“What the devil . . .”
She heard his footsteps marching over the bridge, coming toward her faster and faster. Nine feet, six feet, one foot. . . Now he must be directly above her. Sara let out one last whimper, and then Lancelot’s arm, holding the Uzi, appeared over her head. He was bending over the side of the bridge. The semiautomatic, his finger on the trigger, his hairy arm . . . At last she saw Lancelot’s face as he leaned over the guardrail, which came only up to his stomach. He squinted his one sound eye, aiming at her face.
“Game over, baby,” he growled. “Now you’ll find out what . . .”
At that moment, Sara seized the wrist of the giant just above her with her right hand. Closing her eyes, she took her other hand off the girder . . .
And let herself drop.
In a fraction of a second, Lancelot’s expression changed to panic. He waved his free arm about; he staggered; then his heavy body toppled over the guardrail like a block of stone. A shot went off, and Sara felt a burning sensation on her right temple. For a brief moment their eyes met, and then Sara let go of Lancelot’s hand. Screaming, he fell to the depths below with outstretched arms, while the Uzi and the Glock fell after him like a couple of plastic toys.
The scream stopped abruptly as the giant’s head smashed into a rocky wall. His body turned over in the air a few times, and then he fell into the rushing water in the stone basin. Like a rotten piece of wood, he bobbed up and down, until the falling water washed him down in the direction of the valley.
Sara hung from the cord belt of her dress, swaying gently back and forth at a height of almost three hundred feet.
“Yacht in the Caribbean, eh?” she shouted down into the gorge as tears ran down her face. “Have a good trip down the river, asshole! And you’d better not try to haunt me. Then I’ll . . .”
An ugly tearing sound stopped her. One by one, the threads of her cord belt were giving way. She spun helplessly in the wind. She moved her legs, then rocked back and forth, trying to reach the safety of the iron girder diagonally above her. More threads gave way. She desperately reached out her right arm; she wriggled and twitched, until she finally managed to catch hold of the iron with her hand and pull herself up.
Sara clung to the thick pole like a child clinging to its mother. The cord of the belt was almost entirely gone but for one thin thread. Almost lifelessly, she slid down the iron pole, pressing her legs to the cold metal and closing her eyes.
She felt an overpowering sense of faintness rise in her, and the gorge rushed toward her like a fist ready to strike.
42
WHILE THE SUN ROSE in the sky, a glowing red globe to the east, Luise, Steven, and his two guards went up a well-worn flight of stone steps to the peak of the Falkenstein. The entire Alpine mountain chain stretched out before their eyes like a never-ending ribbon of rock running all the way to the horizon. The abyss dropped steeply away beside Steven’s feet; only a step farther and he would fall more than one hundred sixty feet to the depths.
“See that little white mark over there?” Luise handed him a pair of field glasses. When Steven looked through them, he could indeed make out Neuschwanstein between the trees.
“You can see Falkenstein from the window of the throne room on a clear day,” the industrialist told him. “Ludwig immortalized the castle on a picture there of St. George.”
Steven remembered the model in the museum at Herrenchiemsee, the fairy-tale plaster castle with its battlements and bay windows. But the ruin up here on the peak was not in the least like a legendary king’s castle. He stared blankly at a ruinous wall, about sixteen feet high and made of crumbling blocks of stone. In many places empty windows and embrasures could still be seen. More recently, a stairway with a rail had been fitted inside so that visitors could enjoy the magnificent view from a platform. Otherwise, the castle looked more like the remains of a tower battered by wind and weather for many hundreds of years. Steven studied a rusty notice giving information that had been put up beside the ruin.
“In 1889 lightning struck here, and since then the whole of the eastern gable wall has been missing,” he read aloud. “I assume that over the last century tourists have left no stone unturned here. So how are we supposed to find a single document? It probably fell to pieces long ago, and . . .”
“It exists and it is here!”
Luise’s shrill cry cut through the otherwise-peaceful morning silence, and even her two paladins turned around, startled.
