The Ludwig Conspiracy (34 page)

“I mean the book isn’t in that box, you idiot. The bookseller hid it somewhere. Unfortunately, you’ve knocked him unconscious, and I have no idea where it is. You’d better think something up quick if you don’t want to piss off your boss.”

“If you’re trying to fool me . . .” The giant bent over the container and picked it up. Curious, he opened the little box.

At that moment Steven jumped up and ran to the purse. The seconds stretched endlessly. He grabbed the green purse, unzipped it, and brought out the pistol. Shaking, he aimed it at the giant, who had frozen where he stood, and pulled the trigger.

Nothing happened.

“Ah, you always have to take the safety off a gun first,” the giant said, smiling and pointing to a small lever on the butt of his own pistol. “
My
gun’s safety is already off, by the way.” At his leisure, he aimed the pistol at Steven’s legs. “The boss did say to take you alive,” he growled. “Never specified in what condition, though. Watch out, this is going to be very, very painful.”

Steven closed his eyes and waited for the shot.

It didn’t come.

When he opened his eyes again, he saw that the giant was staring at the door on his left in confusion. In the now-clearing smoke, a broad-shouldered figure stood in a voluminous royal cloak, one hand raised in admonition or greeting, his black-haired head angrily thrust forward.

It was Ludwig II.

Steven’s mouth hung open in astonishment. No doubt about it, the man in the vapors was the Fairy-tale King. Incredulous, Steven closed his eyes and then opened them again. But the king was still there.

Am I losing my mind? Is there something in that smoke that sets off hallucinations?

The giant seemed baffled at first, too. He seemed unable to assess the situation. Slowly, he lowered his gun.

“But, Your Majesty . . .” he stammered. “You’re here? I thought . . .”

“Stay your hand, unworthy man,” said a deep, resonant voice, “before my anger strikes you like a flash of lightning from a clear blue sky!”

When Steven heard the voice, he started in surprise. Only now did it occur to him that, even for Ludwig II, the figure was decidedly fat. The smoke was still drifting quite densely over the floor, but the bookseller could see beige front-pleated pants under the royal mantle, and a pair of casual shoes splashed with mud.

Furthermore, this Ludwig wore glasses.

Steven looked at Sara, who had also been staring at the figure in the mist. At the same moment, she seemed to realize, as he did, who the king really was. It took the giant a moment longer.

That was his mistake.

Steven flicked off the safety, aimed into the smoke, and pulled the trigger. After the “pop” of the silencer on the giant’s gun, the sound of the shot that followed was deafening. In spite of the small size of the weapon, the recoil was so violent that the bookseller almost dropped the pistol. For a moment Steven thought he had missed, but then the giant dropped his own pistol and staggered several paces back until the smoke finally swallowed him up. To be on the safe side, Steven fired a few more shots, and then he ran over to Sara.

“Is everything okay?” he cried, reaching for the little treasure chest.

She nodded. Together, they went over to the doorway where the fat king still stood.

“I stole the coronation cloak from one of the broken glass cases,” Albert Zöller panted. “His Majesty will never forgive me, but I had to distract that lunatic’s attention somehow, before he shot you both. Who was he, anyway? Just as I was going over to join you in the museum, the lights went out, there was a crashing and a clanking, and two men came toward me, screaming.”

“We’ll tell you all about it later,” Steven said, ushering the group at a run to the museum exit. At last they reached the castle entrance, where the door was wide open. Outside, rain poured down in torrents, the night was starless, and only occasional flashes of bright lightning passed over the sky. Not until they had reached the fountains did the three fugitives stop to catch their breath.

“Where . . . where do we go now?” Sara asked, turning and looking around her. In spite of the cool fall air, sweat ran down her face, joining the rain to form small streams. “Over to the monastery? At least there’ll be a few people there.”

“I don’t think that’s a great idea.” Zöller frowned. “The security staff will probably have us up against the wall for lèse
majesté
.
I did switch the alarm system off, but when they see all this, they’ll put two and two together. There are some fanatical Ludwig fans among the night watchmen. I doubt that they’d settle for just banning us from Herrenchiemsee for life.” Uncle Lu searched his pants pocket and brought out a scratched cell phone. “I tell you what we’ll do. I’ll call Alois at the Prien fisheries and tell him to pick us up down at the chapel. And then I’ll give myself until morning to work out how we can extricate ourselves from this mess.”

