Schlacht was reluctant to appear to be acceding to the request of the older Gypsy, and he was determined not to allow the younger one to believe that his warning had been effective, but he was forced to accept the fact that Weyrauch was making sense. "Very well, Gottfried," he muttered, looking angrily at Kaldy. "I shall take your advice." He looked over at the guard and said, "Remove the old man to another cell." Then, still speaking to the guard but looking directly at Kaldy as if challenging the Gypsy to contradict him, he added, "We’ll leave Kaldy where he is. The bars will be sufficient to keep him there." Kaldy did not reply. He was once again gazing vacantly at the wall. It was as if he dwelled in a private, interior world, from which he had been momentarily summoned to make his few comments, and to which he had retreated once he had finished speaking.
The next half hour was spent in quiet, methodical preparation for what was assumed to be Kaldy’s impending seizure. Schlacht had assigned only two guards to the prisoners, reasoning that even that number was probably excessive to keep watch over two Gypsies but not wishing to take any chances with what he hoped might be a very useful captive. The first guard transferred Blasko to a cell down the corridor while the other unfolded a tripod and then affixed a motion picture camera to it. He checked the hand crank on the side of the camera, took a light reading, and then began to hook up additional lights in Kaldy’s cell. While he was doing this, he left the cell door open for a short time. It was true that had Kaldy attempted to escape at that moment, the other guard could have shot him down easily; but the Gypsy not only made no effort to leave the cell, he did not even look over at the doorway. He continued to sit motionless upon the wooden stool, gazing at the wall.
"If this fellow is the lunatic we suspect him to be," Schlacht explained to Weyrauch, "it may be useful to have a photographic record of his behavior for further study."
It was Louisa who replied to this, not her husband. She had managed to restrain her anger, and when now she spoke to her cousin it was with an almost plaintive tone. "Helmuth, do you remember when we were children, when your mother and my mother used to take us to church together?"
"Of course I remember, dear cousin," Schlacht replied amicably. "The memories of childhood are usually sweet, and are therefore cherished."
"Well, didn’t anything you learned in church mean anything to you? Didn’t any of it stay with you, even a little?" She seemed on the verge of weeping. "Helmuth, don’t you understand that what you’re doing, what we’re doing, what our country is doing, is wrong, just simply morally wrong?"
Schlacht seemed almost embarrassed by what he regarded as her childishness. "Come now, Louisa!"
"Don’t you remember what Christ said about loving your enemies, turning the other cheek, forgiving seventy times seven times? Don’t you remember what he said about the peacemakers being blessed?"
Schlacht leaned his face close to hers and, as if uttering a profound, significant truth, he said, "Do not forget, Louisa, that Jesus was a Jew!"
Weyrauch decided to diffuse the tension with a humorous remark. "Only half-Jewish, actually." He began to snicker and then fell silent as Schlacht and Louisa both glowered at him, the latter angered at his blasphemous weakness, the former angered at his trivial response to what was, to Schlacht, a very important point. Weyrauch seemed physically to shrink under the steady glare of the two pairs of icy blue eyes. He cowered away from them into a corner near the door of the corridor. Odd, he thought, that the only thing which Louisa and Helmuth have in common is their dislike of me.
The guard finished lighting the cell and making certain that the camera was ready, and then nothing remained to be done but wait. Schlacht considered sending one of the guards for more schnapps, but then decided against it. He smoked a few cigarettes and took a perverse delight in blowing the smoke in Weyrauch’s direction so as to make him cough. No one spoke as the minutes crawled by. One guard stood beside the door, his Schmeisser MP 40 submachine gun held at the ready, while the other stood behind the tripod, waiting for Schlacht to tell him to begin filming. Schlacht stood on one side of the tripod and Weyrauch, much against his wishes, stood on the other. They both were watching Kaldy carefully. Louisa sat upon a wooden chair near the door, not wishing at all to be present, but refusing to give her cousin the satisfaction of hearing her make a request of him permission to leave.
