The strokes, Magda noticed, varied in thickness, but all were of a width consistent with a human finger. She shuddered at the thought and studied the words. She recognized the language and knew she could make the translation if only her mind would concentrate on the words and not on what their author had used for ink.
"Do you have any idea what it means?" Woermann asked.
Papa nodded. "Yes," he said, and paused, mesmerized by the display before him.
"Well?" Kaempffer said.
Magda could tell that he hated to depend on a Jew for anything, and worse to be kept waiting by one. She wished her father would be more careful about provoking him.
"It says, 'Strangers, leave my home!' It's in the imperative form." His voice had an almost mechanical quality as he spoke. He was disturbed by something about the words.
Kaempffer slapped his hand against his holster. "Ah! So the killings are politically motivated!"
"Perhaps. But this warning, or demand, or whatever you might wish to call it, is perfectly couched in Old Slavonic, a dead language. As dead as Latin. And those letters are formed just the way they were written back then. I should know. I've seen enough of the old manuscripts."
Now that Papa had identified the language, Magda's mind could focus on the words. She thought she knew what was so disturbing.
"Your killer, gentlemen," he went on, "is either a most erudite scholar, or else he has been frozen for half a millennium."
FOURTEEN
"It appears we have wasted our time," Major Kaempffer said, puffing on a cigarette as he strutted about. The four were again in the lowest level of the watchtower.
In the center of the room, Magda leaned exhaustedly against the back of the wheelchair. She sensed there was some sort of tug-of-war going on between Woermann and Kaempffer, but couldn't understand the rules or the motivations of the players. Of one thing she was certain, however: Papa's life and her own hung on the outcome.
"I disagree," Captain Woermann said. He leaned against the wall by the door, his arms folded across his chest. "As I see it, we know more than we did this morning. Not much, but at least it's progress ... we haven't been making any on our own."
"It's not enough!" Kaempffer snapped. "Nowhere near enough!"
"Very well, then. Since we have no other sources of information open to us, I think we should abandon the keep immediately."
Kaempffer made no reply; he merely continued puffing and strutting back and forth across the far end of the room.
Papa cleared his throat for attention.
"Stay out of this, Jew!"
"Let's hear what he has to say. That's why we dragged him here, isn't it?"
It was gradually becoming clear to Magda that there was a deep hostility between the two officers. She knew Papa had recognized it, too, and was surely trying to turn it to their advantage.
"I may be able to help." Papa gestured to the pile of books on the table. "As I mentioned before, the answer to your problem may lie in those books. If they do hold the answer, I am the only person who—with the aid of my daughter—can ferret it out. If you wish, I shall try."
Kaempffer stopped pacing and looked at Woermann.
"It's worth a try," Woermann said. "I for one don't have any better ideas. Do you?"
Kaempffer dropped his cigarette butt to the floor and slowly ground it out with his toe. "Three days, Jew. You have three days to come up with something useful." He strode past them and out the door, leaving it open behind him.
Captain Woermann heaved himself away from the wall and turned toward the door, his hands clasped at his back. "I'll have my sergeant arrange for a pair of bedrolls for you two." He glanced at Papa's frail body. "We have no other bedding."
"I will manage, Captain. Thank you."
"Wood," Magda said. "We'll need some wood for a fire."
"It doesn't get that cold at night," he said, shaking his head.
"My father's hands—if they act up on him, he won't even be able to turn the pages."
Woermann sighed. "I'll ask the sergeant to see what he can do—perhaps some scrap lumber." He turned to go, then turned back to them. "Let me tell you two something. The major will snuff you both out with no more thought than he gave to that cigarette he just finished. He has his own reasons for wanting a quick solution to this problem and I have mine: I don't want any more of my men to die. Find a way to get us through a single night without a death and you will have proven your worth. Find a way to defeat this thing and I may be able to get you back to Bucharest and keep you safe there."
"And then again," Magda said, "you may not." She watched his face carefully. Was he really offering them hope?
Captain Woermann's expression was grim as he echoed her words. "And then again, I may not."
After ordering wood brought to the first-level rooms, Woermann stood and thought for a moment. At first he had considered the pair from Bucharest a pitiful couple—the girl bound to her father, the father bound to his wheelchair. But as he had watched them and heard them speak, he had sensed subtle strengths within the two of them. That was good. For they both would need cores of steel to survive this place. If armed men could not defend themselves here, what hope was there for a defenseless female and a cripple?
He suddenly realized he was being watched. He could not say how he knew, but the feeling was definitely there. It was a sensation he would find unsettling in the most pleasant surroundings; but here, with the knowledge of what had been happening during the past week, it was unnerving.
Woermann peered up the steps curving away to his right. No one there. He went to the arch that opened onto the courtyard. All the lights were on out there, the pairs of sentries intent on their patrols.
Still the feeling of being watched.
He turned toward the steps, trying to shrug it off, hoping that if he moved from this spot the feeling would pass. And it did. As he climbed toward his quarters, the sensation evaporated.
But the underlying fear remained with him, the fear he lived with every night in the keep—the certainty that before morning someone was going to die horribly.
Major Kaempffer stood within the dark doorway to the rear section of the keep. He watched Woermann pause at the tower entry arch, then turn and start up the steps. Kaempffer felt an impulsive urge to follow him—to hurry back across the courtyard, run up to the third level of the tower, rap on Woermann's door.
He did not want to be alone tonight. Behind him was the stairway up to his own quarters, the place where just last night two dead men had walked in and fallen on him. He dreaded the very thought of going back there.
Woermann was the only one who could possibly be of any use to him tonight. As an officer, Kaempffer could not seek out the company of the enlisted men, and he certainly could not go sit with the Jews.
Woermann was the answer. He was a fellow officer and it was only right that they keep each other company. Kaempffer stepped out of the doorway and started briskly for the tower. But after a few paces he came to a faltering halt. Woermann would never let him through the door, let alone sit and share a glass of schnapps with him. Woermann despised the SS, the Party, and everyone associated with either. Why? Kaempffer found the attitude baffling. Woermann was pure Aryan. He had nothing to fear from the SS, Why, then, did he hate it so?
Kaempffer turned and re-entered the rear structure of the keep. There could be no rapprochement with Woermann. The man was simply too pig-headed and narrow-minded to accept the realities of the New Order. He was doomed. And the farther Kaempffer stayed away, the better.
Still ... Kaempffer needed a friend tonight. And there was no one.
Hesitantly, fearfully, he began a slow climb to his quarters, wondering if a new horror awaited him.
The fire added more than heat to the room. It added light, a warm glow that the single light bulb under its conical shade could not hope to match. Magda had spread out one of the bedrolls next to the fireplace for her father, but he was not interested. Never in the past few years had she seen him so fired, so animated. Month after month the disease had sapped his strength, burdening him with heavier and heavier fatigue until his waking hours had grown few and his sleeping hours many.
But now he seemed a new man, feverishly poring over the texts before him. Magda knew it couldn't last. His diseased flesh would soon demand rest. He was running on stolen energy. He had no reserves.
Yet Magda hesitated to insist that he rest. Lately, he had lost interest in everything, spending his days seated by the front window, staring out at the streets and seeing nothing. Doctors, when she could get one in to see him, had told her it was melancholia, common in his condition. Nothing to be done for it. Just give him aspirin for the constant ache, and codeine—when available—for the awful pains in every joint.