The Great Game

by Michael Kurland

  Somewhere behind him there was a sharp explosion. A bomb had been set off in the path of the carriage. Two of the four Household Guards who were pursuing Webel, wheeled and galloped off to counter this new, and more immediate threat, but the others came pounding on.

  The Ferret appeared before him and grabbed him by the shoulder. "Lie down!" he ordered. "Now!"

  Webel dropped. Several pairs of feet pushed and prodded him, and he rolled into an empty space that appeared before him. As a flap was lowered behind him he realized that he was under the platform holding the puppet show stage. Outside there was yelling and screaming and the sound of running feet and cantering horses, as the Household Guardsmen searched for their prey. Inside all was dark. Webel rolled over to get deeper into the space and something sticky brushed his cheek. He reached up and traced the stickiness to the shoulder of his coat, where the Ferret had grabbed him. Rolling back, he lifted the end of the tent flap slightly and looked at his hand. There was a slender smear of almost-dried blood. Blood! What had the Ferret been doing to get his hand stained with blood?

  -

  It was approaching six o'clock when Paul entered the lobby of his building. A large man sitting on the staircase looked up as he entered. "Herr Paul Donzhof?"

  "Yes?"

  The man produced a Mauser automatic from the folds of his overcoat and pointed it at Paul. "We are of the police. I am Inspector Harcev. Please raise your hands above your head. Make no motion toward your pockets or I shall shoot you."

  "What?"

  Paul heard a footstep behind him, and then suddenly he was embraced in a powerful bear hug from behind by one man while another rapidly and impersonally went through his pockets and prodded and squeezed every place on his body where he might have concealed a weapon. Then his hands were twisted behind his back and a pair of handcuffs were screwed onto his wrists. The whole procedure took less than thirty seconds.

  Charles Summerdane stood mute and impassive at this display of overwhelming force, but his mind raced. Had the police discovered who he really was or what he was doing in Vienna? Had they stumbled upon the lesser truth that, as Paul Donzhof, he was a member of an anarchist group? He had thought that it was the uneasy anarchists who were following him about. Could it, instead, have been the police? Perhaps the Kundschafts Stelle had been watching him for the past few weeks, and was even now rounding up the other members of his group.

  Summerdane decided that a general denial, just to set the tone, would be in order. He would adopt the attitude of a truly innocent man until he found out just what they believed him guilty of—and probably beyond.

  "I don't understand what this is about," he said with as much dignity as he could manage with his hands manacled behind his back and two large men holding him by the shoulders. "Why are you treating me like a common criminal? Am I under arrest? I have done nothing."

  "That is for the magistrate to decide," Inspector Harcev said. He gestured. "Bring him."

  "Yes, Herr Inspector," one of his captors voiced. With one man grasping him by the elbow, the other prodding him in the back, and the inspector leading the way, they propelled Charles up the four flights of stairs to his landing.

  The front door to his apartment had been broken in and was drooping crazily, hanging from its lower hinge. Several men in black suits were visible in the hallway inside the apartment, tramping about and examining everything there was to examine.

  "Bring him!" the inspector repeated, heading into the apartment.

  Summerdane was propelled into the apartment by somebody's hand pushing the flat of his back. He stumbled, but managed to catch himself before he fell. "Say!" he said. "That sort of thing isn't necessary."

  Inspector Harcev stood by the door to the bedroom and gestured within. "And that, Herr Donzhof," he said, "was that necessary?"

  Charles stood next to the inspector and looked into the bedroom. There, on the checkerboard brown-and-white goose-feather quilt that covered his bed, was a great pool of blood. Beside it, and partly over it, was the body of Giselle Schiff. She was in her white smock over a patterned shirtfront with puffy sleeves. Her stockinged feet were in red knitted slippers from Persia that Paul Donzhof had brought her for her last birthday. Her throat had been cut straight across in one deep slash by a very sharp blade, leaving a gaping red mouth of a wound. Her eyes stared sightlessly at the doorway where Charles was standing. Great splotches of blood were on the wall in the bedroom and leading out of the hallway, as though someone, his hands covered with blood, had staggered from the room, perhaps overwhelmed with what he had just done.

  "Oh, God!" Charles said, and a white fog of pain suddenly swept over him, and he felt as though he had been kicked in the stomach and without any conscious thought he found that he was bent over and had begun throwing up everything he had eaten that day.

  "Goddam!" Inspector Harcev muttered, hopping aside, "he's retching over my shoe. Take him into the bathroom in the next apartment—they're not finished with this one yet—and clean him up when he stops vomiting. Then take him to the central police station and put him in a holding cell. We'll bring him before an examining magistrate in the morning."

  CHAPTER NINE — INCOGNITO

  In the four parts of the earth are many that are able to write learned books, many that are able to lead armies, and many also that are able to govern kingdoms and empires; but few there be that can keep a hotel.

  — Omar Kayyam

  A great roaring sounded in Barnett's ears, and three white blobs appeared in the blackness that had been his vision and faded away again. The roaring increased until it filled his whole mind and being, and several eternities passed, but then ever so slowly it died away to a dull, flat buzz. The blobs reappeared, filling his vision, and then receded some and came into focus, and they were heads. One of them belonged to Cecily. Behind her was a window and a ceiling. Barnett realized that he was lying down.

