The Ludwig Conspiracy(57)

The next moment the giant was upon her.

Sara fell to the ground, buried under the colossus. She breathed in the pungent smell of his leather coat and tried to escape from under the man. But it was as if a rock were lying on top of her. Something hard pressed against her thigh.

My God, he’s going to rape me! Here I am at a glittering millionaires’ party with the interior minister of Bavaria, and this guy wants to rape me. I don’t believe it.

She tried to scream, but the giant pressed his hairy hand down on her mouth.

“Where’s the book?” she heard him growl. His voice was surprisingly melodious; Sara was reminded of a sonorous radio announcer. “The book, you slut! You know what I’m talking about.”

Sara froze. She was finding it difficult to swallow. This wasn’t a rape; it was an attack! Although she doubted whether that improved her situation much. Probably the opposite.

“I . . . I don’t know what you’re talking about at all,” she gasped. “I don’t know anything about any . . .”

The man hit her hard in the face. She felt warm blood running over her lips. Sara whimpered and was instantly ashamed of herself.

“All right, all right, I’ll tell you!” The words came out of her mouth like a croak. “The secondhand bookseller has it. He’s over there at the old hermitage!” It was a feeble evasion, but the man swallowed it. All the same, he hit her again in the pit of the stomach, so hard that she almost vomited.

“What are you two doing here?” he growled. “What’s in that book to make you go poking around this place? What’s hidden here?”

“I . . . I swear I don’t know. There was an indication, but . . . but we’ve been looking for it since yesterday and we’ve found nothing. If anything was hidden, it must be somewhere else.”

“If you’re lying to me, I’ll break every bone in your body. Understand? Every single bone!”

Sara nodded, and she felt tears and blood running down her cheeks. She remembered that the late Bernd Reiser’s pistol was in her case back at the hotel. Stupidly, she had decided not to take it to the party with her—a mistake that she now regretted with all her heart.

“And now we’re just dropping off to sleep,” growled the bear, and now his voice sounded quite gentle again. “Shut your eyes and breathe deep. Here comes the sandman.”

A white handkerchief with a slightly sweet smell appeared in front of Sara’s face. She felt her senses failing her; all at once the world around her was like a wall of white rubber.

Chloroform! It’s chloroform!

Sara reared up. At the last moment, she managed to turn her head aside. She dug her hands into the gravel and tried to crawl away, but the giant’s hands took her in their viselike grasp and hauled her inexorably back. Her fingers scraped over the gravel like the tines of a rake; one by one, Sara’s green-painted nails broke.

Suddenly she felt a hard, smooth object between her fingers. It took her several precious seconds to work out that it was one of her high-heeled shoes. She had dropped it when the man attacked.

Without a second thought, she took firm hold of the shoe and hit out behind her at random. She felt the sharp heel, which was only about the diameter of a penny, meet resistance and finally go through something soft.

There was a slippery sound, and then a hollow scream.

The hands let go of her, and Sara scrabbled out from under the giant like a lame beetle. When she frantically looked around, she saw the man with his hands to his face, writhing in pain. Blood flowed out between his fingers; he was groaning. Finally he turned and looked at her.

Sara uttered a low scream.

For the first time, she could see his face. It was as if a childhood nightmare had come into the park to take her away. Before her, in the darkness of the leafy path, she saw the grotesque face of a wicked medieval knight. The stranger had a small, neatly trimmed beard, a scar on his right cheek, and long black hair plaited into a braid. His left eye flashed with hatred.

His right eye was a black hole.

My God, I’ve put out his eye with the heel of my shoe.

“You bitch! I’ll send you to hell for this!”

The giant straightened up, bellowing. With his one eye, he looked like an angry Cyclops. Sara didn’t stop to think but plunged into the foliage at the side of the leafy path. Twigs and leaves brushed her face; she felt for a moment as if long, sticky arms were trying to hold her back, and then, finally, she was out on the other side.

Sara staggered into the sheltering darkness of the park, while she could still hear the cyclops roaring behind her. She almost thought she could sense the eyes of the shining white statues on her back, all those marble nymphs, dryads, and gods watching over Linderhof like guardian spirits.