The Ludwig Conspiracy

  “That’s not possible!” Steven cried in agitation. “That professor was . . .” But Sara gently pressed his hand.

  “Shhh. There’s more.”

  “The police now assume that there was some sort of dispute between the two men. This suspicion is further borne out by a discovery in the cellar of the antiquarian bookshop in the Westend district of Munich,” the news anchor said, raising her right eyebrow critically. “Upon searching the building, the officer came upon a second corpse. Reports from police circles identify the dead man as a certain Bernd R., an unemployed watchman, who had several previous convictions for assault. Neighbors claim to have seen Lukas entering his shop late last night. Since then, the bookseller and suspected murderer has disappeared without trace.”

  “Old Stiebner from the second floor who let us in,” Steven said with a groan. “What an idiot I am. How could I have forgotten him?” Suddenly he felt unwell. He sat down on the broad, unmade bed and listened to the newscaster, who was now asking people to keep their eyes open and report any relevant information to the police. The following story was about a puppy mill. Sara mercifully switched off the television.

  “Oh my God,” Steven muttered, running his fingers through his hair. “They suspect me of murdering the professor. But . . . but that’s absurd. What kind of hat and coat do they say they found in my shop? There was nothing like that there.”

  Sara frowned. “Apparently there was. Now at least we know what that thug was doing at your place last night. He must have planted the hat and coat there. And then someone told the police and press.” She took the coffee cup from Steven’s limp hand and drank what was left in it. “A pretty mean trick. I’d say there’s someone out there who doesn’t like you one little bit.”

  “We ought to have gone to the police. I said so all along,” Steven said. “If only I hadn’t listened to you! Now I’m deeper in shit than ever.”

  “How could I know someone would plant my uncle’s clothing in your shop and then tip off the cops? You act as if I were your mother. I wish you had gone to the police instead of sitting around here crying like a baby.” Sara reached for a pack of menthol cigarettes lying beside the bed. In silence, she fished out a crumpled cigarette and lit it.

  “Anyway, arguing isn’t getting us anywhere,” she said at last. “We have to think. I’ll bet the guy who killed my uncle and is looking for that book is behind it. He’ll want to keep us from going to the police, so he makes you the main suspect. Not a bad idea really, not bad at all.”

  Steven thought of the man in the Bavarian-style suit. Could he be pulling the strings? Was he the leader of those Cowled Men who were trying to get their hands on the diary?

  The smoke of the menthol cigarette was making him feel even worse than he was already. He had slept for less than five hours in a worn leather chair, he’d had nothing to eat, and now he turned out to be a wanted man, chief suspect in a gruesome murder investigation. He fanned the smoke away with his hand. When Sara saw his efforts, she ground out her cigarette and looked at him sympathetically.

  “I’ll make a suggestion, Herr Lukas,” she said. “I’ll conjure us up a late breakfast—coffee, croissants, butter, and honey—and while we’re eating, you can tell me what you found out from the diary. And then we’ll figure out what to do next.” She smiled. “You wait and see. The world will look quite different then.”

  Steven nodded, even though he couldn’t imagine that the world would ever look right to him again.

  HALF AN HOUR LATER, they were sitting together at the table in Sara’s untidy, little built-in kitchen, munching a couple of microwaved chocolate croissants. Although the croissants tasted terrible, Steven felt himself slowly coming back to life. He had told Sara everything he had read in the diary. She had listened in silence, sipping her strong coffee.

  “If that diary is genuine, it’s a sensational find,” she finally said. “I don’t think there are any other documents that actually prove that Ludwig was the victim of a plot by his ministers.”

  “What do you mean, plot?” Steven objected, dipping his croissant in his coffee. “The king was as crazy as they come. Think of the black mask that one of his servants had to wear. The conversations he imagined having with Louis the Fourteenth, those ostentatious castles, the bizarre costumes . . .”

  “Just one question, Herr Lukas,” Sara interrupted. She seemed aggrieved, as if Steven had insulted her personally. “Was Michael Jackson crazy?”