“And if necessary, we ourselves will leave no stone unturned. Not a single stone. I have time. My family hasn’t waited more than a hundred years to lose patience now, at the last moment. If need be, we’ll stay here until we have dug up the entire peak.”
The glances exchanged by the two guards told Steven that they were far from enthusiastic at this prospect. Nonetheless, they obediently picked up their shovels and picks and began digging.
Meanwhile, the bookseller was staring across at the little white dot to the east that was Neuschwanstein. Steven’s thoughts were with Sara. What had Lancelot done to her? She had obviously been lying to Steven; yet he still loved her. Had she merely been using him to get her hands on the diary? Had it all been just an act? Sara had made him feel able to break away from his lonely, dusty world of books at last; she had made him feel young again. But the way it looked now, she was nothing but a fraud.
And probably dead already.
With tears in his eyes, Steven sat down beside a contorted old tree not far from the entrance to the castle and looked down into the yawning gulf. The damn diary had taken him back to his childhood and finally brought him here. Once again, he felt a desire to jump.
Then perhaps I’ll meet Sara again.
Tristan and Galahad picked about at the niches in the walls first and then began breaking several large blocks of stone out of the walls. Meanwhile, Luise prowled up and down the small courtyard of the castle like a panther in a cage.
“It must be here somewhere!” she cried. “Search, dig, keep those shovels working! Maybe Marot left a sign of some sort behind, something scratched on the rock, something.”
“Have you seen the gigantic heap of stones on the north side of the castle?” Steven asked, pointing behind him with a weary smile. “I suppose you’ve heard of Sisyphus, Luise?”
“Very funny, dear cousin.” Luise Manstein tossed him a shovel encrusted with mud. “I suggest you start in on that heap of stones right away. Galahad will go with you, so don’t get any stupid ideas.”
THEY DUG FOR more than an hour, and in spite of the chilly fall wind, Steven soon had sweat running down his forehead. The mountain of rubble stretched the entire length of the castle ruins, a waste of limestone bedrock in pieces large and small, and to make matters more difficult, they were sometimes wedged together. Galahad kept looking at him darkly.
“Once we’ve found that bloody letter, it’ll be your turn,” he said. “I’ll stone you with my own hands. Every rock I have to turn over I’ll throw at your head.”
“This could take quite a while yet,” Steven replied, straightening up with a groan. His back ached from the unaccustomed manual labor. “If we’re out of luck, my beloved cousin will have us tear the entire castle apart.”
Steven went over to the contorted tree, where there were several bottles of water ready for them. As he drank deeply, he glanced down at the hotel. The helicopter still waited on its pad. A light drizzle of rain had set in, but all the same the pilot had already had to get rid of two early-morning hikers with Nordic walking sticks. Steven was briefly tempted to call to them for help. But probably that would have cost not just his own life, but also the lives of the innocent elderly couple.
Breathing heavily from the hard work, he sat down on a rock beside the tree and watched Luise and Tristan digging holes at random in the castle courtyard while the industrialist shouted and cursed at the top of her lungs. She had now switched to speaking of herself in the royal plural. Indeed, she seemed to be getting more der
anged every minute. She reminded Steven more and more of the defiant ten-year-old who shouted, ranted, and wanted to scratch his eyes out. It seemed as if Luise simply did not realize how pointless all her efforts were.
“The letter will occupy a special position in Our castle,” she gasped, and struck the rocks so hard with the pick that splinters of stone sprayed up. “Right beside Our bed, or maybe in the throne room next to the picture of St. George. We will have a chapel built, a vault for the worthy descendants of Ludwig.”
“And where is this pretty castle of yours?” Steven called to her. “It’s strange that I’ve never heard of it. Must be quite large if all the furniture from Neuschwanstein fits into it.”
“That’s none of your business,” Luise said. Her gray suit was torn and dirty from all her grim digging; her hair stood out around her face in confusion. She looked like a furious little gnome wielding a pick.
Like Alberich in search of the Rhine gold, Steven thought. But I am neither Wotan nor Siegfried.
