Read Games of the Hangman Online
Authors: Victor O'Reilly
Inside Erika's
sanctum they found what they had been looking for, but not the way they had
expected.
Beat von Graffenlaub was
present, to be sure, but in a fashion that transferred him from the suspect to
the victim
file
of the Nose's memory banks.
He lay across his wife, his blood mingled
with hers, the point of a fifteenth-century halberd protruding a hand's width
from his chest.
The handle extended from
his back as casually as a fork stuck in the ground.
The Chief was
sweaty in his bulletproof armor.
"Loopy," he said.
*
*
*
*
*
The only good
news out of this latest fiasco was that they were now down to one name on the
computer's primary suspect list.
The
Chief radioed through for a progress report on his remaining quarry.
He tried not to think of the awful tragedy of
Beat von Graffenlaub.
Mourning would
have to wait.
They were now
looking for someone called Bridgenorth Lodge.
The computer said he was an American citizen living in
earliest days.
In fact, he'd been born
there — which didn't, of course, make him Swiss.
One of the heurisitics programmed into the
computer was that the Hangman wasn't Swiss.
The Chief had asked Henssen for the basis of what seemed to him to be
pure guesswork, and he'd been referred to the Bear.
The Bear had
just shrugged.
"He isn't
Swiss," he'd repeated.
He hadn't
been able to give a reason, but the Chief went along with it.
The whole business was crazy anyway, and in
the Chief's experience, the Bear's hunches were every bit as good as any
computer's.
21
Within minutes
of his name's flashing up on the Project K computer screen, Lodge's house in
the exclusive
Only minutes away from both
Kirchenfeldstrasse and police headquarters, Muri was a quarter occupied mainly
by diplomats, senior bureaucrats, and the ex-wives of successful businessmen.
The houses were solidly built and expensive
even by Swiss standards and in many cases were discreetly set back from the
road in the seclusion of their own grounds.
Lodge's house
wasn't just discreet; it was downright reclusive.
It occupied a two-acre lot at the end of a
leafy cul-de-sac.
A thick screen of
trees and shrubbery rendered it invisible from either the road or its neighbors
on either side, and the grounds at the back of the house not only were
similarly screened but led in turn to a private fenced-off wood and through it
to the River Aare.
Further privacy was
ensured by a four-meter-high perimeter wall topped with razor wire — sprayed
green for environmental reasons.
The
wire was electrified.
The main gates
were the same height as the wall and were made from oak-faced steel plate.
There was no doorbell.
The Chief
Kripo would have preferred to keep Lodge's place under observation for some
days before taking more dramatic action, but practical realities
intervened.
First, the Hangman was
simply too dangerous to leave on the loose any longer than necessary, and
second, they had to find out as fast as possible whether they were on the right
track.
After all, the computer wasn't
infallible.
Lodge might not be the right
man.
He might be a totally innocent
run-of-the-mill privacy-loving billionaire.
The Chief
wished that there were a better way of checking out Lodge, but he couldn’t
think of one.
Once again he was going to
lead the raid, and this time he was sweating under his body armor even
before
the
assault
team went into action.
His skin felt
cold and clammy, and there was an unpleasant taste in his mouth.
He had a very bad feeling about what was to
happen.
He swallowed with difficulty and
issued the command.
The team started in.
*
*
*
*
*
Henssen
replaced the receiver slowly and stared into the middle distance.
"What a bloody business."
Kersdorf's
legs were hurting him.
"What
happened?" he asked.
"Is Lodge
our man?"
Henssen
shrugged helplessly.
"The assault
team lost two men going in plus another half dozen wounded.
Lost as in dead.
The Chief was scratched, but he's okay."
Kersdorf was
silent, shocked.
Then he spoke.
"So Lodge is our man.
Did they get him?"
"They
don't even know whether he was there when the assault began," said
Henssen, spreading his hands in a gesture of frustration, "but he
certainly wasn't by the time they secured the house.
Their best guess is that he wasn't there at
all.
They sweat that nobody got through
their cordon and that the house was empty."
"So how
come
the casualties?"
"A variation on a theme.
Explosives concealed in the floors and
ceilings were triggered by a series of independent but mutually supporting
automatic sensors:
heat, acoustic, and
pressure.
The explosives were wrapped in
some material that neutralized the sniffers."
"What
about Claymores?" said
Kersdorf.
"We warned them to expect
Claymores."
"It seems
that our people just weren't good enough," said Henssen, "or at least
the Hangman was better.
Of course, he's
had more practice, God rot him."
He
paused and massaged his temples.
He felt
acutely depressed, and light-headed from lack of sleep.
He continued.
"Oh, they found Claymores as expected and defused them.
They followed our briefing in that respect,
but then they thought they were safe — and boom."
