"Please, Magda. As one last favor to a dying old man who would go smiling to his grave if he knew you were safe from the Nazis."
"And me knowing I left you among them? Never!"
"Please listen to me! You can take the Al Azif with you. It's bulky I know, but it's probably the last surviving copy in any language. There isn't a country in the world where you couldn't sell it for enough money to keep you comfortable for life."
"No, Papa," she said with a determination in her voice that he could not recall ever hearing before.
She turned away and walked into the rear room, closing the door behind her.
I've taught her too well, he thought. I've bound her so tightly to me I cannot push her away even for her own good. Is that why she never married? Because of me?
Cuza rubbed his itching eyes with cotton-gloved fingers, thinking back over the years. Ever since puberty Magda had been a constant object of male attention. Something in her appealed to different sorts of men in different ways; she rarely left one untouched. She probably would have been married and a mother a number of times over by now—and he, a grandfather—if her mother had not died so suddenly eleven years ago. Magda, only twenty then, had changed, taking on the roles of his companion, secretary, associate, and now nurse. The men about soon found her remote. Magda gradually built up a shell of self-absorption. Cuza knew every weak spot in that shell—and could pierce it at will. To all others she was immune.
But there were more pressing concerns at the moment. Magda faced a very short future unless she escaped the keep. Beyond that, there was the apparition they had encountered last night. Cuza was sure it would return with the passing of the day, and he did not want Magda here when it did. There had been something in its eyes that had caused fear to grip his heart like an icy fist. Such an unspeakable hunger there ... he wanted Magda far away tonight.
But more than anything else he wanted to stay here by himself and wait for it to return. This was the moment of a lifetime—a dozen lifetimes! To actually come face to face with a myth, with a creature that had been used for centuries to frighten children. Adults, too. To document its existence! He had to speak to this thing again ... induce it to answer. He had to learn which of the myths surrounding it were true and which, false.
The mere thought of the meeting made his heart race with excitement and anticipation. Strangely, he did not feel terribly threatened by the creature. He knew its language and had even communicated with it last night. It had understood and had left them unharmed. He sensed the possibility of a common ground between them, a place for a meeting of minds. He certainly did not wish to stop it or harm it—Theodor Cuza was not an enemy of anything that reduced the ranks of the German Army.
He looked down at the littered table before him. He was sure he would find nothing threatening to it in these despicable old books. He now understood why the books had been suppressed—they were abominations. But they were useful as props in the little play he was acting out for those two bickering German officers. He had to remain in the keep until he had learned all he could from the being that dwelt here. Then the Germans could do what they wished with him.
But Magda ... Magda had to be on her way to safety before he could devote his attention to anything else. She would not leave of her own accord ... what if she were driven out? Captain Woermann might be the key there. He did not seem too happy about having a woman quartered in the keep. Yes, if Woermann could be provoked...
Cuza despised himself for what he was about to do.
"Magda!" he called. "Magda!"
She opened the door and looked out. "I hope this is not about my leaving the keep, because—"
"Not the keep; just the room. I'm hungry and the Germans told us they'd feed us from their kitchen."
"Did they bring us any food?"
"No. And I'm sure they won't. You'll have to go get some."
She stiffened. "Across the courtyard? You want me to go back out there after what happened?"
"I'm sure it won't happen again." He hated lying to her, but it was the only way. "The men have been warned by their officers. And besides, you'll not be on any dark cellar stairway. You'll be out in the open."
"But the way they look at me..."
"We have to eat."
There was a long pause as his daughter stared at him. Then she nodded. "I suppose we do."
Magda buttoned her sweater all the way to the neck as she crossed the room, saying nothing as she left.
Cuza felt his throat constrict as the door closed behind her. She had courage, and trust in him ... a trust he was betraying. And yet keeping. He knew what she faced out there, and yet he had knowingly sent her into it. Supposedly for food.
He wasn't the slightest bit hungry.
SIXTEEN
The Danube Delta, Eastern Romania
Wednesday, April 30
1035 hours
Land was in sight again.
Sixteen unnervingly frustrating hours, each one like an endless day, were finally at an end. The red-haired man stood on the weathered bow and looked shoreward. The sardiner had chugged across the placid expanse of the Black Sea at a steady pace, a good pace, but one made maddeningly slow by the sole passenger's relentless sense of urgency. At least they had not been stopped by either of the two military patrol boats they had passed, one Russian, one Romanian. That could have proved disastrous.
Directly ahead lay the multichanneled delta where the Danube emptied into the Black Sea. The shore was green and swampy, pocked with countless coves. Getting ashore would be easy, but traveling through the bogs to higher, drier land would be time consuming. And there was no time!
He had to find another way.
The red-haired man glanced over his shoulder at the old Turk at the helm, then forward again to the delta. The sardine boat didn't draw much—it could move comfortably in about four feet of water. It was a possibility—take one of these tiny delta tributaries up to the Danube itself, then chug west along the river to a point, say, just east of Galati. They would be traveling against the current but it had to be faster than scrambling on foot through miles of sucking mire.
He dug into his money belt and brought out two Mexican fifty-peso pieces. Together they gave a weight of about two and a half ounces of gold. Turning again, he held them up to the Turk, addressing him in his native tongue.
"Kiamil! Two more coins if you'll take me upstream!"
The fisherman stared at the coins, saying nothing, chewing his lower lip. There was already enough gold in his pocket to make him the richest man in his village. At least for a while. But nothing lasts forever, and soon he would be out on the water again, hauling in his nets. The two extra coins could forestall that. Who knew how many days on the water, how many hand cuts, how many pains in an aging back, how many hauls of fish would have to be unloaded at the cannery to earn an equivalent amount?
The red-haired man watched Kiamil's face as the calculations of risks against profits played across it. And as he watched, he, too, calculated the risks: They would be traveling by day, never far from shore because of the narrowness of the waterway along most of the route, in Romanian waters in a boat of Turkish registry.
It was insane. Even if by some miracle of chance they reached the edge of Galati without being stopped, Kiamil could not expect a similar miracle on the return trip downstream. He would be caught, his boat impounded, and he imprisoned. Conversely, there was little risk to the red-haired man. If they were stopped and brought into port, he was sure he could find a way to escape and continue his trek. But Kiamil at the very least would lose his boat. Possibly his life.