The Ludwig Conspiracy

Then she seized Steven’s arm.

  “No. I don’t think Ludwig would have given up. On the contrary.”

  She pulled him away behind the castle and toward the abyss. Only now did the bookseller see, to his horror, that sparkling new iron rungs led down the precipitous wall, now wet with rain.

  “Follow me, Cousin,” Luise commanded, with a grave and majestic expression. “It is time for you to set foot in our great-great-grandfather’s halls.”

  44

  THEY CLIMBED DOWN THE rocky wall one after the other, while the bullets went on rattling overhead.

  Steven looked down, his heart thudding, as he made his way from rung to rung, using those above him as handholds. It must have been a good hundred thirty feet down to the grassy ground below, overgrown with small bushes. Flight was out of the question; Luise was right above him. She had slung the nylon bag with the little treasure chest inside it over her shoulder, and she kept stopping and threatening Steven with her pistol to make him hurry.

  At last he felt ground beneath his feet, and soon after that Luise was beside him. A narrow path wound its way along the precipitous rock wall to the hotel. There was nothing to be seen now of the chaos raging in the castle above. Only now and then did the sound of shots come down to them.

  “Right, keep going,” Luise ordered, pushing her cousin forward. “Who knows how long my faithful paladins up there will hold out.”

  Steven staggered along the muddy path that ended, just below the hotel building, at a square, wooden annex. A narrow flight of steps led into a small room made of pale spruce planks with an aromatic scent of resin. Several old etchings showing Falkenstein Castle at an earlier date hung on the wall; there was a model of the castle in a glass display case, and notices provided information about the details of its history.

  “The Falkenstein Museum,” Luise explained as she searched the pockets of her suit. “The previous owner of the hotel had it built for his guests, but I have found another use for it.”

  She took out a small key and inserted it into a keyhole fitted to the side of the display case. There was a quiet hum, and then the case moved aside to reveal a flight of stairs leading down. They climbed down the stairs until they reached an elevator with doors that slid soundlessly aside.

  “Welcome to Hades.”

  Luise sketched a slight bow before ushering Steven into the elevator. “This is really only my escape hatch. I would have liked to show you my hotel suite. But the way things seem, I fear we have no time for that now.”

  She tapped a combination of several numbers into a keypad, the doors closed, and the elevator, humming, went down.

  When the doors opened again, Steven was in the Middle Ages.

  A long corridor lined with wood veneer stretched before him, and like the rooms in Neuschwanstein, it was adorned with life-sized murals from the world of the Germanic legends. Chandeliers with white candles in them hung from the ceiling, giving a faint light, and from somewhere came the soft notes of one of Wagner’s overtures. Only when he looked again did he see that small halogen bulbs and not candles were burning, and the music came from tiny loudspeakers mounted everywhere in the corridor. On closer inspection, he found that the corridor itself had a rather temporary appearance: some of the planks under the thick rugs were missing, and the ceiling had not yet been fully plastered.

  Like Ludwig’s own building style, Steven thought. A half-finished castle cobbled together from several different periods.

  “I have rebuilt large parts of Neuschwanstein,” Luise announced as they walked down the long corridor. “In one or two years I would have finished the work. Only the murals are new. I think they are even more successful than the originals, don’t you agree?”

  “Just as gloomy, anyway.”

  The corridor suddenly veered left, and they were now walking farther and farther into the mountain, through dimly lit rooms. Luise seemed to have hollowed out the whole Falkenstein like a Swiss cheese. The rooms were carved directly into the rock, and some were shaped like caverns. Instead of windows, there were landscape paintings, one providing a view of a medieval idyll. Behind dusty glass, Steven saw castles on steep peaks, towers, and deep green forests.

  In due course, he really did recognize all the furnishings of Neuschwanstein in the countless, labyrinthine series of rooms. They passed the plainly furnished servants’ rooms with their rustic wooden bedsteads, then the magnificent dining room in which, as in the original, there was a table with a marble and gilded bronze centerpiece. They walked through the dressing room, the bedchamber, and the salon with its columns and Byzantine arches; even Ludwig’s bed with its valuable carvings stood here, just as Steven remembered it. Beyond a passage he saw the sparkling red and blue lights of a grotto reflected on the surface of an underground lake.

