"Why fitting?"
"The officer in question is Captain Klaus Woermann, the one you brought to my attention a year or so ago because of his refusal to join the Party."
Kaempffer allowed himself an instant of guarded relief. "And since I'll be in Romania, this is to be dumped in my lap."
"Precisely. Your year's tutelage at Auschwitz should not only have taught you how to run an efficient camp, but how to deal with partisan locals as well. I'm sure you'll solve the matter quickly."
"May I see the paper?"
"Certainly."
Kaempffer took the proffered slip of paper and read the two lines. Then he read them again.
"Was this decoded properly?"
"Yes. I thought the wording rather odd myself, so I had it double-checked. It's accurate."
Kaempffer read the message again:
Request immediate relocation.
Something is murdering my men.
A disturbing message. He had known Woermann in the Great War and would always remember him as one of the stubbornest men alive. And now, in a new war, as an officer in the Reichswehr, Woermann had repeatedly refused to join the Party despite relentless pressure. Not a man to abandon a position, strategic or otherwise, once he had assumed it. Something must be very wrong for him to request relocation.
But what bothered Kaempffer even more was the choice of words. Woermann was intelligent and precise. He knew his message would pass through a number of hands along the transcription and decoding route and had been trying to get something across to the High Command without going into detail.
But what? The word "murder" implied a purposeful human agent. Why then had he preceded it with "something"? A thing—an animal, a toxin, a natural disaster—could kill but it could not murder.
"I'm sure I don't have to tell you," Hossbach was saying, "that since Romania is an ally state rather than an occupied territory, a certain amount of finesse will be required."
"I'm quite well aware of that."
A certain amount of finesse would be required in handling Woermann, too. Kaempffer had an old score to settle with him.
Hossbach tried to smile, but the attempt looked more like a leer to Kaempffer. "All of us at RSHA, all the way up to General Heydrich, will be most interested to see how you fare in this ... before you move on to the major task at Ploiesti."
The emphasis on the word "before," and the slight pause preceding it were not lost on Kaempffer. Hossbach was going to turn this little side trip to the Alps into a trial by fire. Kaempffer was due in Ploiesti in one week; if he could not handle Woermann's problem with sufficient dispatch, then it might be said of him that perhaps he was not the man to set up the resettlement camp at Ploiesti. There would be no shortage of candidates to take his place.
Spurred by a sudden sense of urgency, he rose and put on his coat and cap. "I foresee no problems. I'll leave at once with two squads of einsatzkommandos. If air transport can be arranged and proper rail connections made, we can be there by this evening."
"Excellent!" Hossbach said, returning Kaempffer's salute.
"Two squads should be sufficient to take care of a few guerrillas." He turned and stepped to the door.
"More than sufficient, I'm sure."
SS-Sturmbannführer Kaempffer did not hear his superior's parting remark. Other words filled his mind: "Something is murdering my men."
Dinu Pass, Romania
28 April 1941
1322 hours
Captain Klaus Woermann stepped to the south window of his room in the keep's tower and spat a stream of white into the open air.
Goat's milk—gah! For cheese, maybe, but not for drinking.
As he watched the liquid dissipate into a cloud of pale droplets plummeting the hundred feet or so to the rocks below, Woermann wished for a brimming stein of good German beer. The only thing he wanted more than the beer was to be gone from this antechamber to Hell.
But that was not to be. Not yet, anyway. He straightened his shoulders in a typically Prussian gesture. He was taller than average and had a large frame that had once supported more muscle but was now tending toward flab. His dark brown hair was cropped close; he had wide-set eyes, equally brown; a slightly crooked nose, broken in his youth; and a full mouth capable of a toothy grin when appropriate. His gray tunic was open to the waist, allowing his small paunch to protrude. He patted it. Too much sausage. When frustrated or dissatisfied, he tended to nibble between meals, usually at a sausage. The more frustrated and dissatisfied, the more he nibbled. He was getting fat.
Woermann's gaze came to rest on the tiny Romanian village across the gorge, basking in the afternoon sunlight, peaceful, a world away. Pulling himself from the window, he turned and walked across the room, a room lined with stone blocks, many of them inlaid with peculiar brass-and-nickel crosses. Forty-nine crosses in this room to be exact. He knew. He had counted them numerous times in the last three or four days. He walked past an easel holding a nearly finished painting, past a cluttered makeshift desk to the opposite window, the one that looked down on the keep's small courtyard.
Below, the off-duty men of his command stood in small groups, some talking in low tones, most sullen and silent, all avoiding the lengthening shadows. Another night was coming. Another of their number would die.
One man sat alone in a corner, whittling feverishly. Woermann squinted down at the piece of wood taking shape in the carver's hands—a crude cross. As if there weren't enough crosses around!
The men were afraid. And so was he. Quite a turnaround in less than a week. He remembered marching them through the gates of the keep as proud soldiers of the Wehrmacht, an army that had conquered Poland, Denmark, Norway, Holland, and Belgium; and then, after sweeping the remnants of the British Army into the sea at Dunkirk, had gone on to finish off France in thirty-nine days. And just this month, Yugoslavia had been overrun in twelve days, Greece in a mere twenty-one as of yesterday. Nothing could stand against them. Born victors.
But that had been last week. Amazing what six horrible deaths could do to the conquerors of the world. It worried him. During the past week the world had constricted until nothing existed for him and for his men beyond this undersized castle, this tomb of stone. They had run up against something that defied all their efforts to stop it, that killed and faded away, only to return to kill again. The heart was going out of them.
They ... Woermann realized that he had not included himself among them for some time. The fight had gone out of his own heart back in Poland, near the town of Posnan ... after the SS had moved in and he had seen firsthand the fate of those "undesirables" left in the wake of the victorious Wehrmacht. He had protested. As a result, he had seen no further combat since then. Just as well. He had lost all pride that day in thinking of himself as one of the conquerors of the world.
He left the window and returned to the desk. He stood at its edge, oblivious to the framed photographs of his wife and his two sons, and stared down at the decoded message there.
SS-Sturmbannführer Kaempffer arriving today with detachment einsatzkommandos. Maintain present position.
Why an SS major? This was a regular army position. The SS had nothing to do with him, with the keep, or with Romania as far as he knew. But then there were so many things he failed to understand about this war. And Kaempffer, of all people! A rotten soldier, but no doubt an exemplary SS man. Why here? And why with einsatzkommandos? They were extermination squads. Death's Head Troopers. Concentration camp muscle. Specialists in killing unarmed civilians. It was their work he had witnessed outside Posnan. Why were they coming here?