Thoughtfully, he ran one finger through the soil mingled with roots under the contorted tree. Rotting fall leaves clung to his hand. He rubbed them off and let them drop to the ground. They were withered, brown linden leaves, the typical heart shape.
Suddenly he stopped.
Linden leaves . . .
Could it be possible? Steven looked all the way up the tree. It appeared to be old, almost two hundred years, he estimated. The linden must have been standing here when Marot came to Falkenstein in search of a hiding place.
But considerably smaller at the time . . .
Once again, the answer to the puzzle went through Steven’s head.
In the king’s fourth castle a scion shows the dearest of his treasures . . .
Steven felt the blood throbbing in his temples, and all of a sudden his throat seemed as dry as a piece of sandpaper. They had assumed all along that scion meant Leopold, Ludwig’s son. But what if scion meant something different? What if it referred to its horticultural meaning of a little tree, a young shoot that, someday, would grow into a strong trunk?
A mighty linden tree.
Steven dug his hands far into the heap of withered leaves and then the soil beneath them, and his heart began to beat faster. His fingers slipped as if of their own accord over the roots and up to the trunk, until they met with some tiny indentations that must have been carved in it by someone long ago. They were letters, distorted and almost covered by the bark as it grew with every year’s passing, but Steven recognized them without looking.
Maria.
Steven instinctively smiled. The beginning and the end; it all came full circle here in Falkenstein. The journey was over, and the letter . . .
He felt Luise looking at his back as if her gaze were the tip of an arrow. When he slowly turned around, he saw her standing at the entrance to the castle. She was leaning on her pick and giggling wildly.
“I knew you’d lead me to the hiding place, dearest cousin,” she said, pointing to the linden tree. “I really ought to have figured it out myself.” She shook her head, laughing. “A scion that shows us Ludwig’s son. Friend Theodor really was a poet.” Her face transformed into a frozen grotesque. Her lips narrow and bloodless, she turned to her two companions.
“Tristan and Galahad, we need ropes and an ax. And hurry up! We are going to dig my cousin a grave worthy of him.”
Luise Manstein took the pick, and with an ardent cry she drove the implement deep into the bark of the tree.
THEY FOUND THE container about six feet down. It was rusty iron, and so dirty that at first the men thought it was a clod of earth. The beautiful linden tree, felled, lay on the ground, its roots torn apart and shredded as if a bomb had hit it. Luise danced around the wreck of the tree, holding her face up to the drizzling rain.
“Here it is!” she shouted, her voice almost breaking. “Destiny is fulfilled! I have the proof!”
She had the heavily breathing paladins give her the container, and she carefully scratched the layer of mud away. Underneath it was a lid riveted in place and a rusty padlock.
“Quick, a knife!”
Galahad handed her a knife, and, with a well-aimed thrust, Luise Manstein broke the now-brittle padlock open. She reverently put the little container on the ground, knelt down, and lifted the lid.
Inside lay a sealed envelope, damp and sprinkled with spots of mold, but otherwise intact.
Luise took it out and stroked the seal, which showed a swan with its head raised. The knife passed under the seal, which crumbled into small red fragments. With her fingertips, she took the letter out of the envelope and carefully unfolded it. She seemed to be trembling all over.
“I’ve waited so many years for this moment,” she whispered. “Ever since I was a child. And now my dream has come true at last.”
Luise fished a pair of reading glasses out of her breast pocket, put them on, and silently moved her lips, as if incanting a magic spell.
“Thursday, the tenth of June 1886,” she began quietly. “I, King Ludwig the Second of Bavaria, do hereby declare, being in full possession of my intellectual powers, and in the best of health, that . . .”
At that moment the sirens wailed.
43
LUISE LOOKED UP IN irritation. Tristan, Galahad, and Steven also turned around, startled. The bookseller could hardly believe his ears. He was hearing good old police sirens, similar to the fanfare in old Westerns as the cavalry rode to the aid of the beleaguered fort.
