Games of The Hangman

17

Colonel Ulrich Hoden (retired) had risen early. He had a problem. Major Tranino (retired), his old wartime companion, and over the intervening decades his chess partner — normally by post but twice a year in person — was on a winning streak. He had beaten the colonel twice in a row. Something had to be done if a hat trick was to be staved off.

Over a game of jass, the Swiss national card game, he had posed the problem to his companions. After much deliberation and several liters of Gurten beer, they had suggested that what the colonel needed was perspective: to study the chess problem from a new angle. One of his companions suggested that he work it out on one of the giant open-air chessboards scattered around Bern. He particularly recommended the board next to the Rosengarten. It was only twenty minutes from where the colonel was staying with his grandchildren in the Obstberg district, and apart from the pleasures of the garden itself, the view of Bern from the low hill on which the garden was located was spectacular.

The colonel took the steep path up to the Rosengarten instead of the longer but gentler route. At the top there was a glass-fronted café, still closed at this hour, with an outside eating area bordered by a low wall. He rested there for a few minutes, catching his breath after the steep climb and taking in the sight of old Bern laid out below. He could see the course of the River Aare, the red-tiled roofs of the old buildings, the spire of the Münster against the distant skyline of snowcapped mountains, and all around him trees and flowers were coming into full bloom as if in special haste to make up for their long sleep under the snows of winter. A robin landed on the wall beside him, peered up inquisitively, hopped around a couple of times, then flew away about its business.

The colonel decided that he had better follow the robin's example. Major Tranino's problem was a tricky one. The sooner he laid it out on the giant chessboard, the sooner inspiration might strike.

As he neared the chessboard, he was surprised to see the pieces all laid out ready to play. They were normally stacked away at night, and it now looked as if someone might have beaten him to it despite the early hour. Ah, well, he had enjoyed the walk, and there might be the chance of a game. Perhaps two heads could solve the colonel's little difficulty. But would that be ethical? Probably not. It was supposed to be strictly mano a mano when the colonel and the major were playing, notwithstanding the geographical separation.

Something about the chessboard looked odd, and he could see no other players. He came closer. The blue and white chess pieces were nearer to him, the tallest of them the size of a small child, reaching halfway up his thigh. He put on his glasses; there was nothing wrong with the blue and white pieces. He turned his gaze to the red and black pieces and walked forward onto the board itself to study the pieces one by one.

The pawns gleamed in their new paint, and the contrasting slashes of color reminded him of nothing so much as a file of Swiss Guards on parade in the Vatican. He knew that there was something wrong and that he should have seen what it was by now, and he admitted to himself that even with his glasses his eyes were not what they had been. He really should get a stronger pair; vanity be damned.

He stepped forward again to study the back row. The rook seemed fine; the knight and the bishop were normal; nest came the queen — and it was the queen that killed him.

There was no queen. In her place, propped upright, was the upper half of the body of a young woman. She seemed to be smiling at him, then he realized that her lips had been cut away to expose her teeth.

The pain was immediate and massive. He swayed briefly and then fell back on the hard slabs of the chessboard. His last thought before the heart attack killed him was that Major Tranino (retired) looked as if he would win three times in a row, if only by default in the case of the third game — and that was a pity because Colonel Hoden (retired) thought he just might have found the answer.

* * * * *

Fitzduane supposed that his ideas of what an Autonomous Youth House should look like were conditioned by his recollection of the one in Zurich. He remembered a battered and litter-strewn industrial building covered with graffiti and still freshly scarred from recent riots, and everywhere around it broken glass and empty tear gas canisters and twitchy policemen. He was almost disappointed by what he found in Bern.

Taubenstrasse 12 was a large, solid three-story construction with a distinctly nineteenth-century feel about it. Its style positively radiated probity, bourgeois values, and the merits of the Bernese establishment. In contrast with the sober image projected by the building, half a dozen spray can-inscribed sheets fluttered their calls for freedom, anarchy, and pot for all from the front of the house. In counterpoint, less than a hundred meters away was the gray, multistory, modernistic box that housed the Federal Police administration.