“One way or another we’d better hurry,” Sara said suddenly. “Looks like there’s no way to kill that knight.”

Steven glanced back at the castle, where a figure in a leather coat was staggering through the exit. The man was clutching his right leg, but otherwise he seemed to be uninjured. Pistol in hand, he looked searchingly into the rain-lashed night.

“He’s alive and kicking, Steven, damn it!” Sara cursed. “Where the hell did you learn to shoot? At the Oktoberfest carnival?”

“I wish I had. To tell you the truth, I’d never held a gun in my life before.”

“Get out of here . . . He’s seen us.” Puffing and panting, Albert Zöller ran over to the small tool-filled truck that the gardeners had parked there. The giant seemed to have spotted them. He limped toward them, his gun raised.

“What’s the plan?” Sara called to Uncle Lu, who was now sitting, legs apart, in the driver’s seat of the truck. “Are you planning to hotwire the truck? We don’t have time for that.”

“Didn’t I tell you the head of the security staff gave me all the keys to Herrenchiemsee?” Zöller produced the large, rusty bunch of keys from his pocket. “As far as I remember, there’s a single key for all the minitrucks on this island,” he muttered. “The only question is, which is it . . .” Slowly, he tried to put one of the many keys into the ignition. “No, not this one.”

“Damn it, hurry!” Sara screamed. She and Steven had clambered up on the bed of the truck. “That lunatic will be in firing range any second.”

Sure enough, Steven heard a hiss, and soon after that, stone dust sprayed up from the rim of the basin of the fountain.

“Let’s try this one,” Uncle Lu muttered. “This could be it. Oh no, not this one either.”

Another bullet struck one of the statues in the Fountain of Fortuna. In spite of his injury, the giant was astonishingly fast. He had now covered almost half the distance between them, and Steven could see his face distorted by hatred. He was dragging one leg, and seemed to be in great pain. Now the man stood still again and aimed at the truck. Steven instinctively knew that he wasn’t going to miss this time.

There was a rattle, and the rusty truck leaped forward. With a tinny sound, three more bullets riddled the load surface.

“There we go!” Zöller cried in relief. “As usual, the last key. Now, where’s first gear on this?”

At last the little truck began to move, rattling. It reached a speed of 18 m.p.h., and soon they had left the castle forecourt behind. The figure of the giant grew smaller and smaller. Steven thought he heard one more faint hiss pass above him, and then the woods swallowed them up.

“He’ll follow the tire tracks,” Sara said, staring into the darkness behind them. Small twigs whipped her face, but she didn’t seem to notice them. “He’s not going to give up so easily. Not him.”

“I don’t think he’ll be able to get far with that wound,” said Steven, shrugging his shoulders. “The way he’s limping, I did at least hit his lower leg.”

Sara grinned. “Not bad for five shots fired at point-blank range. Wyatt Earp would have been proud of you.”

“I’d settle for you being proud of me,” Steven said, drawing her close. The little treasure chest, wet from the rain, lay safely on his lap. In spite of Sara’s body heat, he was shivering slightly, and not because of the wind and storm. The dark dreams had disappeared, but Steven knew they could come back at any time.

In front of them Uncle Lu, in the king’s voluminous cloak, was squawking into his cell phone. Alois, the fisherman, didn’t seem to be especially amused by his old friend’s nocturnal call, but Zöller had some persuasive arguments. Finally the old man put his cell phone away and grinned at his two passengers.

“I’ve promised Alois the king’s cloak,” he said, turning to them in the back of the truck. “And I’ll probably have to back his chloroform theory at the next meeting. Ah well, it isn’t really such a crazy theory.”

“No crazier than a diary, a dead Cowled Man, and a contract killer in a castle museum,” Sara replied.

A few minutes later they finally reached the little harbor near the chapel. Alois, the fisherman, was waiting for them, with his outboard engine chugging. The stormy wind whistled over the Chiemsee, and the boat was bobbing up and down on the waves like a wet paper ship, but that didn’t seem to bother Alois. The promise of the cloak had improved his temper considerably.

“Lord almighty!” the old fisherman said. “I took you for the king himself. What the devil were you doing over there, Lu?”

