The Keep ac-1

by F. Paul Wilson

  "How long has he been here?"

  "Three days—since Wednesday evening." Cuza felt compelled to add: "Why? What's wrong?"

  Molasar did not answer immediately. He paced back and forth in the growing darkness beyond the candlelight—three steps this way, three steps that way, deep in thought. And then he stopped.

  "The Glaeken sect must still exist," he said in a hushed voice. "I should have known! They were always too tenacious, their zeal for world domination too fanatical for them to die out! These Nazis you speak of ... this Hitler... it all makes sense now. Of course!"

  Cuza felt it might be safe to rise. "What makes sense?"

  "The Glaeken always chose to work behind the scenes, using popular movements to hide their identity and their true aims." Molasar stood there, a towering shadow, and raised his fists. "I see it now. Lord Hitler and his followers are just another facade for the Glaeken. I've been a fool! I should have recognized their methods when you first told me about the death camps. And then that twisted cross these Nazis have painted on everything—how obvious! The Glaeken were once an arm of the Church!"

  "But Glenn—"

  "He is one of them! Not one of their puppets like the Nazis, but one of the inner circle. A true member of the Glaeken—one of its assassins!"

  Cuza felt his throat constrict. "But how can you be sure?"

  "The Glaeken breed their assassins true to a certain form: always blue eyes, always faintly olive skin, always red hair. They are trained in every method of killing, including ways of killing the undead. This one who calls himself Glenn means to see that I never leave my keep!"

  Cuza leaned against the wall, reeling at the thought of Magda in the arms of a man who was part of the real power behind Hitler. It was too fantastic to believe! And yet it all seemed to fit. That was the real horror of it—it all fit. No wonder Glenn had been so upset at hearing him say he was going to help Molasar rid the world of Hitler. It also explained Glenn's unceasing efforts to cast doubt on everything Molasar had told him. And it explained, too, why Cuza had instinctively come to loathe the red-haired man. The monster was not Molasar—it was Glenn! And at this very moment Magda was no doubt with him! Something had to be done!

  He steadied himself and looked at Molasar. Cuza could not allow himself to panic now. He needed answers before deciding what to do. "How can he possibly stop you?"

  "He knows ways ... ways perfected by his sect over centuries of conflict with my kind. He alone would be able to use my talisman against me. If he gains possession of it he will destroy me!"

  "Destroy you..." Cuza stood in a daze. Glenn could ruin everything. If Glenn destroyed Molasar it would mean more death camps, more conquests by Hitler's armies... the eradication of the Jews as a people.

  "He must be eliminated," Molasar said. "I cannot risk leaving my source of power here behind me while he is about."

  "Then do it!" Cuza said. "Kill him like you killed the others!"

  Molasar shook his head. "I am not yet strong enough to face one such as he—at least not outside these walls. I'm stronger in the keep. If there were some way to bring him here, I could deal with him. I could then see that he would never interfere with me—ever!"

  "I have it!" The solution was suddenly clear in Cuza's brain, crystallizing even as he spoke. It was so simple. "We'll have him brought here."

  Molasar's expression was dubious but interested. "By whom?"

  "Major Kaempffer will be more than happy to do it!" Cuza heard himself laugh and was startled at the sound. But why not laugh? He could not suppress his glee at the idea of using an SS major to help rid the world of Nazism.

  "Why should he want to do that?"

  "Leave it to me!"

  Cuza seated himself in the wheelchair and began rolling toward the door. His mind was working furiously. He would have to find the right way to bend the major to his way of thinking, to let Kaempffer reach the decision to bring Glenn over to the keep on his own. He wheeled himself out of the tower and into the courtyard.

  "Guard! Guard!" he shouted. Sergeant Oster hurried over immediately, two other soldiers behind him. "Get the major!" he called, puffing with feigned exertion. "I must speak to him immediately!"

  "I'll relay the message," the sergeant said, "but don't expect him to come running." The other two soldiers grinned at this.

