was bloody freezing.
'I thought you were dead,' said Kilmara cheerfully, 'or dying at least – surrounded by nubile nurses in Tiefenau's intensive care unit.' He rubbed his chin and added as an afterthought, 'but I've prepared dinner anyway.' He led the way into the big kitchen. 'I've sent Adeline and the kids away for a while.'
'There was fuck all wrong with me,' said Fitzduane dryly, 'thought I guess I was a bit dazed by the pyrotechnics. It was the paramedic who put me out – determined to have his moment of glory.'
'Have a drink and relax,' said Kilmara, 'while I fiddle with pots and pans. You can tell me everything after you've eaten.' He handed Fitzduane a tumbler of whiskey. 'I assume you're staying the night. You'd better; you look terrible.'
'Swiss hospitality,' said Fitzduane. He slumped in a chair beside the fire. 'It feels weird being back, weird and depressing and anticlimactic – and damp and cold.'
'You're always going away to sunnier climates,' said Kilmara, 'but still you come back; you should know what to expect by now. What's so different this time?'
'I don't know,' said Fitzduane. 'Or perhaps I do.' He fell asleep. He often did in Kilmara's house.
It was five hours later.
The plates had been cleared. The dishwasher had been loaded. The perimeter alarms had been rechecked. The dogs had bee let loose to roam or shelter as they wished. Kilmara had received a brief report over a secure line from the Ranger duty officer. The day was nearly done.
Sheets of rain driven by an unseasonable gale-force wind lashed the darkness. Double glazing and heavy lined curtains muted the sound of the storm except for the occasional eerie shriek echoing down the chimney. They sat on either side of the study fire, coffee, drinks, and cigars at hand.
Fitzduane was still suffering from reaction to events in Bern. His fatigue was deep and lasting, and he felt only marginally refreshed after his sleep despite the fact that Kilmara, seeing his friend's torpor, had delayed eating until very late.
He could hear the sound of a clock chiming midnight. 'Hell of a time for a serious discussion,' he said.
Kilmara smiled. 'I'm sorry about that. I'm tight for time, and it's important I talk to you.'
'Fire away.'
'The Hangman,' began Kilmara. 'Let's start with his death.'
'The Hangman,' repeated Fitzduane thoughtfully. 'So many different names; but it's funny, you know, I'll always think of him as Simon Balac.'
'Different aliases and personas are still coming out of the woodwork,' said Kilmara. 'Whitney seems to have been another of them. Best guess is that that particular name was inspired by his late-lamented blond CIA boyfriend in Cuba. Still, it does look as if Lodge was his real name. The background fits, took or at least the psychiatrists seem to think so. You read the stuff that was prized out of the CIA?'
Fitzduane nodded. He remembered the clipped sentences describing Lodge's upbringing in Cuba: a brilliant, scared, lonely little boy maturing into a psychopath of genius. Fitzduane doubted that they had been supplied with the full story. The CIA didn't like to talk too much about Cuba.
'We'll call him the Hangman,' said Fitzduane. 'The press seems to have picked up on the name anyway. ‘Death of a Master Terrorist. Major success for joint Bernese / Bundeskriminalamt task force. The Hangman slain.’'
'The Bernese cops had to say something,' said Kilmara. 'they couldn't turn part of the city into a war zone and then burn down a complete block and say nothing. So tell me about it. I need to get a feel of the situation. The Hangman may be dead, but do his various enterprises live on? A friend of mine in the Mossad has suggested a few things that make me uneasy.'
'The Mossad?' said Fitzduane.
'You go first,' said Kilmara.
Fitzduane did.
'So you didn't actually see the Hangman killed?' said Kilmara.
'No,' said Fitzduane. 'Things happened very fast after Paulus shouted ‘Sempach!’ and shot Julius Lestoni. It was all over in a matter of seconds. The last I saw of Balac he was headed toward the end of the studio. I got off a couple of rounds, but I don't think I hit him. Then the assault group and the Bear's fucking tank took over. When I woke up in the Tiefenau, they told me the rest. The assault team had seen the Hangman through a door at the end of the studio. They blasted him with everything short of things nuclear, and then some kind of embedded thermite bombs went off and the whole place went up in flames. The entire block was sealed off, and when things were cool enough, they went in and dug through the wreckage. They found various bodies. The Hangman was identified by his dental records. Apparently he had tried to destroy them and had succeeded, but the dentist kept a duplicate set in his bank vault.
'Anyway, that, according to the powers that be, was the end of the Hangman. I stayed on a week to answer a whole lot of questions a whole lot of times and get drunk most nights with the Bear. And now here I am.'
'Why did Paulus von Beck shout, ‘ Sempach ’?' asked Kilmara, puzzled.
Fitzduane smiled. 'Love, honor, duty. We're all motivated by something.'
'I don't follow.'
'The von Becks are Bernese aristocracy,' said Fitzduane. 'Paulus felt that he had besmirched the family honor and that he was redeeming it by facing up to the Hangman. The Battle of Sempach took place when Napoleon's troops invaded Switzerland. The defending Bernese lost, but the consensus was that they had saved their honor. One of the heroes of the battles was a von Beck.'
Kilmara raised his eyebrows and then shook his head ruefully. He looked at his friend in silence for a short while before speaking. 'So what's troubling you? The Hangman's dead. Isn't it over?'
Fitzduane looked at Kilmara suspiciously. 'Why shouldn't it be over? The Chief Kripo says it's over. He even paid for my going-away party – and drove me to the airport. He thinks Bern is returning to normal. He'll have a seizure if I go back.'
Kilmara laughed, then he turned serious again. 'Hugo, I've known you for twenty years. You've got instincts I have learned to listen to – and good judgment. So what's bugging you?'
Fitzduane sighed. 'I'm not sure it's over, but I really can't tell you why, and I'm not sure I want to know. I'm so bloody tired. I had a bellyful of trouble in Bern. I just want to go home now, put my feet up, twiddle my thumbs, and figure out what to do with the rest of my life. I'm not going to photograph any more wars. I'm too old to get shot at and too young to die – and I don't need the money.'
'What about Etan?' said Kilmara. 'Does she come into the equation? You know she hauled me out to lunch a couple of times when you were away. I have the feeling I'm supposed to act as some sort of middleman. I wish you two would talk to each other directly. This habit of not communicating when you're away on an assignment is cuckoo.'
'There was a reason for it,' said Fitzduane. 'The idea was for both of us to keep a sense of perspective, not to let things get out of hand.'
'As I said,' said Kilmara, 'cuckoo. Here you are, crazy about each other, and you don't communicate for months. Even the Romans used to send stone tablets to each other, and now we have something called a telephone.' He shook his head and relit his pipe. 'But why do you think it may not be over?' he said. 'Are you suggesting the Hangman didn't die in that fire?'
Fitzduane took his time answering. 'The Hangman's whole pattern is one of deception,' he said eventually. 'And I would feel a whole lot happier if we had had a body to identify. Dental records can be switched. On the other hand I was there, and I don't see how he could have escaped. He certainly couldn't have lived through a fire of that intensity. So the guy must be dead, and I'm not going to spend my hard-earned rest in Connemara worrying about what might happen next. Almost anything might happen. My concern is with what probably will happen.'
'The evidence suggests that the Hangman is dead,' said Kilmara, 'but that is no guarantee his various little
