Read Games of the Hangman Online
Authors: Victor O'Reilly
There was a
smashing of glass and the sound of a body dropping outside, then another.
Fitzduane looked out the bedroom window and
saw a figure running toward the small barn located at the end of the track
farthest away from the village.
It had
sounded as if both terrorists had jumped out of the ground-floor window when
they discovered they were being fired upon from both sides — so where was the
second one?
Wood
splintered, and the front door was smashed off its hinges to hit the floor with
a reverberating crash.
There was a shout
from below.
Fitzduane looked down
through the choust to see the Bear grinning up at him, looking pleased with
himself.
He held up the Magnum.
"Seems to
work," he said, "but if I'm going to travel around with you, I'd
better learn to carry more ammunition.
I'm out."
"Your
timing's off," said Fitzduane.
"One's still in close; the other legged it for the barn.
I don't think peace has broken out yet."
A round black
object came hurtling through the broken living room window and rolled across
the wooden floor.
Fitzduane flung
himself away from the choust.
There was a
vivid flash, and a wave of heat blasted up through the hole, knocking Fitzduane
backward.
The hanging rope, severed by
flying shrapnel, came tumbling down, engulfing him in its coils and invoking an
instant feeling of revulsion, as if the rope itself were contaminated.
He disentangled himself and crawled to the
side of the window.
He looked around the
frame cautiously and could see a figure zigzagging toward the barn.
He fired repeatedly, but he was still shaken
from the shock of the explosion — and then the gun was empty.
He ducked down
behind the windowsill as return fire coming from the barn bracketed his
position.
No ammunition.
A bloody unhealthy
situation that was heading toward terminal unless he could com up with some
answers.
Think.
He remembered
something from his last visit:
the
incongruity of Peter Haag's army rifle hanging in the bedroom.
He fetched it.
It was a substantial weapon compared with the
Skorpion, but not of much use unless he could find the ammunition.
Somewhere in the house there would be
twenty-four rounds in
a
special
container, but where?
Regulations said ammunition should be stored separately from the
weapon.
He checked the bedroom closet
just in case, but in vain.
Peter Haag
might have been a terrorist, but he was Swiss, and he would have followed
regulations.
Clasping the
assault rifle, Fitzduane wriggled down through the choust to the living room
below.
He found the Bear lying on the
floor, semiconscious and muttering in Bernese dialect.
The heavy metal stove seemed to have
protected him from the full force of the blast, but it hadn’t done him much
good either.
"For the love of God,
Heini," Fitzduane muttered as he searched through the living room,
"this is no time to try to teach me your bloody language."
No ammunition.
Heavier-caliber
fire started to rip through the farmhouse walls from the direction of the barn,
and Fitzduane realized that the terrorists must have concealed some backup
weaponry there.
One of them had
something like a heavy hunting rifle.
Obviously he was no expert with bolt action, but the slowness of his
fire was compensated for by the fact that the wooden walls gave no protection
at all against the new weapon.
It was
only a matter of time before he or the Bear or Vreni got hit.
The sniper was methodically quartering the farmhouse,
and it wasn't too big a building to cover.
He pulled the Bear further behind the wood stove and tried not to think
of Verni's frail body totally exposed to the rifle fire.
The desecration of the
dead.
Did it really matter?
Desperately he
scoured the shelves and cabinets for the ammunition.
He wondered if it would be hidden behind the
marmalade, as it had been at Guido's.
Did followers of the Steiner philosophy even eat marmalade?
If he didn't strike pay dirt soon, he might
get the chance to ask the long-dead Steiner personally.
A rifle bullet
plowed into a second jar of mung beans, filling the air with organically
approved food mixed with less friendly shards of broken glass.
Brown rice was blasted into the air like
shrapnel.
He reached out for the lethal
locally distilled spirit he remembered.
Behind the rear bottle lay the ammunition.
He ripped open the sealed container and fed
in the rounds one by one, hoping that the rifle's mechanism wasn't jammed up
with brown rice or lentils or the like.
Crouched low, he went out the kitchen door
.
He found a firing position by the
wall facing the barn.
He extended the
assault rifle's bipod and activated the night sight.
His front was substantially protected by a
bag of some sort of organic manure; whatever it was, it wasn't odorless.
The firing
from the barn ceased.
A single figure
appeared, moving cautiously but somehow conveying the impression that it didn't
expect any more opposition — scarcely surprising after the grenade and the
barrage of heavy-rifle fire and the lack of response from the defenders.
Fitzduane
waited.
The figure was close now and
moving more confidently.
Fitzduane tried
to figure out where the backup sniper would be and had just settled on the most
probably location when the barn doors opened and a powerful motorcycle
emerged.
They were going to check out
the farmhouse and make their getaway.
The remaining question was, were there only two of them left or were
there more surprises?
Fitzduane
supposed that legally he should probably shout, "Police," or
"Hands up," or some such crap, but he wasn't feeling either legal or
charitable.
He shot the walking
terrorist four time through the chest, sending the body spinning off the track
and then down the mountainside like a runaway sled.
