Fitzduane 01 - Games of The Hangman

by O'Reilly-Victor

  "How did he die?"

  Marta gave a slight start as Fitzduane's question broke into her reverie. "I don't know the details. All I know is that he had gone to meet a client in Simmenfälle. The client didn't show up, and while he was walking home, he was knocked down by a car. It was a hit and run."

  "Did anyone see the accident?"

  "I don't think so," said Marta, "but you'd have to ask the police."

  Fitzduane watched his Glühwein getting cold. The he went inside and called the Bear. There was a pause at the other end before the Bear spoke. "I'll check with the local police," he said. "When are you seeing Felix Krane?"

  "Tomorrow if I can," said Fitzduane. "I haven't managed to track him down yet."

  "I'll arrange for one of the local cops to go with you," said the Bear. "It may cramp your style, but I don't like what's going on. "Where are you staying? I'll call you later."

  "At the Simmenfälle."

  There was another silence at the end of the line. Then the Bear sighed. "Don't go for any midnight walks," he said, "and keep your back to the wall."

  "And don't talk to strangers," said Fitzduane.

  "That's not so funny."

  "No, it isn't."

  * * * * *

  The canton policeman was a good-humored sergeant named Franze, with a tanned round face setting off an impressively red nose. He had the work-roughened hands of a farmer, which, indeed, he was in his off-duty hours. He arrived in a Volkswagen Beetle, a near-twin of the antique that had transported Fitzduane to the Swiss Army base at Sand. It wheezed to a halt in front of the Simmenfälle as Fitzduane was finishing breakfast. The Irishman ordered an extra cup of coffee and, upon further reflection, a schnapps. The gesture was not unappreciated. Franze talked freely. Since Kilmara's visit, Fitzduane had official status, and the sergeant treated him as a policeman.

  It transpired that Oskar Schupbach had been related to Sergeant Franze. Talking about Oskar's death visibly depressed the good sergeant, and Fitzduane ordered him another schnapps for purely medicinal reasons. It crossed Fitzduane's mind that breakfasts with Swiss police sergeants were beginning to fall into a pattern.

  "Oskar," said Sergeant Franze, his good humor resurrected by the second schnapps, "was a fine man. I wish you could have met him."

  "So do I," said Fitzduane. He was annoyed at himself for to having come to Lenk sooner. "But accidents will happen."

  "It was no accident," said Franze angrily, "unless you can be accidentally run over twice by the same car."

  * * * * *

  On the short drive to Lenk and the cheese maker's where Felix Krane was working, they passed the spot where Oskar Schupbach had been killed. Sand had been sprinkled over the bloodstains, and Franze crossed himself as he pointed out the spot where the guide had died. Fitzduane felt cold and grim and had a premonition of worse things to come. Then the mood passed, and he thought about the making of cheese.

  Fitzduane was fond of good cheese and regarded the master cheese maker's business with more than passing interest. A compact but expensively equipped shop in front — featuring a lavish array of mostly Swiss cheeses, each one shown off by a miniature banner featuring the coat of arms of the region of origin — led through to a miniature factory in the rear. Stainless steel vats and electronic monitoring equipment contrasted with a young apprentice's portioning butter by hand, using wooden paddles shaped like rectangular Ping Pong paddles. Each cheese was hand-stamped with the master cheese maker's mark.

  The master cheese maker was a big, burly man with a luxuriant mustache to set off his smile. He was tieless, his shirtsleeves were rolled up, and he wore a long, white, crisply starched apron. Fitzduane thought he would do nicely in a barbershop quartet. Sergeant Franze spoke to him briefly, and then he turned to Fitzduane. "His name is Hans Müller," he said. He introduced Fitzduane. Müller beamed when he heard his name mentioned and pumped Fitzduane's arm vigorously. To judge by the size of the cheese maker's muscles, he had served his apprenticeship churning butter by hand.

  "I have told him you are a friend of Oskar's," said Franze — Müller's face went solemn — "and that you want to see Felix Krane on a private matter."

  "Is Krane here?" asked Fitzduane, looking around.

