscious—or to death, perhaps—will get you what you want? How intelligent!" Woermann moved forward to Iuliu's side, blandly pushing the einsatzkommandos aside as if they were inanimate objects. He glanced down at the groaning innkeeper, then fixed each of the guards with his stare. "Is this how German troops act for the greater glory of the Fatherland? I'll bet your mothers and fathers would love to come and watch you kick an unarmed aging fat man to death. How brave! Why don't you invite them someday? Or did you kick them to death the last time you were home on leave?"
"I must warn you, Captain—" Kaempffer began, but Woermann had turned his attention to the innkeeper.
"What can you tell us about the keep that we don't already know?"
"Nothing," Iuliu said from the floor.
"Any wives' tales or scare stories or legends?"
"I've lived here all my life and never heard any."
"No deaths in the keep? Ever?"
"Never."
As Kaempffer watched, he saw the innkeeper's face light with a kind of hope, as if he had thought of a way to survive the night intact.
"But perhaps there is someone who could help you. If I may just get my registration book...?" He indicated the jumbled ledgers on the floor.
When Woermann nodded to him, he crawled across the floor and picked out a worn, stained, cloth-covered volume from the rest. He fumbled through the pages feverishly until he came to the entry he wanted.