At five forty-one the sun set, and the full moon, partially hidden by clouds, was visible through the small window near the ceiling of the cell.
At six o’clock, Janos Kaldy began to scream.
"Begin," Schlacht said softly, and the S.S. guard began to turn the camera crank,
Kaldy’s face contorted in agony and his body began to shake and tremble as if waves of pain were washing over it. His screams continued incessantly, and Louisa held her hands over her ears to block them out. The Gypsy fell from the stool onto the cold stone floor, doubled over into a fetal position, and then emitted another shriek of agony as his arms and legs thrashed wildly about. The sound of crunching bone mingled with his screams, and both Schlacht and Weyrauch leaned forward, openmouthed, disbelieving the evidence of their own eyes.
Kaldy was changing.
The change was at first very subtle, an almost imperceptible elongation of his arms attended by the same sound of bone scraping against bone. His shoulders swelled as if they were being filled with liquid, but then rippling muscles pushed out on his arms and back and chest. His black eyes grew yellow and luminescent, and the agonized, painfully human look of desperation in them began to flicker and weaken, began to be replaced by something unearthly, hellish. Kaldy’s legs seemed to pull upward slightly as if compensating for the elongation of his arms, and then thick brown hair burst from every inch of his skin. Kaldy threw himself up onto his knees and faced his captors, but his face did not long remain his own. Blood poured from his mouth as long fangs thrust upward from his lower jaw and down from his upper; his lips disappeared beneath the hairy muzzle which grew downward from the squat, moist nostrils; and a long, canine tongue flicked out over the fangs.
Kaldy screamed once more; and then, as the last spark of human intelligence in his eyes died, he began to growl.
The creature...for Kaldy it was no longer...stood and gazed at the humans on the other side of the cell bars with undisguised, aggressive, hate-filled appetite. For a moment, no one moved. Weyrauch, Schlacht and the guards stared at the creature, their only movement being that of the one guard cranking the camera. Behind them Louisa whispered, "God have mercy!"
Her words seemed the catalyst to action. The creature threw itself against the bars, once, twice, and then the entire iron frame tore free from its casing and crashed loudly on the stones. The guard with the camera stopped cranking it and jumped back as both Louisa and Weyrauch screamed and the other guard leveled his weapon at the creature and opened fire. The bullets might as well have been made of paper, for they thudded audibly against the monster’s chest but did not impede its attack. The creature ignored the gun, lashing out at the face of the guard. The sharp talons ripped through the guard’s flesh and tore his jaw from his face. The creature slashed at him again, shearing through his throat and sending his severed head cascading away from his body to bounce absurdly along the floor of the corridor.
Louisa ran from the corridor out into the anteroom. Her husband and cousin followed. The second guard made an attempt to do the same, but the creature knocked him to the ground and then snapped its fanged jaws shut on his arm. The guard shrieked as it tore off a thick chunk of flesh, swallowed it, and then ripped what was left of his arm from its socket. The creature ran from the corridor into the anteroom, leaving the shuddering body of the guard lying in a pool of his own blood.
The escape of the creature and its attack upon the guards had happened so quickly that neither Schlacht nor Weyrauch nor Louisa had been able to get to the still-locked door of the anteroom. As the beast rushed in from the corridor, Schlacht, unwilling to attract its attention by moving, froze mot
ionless in one corner while his cousin and her husband whimpered in another.
In the anteroom the creature stopped and looked around in what appeared to be confusion, as if perplexed by the fact that its escape from the cell and the corridor had left it still confined within a room, as if it had expected to be outside beneath the stars. It seemed to forget the presence of the three remaining humans as it searched the walls and ceiling of the anteroom for a pathway to freedom. Its limited intelligence was not able to comprehend the nature and purpose of the doorway against the far wall. Schlacht watched the creature as its eyes scanned the walls, and he began slowly to inch his hand toward the revolver hanging unfired in its holster; then he stopped, thinking the better of it. If the guard had been unable to stop this monstrosity with a machine gun, of what use would a handgun be against it? He remained motionless, hoping that the beast would ignore him, would go for Weyrauch or Louisa first and allow him to get to the door.
