Games of The Hangman f-1

by VICTOR O'REILLY

  "The house was a large three-story building. The guards protected the gate, the walls, and the various entrances to the house itself. There were five servants, but only two lived in. Their quarters were over the garage, with an access door leading directly to the first floor. That door was padded to cut down noise. It didn't seem likely that the sound of shots would penetrate, but sound carries at night, and I had to be sure.

  "I typed a note on Ventura's study typewriter, signed it with his signature, and addressed it to Mother. I placed the note in my pocket. I had already taken a small .22 caliber automatic pistol that Ventura had given my mother several years before. I checked that and place it in the other side pocket of my robe.

  "They tended to go to bed late. Through my spy hole, headphones in place, I monitored their progress. As I watched each action, I thought, there, they are doing that or that for the last time. It gave me an odd feeling, almost of omniscience.

  "Ventura climbed into bed naked. He drank some brandy and leaned back against the pillows. He was smoking a cigar. His automatic pistol lay, cocked and locked, on the bedside table. Mother sat in front of the dressing table. I knew she would be there for several minutes. She no longer enjoyed sharing a bed with Ventura.

  "I left my door open and descended to the floor below. I knocked tentatively on the door and announced myself. Mother let me in. ‘I need to talk,’ I said.

  "Ventura looked both irritated and amused. His glass was nearly empty. I walked over to his side of the bed and refilled it. His chest was matted with black hair, and he was sweating. "Thanks, kid," he said. His voice was friendly.

  "My mother had her back to us as she finished at the dressing table. I replaced the brandy bottle on the bedside table. Beside it there was a hand towel that Ventura had been using. It was damp with is sweat. I wiped my own hands with it and reached into my pocket for the .22. I shot Ventura twice in the chest.

  "I turned as Mother turned and in three swift steps was in front of her. I went down on one knee. Over my shoulder she could see Ventura. She stared, mouth open, too shocked to scream. I placed the pistol in her mouth, angled toward her brain, and squeezed the trigger. There was less noise than you'd expect.

  "I heard a faint gasp and walked back to Ventura. He was still alive, though his eyes were going dull. Blood mixed with brandy was staining the sheets. He was saying something. I leaned over to hear, being careful to avoid the mess. ‘But why me?’ he whispered. ‘Why me?’

  "I pulled the note from my pocket and showed him his signature. A look of understanding crept into his eyes. I recited a number to him and an amount: ‘One million, three hundred and twenty-seven thousand dollars.’

  "‘I was aiming for two,’ he whispered, ‘but that fucking Castro has screwed things up.’

  "I shot him again, twice, this time in the head, then tore up the note and scattered the pieces over his body. It announced, in my best version of Ventura's style, that he was leaving Cuba and that Mother would have to look after herself. I placed the pistol in Mother's hand.

  "Nobody heard a thing. I didn't have to be found screaming as if I'd run into the room after having heard the shots. I waited ten minutes and adopted the second option. I locked their bedroom door and went upstairs to sleep. I slept like a log. In the morning the guards broke down their door, and the crashes and shouting awoke me. It was easy to drop Mother's door key where it would have been flung out of the lock as the door was burst open.

  "I met my new mother three days later. Father gave me a strange look when I shook hands with him, but he didn't say anything."

  "What did you feel after you had killed your mother?" asked Dr. Paul.

  "I wished I'd used a shotgun."

  * * * * *

  They dined simply: salad, potatoes, cheese, and fruit. There were candles on the table. Throughout the meal they talked about memories, mutual friends, food, and wine, but rarely about the future. From time to time, in unguarded moments, Fitzduane perceived a flash of sadness in Christina's eyes. Mostly she projected warmth, tenderness, and a deep, caring affection. He realized that Guido, despite his pain and approaching death, was quietly content.

  They talked about the recent riots in Zurich and the youth movement.

  "Consider me confused," said Fitzduane. "Apart from no unemployment, virtually no inflation, and the highest standard of living of any European nation, what other problems haven't you got? Who exactly is rioting, and what are they breaking windows about?"

  "They are not just breaking windows," said Guido. "Thousands of young people also paraded through the streets of Zurich stark naked."

  Fitzduane grinned.

  "It's very difficult to say precisely what they are protesting about," continued Guido. "Basically, it's a rather ill-defined reaction against much of the Swiss system by a certain percentage of Swiss youth. Whatever the merits of this country, there is no denying that there is tremendous social pressure to conform. Most of the rules make sense by themselves. Put them all together, and you have a free Western democracy without a lot of freedom — or at least that is what they say."

  "It sounds not unlike the 1968 protests in France."

  "There are similarities," said Guido, "but 1968 was much more organized and structured. There were leaders like Daniel Cohn-Bendit, and specific demands made. This is much more anarchistic and aimless. There are few precise demands. There is no one to negotiate with. The authorities don't know who to talk to or what to do, so they respond with overreaction and the riot police: clubs, tear gas, and water cannon instead of thought."

  "Is the youth movement throughout Switzerland?" asked Fitzduane.