  "Tell him I've learned something important about the keep, something that must be acted upon tonight. Tomorrow may be too late!"

  The sergeant looked at one of the privates and jerked his head toward the rear of the keep. "Move!" To the other, he gestured toward the wheelchair. "Let's see to it that Major Kaempffer doesn't have to walk too far to see what the professor has to say."

  Cuza was wheeled as far across the courtyard as the rubble would allow, then left to wait. He sat quietly, composing what he would say. After many long minutes, Kaempffer appeared at the opening in the rear wall, his head bare. He was obviously annoyed.

  "What do you have to tell me, Jew?" he called.

  "It's of utmost importance, Major," Cuza replied, weakening his voice so Kaempffer would have to strain to hear. "And not for shouting."

  As Major Kaempffer picked his way through the maze of fallen stone, his lips were moving, indubitably forming silent curses.

  Cuza had not realized how much he would enjoy this little charade.

  Kaempffer finally arrived at the wheelchair's side and waved the others away. "This had better be good, Jew. If you've brought me out here for nothing—"

  "I believe I've discovered a new source of information about the keep," Cuza told him in a low, conspiratorial tone. "There's a stranger over at the inn. I met him today. He seems very interested in what is going on here—too interested. He questioned me very closely on it this morning."

  "Why should that interest me?"

  "Well, he made a few statements which struck me as odd. So odd that I looked into the forbidden books when I returned and found references there which backed up his statements."

  "What statements?"

  "They are unimportant in themselves. What is important is that they indicate that he knows more about the keep than he's telling. I think he may be connected in some way to the people who are paying for the keep's maintenance."

  Cuza paused to let this settle in. He didn't want to overburden the major with information. After sufficient time, he added:

  "If I were you, Major, I would ask the gentleman to stop in tomorrow for a chat. Maybe he would be good enough to tell us something."

  Kaempffer sneered. "You aren't me, Jew! I do not waste my time asking dolts to visit—and I don't wait until morning!" He turned and gestured to Sergeant Oster. "Get four of my troopers down here on the double!" Then back to Cuza: "You'll come along with us to assure we arrest the right man."

  Cuza hid his smile. It was all so simple—so hellishly simple.

  "Another objection that my father has is that you're not a Jew," Magda said. The two of them were still seated amid the dying leaves, facing the keep. Dusk was deepening and the keep had all its lights on.

  "He's right."

  "What is your religion?"

  "I have none."

  "But you must have been born into one."

  Glenn shrugged. "Perhaps. If so, I've long since forgotten it."

  "How can you forget something like that?"

  "Easy."

  She was beginning to feel annoyed at his insistence on frustrating her curiosity.

  "Do you believe in God, Glenn?"

  He turned and flashed the smile that never failed to move her. "I believe in you... isn't that enough?"

  Magda leaned against him. "Yes. I suppose it is."

  What was she to do with this man who was so unlike her yet stirred her emotions so? He seemed well educated, even erudite, yet she could not imagine him ever opening a book. He exuded strength, yet with her he could be so gentle.

  Glenn was a tangled mass of contradictions. Yet Magda felt she had found in him the man wit
h whom she wanted to share her life. And the life she pictured with Glenn was nothing like anything she had ever imagined in the past. No cool lingering days of quiet scholarship in this future, but rather endless nights of tangled limbs and heated passion. If she were to have a life after the keep, she wanted it to be with Glenn.

  She didn't understand how this man could affect her so. All she knew was how she felt ... and she desperately wanted to be with him. Always. To cling to him through the night and bear his children and see him smile at her the way he had a moment ago.

  But he wasn't smiling now. He was staring at the keep. Something was tormenting him terribly, eating away at him from the inside. Magda wanted to share that pain, ease it if she could. But she was helpless until he opened up to her. Perhaps now was the time to try...

  "Glenn," she said softly. "Why are you really here?"