  She really has had all this stuff brought here to realize her own dream of a fairy-tale castle. How long was it in the planning?

  “What you see here is the labor of many years,” Luise said proudly, as if she had read his thoughts. “When my husband died, I was able to devote myself entirely to my hobby. A not-inconsiderable part of the resources of the Manstein firm has gone into this project.” She turned in a circle, the Derringer in her hand and her head raised to look at the ceiling. “Our great-great-grandfather would have done just the same. Then he would have been spared seeing half the world trample his heritage underfoot. Ludwig wanted to keep his castles to himself. I am the one who has made that dream come true.”

  “Luise, Ludwig is dead,” Steven said wearily. “If anything survives, it is only his idea in people’s minds. He’s one of the best-known figures in German history. Do you think he would have been if his castles were hidden somewhere underground?”

  Luise sighed and directed Steven on along the corridor with her gun. “You don’t understand, Steven. How could you? Yours is the branch of the family that has not bred true to its stock and must be cut off. I’m sorry to put it so bluntly.”

  By now they had reached the end of the corridor. Ahead of Steven, a mighty hall almost fifty feet high opened up—a perfect copy of the Neuschwanstein throne room.

  Or in fact the original itself.

  He looked at the colorful mosaic images of animals on the floor, the paintings on the walls, the blue columns and the massive chandelier hanging from the ceiling by chains. Luise’s footsteps echoed behind Steven as he walked into the middle of the room. Once again the industrialist looked all around her, and there was mingled grief and resignation in her face. Then, with great care, she put the nylon bag containing the treasure chest down on the mosaic floor and took Ludwig’s statutory declaration out from her neckline.

  “I have looked for it for so long,” she murmured, kissing the letter, and then she tossed it carelessly away, so that it sailed to the floor like a tired moth. “All over.”

  There was silence for a moment. Then Luise’s expression changed as a crazed smile played around her lips. She fished a small black device the size of a cell phone out of her pants pocket and began pressing keys. It made a beeping, buzzing noise like a badly set alarm clock.

  “Of course I knew I must be prepared for such an attack,” she went on. “You must always be prepared for anything, don’t you agree? As Ludwig was. It is said that he would have liked to blow his castles sky-high rather than leave them in the hands of those unworthy of them. And that is exactly what I am going to do now.”

  Steven missed a breath. “You’re going to do what?”

  Luise looked at her cousin with vacant eyes. “I have had a number of explosives built into my pretty little castle, and I can set them off whenever I like by remote control. You have to know when the end has come. Three, two, one . . .”

  “Luise, no!” Steven tried to wrench the little device out of her hand, but it was too late. She had already pressed the last key, and she threw the little black box high in the air and away from her, From somewhere on the other side of the walls came a regular beep repeated at intervals of a sec
ond.

  “We have five minutes,” Luise said dreamily. “The last five minutes in my palace. Come along, Cousin. Let us pray together. This is the end of our family. The end of the line.”

  Steven stood rigidly beside her. Only seconds later did he seem to awake from a nightmare. “If you think I’m going to die with you, you’re much mistaken. You . . . you psycho!”

  He turned to the exit, but Luise’s cutting voice stopped him in his tracks.

  “You’re staying here.”

  Steven spun around and looked down the steel barrel of the Derringer.

  “What a disgrace,” Luise growled. “If you haven’t lived like one, then at least die like the descendant of a king.”

  “Never. You can go to hell on your own.”

  Without thinking, Steven flung himself at Luise, his arms spread wide. He heard a report, a bullet hissed past close to his cheek, and then he was on her. He pressed her body to the floor with his full weight and tried to seize Luise’s hand holding the Derringer.

  It’s like back then, he thought. All those years ago in the burning library. And our fight is only now coming to an end.

