The Ludwig Conspiracy (33 page)

“But not a romantic lunatic, that’s the difference.”

“Be that as it may,” Herr Huber said. “All I want to say to you both is this: Ludwig the Second was a genius, a shining light who has been dragged through the dirt for far too long. We cannot allow his reputation to be further sullied by the memoirs of some low-born lackey. So I am afraid I must insist on being allowed to see that diary before it becomes public property.”

“But what makes you think that Theodor Marot meant the king ill?” Steven asked. “I’ve read large parts of the diary. Marot was true to Ludwig to the end.”

“Obviously
too
true.” The steersman took off his pince-nez and began nervously cleaning the lenses. “There are rumors that Marot was, well . . . homosexual, and made advances to the king. Not that Ludwig would have fallen for such a thing. God forbid. However, certain protestations of love on Marot’s part could nonetheless cast a poor light on the king . . .”

“That’s ridiculous!” Steven exclaimed. He felt rising anger. “Theodor Marot wasn’t gay—Ludwig was. And you know it. You’re trying to falsify history. Can’t you just accept that your precious king was gay? Is it such a big deal?”

“I can only repeat myself,” Herr Huber said as his two assistants moved menacingly toward Sara and Steven. “The king’s honor must be defended by every means at our disposal. I will therefore ask you to hand me the book at once.” Suddenly the black pistol was back in his hand. “Don’t make me use force. The king was a pacifist, and I am really a pacifist, too. Up to a point.”

Now the two lieutenants were standing beside Sara and Steven. As one of them positioned himself threateningly in front of the art detective, the other reached swiftly for Steven’s rucksack.

“Hey, you can’t just . . .” Steven began, but the Cowled Man had already wrenched the rucksack from his grasp and threw it to his boss. Herr Huber worked frantically at the zipper, finally pulling it open. He triumphantly lifted the little wooden treasure chest.

“At last,” he whispered, his voice husky. “My dream becomes reality. After more than a hundred years, soon we will find out who . . .”

There was a faint pop, and the steersman’s voice died away midsentence. Astonished, he looked at a small red circle on the chest of his coat. A thin stream of blood flowed from it.

Herr Huber moaned and collapsed between his two lieutenants, his trembling hands still clutching the treasure chest.

A moment later the light went out, and the inside of the museum was suddenly dark as a grave.

Thick mist began rising from the floor.

L
ANCELOT WAS ANGRY
. Very angry.

He had served in Iraq and in several African states, the names of which he had long ago forgotten. But this Bavarian job was becoming more and more complicated, with incalculable risks and an insane boss. He had already paid for it with one eye, and he had no intention of losing any other parts of his body, let alone his reason or his life.

Think of the Caribbean, think of the girls.

Directly after getting in touch with the Munich and New York control centers about that damn antiquarian bookseller, he had gone back on the trail. But at first it was as if the earth had opened and swallowed up both that little bitch and Steven Lukas after they reached Herrenchiemsee. When Lancelot had finally seen a light in the castle that evening, he had slipped in and, to his delight, had found the couple on the second floor. A fat old guy was with them, but he wouldn’t present any problems.

Then, unfortunately, an armed night watchman joined the three of them, and Lancelot decided to put off attacking. Instead, he followed the woman and the bookseller into the museum, where he could eavesdrop on their conversation from the next room. Now he knew that the woman’s name was Sara, and he also knew the second keyword—an advantage that he could turn into hard cash from The Deranged Majesty. In addition, he had found the power distributor box for the museum in the ticket office. A couple of switches thrown, the smoke bombs he had brought with him from the dinghy set off, and the museum would turn into a haunted house.

With Lancelot as the chief attraction.

Hey there, Sara. Afraid of the Dark Man, are you?

Everything was going as planned until those three men arrived, at least one of them armed. When they were about to make off with the book, Lancelot finally lost his cool and fired a shot. Now one of the men was wallowing in a pool of blood, the other two were yelling blue murder, and the bookseller and his slut were about to disappear, taking the book with them.

In other words, it was time to act.

