'Is there a moral to this story?'
'Pick your battles.'
Kilmara gestured Fitzduane to a seat at the big kitchen table and then strode across to the cast-iron range. He poked the cooker into life and stood for a moment enjoying the waves of heat coming from the stove. He donned an apron over his combat fatigues and hummed as he cooked.
Fitzduane dozed a little. It was nearly dawn. Images flickered through his mind. He awoke with a start when Kilmara put a plate of food in front of him.
'Bacon, eggs, sausages, tomatoes, mushrooms, black pudding, white pudding, and fried bread,' he said. 'You won't see the likes of this in Switzerland.' He poured them both coffee from an enamel pot that looked as if it had been around since MacDatho's time.
Fitzduane picked up his mug of coffee. 'That book of mine you found in the terrorists' car-'
'Uh-huh,' said Kilmara.
'You thought it had to do with me?'
'It's a possibility,' said Kilmara. 'Maybe on one of your foreign forays you photographed some local supremo from his bad side or something, and our friends were sent to teach you a permanent lesson. They didn't seem to be slap-on-the-wrist types. Well, who knows? I'll worry about the reasons after I've had some sleep.'
'I've got another idea,' said Fitzduane. 'Since you took this job, no photographs of you have been published. Right?'
'Right.'
'So two things,' said Fitzduane. 'First, our terrorist friends were killed no more than ten miles from this house while heading in this direction. Second, my book contains a large photo of you at that reunion in Brussels. It's probably the most up-to-date picture of you that's freely available.'
'You're suggesting that I could have been the target?' Kilmara had a forkful of bacon and black pudding and fried bread poised for demolition.
'You're sharp this morning,' said Fitzduane.
Kilmara munched away. 'Ho and hum,' he said. 'You really should leave such suggestions until after breakfast.'
The first shading of dawn appeared through the windows. Outside, a cock began to crow.
Book Two
The Hunting
'The distance is nothing; it is only the first step that is difficult.'
– Marquise du Deffand,
Concerning the legend that St. Denis, carrying his head in his hands, walked two leagues.
'Crime in Switzerland is rare… And the law is clear. The traffic directions, for example, are clear enough for a blind man to read, but, as a precaution, I have heard, though I cannot consider my source reliable, they are considering writing them in Braille.'
– Vincent Carter, The Bern Book, 1973
9
A large harp, comfortably secured by its safety belt, occupied the front first-class passenger seat of the plane to Zurich. Fitzduane was curious. Eventually he asked, and was not reassured by the answer. The harp, he was informed, belonged to the pilot.
Fitzduane raised an eyebrow, then fell asleep. He hoped he would wake up. Thirty-three thousand feet up was more of a head start toward heaven than he really cared for, even without a pilot who seemed more prepared for the afterlife than made for good airline public relations. Fitzduane flew a great deal and did not like it much. In the Congo he had been shot down. In Vietnam he had been shot down. In a series of other wars he had gotten used to the idea that everybody shot at aircraft; whose side they were on seemed to have nothing to do with it.
He awoke when the BAC 111 was over the Bristol Channel, and looked out the window. The wing was still there, which made him feel better, and there were no fresh holes. There was the crackle of a microphone, and an android voice announced that they were flying at five hundred miles an hour and that it was five degrees Celsius in Zurich. Fitzduane closed his eyes and slept again.
The man they soon were to call the Hangman stood naked in front of the mirror and stared at his reflection. His face and upper body were encrusted with drying blood. His chest and pubic hair were matted and sticky with it. He had fallen asleep after the sex and the killing that had accompanied their orgasms. The room smelled of blood and semen and sweat and, he liked to think, their victim's fear. The mutilated body still lay in the room, but neatly in one corner in a body-fluid-proof body bag.
The woman – she had done the actual killing this time – lay sprawled on the bed, fast asleep, exhausted after her endeavors. Her satiety, he knew, wouldn't last long.
The man smiled and stepped into the shower. He looked down at his body as the needles of pulsing water washed the last traces of the boy's life off the gridded porcelain floor and then down through the drain into the sewers of Bern. So much for beautiful Klaus.
The man – one of his many names was Kadar – dried himself and donned a light robe of silk. The activity and the sleep that had followed had done him good. He went into his study and lay back in his Charles Eames chair for his first session with Dr. Paul.
The solution had been so simple: Since he could not visit a psychiatrist without risk, he would do the job himself. He would tap into his own considerable resources. He would be his own expert. He would be able to speak absolutely frankly in a way that would otherwise be impossible. And, as always, he would be in control.
Since childhood Kadar had invented imaginary friends. The first had been Michael, who had been pale-skinned with sun-bleached golden hair. He looked the way Kadar wished to be but was not. Other creations followed.
As the years passed, Kadar refined the process of creating a new person to ritual. Always the process started with his lying back, his eyes closed and his body relaxed. He would focus his mind in a way he could not even describe to himself. It was something akin to fine-tuning his natural life-force. When he was ready to begin, he would see a wall of thin gray mist swirling gently. The mist would have a glow as if lit from within.
Slowly a shape would appear in the mist, its details obscure. Only one factor would be clear: the height of the figure. Kadar's creations, regardless of their eventual age or sex or external appearance, always started with height.
He often thought that this first stage was the hardest. It required such an infusion of energy. Sometimes he would lie there for hours, his body drenched in sweat, and the wall of mist would stay blank. Once the basic shape had appeared, the work would be easier and more pleasurable. He would mold and paint in the details as if in an artist's studio, but use his tightly focused mind instead of brushes or tools to achieve the result. He would adjust the height and then work on the general build. Features would become defined. He would work on the posture. Clothing would be added, then texture and color. Finally the creation would be complete but lifeless. Then, in his own time, he would breathe life into it – and it could talk and move if that was his wish.
Most of the men he created had pale skin and sun-bleached hair and were beautiful. Most of the women he created were more utilitarian, although there were exceptions.
Over time he had learned to modify his ritual to mold and change real people. There wasn't the same totality of control, but there was more challenge. There was a higher wastage factor, but that in itself yielded benefits.
It was in the process of killing that he reasserted control.
Fitzduane patted the harp on its little head, then left the plane. The flight had taken under two hours. It was
