Read Games of the Hangman Online
Authors: Victor O'Reilly
Balac stopped
some three paces away.
"It's going
to be worse for you, Hugo," he said.
"It's going to hurt more than you can imagine, and there's going to
be no relief except death.
How does it
feel to
knew
that it's over?"
His eyes were shining.
A drop of blood fell from the
knife
and
splashed to
the floor.
Angelo
screamed something in Italian.
There was
desperation in his voice.
Julius's gaze
still didn't waver.
The twin barrels of
the shotgun were pointed at Fitzduane.
"Julius!"
shouted Balac.
Paulus von
Beck had somehow risen to his knees.
Blood was pouring from his groin.
"
Sempach, Sempaaach!
"
he shouted, and the automatic he held in both hands flamed,
blowing
a
neat round hole through Julius
Lestoni's head.
His brains spattered
over the wall.
Fitzduane
watched the twin muzzles of the shotgun slip away from his line of sight.
He didn't wait.
He closed his eyes and, pressing the firing
button, blew the shaped charge.
Prepared
though he was, the noise was shattering.
Three stun grenades went off in a ripple effect, the blast completely
drowning the crack of the shaped charge and filling the room with searing light
of igniting magnesium.
Fitzduane's eyelids
went white.
There was a roaring in his
ears, and he had to fight to avoid being completely disoriented.
He shook his head dazedly and opened his
eyes.
Pietro had
been half behind the packing case when the charge went off.
He had been surgically cut in two from the
top of his head to the upper thigh of his right leg.
The right-hand side of his body had
disappeared in the rubble behind the packing case.
The left-hand side still stood propped
against the wall.
Fitzduane's SIG
automatic lay on the ground where it had fallen from Julius's belt as he
collapsed.
He leaped forward and grabbed
it.
Balac seemed to have vanished.
The shaped
charge, moved away from its correct positioning against the wall and diluted by
Pietro's body, had been only partially successful.
One side and the top of a door-shaped
aperture had been cut out of the wall, but the remaining vertical had been only
half cut through, and rubble blocked the way.
Fitzduane
caught a brief glimpse of Angelo Lestoni through the smoke and dust.
He fired.
Automatic fire scythed through the air in return.
He crawled along the ground.
Further bursts cut through the air above
him.
He could see Angelo's legs.
He fired again.
The external
wall of the studio seemed to implode.
The noise was overwhelming — a growling metallic shrieking mixed with
the crash of falling masonry and the rattle of gunfire.
The muzzle of a huge machine gun poked into
the room, spitting tracers.
The bullets
found Angelo Lestoni, who was lifted off the ground and thrown against the
floor, a broken mess.
Fitzduane
caught a brief glimpse of Balac at the end of the studio and fired twice
rapidly.
The tank,
rumbling farther forward, blocked his view.
There was a string of sharp explosions as prepositioned Claymore antipersonnel
mines detonated uselessly, their normally lethal ball-bearing missiles smashing
harmlessly against the tank's armor.
The end of the
studio erupted in a sea of flame.
Members of the assault unit grabbed Fitzduane and hurried him out of the
building and into a waiting ambulance.
Paulus, paramedics working on him furiously, lay in the other bunk.
He heard
noises, more explosions, and the sound of heavy gunfire.
He felt a pinprick on his arm and a brief
glimpse of a man in a white coat standing over him and the Bear behind him
wearing some kind of helmet.
And then there
was nothing.
Book Three
The Killing
"The Irish are loose, untamable,
superstitious, execrable, whiskey swilling, frank, amorous, ireful, and
gloating in war."
—Giraldus
Cambrensis
(
of
thirteenth century
23
Unwisely — but
thinking his stay in Switzerland would be a matter of weeks rather than a
couple of months — he had left the Land Rover in the Long Stay Car Park of
Dublin Airport.
Somewhat to his surprise
it was still there on his return, though sticky with a thick deposit of
unburned aviation fuel mixed with
He reached out
his hand to open the befouled door with reluctance.
A sudden gust of chill north wind angled the
rain into his face, drenching his shirt.
He suppressed his squeamishness and yanked the door open, threw in his
bags, and climbed into the vehicle.
A
rush of wet cold located around his right foot informed him he had just stepped
in a puddle.
He slammed the door shut,
and the wind and rain were excluded from his cold, damp aluminum and glass box.
A rat biting
at his nerve endings inside his skull reminded him that he had a hangover.
God damn the Swiss and their going-away
parties.
Why the hell
did he have to live in such a miserable, wet, wind-swept place as
It was May, and he was bloody freezing.
*
*
*
*
*
"I
thought you were dead," said Kilmara cheerfully, "or dying at least —
surrounded by nubile nurses in Tiefenau's intensive care unit."
He rubbed his chin and added as an
afterthought, "but I've prepared dinner anyway."
He led the way into the big kitchen.
"I've sent Adeline and the kids away for
a while."
"There
was fuck all wrong with me," said Fitzduane dryly, "thought I guess I
was a bit dazed by the pyrotechnics.