“I’ll tell you back at your hut over a beer,” Zöller said. “Now, let’s go, damn it. Otherwise we’ll both be lying dead in the water like Ludwig and Gudden.”

L
ANCELOT STOOD ON
the bank, watching the bobbing boat as it grew smaller and smaller across the heavy swell of the lake. The wound on his left leg hurt like hell, but the giant was sure it was only a graze. A fresh dressing, some disinfectant, and the hunt could go on. That was the good news.

The bad news was that they had escaped him again.

Cursing, Lancelot kicked a rotting wooden post into the water. The king would go berserk. As so often, there would be threats to flay Lancelot alive, or to have him deported to Papua New Guinea.

Lancelot breathed in the fresh air of the lake deeply.

At least he had one card to play. He knew the second keyword—and he knew where the trio was going next.

Neuschwanstein.

All was not yet lost. Lancelot would get back on the trail. But this time he would take Tristan and Gawain with him, maybe Galahad and Mordred as well. He’d take a whole damn army if need be.

Next time they wouldn’t get away.

Once again he stared at the boat slowly moving away over the Chiemsee, which lay before him, an infinitely black, surging surface, its waves crowned by white foam. Then he limped back into the woods.

When his cell phone rang a little later, it took Lancelot some time to fish it out of his blood-soaked pants pocket. It was the king. In a hasty whisper, Lancelot explained what had happened in the castle. Then he said no more for quite a long time as he listened in silence.

The Royal Majesty was not angry. The Royal Majesty had a plan.

T
HE BED IN THE OLD
boathouse creaked and squealed if Steven moved so much as a centimeter. It was so narrow that he was in constant danger of either falling out or forcing Sara over the side of the bed. It also stank of old fish.

He stared at the rotting ceiling and tried to find some peace and calm, in spite of the rain pattering down and the events of the last few hours. Alois, the fisherman, had given them the key to his old boathouse down in Prien harbor. After they had hidden the Mini in a nearby garage and told Uncle Lu about their experiences in the museum, the old man had disappeared with Alois into a bar somewhere to give him a slightly doctored account of the last few hours. Meanwhile, Sara and Steven had crept into the crooked boathouse, hoping that the killer wouldn’t find them there. But whenever the shutter over the window rattled, Steven imagined he saw the one-eyed giant suddenly appearing in the hut.

Far worse, however, were the memories that overwhelmed him like flashes of lightning.

Steven kept seeing his parents’ burning villa before him, heard the crackling of the flames and his mother’s shrill scream from the library. When he closed his eyes, there was a furious girl with long blond braids, trying to scratch his eyes out. But whenever the picture was about to become clearer, it dissipated. There was nothing beyond it but endless black.

Damn you, dreams. Why have you come back?

“Can’t you get to sleep either?” Steven asked, after he had been tossing and turning for what felt like an eternity.

The art detective sat bolt upright in bed. “Thanks for asking,” she snapped. “Even ignoring the lice in this place, a deranged giant in a gas mask tried to murder me tonight. And when I close my eyes, I see the leader of the Cowled Men wallowing in his own blood. So, no, I can’t get to sleep either.”

Steven switched on the rusty lamp beside the bed and turned to Sara. Her hair was tousled and still damp after their flight from the island. It had small leaves in it. He looked at her in silence for quite a long time.

“We still don’t know who that colossus is,” he said at last, lost in thought as he stroked Sara’s hair. “No friend of the Cowled Men, anyway, that much is clear now. I wonder if he was following us from Uncle Lu’s house in that green Bentley?”

A particularly violent gust of wind rattled the shutter, and the rain slapped against the wood like a wet cloth. Sara gave a nervous start. She reached for her crumpled pack of cigarettes beside the bed and lit herself a partly smoked one. “No idea. Maybe, or maybe it was some third party we don’t even know about. Or friends of Albert Zöller keeping us under observation.”

“Do you still think he has something to do with your uncle’s murder?” Steven shook his head. “Forget it—he saved our lives just now, putting on that Ludwig act. We ought to be grateful.”

“All the same.” Sara drew deeply on her cigarette. “There’s something wrong. Uncle Paul knew Zöller. So why didn’t he turn to him for advice if Uncle Lu knows so much about the king? Instead, my uncle went straight to the Cowled Men.”