"He's a
creature of habit," said Kersdorf.
"There is always a surprise within a surprise:
the Chinese doll syndrome."
"Russian
doll," corrected Henssen.
"Those doll-within-a-doll-within-a-doll sets are Russian.
They call them matrushkas; there can be
three, four, or five, or six, or even
more little
surprises inside."
Kersdorf
sighed.
There was silence in the room
before he spoke.
"Let's get some
sleep."
He gestured at the
computer.
"At least we now know how
he operates.
It won't be long before we
get him."
"But at
what cost?" said Henssen.
*
*
*
*
*
The Bear was
in a private room of the Tiefnau.
Ten
days of first-class medical care and the special attentions of one particular
ward nurse with a gleam in her eye had left him, if not as good as new, at
least in excellent secondhand condition.
He pushed aside his tray with a satisfied sigh and split the last of the
..
Fitzduane
picked up the empty bottle.
"Hospital issue?"
"Not
exactly," said the Bear, "though I suppose you might call it medically
selected."
"Ah,"
said Fitzduane.
He looked at the
label.
"A 1961
Beaune.
Now what does that
suggest to you about the lady who bought you this?
This is real wine.
You don't use ‘61 Beaune to take the paint
off your front door."
"Hmm,"
said the Bear, growing a little pinker.
"Do you mind if we don't talk about Frau Maurer?"
Fitzduane
grinned and drained his glass.
"What's
been happening?" asked the Bear.
"Rest and relaxation are going to be the death of me.
I'm not allowed near a phone, and the news
I'm being fed is so scrappy that if I were a dog, I'd be chasing sheep."
"Don't
exaggerate."
"Any progress with Vreni?"
"None.
She's
alive, she's physically almost recovered, but her mind is the problem.
She talks little, sleeps a lot, and any attempt
to question her has proved disastrous.
It sends her into a fit each time.
The doctors have insisted that she be left alone."
"Poor
kid," said the Bear.
"What
about Lodge?"
"Vanished
— not that he ever appeared, now I think about it.
The house has been taken apart by the army
and made safe, which was no small task itself.
There were booby traps everywhere.
Afterward the forensics people had a field day.
There is no doubt that Lodge is the Hangman,
but the question is, is Lodge really Lodge?"
"Why do
you say that?"
"Questioning
of the neighbors hasn't yielded much," explained Fitzduane.
"He is a recluse.
He comes and goes at irregular
intervals.
He is absent for long
periods.
It's consistent with what we
expected.
We have had some small luck in
terms of physical description, though few people have seen him up close.
Mostly quick glimpses
through a car window."
"I
thought all his various cars have tinted windows."
"Sometimes,
on a hot day, a window might be wound down," said Fitzduane.
"He has also been seen walking on a
couple of occasions — both times while it was raining so he was huddled under
an umbrella."
"Blond,
bearded, medium build, et cetera," said the Bear.
"Quite
so," said Fitzduane.
"And
that tallies
with the photo and other personal details filed
with the Bern Fremdenpolizei."
"So
what's the problem?"
"We've
traced some of Lodge's background in the States," said Fitzduane.
"We haven't been able to lay our hands
on a photograph — his father was a senior CIA man and apparently for security
reasons didn't allow either himself or his family to be photographed — but the
physical descriptions don't tally.
Hair
and eyes are a different color.
Lodge in
his youth had dark brown hair and brown eyes."
"A good
wig and contact lenses are all you need to solve that problem."
Fitzduane
shook his head.
"Not so
simple.
Normal procedure for an alien
coming to live in
In Lodge's case, he was interviewed several times by an experienced
sergeant who swears that the man he spoke to — for several hours in all — had
naturally blond hair, was not wearing contact lenses, and is the man in the
photo in his file, which in turn pretty much tallies with the neighbors'
description."
"Fingerprints?"
"None,"
said Fitzduane.
"None
on file in the States anyway.
The
Fremdenpolizei apparently don't
taken
them if you're a
well-behaved affluent foreigner, and the jury is still out on the house in
Muri.
The forensics people have picked
up some unidentified prints, but without a match they're not much use.
I wouldn’t bet on the Hangman's prints being
among them.
He seems to skate near the
edge, but in fundamental things he's damn cautious."
"So Lodge
is the Hangman," said the Bear, "but maybe Lodge isn't Lodge — and
the Lodge that isn't Lodge isn’t to be found."
"Hole in
one," said Fitzduane.
The Bear
looked out the full-length window.
Despite protestations about security, he had insisted on being on the
ground floor and on having direct access to the garden.
The window was slightly open, and he could
smell freshly cut grass.
He could hear
the mower in the distance.
"I hate
hospitals.
But I'm developing
a certain
affection for this one.
Dental records?" he added.
"Like the
marriage feast at
for last."