It
was the paramedic who put me out — determined to have his moment of
glory."
"Have a
drink and relax," said Kilmara, "while I fiddle with pots and
pans.
You can tell me everything after
you've eaten."
He handed Fitzduane
a tumbler of whiskey.
"I assume
you're staying the night.
You'd better;
you look terrible."
"Swiss
hospitality," said Fitzduane.
He
slumped in a chair beside the fire.
"It feels weird being back, weird and depressing and anticlimactic
— and damp and cold."
"You're
always going away to sunnier climates," said Kilmara, "but still you
come back; you should know what to expect by now.
What's so different this time?"
"I don't
know," said Fitzduane.
"Or
perhaps I do."
He fell asleep.
He often did in Kilmara's house.
*
*
*
*
*
It was five
hours later.
The plates had
been cleared.
The dishwasher had been
loaded.
The perimeter alarms had been
rechecked.
The dogs had bee let loose to
roam or shelter as they wished.
Kilmara
had received a brief report over a secure line from the Ranger duty
officer.
The day was nearly done.
Sheets of rain
driven by an unseasonable gale-force wind lashed the darkness.
Double glazing and heavy lined curtains muted
the sound of the storm except for the occasional eerie shriek echoing down the
chimney.
They sat on either side of the
study fire, coffee, drinks, and cigars at hand.
Fitzduane was
still suffering from reaction to events in
His fatigue was deep and lasting, and he felt only marginally refreshed
after his sleep despite the fact that Kilmara, seeing his friend's torpor, had
delayed eating until very late.
He could hear
the sound of a clock chiming midnight.
"Hell of a time for a serious discussion," he said.
Kilmara
smiled.
"I'm sorry about that.
I'm tight for time, and it's important I talk
to you."
"Fire
away."
"The
Hangman," began Kilmara.
"Let's start with his death."
"The
Hangman," repeated Fitzduane thoughtfully.
"So many different names; but it's funny, you know, I'll always
think of him as Simon Balac."
"Different
aliases and personas are still coming out of the woodwork," said
Kilmara.
"Whitney seems to have
been another of them.
Best guess is that
that particular name was inspired by his late-lamented blond CIA boyfriend in
Still, it does look as if Lodge was his real
name.
The background fits, took or at
least the psychiatrists seem to think so.
You read the stuff that was prized out of the CIA?"
Fitzduane
nodded.
He remembered the clipped
sentences describing Lodge's upbringing in
a brilliant, scared, lonely little boy
maturing into a psychopath of genius.
Fitzduane doubted that they had been supplied with the full story.
The CIA didn't like to talk too much about
"We'll
call him the Hangman," said Fitzduane.
"The press seems to have picked up on the name anyway.
‘Death of a Master
Terrorist.
Major
success for joint Bernese / Bundeskriminalamt task force.
The Hangman slain.’"
"The
Bernese cops had to say something," said Kilmara.
"
they
couldn't
turn part of the city into a war zone and then burn down a complete block and
say nothing.
So tell me about it.
I need to get a feel of the situation.
The Hangman may be dead, but do his various
enterprises live on?
A friend of mine in
the Mossad has suggested a few things that make me uneasy."
"The Mossad?"
said Fitzduane.
"You go
first," said Kilmara.
Fitzduane did.
"So you
didn't actually see the Hangman killed?" said Kilmara.
"No,"
said Fitzduane.
"Things happened
very fast after Paulus shouted
‘Sempach!’
and shot Julius Lestoni.
It was all over
in a matter of seconds.
The last I saw
of Balac he was headed toward the end of the studio.
I got off a couple of rounds, but I don't
think I hit him.
Then the assault group
and the Bear's fucking tank took over.
When I woke up in the Tiefenau, they told me the rest.
The assault team had seen the Hangman through
a door at the end of the studio.
They
blasted him with everything short of things nuclear, and then some kind of embedded
thermite bombs went off and the whole place went up in flames.
The entire block was sealed off, and when
things were cool enough, they went in and dug through the wreckage.
They found various bodies.
The Hangman was identified by his dental
records.
Apparently he had tried to
destroy them and had succeeded, but the dentist kept a duplicate set in his
bank vault.
"Anyway,
that, according to the powers that be, was the end of the Hangman.
I stayed on a week to answer a whole lot of
questions a whole lot of times and get drunk most nights with the Bear.
And now here I am."
"Why did
Paulus von Beck shout, ‘
Sempach
’?"
asked Kilmara, puzzled.
Fitzduane
smiled.
"Love,
honor, duty.
We're all motivated
by something."
"I don't
follow."
"The von
Becks are Bernese aristocracy," said Fitzduane.
"Paulus felt that he had besmirched the
family honor and that he was redeeming it by facing up to the Hangman.
The Battle of Sempach took place when
Napoleon's troops invaded
The defending Bernese lost, but the consensus
was that they had saved their honor.
One
of the heroes of the battles was a von Beck."