The Ludwig Conspiracy(144)
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 Lancelot, 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.