  What had happened? The last thing he remembered was walking on the grass with Cecily and the Bulefortes. And then—Oh, yes, a red spark came spiraling through the air. A red—he remembered! He had caught the infernal device that had been heaved at them and thrown it back. And then—nothing. How long had he been lying here, he wondered. Had the bomb gone off? How were the Bulefortes? He tried to sit up, but it seemed that his muscles couldn't remember how.

  He peered up at Cecily and the other two heads. "I think you're beautiful and wonderful," he told Cecily, "and whatever happened to me, I'm so glad you're all right."

  Cecily seemed to be staring down at him and smiling encouragingly, but her expression did not change, and she didn't reply. Oh, of course, his words had been thought but not spoken, they had not come out. He must try again.

  He tried to take a deep breath, but couldn't manage, so he settled for a shallow one. He concentrated on working his mouth and vocal cords. "Hello!" he croaked.

  "You're awake!" Cecily said, reaching over and putting a hand on his forehead. He realized that she was sitting on a chair by the bed.

  "What am I doing here?" he asked. The words sounded unnaturally loud, and his head began to ache. One of the heads disappeared from view, and he heard a door closing.

  "Hello, my love," Cecily said.

  "Well, that is a change," a new voice said. "Most usually the first question is 'Where am I?' but you have jumped right over that one." A genial-looking stout man with a great walrus mustache peered down at him over Cecily's shoulder.

  "This is Dr. Silbermann," Cecily explained. "From Vienna. Luckily he is a guest at the pensione, as the closest regular doctor is in Como."

  "Not that I am an irregular doctor, you understand," Silbermann insisted, "but merely a doctor on vacation."

  "I remember," Barnett said. "I have seen you in the dining room, doctor. How am I?"

  "Very lucky is how you are, young man," Dr. Silbermann said. "By all rights you should have had, at the very least, a concussion. But the probability of that seems to be diminishing. And the flying shards
of the infernal device have bypassed you completely, except for a comparatively minor slice taken from your thigh."

  His thigh? Barnett felt down beneath the pristine white bedclothes and encountered a mass of bandages that seemed to begin at his waist and go down as far as he could feel. He tried to sit up to explore the extent of his bandaging, but he was pushed firmly back down by Dr. Silbermann.

  "Not quite yet, young man," Silbermann said. "The possibility of concussion is not as of yet quite eliminated, and I wish you to lie very still until such time as it is."

  "When will that be?" Barnett asked.

  "When, after some time, you have shown no signs of having a concussion," Dr. Silbermann told him. "In medicine, as in logic, it is always more difficult to establish a negative. But we shall see what we shall see. Hold the light for me, please, Mrs. Barnett." The doctor rolled a sheet of paper into a tube and peered through it into Barnett's left eye, and then his right. "You may have a mild headache," he told Barnett. "That is to be expected. If, however, it gets severe, please notify me at once."

  Barnett tried to nod, and discovered that it hurt his head. But not, he decided, severely. He grinned weakly and turned to Cecily. "How are you?" he asked.

  She smiled. "Unharmed. You hurled that horrible thing away and saved us all."

  Barnett thought about that for a minute. "It is seldom," he said, "that a man can appear a hero in the eyes of his wife. I will not say that it was worth it—but that is a consideration. Where am I? I don't know this room, but it doesn't look like a hospital. And what time is it? And how are the Bulefortes?"

  "You are in one of the downstairs bedrooms at the villa," Cecily said, sitting on the edge of the bed. "It was thought unwise to attempt to move you upstairs while we were still uncertain about the extent of your injuries. It is about eleven o'clock in the morning. You slept through one entire day. And the Bulefortes are fine. Diane got a cut on her knee when Ariste pushed her down, but she is not complaining. Klempt, their bodyguard, lost a piece of his nose."

  "It was sliced cleanly off," Dr. Silbermann said with the enthusiasm of the professional, indicating the area removed with the two fingers of his right hand, "and presents no further danger to his health, although it will do little for his appearance. I understand the Swedish astronomer Tycho Brahe wore a silver nose for most of his life, his own having been cut off in a duel. The only danger Klempt now faces is infection, and the cartilage in the nose, with such a slight blood supply, is not prone to become infected."

  Barnett turned to Cecily. "Then he was, indeed, a bodyguard," he said.

  "Evidently not a very efficient one," Dr. Silbermann said. "It's no thanks to him that the body is still around."

  "The only fatality," Cecily said, "was the bomb-thrower himself. And he will not be sorely missed."

  "Who was he?" Barnett asked. "What happened to him?"

  "No one knows who he was," Cecily said. "He was carrying no identification."

  "A man in his mid twenties," Dr. Silbermann said, "In good health, well nourished, Caucasian, Nordic-type; weight about seventy kilos. Blue eyes, blond hair, cut short, sparse body hair, uncircumcised—beg pardon, Madam—scars from what must have been a severe childhood injury to his right knee, but he seems to have maintained the mobility of the joint. Death caused by rapid exsanguination caused by a fragment of the bomb which severed his carotid artery."