  "No," said Franze, "he no longer works here regularly but does odd jobs. Now he is in the maturing store just outside of town. It's a cave excavated into the mountainside. Without any artificial air-conditioning, it keeps the cheese at exactly the right temperature and humidity. Krane turns the cheeses, among other jobs he does there."

  Müller spoke again, gesturing around the building to where half a dozen workers and apprentices were carrying out different tasks. He sounded enthusiastic and beamed at Fitzduane. The sergeant turned toward Fitzduane. "He has noticed your interest in his place, and he wants to know if you would like to look around. He would be happy to explain everything."

  Fitzduane nodded. "I would be most interested." Afterward Fitzduane had good reason to recall that informative hour and to speculate on what might have happened if they had left to find Felix Krane earlier. On balance, he decided it had probably saved his own life.

  Unfortunately, in view of what he was about to find, he never felt quite the same way about cheese again.

  * * * * *

  They were on the shaded side of the valley, driving slowly up a side road set in close to the base of the mountains. Out of the sun the air was chill. Across the valley mountain peaks loomed high, causing Fitzduane to feel vaguely claustrophobic and to wonder what it must have been like before railways and mountain tunnels and roadways opened up the country. No wonder there was such a strong sense of local community in Switzerland. The terrain was such that for centuries you had little choice but to work with your neighbors if you were to survive.

  Sergeant Franze was driving slowly. "What are you looking for?" asked Fitzduane.

  "It's easy to miss," said Franze. "All you can see from the road is a gray painted iron door set into the mountain."

  They could see a dark blue Ford panel truck parked up ahead. "There it is," said Franze, "about thirty meters before that truck."

  Fitzduane couldn't see anything at first. The entrance was recessed and had weathered into much the same texture as the mountain. Then, when he was practically parallel and Franze was pulling in to park, he saw the iron door. It looked old, from another century, and there was a small grating set in it at eye level.

  Franze walked ahead to the truck and peered inside, then walked back to where Fitzduane stood beside the iron door. "Nobody in it," he said. "Probably some deliveryman gone to have a pee."

  An unlocked padlock hung from the hasp. Franze eased the door open. It was stiff and heavy but not too hard to handle. It was balanced so that it closed slowly behind them. Ahead lay a corridor long enough for the light from the door grating to get lost in the gloom. Franze looked around for a light switch. He flicked the switch but nothing happened.

  "Shit," he said, "I didn't bring a flashlight. Still, it's not far."

  It was cool but dry in the corridor. Fitzduane felt something crunch underfoot. It sounded like glass from a light bulb. "What's the layout?" he asked. The corridor curved, and the last vestiges of light from the grating vanished.

  "This passage runs for about another forty meters and then splits into three," said Franze. "The cheese storage is on the right, so if you hug the right-hand wall, you can't miss it."

  "What about the other passages?"

  "The middle cavern is empty, I think," said Franze. "The one on the left is used by the army. You know there are weapons dumps, thousands of them, concealed all over the country."

  Fitzduane digested the idea of storing cheese and armaments together and decided it was a nonrunner for Ireland. "Why not give Krane a shout?" he said. "We could do with some light. There seems to be glass everywhere." He thought he could hear voices but very faintly. He paused to listen.

  Suddenly there were screams, a series of screams, all the mor
e unsettling for being muffled. The screaming abruptly terminated in a noise that brought memories jarring back into Fitzduane's brain. There was no sound quite like the chunk of a heavy blade biting into human flesh.

  "Mein Gott!" said Franze in a whisper. Three was silence apart from his breathing. "Herr Fitzduane, are you armed?"

  "Yes." He slid the shotgun from it s case and extended the collapsible metal stock. He pumped an XR-18 round into the chamber and wished he had an opportunity to test-fire a few rounds first. He heard Franze, ten paces ahead of him, work the slide of his automatic.

  The darkness was absolute. He tried to picture the layout in his mind. They must be close to where the passage widened and split into three. That would mean some kind of lobby first, more room to maneuver. He felt vulnerable in the narrow passage. There was a slight breeze on his face, and he heard a door opening ahead of him.

