Fitzduane 01 - Games of The Hangman

by O'Reilly-Victor

  He entered the small, brightly lit room and closed and relocked the door behind him before punching in the code that would release the freezer lid. He glanced at the abundance of food inside. The top layer was sorted by category in wire baskets. He liked things neat. He removed a wire basket of frozen vegetables and then one of fish. The next contained poultry. The last basket was filled with game birds, mainly pheasant although quail and several other species were also represented. He had gone though a pheasant phase not so long ago, until he chipped a tooth on a piece of buckshot — the idiot hunter must have thought pheasants were the size of vultures because the shot was from a number four load — and was forced to visit the dentist. This boring experience had not been without its advantages, though it had put him off pheasant for a while. While lying back in the dentist's chair, he had begun to plan his own death. This exercise was not unenjoyable, despite the circumstances, for it involved the dentist's death, too.

  He admitted to himself that the basic idea wasn't original, but he didn't suffer from the classic engineers' disease of NIH — “Not Invented Here,” and therefore useless. In any case he had improved on the original pattern, thanks to his casual discovery — through the one-sided small talk that dentists enjoy while the victim lies gagged and helpless — that this particular dentist, the appallingly expensive but highly successful Dr. Ernst Wenger, was an unusually prudent man. Swiss to the core and Bernese from toe to toupee, he not only kept excellent dental records in his office — what else would you expect of someone who was also a supply officer, a major in fact, in the Swiss Army? — but kept a reserve set, updated weekly, in his bank. Dr. Wenger kept a substantial portfolio of bearer bonds and other securities in the same location, but considering the success of his practice, if he had been asked to choose which he would prefer to lose — dental records or financial papers — it would have been no contest. His dental records were the key to what he called his “private gold mine.” Dr. Wenger enjoyed his little jokes. His patients, on average, did not.

  Kadar placed the last basket on the floor beside the deep freeze, then looked back into the unit. Nothing had changed since his last inspection, which was reassuring if scarcely surprising. He didn't really expect the occupant to be found munching frozen peas or to have grown a mustache to while away the time. Frozen corpses tended to be low on the activity scale. Kadar leaned on the insulated rim of the freezer and spoke encouragingly. "Your time will come, have no fear." He smiled for good measure.

  Inside the deep freeze, well frosted over, Paul Straub lay unmoving. The expression of horror, panic, despair, and downright disbelief on his face, frozen into perpetuity, indicated his general lack of enthusiasm for his fate. He had been drugged, bound into immobility, then place alive in the deep freeze. His last sight before the lid and darkness descended was of a basket of frozen chickens. As a vegetarian he might have particularly objected to this. He had been frozen to death, his only offense being a certain similarity in height, weight and general physiognomy to Kadar — and the fact that he had been a patient of Dr. Wenger's.

  Kadar leaned farther over, reached into the freezer, and tapped the corpse. It felt reassuringly solid. The refrigeration was working fine. He had considered using supercold liquid nitrogen, which would minimize tissue destruction — it was used for semen and strawberries, to name but two critical applications — but when he considered what was going to happen to the corpse, Kadar settled for a more conventional solution.

  He straightened himself and began replacing the baskets. Just before he replaced the last one, he looked at the late Paul Straub's frozen head. The eyes were frozen open but iced over. "Don't blame me," said Kadar. "Blame that damn pheasant." He dropped the basket into place. He felt quite satisfied as he left the room and heard the locks snap into place behind him. All in all, given the imperfections of the material he was working with, things were going quite well.

  19

  As originally conceived, Project K was to be a low-key support operation, close enough to the people at the sharp end to cut out bureaucratic delay but modest in scope and scale. The killings in Lenk changed things overnight.

  Convinced that time was running out, Charlie von Beck had turned Fitzduane's apartment into an around-the-clock command center. When Fitzduane found that a Digital Equipment Corporation multiterminal minicomputer was being installed in his bedroom, he took the hint and moved into a spare room in the Bear's Saali apartment. It didn't have black silk sheets and a mirror over the bed, but the Bear's cuisine would have merited three stars from Michelin if ever its reviewer had dropped in, and besides, the Bear had bought himself a bigger gun — which, the way things were going, was comforting.

