Victor O'Reilly - Games of The Hangman

"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 cafe in the Barenplatz. 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 Barenplatz 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 cafe 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 such 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.