Lancelot fired his Glock 17 with its fitted silencer into the distributor box twice. At once the museum was plunged into total darkness. Then the giant threw the smoke bombs into the middle of the room, where they exploded with a faint hiss. Swirling mist spread like an overdose of incense.

Lancelot changed the magazine of his semiautomatic pistol, pulled down the gas mask he had brought with him, and plunged into the smoke.

C
OUGHING, SARA STAGGERED
through the room, which was rapidly filling with dense smoke. Soon everything was invisible: the boat, the painting, the two surviving Cowled Men. Their uncertain footsteps were the only sign of their presence. But soon they moved off and finally died away entirely. Apparently the two men had succeeded in getting out of the museum.

Suddenly that faint pop came again, once, twice, three times. It sounded as if glass cases were smashing somewhere; then there was quiet, with only a slight hissing from where the mists were thickest.

“Steven!” Sara called into the smoke, trying to breathe in as little of it as possible. “Steven, where are you ? Where . . .”

She stopped midsentence when it struck her that it wasn’t particularly clever to shout in a room where a murderer might be hiding. Silently, she groped her way through the room, until she suddenly stumbled over something large. She fell to the floor and found herself looking straight into the rock-gray face of the steersman of the Cowled Men. His mouth gaped in surprise, as if he still couldn’t understand that he was really dead.

As Sara struggled up, her right hand met the little box containing the diary. She snatched it up and crawled on through the smoke-filled room on all fours. She heard suppressed coughing somewhere, and soon after that saw someone curled up in a corner, barely moving. Cautiously coming closer, she saw that it was Steven. He had drawn up his knees in the fetal position and was staring apathetically into the smoke. A slight tremor ran through his body.

“Steven, what is it?” Sara whispered. “What’s the matter?”

“The . . . the fire,” the bookseller answered. His eyes were vacant. “It’s like that time in the library. My parents . . . they’re somewhere in there.”

Sara shook him. “You’re dreaming! We’re in the museum at Herrenchiemsee. Your parents died years ago.”

“I . . . I heard screaming. They’re burning alive. It’s my fault; it’s all my fault!”

“You didn’t hear your parents—it was the Cowled Men,” Sara hissed desperately. “Someone shot their boss. And it’s not a fire in here—it’s some kind of smoke bomb. There’s someone in this room, and if we don’t hurry, he’s going to shoot us the way he shot that Herr Huber.”

“Must . . . must hide,” Steven whimpered. “I’ve ruined everything. The library’s on fire. Mom and Dad won’t find me in the teahouse . . .”

“Damn it, what teahouse? What are you talking about? Steven, you leave me no choice.” With all her might, she gave the trembling bookseller a slap in the face that brought him halfway back to consciousness. He shook himself and, dazed, felt his cheek.

“That hurt.”

“It was meant to. Now, we have to get out of here.”

Sara hauled the still-lethargic Steven up by his arms until he could stand on his own. Then, together, they stumbled and groped their way through the room, hoping to find a way out through the smoke.

“I think we ought to look for that boat,” Sara gasped, the smoke constricting her throat more and more. “There was a door into the next room with the marble statue there. Then if we go right and straight ahead, we ought to . . .”

She stopped dead when she heard soft footsteps only a few yards away. There was a steady hissing sound, as if from a pair of bellows being blown.

“Oh God, there’s someone here!” Sara froze where she was and clung to Steven. They waited in silence until the footsteps and the hissing sound died away. The bookseller signed to her to stay quiet, then drew her into the back right-hand corner of the smoke-filled room. His expression was tense but concentrated. Sara heaved a sigh of relief; Steven seemed to have overcome his strange trauma.

Suddenly there was a scraping sound, this time from the other side of the room. Sara still held the little treasure chest, clutching it to her breast like a talisman. Her heart thudded; she expected to hear the “pop” of the silencer at any moment, followed by unbearable pain. The smoke around them was still so thick that she couldn’t see more than a pace in front of her. With difficulty, she fought down her urge to cough. Any sound now, however slight, might give them away.

She was about to steal along beside the wall with Steven, hoping to find one of the two passages at some point, when a figure emerged from the vapor ahead of them.

