Victor O'Reilly - Games of The Hangman

He checked the pistol, pleased to see that it was in perfect working order. He inserted a clip of ammunition and a round in the chamber and placed the weapon on the desk beside him. He picked up his pen again and continued writing. Tears stained his cheeks, but he wiped them away before they marked the paper.

Sangster was thinking about the assassination of Aldo Moro, a classic case history of the down side of the personal protection business that had taken place some three years previously. The Moro killing was not an encouraging precedent. Granted, there were certain obvious errors. His original bulletproof Fiat had become unreliable because of the weight of its additional armor, and pending the delivery of a new armored automobile, Moro was being driven in an unarmored Fiat sedan; second, he was using the same route he had traveled for the last fifteen years, so even the most slow-witted of terrorists could have put together a reasonable strike plan; third, although the police bodyguards were carrying their personal weapons, it struck Sangster as being less than inspired to have all their heavy firepower locked away in the escort car's trunk.

Still, mistakes or not, the fact remained that Aldo Moro, ex-prime minister and senior statesman of Italy, had been protected by no fewer than five experienced bodyguards – and the entire escort had been wiped out in seconds, with only one man even getting his pistol out to fire two shots in vain. The moral of the story, thought Sangster, is that you're a sitting duck against automatic-weapons fire if you are operating from an unarmored vehicle.

Sangster looked at the Hertz symbol on the windshield of his rented Mercedes. It didn't exactly make his day to know that he was making an even worse mistake than Moro's team. At least their vehicles had been moving. He was parked at the head of the track that led to Vreni von Graffenlaub's house, semiblind with the steamed-up car windows and furious that the bitch wouldn't let him and Pierre into her home, where they could do a decent protection job.

Woodsmoke trickled from Vreni's chimney. She was a pretty little thing, he had to admit. He tried to think of Vreni naked and willing in the farmhouse under a cozy duvet. Bodyguarding sometimes worked out that way. He picked up the field glasses and tried to catch a glimpse of her through the windows. He could see nothing. He scanned the rest of the area. There was still snow on the ground though it was melting. At night it would freeze again. He raised the radio and checked with Pierre, who was doing a mobile on the other side of the farmhouse. Pierre was wet and cold, and merde was the politest expletive he used. The exchange cheered Sangster up a little.

Sangster doubted that Vreni von Graffenlaub was in any serious danger. Most likely it was Dad trying to put some pressure on a wayward daughter; it wouldn’t be the first time a protection team had been so employed. Not that it made any difference to them. The conditions might be variable, but the money was excellent.

Moro's bodyguards had been hit with an average of seven rounds each. Funny how details like that stick in your mind. Sangster raised the field glasses again. Bloody nothing.

The Chief Kripo was busy fishing a fly out of his tea when he heard the news of the Barenplatz shootings. He stopped thinking about the fly and started thinking about crucifying the Irishman. Easter was over, but it was that time of year, and three crosses on top of the Gurten would not look amiss. Fitzduane could have the place of honor, with the Bear and von Beck standing in for the thieves. There would be none of that rubbish about taking them down after three days either. They would hand there until they rotted – an example to all not to stir up trouble in the normally placid city of Bern.

The Chief Kripo spread a protective cloth on his desk and hunted through his desk drawers for some guns to clean. He found four pistols and lined them up on his left, with the cleaning kit to his right. Everything was in order. He picked up the SIG 9 mm and stripped it down. It was immaculate, but he cleaned it anyway. He liked the smell of gun oil. In fact, he liked everything about guns except people using them on people.

He did some of his best thinking while cleaning his guns. Today was no exception. Perhaps he'd better stop contemplating a triple crucifixion and have a serious look at what was happening off Kirchenfeldstrasse. Certainly his conventional investigation wasn't coming up with any answers. It could be that the time had come to take Project K seriously.

The four guns were now cleaned but still broken down into their component parts. He mingled the pieces at random, then closed his eyes and reassembled the weapons by touch. After that he strapped on the SIG and rang for a car.

After forty-five minutes with the Project K team, the Chief Kripo decided that life was too short and he was too old to have the time to get fully familiar with artificial intelligence and expert systems. The principles weren't too hard to grasp, but once Henssen got technical and started talking about interference engines and consistency checking and the virtues of Prolog as opposed to LISP, the Chief's eyeballs rolled skyward. Soon afterward, his chair being exceeding comfortable, he fell asleep. Henssen could believe what he was seeing and chose to think that the Chief's eyes were closed in deep concentration.

The Chief started to snore. It was such a melodious sound with some of the cadence and lilt of Berndeutsch, and it prompted Fitzduane to wonder whether the language one spoke affected the sound produced when snoring. Did a Chinese snore like an Italian?

The Chief's eyes snapped open. He glared at Henssen, who was standing there bemused, mouth half agape, pointer in hand, flip chart at the ready. "All that stuff might be a barrel of laughs to a bunch of long-haired, unwashed, pimple-faced students," the Chief barked, "but I'm here to talk about murder! We've got dead bodies turning up like geraniums all over my city, and I want it stopped – or I may personally start adding to the list."

"Um," murmured Henssen, and sat down.

"Look," said von Beck in a mollifying tone, "I think it might be easier if you ask us exactly what you want to know."

The Chief leaned forward in his chair. "How close are you people to coming up with a suspect, or at least a short list?"

"Very close," said Chief Inspector Kersdorf.

"Days, minutes, hours? Give me a time frame."

Kersdorf looked at Henssen, who cleared his throat before he spoke. "Within forty-eight hours at the outside, but possibly as soon as twelve."

"What are the main holdups?" asked the Chief. "I thought your computers were ultrafast."

"Processing time isn't the problem," said Henssen. "The main delays are in three areas: getting the records we want out of people, transferring the data to a format the computers can use, and the human interface."

"What do you mean by the human interface? I thought the computer did all the thinking."

"We're not to of a job yet," said Kersdorf. "The computer does the heavy data interpretation, ‘thinking,’ if you will, but only within parameters we determine. The computer learns as it goes, but we have to tell it, at least the first time, what is significant."

The Chief grunted. He was having a hard time trying to assess to what extent the damn machines could actually think, but he decided that the balance, at this stage, between man and machine was not so important. What he had to decide was the effectiveness of the full package. Was Project K worth the candle and likely to deliver, or should he do a Pontius Pilate and wash his hands while the Federal Police or a cantonal task force took over the whole thing? "Let's talk specifics," he said. "Have you considered that our candidate is almost certainly known by the von Graffenlaubs?"