The Keep by F. Paul Wilson
THE KEEP
F. Paul Wilson
A TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOK
New York
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To Al Zuckerman
PROLOGUE
WARSAW, POLAND
Monday, 28 April 1941
0815 hours
A year and a half ago another name had graced the door, a Polish name, and no doubt a title and the name of a department or bureau in the Polish government. But Poland no longer belonged to the Poles, and thick, heavy strokes of black paint had crudely obliterated the name. Erich Kaempffer paused outside the door and tried to remember the name. Not that he cared. Merely an exercise in memory. A mahogany plaque now covered the spot, but smears of black showed around its edges. It read:
SS-OBERFÜHRER W. HOSSBACH
RSHA-DIVISION OF RACE AND RESETTLEMENT
Warsaw District
He paused to compose himself. What did Hossbach want of him? Why the early morning summons? He was angry with himself for letting this upset him, but no one in the SS, no matter how secure his position, even an officer rising as rapidly as he, could be summoned to report “immediately” to a superior’s office without experiencing a spasm of apprehension.
Kaempffer took one last deep breath, masked his anxiety, and pushed through the door. The corporal who acted as General Hossbach’s secretary snapped to attention. The man was new and Kaempffer could see that the soldier didn’t recognize him. It was understandable—Kaempffer had been at Auschwitz for the past year.
“Sturmbannführer Kaempffer,” was all he said, allowing the youngster to take it from there. The corporal pivoted and strode through to the inner office. He returned immediately.
“Oberführer Hossbach will see you now, Herr Major.”
Kaempffer breezed past the corporal and stepped into Hossbach’s office to find him sitting on the edge of his desk.
“Ah, Erich! Good morning!” Hossbach said with uncharacteristic joviality. “Coffee?”
“No thank you, Wilhelm.” He had craved a cup until this very moment, but Hossbach’s smile had immediately put him on guard. Now there was a knot where an empty stomach had been.
“Very well, then. But take off your coat and get comfortable.”
The calendar said April, but it was still cold in Warsaw. Kaempffer wore his overlong SS greatcoat. He removed it and his officer’s cap slowly and hung them on the wall rack with great care, forcing Hossbach to watch him and, perhaps, to dwell on their physical differences. 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.
“Congratulations, by the way, on your promotion and on your new assignment. The Ploiesti position is quite a plum.”
“Yes.” Kaempffer maintained a neutral tone. “I just hope I can live up to Berlin’s confidence in me.”
“I’m sure you will.”
Kaempffer knew that Hossbach’s good wishes were as hollow as the promises of resettlement he made to the Polish Jews. Hossbach had wanted Ploiesti for himself—every SS officer wanted it. The opportunities for advancement and for personal profit in being commandant of the major camp in Romania were enormous. In the relentless pursuit of position within the huge bureaucracy created by Heinrich Himmler, where one eye was always fixed on the vulnerable back of the man ahead of you, and the other eye ever watchful over your shoulder at the man behind you, a sincere wish for success was a fantasy.
In the uncomfortable silence that followed, Kaempffer scanned the walls and repressed a sneer as he noted more lightly colored squares and rectangles where degrees and citations had been hung by the previous occupant. Hossbach had not redecorated. Typical of the man to try to give the impression that he was much too busy with SS matters to bother with trifles such as having the walls painted. So obviously an act. 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.
He pretended to study the large map of Poland on the wall, its face studded with colored pins representing concentrations of undesirables. This had been a busy year for Hossbach’s RSHA office; it was through here that Poland’s Jewish population was being directed toward the “resettlement center” near the rail nexus of Auschwitz. Kaempffer imagined his own office-to-be in Ploiesti, with a map of Romania on the wall, studded with his own pins. Ploiesti…there could be no doubt that Hossbach’s cheery manner boded ill. Something had gone wrong somewhere and Hossbach was going to make full use of his last few days as superior officer to rub Kaempffer’s nose in it.
“Is there some way I might be of service to you?” Kaempffer finally asked.
“Not to me, per se, but to the High Command. There is a little problem in Romania at the moment. An inconvenience, really.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. A small regular army detachment stationed in the Alps north of Ploiesti has been suffering some losses—apparently due to local partisan activity—and the officer wishes to abandon his position.”
“That’s an army matter.” Major Kaempffer didn’t like this one bit. “It has nothing to do with the SS.”
“But it does.” Hossbach reached behind him and plucked a piece of paper off his desktop. “The High Command passed this on to Obergruppenführer Heydrich’s office. I think it is rather fitting that I pass it on to you.”
“Why fitting?”
“The officer in question is Captain Klaus Woermann, the one you brought to my attention a year or so ago because of his refusal to join the Party.”
