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THE KEEP
F. Paul Wilson
Copyright © 1981
PROLOGUE
WARSAW, POLAND Monday, 28 April 1941 0815 hours
SS-OBERFÜCHRER W. HOSSBACH RSHA-DIVISION OF RACE AND RESETTLEMENT Warsaw District
Kaempffer had been at Auschwitz for the past year.
Hossbach was portly, balding, in his early fifties. Kaempffer was a decade younger, with a tightly muscled frame and a full head of boyishly blond hair. And Erich Kaempffer was on his way up.
Kaempffer did not need to put on a show of his devotion to the SS. His every waking hour was devoted to furthering his position in the organization.
Kaempffer read the message again: Request immediate relocation. Something is murdering my men.
DINU PASS, ROMANIA 28 April 1941 1322 hours
Woermann wished for a brimming stein of good German beer. The only thing he wanted more than the beer was to be gone from this antechamber to Hell.
The more frustrated and dissatisfied, the more he nibbled. He was getting fat.
room lined with stone blocks, many of them inlaid with peculiar brass-and-nickel crosses. Forty-nine crosses in this room to be exact.
Another night was coming. Another of their number would die.
Amazing what six horrible deaths could do to the conquerors of the world. It worried him.
he stared down at the decoded message there. SS-Sturmbannfahrer Kaempffer arriving today with detachment einsatzkommandos. Maintain present position.
ONE
Because of the crucial nature of the petrol supplied by Ploiesti, it is recommended that until Operation Barbarossa is fully under way, a small watch force be set up within the Dinu Pass. As mentioned in the body of the report, there is an old fortification midway along the pass which should serve adequately as a sentry base.
DEFENSE ANALYSIS FOR PLOIESTI, ROMANIA Submitted to Reichswehr High Command 1 April 1941
DINU PASS, ROMANIA
Tuesday, 22 April 1208 hours
But the most striking feature of the small fortress was the solitary tower that formed its leading edge: flat-topped, jutting out toward the center of the pass, at least 150 feet from its notched parapet to the rocky gorge below. That was the keep.
But strange the way it looked so new…
Woermann began his recitation: "High Command considers the Dinu Pass a direct link from the steppes of Russia to all those oil fields we passed at Ploiesti. Should relations between Russia and the Reich ever deteriorate, the Russians might decide to launch a sneak attack at Ploiesti. And without that petrol, the Wehrmacht's mobility would be seriously impaired."
Woermann had found himself far too old for such infatuation. He had celebrated his forty-first birthday last month. He had watched Hitler move from beer halls, to the Chancellory, to godhood. He had never liked him.
Then he saw the crosses. The inner walls of the courtyard were studded with hundreds of them…thousands of them. All the same size and shape, all the same unusual design: The upright was a good ten inches high, squared at the top and lipped at the base; the crosspiece measured about eight inches and had a slight upward angle at each end. But the odd part was how high the crosspieces were set upon the uprights – any higher and the cross would have become an upper-case ''T."
The upright was brass and the crosspiece nickel, all skillfully inlaid into the surface of the stone block.
There were no pigeons on the walls.
He couldn’t find a single bird anywhere on the walls, the windows, or the tower.
"There are sixteen thousand eight hundred and seven such crosses imbedded in the walls of this keep," said a voice behind him.
"You cannot stay here." "And why not?" "It is forbidden."
"Then what? What drives trespassers out after only one night?" "Dreams, sir. Bad dreams. And always the same, from what I can gather…something about being trapped in a tiny room with no door and no windows and no lights…utter darkness…and cold…very cold…and something in the dark with you…colder than the dark…and hungry."
Yes, Alexandru had spent a night in the keep. But only once.
"Forty-nine rooms in all, counting the suites in the tower," Alexandru said.
"I don't recall seeing any crosses in the outer aspect of the wall."' "There aren't any. Only on the inside. And look at the blocks here. See how perfectly they fit. Not a speck of mortar is used to hold them together. All the walls in the keep are constructed this way. It's a lost art."
He drifted into sleep wondering if Alexandru's nightmare awaited him.
THE KEEP Wednesday, 23 April 0340 hours
As Lutz advanced the lamp a few more inches, the flame died. With its passing he realized he was not alone.
The horror had begun.
Yikes!
TAVlRA, PORTUGAL Wednesday, 23 April 0235 hours (Greenwich Mean Time)
He had hoped this moment would never come, had told himself time and again that it never would. But now that it was here, he realized it had been inevitable all along.
The red-haired man knelt and began to dig with his hands. A few quick, fierce movements brought him to a long, narrow, oilskin-wrapped case that he tugged and wrested from the hole.
When he had rowed past the breakers and had pulled the single sail to the top of its mast, he turned the prow east toward Gibraltar, not far away, and allowed himself a final look at the tiny starlit fishing village at the southern tip of Portugal that had been his home for the past few years.
The work had accomplished its purpose, leaving him lean and tight-muscled again after too many years of soft city living. He had made friends, but no close ones. None he could not walk away from.
He could not allow delay. He had to reach Romania as quickly as possible and had to travel the entire 2,300mile length of the Mediterranean Sea to get there.
THE KEEP Wednesday, 23 April 0435 hours
He had seen dead men before, victims of war, but this was different. This sickened him in a way the others had not. Battlefield deaths were mostly impersonal; this was not. This was horrible, mutilating death for its own sake. And in the back of his mind was the question: Is this what happens when you deface a cross in the keep?
BUCHAREST, ROMANIA Wednesday, 23 April 0455 hours
Magda was a mystery to the community. Despite her soft, even features, her smooth, pale skin and wide brown eyes, at thirty-one she remained unmarried. Magda the scholar, the devoted daughter, the nursemaid. Magda the spinster. Yet many a younger woman who was married would have envied the shape and texture of those breasts: fresh, unmarred, unsuckled, untouched by any hand but her own. Magda felt no desire to alter that.
