The Ludwig Conspiracy

  At last Luise stopped, pointing her flashlight straight ahead, and Steven saw a narrow bridge leading through the night ahead of them. In the darkness, it looked like the entrance to hell.

  “The Marie Bridge over the Pöllat Gorge,” she said with awe. “See for yourself; the view is astounding.” She gave Steven a push, and with Sara he staggered toward the bridge, while two of their guards got into position in front of them and two behind them. Now the sound of water was very close.

  The panorama was indeed incomparable.

  Below them lay the Pöllat Gorge. A giant waterfall roared down into a rocky basin, flowing on and down to the valley as a rushing mountain stream. Mighty rocks stood to the right and left. Toward the east, Neuschwanstein rose like a white fairy castle among the trees in their fall colors. At exactly this moment, the first faint red glow of the morning sun showed behind the castle.

  “Well, did I promise you too much?” Luise leaned dreamily against the chest-high metal railing, looking at the sunrise. She made a wide gesture over the misty mountain world of the Alps. “A beautiful place to die, don’t you think, Frau Lengfeld? We are entirely alone; the first hikers won’t be around for a few hours. And then an unfortunate tourist woman will be found at the bottom of the Pöllat Gorge, a victim of her own stupidity.” Shaking her head, she looked at Sara’s high-heeled shoes. “You really shouldn’t walk in the mountains in pumps like those. Didn’t you read the warning notices?”

  Sara tried to fling herself on Luise, but Lancelot held her back by the shoulder with his huge paws.

  “You crazy viper!” Sara yelled. “You won’t get away with this. Questions will be asked. I left a message behind at home. If anything should happen to me, then . . .”

  “Oh, Frau Lengfeld, do stop,” Luise interrupted. “Don’t you think you’ve told enough lies? That naïve idiot beside you may have swallowed all your stories, but you won’t get anywhere with me.”

  “Lies? What . . . what do you mean?” Steven asked.

  “What do I mean?” Luise raised her right eyebrow. “Well, dear cousin, we have gathered information not only about you but also, of course, about your charming companion here. And do you know what’s so funny about it?” She paused for a moment and then winked at Steven. “Professor Liebermann has no niece.”

  Steven’s jaw dropped, and his legs threatened to give way. What kind of game was she playing?

  “Sara . . .” He looked at the art detective, who was standing by the bars of the bridge and was unusually silent, with her lips narrowed. “Is that true?”

  “Steven, let me explain . . .”

  “I want to know whether it’s true!” When Sara nodded, he had to hold on to the handrail of the bridge to keep from crumpling.

  “And it gets even better, Steven,” Luise said. “Has Sara ever told you about her dear papa? No? Then I will.” She paused for dramatic effect before she went on, relishing the situation. “Peter Lengfeld is an art thief, the terror of museums, with an unfortunate tendency to steal objets d’art. He has about a dozen break-ins to his name. At the moment, he’s serving his third term in prison, waiting to get therapy. We’ve made inquiries, Steven. While you were at Linderhof, Sara Lengfeld visited her father at Stadelheim Prison in Munich. Ask her what she was doing there. Well?”

  Sara was silent. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply and heavily. But Luise Manstein wouldn’t let the subject drop.

  “This woman is a liar, Steven,” she repeated. “A liar and a criminal. I’ve seen her file on the police computer. Sara Lengfeld has a criminal record for breaking and entering. She has helped her father more than once in his thefts from museums. And she is not the niece of Professor Paul Liebermann.”

  Steven felt hot tears running down his face. This was all too much for him. Which of them should he believe?

  “My God, Sara, I trusted you,” he whispered. “I told you all about myself. I loved you . . . Say it isn’t true. Say you weren’t lying to me from the start!”

  “Steven, it’s not the way you think!” Sara was pleading now. “Okay, it’s true about my father, but that’s a long time ago. I’ve changed. And this isn’t about him at all. Don’t you see how she’s trying to play us off against each other? Let me explain . . .”

  “You lied to me, Sara Lengfeld. Or whatever your real name is. Who can I still trust? Tell me, who?”

