Cuza sat helpless in his chair. He could feel his lips and tongue working, but he could not speak. His mind was too shocked, too appalled at what he had just heard. It was impossible! Yet the glee in Kaempffer's eyes told him it was true. Finally, a word escaped him.
"Beast!"
Kaempffer's smile broadened. "Strangely enough, I don't mind the sound of that word on a Jew's lips. It is proof positive that I am successfully discharging my duties." He strode to the door, then turned back. "So look well through your books, Jew. Work hard for me. Find me an answer. It's not just your own well-being that hangs on it, but your daughter's too." He turned and was gone.
Cuza looked at Woermann pleadingly. "Captain...?"
"I can do nothing, Herr Professor," he replied in a low voice full of regret. "I can only suggest that you work at those books. You've found one reference to the keep; that means there's a good chance you can find another. And I might suggest that you tell your daughter to find a safer place of residence than the inn ... perhaps somewhere in the hills."
He could not admit to the captain that he had lied about finding a reference to the keep, that there was no hope of ever finding one. And as for Magda: "My daughter is stubborn. She will stay at the inn."
"I thought as much. But beyond what I have just said, I am powerless. I am no longer in command of the keep." He grimaced. "I wonder if I ever was. Good evening."
"Wait!" Cuza clumsily fished the cross out of his pocket. "Take this. I have no use for it."
Woermann enclosed the cross in his fist and stared at him a moment. Then he, too, was gone.
Cuza sat in his wheelchair, enveloped in the blackest depression he had ever known. There was no way of winning here. If Molasar stopped killing the Germans, Kaempffer would leave for Ploiesti to begin the systematic extermination of Romanian Jewry. If Molasar persisted, Kaempffer would destroy the keep and drag him and Magda to Ploiesti as his first victims. He thought of Magda in their hands and truly understood the old cliché, a fate worse than death.
There had to be a way out. Far more than his own life and Magda's rested on what happened here. Hundreds of thousands—perhaps a million or more—lives were at stake. There had to be a way to stop Kaempffer. He had to be prevented from going off on his mission ... it seemed of utmost importance to him to arrive in Ploiesti on Monday. Would he lose his position if delayed? If so, that might give the doomed a grace period.
What if Kaempffer never left the keep? What if he met with a fatal accident? But how? How to stop him?
He sobbed in his helplessness. He was a crippled Jew amid squads of German soldiers. He needed guidance. He needed an answer. And soon. He folded his stiff fingers and bowed his head.
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.