Ruby Red Death

One

August, 1944

The German SS office for the control of internal affairs in Romania was located in Bucharest, at 9 Straulesti Street. It was a three-story, gray stone building. Inside, the floors were chopped up into little cubicles designed to hold mostly file cabinets and few people.

Every hour on the hour for the last three days, Greta Schell left her cubicle and walked briskly down a long corridor to the office of the area commander, SS Gruppenführer Graf von Wassner.

It was four o’clock on the afternoon of August the twelfth. Greta ripped the last coded report from the machine and moved quickly. Her heels tapped heavily on the wooden floors bleached with too much scrubbing.

She knocked once on the glass pane of the door and entered without a command. Wordlessly, she placed the report on the desk and stepped back to gauge its effect.

Von Wassner scanned the latest news quickly, and then read it a second time.

Dressed in the stark black uniform with the twin bolts of lightning on his collar, von Wassner was a striking figure. He stood to pace the room.

He was even more splendid to watch in motion than in repose. His thick blond hair and gray eyes glistened under the harsh lights as he walked with the lithe assurance of an acrobat. At forty-three he looked no more than thirty-five, and carried himself as if he felt another ten years younger than that.

Watching him, Greta Schell felt the same desire she had felt the first time she had slept with him a year before.

His voice, when he spoke, was a rumbling bass. “Hitler is an idiot and Himmler is his ass-kisser!”

“It is bad?”

He looked up. “Worse than bad. It is terrible. The partisans have linked up with the Red Army. They are in the Transylvanian Alps and pushing south.”

The woman’s lips quivered. “How long?”

“Two days, three at the most. Our mighty Führer has ordered us to hold Bucharest to the last man.”

“Can we still get across the Danube to the sea?” Greta whispered.

Von Wassner nodded. “I think so. Order Dieter to bring the car around.”

Greta Schell hurried from the office. Despite the horror of the moment, she had a slight smile on her lips.

He had not mentioned his wife in Berlin. She, Greta Schell, had replaced her. Together, she and the count would be safe in South America.

Graf von Wassner stepped from the black Mercedes and leaned back through the window. “Take Fräulein Schell to her flat and return for me in an hour.”

“Ja, Herr Gruppenführer.”

The count hurried up the three flights, unlocked the door to his flat, and shoved it open.

One step into the room, von Wassner froze. Sitting in a chair, his hands folded across his fat paunch, was the head of the Bucharest Abwehr, Hermann Eisling.

Could the man know?

Von Wassner ignored the knot in his gut, shut the door, and stepped forward. He managed a look of contempt as he lit a cigarette.

“What the hell are you doing in my flat, Herr Eisling?”

“Waiting for you, of course.”

“You have a key?”

“Locks are conceived by fools,” the other man said with a shrug.

Von Wassner stepped to a nearby table and angrily extinguished the cigarette. “I’ve had a difficult day. What do you want?”

“Each day, in these times, is a difficult day.”

“Dammit, Eisling—”

“I know,” the Abwehr man interrupted.

“What?”

“I know of your plans. I know that you have purchased Portuguese passports for yourself and Fräulein Schell. I know that you have stolen a great amount of American dollars and English pounds sterling...”

Von Wassner bristled. “Eisling, do you know what you’re saying?”

“Every word of it. I know that you plan to drive across the Danube to the Black Sea at Constanta. There, you will—”

He was wearing a pair of blue trousers and a large turtleneck sweater, both of which showed his flab to disadvantage. Von Wassner took a firm hold on the bulk of the sweater, just under his chin, and yanked him up to a convenient position. He backhanded him across the mouth with his right hand. Then he let him have one from the opposite direction. He repeated the action half a dozen times. It was like hitting a punching bag. Eisling’s head moved with the blows but he didn’t resist, just hung loosely where he was held.

He whimpered once, and von Wassner let go of him. He flopped back down into the chair.

“What do you want?” von Wassner hissed.

Eisling didn’t answer. Instead he took a handkerchief from one of his side trouser pockets and began dabbing at the blood that flowed from his nose and mouth and at the tears rolling down his cheeks.

