"I read something about it," said von Graffenlaub, "in a section of a brochure put out by Draker College. But what does a long-dead cult have to do with all this? The Sacrificers were wiped out more than seven hundred years ago."
"Well, imagine the appeal of such an organization to young people like Rudi. An independent structure, secret and violent and dedicated. To a rebellious adolescent, you can see the attractiveness of it. To a man like the Hangman, such an organization would be ideal."
"Preposterous," said von Graffenlaub. "These are wild surmises."
Fitzduane nodded. "You're quite right. Much of this is guesswork. I have no proof that Rudi was a member of any cult, much less one involving the Hangman. But the fact of his tattoo, which has been associated with the Hangman, remains. Otherwise the object of all this—game playing or something more serious—is far from clear. Now let me show you something."
Fitzduane clicked the video made by the Rangers into place and pressed the play button. On its completion he placed a slim plastic folder containing letters in front of the momentarily speechless von Graffenlaub.
"That video was made after Rudi's death," said Fitzduane. "That pleasant-looking little group was observed coming from Draker. The masks, need I say, make identification impossible."
"So why do you think Rudi was involved?" Von Graffenlaub's voice was weary. "His tattoo—except for the circle of flowers, it is a common enough design, it signifies protest, nothing more. He could have picked it up anywhere."
Fitzduane opened the file of letters. He showed one to von Graffenlaub. "You recognize the writing?"
Von Graffenlaub nodded. "Rudi's," he said sadly. He rubbed the paper between his fingers as if this would somehow bring his dead son closer.
"Rudi was alienated from you," said Fitzduane, "and his mother was dead. He was almost too close to Vreni. He needed someone to confide in who had some perspective. He started writing to Marta. What he wrote is neither entirely clear nor totally incriminating, but if you put it together with what we now know through other means, a reasonable interpretation is that he joined some sort of cult, found himself involved in something he couldn't handle, tried to leave—and then found there was no way out."
"So he killed himself."
"No," said Fitzduane. "I don't think so, or at least not willingly. I think he was either murdered or forced to commit suicide, which amounts to the same thing. Probably we shall never know."
"May I have his letters?"
"Of course." Fitzduane had already made copies in anticipation of this contingency. They made depressing reading. He remembered an extract from the last letter, written less than a week before Rudi's death:
Matinka, I wish I could tell you what is really going on, but I can't. I'm sworn to secrecy. I thought it was what should be done, but now I know more, and I'm not sure it's right anymore. I've been doing a lot of thinking. This is a good place to think. It's so empty compared with Switzerland, and there is always the noise of the sea. It's surreal, not like real life.
But I have to get away. You'll probably see me sooner than you expect. Perhaps things will look better when I'm back in Bern.
Von Graffenlaub had been scanning the letter. "Why didn't Marta show this to me?" he said.
Fitzduane sighed. "By the time that particular letter arrived, Rudi was dead," he said. "I guess she thought, what's the point?"
The Bear and Charlie von Beck were sitting in the next room when Fitzduane came in after his talk with von Graffenlaub. The Bear removed his headphones and switched off the tape recorder. "Has he gone?"
"Yes," said Fitzduane. "He's got a plane to catch, some negotiations in progress in New York. He'll be away for a week."
"Plenty of time to think," said von Beck.
"Yes, poor sod," said Fitzduane. "I don't like what we're doing."
"We apply pressure where we can," said the Bear, "and hope that something gives. It's crude and it isn't fair, but it's what works."
"Sometimes," said Fitzduane.
"Sometimes is enough," said the Bear.
"I don't think von Graffenlaub is involved," said von Beck.
"No," agreed the Bear, "but who is better placed to lean on Erika?"
"Aren't you afraid of what may happen?" said Fitzduane.
"Do you mean, do I think von Graffenlaub may attack her, perhaps kill her? Not really. But even if he does, do we have a choice? The Hangman isn't a single case of murder; he's a plague. He's got to be stopped."