  "Ex—," Barnett began.

  "He bled to death. It couldn't have taken more than a minute or two, and he was already unconscious from another fragment of the bomb connecting with his temple."

  "You threw the bomb right back at him, you know," Cecily said.

  "I didn't have time to think about it," Barnett said. "It was like fielding an infield fly. Who would ever have thought that the habits built up by playing baseball in Central Park would one day save my life? But I'm sorry he's dead."

  "In that case I'm very glad you played so much of that peculiar American sport," Cecily said. "And don't feel sorry for the bomb-thrower. You did to him what he was trying to do to us." She leaned forward and kissed him on the forehead.

  "I'm only sorry because, were he alive, he might be able to tell us what he was doing, or rather, why he was doing it. Which among us is a target for a mad bomber?"

  "That is the question," Cecily agreed. "At first I was inclined to think that the people following us about might have instigated this. But if they wanted to kill us, they could have done it easily on the train, so why wait until we got here?"

  "And what do you think now?" Barnett asked. "You've had more time to think about it than I have. Although I think I dreamed about it. At least I dreamed about explosions, and a bright maelstrom that was sucking me in, trying to take me somewhere I didn't want to go. And, somehow, I couldn't fight it, I just had to go along."

  "How horrible!" Cecily said.

  "The unconscious mind sends us strange signals," Dr. Silbermann said. "Some of my colleagues are attempting to interpret them, even now. The emotional content of a dream is an indicator of its meaning. But in this case—a dream of horror in response to an event of horror—it is to be expected, no?"

  "At the same time it seemed strangely peaceful," Barnett said. "I don't remember ever arriving anywhere. I guess the dream just sort of faded out." He reached a hand out for Cecily. "What opinions have you arrived at regarding our bomber?"

  "Not so much an opinion as a feeling, based on a little information," Cecily said. "And I'd rather not go into it until I know a little bit more than I do now."

  Barnett looked speculatively at his wife for a second, and then said, "Fair enough. I think I'll go along with your feelings from now on."

  There was a knock on the door, and Frau Schimmer and a serving-girl entered with a pair of trays. "Breakfast for the invalid," Frau Schimmer announced cheerfully.

  And, with the word "breakfast," there came to Barnett the realization of a substantial hunger. "You must bear with me now, Doctor," he said, pushing himself to a sitting position. "Because I intend to eat breakfast. And if I don't sit up, I shall get it all over myself, and possibly choke."

  The girl put her tray down at the foot of the bed while Cecily and Frau Schimmer propped Barnett up with pillows. "Eat, eat," Frau Schimmer said. "Good food is the best medicine. A delicate omelette, slightly undercooked as befits the situation; brötchen, marmalade, hot cocoa. And a tray for you, also, Signora Barnett. To eat along with your so-brave husband."

  "You haven't eaten yet?" Barnett asked.

  "She has not yet left your side, the signora," Frau Schimmer said. "I do not believe she has slept."

  "I napped a little," Cecily said. "It's not important. Let's eat breakfast."

  Dr. Silbermann examined Barnett's breakfast tray and pronounced it suitable fare for an injured man. "But do not stuff yourself," he warned. "Eat lightly for a day or so, my boy."

  Frau Schimmer looked disapprovingly at the doctor for giving advice that went so strongly against everything in which she believed. They left the room together, and her voice could be heard in the hall explaining to Dr. Silbermann the health benefits of copious amounts of good food.

  Benjamin and Cecily ate in silence. There was, for now, nothing to say that needed words. After a few minutes Barnett's hunger deserted him completely and he pushed the tray further down the bed and sipped his hot chocolate, staring discontentedly at the half-eaten omelette on his plate. He felt that he was letting Frau Schimmer down, but he could eat no more.

  There was a knock at the door, and the Bulefortes came in. "Ah! You are awake!" Ariste Buleforte came over to the foot of the bed. "We would have been in to see you earlier, but we were told you were still sleeping. But finally Diane said we must look in on you anyway, and so we are here. How are you feeling?"

  "Tolerably well," Barnett said. "Suffering no pain at the moment except for a slight headache."

  "Thank the good Lord," Diane Buleforte said. "We were so worried about you. It would have been unforgivable if y
ou had suffered serious hurt."

  "Two policemen have arrived by vapore from Como," Ariste said. "They are engaged in looking at the, um, deceased, now. But they will want to question us shortly. I apologize for the inconvenience."

  "Don't take it so personally," Barnett said. "It's not your fault."

  "Ah, but I'm afraid it is. It was, after all, either me or my wife, or more probably both of us, that this insane person was trying to assassinate. That he used a bomb capable of removing us all was merely a sign of his exuberance."

  "Now hold it," Barnett said. "Don't be so all-fired eager to take the credit. We don't know who the man was after. It might have been Cecily and myself, after all. Strange people have been fol-lowing us around since we left for this trip, and going through our belongings."