The motorcycle
engine roared, and submachine-gun fire sprayed the farmhouse.
The bike's headlight blinded him.
The machine leaped toward him, but it hit a
rut and flew through the air, skidding past him before the rider expertly
corrected.
He shot the
motorcyclist as the bike was approaching the security guards' Mercedes.
The machine barreled into the car, flinging
the wounded terrorist into the snow.
Fitzduane fired again very carefully at the flailing figure until there
was no sign of movement.
Fitzduane was
holding Vreni in his arms when the villagers arrived minutes later, assault
rifles at the ready.
She was limp and
still, and her body was cold, but the Irishman was smiling.
*
*
*
*
*
He felt his
shoulder being shaken, but he didn't want to leave the warm cocoon of
sleep.
His shoulder was shaken again,
this time less gently.
"Chief," said a familiar voice.
"Chief," we've got a name."
The Chief
Kripo reluctantly reentered the real world.
He'd already forgotten what he'd been dreaming about, but he knew it had
to have been better than the maelstrom that his waking hours had turned
into.
On the other hand, perhaps he was
being too pessimistic.
He recalled being
agreeably surprised at the progress being made by Project K, so much so that
there would be some kind of breakthrough.
And it was a legitimate way of avoiding the flak he knew awaited him on
his return to the office.
"A name?"
He opened his eyes, blinked, and then opened them wider.
"My God," he said to Henssen.
"You look terrible."
"My
circuits are fucked," said Henssen.
"After this is over, I'm going to sleep for a month."
The Chief
Kripo unraveled himself from the couch and sipped at the black coffee Henssen
had brought him.
He could hear computer
sounds in the background.
He looked at
his watch.
"It's
tomorrow," said Henssen.
"You've been out only a few hours, but there have been some
developments.
It's kind of good news and
bad news."
The Chief
remembered something had been nagging at him before he fell asleep.
"The Irishman and the Bear," he
said.
"Are they back?"
"Not
exactly," said Henssen, and he told the Chief what they'd heard through
the local canton police.
The Chief
shook his head.
He looked dazed.
"Incredible.
I must still be dreaming.
Is that the good news or the bad news?"
"It
depends how you look at it."
"With a
jaundiced eye," said the Chief, who actually wasn't quite sure of his
reaction.
He put down his coffee and
stood up.
"You mentioned a
name," he said to Henssen.
"You mean your machine has stopped dithering?
You've found the Hangman?"
Henssen looked
mildly uncomfortable
.
"We've got a couple of
strong possibilities.
Come and see for
yourself."
"The
Chief Kripo followed Henssen into the main computer room.
Only one terminal was live, the one with a
special high-resolution screen that Henssen found was a little easier on his
eyes when he was tired.
There was a name
on the screen followed by file references.
The Chief looked at it and felt he was going crazy.
The name on
the screen read:
VON GRAFFENLAUB, BEAT.
"You're
all loopy," said the Chief.
"Your fucking machine is loopy."
Henssen,
Kersdorf, and the other bleary-eyed men in the room were too exhausted to
argue.
Henssen played with the keyboard
.
There was a brief
pause.
Then the high-speed printer
started spitting back the machine's reasoning.
The computer wasn't too tired to argue.
It outlined a formidable case.
*
*
*
*
*
He'd forgotten
about the radiophone.
By reflex he
picked it up in answer to its electronic beep.
Erika lay there lifeless, her blood congealing.
He had no idea of the time or of what he was
going to do next.
He merely reacted.
"Herr von
Graffenlaub," said a voice.
"Herr Beat von Graffenlaub?"
"Yes,"
said von Graffenlaub.
The voice was
tense, anxious, and familiar.
It was not
someone he knew well but someone he had spoken to recently.
"Sir,
this is Mike Findlater at ME Services.
I
regret to say I have some very serious news to report, very serious
indeed."
Beat von
Graffenlaub listened to what the security man had to say.
Initial fear turned to relief and then
absolute joy as he absorbed the key fact that Vreni, little Vreni, was
alive.
Tears of gratitude poured down
his cheeks.
He didn't hear
the other entrance open.
*
*
*
*
*
Conventional
policing in
action.
The von Graffenlaub premises
were surrounded within thirty minutes of his name's flashing up on the screen,
but it was more than six hours later before a highly trained entry group gained
access.
It had taken this long as a
result of the most meticulous precautions designed to prevent the kind of
surprises the Hangman liked to produce.
Scanning equipment of various types was used to locate possible traps,
and the entire block was searched to eliminate any chance of the terrorist's
escaping through another exit.
Despite
protests from some of his most senior officers, the Chief Kripo insisted on
leading the entry team on its final push inside.
Mindful of booby traps and checking
frequently by radio with the Nose, the men entered Erika's apartment not
through the door but through a hole cut by a shaped charge in an internal wall
— having previously scanned the area with metal detectors and
explosive-sniffing equipment that could identify volatile substances in even
the minutest volumes.
Only traces of
small-arms propellant were found by the probes.
A second concealed entrance was also located.
It led directly into an apartment in an
adjoining house.