  "Krane!" shouted Franze, who seemed to have moved forward another couple of paces. He shouted again, and the noise echoed from the stone walls. "Maybe he has had an accident," he said to Fitzduane. "One of those cheese racks may have fallen on him. You stay where you are. I'm going ahead to see."

  Fitzduane kept silent; he did not share Franze's optimism. Every nerve ending screamed danger, and he concentrated on the elemental task of staying alive. When it happened, it would happen fast. There was the sound of fumbling. Fitzduane guessed that Franze was looking for a lighter. He moved from crouching on one knee to the prone position and began to wriggle forward in combat infantryman's fashion, using his elbows, holding his weapon ready to fire. Every two or three paces he held his weapon in one hand and with his free hand felt around him. The passage was widening. He moved toward the middle so that he could maneuver in any direction.

  Franze's lighter flashed and then went out. Fitzduane could see that Franze, who was right-handed, was holding the lighter in his left hand far out from his body. His automatic was extended at eye level in his right hand. It was not the posture of a man who thought he was investigating a simple industrial accident. Fitzduane hoped that Franze had the combat sense to change positions before he tried the lighter again. As he thought this, he rolled quickly to a fresh location, painfully aware of how exposed they were. Darkness was their sole cover.

  He had a sense that there was someone else in the tunnel with them. He could hear nothing, but the feeling was strong and his skin crawled. He wanted to warn Franze, but he remained silent, unwilling to reveal his position, ad prayed that the policeman had detected the intruder as well. He heard the faintest sound of metal rubbing against stone. The sound was to his left, roughly parallel with Franze. His imagination was playing tricks. He heard the sound again and thought he could hear breathing. The hell with appearing a fool, he thought. He heard the sound of Franze's lighter again. The policeman hadn't moved from his original position.

  "Drop right, Franze!" he shouted, rolling right as he did so. In a blur of movement he saw that Franze's lighter had flared again. For a split second its light glinted off bloody steel before the lighter tumbled to the ground, still gripped in the fingers of the policeman's severed left arm. Franze screamed, and Fitzduane's mind went numb with shock. The sound of movement down the corridor toward the outer door snapped him back to his senses.

  He pushed Franze flat on the cold stone floor as a flash of muzzle blast stabbed toward them and bullets ricocheted off stone and metal. He tried to sink himself into the solid stone. Two further bursts were fired, and he recognized the sound of an Ingram fitted with a silencer. The outer door clanged shut. His left hand was warm and sticky, and Franze was breathing in short, irregular gasps.

  He felt again with his left hand. He touched inert fingers and the warm metal of the lighter top. He placed the shotgun on the ground and with his two hands removed the lighter from the severed arm. He needed help. It seemed probable that whoever else had been there, Krane perhaps, was gone. He had thought that there had been two people, but he couldn’t be sure. Christ, it was like Vietnam again, yet another fucking tunnel. Sweat broke out on his forehead, and he could feel the vibration of bombing in the distance. He fought to control himself and realized that the vibration was a heavy truck grinding up the road outside, where it was daylight and life was normal.

  He flicked the lighter, and the flame caught immediately. Franze was slumped on the ground where he had been pushed, conscious but in shock. Blood was pouring from the stump of his left arm. It had been severed above the elbow.

  Fitzduane removed his belt and tightened it above the stump until the flow had almost stopped. It was tricky work because he needed both hands for the tourniquet, so he had to let the lighter go out and work in darkness. His hands and clothing became saturated in blood. He spoke reassuringly to Franze, but there was no response, and the policeman's skin felt cold. He needed medical attention immediately. The wound itself wasn’t fatal, but Fitzduane had seen lesser casualties go into deep shock and die after the loss of so much blood, and the sergeant was no longer young.

  He helped the policeman back along the passage to the outer doorway. His spirits lifted when he saw the glimmer of light that signaled they were approaching the iron door and the road. It was difficult work. Franze was heavy. He lacked the strength of help himself, so in the end Fitzduane carried him in a fireman's lift. When he tried to open the iron door, he found with a sickened feeling that it was locked on the outside.