  Instead of answering, he pointed to the keep. "Something's happening."

  Magda looked. In the light that poured from the main gate as it opened, six figures could be seen on the causeway, one of them in a wheelchair.

  "Where could they be going with Papa?" she asked, tension tightening her throat.

  "To the inn, most likely. It's the only thing within walking distance."

  "They've come for me," Magda said. It was the only explanation that occurred to her.

  "No, I doubt that. They wouldn't have brought your father along if they meant to drag you back to the keep. They have something else in mind."

  Chewing her lower lip uneasily, Magda watched the knot of dark figures move along the causeway over the rising river of fog, flashlights illuminating their way. They were passing not twenty feet away when Magda whispered to Glenn.

  "Let's stay hidden until we know what they're after."

  "If they don't find you they may think you've run off ... and they may take their anger out on your father. If they decide to search for you, they'll find you—we're trapped between here and the edge of the gorge. Nowhere to go. Better to go out and meet them."

  "And you?"

  "I'll be here if you need me. But for now I think the less they see of me the better."

  Reluctantly, Magda rose and pushed her way through the brush. The group had already passed by the time she reached the road. She watched them before speaking. There was something wrong here. She could not say what, but neither could she deny the feeling of danger that stole over her as she stood there on the side of the path. The SS major was there, and the troopers were SS, too; yet Papa appeared to be traveling with them willingly, even appeared to be making small talk. It must be all right.

  "Papa?"

  The soldiers, even the one assigned to pushing the wheelchair, spun around as one, weapons raised and leveled. Papa spoke to them in rapid German.

  "Hold—please! That is my daughter! Let me speak to her."

  Magda hurried to his side, skirting the menacing quintet of black uniformed shapes. When she spoke she used the Gypsy dialect.

  "Why have they brought you here?"

  He answered her in kind: "I'll explain later. Where's Glenn?"

  "In the bushes behind me." She replied without hesitation. After all, it was Papa who was asking. "Why do you want to know?"

  Papa immediately turned to the major and spoke in German. "Over there!" He was pointing to the very spot Magda had told him. The four troopers quickly fanned out into a semicircle and began moving into the brush.

  Magda gaped in shock at her father. "Papa, what are you doing?" She instinctively moved toward the brush but he gripped her wrist.

  "It's all right," he told her, reverting to the Gypsy dialect. "I learned only a few moments ago that Glenn is one of them!"

  Magda heard her own voice speaking Romanian. She was too appalled by her father's treachery to reply in anything but her native tongue.

  "No! That's—"

  "He belongs to a group that directs the Nazis, that is using them for its own foul ends! He's worse than a Nazi!"

  "That's a lie!" Papa's gone mad!

  "No it's not! And I'm sorry to be the one to tell you. But better you hear it from me now than later when it's too late!"

  "They'll kill him!" she cried as panic filled her. Frantically, she tried to pull away. But Papa held her tight with his newfound strength, all the time whispering to her, filling her ears with awful things:

  "No! They'll never kill him. They'll just take him over for questioning, and that's when he'll be forced to reveal his link with Hitler so as to save his skin." Papa's eyes were bright, feverish, his voice intense as he spoke. "And that's when you'll thank me, Magda! That's when you'll know I did this for you!"

  "You've done it for yourself!" she screamed, still trying to twist free of his grip. "You hate him because—"

  There was shouting in the brush, some minor scuffling, and then Glenn was led out into the open at gunpoint by two of the troopers. He was soon surrounded by all four of them, each with an automatic weapon trained on Glenn's middle.

  "Leave him alone!" Magda cried, lunging toward the group. But Papa's grip on her wrist would not yield.

  "Stay back, Magda," Glenn said, his expression grim in the dusky light as his eyes bored into Papa's. "You'll accomplish nothing by getting yourself shot."

  "How gallant!" Kaempffer said from behind her.

  "And all a show!" Papa whispered.