As Fitzduane approached, a young couple rushed from the building. The man's face was red and swollen, as if he had been on the losing side of a fight, and blood was gushing from his nose. The girl with him was crying. They pushed past Fitzduane and ran out into the small park that bordered the other side of Taubenstrasse.

The front door was open. Fitzduane called out, then knocked. No one answered. Balancing caution and curiosity, he went in. The hall was dark and cool in contrast with the glare of the sunlight. He paused while his eyes adjusted.

A hand grabbed his arm. "Polizei?" a voice asked nervously.

Fitzduane removed the hand. It was dirty, as was the person it belonged to. The person also smelled.

"No, " said Fitzduane.

"You are English?" The voice belonged to a small, scruffy youth of about twenty. He seemed agitated.

"Irish," said Fitzduane. "I'm looking for someone called Klaus Minder. A friend told me he sometimes lives here."

The youth gave a start. He moved away from Fitzduane and examined him carefully. His eyes were red-rimmed, and he was shaking. He removed a hand-rolled cigarette from his pocket and tried to light it but was unable to hold the match steady. Fitzduane moved forward gently and held his wrist while flame and marijuana made contact. The wrist was frail and thin. The youth inhaled deeply several times, and some of the tension went from his face. He looked at Fitzduane.

"You must help us," he said. "First you must help us."

Fitzduane smiled. "If it's legal and quick, or at least quick. What's the problem?"

The youth leaned forward. He smelled terrible and looked worse, but there was something, some quality, curiously appealing about him. "There is a man upstairs, a Dutchman — his name is Jan van der Grijn — and he is creating trouble. If you go up, because you are an outsider, he will stop."

"Why's he doing this?"

The youth shrugged. He looked at the ground. "He stayed here a little while ago," he said, "and after he left he was missing some stuff. He has come back to find it. He says one of us robbed him, and he's threatening everyone who was there that night."

"Why don't you go to the police?"

The youth shook his head. "We don't want the police in here," he said. "We have enough trouble with them."

The marijuana smoke diffused through the corridor. "I can't imagine why," said Fitzduane dryly. He was thinking it might be an excellent idea to leave.

The youth tugged him by the arm. "Come on," he insisted. "Afterward I will tell you about Klaus."

Reluctantly Fitzduane followed the youth up the stairs. "What's your name?" he called up after him.

"Ivo," answered the youth. He opened a door off the second-floor landing and stood aside. Muffled shouts came from inside, but Fitzduane went in anyway. An extremely bad decision. The door slammed shut behind him.

He could smell Ivo by his side. "The Dutchman has two friends with him," Ivo said. "They are the ones in the leather jackets."

"Good information," said Fitzduane, "but lousy timing." Before he knew what was happening, he felt an armlock around his neck and something sharp being pressed against his kidneys. Someone with foul breath spoke into his right ear. He didn't understand a word.

A big man in a leather jacket stopped punching a blond youth, who was held by an equally large companion, and came forward. He hit Fitzduane once very hard in the stomach. Fitzduane sagged to his knees. He felt sick, and he was getting quite angry.

* * * * *

Detective Kurt Siemann of the Bern Kriminalpolizei, not one of the Chief Kripo's favorites, hence his rank — or rather lack of it at the mature age of forty-seven — was of two minds about whether to follow Fitzduane into the Youth House.

His brief was terse: "Keep an eye on him, note his movements, keep him out of trouble, but don't hassle him," which seemed to Siemann to incorporate certain self-canceling elements. Following Fitzduane into the Youth House could well be construed as ‘hassling.’ On the other hand, since the Bern police were not yet equipped to see through stone walls, the instruction ‘keep an eye on him’ was currently being obeyed only in the figurative sense at best. Another complication was that it was current police policy to steer clear of the Youth House as much as possible. It was a policy with which Detective Siemann did not agree; he was all in favor of donning riot gear and cracking a few heads.

