Read Games of the Hangman Online
Authors: Victor O'Reilly
There was,
from time to time, a sudden rustling of what must have been a large animal —
either a fox or a badger — but otherwise the oppressive silence continued.
Danelle wished
he had brought a colleague.
He was not
fond of his fellow faculty members, but they had their uses, and on this
occasion even the most obnoxious of his fellows would have been welcome.
Slowly he recognized the unsettling sensation
that gripped him.
It was an old ailment
of humankind and could be smelled as well as felt.
Fear.
It was darker
in the wood than he expected.
These short, gloomy March evenings of
He wished that he were somewhere farther
south, somewhere warm and sunny and dry — especially dry.
A raindrop slithered down the back of his
neck, and soon there were others.
He
began to feel cold and shivery.
The feeling he
had was changing.
It was no longer
fear.
He stumbled on through the gloom
and gathering darkness, branches and briars whipping and dragging at his face
and body.
The feeling identified
itself.
There remained little doubt
about it.
It bore a distinct resemblance
to absolute, all-encompassing, mind-dominating, blind panic.
He stopped and
tried to get his nerves under control.
With great deliberation, his hand shaking as if he had malaria, he
removed a white handkerchief from his pocket and wiped away the cold sweat and
rain and streaks of dirt from where the branches had whipped him.
The action, calmly carried out, made him feel
better.
He felt more in control.
He told himself that he was being ridiculous
and that there was no rational reason for this extraordinary terror.
He walked
on.
The undergrowth became particularly
dense, and the twisty path began to incline upward.
He realized he was near the old oak tree, God
rot it, the source of all his trouble.
His feeling of relief was canceled abruptly when his foot caught on a
protruding root and he tumbled headlong into the dank mulch.
He
rose
slowly, his
heart pounding from the shock.
A sudden vile
stench assailed his nostrils, and he gagged.
It was like rotting flesh mixed with the acrid smell of sulfur, the tang
of hell.
There seemed
to be light coming from behind the old oak tree.
He thought at first that it was the last
gesture of the setting sun, but he realized now that it was too late for the
sun, and anyway, this was different, a strange glow, and its source was from
below, not from the sky.
He wanted to
turn and run, but he felt compelled to move forward.
He walked as if in a trance, his steps slow
and faltering.
What he saw,
as he round the thick trunk of the old oak tree, was more than his brain could
— or wanted to — grasp.
In the clearing
ahead, a large circle had been made out of stones, and the spaces between the
stones were filled with greenery and flowers.
Inside the circle of stones and flowers was another shape.
It looked like a vast letter "A,"
its extremities touching the inside of the circle at three points.
In the center of the circle a fire burned and
flickered and slowly devoured something that had once been living.
Entrails spilled in yellowing coils from the
ripped-open stomach.
The small, hot
flame of the fire hissed and spit — and close up, the smell was nauseating.
There was a
flash and a sudden, sharp smell of sulfur from the fire, and the lower branches
of the old oak tree were lit up in the glow.
Danelle raised his eyes.
It was
the last conscious vision of his life, and it was utterly horrible.
Through the smoke of burning flesh and sulfur,
he beheld the horned head of the devil.
He was still
unconscious when they threw him off the edge of the cliff onto the rocks and
the waters of the
*
*
*
*
*
Fitzduane
slept a sound, dreamless sleep and woke up the following morning feeling
cheerful and rested.
After Etan had
left for the studios, he made himself a large pot of black coffee, put his feet
up in front of the crackling fire, and began reviewing what he had learned so
far.
It came to him that if you're the
kind of person who turns over stones — and most people learn not
to
early in life — what comes crawling out can be
disconcerting.
He started
with his meeting with Kilmara the previous evening.
A computer search had thrown up the fact that
Draker was more than a select school for the children of the rich and
powerful.
Out of a full complement of
sixty pupils — now fifty-eight — no fewer than seventeen were designated
"PT" on the Ranger computer printout.
"Computer
people prefer to talk in bits and bytes," Kilmara had said, "but one
of the advantages of getting in at the start of the Rangers was that I was able
to twist the buggers' arms to make them take some cognizance of the English
language.
‘PT’ stands for ‘possible target.’
It's not a high-level classification, but it
means that, in theory, you take some precautions and you think twice when some
incident occurs involving someone with ‘PT’ after his or her name."
"Tell me
more," said Fitzduane.
"Do I
detect a flutter of interest, Hugo?" said Kilmara.
"Relax, my son.
Thousands of people in
or higher:
politicians, businessmen,
diplomats, visiting absentee landlords of the English variety, and God and the
computer only know who else."
"But why
these particular seventeen students?" asked Fitzduane.
"Oh, it
has nothing to do with them as such," said Kilmara.
"It has to do with families and
backgrounds and the like.