The figure looked like a giant out of a fairy tale, and this giant was in a very, very bad mood.

The strange figure was more than six feet tall. He wore jeans, a black leather coat, and a close-fitting pullover. In one hand he held a long, slim pistol with a silencer; in the other a flashlight the length of his forearm. The worst thing, however, was his head. His face was covered by a black gas mask, which gave him the look of a monstrous fly.

“Hello, Sara,” Lancelot said. His voice came through the gas mask in a curiously muted hiss. “Not very nice to Papa, were you? But now you have all the time in the world to make up for it.”

S
TEVEN FOUGHT WITH
all his might against his rising faintness. Once again, parts of his childhood took shape before his eyes.

When he saw the giant striding toward him through the smoke, he thought at first he was seeing the firefighter in the gas mask who had carried him away from the ivy-covered teahouse on that dreadful evening. His parents’ screams had died away, and Steven had opened the pagoda door a little way to glance out at the fire, now lighting up the whole street like a hundred searchlights. The party guests were still standing around the large garden in dinner jackets and evening dresses, staring at the burning villa. Many of them were shedding tears; others held handkerchiefs over their mouths to protect themselves from flying ash.

All my fault . . . Mom and Dad will be very cross . . .

Steven had finally been given away by his whimpering. The gigantic firefighter had found him in the teahouse, picked him up like a kitten, and carried him through the smoke and outside.

But when he saw the black pistol in the giant’s hand, Steven knew that he was facing not good but the depths of evil. This must be the man who had lain in wait for Sara at Linderhof; now the bookseller could understand why she had called him the worst nightmare of her life.

And you are my nightmare, too, although you don’t know why . . .

Beside him, Sara screamed, while the tall stranger calmly trained his gun on the bookseller.

“Good evening, Herr Lukas,” he growled. The smoke was beginning to clear, and the man pushed his gas mask up. He had a scar on his face and wore a black-colored eye patch. “I have a score to settle with your girlfriend,” he went on in a deep, sonorous voice. “I suggest you go to sleep for a while now, and then the two of us will be taking a little journey.” He smiled and ran the muzzle of his pistol over his lips, which were moist with sweat. “Sara will be staying here, I’m afraid. She has been a very, very naughty girl. Goodnight now, Herr Lukas.”

Without any warning, the giant swung the pistol and struck Steven a blow over the temple. The bookseller staggered, everything went black before his eyes, and he collapsed.

Surprisingly, he did not entirely lose consciousness; the blow had not been quite hard enough for that. From the floor, Steven saw the dead leader of the Cowled Men lying in front of him, covered in blood. He watched, despairingly, as the giant marched through the drifting smoke toward Sara. There was a fire in her eyes that Steven had never seen there before.

“One more step, you great castrated ox,” she hissed, “and I’ll scratch your other eye out.”

“I hardly think so,” the giant said. “This time I’m better prepared.” He pointed with the pistol to the body of the steersman of the Cowled Men. “I suppose you don’t want to end up like that. So put that damn box down on the floor very slowly, understand?”

Sara nodded and bent to put the treasure chest with the book in it down. At first Steven was surprised to see the art detective comply so quickly, but then he saw how Sara’s eyes were feverishly moving over the floor.

She’s looking for her purse.
The thought flashed through his head.
She’s looking for her purse with the pistol in it.

Cautiously, the bookseller turned his head the other way. There, only six feet from him, lay Sara’s green purse. Steven swiftly worked out the length of time he would need to draw the pistol and shoot. Two seconds to jump up, with his head still ringing from the giant’s blow, and grab the purse. Then at least three more to open it, take out the gun, and pull the trigger.

Five seconds. Too long, damn it!

Unless someone distracted the giant . . .

At that moment his eyes and Sara’s met. The detective seemed to have guessed at his thoughts, because as soon as she was standing upright again, she spoke to the giant with the pistol.

“I don’t know what you plan to do with the box, but help yourself. You’re welcome to it,” she said in a firm voice. “Good luck finding the book, though.”

The giant looked at her grimly. “And what do you mean by that?”