  The bookseller’s forehead wrinkled. “Michael Jackson? What does he have to do with anything?”

  “Well, the King of Pop lived it up on his Neverland ranch, he hid his face behind a mask, he had a pet monkey, and he slept under an oxygen tent. Was he crazy?”

  “In a way you could say he—”

  “Would you have locked him up in a madhouse?”

  Steven shook his head indignantly. “Of course not.”

  “You see, that’s the problem,” Sara said. “A lot of people aren’t normal. They’re wacky, eccentric, downright peculiar if you like. But that doesn’t mean they’re insane. And it’s no reason to lock them up.”

  Steven nodded. “I see what you’re getting at. Presumably that’s why Dr. von Gudden hesitated when he was told to certify Ludwig insane.”

  “All the evidence in the later medical reports came from the king’s lackeys,” said Sara, spreading honey thickly on her chocolate croissant. “Careerists and corrupt, fawning courtiers. It’d be like asking the assembly-line workers in a factory whether their boss is an asshole, and promising them a new boss and better pay at the same time.”

  Steven smiled. “One might think you have a soft spot for Ludwig.”

  “I just can’t stand it when people are called crazy for no reason except not being the same as everyone else.”

  There was silence at the table for a while. Finally Steven cleared his throat.

  “What do you think I ought to do now?” he asked. “Go to the police and explain myself?”

  “After they found my uncle’s hat and coat at your place, plus a corpse covered with blood?” Sara frowned. “That might be difficult. Let’s see if we can find out any more about this diary first. Maybe we’ll find some kind of hint about the killer that will convince the police.”

  Steven nodded. “Okay, then let’s sum up what we know so far,” he began. “The diary is an eyewitness account of the king’s last year of life, written by one of his loyal companions. My guess is we’ll find something about his death in it, too. But what about those weird jumbled letters in the text?” He reached for the diary lying on the kitchen counter beside him. “QRCSOQNZO. Or NECAALAI. In all, I’ve found five of those words in the pages I’ve decoded so far. And I’m sure there will be more of them.” He shook his head. “There’s no hint at all about deciphering them in Shelton’s Tachygraphy.”

  “Maybe it’s another kind of secret writing,” Sara suggested. “A code inside the code, so to speak. Maybe Marot wanted to hide something so appalling that it had to be put into an additional code.”

  Steven frowned. “You think it will tell us about more than just Ludwig’s murder?”

  “I’m only saying that Marot went to a great deal of trouble to hide something. And these unpleasant strangers who are trying to get the book away from you seem to have pretty sophisticated methods. More than I would expect from the Cowled Men.”

  Wearily, Steven rubbed his temples. “We’re probably never going to solve this riddle. It’s already taken me hours to decode just a few pages of that damn shorthand.”

  “Let’s have a look.” Sara reached over the table for the diary, leaving a large chocolaty mark on the first page.

  “Careful!” Steven snapped. “This isn’t . . .”

  “Some tabloid, I know,” Sara said, leafing through the pages. “Looks to me like some letters have deliberately been used instead of others. What’s more, they’re all capitals, and written in the normal alphabet, not Shelton’s shorthand.”

 
“Marot obviously wanted them to stand out from the rest of the text,” said Steven. “They mattered to him. But as for what they mean . . .” He shrugged.

  “Wait a moment.” Sara took a paper napkin and began writing the separate words down on it.

  QRCSOQNZO, NECAALAI, IIEAPQRX, FHRT, LALJEDIE

  “Looks like a letter cipher,” she said. “As if separate letters have been exchanged for each other according to a certain pattern.”

  Steven nodded. “I thought of that myself. I worked on it a bit last night. Do you know Caesar’s code?”

  “I’m an art detective, not a cryptographer.”

  “Apparently Julius Caesar used that kind of code for his messages. In the Caesar code, you agree on a letter in the alphabet. Then the letters to be coded are shifted the appropriate number of places. Caesar usually set out from C.”

  “I get it,” Sara said. “So an A becomes C; B becomes D . . .”