  "In various forms it is throughout Europe," said Guido. "Here in Switzerland I think many of the youth are concerned, but only a small percentage riot, and that is concentrated in the cities."

  "Bern, too?"

  "A little," said Guido, "but not so much. The Bernese have their own ways of doing things. They don't like confrontation. I think, perhaps, the authorities in Bern are handling it better."

  "I thought you were suggesting that the Bernese were a little stupid," Fitzduane, recalling an earlier remark by Guido.

  "Slow; I didn't say they weren't smart. But I'd like to show you something." He smiled, then stood up and went over to a closet and removed a bulky object. He placed the assault rifle on the dining room table against a backdrop of cheese and empty wine bottles. The weapon glistened dully in the candlelight. The bipod was in place.

  "The SG-57," said Fitzduane. "Caliber 7.5 millimeter, magazine capacity twenty-four rounds, self-loading or fully automatic, effective range up to four hundred and fifty meters. No dinner table is complete without one."

  "Always the weapons expert," said Guido.

  Fitzduane shrugged.

  "About six hundred thousand Swiss homes contain one of these rifles," said Guido, "together with a sealed container of twenty-four rounds of ammunition. Just about every male between the ages of twenty and fifty is in the army. Over six hundred and fifty thousand men can be fully mobilized within hours. We are prepared to fight to stay at peace. The army is the one major social organization that binds the Swiss together."

  "Supposing you don't want to join?"

  "Provided you are in good health," said Guido, "at twenty years of age, in you go. If you refuse, it's prison for six months or so — and afterward there can be problems in getting a federal job, and other penalties. But there are more important things to know about the army. It's not just an experience common to all Swiss males between the ages of twenty and fifty. It is also one of the main meeting grounds of the power elite.

  "You start off in the army as an ordinary soldier. You do your seventeen weeks of basic training and then you return to civilian life with your uniform and rifle — until next year, when you do a couple of week's refresher course, and so on, until you are fifty.

  "However, the best of the recruits are invited to become corporals and then officers, and later, conceivably, they end of
on the general staff. There are about fifty thousand officers, and only two thousand of these are general staff — and it is officers of the general staff who dominate the power structure in this country. The higher you go in the Swiss Army, they more time you have to put in away from your civilian job. We call it ‘paying your grade.’ That's especially difficult for an ordinary worker or a self-employed businessman. As a result, the general staff and, to a lesser extent, the officer corps as a whole are dominated by senior executives of the large banks, industrial corporations, and the government."

  "In Eisenhower's phrase, ‘the military-industrial complex,’" said Fitzduane.

  "He was talking about America," said Guido, "and collusion between the military and big business. Here it is not just collusion. The senior army officers and the senior corporate executives are the same people. They don't just make the weapons; they buy them and use them."

  "But only for practice," said Fitzduane.

  "That's the good part."

  Later, when the exhausted Guido had retired, Christina showed Fitzduane to his room. By the window there was a huge potted plant that was making a serious attempt to reach up and strangle the light bulb.

  "It's doing well," Christina said proudly. "It came from England in a milk bottle."

  "A two-meter-high milk bottle?" said Fitzduane.

  "It grew since then."

  "What's it called?"

  "It's a papyrus," said Christina. "The same thing that's at the head of your bed."

  "Jesus!" exclaimed Fitzduane. "How fast do these things grow?"

  * * * * *

  Kadar did not speak. He was remembering.

  He wondered if he should have felt remorse. In truth he hadn't felt much of anything immediately after the event except an overwhelming feeling of fatigue mixed with a quiet satisfaction that he had been able to do it. He had passed the test. He had an inner strength possessed by few people. He was born to control.

  He tried not to remember how he had felt one day later. From the time he had woken he had been unable to stop shaking, and the spasms had continued for most of that day. "Classic reaction to shock," the doctor had said sympathetically. Kadar had lain there in quiet despair while his body betrayed him. In later years he had undergone training in a variety of Eastern combat disciplines to fuse his mental and physical strength, and the post-action shock had not manifested itself again. Very occasionally he wondered if such stress symptoms were nonetheless there, but in a more insidious, invisible way, like the hairline cracks of metal fatigue in an aircraft.

  The silence continued for several minutes. Kadar was caught up in the excitement of that time and the almost unremitting stimulation offered by his new life in the States. The greatest surprise of that period had not been the luxury of his new home, or access to all the material goods he could reasonably want, or the effect of an environment in which almost anything seemed to be possible. It had been the attitude of his father.

  At their first meeting in Havana, Henry Bridgenorth Lodge had been cold, hard, and cynical — almost dispassionate. He needed a son to satisfy his wife. So be it. Subsequently, although his manner remained superficially distant and though the hardness and cynicism proved to be real enough, Lodge displayed a concern for and attention to his son's well-being that almost made Kadar drop his guard and develop an affection for him.

  Kadar had to exert all his formidable sense of purpose and self-discipline to resist an emotion that threatened to overwhelm his sixteen-year-old frame. He reminded himself again and again that to be in control, truly in control, he must remain above conventional emotions. He repeated this constantly in the privacy of his room at night even while the tears trickled down his cheeks and his body was suffused by feelings he could not, or would not, begin to understand.