“That wasn’t necessary, Gruppenführer.”

Von Wassner’s foot shot forward. His toe connected squarely with Eisling’s knee. The fat man squealed in pain and rolled from the chair to the floor.

“When I ask you a question, you answer me. Don’t fuck around with it. Just answer.”

“I want to come with you,” Eisling whined.

Von Wassner yanked him to his feet. “You are a fool.”

“Herr Gruppenführer, you might as well know that I am an intelligent man and I accept the fact that I am a physical coward, so I won’t fight you.”

Von Wassner threw him back into the chair in disgust. From the holster at his belt he withdrew a 9mm Luger, cocked it, and placed the muzzle against the Abwehr man’s head.

“I have to kill you.”

“No, no, wait!” Eisling’s lower lip quivered and more tears appeared on his cheeks. “The funds you have secured for your escape are not large. They are merely a fraction of what I can offer if you take me with you.”

Von Wassner’s grip relaxed slightly on the pistol. “What are you talking about?”

Eisling squirmed around in the chair, pulling himself together. He balled up the handkerchief and held it tightly in a fist as the arrogance began drifting back into his expression.

“I know where there are enough jewels to last both of us a lifetime, ten lifetimes. They are here, not more than an hour’s drive from Bucharest.”

As he watched the change of expression in the other man’s eyes, he pulled a fresh cigar from a breast pocket and rolled it between his fingers. Now the arrogance pervaded his features.

“Why haven’t these jewels already been confiscated?” von Wassner demanded.

“Two reasons. The first, because their owner has been very helpful to our cause. The second reason is because I have deleted all records of them from my reports. Only the family, myself, and Canaris know of their existence.”

Von Wassner thought about it. As head of the Abwehr, Admiral Canaris was an honest military man. Unlike Goring, Canaris cared nothing about raping the countries that the Third Reich had conquered.

“Who is the family?” von Wassner asked.

“A very highly placed Romanian family, anti-Bolshevik.”

“You have proof of this?”

“I can lead you directly to them.”

“I didn’t ask you that,” von Wassner barked. “Do you have proof?”

Eisling ignored the question. Calmly, he started to light his cigar. Von Wassner brought the barrel of the Luger down across the other man’s head, just hard enough to stun but not enough to crush the skull.

“The proof, Eisling!”

“The report,” Eisling rasped. “I have the only original copy of the report... the one I never filed!”

“Where is it? I want to see it.”

Von Wassner softened his voice, the way he did when interrogating a prisoner. When no answer came, he hit Eisling again, this time across the temple, harder.

“No!” the man whimpered, falling to his knees, a hand covering the place where von Wassner had struck him.

“Yes, you fat pig! Do you think I would gamble taking you along without knowing you’re worth it?”

It was in the Abwehr man’s eyes: fear, desperation, survival. He telegraphed the move a full second before he made it. His hand had snaked down to his ankle and come up with a small pistol. As he came out of the chair, von Wassner shot him low in the groin.

Eisling screamed as the blood ran out over his pants. Von Wassner bent down. The man moaned softly in German. He tried to scream again, but it came out as a moan and what sounded like “Bitte.” Von Wassner placed the gun under his ear. Nearby, a truck rattled over the old cobblestones and a horn blew loud and long. They made so much noise that von Wassner felt the recoil and saw the skull explode more than he heard the shot.

He searched Eisling’s pockets and found only his identification and the usual paraphernalia. The man’s jacket was hung on a nearby chair. He shredded the lining, and found a thick envelope.

One quick scan of its contents told him that he had struck gold. Or, better yet, a fortune in jewels.

In the rear of the Mercedes, von Wassner, a penlight in his right hand, studied the Romanovsky file.

Prince Valentin Romanovsky had fled from Russia during the Bolshevik revolution. In Romania he married the only surviving heir to the powerful house of Cimpeni, Princess Sophia. While the other royal houses fell to financial ruin after World War I, Romanovsky survived and prospered. The reason for this was the tremendous borrowing power of the merged Romanovsky and Cimpeni family jewels. They were worth millions.