  “Steven, believe me . . .”

  Steven abruptly turned away from her and stared down into the gorge. Suddenly he thought of all the little ways in which Sara had involved him more and more deeply in this business. The plan to solve the puzzle had been hers. Again and again she had advised him against going to the police. She had urged him to go on. And her strange coolness at the sight of the dead man in his bookshop made sense now. Was this woman nothing but a stone-cold criminal? Had she needed him just because he could read Marot’s shorthand?

  Had she . . . used him all along?

  For a moment he was tempted to climb over the handrail and let himself drop—drop to the bottom of the gorge, where darkness and endless oblivion awaited him. But then it occurred to him that others were about to make him do that anyway.

  “Unfortunately, Frau Lengfeld hasn’t yet told us who she is actually working for,” Luise said. “Whether for her father or for someone else. But maybe a look at the depths below will make her a little more forthcoming. Well, Frau Lengfeld, what about it?”

  “You’re going to kill me anyway,” Sara replied, “so why should I tell you anything?”

  Luise shook her head disapprovingly. “You’re forgetting that some ways of dying are quick; some take much longer. Lancelot will think himself lucky to try either way on you. So talk.”

  Sara’s lips were a narrow line, and she kept her arms folded.

  “Very well.” Luise gave a theatrical sigh. “Then it will take a long time. A very long time.”

  She tapped Steven on the shoulder. “Come along, dearest cousin. Family duties call. You have solved the puzzle, and now I know where we must search. A perfect division of labor, don’t you agree?” Luise turned away, and the three bodyguards pushed the trembling bookseller along ahead of them, until they had left the bridge behind again, with only Sara and Lancelot still on it.

  At that moment he heard the throb of rotor blades coming from the east. A helicopter came up from the valley and prepared to land in the castle courtyard. The industrialist took a deep breath.

  “Let’s forget that little snake,” she said, leading Steven away. She held the treasure chest with the diary in a firm grip. “Lancelot will take care of her. Our taxi is waiting in the upper courtyard. It will take us to the fourth castle and the end of our quest.”

  Meanwhile Lancelot, his gun raised, advanced on Sara. He lifted his eye patch so that she could see the dark socket behind it.

  “Hey, baby,” he called, vying with the noise of the helicopter. “Today you’re gonna learn to fly.”

  40

  LUISE, HER THREE paladins, and the exhausted, staggering Steven hurried toward the castle, while the helicopter, making an infernal racket, came down in the upper courtyard of the castle. Ducking, the five of them approached the roaring monster as it rocked, like an intoxicated dragon, a few hand’s-breadths above the ground.

  Luise pointed her Derringer to its interior. “In you get, Steven!” she shouted. She gave one of the armed men a few instructions, and then she, the other two, and Steven climbed into the helicopter. The door closed, and they took off.

  “Mordred and a few of the other knights will see to the throne room and Zöller’s body,” she said, staring out of the window, through which the castle below them got smaller and smaller. “When the first tourists arrive at ten, no one will be able to tell what happened here last night. Tristan and Galahad, on the other hand . . .” She pointed to the two bodyguards who sat to the right and left of Steven in their black leather jackets, staring straight ahead. “Tristan and Galahad will accompany us on this quest. Besides L
ancelot, they are my best paladins, and they have instructions to shoot you at once if there is any danger of your trying to escape. So don’t think that you can try anything clever.”

  “Where are we going?” Steven asked as he looked ahead through the cockpit window, where the Alps were emerging from the mist. Steep peaks rose among the clouds, which were slowly dispersing in the morning light. Steven still felt numb; in the last hour his life had turned into a nightmare from which he didn’t seem to be awakening. The damn book had cast its spell on him, and in the end it had thrown him into hell.

  “Where are we going?”

  Luise laughed. “To the fourth castle, of course. You yourself were kind enough to find out the hiding place for me. Don’t you remember the solution to the puzzle?” She chanted Marot’s words like a strange kind of melody.

  “In the king’s fourth castle a scion shows the dearest of his treasures. The irony behind that is truly too delicious.”

