The Keep ac-1

by F. Paul Wilson

  "Glenn, I—"

  He looked furious. "I thought I could trust you! What did you hope to find in here?"

  "Nothing ...I came looking for you." She did not understand the intensity of his anger. He had a right to be annoyed, but this—

  "Did you think you'd find me in the closet?"

  "No! I..." Why try to explain it away? It would only sound lame. She had no business being here. She was in the wrong, she knew it, and she felt terribly guilty standing here after being caught in the act. But it wasn't as if she had come here to steal from him. As she felt her own anger begin to grow at the way he was overreacting, she found the will to meet his glare with her own. "I'm curious about you. I came in to talk with you. I—I like to be with you, and yet I know nothing about you." She tossed her head. "It won't happen again."

  She moved toward the hall, intending to leave him with his precious privacy, but she never reached the door. As she passed between Glenn and the bureau, he reached out and gripped her shoulders, gently but with a firmness that was not to be denied. He turned her toward him. Their eyes locked.

  "Magda..." he began, then he was pulling her to him, pressing his lips against hers, crushing her against him. Magda experienced a fleeting urge to resist, to pound her fists against him and pull away, but this was mere reflex and was gone before she could recognize it, engulfed by the heat of desire that surged over her. She slipped her arms around Glenn's neck and pulled closer to him, losing herself in the glow that enveloped her. His tongue pushed through to hers, shocking her with its audacity—she hadn't known anyone kissed like this—and jolting her with the pleasure it gave. Glenn's hands began to roam her body, caressing her buttocks through the layers of her clothes, moving over her compressed breasts, leaving tingling trails of warmth wherever they went. They rose to her neck, untied her kerchief and hurled it away, then came to rest on the buttons of her sweater and began opening them. She didn't stop him. Her clothes had shrunken on her and the room had grown so hot ... she had to be rid of them.

  There was a brief moment then when she could have stopped it, could have pulled back and retreated. With the parting of the front of her sweater a small voice cried out in her mind—Is this me? What's happening to me? This is insane! It was the voice of the old Magda, the Magda who had faced the world since her mother's death. But that voice was swept away by another Magda, a stranger, a Magda who had slowly grown amid the ruins of everything the old Magda had believed in. A new Magda, awakened by the vital force that burned white hot within the man who now held her. The past, tradition, and propriety had lost all meaning; tomorrow was a faraway place she might never see. There was only now. And Glenn.

  The sweater slipped from her shoulders, then the white blouse. Magda felt fire where her hair brushed the bare skin of her upper back and shoulders. Glenn pushed the tight bandeau down to her waist, allowing her breasts to spring free. Still holding his lips to hers, he ran his fingertips lightly over each breast, zeroing in on the taut nipples and tracing tiny circles that caused her to moan deep in her throat. His lips finally broke from hers, sliding along her throat to the valley between her breasts, from there to her nipples, each in turn, his tongue making little wet circles over the dry ones his fingers had drawn. With a small cry she clutched the back of his head and arched her breasts against his face, shuddering as waves of ecstasy began to pulsate from deep within her pelvis.

  He lifted her and carried her to the bed, removing the rest of her clothes while his lips continued to pleasure her. Then his own clothes were off and he was leaning over her. Magda's hands had taken on a life of their own, running over him as if to be sure that he was real. And then he was on her and slipping into her, and after the first jab of pain he was there and it was wonderful.

  Oh, God! she thought as spasms of pleasure shot through her. Is this what it's like? Is this what I've been missing all these years? Can this be the awful act I've heard the married women talking about? It can't be! This is too wonderful! And I haven't been missing anything because it never could be like this with any man but Glenn.

  He began to move inside her and she matched his rhythm. The pleasure increased, doubling and redoubling until she was sure her flesh would melt. She felt Glenn's body begin to stiffen as she felt the inevitability within herself, too. It happened. With her back arched, her ankles hooked on either side of the narrow mattress, and her knees wide in the air, Magda Cuza saw the world swell, crack, and come apart in a blazing burst of flame.