Detective Siemann decided that on balance he was probably better off staying outside, staring at the tulips and counting the flies. He thought it wouldn't do any harm if he sat down on the grass and rested for a few minutes. He lay down and put his hands behind his head — it wasn't all bad being a policeman in the spring. It might not be fair to say that he fell fast asleep, but even Detective Siemann himself would admit that he dozed.

* * * * *

The Bear tried to maintain an orderly wallet with everything in its place, but somehow it didn't seem to work out that way. Cash, credit cards, notes, receipts, police bulletins, bills, letters, and other impedimenta of debatable origin all seemed to gravitate of their own volition in no logical order to an apparently endless series of pockets that he had discovered disgorged their contents only on whim. It was infuriating. He worried that he would be unable to find his police identity card at some crucial moment, but so far, at least, that piece of documentation seemed to be a bit less independently mobile than the others.

The Bear hadn’t found a way to solve his problem, but he had discovered over the years that he could keep anarchy marginally in check by a deliberate daily ritual — weekly more like it — of emptying out his pockets on his office desk and doing a sort.

He swore violently in Berndeutsch, and then in Romansh for good measure, when he discovered in the debris the photograph of the motorcyclist the Irishman had asked him to check. He reached for the phone.

The answer from the vehicle registration computer came through almost immediately. The motorcycle was registered to Felix Krane with an address in Lenk. He checked with the Operations Room and discovered that Fitzduane's tail had reported in by personal radio some eight minutes earlier. The Irishman was in the Youth House.

The Bear decided it might be a good idea to make up for his absentmindedness by delivering his information immediately. He looked at the chaos on his desk, swore again, extracted the minimum necessary for survival, and swept the balance into a drawer.

He headed toward the Youth House, which was only a few minutes away on foot. Most places were, in Bern.

* * * * *

Fitzduane felt a hand cup his chin, and his head was jerked painfully backward.

Van der Grijn stared down at him for a few seconds and then withdrew his hand with a grunt. "No, I don't think so."

He spoke a quick command in Dutch, and Fitzduane felt himself hauled to his feet and quickly but thoroughly frisked. The shoulder bag containing his camera equipment and the tripod case lay on the floor, ignored in the confusion.

Out of the corner of his eyes Fitzduane could see Ivo on his right but slightly behind him. Fitzduane had the strong feeling that Ivo knew more than he was saying. Still, comparing the slight figure of Ivo with the three burly Dutchmen, he began to appreciate the youth's courage. He'd known what he was up against, and he could have gotten away. Instead, he had deliberately put himself in danger to try to do something about the situation.

Van der Grijn stepped back a couple of paces and stood to one side so that he could keep Fitzduane in full view while the Dutchman who had been doing the frisking came around in front of Fitzduane and started going through his pockets. He was carrying a Bundeswehrmesser, the standard West German Army fighting knife. He held it in his right hand as he emptied Fitzduane's pockets with his left. At all times he kept the point of the blade, which bore the signs of many loving encounters with a sharpening stone and glistened under a light film of oil, either under Fitzduane's neck or angled slightly upward for an easy thrust into his heart or stomach.

Fitzduane kept quite still. His wallet was removed from his inside pocket and handed to van der Grijn. The searcher stepped back and then returned to his position behind Fitzduane, by the door. Fitzduane mentally christened him Knife. He thought that Knife was about two meters behind him. He was beginning to have some potential room to maneuver.

Van der Grijn flipped open Fitzduane's wallet. He pocketed cash and credit cards and examined Fitzduane's press card and other credentials. The short pause gave Fitzduane time to get his bearings. The rectangular room was spacious but furnished only with a large, plain wooden table, two stuffed armchairs not in the prime of life, and two straight-back chairs. Every square millimeter of wall space was covered with drawings, slogans, and other graffiti. Light came from one large and two small windows at one end of the room.