Kaempffer allowed himself an instant of guarded relief. “And since I’ll be in Romania, this is to be dumped in my lap.”
“Precisely. Your year’s tutelage at Auschwitz should have taught you not only how to run an efficient camp, but how to deal with partisan locals as well. I’m sure you’ll solve the matter quickly.”
“May I see the paper?”
“Certainly.”
Kaempffer took the proffered slip and read the two lines. Then he read them again.
“Was this decoded properly?”
“Yes. I thought the wording rather odd myself, so I had it double-checked. It’s accurate.”
Kaempffer read the message again:
Request immediate relocation.
Something is murdering my men.
A disturbing message. He had known Woermann in the Great War and would always remember him as one of the stubbornest men alive. And now, in a new war, as an officer in the Reichswehr, Woermann had repeatedly refused to join the Party despite relentless pressure. Not a man to abandon a position, strategic or otherwise, once he had assumed it. Something
But what bothered Kaempffer even more was the choice of words. Woermann was intelligent and precise. He knew his message would pass through a number of hands along the transcription and decoding route and must have been trying to get something across to the High Command without going into detail.
But what? The word “murder” implied a purposeful human agent. Why then had he preceded it with “something”? A thing—an animal, a disease, a natural disaster—could kill, but it could not murder.
“I’m sure I don’t have to tell you,” Hossbach was saying, “that since Romania is an ally state rather than an occupied territory, a certain amount of finesse will be required.”
“I’m quite well aware of that.”
A certain amount of finesse would be required in handling Woermann, too. Kaempffer had an old score to settle with him.
Hossbach tried to smile, but the attempt looked more like a leer. “All of us at RSHA, all the way up to General Heydrich, will be most interested to see how you fare in this…before you move on to the major task at Ploiesti.”
The emphasis on the word “before,” and the slight pause preceding it, were not lost on Kaempffer. Hossbach was going to turn this little side trip to the Alps into a trial by fire. Kaempffer was due in Ploiesti in one week; if he could not handle Woermann’s problem with sufficient dispatch, then it might be said that perhaps he was not the man to set up the resettlement camp at Ploiesti. There would be no shortage of candidates to take his place.
Spurred by a sudden sense of urgency, he rose and put on his coat and cap. “I foresee no problems. I’ll leave at once with two squads of einsatzkommandos. If air transport can be arranged and proper rail connections made, we can be there by this evening.”
“Excellent!” Hossbach said, returning Kaempffer’s salute. “Two squads should be sufficient to take care of a few guerrillas.” He turned and stepped to the door.
“More than sufficient, I’m sure.”
SS-Sturmbannführer Kaempffer did not hear his superior’s parting remark. Other words filled his mind: “Something is murdering my men.”
DINU PASS, ROMANIA
28 April 1941
1322 hours
Captain Klaus Woermann stepped to the south window of his room in the keep’s tower and spat a stream of white into the open air.
Goat’s milk—gah! For cheese, maybe, but not for drinking.
As he watched the liquid dissipate into a cloud of pale droplets plummeting the hundred feet or so to the rocks below, 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.
But that was not to be. Not yet, anyway. He straightened his shoulders in a typically Prussian gesture. He was taller than average and had a large frame that had once supported more muscle but was now tending toward flab. His dark brown hair was cropped close; he had wide-set eyes, equally brown; a slightly crooked nose, broken in his youth; and a full mouth capable of a toothy grin when appropriate. His gray tunic was open to the waist, allowing his small paunch to protrude. He patted it. Too much sausage. When frustrated or dissatisfied, he tended to nibble between meals, usually at a sausage. The more frustrated and dissatisfied, the more he nibbled. He was getting fat.
Woermann’s gaze came to rest on the tiny Romanian village across the gorge, basking in the afternoon sunlight, peaceful, a world away. Pulling himself from the window, he turned and walked across the room, a room lined with stone blocks, many of them inlaid with peculiar brass-and-nickel crosses. Forty-nine crosses in this room to be exact. He knew. He had counted them numerous times in the last three or four days. He walked past an easel holding a nearly finished painting, past a cluttered makeshift desk to the opposite window, the one that looked down on the keep’s small courtyard.
Below, the off-duty men of his command stood in small groups, some talking in low tones, most sullen and silent, all avoiding the lengthening shadows. Another night was coming. Another of their number would die.
One man sat alone in a corner, whittling feverishly. Woermann squinted down at the piece of wood taking shape in the carver’s hands—a crude cross. As if there weren’t enough crosses around!
