Read Games of the Hangman Online
Authors: Victor O'Reilly
Lodge might
have had some inkling of Kadar's inner conflicts, but he had hopes that they
could be channeled in the Bridgenorth Lodge tradition.
His son was being groomed for a career of
distinction in the CIA, followed by a suitable switch to public office.
Kadar, who in
the more relaxed environment of
years later that this training for the public service was to produce one of the
most dangerous criminals of the century and someone who secretly despised
everything the Bridgenorth Lodges stood for.
Except, it should be said, their money.
*
*
*
*
*
When Fitzduane
awoke in the morning, the apartment was empty.
He could hear faint sounds of traffic through the double-glazed
windows.
A light breakfast had been laid
out.
The assault rifle had been cleared
away from the dining room table.
He looked for
some jam in the kitchen cabinet.
He
found two different kinds, together with a jar of English marmalade.
Behind the jam pots was a sealed container of
twenty-four rounds of rifle ammunition.
The container resembled a soft-drink can.
Over breakfast
he skimmed idly through the notes and tapes on the von Graffenlaubs that Guido
had left him.
He pushed the tapes aside
for the moment and concentrated on the written material.
Guido's notes were
clear
and
pointed:
The
von Graffenlaub family is one of the oldest and most respected in
The family has a centuries-old tradition of
involvement in the government of both city and canton.
The present Beat (pronounced “Bay-at,” by the
way, not “Beet”) von Graffenlaub is a pillar of the Swiss establishment through
family, business, and the army.
Apart
from the natural advantages of birth, Beat laid the foundation for his
distinguished career by carrying out several missions for Swiss military
intelligence during the Second World War.
Briefly, he acted as a courier between sources in the German high
command and Swiss intelligence.
Under
the cover of skiing exhibitions and other sporting activities, he brought back
information of the utmost importance, including details of Operation
Tannenbaum, the German-Italian plan for the invasion of
Having
risked his life in the service of his country while still only in his late
teens and early twenties, Beat was rewarded with accelerated promotion in both
the army and civilian life.
After
the war he spent some years in business but then switched to study law.
After qualifying, he established his own
practice, eventually becoming an adviser to a number of major Swiss
corporations.
At the same time he
pursued his army career, specializing in military intelligence.
He officially retired in 1978 with the rank
of colonel in the general staff.
Von
G.'s influence in business circles is further enhanced by his role as trustee
for several privately held estates.
As
such, his voting power considerably exceeds what his substantial personal
fortune would warrant and makes him a very real power in Swiss business
circles...
The notes
continued, page after page.
Beat von
Graffenlaub was Swiss establishment personified.
How had Rudi reacted to such a shadow?
Action and reaction.
Was that enduring theme some indication of
the way it had been for Rudi?
"Sod
it," he said to himself quietly, as his thoughts of the dead Rudi passed
on to the thought of Guido's wasting away.
"Too much thinking about the dead and
dying."
He missed Etan.
He packed and
took the tram into the city center, where he boarded the train for
10
Max Buisard,
the Chief of the Criminal Police (the Kriminalpolizei, or Kripo) of the city of
his desk in police headquarters in Waisenhausplatz at six o'clock in the
morning.
Sometimes he started earlier.
Such work
habits would indicate, even if no other evidence were available, that the Chief
Kripo had no Irish blood in him whatsoever.
In Ireland — at least south of the border — there was no excuse for
being awake, let alone working, at such an ungodly hour, save returning from a
late night's drinking, insanity, or sex.
Even Irish cows slept until nearly eight; later on Sundays.
Buisard was,
in fact, by origin a Swiss Romand, a French-speaking Swiss from the canton of
Vaud, but he had been a resident of
For instance, by the pragmatic if somewhat
energetic expedient of having a wife and no fewer than two current mistresses,
he had proudly succeeded in mastering Berndeutsch, the local dialect.
His dedication
did not pass unnoticed.
Recently he had
overheard an eminent member of
the
Bürgergemeinde
refer to him as
bodenständig
— the ultimate Bernese
accolade for a sensible, practical fellow, with his feet firmly on the
ground.
For a brief moment Buisard
wondered if the rumors of his penchant for making love standing up — a
by-product of his busy schedule, which combined sex with exercise — had
circulated, but he dismissed the thought.
He had faith in the discretion of his women and in the soundproofing of
Bernese buildings.
The Chief
stared at the blotter in front of him.
He had a problem, a large, rather fat problem
,,
with a heavy walrus mustache, a gruff manner, and an increasingly unpredictable
temper.
He added a
mustache to the doodle on the blotter and then, as an afterthought, drew a
holstered gun on the ponderous figure.
What do you do with a first-rate veteran detective who has turned moody,
troublesome, and downright irascible, and who also happens to be an old friend?
Buisard drew a
cage around the figure on his blotter, looked at it for a while, and sketched a
door with a handle on both sides.