  And after a while, to the accompaniment of her spent body's labored breathing, she watched it fall together again through the lids of her closed eyes.

  They spent the day on that narrow little bed, whispering, laughing, talking, exploring each other. Glenn knew so much, taught her so much, it was as if he were introducing her to her own body. He was gentle and patient and tender, bringing her to peaks of pleasure time and time again. He was her first—she didn't say so; she didn't have to. She was far from his first; that, too, required no comment, and Magda found it didn't matter. Yet she sensed a great release within him, as if he had denied himself for a long time.

  His body fascinated her. The male physique was terra incognita to Magda. She wondered if all men's muscles were so hard and so close to the skin. All of Glenn's hair was red, and there were so many scars on his chest and abdomen; old scars, thin and white on his olive skin. When she asked about them, he told her they were from accidents. Then he quieted her questions by making love to her again.

  After the sun had dipped behind the western ridge, they dressed and went for a walk, arm in arm, stretching their limbs, stopping every so often to embrace and kiss. When they returned to the inn, Lidia was putting supper on the table. Magda realized she was famished and so they both sat down and helped themselves, Magda trying to do her best to keep her eyes off Glenn and concentrate on the food, feeding one hunger while another grew. A whole new world had been opened to her today and she was eager to explore it further.

  They ate hurriedly and excused themselves the instant they were finished, like schoolchildren hurrying out to play before dark. From the table it was a race to the second floor, Magda ahead, laughing, leading Glenn to her room this time. Her bed. As soon as the door closed behind them they were pulling at each other's clothes, throwing them in all directions, then clutching each other in the growing dark.

  As she lay in his arms hours later, fully spent, at peace with herself and the world as she had never been before, Magda knew she was in love. Magda Cuza, the spinster bookworm, in love. Never, anywhere, at any time, had there been another man like Glenn. And he wanted her. She loved him. She hadn't said so, and neither had he. She felt she should wait until he said it first. It might not be for a while, but that was all right. She could tell he felt it, too, and that was enough.

  She snuggled more closely against him. Today alone was enough for the rest of her life. It was almost gluttonous to look forward to tomorrow. Yet she did. Avidly. Surely no one had ever derived so much pleasure from body and emotions as she had today. No one. Tonight she went to sleep a different Magda Cuza than the one who had awakened in this very bed this morning. It seemed so long ago ... a lifetime ago. And that other Magda seemed like such a stranger now. A sleepwalker, really. The new Magda was wide awake and in love. Everything was going to be all right.

  Magda closed her eyes. Faintly, she heard the cheeping of the baby birds outside the window. Their peeps were fainter than this morning and seemed to have taken on a desperate quality. But before she could wonder about what might be wrong, she was asleep.

  He looked at Magda's face in the dark. Peaceful and innocent. The face of a sleeping child. He tightened his arms around her, afraid she might slip away.

  He should have kept his distance; he had known that all along. But he had been drawn to her. He had let her stir the ashes of feelings he had thought long dead and gone, and she had found live coals beneath. And then this morning, in the heat of his anger at finding her snooping through
his closet, the coals had burst into flame.

  It was almost like fate. Like kismet. He had seen and experienced far too much to believe that anything was truly ordained to be. There were, however, certain ... inevitabilities. The difference was subtle, yet most important.

  Still, it was wrong to let her care when he didn't even know if he would be walking away from here. Perhaps that was why he had been driven to be with her. If he died here, at least the taste of her would be fresh upon him. He couldn't afford to care now. Caring could distract him, further reducing his chances of surviving the coming battle. And yet if he did manage to survive, would Magda want anything to do with him when she knew the truth about him?