  But although she was slightly built, the industrialist was surprisingly strong. She rammed her knee into his groin, and Steven fell on his side, groaning. Then she aimed her gun straight at his face.

  “Die, you filthy bastard. You thief. You’re a traitor to the family. Now . . .”

  Steven seized hold of the Derringer and turned it aside. Luise tried to kick him again, but this time he was ready. He brought up his knee and used the short moment of uncertainty to bite Luise’s wrist as hard as he could. She screamed and dropped the gun. The next moment Steven was holding the pistol. Still lying on his back, he aimed it at his cousin.

  Luise Manstein stood over him, her makeup smeared, her short gray hair standing out on all sides around her head. She looked like a defiant ten-year-old throwing a tantrum. She raised her painted fingernails like claws, and naked madness gleamed in her eyes.

  “How . . . how dare you bite My Majesty?” she screeched. “You useless little lackey, you filthy bastard . . .”

  Steven pulled the trigger.

  Luise stood there for a moment as if turned to stone, and only then did she realize that the bullet had missed her. She broke into deranged laughter.

  “You’re a coward and a failure, Steven,” she said. “You may have Ludwig’s blood in you, but your branch of the family will wither, and no one will ever speak your name again. You . . .”

  Luise fell silent as an extraordinary creaking and squealing sound was heard from somewhere.

  The explosives! thought Steven. They’re going off!

  But then he looked up and saw that the chandelier had moved much closer. One of its chains had broken.

  I hit the chandelier!

  Steven rolled to one side and, out of the corner of his eye, saw his cousin staring upward in horror. One more creak, and then the chandelier with all its weight came down on Luise like a shooting star.

  The chandelier made the mosaic floor vibrate as it smashed down on the floor. Stone dust rose; pieces of iron and splinters of glass flew through the air. Briefly, Steven saw a hand with a ring on it still twitching under the heap of rubble, and then he turned away and ran along the corridor to the elevator. The beeping around him was getting louder and louder.

  Out of here! The explosion could come any moment!

  At last Steven reached the elevator at the end of the corridor. He frantically pressed the button, and only then saw the keypad right beside the door.

  Damn it, the code!

  Steven desperately tried to remember what numbers Luise had tapped in on their way down, but it was no good. He simply had no idea. He closed his eyes and wondered what combination Luise might have used. It had been eight numbers; he did remember that. Luise’s own birthday? Steven remembered the date of the birthday party at Linderhof three days ago, and he tried the sequence 20102010, but the doors stayed closed. Maybe Ludwig’s birthday? When was that? It had been in the diary, right at the start—Marot, Dürckheim, and the others had celebrated Ludwig’s birthday up on the Schachen. Steven concentrated, and then he tried those eight numbers.

  25081845.

  Nothing happened. There was only the regular beeping, crescendo now.

  Steven cursed and hit the keypad. What else was there? If not the king’s birthday, then perhaps . . .

  What had Luise said as they entered the elevator?

  Welcome to Hades . . .

  Steven knew this was his only chance. He thought of Marot’s diary and tapped in the date of the Fairy-tale King’s death.

  13061886

  Without a sound, the doors slid open.

  Steven let out a cry of joy, ran into the elevator, and pressed the button for Up. Rumbling, the elevator began to move, and spat him out only seconds later in the little museum, where the glass display case still stood beside the opening. Breathlessly, he ran down the steps and out into the open air. He stumbled, rolled down a slope, and turned over several times before he finally came to a halt in a thorny juniper bush. The thorns dug into his skin, but this was no time for crying out.

  At that moment, well over three hundred feet above him, the hotel blew up.

  The blast was so strong that the shock wave blew into his face, hot and dry like a desert wind. A fireball rose above the site of the hotel, and blazing pieces of wood, splinters of stone, and ashes flew up as far as the tallest treetops. Smaller explosions shook the ground three more times, to be succeeded by an almost unearthly silence. Only the crackling of the fire could still be heard, and sirens wailing on the road in the valley.