When World War II came along, and Romania became an ally of Nazi Germany, Romanovsky gladly supplied Hitler’s military machine with oil from his rich Romanian fields. In return for this, the family’s fortunes — including the jewels — remained intact.

Greta Schell read the document over von Wassner’s shoulder. By the time she finished she was shaking with excitement. “My God, Graf, millions!” she exclaimed.

He smiled. “And ours for the taking.”

“But will Romanovsky have them in the castle?”

“He will,” von Wassner replied, “if he is a prudent man and not a fool. Like us, he must have seen the end long ago. He would keep the jewels at hand, just in case.”

Von Wassner spread a map of Romania on his lap. He studied it for a moment, and then circled the village of Cemavoda.

“Herr Gruppenfiihrer...”

“Ja?”

“The bridge.”

A mile ahead lay the Fetesti Bridge across the Danube. On each side they could see the tiny huts of the checkpoint guards.

The driver slowed as they approached the western side of the bridge. No one challenged them from the hut.

“They have probably set up a line on the eastern bank,” von Wassner said evenly. “When the Reds come, it will be from there. Drive on.”

But they got no challenge on the eastern side of the river either. Von Wassner’s antennae came up on full alert. Something was wrong, very wrong...

But it was too late.

Greta Schell saw them first, a Red Army patrol. They materialized from the trees beside the road.

She screamed, but the sound was drowned out by rifle fire.

Sergeant Boris Glaskov was five feet ten. His body under his dirt-brown uniform was broad and solid. His sandy hair was long and limp with perspiration. His brown eyes were flecked with gold and set too close together for most people’s taste, including his own. They made him look cruel, devious, and dishonest. This was a disadvantage, since he was cruel, devious, and dishonest. Glaskov was one day past his twenty-first birthday.

He munched a candy bar he had taken from the Mercedes driver’s pocket, and examined the watch he had pulled from the man’s wrist.

He was angry. The fools had opened fire without his order. The woman was beautiful. They could have all raped her before they killed her. The fools.

A blanket was dropped at his feet. “From the two in the back, Comrade Sergeant.”

Glaskov looked up at the man with his dead stare. “What did you keep, Corporal?”

The corporal started to protest, thought better of it, and pulled von Wassner’s SS ring from his finger. He dropped it onto the pile and retreated.

Glaskov went through the SS officer’s and the woman’s belongings. Anything of value went into the pouch on his belt.

The Portuguese passports were interesting. Heinrich and Greta Bolivar, Lisbon.

He picked up the sheaf of official-looking papers with the Abwehr seal.

Boris Glaskov had been born in the tiny village of Vysokoye, near the Russian border. Because of this, he spoke fluent Polish and German, as well as his native Russian.

He read the complete report on Romanovsky, and then read it again. He looked at the marked map, and then picked up the passports once more.

Boris Glaskov was not educated, but he was cunning. All of these items put together meant something.

Vysokoye was a poor village, and the Glaskov clan the poorest of its inhabitants. Boris had stolen to eat almost from the time he could walk. In fact, if the war had not happened, and he had not been conscripted into the army, his fellow villagers or the GPU would probably have lynched him by now.

As far as Boris was concerned, the revolution had done nothing for him or his family. The only difference was that the grain and meat Boris stole was now the state’s instead of his neighbor’s. That made it even more likely that when he went home he would be hanged that much sooner.

Boris Glaskov did not want to return to Russia.

He had a gut feeling that the papers he now held might solve that problem for him.

“Corporal?”

“Da, Comrade Sergeant?”

“Your grid map of the area.”

“Da.” The corporal trotted over, pulling the map from his pouch.

“How far are we from the village of Cernavoda?”

The corporal calculated quickly. “About six and a half kilometers, Comrade Sergeant.”

Glaskov stood and shouldered his rifle.

“We go there.”

Castle Cimpeni was perched on a hill that dominated the countryside clear to the Danube. Its battlements and fortifications recalled a history of conquests and internal wars. The village of Cernavoda clung to the side of the hill, and some of the weathervanes atop the little houses reached almost to the level of the castle’s terrace.