  He drew the cover over her bare shoulder. He did not want to lose her. If there were any way to keep her after all this was over, he would do everything he could to find it.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  The Keep

  Friday, 1 May

  2137 hours

  Captain Woermann sat before his easel. It had been his intention to force himself to blot out that shadow of the hanging corpse. But now, with his palette in his left hand and a tube of pigment in his right, he found himself unwilling to change it. Let the shadow remain. It didn't matter. He would leave the painting behind anyway. He wanted no reminders of this place when he departed. If he departed.

  Outside, the keep lights were on full force, the men on guard in pairs, armed to the teeth and ready to shoot at the slightest provocation. Woermann's own weapon lay on his bedroll, holstered and forgotten.

  He had developed his own theory about the keep, not one he took seriously, but one that fit most of the facts and explained most of the mysteries. The keep was alive. That would explain why no one had even seen what killed the men, and why no one could track it down, and why no one had been able to find its hiding place despite all the walls they had torn down. It was the keep itself doing the killing.

  One fact was left dangling by this explanation, however. A major fact. The keep had not been malevolent when they had entered, at least not in a way one could sense. True, birds seemed to avoid nesting here, but Woermann had felt nothing wrong until that first night when the cellar wall had been broached. The keep had changed then. It had become bloodthirsty.

  No one had fully explored the subcellar. There really didn't seem to be any reason to. Men had been on guard in the cellar while a comrade had been murdered above them, and they had seen nothing coming or going through the break in the floor. Maybe they should explore the subcellar. Perhaps the keep's heart lay buried in those caverns. That's where they should search. No ... that could take forever. Those caverns could extend for miles, and frankly, no one really wanted to search them. It was always night down there. And night had become a dread enemy. Only the corpses were willing to stay.

  The corpses ... with their dirty boots and smudged shrouds. They still bothered Woermann at the oddest times. Like now. And all day long, ever since he had overseen the placement of the last two dead soldiers, those dirty boots had trudged unbidden into his thoughts, scattering them, smearing them with mud.

  Those dirty, muddy boots. They made him uncomfortable in a way he could not pin down.

  He continued to sit and stare at the painting.

  Kaempffer sat cross-legged on his cot, a Schmeisser across his knees. A shiver rippled over him. He tried to still it but didn't have strength. He had never realized how exhausting constant fear could be.

  He had to get out of here!

  Blow up the keep tomorrow—that's what he should do! Set the charges and reduce it to gravel after lunch. That way he could spend Saturday night in Ploiesti in a bunk with a real mattress and not worry about every sound, every vagrant current of air. No more would he have to sit and shake and sweat and wonder what might be making its way down the hall to his door.

  But tomorrow was too soon. It wouldn't look good on his record. He wasn't due in Ploiesti until Monday and would be expected to use up all the available time until then to solve the problem here. Blowing up the keep was the last resort, to be considered only when all else failed. The High Command had ordered that this pass be watched and had designated the keep as the chosen watchpoint. Destruction had to be the last resort.

  He heard the measured treads of a pair of einsatzkommandos pass his locked door. The hallway out there was doubly guarded. He had made sure of that. Not that there was the slightest chance a stream of lead from a Schmeisser could actually stop whatever was behind the killings here—he simply hoped the guards would be taken first, thereby sparing him another night. And those guards had better stay awake and on duty, no matter how tired they were! He had driven the men hard today to dismantle the rear section of the keep, concentrating their efforts on the area around his quarters. They had opened every wall within fifty feet of where he now huddled, and had found nothing. There were no secret passages leading to his room, no hiding places anywhere.

  He shivered again.

  The cold and the darkness came as they had before, but Cuza was feeling too weak and sick tonight to turn his chair around and face Molasar. He was out of codeine and the pain in his joints was a steady agony.

  "How do you enter and leave this room?" he asked for want of anything better to say. He had been facing the hinged slab that opened into the base of the watchtower, assuming Molasar would arrive through there. But Molasar had somehow appeared behind him.