"The greater good."
"Something like that," said the Bear. "But if it helps you any, I don't like it either."
Fitzduane poured himself a drink. He was drained after the long session with von Graffenlaub, and the whiskey felt smooth against his throat. He poured himself another and added more ice. The Bear was lighting his pipe and looking at him over the top.
" 'How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?' " quoted Fitzduane.
"Not once," said the Bear, "since you're asking."
"Sherlock Holmes. Don't they teach you Bernese anything apart from languages?"
"Good manners, for one," said the Bear. "Let me remind you of another Holmes dictum: 'It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data.' "
"That was before computers," said Fitzduane, "not to mention expert systems. Anyway, the trouble with this case isn't lack of data. We're drowning in it. What we're short of are conclusions, not to mention proof."
"They also teach us patience in Bern," said the Bear.
"That's not one of Ireland's national characteristics."
"But what's this about the elusive Ivo?" von Beck broke in. "What headway is being made there?"
"Sir Ivo," said Fitzduane. "He thinks he's a knight in shining armor. I didn't recognize him at first. I was coming out of a bank on the Bärenplatz when this weird figure in cloak and crash helmet slid up on roller skates and started to talk to me. Before I could say much more than a social 'Who the hell are you?' he'd vanished again. He did much the same thing twice more as I was crossing the square and then pressed a note into my hand. I damn nearly shot him."
Von Beck shuddered. "I wish you wouldn't say things like that," he said. "Shooting people is very un-Swiss. Which reminds me—the authorities in Lenk want to know who's going to pay for the iron door you blasted. Apparently it doesn't belong to the cheese maker; it's Gemeinde property."
Fitzduane laughed. Von Beck tried to look serious and authoritarian, which wasn't so easy in his skunkworks sweatshirt.
"Wait till you see the bill," he said. "It's no laughing matter. The Gemeinde claims it was an antique door of considerable historical value. They also want to give you an award for saving Sergeant Franze's life—but that's a separate issue."
"You're kidding me."
"Certainly not," said von Beck. "In Switzerland we take the destruction of property most seriously."
"Ivo," said the Bear.
"Ah, yes," said von Beck. "What does this note say?"
"It's a typical Ivo message," said the Bear, "not straightforward. He uses drawings and poetry and so on. But the meaning is clear. He wants to meet Fitzduane tomorrow at the High Noon, the café at the corner of the Bärenplatz, at midday. He must come alone. No police. And it's about Klaus Minder. Ivo has information about his killer."
"Ivo's a screwball," said von Beck, "and he's already killed one man. Is it worth the risk? We don't want our Irishman slashed to death before he's paid for the door in Lenk—even if it would make our Chief of the Criminal Police happy."
"It's a risk," said the Bear, "but I don't think a serious one. It's clear that Ivo has taken a liking to Fitzduane, and I don't think he's essentially violent. I'll lay odds what happened to the Monkey was provoked in some way."
"Want to risk it?" said von Beck to Fitzduane. "We'll have you well covered."
"If the city pays for the door in Lenk."
Von Beck looked paine
d.
Henssen came in, smiling. "Progress," he announced. "We've done another run. If all our heuristics are correct, we've narrowed down the suspect list to only eight thousand."
Von Beck looked depressed. "I hate computers," he said as he left the room.
"What's up with him?" said Henssen. "I was only joking."
"Budget problems," said the Bear.
Fitzduane put down his glass. The shotgun, an XR-18 round chambered, safety on, lay concealed in the tripod case beside the beer. There was no sign of Ivo. He checked his watch: three minutes to noon. He remembered what Charlie von Beck had said: "Ivo might be a screwball, but he's a Swiss screwball." Ivo would be on time.
The Bear, von Beck himself, and six detectives, including one borrowed from the Federal Police, had been allocated to back up Fitzduane, and it had seemed like overkill when they were running through the plan. Now, looking at the teeming crowds and the area to be covered, he wasn't so sure.