  Von Beck had encountered some opposition to basing Project K in ‘nonofficial premises,’ but he had countered with the comment that if Brigadier Masson could run the Swiss intelligence service during the Second World War from a floor in Bern's Schweizerhof Hotel the secluded apartment off Kirchenfeldstrasse was good enough for him.

  The occupants of the other three apartments in the small block — wholly owned by Beat von Graffenlaub — were amicably moved out by appeals to their patriotism and their pockets. Once the last of them left, von Beck tightened security still further.

  * * * * *

  As Fitzduane, the Bear, and, from time to time, other members of the Project K team spoke, Beat von Graffenlaub began to look increasingly disturbed. As always, the lawyer was immaculately tailored, but the elegance of his clothes no longer seemed integrated and he had lost weight. The arrogance of wealth was no longer so apparent in his manner.

  "And what do you call this man, this corrupter of lives?" he said in a low, angry voice.

  Henssen indicated that he would answer. "When he was nothing more than a statistical anomaly, my cynical colleagues in the BKA christened him the Abominable No-Man. Now that is not so funny anymore."

  "The Hangman," said the Bear. "We've given him the code name ‘the Hangman’"

  Von Graffenlaub looked at Fitzduane.

  "We believe the Hangman exists," said Kersdorf quietly, "but it would be idle to pretend that our view is widely held. Conventional investigations parallel the work we are doing. Even your own Chief of Police is skeptical."

  "In strict legal terms," sand von Beck, "we have very little proof." His rather formal tone was counterbalanced by his attire. He was wearing a pink sweatshirt labeled SKUNKWORKS. The group of snoozing skunks stenciled on it all wore bow ties.

  "And if your heuristics — your intelligent guesses — are wrong," said von Graffenlaub, "you have cumulative error in your deductions increased by the massive power of your computing system."

  "Those are the risks," agreed Hanssen.

  "The only thing is," said Chief Inspector Kersdorf, "nobody else has come up with any coherent explanation of what has been happening."

  Von Graffenlaub drank some Perrier. His hand was shaking slightly as he drank. He put the glass down and bowed his head in thought. The group around him remained silent, and they could hear the faint hiss of bubbles bursting. He raised his head and looked at each man in turn. His gaze stopped at Fitzduane.

  "This man, a stranger, was concerned enough to want to know why a young man should die so horribly," he said. "Rudi was my son and, with his twin sister, Vreni, my lastborn. I can assure you that I'm not going to back out now. You'd better tell me everything — both what you know and what you suspect. Don't try to spare my feelings. You had better start with Rudi's involvement with this — this Hangman."

  "And your wife's," said Fitzduane.

  "Erika," said von Graffenlaub. "Yes, yes, of course." He was whispering, and there were tears running down his cheeks.

  Fitzduane felt terribly, terribly sad. He was looking at a man being destroyed, and there was no way anymore to stop what would happen. He put his hand on von Graffenlaub's shoulder, but there wasn't anything he could say.

  * * * * *

  As if by agreement, the others left Fitzduane
alone with von Graffenlaub. What had to be said was unpleasant enough without the embarrassment of having the entire group present.

  "I'll be as brief as I can," said Fitzduane, "and I'll concentrate on conclusions rather than reasons. We can go through the logic of our reasoning afterward if you wish. We've already told you about the Hangman, and we'll come to what we know about him — and that's quite a lot — later, but right now I want to focus on one point, the Hangman's method of operation. His objectives seem to be financial rather than ideological — mixed, I suspect, with a general desire to fuck the system and a macabre sense of humor. His method seems to be to tap into, and harness, the natural energies and causes that already exist. He doesn't need a coherent ideology. Each little group is built around its own obsession, and the Hangman creams off the financial result.

