O God. Help me, your humble servant, find the answer to the trials of your other servants. Help me help them. Help me find a way to preserve them...
The silent prayer trailed off into the oblivion of his despair. What was the use? How many of the countless thousands dying at the hands of the Germans had lifted their hearts and minds and voices in a similar plea? And where were they now? Dead! And where would he be if he waited for an answer to his own supplication? Dead. And worse for Magda.
He sat in quiet desperation...
There was still Molasar.
Woermann stood for a moment outside the professor's door after closing it. He had experienced a strange sensation while the old man was explaining what he had found in that indecipherable book, a feeling that Cuza was telling the truth, and yet lying at the same time. Odd. What was the professor's game?
He strolled out to the bright courtyard, catching the anxious expressions on the faces of the sentries. Ah, well, it had been too good to be true. Two nights without a casualty—too much to hope for three. Now they were all back to square one ... except for the body count which continued to rise. Ten now. One per night for ten nights. A chilling statistic. If only the killer, Cuza's "Wallachian lord," had held off until tomorrow night. Kaempffer would have been gone by then and he could have marched his own men out. But as things looked now, they would all have to stay through the weekend. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights to go. A death potential of three. Maybe more.
Woermann turned right and walked the short distance to the cellar entrance. The interment detail should have the two fresh corpses down in the subcellar by now. He decided to see that they were laid out properly. Even einsatzkommandos should be accorded a modicum of dignity in death.
In the cellar he glanced into the room in which the two bodies had been found; their throats had not only been torn open but their heads had lolled at obscene angles. The killer had broken their necks for some reason. That was a new atrocity. The room was empty now except for pieces of the shattered door. What had happened here? The dead men's weapons had been found unfired. Had they tried to save themselves by locking the door against their attacker? Why had no one heard their shouts? Or hadn't they shouted?
He walked farther down the central corridor to the broached wall and heard voices coming from below. On the way down the stairs he met the interment detail coming up, blowing into their chilled hands. He directed them back down the stairs.
"Let's go see what sort of job you did."
In the subcellar the glow from flashlights and handheld kerosene lamps glimmered dully off the ten white-sheeted figures on the ground.
"We neatened them up a bit, sir," said a private in gray. "Some of the sheets needed straightening."
Woermann surveyed the scene. Everything seemed in order. He was going to have to come to a decision on disposition of the bodies. He would have to ship them out soon. But how?
He clapped his hands together. Of course—Kaempffer! The major was planning to leave Sunday evening no matter what. He could transport the corpses to Ploiesti, and from there they could be flown back to Germany. Perfect... and fitting.
He noticed that the left foot of the third corpse from the end was sticking out from under its sheet. As he stooped to adjust the cover, he saw that the boot was filthy. It almost looked as if the wearer had been dragged to his resting place by the arms. Both boots were caked with dirt.
Woermann felt a surge of anger, then let it slip away. What did it really matter? The dead were dead. Why make a fuss over a muddy pair of boots? Last week it would have seemed important. Now it was no more than a quibble. A trifle. Yet the dirty boots bothered him. He could not say why, exactly. But they did bother him.
"Let's go, men," he said, turning away and letting his breath fog past him as he moved. The men readily complied. It was cold down there.
Woermann paused at the foot of the steps and looked back. The corpses were barely visible in the receding light. Those boots ... he thought of those dirty, muddy boots again. Then he followed the others up to the cellar.
From his quarters at the rear of the keep, Kaempffer stood at his window and looked out over the courtyard. He had watched Woermann go down to the cellar and return. And still he stood. He should have felt relatively safe, at least for the rest of the night. Not because of the guards all around, but because the thing that killed his men at will had done its work for the night and would not strike again.
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 had 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 from which 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. There soldiers were at work, hacking away at the stones. Whereas 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 he 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, there was that nasty whisper in a far corner of her mind hinting that she lacked something.