GAMES OF THE HANGMAN

by VICTOR O'REILLY

  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 Tiefenau. 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 Burgundy between them.

  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 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 Switzerland involves the Fremdenpolizei, as you know. 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 take 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 Cana, I'm saving the best for last."

  "So?" the Bear said impatiently.

  "The Nose has been set up to monitor any incident in Bern that might conceivably relate to the activities of the Hangman. A couple of days ago a dentist's surgery was completely destroyed by fire—as was the dentist, who had been bound into his own chair with wire."

  "That sounds like the Hangman's sense of humor," said the Bear. "Though I guess there might be a few other candidates among the patients."

  "Needless to say, all of the dentist's records were destroyed, and that would have been that except it turns out he kept a backup set in his bank."

  "I'm sure his widow will enjoy looking through them. And I presume Mr. Lodge's full frontals are among them?"

  "Exactly."

  "Matrushka," said the Bear, "if I can quote Henssen's latest obsession."

  "Gesundheit," said Fitzduane.

  The Chief Kripo was contemplating the computer screen. His face had been gashed unpleasantly, if not severely, during the Muri raid, and the scars itched. The stitches had been taken out several days before and he had been told he was healing well. He had also been told the scars would be permanent unless he had plastic surgery. He was unenthusiastic about the idea; he thought he'd prefer to remain scarred and dangerous-looking than have some quack peel skin off his bottom and try to stick it on his face. He didn't like strangers attempting to rearrange his bits—which brought him right back to the Hangman, who had damn nearly succeeded in disassembling him into his component parts.

  He tapped the computer keyboard a couple of times with his forefinger. "It works," he said. "You've proved that it does. Why is it that now, when we're so close, it's of no help anymore?"

  Henssen shrugged helplessly. "It has to be asked the right questions."

  The Chief glared at the VDU. He had a totally irrational desire to climb inside the machine with a screwdriver and wrench and force the dumb beast to cough up some answers. Somewhere inside the electronic monster lay the solution, he was convinced of that. But what to do about it? He had no idea. He was certain he was missing something—something obvious. He walked back and forth across the room, glancing frequently at the computer. After ten minutes of this, to Henssen's great relief, he stopped and sat down. "Tell me more," he said, "about how this machine thinks."

  Fitzduane found walking in the Marzili pleasant but distracting. The Marzili was a long, thin park sandwiched between the River Aare and a well-to-do residential area of Bern, both of which were overlooked by the Bundeshaus and a plethora of government buildings, including the Interpol building and the headquarters of the Federal Police.

  The Marzili's proximity to the center of things meant that even this early in the year, as the day was warm and sunny, a generous sprinkling of nearly naked women was scattered across the lawn. Topless sunbathing was the norm in the Marzili, and hundreds of secretaries and computer operators and other government workers were busy making up for a long, cold winter. Serried ranks of nipples were pointed at the sun like solar cells on an energy farm.

  Fitzduane, encased in a bulletproof vest under a light cotton blouson jacket, felt overdressed. He glanced across at the Bear, who was humming. Externally the detective seemed little the worse for wear after his two weeks in the hospital, and his cheeks had the ruddy gl
ow of good living. On second thought Fitzduane decided that more than good food and wine were reflected in the Bear's demeanor. Love and the Bear? Well, good for Frau Maurer. Her first name, he had learned, was Katia.

  "Don't you find all this distracting?" he asked. Fitzduane's eyes followed a spectacular redhead as she loped across the grass in front of them and then lay down on a towel, eyes closed, face and body toward the sun, knees drawn up and slightly apart. Tendrils of pubic hair escaping from the monokini confirmed that she was the genuine article. She looked edible.

  "On the contrary," said the Bear, "I find it quite riveting."

  Fitzduane smiled. They walked toward the path that ran along the bank of the river. Downstream, minutes away, was the Kirchenfeld Bridge, and just below that was the spot where Klaus Minder's body had been fished out.

  The Bear sat down on a bench. Suddenly he looked tired. He threw a small branch into the water, and his eyes followed it until it bobbed out of sight. He extracted a creased envelope from his pocket and smoothed it on his knee.