For instance,
included in the Draker seventeen at present are a minor Saudi princeling — and
there're thousands of those knocking around — a cousin of the Kennedy clan, two
children of the Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs, the son of a Japanese
automobile tycoon
...
Well, you get the drift."
"How about Rudi von Graffenlaub and the girl, Toni
Hoffman?"
"In our
baby computer system,
nada
,"
said Kilmara.
"But that doesn't
mean there shouldn't have been.
It's a
rough-and-ready classification.
Deciding
who might be a terrorist or criminal target is very much a matter of judgment.
To make life more confusing, fashions change
in the terrorist business.
It's
politicians during one phase and businessmen the
next.
For all I know, it will be garbage
collectors after that — or pregnant mothers.
It's all show biz in this game.
It's the media impact that counts."
"So what
do you do about these PTs, apart from giving them a couple of initials on
computer input?"
"Well,"
said Kilmara, "if one of them drowns in the municipal swimming pool, we
drain it a bit faster, but that's about the size of it.
Basically it's the government contribution to
the media game.
It's called taking every
reasonable precaution.
It helps to cover
the official ass if something does happen."
"Were you
always so cynical?" said Fitzduane, "or did someone salt your baby
food?"
Kilmara turned
his cigarette lighter into a small flamethrower to work on his pipe.
Success achieved, he stood up from his chair
and walked across to a whiteboard screwed to the wall.
He picked up a black dry-wipe felt pen and
started to write.
"You find
it odd,
Hugo, that
we don't do much more?
Well, let me throw a few figures at you.
They're a little rough, but they're accurate
enough to make the point, and the same situation applies to most other Western
European countries."
"We have
about ten thousand police in this country to deal with about three and a half
million people.
Police work is a
twenty-four-hour-a-day business and involves a great many things other than
guarding against terrorism, so at any one time the force would be stretched to
the extreme to free up from routine duties any more than a thousand, and even
that would mean drawing manpower from all over
In the wee hours manpower resources are even
more limited.
At such times it's an
interesting thought that the entire country's internal security is looked after
by a mere few hundred.
"Now, to
set against the resources I've described — and I have left the army out of the
equation to keep things simple — we have more than eight thousand names
classified ‘PT’ or higher, and remember ‘PT’ is only a judgment.
We could probably triple that number if we
did our homework.
Now, it takes at least
six trained personnel to provide reasonable security for one target.
That means we would need a minimum total of
forty-eight thousand trained bodyguards.
"We don't
have them.
We can't afford them.
And we really don't need them.
As I have mentioned before, there just aren't
that many terrorist incidents — just enough to keep the likes of Günther and me
in reading and drinking money."
"Amen to
that," said Günther.
He closed his
copy of the book he had been reading,
Winnie-the-Pooh
,
with a snap.
"Great book," he
said.
"No sex and no violence.
I'd be out of a job in Pooh Corner."
"Shut up
and have a drink," said Kilmara, "and let's see if we can make some
sense out of our
"
Fitzduane.
"How does
picture?"
Kilmara slid
open the top drawer of his desk and removed his service automatic.
Fitzduane noticed with some relief that the
safety was on.
Kilmara
gestured with his pistol.
"People
think this is how we fight terrorism.
Not so."
He tossed the
weapon back into the drawer and closed it with a flourish.
"Firepower plays a part, of course, but
the real secret is intelligence, and the key to that, these days, is the
computer."
He looked
across at Günther.
"You tell him,
Günther.
It's your
Heimat
, and you like the things."
"
headquarters of the BKA, the Bundeskriminalamt," said Günther.
"The BKA is, very roughly, the German
equivalent of the FBI.
It has primary
responsibility for counterterrorism, with my old outfit, GSG-9, providing
muscle when terrorists have been identified and located.
The BKA has been very successful at hunting
down terrorists, and one of the secrets of this success is the
he grinned
— ”
better known as the Kommissar."
"It's
quite an installation," interjected Kilmara.
"I was there a year or so ago.
It's all glass and concrete and sits on a
hill that, appropriately
enough,
used to be a place of
execution.
More than three thousand
acolytes feed the beast in
They don't just record information.
The positively vacuum it up.
Names, descriptions, addresses, relatives,
ancestors, contacts, personal habits, food preferences, sexual idiosyncrasies,
speech patterns — you name it, anything that might in some way contribute to
the hunt
gets
entered."
"Twelve
million constantly updated files, and the number is climbing," said
Günther with pride.
George
Orwell's 1984
has
arrived, thought Fitzduane.
It just hasn't been noticed.
He took the whiskey Kilmara had poured
him.
'Very
interesting," he said, "but what has the Kommissar go to do with my
modest investigation?"
Kilmara held
up his glass.
"
Sláinte
!"
"
Prosit
!" said
Günther,
similarly equipped.