He ran through the plan again. The Bärenplatz was a large, rectangular open space with outdoor cafes lining the sunny side. The center of the space had been closed off to traffic and was filled with market stalls. Today seemed especially busy. There were flower stands in profusion, hucksters selling leatherwear and homemade sweets and organically grown just-about-everything. About thirty meters away a crowd had gathered to watch some jugglers and a fire-eater perform.
The Bärenplatz wasn't a nice neat shoebox with one entrance. Far from it: it was impossible to seal off without much greater manpower than was available. One end led into Spitalgasse, one of the main shopping streets, providing endless opportunities for escape; the other end of the square bordered the Bundesplatz, the even larger open area in front of the Federal Parliament building. To cap it all off, Ivo would probably be on roller skates, which meant he could move considerably faster than the police. Fitzduane had raised the matter with von Beck, who had laughed and said that an earlier suggestion that some detectives might wear skates had nearly given the Chief Kripo a heart attack.
The compromise was two detectives on motorcycles. Fitzduane looked at the jugglers and the fire-eater and the dense crowds and had bad vibes about the whole thing. On the other hand, he admitted to himself, he was biased. He would have liked to have seen the Bear on skates.
The High Noon was in one corner of the Bärenplatz within a few yards of the Käfigturm, the Prison Tower, which divided what was essentially one street into Spitalgasse and Marktgasse.
Ivo had stipulated no police, and the Bear, who knew him well, had been adamant. If Ivo wasn't to be frightened away, the backup force would have to be well concealed. "Ivo," the Bear had said, tapping his nose, "may be odd, but he's no fool. He can smell a cop—and he's got a good sense of smell. Believe me."
They did. All of which put the onus on Fitzduane and good communications. The idea was that Ivo wouldn't be arrested until he had had a chance to say whatever was on his mind. Only then, at Fitzduane's signal, would the trap be sprung. Fitzduane drank some beer and tried to feel less uneasy with his role. He felt like a Judas. Ivo, a lonely soul who needed help more than anything else, trusted him.
The taped wires of the concealed transmitter itched, but he resisted the temptation to scratch under his shirt. He pressed the transmitter switch that was taped to his left wrist under his shirt cuff. The gesture looked as if he were consulting his watch. He heard an answering click from the Bear, who, together with the federal policeman, was sitting on the second-floor veranda of a tearoom more or less directly across from where Fitzduane sat. This gave the Bear a bird's-eye view of the operation, and it kept him out of Ivo's sight. He was; however, too far away from the High Noon to make the actual arrest. That would be the responsibility of the two detectives concealed in the kitchen of the café. The task force was linked by two radio nets. One channel was restricted to Fitzduane and the Bear. The second channel was netted between the Bear and all the other members of his team. The setup should work fine unless the Bear got his transmission buttons mixed up. The clock in the Prison Tower struck noon.
Frau Hunziker looked up in surprise as the door opened.
"Herr von Graffenlaub," she said, a little flustered. "I didn't expect you until next week. I thought you were in New York. Is something wrong?"
Beat von Graffenlaub smiled at her gently. The smile was incongruous because his eyes were hollow from lack of sleep and his whole demeanor projected stress and worry. He had aged in the past few days. My God, he's an old man, she thought for the first time.
"You and I, Frau Hunziker," he said, "have some arrangements to make."
"I don't understand," said Frau Hunziker. "Everything is in order as far as I know."
"You do an excellent job, my dear Frau Hunziker, excellent, quite excellent." He stood in the doorway of his office. "No interruptions until after lunch. Then I will need you. No interruptions at all. Is that quite clear?"
"Yes, Herr von Graffenlaub." She heard the lock click in the door. She was concerned. Herr von Graffenlaub had never behaved this way before, and he was looking terrible. Perhaps she should do something. She looked up at the clock on the wall. It was just after midday, two hours until her employer would need her. But training and discipline reasserted themselves, and she returned to her work.