Weyrauch and Louisa huddled together in the corner, silent and trembling, tears streaming down their faces, certain that they were not destined to emerge alive from the room; then the creature turned and ran back into the corridor, back into the cell from which it had just escaped. It looked up at the small window near the ceiling of the room and through the bars saw the bright moon and the few stars struggling to shine through the clouds. It tried to leap the twenty-five feet from the floor to the window, but fell short on the first attempt. It leaped again and this time it managed to grab hold of the bars. The creature looked down at the empty cell and snarled, and then, holding on to one bar with one hand it tore the other bars from their encasements. In an instant the creature crawled through the gaping hole, fled into the night and was gone.
Schlacht, Weyrauch and Louisa did not move at first, did not display any emotion, did not react to what had just occurred. Then Weyrauch fainted and Louisa began to weep hysterically. A moment later she joined her husband in slipping into unconsciousness.
And S.S. Colonel Helmuth Schlacht, relieved at being alive and largely unaffected by the familiar sights and smells of death, was smiling, astounding himself with the audaciousness of the plan which was even now taking shape in his mind.
CHAPTER FOUR
When Schlacht had been seven years old, he and another child had been caught in some silly childhood misbehavior by their teacher and had been sent to the school’s headmaster for punishment. He remembered the feeling of being a small boy standing nervously in the presence of absolute authority; he recalled quite clearly the way his small heart had pounded in his chest, and he remembered the almost audible churning in his stomach, the sick, sinking feeling; he recalled the way his legs had shaken inside his Lederhosen as he waited for the omnipotent headmaster to speak.
These thoughts occurred to him because he was experiencing the same sensations at this very moment. He had submitted his report and had urgently requested an interview. He was standing, not at attention but not quite at ease, listening to the pounding of his heart, feeling his stomach churn, trying to keep his legs from shaking.
There were differences, of course. What he feared now was not punishment but disbelief of his report and rejection of his proposal. He was not wearing Lederhosen, but the uniform of a colonel in the Schutzstaffel; and unlike his childish perception of the school’s headmaster, he now truly was in the presence of absolute authority, of omnipotence. There was only one person in Europe more powerful than the man before whose desk Schlacht was standing; and even that one person, Adolf Hitler, deferred to Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler in all matters of concern to Himmler’s two arms, the S.S. and the Gestapo.
Heinrich Himmler did not look like a demigod, and no outward appearance or trapping of office testified to the enormous power this man wielded over millions, the power over life and, more commonly, death. The chief of the somewhat ponderously named Reichsicherheitdiensthauptamt, Main Office of the Reich Security Service, whose black-shirted minions had instituted a reign of terror over a conquered continent, resembled nothing so much as a pedant or a bureaucrat or the postmaster of a small village. The file folders which lay strewn atop Himmler’s desk might have been the daily traffic reports being reviewed by a local Bürgermeister, for Himmler looked suited for that role as well, with his small, round glasses, his balding head, his slightly paunchy stomach, his incipient double chin, his pursed lips and small, delicate hands. Only the labels on the folders indicated that they were statistical reports sent to him from the commandants of Auschwitz-Birkenau and Treblinka, of Sorbibor and Bergen-Belsen, of Sachsenhausen and Buchenwald; and only a man like Schlacht, whose career in the S.S. had begun when he served as a staff officer at the Third Reich’s first concentration camp at Dachau, could fully know and understand what information those files contained.
Himmler finished reading Schlacht’s report on the events which had transpired in the RagoczyPalace the previous week, and he then placed the typewritten pages down upon the desk with a meticulous, almost gentle gesture. Then he looked up at Schlacht and appraised him with his small, inscrutable, reptilian eyes. Schlacht waited for his chief to respond to what he had just read. He wondered if Himmler could hear his heart pounding.
After a few moments of silence Himmler spoke. His voice was soft and even, but subtly incredulous. "A werewolf, Schlacht? You are telling me that that you captured a werewolf?"
