Scenes from the Secret History (The Secret History of the World) (5 page)

"Oh, darling, he didn't forget. It's just that there were some last minute problems with this new contract and he had to iron them out. I hate it when they bother him with business matters on the weekend but he had to go."

I hated it, too. Dad was always getting called away.

"Maybe this afternoon," I said.

"I'm afraid it will be too late then, dear. You know we've got all these people coming for cocktails and dinner at five. There won't be time. But he'll make it up to you. You know that."

Trouble was, I didn't know any such thing.

"And as soon as he comes back, we'll have your birthday cake. Okay?"

"Okay." I didn't have much choice.

"Swell. Now you just go out and play for a while. I've got to plan tonight's menu with Oba-san."

I waved and ran outside, determined to hide my disappointment. I had been waiting all week for today: my birthday, sailing with my dad, just the two of us on the water with no phones and no telegrams.

I walked to the ocean edge of the yard and looked down to where the brand-new Lightning sat on rollers on the thin strip of beach fifty feet below. A sob was hiding somewhere within me. I didn't look for it. I had learned from Matsuo and Nagata that the face within is not the face for the world.

Matsuo came running up. "You're not going sailing at all?" he said when he stopped beside me.

He had a lean face and body, dark brown eyes, and short black hair. He was my age and almost as tall. Only in the past year had I begun to stretch past him in height, and only by half an inch at that. But while I clomped along, Matsuo moved like a cat. His mind was as agile as his body and he spoke English as well as any American. And why not? He may have been born in
Japan, but he grew up here. He had been speaking English almost as long as I had.

I guess I still needed practice keeping my two faces separate. I shook my head, not yet ready to trust myself to speak.

"I think you made a good decision," Matsuo said, shading his eyes as he looked out over the Pacific. "It looks choppy. Too much wind to learn sailing. Wise to wait until tomorrow when it will be calmer."

I looked north past the deep brown stone of the Presidio to where the morning sun lit the fog flowing through the Golden Gate, then out to the misty Pacific, calm and gently rolling toward shore under an easterly breeze that couldn't have topped five knots.

I glanced at Matsuo and had to smile. This was the truest friend a fellow could ever have.

If you wish to read on:
Black Wind

1941

THE
KEEP

The book that will not die!

What is it about
the Keep
?  First published in 1981, it’s never been out of print and, day in and day out, year after year, it remains the bestselling title on my backlist. Over its lifespan it has appeared as a trade hardcover, a signed limited collector’s edition, a mass market paperback, a trade paperback, and even a graphic novel.

Maybe it’s because
The Keep
is the linchpin of the Secret History.  If the German Army hadn’t occupied the place and vandalized its inner structure, we would still be ignorant of the Secret History.  But with the freeing of the One, the dominoes began to fall, making
Nightworld
inevitable.

Though I spent the 70s writing SF for John Campbell’s
Analog
and Doubleday’s science fiction line, I really wanted to write horror.  By 1980 the K-man’s success had convinced publishers that horror would sell, even if your name wasn’t Blatty or Levin, so I decided to go for it.  King had continued Richard Matheson’s trend of moving horror away from brooding castles and into the towns and schools and homes of working- and middleclass Americans. I wasn’t ready for that.  I’d read too much classic horror to give up on the Gothic just yet. 

I’d spent decades immersed in everything horror – the works of Machen, LeFanu, James, and Lovecraft –
tons
of Lovecraft. I’d also been reading Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, and while I enjoyed her
Hotel Transylvania
, I found the idea of a heroic vampire ridiculous. They’re parasites. But she did start me thinking about vampires. Like how much more interesting if the vampire only pretended to be an ally. (Hmmm…there’s a thought.)

At that time I lived near Lakewood, NJ, with its large Orthodox Jewish community. I’d see them in the stores all the time and, since vampires were on my mind, I started wondering: If these rabbi types ran into a true vampire, how would they react to its traditional fear of the crucifix? Wouldn’t that raise an awful lot of questions about their belief system?

Interesting situation. Even more interesting if the being was pretending to be a vampire to hide its true nature – something much worse.

The juices started flowing.  What if it wasn’t the Christian cross it feared, but something that resembled one?  But what?

The solution came to me at 3 a.m. one morning.  I scribbled it down in the dark and the story cascaded together.

Besides horror, I was reading a lot of Robert Ludlum in those days. I loved the international scope of his breathlessly paced novels, so full of conspiracies, lies, and deception, where no one was who they seemed to be.

So for my first horror novel I ignored all the small-town, narrow-focus
Carrie/Salem’s Lot/The Shining
clones everyone else was writing, and set up a big canvas.  I took one part vampire myth, one part HPL’s cosmic evil, sprinkled in some Nazi einsatzkommandos for human evil, added smidgen of Ludlum paranoia and misdirection, a Jewish scholar, and began to paint.

My agent had a movie deal before he’d even begun to send it to publishers.  Unfortunately
The Keep
wound up in the clutches of Michael Mann who warped it into a film memorable for striking imagery, bad dialogue, and head-scratching incomprehensibility.

But the book is still here, just as I wrote it.  Here are the opening scenes.

THE KEEP

(sample)

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-OBERFÜCHRER 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 Obergruppenfführer 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.”