“I have placed myself at your service.”
“Lieutenant Arosa will be conducting extensive interrogations.”
“Of course. I have nothing to hide.”
“You’ve got a lot to explain. I am putting you on your honor not to leave the environs of Rombaden. Do you have a residence in the city?”
“The house of my late brother, Kurt, will be suitable.”
“Clear out of Castle Romstein immediately with your family. Take only what personal possessions you can carry in two handbags. Report your address to the clerk outside. You are dismissed.”
Graf Ludwig Von Romstein smiled thinly at the three men before him, conveying the obvious message that the inferior pigs who sat in judgment constituted a temporary situation. His fat brother bowed his way out of the door backwards.
“Well,” Duquesne said, “how do you like the Germans now?”
Dante Arosa blew a long breath and peeled the wrapper off a cigar he had bummed from Colonel Dundee. “You shouldn’t have let them go, Sean. Both of them are right on top of the Blacklist.”
“They’re not going anywhere,” Sean said.
“You don’t sit sixty miles from the border and not have an escape route mapped out. They’ve probably got half their holdings in Switzerland.”
“No, Dante,” Duquesne said, “Sean is correct. The holdings that make them powerful are right here. The land ... the factory. If they had meant to leave the country they would have done so before now. It is a simple matter to escape to Switzerland. He has made his decision to stay here and gamble for his estate. He was prepared for all the consequences when he walked into this office.”
“Lock him up,” Dante insisted.
“We’ve got too much use for both of them to lock them up.”
Maurice, having agreed with Sean, now turned on him. “Do not think you are able to play a cat and mouse game with this Count Von Romstein. Intrigue is a way of life centuries old. With all due respects, it is foreign to American comprehension. When Dante interrogates him he will have a web of stories woven to make him look like a maiden of pure driven snow.”
Sean did not argue. He wondered if by letting Count Ludwig free he had not overmatched himself.
Baron Sigmund Von Romstein, who by oversight or trickery was still mayor of Rombaden, plopped into an overstuffed chair, devoured by perspiration, heart palpitating.
“Gone,” he lamented, “everything is gone. The villages, Castle Romstein, the Machine Works. Everything is gone.”
“Shut up,” Count Ludwig commanded. Even at this dreadful time his sharp voice stopped his brother’s babbling. “Louts,” Ludwig continued.
“What are they going to do with us?” Sigmund whined.
“For the time being, nothing. They will prod us for information and use us as fronts to do their dirty laundry.”
“We are clean! We have never been Nazi Party members!’’
“No, poor Kurt joined the party for us.”
“And now he is dead. You made him join the party. It was you, Ludwig!” he cried in a rare show of defiance.
The count slapped his brother and hovered above him in rage, his dueling scar darkening to an ugly purple. “Kurt joined the party for the Von Romstein family! Remember that! And you will control yourself, Sigmund. That is just what those people want ... for you to lose your composure before them.”
The baron gasped out that he understood.
“I have made the decision. We will remain here,” Ludwig continued.
“I am afraid of that American major. He hates us.”
“You need not be. He is an American obsessed by the stringent rules of fair play. What the devil do the Americans know about the game of war and conquest? What do they know about ruling a people? They are a mongrelized race protected by isolation from the realities of ashes and blood. Mark my words, when the last shot is fired the Americans will cry to go home. You can thank God the Russians didn’t get here first ... or even the French.”
“I don’t know. I saw something in this one’s eyes. I tell you, he means to ruin us.”
“Nonsense. As for the other two, it will be a pleasure for the young idiot with the Italian name to interrogate us. But ... be careful of the Frenchman.”
“Careful for what? They have already taken everything.”
“We shall get it all back. The Von Romstein family has lived through this crisis a hundred times. Let them make their accusations. Let them jail us. But we have time, Sigmund. We have time and we have heirs. One year, five, ten. It will all be restored to us eventually, with proper apology. The Americans will go and the French will go ... and there will still be Von Romstein.”
Chapter Seventeen
SEAN’S PHONE RANG. “MAJOR O’Sullivan.”
“This is Captain Armour, with Colonel Dundee’s outfit. We’ve broken into the concentration camp. Colonel Dundee says to get over here right away with your health officer.”
“What’s the picture, Captain?”
“It can’t be described. I’ll pick you up at Ludwigsdorf and lead you in.”
“We’ll be right over.”
They crossed over the pontoon bridge to the south bank of the Landau in two jeep loads. Downstream they passed the magnificent estates, the Kurhaus Casino, the spa hotels, then swung inland into the district countryside. In the excitement Sean had forgotten and let Maurice Duquesne follow him. He corrected the situation and let the Frenchman take the lead. There was Grimwood, mumbling about Sean locking up several German Blacklist doctors he needed, Blessing, and, of course, O’Toole.
In the other jeep Bolinski, the lawyer and displaced persons officer, and Dante Arosa prayed for their safety at Duquesne’s wheelsmanship.
Romstein District was lush and pastoral. The unscarred villages they passed seemed to have been at peace for a thousand years. Curious farmers and villagers, knowing now they would not be harmed, studied the speeding American jeeps in half friendliness and some of the children waved.
As they approached Ludwigsdorf, which directly served the Von Romstein estates, they could see Romstein Castle on a hill in the distance. Near the highway there was a small railroad station, used to transport Romstein products; in the center of the village stood a church with a tall tower and onion-shaped dome, a replica of the cathedral in Rombaden. Within its vaults lay centuries of the Von Romstein dynasty’s dead.
Captain Armour flagged them down in the square, jumped into his own jeep, and led them out. The rail line angled sharply and ran parallel with the road into the Schwabenwald Forest. They raced toward the mass of dark green with sunlight coming in flickers as the road snaked through the forest.
A large sign pocked with bullet holes blared out at them: WARNING! CONCENTRATION CAMP GROUNDS! DO NOT PROCEED BEYOND THIS POINT! VIOLATORS SUBJECT TO SEVERE PENALTY! There was a death’s head insignia below the words.
A few dozen battle-weary American soldiers sat along the roadside, backs propped against trees, dull-brained from the fight, digging half-heartedly at cans of ham and nibbling at the chocolate in their rations.
A pretty wooden bridge forded a stream. Nestled about the forest were about fifty lovely cottages with little gardens planted before them. These were the homes of the married SS officers.
A few hundred yards past the cottages they broke into an immense clearing in what must have been dead center of the forest. A high, solid gate blocked them. It was flanked by two empty guard boxes, an archway over the gate. This, too, had a sign. It read: SCHWABENWALD CONCENTRATION CAMP. Below it were words of wisdom in Gothic print declaring that all who came here and performed honest labor would redeem their sins.
Once inside this outer gate they were on a street of administrative buildings and barracks of the SS Death’s Head Units. Captain Armour halted before the commandant’s building.