  "He likes dealing with impressionable people. Many of his followers — and most of them wouldn’t think of themselves as his followers but as members of some specific smaller group — are young and idealistic and sexually highly active. He uses what's available, and we have reason to believe that sexuality is one such tool. It has long featured in secret rites and initiations and is a classic bonding and manipulative lever. Consider, for example, sexuality in satanic rites or pre-Christian ceremonies, or, inversely, the absence of sex in the Catholic orders.

  "In addition to his use of sexuality as a manipulative tool, and perhaps as a consequence of it, we believe that the Hangman has sexual problems of his own. He seems to have both heterosexual and homosexual inclinations, and these are mixed up with pronounced sadomachistic behavior of the most extreme sort."

  "In short, he is a maniac," said von Graffenlaub, "a monster."

  "Maybe," said Fitzduane, "but if we are to catch him, that's not the way to think of him. He probably looks and behaves quite normally, much like you or me."

  "And who knows what unusual behavior lurks beneath our prosaic exteriors?" said von Graffenlaub thoughtfully.

  "Just so," said Fitzduane.

  * * * * *

  Frau Raemy had finished her shopping and was indulging herself with a coffee and a very small pastry, or two, at an outdoor café in the Bärenplatz. She was pleased because she had been able to find on sale the pear liqueur that her husband, Gerhard, so enjoyed, and three bottles of it now reposed in the sturdy canvas shopping bag on the ground beside her.

  Gerhard, fed enough liqueur after his evening meal, became quite tolerable, mellow even, and later on, in bed, he tended to fall asleep immediately and what Frau Raemy thought of as ‘that business’ could be avoided. Really, with both of them in their late fifties, it was about time that Gerhard found another activity to amuse himself with — perhaps stamp collecting or carpentry. On the other hand, perhaps it was not so bad after twenty-eight years of marriage her man continued to find her desirable.

  She smiled to herself. Sitting in the sun in the Bärenplatz was most pleasant. She enjoyed the passing parade, all these colorful characters.

  A figure wearing a large cloak, face obscured by a motorcycle helmet, and with a guitar slung from his neck, glided to a stop in front of her and glanced around. Then, with an abrupt movement, he slid off into the crowd.

  Frau Raemy didn't watch him go. There was a blur, a muffled coughing sound, and then she was staring in some confusion at her shopping bag, which had suddenly sprouted a ragged cluster of bullet holes. From the shattered bottles the aroma of pear liqueur filled the air.

  Her mind, quite simply, could not cope with what had happened. She didn't got to the police. She placed her shopping bag in a litter bin, holding it at arm's length and keeping her face averted as she did so. Then she bought replacements in Loeb's and took the tram home.

  She didn't speak for two days.

  * * * * *

  "Why did you choose this place?" asked the Lebanese. He glanced around Der Falken. The café was two-thirds full of characters who might have been lifted straight from the set of a Fellini film. Most of the men seemed to have beards and earrings and big black hats and tattered jeans. You could tell the girls because most of them didn't have beards. Both sexes drank beer and milk shakes and smoked hash. There was a relentless conformity to their outrageousness. Almost no one was over twenty-five, and the sunken eyes and general skin pallor suggested that few were aspiring to longevity.

  "No mystery," said Sylvie. "I wanted to get you off the street but fast. For fuck's sake, you missed the bastard."

  The Lebanese shrugged apologetically. "He moved just as I fired. It couldn't be helped. He moves so fast on those skates. At least no one seemed to notice anything. The Skorpion silencer is most effective."

  "We haven't got much time," said Sylvie. You know Kadar."

  "Only too well," said the Lebanese grimly.

  "Next time we'll get in close," said Sylvie, "and there will be no mistakes."

  The Lebanese drained his beer and said nothing. He flicked a speck of dust off his lapel and then examined with pleasure his polished alligator shoes. Fuck Kadar, fuck Ivo, and fuck Sylvie, he thought. He came back to Sylvie and looked at her appraisingly.

  She met his gaze and shook her head. "You're the wrong sex."