  “C becomes E, and so on. To decode the cipher, you just have to reverse the process.” Steven tapped the scribbles on the paper napkin with his ballpoint pen. “I’ve already tried that for the first words, but it didn’t work. Probably would have been too simple, anyway.” He sighed and pushed the diary over to Sara. “I give up. Those words are already swimming before my eyes.”

  Sara took the book from him and began leafing through it, lost in thought. Steven was horrified to see the chocolate cream sticking to her green fingernails.

  “Wait a second,” she said suddenly. “There are two more words here written in capitals and the normal alphabet.” She tapped her chocolate-smeared finger on the page. “Right at the end of your decoding so far. LINDERHOF and LOVED.”

  Steven stood up and looked over her shoulder. “You’re right,” he said. “I didn’t notice last night. I was probably already nodding off.”

  “And there’s something else odd about it.” Sara pointed to the line in which the word LOVED occurred. “Look what comes directly after it.”

  “That was the key that could open the door of truth to the world,” Steven read aloud. “Do you mean . . .”

  “I mean it’s a highly emotional remark,” Sara said. “Then again, it could mean exactly what it says. Marot is talking about love that can reveal the truth. Suppose the word LOVED is the key to reading the real story? Some kind of clue. And that clue is . . .”

  “In Linderhof Castle. The other word written in capitals.” Steven struck his brow. “You just might be onto something.”

  “Well, it’s worth a try, anyway. Especially . . .” Sara paused, then dipped another croissant in her coffee. “There’s one thing I haven’t told you yet. That swan amulet our friend the Hulk was wearing, with its strange inscription. Tmeicos Ettal, remember?”

  Intent on her now, Steven asked. “What about it?”

  “While you were asleep, I did some research online. The swan was a favorite symbol of Ludwig’s. He used it on pictures, furniture, and jewelry. But that isn’t the interesting part.”

  “So what is the interesting part?”

  “Tmeicos Ettal is an anagram. If you switch the letters around, you get Louis the Fourteenth’s famous saying, L’état, c’est moi.”

  “I am the state.”

  “Exactly.” Sara bit into her croissant and went on with her mouth full. “A puzzle word that Ludwig used to code the architectural plans for one of his favorite projects. A castle in the Ammergau Alps.”

  “Linderhof,” Steven breathed.

  “Yep.” Sara wiped her mouth on a napkin and stood up. “I think we ought to pay that little castle a visit. Like, today. Could be we’ll find some kind of clue there to help us untangle this letter code. Something to do with the word LOVED.”

  Steven remained seated and looked at her skeptically. “Why would I put myself into even more danger? Who’s to say those murderers aren’t wandering around out there somewhere, just waiting for us to show up? At least I’m safe here.”

  “Didn’t you tell me books were your great passion?” Sara winked at him. “This book is probably the greatest find an antiquarian bookseller could ever make. Don’t tell me you aren’t excited. This is the puzzle of the decade. We have a chance to solve the most famous crime in nineteenth-century German history. A deadly secret that’s been lying between the covers of a book for a hundred and twenty-five years.” She picked up the diary and went to the door. “But of course you can always stay here sulking. In which case I’m going alone.”

  “Hey, wait!” Steven jumped up and followed her out into the corridor. “I didn’t exactly say no. I just wanted to . . . to express a few doubts. Besides . . .” He made one last desperate attempt. “What about the cops? Don’t forget, they’re after me. My photo will probably be in every paper by morning.”

  Sara grinned and pointed through the open door to her bedroom, more specifically, to her wardrobe.

  “Don’t worry about that, Herr Lukas. We’ll just have to make our respectable bookseller into a different kind of guy.” She looked him up and down. “Did I mention that you and David, my cute ex-boyfriend, are exactly the same size?”

  10

  THE KING LAY, eyes closed, on a gently rocking waterbed, wearing padded leather headphones and listening to the overture from Wagner’s Tannhäuser. The bed was carved entirely from oak, with an elaborate Gothic canopy over it. The door to the house’s chapel stood ajar, displaying the triptych of the altarpiece before which the king knelt to pray every morning before going about the tiresome duty of making money.

