The Ludwig Conspiracy(153)

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.”