and rides it to the ground. Dangerous, I'm told. Rather like your American rodeos.'
'What about the twin sister who hanged him?' Jim demanded.
Dimitri opened a file. ''She' is a transvestite, Arn West, born Arnold Atkins at Newcastle upon Tyne. A topflight ultra-expensive assassin specializing in sexual techniques and poisons. His consultation fee to listen to a proposition is a hundred thousand dollars, nonrefundable. Known as the Popper, the Blue Octopus, the Siren Cloak.
'And now, would you gentlemen care to join me for dinner? I would like to hear from you, Mr. Snide, the complete story and a version edited for the so limited police mentality.'
Dimitri's house was near the American embassy. It was not the sort of house you would expect a police official on a modest salary to own. It took up almost half a block. The grounds were surrounded by high walls, with six feet of barbed wire on top. The door looked like a bank vault.
Dimitri led the way down a hall with red-tiled floor into a book-lined room. French doors opened onto a patio about seventy feet long and forty feet wide. I could see a pool, trees and flowers. Jim and I sat down and Dimitri mixed drinks. I glanced at the books: magic, demonology, a number of medical books, a shelf of Egyptology and books on the Mayans and Aztecs.
I told Dimitri what I knew and what I suspected. It took about half an hour. After I had finished, he sat for some time in silence, looking down into his drink.
'Well, Mr. Snide,' he said at last. 'It would seem that your case is closed. The killers are dead.'
'But they were only—'
'Exactly: Servants. Dupes. Hired killers, paid off with a special form of death. You will recognize the rite as the Egyptian sunset rite dedicated to Set. A sacrifice involving both sex and death is the most potent projection of magical intention. The participants did not know that one of the intentions they were projecting was their own death in a plane crash.'
'Any evidence of sabotage?'
'No. But there was not much left of the plane. The crash occurred outside Zagreb. Pilot was off course and flying low. It looks like pilot error. There are, of course, techniques for producing such errors.... You are still intending to continue on this case? To find the higher-ups? And why exactly?'
'Look, Colonel, this didn't start with the Green case. These people are old enemies.'
'Do not be in a hurry to dispose of old enemies. What would you do without them? Look at it this way: You are retained to find a killer. You turn up a hired assassin. You are not satisfied. You want to find the man who hired him. You find another servant. You are not satisfied. You find another servant, and another, right up to Mr. or Mrs. Big—who turns out to be yet another servant ... a servant of forces and powers you cannot reach. Where do you stop? Where do you draw the line?'
He had a point.
He went on: 'Let us consider what has happened here. A boy has been hanged for ritual and magical purposes. Is this so startling? ... You have read
I nodded.
'Well, a modest consumption of one nude hanging a year during the spring festivals ... such festivals, within reason, could serve as a safety valve.... After all, worse things happen every day. Certainly this is a minor matter compared with Hiroshima, Vietnam, mass pollution, droughts, famines ... you have to take a broad general view of things.'
'It might not be within reason at all. It might become pandemic.'
'Yes ... the Aztecs got rather out of hand. But you are referring to your virus theory. Shall we call it 'Virus B-23'? The 'Hanging Fever'? And you are extrapolating from two cases which may not be connected. Peter Winkler may have died from something altogether different. I know you do not want to entertain such a possibility, but suppose that such an