There were roughly a dozen people of both sexes lined up in two irregular groups on either side of the room. They were mostly in their late teens and early twenties, but several were older. All of the smaller group — four in number — had been badly beaten. One lay on the floor, his bloody hand over his eyes and a pool of blood leaching from his head.

"So," said van der Grijn, holding up Fitzduane's press card, "you are a photographer." Like many Dutchmen, he spoke good English though the accent lingered. Each syllable was enunciated, and the voice was hard and uncompromising. Fitzduane noted that the second of van der Grijn's sidekicks was about five meters ahead and to his left, near the windows at the end of the room, and was able to monitor the whole room. He could see the butt of a large-caliber revolver protruding from a shoulder holster as the man shifted position. He seemed entertained by the situation. He was shorter than van der Grijn and Knife but had the physique of a body builder.

The prospects for doing something did not look good. Van der Grijn and Knife aside, there was no chance of getting near the third man before he had a chance to fire. He designated the third man Gun. The others in the room looked as if they had been persuaded out of heroism. That left Ivo. Something less than a balance of power.

Van der Grijn put Fitzduane's credentials into his pocket. "All you people have to do is flash your ID and doors open," he said. "Very useful."

Fitzduane had the strong feeling that whatever he said would be pointless, but he thought he ought to go through the motions.

"Give them back," he said quietly.

Van der Grijn didn’t reply immediately. His face slowly flushed with anger. It began to be clear that he was high on something and that rationality had little to do with his behavior. He rocked slightly to and fro on his feet, and Fitzduane braced himself for a blow. The Dutchman at the window grinned.

Van der Grijn reached inside his leather jacket and pulled a long-barreled 9 mm Browning automatic out of his shoulder holster. He checked the clip, cocked the weapon, and deactivated the safety catch. Suddenly he whipped up the gun and held it in a two-handed combat grip a hair's breadth from Fitzduane's nose.

Fitzduane could smell the gun oil. He was looking straight down the black pit of the muzzle; it shook in van der Grijn's hands. He didn't think van der Grijn could be crazy enough to shoot him in a room full of witnesses, for no good reason except machismo, and only a sparrow hop from the Federal Police building. The he looked into van der Grijn's eyes and knew that things weren't in control, and that if he didn’t do something soon, he would die. He moistened his lips to speak, and the gun barrel jabbed closer.

All eyes in the room were fixed on van der Grijn, Fitzduane, and that swaying gun barrel. A bearded man standing in the as-yet-uninterrogated group bent down almost imperceptibly, as if to massage an aching calf muscle, and with two fingers removed a Beretta from his boot. Nobody seemed to notice.

Fitzduane debated making an immediate move but decided against it. Van der Grijn only had to flinch and Fitzduane's skull would explode. But fuck it, he was going to have to do something. Van der Grijn and his people weren't going to lie down quietly. They were high, drunk on power — but they hadn't seen the bearded man draw the Beretta. Fitzduane could feel the sweat trickling into his eyes, but he was afraid to move to wipe it away.

Van der Grijn's eyes went empty; then he fired.

* * * * *

The Bear was looking down at the somnambulant form if Detective Siemann with amusement rather than anger when he heard the shot. His feelings of benevolence toward Siemann changed in one split second. "Wake up, you idiot," he snarled at him, simultaneously kicking him hard in the ribs.

The large window of the room on the second floor of the Youth House burst into shards of glass. A chair hurtled through it and smashed on the pavement below, missing the Bear as he ran toward the entrance, pistol in hand. Sieman tripped on the splintered remains, cut himself messily on the spears of broken glass, picked himself up, and, pouring blood, ran after the Bear, who had by this time vanished into the building.