  Steven stared at the fire, just as he had stared at his parents’ burning house when he was seven. He had a feeling that something inside him had clicked back into its right place.

  It’s all over.

  Only later did he hear a great many people shouting. He breathed in smoke and saw the monotonous blinking of a blue light reflected in a puddle. Crawling out of the juniper bush, Steven staggered up the steep slope until he had reached the hotel forecourt. Firefighters in gas masks ran around with hosepipes; farther away the gray-clad men of the Special Unit Force carried the two injured bodyguards, Tristan and Galahad, to a police car. Steven was about to go up to the officer and identify himself, when he saw, among the rocks farther away, a small, delicate form.

  Sara had thrown a woolen blanket around her shoulders as protection from the rain and the wind. Her mascara was smeared; she had a bandage around her forehead; her green dress was hanging off her, dirty and torn.

  And she was smoking.

  45

  “MY GOD, SARA. YOU’RE ALIVE!”

  Steven hurried across the forecourt, which teemed with firefighters and paramedics, and took Sara in his arms. The smell of her glowing menthol cigarette suddenly seemed like an exotically fragrant perfume. He held Sara so tightly that he could feel the beating of her heart.

  “Squeeze me a little harder and you’ll finish me off,” she groaned, throwing her cigarette away. “That crazy knight on steroids had nothing on you.”

  “I . . . I’m sorry.” He let her go and looked intently into her eyes. “It’s just that . . . I never expected to see you in this world again.”

  “I didn’t expect to see you either.”

  Steven laughed out loud with relief. “I must say I’ve missed you. Even if I still don’t know why I’m going around with you.”

  “Luise Manstein was right,” Sara said. “My father is a career art thief, serving time in prison at the moment, and as a teenager, I really did stand guard for him a couple of times when he was breaking in somewhere. But that had nothing to do with us.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me about it before?”

  Sara smiled wearily. “Maybe because you had quite enough childhood history for both of us? As for the bit about my alleged uncle . . .”

  “Perhaps I can help you there,” said a deep voice
with a pleasant Bavarian note to it. “I believe we owe you an explanation, Herr Lukas.”

  Turning around, Steven saw a tall, elderly man standing among the firefighters. He wore a brown hunter’s coat and a large felt hat that hid much of his face. However, he took the hat off to Sara and Steven, and offered the bookseller his hand. He had a full beard and a mustache with twirled ends, an aura commanding respect, and two watchful eyes with which he scrutinized Steven in a friendly manner. Somehow he looked familiar.

  “Who are you?” Steven asked while his hand was almost squashed in the other man’s large paw. “A senior police officer?”

  The man smiled. “By no means. Although Frau Lengfeld’s phone call to us did bring the police on the scene particularly promptly. We have a certain . . . well, amount of influence.”

  “He’s my client,” Sara said. “After my little fracas with Lancelot on the bridge, I phoned him at once. I ought to have done it much sooner.”

  Once again Steven had an odd sense of having seen the man somewhere once before. On TV, perhaps, or in the magazines that were always lying around at the barber’s. Yes, that was it; there had been an article in one of them about a certain brewery that didn’t have permission to sell its product at this year’s Oktoberfest, although it brewed the beer favored by the Wittelsbachs.

  Wittelsbachs?

  Steven was speechless for a moment. He cautiously cleared his throat.

  “You are . . .”

  The man made a dismissive gesture. “No names. I’m not really here at all. If the press gets wind of it, there’ll be exactly the trouble we wanted to avoid.” His eyes twinkled at Steven. “Or do you want to have the police after you for murder again?”

  “They aren’t after me anymore?”

  The man without a name glanced at the burning hotel. “Well, let’s say I managed to convince the investigators of the case that they were following a false trail. The gentlemen here have enough to do, keeping a deranged industrialist who thinks herself one of our family a secret from the press. Obviously the board of Manstein Systems knew about Luise Manstein’s unusual hobby, if not about its extreme degree.” He watched with interest as the firefighters tried to stifle the conflagration with foam and fire extinguishers. Flames still licked up from the ruins of the hotel.