“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?”