  "Your guess as to the Hangman's identity," he said. "I found it in my pocket when I was getting dressed in the hospital this morning."

  "It seems I was wrong," said Fitzduane dryly. "There doesn't seem to be much doubt that Lodge is our man, and God knows where he is now. Your people have checked every square millimeter of Bern over the last couple of weeks."

  "Why did you think it was Balac?"

  Fitzduane picked up a handful of pebbles and slowly tossed them one by one into the river. He liked the faint plop each stone made. He wondered how many people had sat on the riverbank over the years and done the same thing. Had a vast bed of pebbles built up in the river as a result? Would the river eventually be choked up by ruminating river watchers?

  "A number of reasons. For starters, just sheer gut feeling that he is a person who is not what he seems. Next, a number of small things. He is the right age. He was an intimate of Erika's. He has the right kind of charming but dominant personality. His artist's training would give him an excellent knowledge of anatomy. His work habits allow him to travel extensively without suspicion, to have unexplained absences, and so on. He's paranoid about security. His studio is near where Klaus Minder's body was found. There are other pointers, but none conclusive, and in any case it all appears a little academic at this stage. We've identified our man, and he isn't Balac."

  "Hmm," mused the Bear. He was no longer looking so tired.

  "Anyway, I can't see him doing something as provocative as the chessboard girl."

  "We're dealing with a player of games," said the Bear. "The Hangman isn't rational by normal standards. He has his own logic. Tweaking our collective official nose appeals to him. Actually it's not so uncommon. I once picked up a car thief who had operated freely for years until he stole a police car—and not an unmarked one, but the full painted-up job with radio and flashing lights and all the trimmings. When I asked him why he'd done such a stupid thing, he said he couldn't resist it."

  Fitzduane laughed. "How are you feeling?"

  "Good considering this is my first day out of the hospital, but I do get a little wobbly now and then. I'll take a good long rest when this is over."

  "I'm not sure you should go to this meeting."

  "You couldn't keep me away if you tried," said the Bear. "Don't forget I've a very personal interest these days. I want the Hangman dead."

  "What about civil rights and due process of law?" said Fitzduane, smiling.

  The Bear shook his head. "This isn't a normal case. Normal rules don't apply. This is like stamping out a plague. You destroy the source of the infection."

  They walked along the Aare to the Dalmazibrücke. By crossing it and cutting up Schwellenmattstrasse, they could have made it to Project K in ten minutes, but Fitzduane took another look at the Bear and called a Berp car by radio. The Bear didn't argue. He was silent, lost in thought.

  The Chief surveyed the assembled Project K team; then his gaze fixed on the Bear.

  "You shouldn't be here, Heini, as you damn well know. If you collapse, don't expect me to hold one end of the stretcher. You're too damn heavy."

  The Bear nodded. "Understood, Chief. You're not a young man anymore."

  "Needs his strength for other things," said Charlie von Beck.

  "Shut up, the lot of you," said the Chief, "and listen carefully. A short time ago we had our first major breakthrough. We paid a heavy price, but we identified the Hangman's base in Bern, and we now have a fair idea who he is, though I admit there are some problems in that area. On the negative side, a couple of weeks after the Muri find, the investigation is virtually at a standstill. We are at an impasse in terms of the Hangman's identity, and the man himself seems to have vanished despite the fact that we now have a photograph of him—and dental records—to work with. To add insult to injury, the death of that dentist occurred after the Muri raid, so it looks very much as if the Hangman is still in Bern. We know what he looks like, yet this psychopath seems to come and go with impunity—and not just to look at the sights. He is still killing.

  "I've called you all together to suggest we change the way we're approaching this investigation. Since Muri we've been concentrating on trying to find Lodge to the virtual exclusion of all else. We haven't been successful. Now I think we need a more creative approach, and I include in that our use of the computer." He nodded at Henssen.

  Henssen stood up and then propped himself against a desktop. He looked as if he needed the support. He cleared his throat and spoke, his voice hoarse. "The Chief thinks that we may have the solution in the computer but that we're not asking the right questions. He may well be right, so let me explain a little more about what we have done—and can do.