On this night, with Red Army artillery booming to the north and east, the castle was ablaze with light.

Behind its three-foot-thick walls, there was controlled chaos. Servants, directed by Princess Sophia herself, hurriedly packed the most essential of the family’s belongings.

Surveying it all through sad eyes was Prince Valentin Romanovsky. He was in his middle fifties, wide and powerfully built, with close-cropped, iron-gray hair and square, solemn features. He wore a black overcoat, a black suit, and carried a narrow-brimmed green felt hat in one big hand. His clothes needed pressing, but there was a certain massive dignity about him. A full-length sable coat was draped over his left arm.

“Sophia.”

The woman turned and came immediately to his side. She was fifteen years younger than her husband, but strikingly beautiful in the same way he was regally handsome. Her face, considering the circumstances, was remarkably calm.

“Yes, Valentin?”

“It is enough. We can take no more. Where is Sergei?”

“Freeing the animals,” she replied. “He doesn’t want his horses under the peasant asses of Bolshevik butchers. His words.”

They both laughed. And Romanovsky’s eyes filled as they gazed at his wife. In her wealth of midnight hair, which she wore loose and well past her shoulders, restrained from clouding her face by a barrette over each temple. In her steady black eyes. In her features, large but perfectly chiseled. And above all in her complexion, which was as utterly white as her hair was utterly black. She made him think of a madonna.

“What is it, my darling?”

“Nothing. Where is little Sophia?”

“In the nursery. She is being readied.”

“Go fetch her. We must leave at once.”

She was two steps above him on the wide stairwell, when gunfire erupted in the front courtyard. Screams of dying men reached their ears, and suddenly the massive doors were flung wide.

Fifteen-year-old Sergei Romanovsky was flung to the floor where he rolled toward them. He was followed by three Russian soldiers. The one with the sergeant’s stripes approached them.

“Prince Romanovsky?”

“Yes.”

“Your family?” The man gestured to the boy and the woman.

“Yes. My wife, Sophia. My son, Sergei.”

“And these three?” the sergeant said, nodding toward the dumbstruck women.

“Servants,” Romanovsky replied.

“And who else is here?”

Romanovsky hesitated only a second. “Only the male servants... outside.”

“They are all dead,” Boris Glaskov said. He turned and shot the three servant women.

Princess Sophia was too shocked to scream. She gasped in terror and clutched her husband’s arm. Young Sergei reacted in the same manner, staring in quiet, stunned disbelief.

“Butchers!” Romanovsky hissed.

“That is so you know I will do everything I say I will do,” the sergeant stated flatly. “In there, all of you.”

Glaskov prodded them into a small study, and turned to his men. “Tell the others to stand guard outside. You two, search the house.”

Glaskov closed and locked the paneled door behind the men. Using drapery cord, he tied the man and boy to chairs. He bound Princess Sophia spread-eagled across a chaise.

When he was finished, he stood before them. “Boy, where are the jewels?” He jabbed his rifle in Sergei’s chest.

“He knows nothing,” Prince Romanovsky said.

Glaskov turned to the older man. “And you?”

Romanovsky stared at him, his eyes glittering. “What would a peasant like yourself do with jewels?”

Glaskov slapped him three times. “I have very little time, and even less patience. Where are they hidden?”

Romanovsky spat in Glaskov’s face. The sergeant turned to Sophia. He wrapped his right hand in the bodice of her dress and ripped it from her body. Within seconds he had stripped her nude.

Romanovsky cried out in rage. Glaskov slapped him again. “Where are they, all of them! And tell me the truth, old man, because I have an itemized list.”

“Valentin,” Sophia hissed, “tell this pig nothing!”

Glaskov raised his tunic and unbuttoned the front of his trousers. “Where?”

Sweat poured from the prince’s face. “What are you going to do?”

“I am going to rape your wife. Where!”

Romanovsky took a deep breath. “In the chapel. There is a false back on the rear of the altar.”

Glaskov fell forward between Sophia’s legs. She cursed him in screams as he entered her.