  “But Ludwig built only three castles,” Steven wearily objected. “There was never any talk of a fourth.”

  The industrialist smiled broadly. “You’re right, Cousin. Only three castles were built. However, a fourth was planned. Your expert friend Albert Zöller could have told you that, I’m sure. Ah, there it is.”

  She wiped condensation off the pane beside her, and through a small hole Steven looked down on a wooded mountain, one of the foothills of the Alps. Its precipitous peak, maybe some three hundred or more feet high, was treeless, and on its rocks he saw a dilapidated ruin that must once, ages ago, have been a castle.

  Suddenly a memory surfaced in Steven’s head. He thought of the model castle in the museum at Herrenchiemsee. The hill on which it stood had looked very like the mountain below him. At the time, Sara had even read the information about the planned project. What had the place been called . . .

  “Falkenstein Castle! An ideal hiding place. I should have known.” Luise’s voice brought him back to reality. “Ludwig’s dream of a castle fit for a true king. And incidentally, at the highest altitude of any castle in Germany.” She looked reverently down at the ruin. A modern complex of buildings lay at its foot.

  “The castle that stood here in the Middle Ages was a powerful signal from Count Meinhard of the Tyrol, who wanted to incorporate the land around Füssen with his domains,” the industrialist went on. “As an inhabited fortress, however, its situation was too high and inhospitable, and so it fell into ruin. Ludwig wanted to build his tomb here, but he died before the building work really began. Marot couldn’t have chosen a better place.”

  “And that new building down there?” Steven asked, pointing out of the window. “That can’t be part of the castle.”

  Luise smiled broadly. “An elegant little luxury hotel that I acquired some time ago, and to which I have added some . . . well, extensions. If I’d known that Ludwig’s statutory declaration was only a few yards away . . .” Laughing, she shook her head.

  The helicopter was now losing height, and it came down on the parking lot outside the hotel. In spite of the noise, the hotel windows were dark, and there was no one in sight.

  “Fortunately, I have been using the off-season to do some renovations,” Luise said as the rotor blades slowed. “The hotel is closed. So we’re all alone up here.”

  She took the little treasure chest off one of the back seats, put it in a nylon bag that she had brought with her, and opened the door. Icy cold mountain air blew into the interior of the helicopter.

  “Come on, Steven,” Luise said. “Time to claim our inheritance.”

  41

  LANCELOT STOOD IN THE middle of the Marie Bridge with his semiautomatic Glock 17 in one hand and an Uzi in the other. He grinned at Sara as the footsteps of Steven, Luise, and the other men slowly died away in the wood.

  “Just the two of us, girlie,” he said at last. “Looks like it’s time for the showdown.”

  The giant hummed a tune, and it took Sara some time to work out that it was supposed to be Simon and Garfunkel’s “Bridge over Troubled Water.” Lancelot put his two guns down on the ground in front of him and came toward Sara, still humming, his huge hands raised. He looked like the crazed priest of some ancient, forgotten deity.

  Keep your head clear, she thought. This guy is a sadist pumped full of testosterone, a fit fighting machine, a murderous mercenary, but apart from that, he’s a perfectly normal human being. And human beings make mistakes.

  “‘When darkness comes,’” sang Lancelot in his deep growling bass, “‘and pain is all around . . .’” He smiled broadly. “I don’t need a gun for what comes next. I’ll be doing it by hand. And tomorrow morning I’m booking the flight that will take me to my yacht in the Caribbean. Too bad you won’t be able to come, too.”

  Sara stood in the middle of the bridge, which vibrated slightly under Lancelot’s footsteps. The giant was only a few feet away. She looked frantically around, trying to calculate her chances of flight. They were very few. The situation was, to put it mildly, hopeless.

  If I turn around and run for the forest on the other side of the gorge, he’ll pick up his Uzi and shoot me. If I stay where I am, he’ll throw me off the bridge. If I fight, he’ll throttle me. Which would hurt less?