* * * * *

Fitzduane felt a sharp pain as the muzzle blast seared the side of his face. The bullet cracked past his right ear so close it drew blood, and it splintered the door behind him before embedding itself in the plaster of the first-floor landing.

"You stupid shit," cried Fitzduane, shock, anger, and sheer naked terror combining to pump adrenaline into his bloodstream. He grabbed van der Grijn's wrists with both hands and deflected the Dutchman's aim toward the ceiling. Van der Grijn fired again and again as they struggled, hot shell casings showering across the room and plaster falling from the ceiling as the rounds bored their way in.

Knife leaped forward to help van der Grijn. Fitzduane swiveled van der Grijn around as the blade was thrust at him. He felt van der Grijn jerk and saw the shock in his eyes as the blade cut effortlessly through his leather jacket and entered his back. He bellowed in pain.

The second Dutchman had his revolver in his hand.

"Police!" yelled the bearded man. The voice was American. "Drop it, motherfucker!" The man had dropped into the combat crouch and had his gun aimed at the second Dutchman.

Moving with unexpected speed, the second Dutchman whirled toward the American, dropped to one knee, and fired two rounds at him, hitting him once in the stomach.

The American's first shot went over the second Dutchman's head, but then he sagged with the impact of the bullet in his stomach, and his aim dropped. The next five slugs from his little Beretta went into the Dutchman's face and neck. In a bloody parody of a knight's posture, the Dutchman stayed on one knee for several seconds, his head bowed, blood spurting from his wounds, his gun still held in his drooping hand, and then slid sideways to the ground.

The Dutchman with the knife, appalled and confused by his error, left the knife in van der Grijn's back and leaped at Fitzduane. The force of his attack separated Fitzduane from van der Grijn, who still held the automatic in his hand. Though half blinded by the plaster dust from the ceiling and groggy with pain from the knife in his back, he was still just able to function. He tried to aim at Fitzduane, who was wrestling with Knife on the floor.

Ivo, who had flung a chair out the window to attract attention, now flung a second chair at van der Grijn. It missed. He dived under the table, encountering a mass of arms and legs belonging to people who had beaten him to it. Van der Grijn, momentarily distracted from Fitzduane, fired back twice. One round gouged into the graffiti on the wall; the second drilled through the table, hitting a seventeen-year-old runaway from Geneva in the left thigh.

The door bust open. "Polizei!" yelled the Bear.

Van der Grijn fired. The Bear shot him four times in the chest, the rounds impacting in a textbook group and flinging van der Grijn back across the room. He staggered, still upright, and the Bear fired again, this time assisted by Detective Siemann.

Van der Grijn reeled back against the window, smashed through the remaining jagged edges of glass, and fell one story onto the pointed tops of the fleur-de-lis cast-iron railings below. His vast body arched at the impact and twitched for a few seconds; then it lay unmoving, impaled in a dozen places.

The Bear smashed the one surviving Dutchman across the side of his face with his still-hot gun barrel. The Dutchman fell to the floor, his cheekbone broken, and lay on his back, moaning. The Bear flipped him over and pressed his gun into the back of his neck. "Don't move, asshole!" The Dutchman became quite still; intermittently he trembled, and moaning sounds came out of his mouth. The Bear kept his gun in position and, using his left hand, handcuffed him.

Siemann pulled the table aside. Bodies intertwined in a confusion of limbs, began to separate. Terrified faces looked up at him. He held out his hand to help and realized he was still holding his gun. He holstered it and tried to say something reassuring. They stared at him, and he looked down at his bloodstained body. He shook his head and tried to smile, and the tension on the faces eased. One by one they rose to their feet. One figure remained unmoving, blood gushing from her thigh. Siemann leaped forward, ripped the belt from his waist, and began to apply a tourniquet. Once the bleeding eased, he unclipped his radio on and put in an emergency call. When he finished he caught the Bear's eye. The Bear nodded his head a couple of times and smiled fleetingly. He rested his hand on Siemann's shoulder.