  "Take him across and we'll find out what he knows."

  The troopers prodded Glenn toward the causeway with the muzzles of their weapons. He was just a dim figure now, backlit in the glow from the keep's open gate. He walked steadily until he reached the causeway, then appeared to stumble on its leading edge and fall forward. Magda gasped and then saw that he hadn't actually fallen—he was diving for the side of the causeway. What could he possibly—? She suddenly realized what he intended. He was going to swing over the side and try to hide beneath the causeway—perhaps even try to climb down the rocky wall of the gorge under protection of its overhang.

  Magda began to run forward. God, let him escape! If he could just get under the causeway he would be lost in the fog and darkness. By the time the Germans could bring scaling ropes to go after him, Glenn might be able to reach the floor of the gorge and be on his way—if he didn't slip and fall to his death.

  Magda was within a dozen feet of the scene when the first Schmeisser burped a spray of bullets at Glenn. Then the others chorused in, lighting the night with then-muzzle flashes, deafening her with their prolonged roar as she skidded to a stop, watching in open-mouthed horror as the wooden planking of the causeway burst into countless flying splinters. Glenn was leaning over the edge of the causeway when the first bullets caught him. She saw his body twist and jerk as streams of lead stitched red perforations in lines across his legs and back, saw him twitch and spin around with the impact of the bullets, saw more red lines crisscross his chest and abdomen. He went limp. His body seemed to fold in on itself as he fell over the edge.

  He was gone.

  The next few moments were a nightmare as Magda stood paralyzed and temporarily blinded by the afterimages of the flashes. Glenn could not be dead—he couldn't be! It wasn't possible! He was too alive to be dead! It was all a bad dream and soon she would awaken in his arms. But for now she must play out the dream: She must force herself forward, screaming silently through air that had thickened to clear jelly.

  Oh no! Oh-no-oh-no-oh-no!

  She could only think the words—speech was utterly impossible.

  The soldiers were at the rim of the gorge, flashing their hand lamps down into the fog when she reached them. She pushed through to the edge but saw nothing below. She fought an urge to leap after Glenn, turning instead on the soldiers and flailing her fists against the nearest one, striking him on the chest and face. His reaction was automatic, almost casual. With the slightest tightening of his lips as the only warning, he brought the short barrel of his Schmeisser around and slammed it against the side of her head.

  The world spun as she went
down. She lost her breath as she struck the ground. Papa's voice came from far off, calling her name. Blackness surged around her but she fought it off long enough to see him being wheeled onto the causeway and back toward the keep. He was twisted around in his chair, looking back at her, shouting.

  "Magda! It will be all right—you'll see! Everything will work out for the best and then you'll understand! Then you'll thank me! Don't hate me, Magda!"

  But Magda did hate him. She swore to always hate him. That was her last thought before the world slipped away.

  An unidentified man had been shot resisting arrest and had fallen into the gorge. Woermann had seen the smug faces of the einsatzkommandos as they marched back into the keep. And he had seen the distraught look on the professor's face. Both were understandable: The former had killed an unarmed man, the thing they did best; the latter for the first time in his life had witnessed a senseless killing.

  But Woermann could not explain Kaempffer's angry, disappointed expression. He stopped him in the courtyard.

  "One man? All that shooting for one man?"

  "The men are edgy," Kaempffer said, obviously edgy himself. "He shouldn't have tried to get away."

  "What did you want him for?"

  "The Jew seemed to think he knew something about the keep."

  "I don't suppose you told him that he was only wanted for questioning."

  "He tried to escape."

  "And the net result is that you now know no more than you did before. You probably frightened the poor man out of his wits. Of course he ran! And now he can't tell you anything! You and your kind will never learn."

  Kaempffer turned toward his quarters without replying, leaving Woermann alone in the courtyard. The blaze of anger that Kaempffer usually provoked did not ignite this time. All he felt was cold resentment... and resignation.