  Day had dawned now, and the first rays of sun were bathing the bridge in an almost unreal light. The chest-high handrails to the left and right were made of metal, and the planks of the bridge were solid, stable timber with narrow cracks between them. Through one slightly wider crack, Sara could see that the bridge rested on an arched iron structure anchored in the rock on both sides of the gorge. Suddenly she stopped short.

  Could that offer a chance?

  Looks like I don’t have any choice . . .

  Quick as lightning, Sara kicked off her impractical shoes, then feinted a movement to the right, and the next moment climbed over the handrail on her left. Lancelot was so surprised that he let valuable time pass before finally moving after her with a roar. When he reached the middle of the bridge, Sara had already climbed down to one of the iron girders. The giant leaned over the handrail and stared at her, his one sound eye full of hatred.

  “That won’t get you anywhere, you bitch!” he shouted. “I’ll pick you off like a bird with a broken wing!”

  Running back to the two weapons, which were still lying on the planks of the end of the bridge nearer the castle, he thrust the Glock into his belt and reached for the Uzi semiautomatic. Meanwhile, Sara made her way hand over hand farther down her girder, and from there she climbed down onto a horizontal strut directly under the bridge. She held two posts firmly, one in each hand, and now ventured a brief glance down.

  The sight made her suddenly feel nauseated. For a brief moment, the strength went out of her fingers. She just barely managed to cling to the iron.

  Some three hundred feet below her, the waterfall poured through a small basin and into the valley. The walls of rock dropping to the bottom were breathtakingly steep. A slight wind blew through her hair and tugged at her clothes.

  Now the bridge itself began to swing. It took Sara a moment to realize that the swinging was not the work of the wind but of Lancelot, who was running along the planks with all his weight. She couldn’t see him, but she could hear him all the more clearly for that.

  “Where are you? Where?” he shouted into the wind. “Have you flown away, little birdie? Damn it, where are you hiding?”

  Sara breathed a sigh of relief. Obviously Lancelot couldn’t see her from where he was behind the guardrails. She heard his heavy boots stamp over the planks, back and forth, faster and faster as he looked for his victim.

  “Bloody woman.”

  Suddenly the Uzi semiautomatic barked. In alarm, Sara looked up and saw with horror that several bullets had come through the planks. One shot hissed by close to her ear.

  “Where are you, Sara?”

  Lancelot’s voice was almost cracking. Once again, several planks splintered. Sara pressed her lips together to keep from screamin
g, and thus giving her hiding place away. What now? It was only a matter of time before one of the bullets hit her. Below her, on the north side of the bridge, she saw an iron basket structure about six feet wide, presumably fitted for building workers. Maybe she could take refuge there? But how on earth was she to travel the hundred feet or so to the structure below the bridge? Sara knew that if she looked down again, everything would probably go black before her eyes. Moreover, any movement would give away her whereabouts. There had to be some other way to do it.

  Sara’s brain was working at top speed as bullets pinged off the metal structure around her. At last she formed something like a plan in her head, clouded as it was by adrenaline. She had once done some judo as a child. She didn’t remember much about it, but one rule stuck in her memory.

  Your opponent’s weight is your own strength . . .

  Sara nodded grimly. More than two hundred pounds could mean a lot of strength.

  She took off the belt of her dress, a thin polyacrylic cord that had been nipping at her waist. Experimentally, she tugged at her improvised rope. It seemed as if it would take some weight. The question was, how much?

  Holding her breath, she pushed herself in the direction of the guardrail until she was back on the vertical girder by which she had climbed down. Finally, she crawled up, centimeter by centimeter, as if on a climbing pole, until she was directly below the sides of the bridge.

  Lancelot peppered the planks with bullets, the floor of the bridge shattering into hundreds of wooden splinters. The noise was so infernal that Sara was afraid she would go deaf. The shots must have been heard down in the valley, but it would certainly be too late for her by the time anyone placed them. She had to act now.

  And she did.

  In a brief pause between two volleys of shots, she gave a quiet little whimper. It was a very slight sound, but loud enough for her to be sure that Lancelot would hear it.