"That was good, Kurt, that was very good."

Siemannn didn't know what to say. He looked away and stroked the injured girl's forehead with his bloody hand. After twenty-five years on the force he no longer felt he had just a job: he felt accepted; he felt like a real policeman.

The Bear reached down to help Fitzduane to his feet. "What was that all about?"

"I'm fucked if I know." Fitzduane walked across to the bearded man, who was lying on the floor surrounded by a circle of people. Someone had put a folded coat under his head. His face under the beard was very white.

Fitzduane knelt down by his side. "You'll be all right," he said gently. "That was some piece of shooting."

The man smiled weakly. "It's a paycheck," he said. His eyes were going cloudy. "The agency expects nothing less."

"CIA?"

"No, not those bozos — DEA." The man grimaced in pain.

"Help's coming," said Fitzduane. He looked down at the man's stomach. The large-caliber hollow-nosed bullet must have hit bone and ricocheted. The entire lower part of his torso seemed to have been ripped open. He had his hands folded across his intestines in a reflex attempt to kept them in. Fitzduane wanted to hold his hand or somehow comfort him, but he knew if he did so, it could add to the pressure and cause more pain.

The man closed his eyes and then opened them again. They were unfocused. "I can hear the dustoff," he whispered. Fitzduane had to bend down and put his ear to the man's mouth to hear him. "Those pilots have a lot of balls."

The man gave a little rattling sound, and for a moment Fitzduane was back in Vietnam watching another man die, the sound of the medevac chopper arriving too late. Then he knew that the sound of the helicopter was real and that it was circling somewhere outside the building.

The Bear looked down at the American. "He's dead," he said. As he had with Siemann, he put his hand on Fitzduane's shoulder, but this time he didn't say anything. Fitzduane, still kneeling, stayed there looking at the man's body, the hands already folded as if in anticipation of an olive green body bag. The blue eyes were still open; they looked faded. Fitzduane gently closed the lids, then rose off his knees.

From outside the Youth House, a heavily amplified voice boomed at them: "YOU INSIDE, THIS IS THE POLICE. LAY DOWN YOUR ARMS AND COME OUT WITH YOUR HANDS UP."

"Assholes," said the Bear. "It's the Federal Police from the building next door. They must be back from their coffee break."

* * * * *

Examining Magistrate Charlie von Beck — wearing a large, floppy brown velvet bow tie to go with his cream shirt and three-piece corduroy suit — was talking. The Chief thought von Beck looked like a leftover from a late-nineteenth-century artist's colony. He wore his fair hair long so it flopped over one eye. His father was an influential professor of law at BernUniversity, he was rich, had connections in all the right places, and he was sharp as a razor. All in all, thought the Chief, Charlie von Beck would have made an ideal person to hate. It irritated him that he liked the man.

"Well, it doesn't make the crime statistics look too good, I admit," said von Beck, "but you have to agree: it's exciting."

"Don't talk like that," said the Chief Kripo. "We haven't had this many violent deaths in Bern in such a short period since the French invasion nearly two hundred years ago — and all you can say is ‘exciting.’ I can see the headlines in Blick or some other scandal sheet: CHAIN OF KILLINGS EXCITING, QUIP BERN AUTHORITIES."

"Relax," said von Beck. "Der Bund, in its usual discreet way, will come out with something to balance the scales, like EXAMINING MAGISTRATE COMMENTS ON STATISTICAL ABNORMALITY IN CRIME FIGURES."

"They don't write headlines that sensational," said the Chief. "So far, including Hoden, we have seven dead, two seriously injured, and eight or so slightly injured."

"At least there's an explanation for the fracas in the Youth House," said von Beck. "I'm still poking around, but we've interviewed most of the parties involved and had some feedback from the Amsterdam cops and the DEA."

"I wish they'd keep their cowboys off my patch," said the Chief Kripo in a grumpy voice.