The
Bear needed to be contained, not stifled.
Even in
and certainly in
person.
But this time something had to
be done.
There had been a string of
incidents since the death of the Bear's wife, and the latest was the most
embarrassing.
The Bear
normally operated as part of the drug squad.
He was the most experienced sergeant in the unit and, like most Bernese
policemen, was also regularly assigned to security duties guarding diplomats
and visiting dignitaries.
The latter was
boring work but not too unpopular because the overtime
pay
came in handy.
The presence of more than
a hundred different diplomatic missions in the city also made security duties
fairly regular.
God alone knew what all
those ambassadors, second secretaries, and cultural attachés did with their
time, lurking down in the greenery of Elfenau, since all the diplomatic action
was in
but that was God's problem.
The Bear had
enjoyed a pretty good reputation.
He had
been both effective and compassionate, not the easiest combination to maintain
in the drug squad.
He was reliable,
cheerful, diligent, and accommodating — an ideal colleague, give or take a few
idiosyncrasies.
For instance, he liked
to carry a very large gun, most recently a Smith & Wesson .41 Magnum
revolver with a six-inch barrel.
Buisard
shuddered at the possible consequences if the Bear ever had to fire it in a
public area.
A stolen
Mercedes, driven by a twenty-year-old drug addict desperate for something to
sell to get a fix, had changed everything.
Tilly had
finished work at Migros, done the shopping for supper, and was waiting for a
tram.
The Bear was about to join
her.
He was less than a hundred meters
away when it happened.
He heard the
sound as the car struck her.
He saw her
body fly through the air and smash against a plate glass window.
The glass cracked in a dozen places but did
not break.
Tilly lay crushed at the
bottom of the window, one arm jerking spastically, her blood staining the
pavement.
She remained
in a coma for three months.
Her brain
was dead.
The Bear stayed with her for
days on end.
He held her hand.
He kissed her.
He told her stories and read out loud from
the papers.
He brought her flowers
arranged in the special way she liked.
The life support system hissed and dripped and made electronic
noises.
People spoke to him.
Occasionally he was asked to sign
papers.
One day they switched her off.
And the Bear's
heart was broken.
*
*
*
*
*
Beat von
Graffenlaub had not slept until nearly dawn.
The numbness he had experienced when he first heard of Rudi's death had
gradually turned to feelings of pain and guilt and a growing emptiness.
Why had Rudi
killed himself?
What had happened to him
in
What was Rudi thinking during that brief
moment just before he jumped?
Did he
take long to die?
Was there pain?
Why had he not talked to someone first?
Surely there must have been some hint of what
he was contemplating, some sign, some change in behavior.
Was there
anything he, Beat von Graffenlaub, wealthy, influential, acclaimed and
respected by his peers, could have done — should have done — to preserve the
life of his son?
Anything?
Somehow he knew that there was; there just
had to be — but what?
The clock
radio woke von Graffenlaub fully.
For a
few moments he lay there, his eyes still closed, listening to the news.
Erika had objected to this early morning
habit, but it had been months since they had made love.
Erika now slept in the apartment she had
created a few doors away.
She needed space
to cultivate her creativity, she had said.
He had not objected.
It would
have been pointless.
The signs of her
disenchantment had been present and growing for a couple of years.
He thought
back, with a pang, to those early years of closeness and sensuality, when they
just had to be together and divorcing Claire was a price well worth paying;
dear, stuffy, conventional Claire, now dead.
Well, he had paid the price willingly and had pushed from his mind the
risks of marrying a woman nearly thirty years his junior.
But time had caught up with him.
At sixty-one, physically trim and fit through
he was, he knew that Erika was slipping
away,
more
probably was lost to him.
He recalled
Erika's distinctive, musky odor and could feel hot wetness against his mouth.
He could hear the special sounds she made
when excited.
He felt his erection
growing, and he moved to look at the sultry features damp with the sweat of
passion — and to enter her.
For the
briefest of time Erika's presence remained with him even after he opened his
eyes and looked around the room.
Then
came
the full onslaught of grief and loneliness.
*
*
*
*
*
Ivo was
untroubled by the combined smell of fourteen unwashed bodies sleeping on grubby
mattresses on the floor of the small room.
One couple had woken half an hour earlier and made love quietly, but for
the last ten minutes the only sounds were those of sleep.
He decided to
wait a little longer.
The Dutchman, van
der Grijn, had drunk enough to poleax any normal man for half a day, but he had
still managed to stay awake, talking and drinking, until the early hours,
before collapsing with a grunt.
Ivo,
small and slight, was not eager to tangle with the huge heroin courier.
Ivo was almost permanently high in a miasma
of marijuana.
Occasionally he sniffed
glue or popped a few pills.
He enjoyed,
but could rarely afford, cocaine.
But he
hated heroin.