The Ludwig Conspiracy(6)
He cautiously climbed down the broad, slippery steps of the temple. A loose balloon, whirled up by the wind, flew past him and finally disappeared in the darkness. There was a smell of spilled beer and garbage. In this weather, there seemed to be no other pedestrians out and about on the broad space, covered as it was with puddles.
When Steven was about halfway across the Theresienwiese, he suddenly heard a sound behind him. It sounded like a soft, hoarse voice calling.
He spun around in alarm and saw three figures standing there, right under the statue of Bavaria. They wore dark capes and hoods that made them look like black-robed Ku Klux Klan members. All three hooded men held burning torches that flickered wildly in the wind. Steven closed his eyes and then opened them again, but the figures were still there.
Very odd. It’s not Halloween yet.
And the figures were obviously too large to be kids. They made Steven think more of trained thugs in monastic habits. Once again he felt the same strange fear that had come over him earlier, in the shop. He turned to look ahead and went hesitantly on. But after a few feet, he quickened his pace, and soon he was running. Behind him, he could hear footsteps in the pouring rain.
The men were following him.
Looking briefly behind him, Steven saw three red dots in the darkness, bouncing up and down, slowly but inexorably coming closer. Were these men really after him? Could it be because of that strange little treasure chest? Heart thudding, Steven ran on. He tasted the metallic tang of blood in his mouth.
He hurried across the deserted Theresienwiese. In the dark, it looked like a huge black lake threatening to swallow him up. To his right and left, alleyways opened up, leading to empty beer tents, and in front of them switchback tracks reared up like the bones of a dinosaur. The opposite side of the plaza, bordered by shining streetlamps, seemed endlessly far away; behind every one of the abandoned snack bars, in every niche, behind every caravan, Steven thought he saw a hooded figure scurrying by.
He stepped into a puddle, tripped over the raised edge of a manhole cover, and fell flat in cold, shallow water. The briefcase slipped from his hands. As he frantically groped for it, he could hear footsteps coming up behind him. They were distinctly closer now; he heard the sound of shoes slapping down on the wet asphalt. Where was the damn briefcase? Something crunched very close, as if someone had stepped on the pieces of a broken beer stein, and then there was a snort and a cough. Something deep inside Steven told him that he mustn’t lose the briefcase, not under any circumstances, even if he didn’t know why.
At last his hand felt familiar leather, caught between a couple of garbage bags left lying around. Steven seized the bag, got to his feet, gasping for breath, and ran on until, at last, he reached the safety of the light from the streetlamps. Still breathless, the bookseller stumbled past a few stunted linden trees, and then finally reached the Bavaria Ring on the other side of the Oktoberfest site.
When he turned around once more, the men and their torches had disappeared. Car horns were honking, a set of traffic lights changed to green, passersby pushed busily past him.
He was back in the bustling city.
Who or what in the world had that been?
Steven was trembling all over. Until now, he had always felt very safe in Germany’s most beautiful and expensive city. Finding that someone had intended to rob him in the city center itself, and indeed not just someone but several weird characters in monastic habits, suddenly made him see Munich with new eyes. All at once the narrow streets of the residential area where he lived, the flickering streetlamps, and the tall old buildings that had been spared by the war seemed to him strange and uncanny.
ANOTHER FIFTEEN MINUTES, and Steven was finally back at his apartment building in Ehrengutstrasse.
He leaned against the front door, briefly closed his eyes, and listened to the familiar sounds of his home—the distant ringing of trolley bells, the horns of cars, the laughter of the many people out drinking in the local bars. In the middle of the night or very early in the morning, before dawn, Steven sometimes heard the mooing of cattle and calves and the squealing of pigs on their last journey to the slaughterhouses from which the district took its name. Now and then there was even a smell of blood in the air. All the same, he couldn’t imagine living anywhere else in the city. Here in the Isarvorstadt area, with the old South Cemetery, the winding alleyways, and the magnificent bridges across the nearby river, Steven thought he could still sense the spirit of past centuries—a Munich that now existed only in a few corners of the city.
The kind of Munich that this man Theodor Marot would have known, he suddenly thought. Is what he wrote in that little book so valuable that I’m being followed already by whoever wants it?