"Don't be a spoilsport. Anyway, it looks fairly straightforward. Van der Grijn had some heroin stolen from him. He reckoned it had happened in the Youth House, so he came back with two heavies to try to find the culprit. The American DEA man was tailing him. Van der Grijn got out of hand when the Irishman walked in, and then all hell broke loose."

"It never used to be like this in Bern," said the Chief Kripo. "I don't care about explanations. I want it to stop."

"Well, don't hold your breath," said von Beck. "I've only been talking about the easy bits so far. We have an explanation for the Youth House deaths, and I guess Hoden's heart attack is no mystery under the circumstances."

"Poor Hoden, what a lousy way to go. You know I served under him for a while."

"So did my father," said von Beck.

"We're still left with a few questions about the Youth House," said the Chief. "For instance, who stole van der Grijn's heroin in the first place — and why? Is the thief selling it or has he some other motive? What was that Irishman doing there? Not content with flinging people off bridges, he seems to gravitate toward trouble like..." He paused, thinking.

"Do you want help on this one?" said von Beck politely.

"The Chief shot von Beck a look. "And lastly, " he continued, "is the Bear going to be in any trouble for killing van der Grijn?"

"I don't think so," said von Beck. "I don't see what else he could have done. He had seconds in which to judge the situation, he called it right, he put himself at risk — and he pulled it off. What's more, he didn't shoot a local, which always raises a stink regardless of the circumstances. It's all show biz in the end."

The Chief surveyed von Beck's sartorial splendor. The magistrate was himself no slouch when it came to show biz — and the bow tie always photographed distinctively. It was the kind of thing that photo editors left in when cropping a print.

The Chief tried to concentrate. He looked across at von Beck. "What about his using a .41 Magnum?"

"It doesn't look tactful in the media," said von Beck, "for a policeman to shoot a suspect six times with a cannon like the Magnum. On the other hand, the evidence is that van der Grijn, a large, powerful man hyped on drugs, was still a threat after being shot no less than four times." He shrugged. "In Heini's place, I'd have done the same thing — and fired again."

"Heini's talking about getting an even bigger gun," said the Chief gloomily. "He says to have to shoot someone six times before he goes down is ridiculous."

"If I was being shot at, I might feel the same way," said von Beck. "What was your first point?"

"Who stole van der Grijn's heroin?"

"The finger seems to point at Ivo."

"He's a dealer?"

"On the contrary," said von Beck. "He seems to hate the stuff. The word is that he destroys it."

The Chief raised his eyebrows. "Odd," he said. "What doest he say?"

"Therein lies a problem," said von Beck. "By all accounts he was on the side of the angels during the gunfight — and then he seems to have vanished."

"Angels do that," said the Chief, "which brings us to the Irishman."

"Yes, well," said von Beck, "he may be innocent, but somehow — and don't ask me how — he's tied in with just about every phase of our little crime wave."

"Including Klaus Minder and the chessboard killing?"

"Yes, in a sense. According to the BKA, the chessboard girl was the partner of the man Fitzduane threw off the KirchenfeldBridge. Fitzduane identified her from a photo sent by the German authorities in Wiesbaden. She was also present when he was attacked but backed off when he threatened her with a shotgun."

"And how does Minder fit it?"

"That's more tenuous," said von Beck, "but it's what my English police friends would call a ‘hopeful line of inquiry.’" He tapped the desk with a gold Waterman fountain pen to emphasize each point. "Point one, forensics thinks that Minder and the chessboard girl were sliced up by the same person. Point two, and I have no idea of the significance of this, Minder and Ivo were close friends. Point three—" The Chief flinched in anticipation but instead von Beck unzipped a leather container the size of a small briefcase and perused the row of pipes displayed within.

"Go on, go on," said the Chief impatiently. "Point three?"

"Klaus Minder was a close friend and sometime lover of the young and recently deceased Rudi von Graffenlaub." Von Beck closed the pipe case with a snap and zipped it up slowly.