  Shortly after he had settled into his new home — a comfortable twenty-minute drive from Langley — he was subjected to what seemed like a barrage of examinations and tests to help determine how the next phase of his education might best be carried out.

  It emerged that he was unusually gifted. His IQ was in the top 0.1 percent of the population. He had an ear for languages. He showed considerable artistic promise. His physical coordination was excellent. He was an impressive if to outstanding athlete.

  It was clear that a conventional school would not be adequate. For the first year he was tutored privately. Lodge tapped into the immense pool of highly qualified academics and analysts that were part of the CIA community, and Kadar was exposed to a quality of mind and a sharpness of intellect that up until then he had only read about. It was exciting. And he flourished both intellectually and physically.

  For his second academic year he was sent to a special school for the gifted, supplemented by private tutoring, a routine that was to remain constant until he left Harvard. It was during this second year that he discovered he had charm and a naturally magnetic personality — and that he could use these qualities to manipulate people to his own ends.

  He was conscious that his experience in dealing with people was inadequate and that such a deficiency could be a weakness. He studied other people's reactions to him and worked hard to improve his overt personality. The public persona became further divorced from the inner reality. He became one of the most popular boys in his class.

  Lodge had some instinctive understanding of the nature of the son he was nurturing. He knew there were risks, yet his perception was counterbalanced by a weakness: Lodge was excited by talent. To such a man, Kadar, who responded to intellectual and other stimuli in such an attractive, dynamic way, was irresistible. It was like having a garden where every seed germinated and flourished. Educating, training, and encouraging this astonishing young stranger who was his son became an obsession.

  Henry Bridgenorth Lodge came from a family that had been so wealthy for so long that career satisfaction could not be achieved by something as mundane as making money. The Bridgenorth Lodges did make money, a great deal of it — more than they could comfortably use, a talent that seemed to survive generation after generation — but they channeled their foremost endeavors toward higher things, principally service to their country. The Bridgenorth Lodges worked to advance the interests of the United States — as they saw them — with the zealousness and ruthlessness of Jesuits. To the Family — as they thought of themselves — the ends did justify the means.

  Many people go through their lives without ever being lucky enough to come under the influence of a really great teacher. In this respect Kadar was doubly fortunate. Ventura had — unintentionally — given him a consummate grounding in the fundamentals of power grabbing, violence, manipulation, and extortion. Lodge and his colleagues taught Kadar to think in a more strategic way, set him up with a network of connections in high places, taught him the social graces, and gave him numerous specific skills from languages to project planning, cultural appreciation to combat pistol shooting.

  Lodge might have had some inkling of Kadar's inner conflicts, but he had hopes that they could be channeled in the Bridgenorth Lodge tradition. His son was being groomed for a career of distinction in the CIA, followed by a suitable switch to public office.

  Kadar, who in the more relaxed environment of America was surprised to discover he had an excellent sense of humor, was not unamused years later that this training for the public service was to produce one of the most dangerous criminals of the century and someone who secretly despised everything the Bridgenorth Lodges stood for. Except, it should be said, their money.

  * * * * *

  When Fitzduane awoke in the morning, the apartment was empty. He could hear faint sounds of traffic through the double-glazed windows. A light breakfast had been laid out. The assault rifle had been cleared away from the dining room table.

  He looked for some jam in the kitchen cabinet. He found two different kinds, together with a jar of English marmalade. Behind the jam pots was a sealed container of twenty-four rounds of rifle ammunition. The container resembled a soft-drink
can.

  Over breakfast he skimmed idly through the notes and tapes on the von Graffenlaubs that Guido had left him. He pushed the tapes aside for the moment and concentrated on the written material. Guido's notes were clear and pointed:

  The von Graffenlaub family is one of the oldest and most respected in Bern. The family has a centuries-old tradition of involvement in the government of both city and canton. The present Beat (pronounced “Bay-at,” by the way, not “Beet”) von Graffenlaub is a pillar of the Swiss establishment through family, business, and the army.

  Apart from the natural advantages of birth, Beat laid the foundation for his distinguished career by carrying out several missions for Swiss military intelligence during the Second World War. Briefly, he acted as a courier between sources in the German high command and Swiss intelligence. Under the cover of skiing exhibitions and other sporting activities, he brought back information of the utmost importance, including details of Operation Tannenbaum, the German-Italian plan for the invasion of Switzerland.

  Having risked his life in the service of his country while still only in his late teens and early twenties, Beat was rewarded with accelerated promotion in both the army and civilian life.

  After the war he spent some years in business but then switched to study law. After qualifying, he established his own practice, eventually becoming an adviser to a number of major Swiss corporations. At the same time he pursued his army career, specializing in military intelligence. He officially retired in 1978 with the rank of colonel in the general staff.

  Von G.'s influence in business circles is further enhanced by his role as trustee for several privately held estates. As such, his voting power considerably exceeds what his substantial personal fortune would warrant and makes him a very real power in Swiss business circles...