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The blood – Flick's and Waltz's blood – used as ink for the words had dried to a reddish brown. Many of the letters were either crudely formed or were not like any letters he had ever seen. Others were recognizable. As a whole, they were incomprehensible. Yet they had to mean something.
"Here it is! He has been here three times in the past ten years, each time sicker than the last, each time with his daughter. He is a great teacher at the University of Bucharest. An expert in the history of this region."
"Who is he?" "Professor Theodor Cuza."
"What is the joke, Captain?" "This Professor Cuza," Woermann said, his laughter fading but the mocking smile remaining on his lips, "the man who might possibly know something that could keep a few of us alive…he's a Jew!" Renewed laughter echoed from the captain as he walked away.
BUCHAREST Tuesday, 29 April 1020 hours
"We are looking for Theodor Cuza." His eyes lingered on Magda's face. "Where is he?" "I am he," Papa said.
"Is this true? This is Professor Theodor Cuza, formerly of the University of Bucharest?"
–you will be escorted to the Dinu Pass."
"Magda…these men mean to take me. If I am to survive, you must come along with me." He looked up at her, his eyes commanding. "You must."
I've always loved the Dinu Pass. It's as good a place to die as any.
"This chance will never come again. We've been in the Alps many times. You know the Dinu Pass well. Summer's coming. You can hide for a while and then make your way south."
She sighed. She wouldn't give up. Not yet. Things were bad and would probably get worse. But it wasn't over. It was never over as long as one could hope.
"I've tried to make sense of it, but I cannot. Just as I cannot make sense of this forced trip to the Dinu Pass. The only thing of interest there is the keep, but that is of interest only to the likes of you and me. Not to Germans."
Magda bent and looked through the glass. She saw four men in black military uniforms standing on the station platform and felt weak. She had heard enough about the German SS to recognize its members when she saw them.
KARABURUN, TURKEY Tuesday, 29 April 1802 hours
It would be 250 miles due north of here to the Danube Delta, and almost 200 more west from there overland to the Dinu Pass. If not for this idiot war, he could have hired an airplane and been there long before now.
He of all people should have known how rare indeed it was for anything to be permanent.
THE KEEP Tuesday, 29 April 1752 hours
"I will do what I can," he said gravely, "but first you must tell me everything that has happened here. Perhaps I can come up with a more realistic explanation."
“The simplest solution is to leave."
"You mean you're contacting the Mediterranean Bank in Zurich? Don't waste your time, I've already been there. The money comes from a trust account set up in the last century when the bank was founded; expenses for maintenance of the keep are paid from interest on the money in the account. And before that, I believe, it was paid through a similar account in a different bank, possibly in a different country…the innkeepers' records over the generations leave much to be desired. But the fact is there is no link anywhere to the person or persons who opened the account; the money is to be held and
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She picked up a random volume. Its title was in English: The Book of Eibon. It startled her. It couldn't be…it was a joke!
"Those books!" she said, unable to hide her shock and revulsion. "They're not even supposed to exist!"
"The Pnakotic Manuscripts, in scroll form! The du Nord translation of The Book of Eibon! The Seven Cryptical Books of Hsan! And here – Unaussprechlichen Kulten by von Juntz! These books are priceless! They've been universally suppressed and forbidden through the ages, so many copies burned that only whispers of their titles have remained. In some cases, it has been questioned whether they ever existed at all! But there they are, perhaps the last surviving copies!"
They were purported to describe foul rites and contacts with forces beyond reason and sanity.
"These books you see before you have been condemned through the ages as evil. I deny that. I say they are not evil, but are about evil. The one in my hands right now is especially feared – the Al Azif in the original Arabic."
German men apparently had many things in common with their Romanian counterparts. She wondered if all men were the same.
Magda realized she had never seen a bird here in all her trips, and it had never occurred to her that their absence was wrong…until now.
"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.
"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.”
"Your killer, gentlemen," he went on, "is either a most erudite scholar, or else has been frozen for half a millennium."
"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."
"Three days, Jew. You have three days to come up with something useful."
"A vampire?" Papa made a tiny gesture with his immobile shoulders. "Who can even say what a vampire might really be? There's been so much folklore about them, who can tell where reality leaves off – assuming there was some reality involved – and myth begins? But there's so much vampire lore in Transylvania and Moldavia that something around here must have engendered it. At the core of every tall tale lies a kernel of truth."
He had a broad forehead. Long, lank black hair hung in thick strands on either side of his face, strands like dead snakes attached by their teeth to his scalp. Pale skin, sunken cheeks, and a hooked nose. Thin lips were drawn back to reveal yellowed teeth, long and almost canine in quality. But his eyes, gripping Magda more fiercely than the icy hand on her arm, killed off her wailing cry and stilled her frantic struggles. His eyes. Large and round, cold and crystalline, the pupils dark holes into a chaos beyond reason, beyond reality itself, black as a night sky that had never been blued by
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"What was it? My God, what was it?"
"The Nazis! They're toying with us! Experimenting on us! I don't know what just happened here…it was very realistic, but it wasn't real! Couldn't have been! They hypnotized us, used drugs, dimmed the lights–”
"I spoke to him in Old Slavonic…told him we were not his enemies…told him to leave us alone…and he left.”
"It's him, Magda. I know it! It's him!"
THE KEEP Wednesday, 30 April 0622 hours
As Woermann crossed the courtyard with the sergeant hurrying behind him, Oster said, "Do you think the Jews are responsible?" "For what?" "For nobody dying last night."
He waited for the slightest sign of a forward rush, his hand ready to draw his Luger. He would never have imagined himself capable of shooting another German soldier, but something inside him hungered to kill this man, to strike out through him at everything that was wrong with the Fatherland, the army, his career.
What was happening to him? He had never hated before. He had killed in battle, at long range and face to face, but never with hatred. It was an uncomfortable, disorienting sensation, as if a stranger had taken up residence unbidden in his home and he could not find a way to make him leave.
"There were no deaths last night!" Cuza said. "It must have been one of those incantations I was reading!"
She locked eyes with her father and a signal seemed to pass between them, perhaps the tiniest nod from the old man, then her face lit up.
him and strode through the door. Woermann took one last look at the professor and his daughter before following. They were hiding something, those two. Whether about the keep itself or the murderous entity that stalked its corridors at night, he could not say. And right now it really didn't matter. As long as no more of his men died in the night, the pair were welcome to their secret.
"The escape route lies right below our feet. Remember?" Her eyes widened. "Oh, yes. I'd forgotten about that!" "How could you forget? You found it."
Beyond that, there was the apparition they had encountered last night. Cuza was sure it would return with the passing of the day, and he did not want Magda here when it did. Something in its eyes had caused fear to grip his heart like an icy fist. Such an unspeakable hunger there…he wanted Magda far away tonight.
He had to remain in the keep until he had learned all he could from the being that dwelt here. Then the Germans could do what they wished with him.
THE DANUBE DELTA, EASTERN ROMANIA Wednesday, April 30 1035 hours.