The men were afraid. And so was he. Quite a turnaround in less than a week. He remembered marching them through the gates of the keep as proud soldiers of the Wehrmacht, an army that had conquered Poland, Denmark, Norway, Holland, and Belgium; and then, after sweeping the remnants of the British Army into the sea at Dunkirk, had gone on to finish off France in thirty-nine days. And just this month Yugoslavia had been overrun in twelve days, Greece in a mere twenty-one as of yesterday. Nothing could stand against them. Born victors.
But that had been last week. Amazing what six horrible deaths could do to the conquerors of the world. It worried him. During the past week the world had constricted until nothing existed for him and his men beyond this undersized castle, this tomb of stone. They had run up against something that defied all their efforts to stop it, that killed and faded away, only to return to kill again. The heart was going out of them.
They…Woermann realized that he had not included himself among them for some time. The fight had gone out of his own heart back in Poland, near the town of Posnan…after the SS had moved in and he had seen firsthand the fate of those “undesirables” left in the wake of the victorious Wehrmacht. He had protested. As a result, he had seen no further combat. Just as well. He had lost all pride that day in thinking of himself as one of the conquerors of the world.
He left the window and returned to the desk. Oblivious to the framed photographs of his wife and his two sons, he stared down at the decoded message there.
SS-Sturmbannführer Kaempffer arriving today with
detachment einsatzkommandos. Maintain present position.
Why an SS major? This was a regular army position. The SS had nothing to do with him, with the keep, or with Romania as far as he knew. But then there were so many things he failed to understand about this war. And Kaempffer, of all people! A rotten soldier, but no doubt an exemplary SS man. Why here? And why with einsatzkommandos? They were extermination squads. Death’s Head Troopers. Concentration camp muscle. Specialists in killing unarmed civilians. It was their work he had witnessed outside Posnan. Why were they coming here?
Unarmed civilians…the words lingered…and as they did, a smile crept slowly into the corners of his mouth, leaving his eyes untouched.
Let the SS come. Woermann was now convinced there was an unarmed civilian of sorts at the root of all the deaths in the keep. But not the helpless cringing sort the SS was used to. Let them come. Let them taste the fear they so dearly loved to spread. Let them learn to believe in the unbelievable.
Woermann believed. A week ago he would have laughed at the thought. But now, the nearer the sun to the horizon, the more firmly he believed…and feared.
All within a week. There had been unanswered questions when they had first arrived at the keep, but no fear. A week. Was that all? It seemed ages ago that he had first laid eyes on the keep…
ONE
IN SUMMATION: The refining complex at Ploiesti has relatively good natural protection to the north. The Dinu Pass through the Transylvanian Alps offers the only overland threat, and that a minor one. As detailed elsewhere in the report, the sparse population and spring weather conditions in the pass make it theoretically possible for a sizable armored force to make its way undetected from the southwest Russian steppes, over the southern Carpathian foothills, and through the Dinu Pass to emerge from the mountains a scant twenty miles northwest of Ploiesti with only flat plains between it and the oil fields.
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 adequa
DEFENSE ANALYSIS FOR PLOIESTI, ROMANIA
Submitted to Reichswehr High Command 1 April 1941
DINU PASS, ROMANIA
Tuesday, 22 April
1208 hours
No such thing as a long day here, no matter what the time of year, thought Woermann as he looked up the sheer mountain walls towering an easy thousand feet on either side of the pass. The sun had to climb a thirty-degree arc before it could peek over the eastern wall and could travel only ninety degrees across the sky before it was again out of sight.
The sides of the Dinu Pass were impossibly steep, as close to vertical as mountain wall could be without overbalancing and crashing down; a bleak expanse of stark, jagged slabs with narrow ledges and precipitous drops, relieved occasionally by conical collections of crumbling shale. Brown and gray, clay and granite, these were the colors, interspersed with snatches of green. Stunted trees, bare now in the early spring, their trunks gnarled and twisted by the wind, hung precariously by tenacious roots that had somehow found weak spots in the rock. They clung like exhausted mountaineers, too tired to move up or down.
Close behind his command car Woermann could hear the rumble of the two lorries carrying his men, and behind them the reassuring rattle of the supply truck with their food and weapons. All four vehicles were crawling in line along the west wall of the pass where for ages a natural shelf of rock had been used as a road. The Dinu was narrow as mountain passes go, averaging only half a mile across the floor along most of its serpentine course through the Transylvanian Alps—the least explored area of Europe. Woermann looked longingly to his right at the floor of the pass fifty feet below, flat and green and pathed along its center. The trip would have been smoother and shorter down there, but his orders warned that their destination was inaccessible to wheeled vehicles from the floor of the pass. They had to keep to the ridge road.