  "Our identification of Lodge was the result of a mixture of computer activity and human judgment. We tapped into a vast amount of data and constructed a theoretical profile of the Hangman, and then, using a technique known as forward chaining, we filtered through the data. We were lucky. One of our two prime suspects was our man."

  "May I interrupt here?" the Bear broke in. "I thought it was agreed that the initial profile would look for someone who wasn't Swiss. If so, why did the machine cough up Beat von Graffenlaub? His age wasn't right either."

  Henssen looked a little uncomfortable. "Well, Heini, I owe you something of an apology. I second-guessed you. The program allows parameters to be graded according to the confidence you have in them. I gave your non-Swiss hunch a low confidence rating because there wasn't a shred of hard evidence to back it up; it was outweighed by other material. The same applied to the age factor. In neither case were we dealing with hard facts, only with guesses."

  "Fair enough," said the Bear, "but I would like to have been told that at the time."

  "The system is totally transparent to the user," said Henssen. "Any of the parameters can be looked at whenever you wish. After this I'll show you how it's done."

  "Can we get back to the original topic?" said the Chief testily.

  "Certainly," said Henssen. "Where was I?"

  "Forward chaining," said Kersdorf.

  "Ah," said Henssen. "Well, forward chaining is essentially a way of generating conclusions by applying rules, either formal or heuristic, to a given set of facts. If the bank customer pulls a gun and demands money and there is no suggestion that this is a security test, then a reasonable deduction is that he is a bank robber."

  "And who said computers couldn't think?" Charlie von Beck rolled his eyes. He was back in his bow tie and velvet suit.

  Henssen ignored the interruption. "The point is, forward chaining is only one way to go about things. You can also use backward chaining. In that situation you could assume someone was a bank robber and then work back to see what facts supported that conclusion. It's an ideal way of checking out a suspect and ties in with the less rational elements of our human makeup, like intuition."

  The Bear caught Fitzduane's eye and smiled.

  "What it comes down to
," the Chief said, "is that we have a much more flexible tool here than we seem to realize, and we're not using it to anywhere near its full potential. For instance, it can function in the abstract. Instead of asking, 'Who do we have on file who has a knowledge of plastique?' you can ask it, 'What kind of person would have a knowledge of plastique, and where might he or she be found?' The machine will then generate a profile based upon its file of data and its knowledge base." He rose to his feet. "Well, there you have it. Take off the blinkers. Try a little creative anarchy. Hit the problem from first principles. Find the fucking Hangman." After an angry look at everyone, he left the room.

  "Anarchy!" exclaimed von Beck. "Creative anarchy! Is he really Swiss? It wasn't anarchy that made William Tell shoot straight or the cuckoos in our clocks pop out on time."

  Inspired by Katia, who believed that certain foods were good for certain parts of the anatomy, over the next three days the Bear ate a great deal of fish—a luxury in landlocked Switzerland—and, so to speak, kept himself to himself.

  He wasn't so much antisocial as elusive. He went places and did things without saying exactly where or what. He made and received phone calls without comment. A series of packages arrived by courier and were unwrapped and examined only when he was alone. He was moderately talkative but only on any subject except the Hangman, and he was maddeningly cheerful.

  On the morning of the fourth day Fitzduane, who had been researching variations of Swiss batzi with a little too much dedication the night before, rose at the unearthly hour the Swiss set aside for breakfast only to yawn to a halt in near-terminal shock at the sight of the Bear standing on his head, arms crossed, in the living room. His eyes were closed.

  "Morning," said the Bear without stirring.

  "Ugh," said Fitzduane. He turned on his heel and stood under a cold shower for five minutes. Toward the end he thought it might be a good idea to remove his robe and pajamas. When he returned to the living room, the apparition had vanished.

  Over breakfast the Bear expounded on the merits of fish as a brain food. "Did you know," he said, "that the brain is essentially a fatty organ and one of its key ingredients, a free fatty acid, comes from fish?"