  The Royal Highness had accumulated a great deal of it over the last few years, far more than the few million Ludwig had had at his disposal. But like Ludwig himself, the king took no real satisfaction in hoarding it, raking it in, having it to command. Money was only an abstract entity enabling one to live more and more entirely in one’s own dreams. The last step to that goal was the book. Its secret was the last stone in the mosaic. Once that was in place, nothing would be as it had been before. If it had turned up at any other time, who knows, perhaps it would have changed the history of the country. Perhaps it might yet do so.

  The book . . .

  The king’s annoyance mingled with Wagner’s blaring horns and trumpets. Not that there was doubt about acquiring Theodor Marot’s account. The king was, however, getting impatient. It had been too long a wait already. That damn professor had pulled a fast one, and now the antiquarian bookseller had simply vanished.

  The king licked dry lips and turned up the volume of the music. At least the man couldn’t go to the police. If he did, he’d risk spending the rest of his life in prison, without any of his beloved books. The Excellency smiled. The antiquarian bookseller’s actions had proven no problem to anticipate. It was so easy to see through people.

  Planting the hat and coat was a stroke of genius. Both items of clothing had still been in the car after Gareth and Gawain had dispatched the professor. Gareth had only to plant them, bloodstained as they were, in the bookshop, and after that, a well-placed phone call had been enough to bring the cops out like a swarm of angry bees.

  The Royal Highness gave a thoughtful tilt of the head. In spite of everything, that scrawny man could be dangerous, as Gareth’s death had shown. The king would never have believed the bookseller capable of killing one of the strongest knights in cold blood, but at least it had put this Lukas under more pressure. Soon he’d come scurrying out of hiding like a mouse out of its hole, and then they must strike.

  The king thought for a long time, finally removing the headphones and pulling a velvet cord beside the bed, eliciting a faint ringing.

  Only the best man would do for this job.

  Mere seconds later, the door opened, and a giant entered the king’s bedchamber. He was more than six feet tall and built like a heavy, antique item of furniture. Unlike the other knights, he did not wear a tracksuit jacket, but a black tailored suit, with an equally dark leather coat over it, giving him the appearance of a panther with a matte gleam to its fur. His black hair w
as tied back in a braid, his full beard was trimmed to perfection, and there was a jagged scar the length of a man’s finger on his right cheek.

  “Majesty?” he asked quietly, his voice like the growling of an old bear.

  “We still have this . . . problem,” said the king. “Gareth has failed, and the others don’t seem up to the task. So I’m sending you, Lancelot.”

  “What are your orders, Excellency?”

  “Find the book. And make sure that bookseller keeps the secret to himself. We can only hope he hasn’t solved the riddle yet.”

  “Everyone knows that dead men tell no tales.”

  The king nodded and moved to put the headphones back on.

  “The man’s obviously gone into hiding,” Lancelot growled. “Any leads on where I can find him?”

  “He’s surely crept into some mouse hole or other,” the king said, waving off the question. “Maybe he’s with that woman. How should I know? Check his friends, his family, his background. He can’t have dissolved into thin air, can he? And use our contacts with the police. They could know something.”

  Then eyes again closed and headphones back on, the king hummed along to the aria from act two of Tannhäuser.

  Lancelot bowed stiffly, like an old oak bending in the wind, and, following the old court ceremonial, walked backward out of the room. No one could say the king wasn’t barking mad, but the pay was good. Damn good. Lancelot had already worked as bodyguard for several millionaires, had been a security advisor in the Congo and for Blackwater in Iraq, but his present post looked like it would wind up being the most lucrative in his career to date—and possibly his last. Another year in The Royal Majesty’s service, and Lancelot would finally be able to afford the stylish forty-foot yacht he coveted. Then he could set off, never to be seen again, for the Caribbean, where he intended to spend the rest of his life with bare-breasted blondes and a large supply of well-chilled daiquiris.