This was the moment upon which everything else hinged, Schlacht thought as he replied, "I know, Reichsführer, I know. The entire notion is so ridiculous that I too at first refused to believe it, until I saw it with my own eyes. The prisoner Blasko told us about it through an interpreter, and of course we regarded the story as an example of the ignorant superstitions of an inferior race. But even though I am quite certain that neither Blasko nor the Gypsy Kaldy understands what really happens when this change occurs, the fact remains that in some way which we do not yet fully comprehend, this man Kaldy..."
"I have watched your progress with interest, Schlacht," Himmler interrupted, quite obviously dismissing what the colonel had just been saying. "After your great success in removing the Jews from Slovenia to the ghetto in Lodz, I personally decided to promote you and put you in charge of solving the Hungarian Gypsy problem. I cannot believe that the strain of this responsibility has had such an effect upon your nerves in so short a period of time." He paused and his brow furrowed with concern. "Perhaps I have misjudged you."
Schlacht chose his words carefully. He knew that he was about to offer Himmler evidence which was irrefutable, and he did not wish to put his chief in the position of having either to apologize or admit that he was wrong. "I know, Reichsführer, that you have every reason to doubt my sanity. On the surface, this seems insane. But I have a roll of film, a record of some of the events referred to in my report. Before you respond to this, I beg you for the opportunity to show it to you."
Himmler paused before saying, "And how did this film come to be made?"
"My initial idea," Schlacht explained, "was that this Gypsy was some sort of homicidal maniac whose madness could somehow be turned to our purposes." He had decided not to mention the Churchill plan; he did not wish to appear to be an inveterate schemer. "With that in mind I arranged to film his behavior when the seizure came upon him, and I also invited my cousin’s husband, a medical doctor with some knowledge of psychology, to be present as an observer."
"Has this man been cleared?"
"I did not feel there to be a need, Reichsführer," Schlacht said quickly. "He is a relative, and I have known him for years."
"And you vouch for his loyalty?"
"I vouch for his compliance and his silence." That seemed sufficient and Himmler nodded. Schlacht continued. "We filmed this gypsy Kaldy from shortly before his transformation until he broke out of the cell. Corporal Oberwald, who had been operating the camera, stopped filming at that point, but we were able to save and develop the film." Schlacht licked his lips nervously. "Reichsführer, you are familiar with my record, you know me
personally. You must be aware that I am not subject to delusions and that I am as emotionally stable as any S.S. officer. With that in mind, I repeat my request. Please take the time to view the film."
Himmler gazed long and hard at the young officer and then, choosing perhaps to indulge him or choosing perhaps to trust his own initial instincts regarding this man, he nodded his head curtly. "Very well. Where is the film?"
"My adjutant is waiting outside with it," Schlacht said, relieved to have surmounted the first of the obstacles which he knew he was to face this day. "I have taken the liberty of arranging for a projector and a screen as well, so that you will be able to see the film here in your office."
Himmler sat back in his chair and folded his hands demurely in his lap. "Proceed," he said softly.
The next few minutes seemed to Schlacht to stretch on for an eternity. His adjutant Vogel brought in the film and the equipment and began to set up the projector and the portable screen. Schlacht stood by nervously and fidgeted as Himmler sat motionless, his face impassive and unreadable.
The room was darkened and the black and white image of Janos Kaldy moved about on the silver projection screen. The flickering images were reflected in the lenses of Himmler’s spectacles, and Schlacht sought in vain for any indication of his chief’s reaction to what he was seeing.
It was all there, captured on celluloid from the first wrenching spasm of pain which caused Kaldy to double over to that moment when the werewolf threw itself against thebars of the cell, at which point the S.S. guard had stopped turning the crank of the camera. Then the screen was filled with flickering white light as the end of the film reel spun about and slapped against the top of the projector. Vogel turned on the lights in Himmler’s office, and Schlacht turned to the Reichsführer, awaiting his response.
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