  "I have my own means of moving about which does not require doors or secret passages. A method quite beyond your comprehension."

  "Along with many other things," Cuza said, unable to keep the despair from his voice.

  It had been a bad day. Beyond the unremitting pain was the sick realization that this morning's glimmer of hope for a reprieve for his people had been a chimera, a useless pipe dream. He had planned to bargain with Molasar, to strike a deal. But for what? The end of the major? Magda had been right this morning: Stopping Kaempffer would only delay the inevitable; his death might even make the situation worse. There would most certainly be vicious reprisals on Romanian Jews if an SS officer sent to set up a death camp were brutally murdered. And the SS would merely send another officer to Ploiesti, maybe next week, maybe next month. What did it matter? The Germans had plenty of time. They were winning every battle, overrunning one country after another. There did not seem to be any way of stopping them. And when they finally held the seats of power in all the countries they wanted, they could pursue their insane leader's goals of racial purity at their leisure.

  In the long run there was nothing a crippled history professor could do that would make the least bit of difference.

  And worsening it all was the insistent knowledge that Molasar feared the cross ...feared the cross!

  Molasar glided around into his field of vision and stood there studying him. Strange, Cuza thought. Either I've immersed myself in such a morass of self-pity that I'm insulated from him, or I'm getting used to Molasar. Tonight he did not feel the crawling sensation that always accompanied Molasar's presence. Maybe he just didn't care anymore.

  "I think you may die," Molasar said without preamble.

  The bluntness of the words jolted Cuza. "At your hands?"

  "No. At your own."

  Could Molasar read minds? Cuza's thoughts had dwelt on that very subject for most of the afternoon. Ending his life would solve so many problems. It would set Magda free. Without him to hold her back, she could flee into the hills and escape Kaempffer, the Iron Guard, and all the rest. Yes, the idea had occurred to him. But he still lacked the means ... and the resolve.

  Cuza averted his gaze. "Perhaps. But if not by my own doing, then soon in Major Kaempffer's death camp."

  "Death camp?" Molasar leaned forward into the light, his brow furrowed in curiosity. "A place where people gather to die?"

  "No. A place where people are dragged off to be murdered. The major will be setting up one such camp not far south of here."

  "To kill Wallachians?" Sudden fury drew Molasar's
lips back from his abnormally long teeth. "A German is here to kill my people?"

  "They are not your people," Cuza said, unable to shake his despondency. The more he thought about it, the worse he felt. "They are Jews. Not the sort you would concern yourself with."

  "I shall decide what concerns me! But Jews? There are no Jews in Wallachia—at least not enough to matter."

  "When you built the keep that was true. But in the following century we were driven here from Spain and the rest of western Europe. Most settled in Turkey, but many strayed into Poland and Hungary and Wallachia."

  " 'We?' " Molasar looked puzzled. "You are a Jew?"

  Cuza nodded, half expecting a blast of anti-Semitism from the ancient boyar. Instead, Molasar said, "But you are a Wallachian, too."

  "Wallachia was joined with Moldavia into what is now called Romania."

  "Names change. Were you born here? Were these other Jews who are destined for the death camps?"

  "Yes, but—"

  "Then they are Wallachians!"

  Cuza sensed Molasar's patience growing short, yet he had to speak: "But their ancestors were immigrants."

  "It matters not! My grandfather came from Hungary. Am I, who was born on this soil, any less a Wallachian for that? "

  "No, of course not." This was a senseless conversation. Let it end.

  "Then neither are these Jews you speak of. They are Wallachians, and as such they are my countrymen!" Molasar straightened up and threw back his shoulders. "No German may come into my country and kill my countrymen!"

  Typical! Cuza thought.I bet he never objected to his fellow boyars' depredations among the Wallachian peasants during his day. And he obviously never objected to Vlad's impalements. It was all right for the Wallachian nobility to decimate the populace, but don't let a foreigner dare!