  He moved the policeman back about ten paces and then went to retrieve his shotgun. Franze's arm lay close by. He left it where it lay and then, not sure what could be accomplished with microsurgery, took off his ski jacket, wrapped the arm in it, and, with the shotgun in his other hand, returned to Franze. "Keep your head down," he said. The policeman barely reacted.

  Fitzduane had little faith that the shotgun would have much effect against the iron door, but it was worth trying. He stood about two meters back and pointed his weapon at the lock. He fired twice, working the slide quickly to deliver two concentrated blows in the minimum time.

  The results lived up to Kilmara's promise. The brittle iron of the door shattered like a shell casing when the XR-18's 450-grain sabot rounds struck it. Shards of iron clanged onto the roadway, and light flooded into the passage. Fitzduane pushed the remains of the door open and helped Franze outside.

  A few yards up the road Müller had just gotten out of his car. The master cheese maker had a presentation box in his hand. He looked at Fitzduane, shotgun still smoking, covered in blood and supporting the policeman. His brain couldn’t take in the situation at first, his face registering total disbelief; then he dropped the presentation box and ran forward. Together they helped Franze into the car and covered him with a blanket.

  "A flashlight?" said Fitzduane. Have you got one?" He searched for the right word in German and cursed his lack of languages. He pantomimed what he wanted. Müller nodded, opened the trunk of his car, and extracted a powerful battery searchlight. Fitzduane grabbed it and pushed Müller into the driver's seat.

  "Hospital and police — Hospital und Polizei — go!" shouted Fitzduane. He banged on the roof of the car, and Müller roared away, one arm extended in a wave of acknowledgment.

  Fitzduane replaced the two spent cartridges and moved back into the passage. He advanced up it in combat fashion, the Remington held at the ready. He doubted that there was any remaining danger, but he could see no reason for behaving like a total fool. He knew if he had any real sense of self-preservation, he would have waited for the police, but he hadn't the patience.

  He saw that every light along the passageway had been systematically broken. This served the double purpose of providing the cover of darkness for an escape and an early-warning system; any new arrival would have to crunch across the glass. The door into the cheese maturing room was open. It was a long, narrow room filled with row after row of wooden racking, each rack filled with wheels of cheese and graded by type and age and size.

  There was a pair of large porcelain sinks in the far corner
of the room. He shone the powerful light toward them. The sinks and the tiling around them were splashed with fresh blood. He played the beam downward, following the splash marks. A body, dressed in a once-white overall now sodden with blood, lay slumped on the floor. The corpse was headless. Fitzduane moved closer to examine the body but remained several paces away. The tiled floor was sticky with blood. It looked as though the victim had been bent headfirst over the sink as if for a ritual execution. Fitzduane could imagine the horror of the doomed man as his neck was pressed against the cold surface.

  He looked into the sinks, but there was no sign of the head. He examined the floor, also with negative results, and began to wonder why the head had been taken away. As proof of a job completed? To the bizarre sense of humor displayed there, and he knew what he would find. He moved the light back to the racks of cheeses and began examining each row of impeccably aligned wheels. It didn't take long. Though he was prepared for the sight, the reality made his stomach turn. Felix Krane's head stared at him from between two maturing wheels of Müller's Finest High Pasture.

  Fitzduane went back to the road and waited for the police. The parked van was gone. He didn’t remember its being there when he had emerged from the tunnel with Franze. The presentation box of cheese lay on the ground where Müller had dropped it. Fitzduane left it there.

  * * * * *

  "Be prepared," said Kadar to no one in particular, for he was alone, and he gave a three-fingered Boy Scout salute.

  The deep freeze, a catering-size chest unit over two meters long, was kept in a concealed and locked storage room in the adjoining premises, owned by Kadar but registered to a cutout. In fact, in keeping with his normal practice of having an escape route always available, Kadar owned the entire small block. By way of hidden doors, he could travel from one end of the block to the other without ever having to use the street. Kadar wasn't entirely happy having the freezer with its incriminating contents so near, but he considered his precautions reasonable, and the important point was that he could get at what he wanted without delay.