Victor O'Reilly - Games of The Hangman

Fitzduane waited. The figure was close now and moving more confidently. Fitzduane tried to figure out where the backup sniper would be and had just settled on the most probably location when the barn doors opened and a powerful motorcycle emerged. They were going to check out the farmhouse and make their getaway. The remaining question was, were there only two of them left or were there more surprises?

Fitzduane supposed that legally he should probably shout, "Police," or "Hands up," or some such crap, but he wasn't feeling either legal or charitable. He shot the walking terrorist four time through the chest, sending the body spinning off the track and then down the mountainside like a runaway sled.

The motorcycle engine roared, and submachine-gun fire sprayed the farmhouse. The bike's headlight blinded him. The machine leaped toward him, but it hit a rut and flew through the air, skidding past him before the rider expertly corrected.

He shot the motorcyclist as the bike was approaching the security guards' Mercedes. The machine barreled into the car, flinging the wounded terrorist into the snow. Fitzduane fired again very carefully at the flailing figure until there was no sign of movement.

Fitzduane was holding Vreni in his arms when the villagers arrived minutes later, assault rifles at the ready. She was limp and still, and her body was cold, but the Irishman was smiling.

He felt his shoulder being shaken, but he didn't want to leave the warm cocoon of sleep. His shoulder was shaken again, this time less gently. "Chief," said a familiar voice. "Chief," we've got a name."

The Chief Kripo reluctantly reentered the real world. He'd already forgotten what he'd been dreaming about, but he knew it had to have been better than the maelstrom that his waking hours had turned into. On the other hand, perhaps he was being too pessimistic. He recalled being agreeably surprised at the progress being made by Project K, so much so that there would be some kind of breakthrough. And it was a legitimate way of avoiding the flak he knew awaited him on his return to the office.

"A name?" He opened his eyes, blinked, and then opened them wider. "My God," he said to Henssen. "You look terrible."

"My circuits are fucked," said Henssen. "After this is over, I'm going to sleep for a month."

The Chief Kripo unraveled himself from the couch and sipped at the black coffee Henssen had brought him. He could hear computer sounds in the background. He looked at his watch.

"It's tomorrow," said Henssen. "You've been out only a few hours, but there have been some developments. It's kind of good news and bad news."

The Chief remembered something had been nagging at him before he fell asleep. "The Irishman and the Bear," he said. "Are they back?"

"Not exactly," said Henssen, and he told the Chief what they'd heard through the local canton police.

The Chief shook his head. He looked dazed. "Incredible. I must still be dreaming. Is that the good news or the bad news?"

"It depends how you look at it."

"With a jaundiced eye," said the Chief, who actually wasn't quite sure of his reaction. He put down his coffee and stood up. "You mentioned a name," he said to Henssen. "You mean your machine has stopped dithering? You've found the Hangman?"

Henssen looked mildly uncomfortable. "We've got a couple of strong possibilities. Come and see for yourself."

"The Chief Kripo followed Henssen into the main computer room. Only one terminal was live, the one with a special high-resolution screen that Henssen found was a little easier on his eyes when he was tired. There was a name on the screen followed by file references. The Chief looked at it and felt he was going crazy.

The name on the screen read: VON GRAFFENLAUB, BEAT.

"You're all loopy," said the Chief. "Your fucking machine is loopy."

Henssen, Kersdorf, and the other bleary-eyed men in the room were too exhausted to argue. Henssen played with the keyboard. There was a brief pause. Then the high-speed printer started spitting back the machine's reasoning. The computer wasn't too tired to argue. It outlined a formidable case.

He'd forgotten about the radiophone. By reflex he picked it up in answer to its electronic beep. Erika lay there lifeless, her blood congealing. He had no idea of the time or of what he was going to do next. He merely reacted.

"Herr von Graffenlaub," said a voice. "Herr Beat von Graffenlaub?"

"Yes," said von Graffenlaub. The voice was tense, anxious, and familiar. It was not someone he knew well but someone he had spoken to recently.

"Sir, this is Mike Findlater at ME Services. I regret to say I have some very serious news to report, very serious indeed."

Beat von Graffenlaub listened to what the security man had to say. Initial fear turned to relief and then absolute joy as he absorbed the key fact that Vreni, little Vreni, was alive. Tears of gratitude poured down his cheeks.

He didn't hear the other entrance open.

Conventional policing in Bern took a backseat as the special antiterrorist force was assembled and sent into action. The von Graffenlaub premises were surrounded within thirty minutes of his name's flashing up on the screen, but it was more than six hours later before a highly trained entry group gained access. It had taken this long as a result of the most meticulous precautions designed to prevent the kind of surprises the Hangman liked to produce. Scanning equipment of various types was used to locate possible traps, and the entire block was searched to eliminate any chance of the terrorist's escaping through another exit.

Despite protests from some of his most senior officers, the Chief Kripo insisted on leading the entry team on its final push inside. Mindful of booby traps and checking frequently by radio with the Nose, the men entered Erika's apartment not through the door but through a hole cut by a shaped charge in an internal wall – having previously scanned the area with metal detectors and explosive-sniffing equipment that could identify volatile substances in even the minutest volumes. Only traces of small-arms propellant were found by the probes. A second concealed entrance was also located. It led directly into an apartment in an adjoining house.

Inside Erika's sanctum they found what they had been looking for, but not the way they had expected. Beat von Graffenlaub was present, to be sure, but in a fashion that transferred him from the suspect to the victim file of the Nose's memory banks. He lay across his wife, his blood mingled with hers, the point of a fifteenth-century halberd protruding a hand's width from his chest. The handle extended from his back as casually as a fork stuck in the ground.

The Chief was sweaty in his bulletproof armor. "Loopy," he said.

The only good news out of this latest fiasco was that they were now down to one name on the computer's primary suspect list. The Chief radioed through for a progress report on his remaining quarry. He tried not to think of the awful tragedy of Beat von Graffenlaub. Mourning would have to wait.

They were now looking for someone called Bridgenorth Lodge. The computer said he was an American citizen living in Bern, with connections to the city from his earliest days. In fact, he'd been born there – which didn't, of course, make him Swiss. One of the heurisitics programmed into the computer was that the Hangman wasn't Swiss. The Chief had asked Henssen for the basis of what seemed to him to be pure guesswork, and he'd been referred to the Bear.

The Bear had just shrugged. "He isn't Swiss," he'd repeated. He hadn't been able to give a reason, but the Chief went along with it. The whole business was crazy anyway, and in the Chief's experience, the Bear's hunches were every bit as good as any computer's.