  * * * * *

  "Rudi was an almost perfect candidate for manipulation," said Fitzduane, "an accident looking for a place to happen. Most teenagers rebel against their parents to some extent, as you well know. Adolescence is a time of great confusion, of searching for identity, of championing new causes. When teenagers reject one set of values, a need for a replacement is created. Nature abhors an ideological vacuum as much as any other kind.

  "Two conflicting views are often expressed about divorce: one is that children are permanently damaged by the whole process; the other is that children are naturally adaptable and have no real problem dealing with two fathers and three mothers or whatever. I don't know what the general pattern is, but I do know that in this specific case your divorce from Claire and your marriage to Erika created chaos. All your children were affected, as best I can judge, but none more so than Rudi — with Vreni a not-so-close second. But I'll concentrate on Rudi.

  "Rudi started his lonely rebellion by rejecting your establishment values. His beliefs received an initial impetus from his mother, who was interested, I'm told, in a more liberal and caring society than you."

  "We used to share the same views," said von Graffenlaub wearily, "but I had to deal with the real world while Claire had the luxury — thanks to my money — to theorize and dream of Utopia. I had to fight, to do unpleasant things, to make harsh decisions, to compromise my principles because that's the way the world is. I had to deal with facts, not fantasy."

  "Be that as it may," said Fitzduane, "the problem was compounded by several other factors. First, Rudi was exceptionally intelligent, energetic, and intense — the classic moody bright kid. He didn't just feel rebellious; he wanted to do something specific. The led to the next development: he started investigating you, reading your files and so on, and lo and behold, he stumbles across Daddy's interest in Vaybon — and Vaybon is just as corrupt as he imagined."

  "He misunderstood what he found," said von Graffenlaub. "Vaybon is a massive organization, and most of what it does is quite aboveboard. He happened to discover a summary of wrongdoings — exceptions to the general pattern of behavior — that I was trying to clean up. Instead of appreciating that he was looking at only a small piece of the picture, he assumed that my entire world was corrupt. He wouldn’t listen to reason."

  "You're not at your most rational in your teens," said Fitzduane, "and you're feeding me a fair amount of bullshit about Vaybon, but I'll let it pass for the moment because I want to talk about Rudi and not a multinational whose collective executive hands are very far from clean."

  Von Graffenlaub flinched perceptibly but didn't speak. He was thinking of the initial idealism he had shared with Claire and then of the seemingly inexorable series of compromises and decisions — always for the greater good — that had led to suc
h a debasement of his original values.

  Fitzduane continued. "We then come to the burning of the papers Rudi had stolen, and Claire's death. His mother's death changed the scale of Rudi's rebellion and removed a restraining influence. He blamed you, the system, and the world for his unhappiness, and he began to believe that the most extreme measures would be needed to change things. Also, he wanted more than change; he wanted revenge, and for that he needed help. He started with the AKO and other extremist elements. They don't mess about with inefficient old democracy. They cut to the heart of the matter: The existing Swiss system has to be destroyed completely, and violence is the only way.

  "I don't know how deeply Rudi got involved with the AKO," continued Fitzduane, "but I suggest that he was more involved than even his twin sister suspected. I believe he was being cultivated as a sleeper. Given his position, your position, if you will, he was too valuable to lose to routine police infiltration, so it was made out that he was only a sympathizer — a terrorist groupie, as I said to Vreni. I think he was almost certainly much more, or, at least, was destined for frontline activity.

  "But police action cut deep into the heart of the AKO and other terrorist organizations, and this left Rudi with a problem. He needed a framework in which to operate, and his original mentors were in prison or dead or in hiding. It was at this stage that Erika entered the scene, no doubt after a series of initial plays. In Rudi we have a mixed-up, sexually active young man reacting against conventional values, who wants revenge on his father and to destroy the system. In your wife Erika — and you're not going to like this — we have a rich, bored, amoral, and sexually voracious woman of stunning physical attractiveness, who likes to indulge her whims and is constantly looking for new thrills, fresh excitement, to satisfy an increasingly jaded appetite. In addition, we suspect that she is involved with the singularly dangerous individual we have called the Hangman."