The Ludwig Conspiracy(118)

Sara showed him her middle finger, took a piece of chewing gum out of her mouth, and stuck it over the lens. The monitor went black.

What the hell . . .

A moment later, the other screen showing the bedroom went blank as well. Snarling, Lancelot stood up from the leather sofa and took the safety catch off his well-oiled Glock 17. He had been having fun long enough.

Now it was time to tidy up.





SARA STUCK THE last remnant of her chewing gum on the second microphone and turned furiously to her two companions.

“I don’t know what’s going on here,” she whispered. “But someone seems to be watching us. And probably listening to everything as well.”

“One of the security guards, maybe?” Zöller suggested. “Or the head of Manstein Systems herself? It could be that Frau Manstein is just checking the system and having a little joke at our expense. She did say she was going to the control room.”

“In that case she’s not going to be very happy that you’ve stuck gum all over her expensive cameras and microphones,” Steven said. “Although that’s exactly what Peggy from Texas would do, with her adolescent sense of humor.”

“Very funny.” Sara rolled her eyes nervously. “Come on, admit that you’re terrified. And still no one has said that . . .” Suddenly she stopped dead.

“What is it?” Steven asked.

“The picture,” she said slowly, pointing to the mural showing the woman in white. “In your excitement just now, you touched that picture.”

“So?”

“Frau Manstein said she’d switched the alarm system on. But no alarm went off, even though you tapped the painting several times. So someone switched the system off again.” She looked cautiously out at the corridor leading to the artificial grotto. “Someone who doesn’t want to be disturbed in his work.”

“Sara, please don’t turn paranoid,” Steven replied skeptically. “This unknown Someone would have had to get into the castle to switch off the system. You saw for yourself how complicated that is. Numerical code, fingerprint, facial recognition—who’d be able to get past all that?”

“I don’t know,” Sara said, looking around the room. “But someone has to clean this place. There are tour guides, watchmen . . .” She suddenly fell silent and bent down. Steven blinked and tried to get a clearer view.

Beside the tiled stove with the two figures of Tristan and Isolde, there was a small electronic distributor box at knee level, as black as the cameras. An adhesive label on it showed the logo of a company and some writing. Sara cried out in surprise.

Now Steven knelt down as well to get a better look at the label.

“Camelot Security,” he read aloud.

But it was not the words that drained the color from his face; it was the logo underneath them.

It showed a golden swan with outspread wings. Below it, there was another inscription in tiny, old-fashioned script, forming part of the logo.

Tmeicos Ettal.

It took Steven some time to remember where he had seen that logo and the inscription before. The realization struck him like a blow in the pit of the stomach. It was the same as on the amulet worn by the dead Bernd Reiser, the man in the cellar of his antiquarian bookshop in Munich. Steven felt his heart beating faster as everything suddenly fitted together. Was this possible?

Camelot Security . . . It’s a case of combining the old and the new.

The bookseller groaned under his breath. He didn’t want to believe it, but the longer he thought, the clearer it all became. It made no sense, but nonetheless it was logical. Even before he could follow his train of thought all the way to its terrible end, a sound startled him.

“Time to go,” Lancelot said, suddenly appearing in the bedroom doorway. His good eye sparkled mockingly as he sketched a small bow.

“Allow me to escort you,” he growled in his deep, bass voice. “The Royal Highness awaits to grant you an audience.”





31





THE KING RECEIVED them in the throne room, sitting ramrod straight on a plain wooden chair without arms or a back, a mere stool, placed exactly on the raised part of the apse where Ludwig’s throne had once been destined to stand.

To the left and right of this improvised throne the paladins Gawain and Mordred stood guard, holding their automatic Uzis in front of them, like lances adorned with pennants. To hold audience, the king wore the royal cloak of white ermine from which the professor’s blood had been removed by chemical cleaning. A thin aristocratic hand tightly gripped the same Derringer the king had used to spray Paul Liebermann’s brain matter over the forest floor. In honor of the day, the king wore a little mascara and some discreet lipstick. The makeup harmonized perfectly with the king’s short gray hair, and equally gray pantsuit.