Moving at speed, Ivo emerged from behind the jugglers, sideslipped gracefully between a mother and her dallying gaggle of children, looped around a flower stall, and glissaded to a halt in front of Fitzduane. He slid his visor up with a click. Behind him the fire-eater started to do something antisocial. Fitzduane hoped the mother was keeping count of her children; the smallest looked as if he were planning to get fried.
"Hello, Irishman," said Ivo. "I'm glad you came."
"I hope I am," said Fitzduane. "The last time we met I nearly got shot."
"Nothing will happen today," said Ivo. "I am invisible to my enemies. I have special powers, you know."
"Nothing personal," said Fitzduane, "but it's not you I'm worried about. I don't have any magic skates, not even a broomstick, and there are people out there with decidedly unpleasant habits."
Ivo sat down across the table from Fitzduane and with the grace of a conjurer produced two brightly painted eggs from the depths of his guitar and began to juggle with them. His special powers obviously didn't extend to juggling, and Fitzduane waited for the accident to happen. He hoped that Ivo had used an egg timer, or he was likely to need a fresh shirt. The display was morbidly fascinating. One egg went unilateral and thudded onto the table in front of Fitzduane.
There was no explosion of yellow; it just lay there cracked.
Ivo shrugged and began removing the shell. "I can never decide which color to eat first," he said.
Fitzduane pushed the salt cellar across the table. "It's one of life's great dilemmas," he said. "Something to drink?"
A waiter was standing by their table, looking at Ivo with ill-concealed distaste. He wrinkled his nose as the light breeze demonstrated the less visible aspects of knightly behavior, and he looked around to see if the other customers seemed to have noticed the smell. Fortunately it was late for morning coffee and early for lunch. The tables were nearly empty. In his own idiosyncratic way, Fitzduane decided, Ivo was a smart screwball, and polite, too. He was sitting downwind of Fitzduane.
"One of those," said Ivo, pointing at Fitzduane's beer.
Fitzduane looked up at the waiter, who seemed to be debating about accepting the order. Fitzduane was not entirely unsympathetic, but the time didn't seem right for a discussion of personal hygiene. "My eccentric but very rich and influential friend," he said, "would like a beer." He smiled and placed a hundred-franc note on the table, weighting it in place with his empty beer bottle.
The waiter's scruples vanished at much the same speed as the hundred-franc note. Fitzduane thought that with such manual dexterity the waiter would be a safer bet with the colored eggs than Ivo.
"Would the gentleman like anything else?" asked the waiter. "Pe
rhaps something to eat?"
"The gentleman's diet permits only a certain type of egg, which, as you can see, he carries with him, but more salt would be appreciated." Fitzduane indicated the nearly empty cellar.
Ivo moved on to the second egg. "I've written a book," he said, his mouth half full, "a book of poems." He reached inside the guitar and produced a soiled but bulky package, which he pushed across the table to Fitzduane. "It's about my friend Klaus and the man who killed him."
"Klaus Minder?"
"Yes," said Ivo, "my friend Klaus." He was silent. Then he put some salt on the side of his left thumb. He drank some beer and licked the salt. "Like tequila," he said.
"You're missing the lemon," said Fitzduane.
"Klaus is dead, you know. I miss him. I need a friend. Will you be my friend? We can find out who killed Klaus together."
"I thought you knew who killed Klaus."
"I know some things—quite a lot of things—but not all things. I need help. Will you help?"
Fitzduane looked at him. Sir Ivo, he thought, was not such a bad invention. There was a noble and sturdy spirit inside that slight physique, though whether it would ever have a chance of fulfillment was a very moot point. He thought of the loaded gun on the table beside him and the police team waiting and the years in prison or in some mental institution that Ivo faced, and he hated himself for what he was doing. He held his hand out to him. "I'll do what I can," he said. "I'll be your friend."
GAMES OF THE HANGMAN Page 32