"And our Irish friend is looking into the death of young Rudi with the forceful backing of Beat von Graffenlaub," said the Chief.

"The rest is details," said von Beck. "It's all in the file." He made a grandiloquent gesture.

"But you do have a theory about all this?"

"Not a one. This thing is so complicated it could go on for years."

"I thought you were supposed to be smart."

"I am, I am," said von Beck, "but who says the bad guys can't be smart, too?"

The telephone rang, and the Chief gave a sigh. He listened to the call, saying little, then turned to von Beck.

"They found the other half of the chessboard girl in a plastic bag inside the Russian Embassy wall," he said. "The Russians are livid and are complaining it's a CIA plot to embarrass them."

"Explain that we're neutral and will regard both them and the Americans with equal suspicion." Von Beck stood up to leave. "Now all we've got to find are Minder's balls."

"And Ivo," said the Chief.

* * * * *

Kadar was working his way through a pile of medical textbooks, and he had a splitting headache. The telex chattered again, exacerbating the headache. He rose, washed down two Tylenol with brandy, and decoded the message.

His headache subsided to an acceptable dull throb. He was knee-deep in medical tracts because the thought he might be suffering from some kind of psychiatric condition. In lay terms —he had not yet stumbled on the correct medical diagnosis — it seemed not unlikely that he was going mad. No, that conveyed images of Hogarthian excess, of twisted faces and dribbling idiots, of barred windows and straightjackets and padded cells. That was too much. He would not accept that he was going mad. He revised his analysis. As a result of sustained stress, he was behaving irrationally. He was doing things that were out of character, that he had not consciously planned, and of which he had scant recollection later.

It was worrying. He was glad that it would all soon be over. He would no longer have to live with the strain of a double existence — if indeed his life could be summed up in such a simple way. His existence was not merely divided in two. It was fragmented into multiple personas, and he had been sustaining this complex life for years. Really, a certain amount of aberration on the margin was to be expected, and possibly was a good thing. It was like letting off steam, a natural release of tensions, a purification through excess. That wasn't the real problem.

It was the periods of amnesia that concerned him. He was a man with an astonishing ability to manipulate and control other beings — up to and including matters of life and death — and yet his underlying fear, a fear that bordered on panic, was that he was losing his ability to control himself.

It was the incident with the girl on the chessboard that had persuaded him that he must get himself under control. Previous incidents, like his killing that beautiful boy Klaus Minder, were unpremeditated and perhaps a little excessive but could be rationalized in context of the needs of his advanced sexuality. Killing Esther was a matter of routine discipline. The killing and the manner of the killing were not the problem. But why had he suddenly taken the notion to draw attention to his presence by planting the torso in such a public place as the Rose Garden's chessboard — not to mention dumping the legs in the Russian Embassy?

Did he subconsciously want to be caught? Was this some sublimated cry for help? He hoped not. He'd put far too much effort into the last couple of decades to have some programmed element of his subconscious betray him. That was the trouble with the childhood phase. In your early years anyone and everyone has a go at programming you, from your parents to religious nuts, from corporations that bombard you with unremitting lies on TV to an educational system that trains you to conform to its values and does its level best to crush your own natural talent.

But Kadar had been lucky. From an early age he had sensed the realities of life, the lies, the corruption, the compromises. He had learned to have only one friend, one loyalty, one guide through life: himself. He had learned one key discipline: control. He had mastered one vital pattern of behavior: to live inside himself and to reveal nothing. Externally he appeared to conform; he knew how the game must be played.

He lay back in his chair and started the ritual of creating Dr. Paul. He desperately needed someone to talk to. But hours later, drenched in sweat, he admitted failure: the image of the smiling doctor wouldn't appear. His headache had escalated into the full, terrible agony of a serious migraine.

Alone in his soundproofed premises Kadar screamed.