But how can this be possible? Steven thought. It must be a dream, a beautiful dream, no more.
However, the sirens were distinctly too loud for a dream. Three green and white Audis and a bus, blue lights flashing, raced up the narrow, winding mountain road to the hotel. A second bus followed. When the pilot down in the parking lot saw this large contingent coming, he ran to the helicopter and started the engine. Soon after that, the rotor blades began to turn faster and faster, until finally the helicopter rose from the ground and disappeared among the clouds.
Only seconds later, the police cars had reached the hotel parking lot. Gray-clad men poured out of the two buses, wearing balaclavas and equipped with MP5 submachine guns and Kevlar bulletproof vests. They took up their positions behind the cars. Some of the officers swarmed out into the woods below the peak. There were clicks of safeties being taken off, and then there was an almost eerie silence.
“This is the police!” a croaking voice suddenly announced through a megaphone. “We know you’re up there, Frau Manstein! Give yourself up. Any resistance is useless!”
Luise froze, her face distorted in a grimace of horror, insanity, and bewilderment. For a moment Steven thought she would put the letter down on the ground and surrender. But then she drew out her small pistol from under her suit and put it to Steven’s head.
“Not a step closer!” she shouted. “Or I’ll blow his brains all over the castle!”
With a strangely calm demeanor, she tucked the envelope into her neckline and gave her two paladins a sign.
“Open fire,” she ordered, and then ran with Steven into the shelter of the castle courtyard. “Distract them until the chopper comes back.”
Tristan and Galahad looked at each other uncertainly. Then they threw down their shovels, drew their semiautomatics, and got into position behind the embrasures of the ruined building. Soon after that, the clatter of the Uzis rang out, interrupted by occasional shots from the police officers. Looking through a moss-covered window opening, Steven saw at least four masked men, wearing bulletproof vests and armed with sniper rifles, sprinting from tree to tree and constantly looking for cover. Just before reaching the peak, they finally crouched down behind some rocks and waited.
“I don’t know who tipped them off,” Luise snarled, “but don’t think it changes your situation in any way.” Her voice was close to Steven’s ear now; he could smell her expensive perfume. “The helicopter was really just supposed to take the new antenna over to the tower at Neuschwanstein. Bu
t now I’ll have to get myself rescued from here in genuinely majestic style.” She held her cell phone to her ear and waited impatiently for someone to answer.
But however long she waited, no one did.
“Damn it!” Luise shouted at last, throwing her BlackBerry down on the stony ground of the courtyard, where the display smashed into tiny splinters. “That filthy bastard of a pilot has run for it. When I get my hands on him, I’ll . . .”
“Whip him until the blood comes and put his eyes out?” Steven suggested, trying to ignore the cold muzzle of the Derringer against his temple. “Have him sent to a penal colony in Papua New Guinea? Oh, come on, Luise. Don’t make things worse than they already are. Even if you were to get away from here—you heard it for yourself: the police know who you are.”
“You think I should surrender?” Luise laughed as her paladins launched into a new orgy of noise with their Uzis. Splinters of stone sprayed off the rocks where the police marksmen had taken cover. “Never! I have plenty of money in my overseas accounts. More than Ludwig could ever have dreamed of. I’ll move to a small, unknown island and realize his dream there. Away from this sick civilization that gives romantics like us no scope. I will . . .”
A scream was heard, and Steven saw Tristan stagger back with a bleeding wound gaping in his left arm. One of the snipers behind the rocks had aimed through the embrasure and hit him.
“The battle of the Burgundians in King Etzel’s hall,” said Luise. “You remember the Nibelung saga? Hundreds now lie slain, by my hand alone . . . The heroes fall one by one, and the floor of the hall is wet with blood.”
“You are totally out of your mind!” Steven yelled. “Give up! It’s not too late!”
“Would Ludwig have given up? What do you think?” But Luise seemed unsure of herself. She gnawed her lower lip, and the mascara ran over her mud-stained face, making her look like a vampire drained of blood.