Games of the Hangman (59 page)

"Quite
so," said von Graffenlaub dryly.
 
He
terminated the call, made the locksmith comfortable, and sat down to wait.
 
The elusive Erika might return first.
 
He took the unconscious locksmith's
pulse.
 
It was strong.
 
He, at least, would live to see the summer.

*
         
*
         
*
         
*
         
*

The Chief
Kripo had been playing devil's advocate for more than five hours, and he wasn't
scoring many points.
 
The project team's
approach was different in many ways from conventional police work, but to
someone not used to working in an integrated way with an expert system, it was
impressively comprehensive.
 
Once
instructed, the computer didn't forget things.
 
It was hard to find a facet the team hadn't covered or at least
considered.
 
But there were some
potential flaws.

"How do
you people deal with data that aren't already computerized?" he
asked.
 
"How do you handle good
old-fashioned typed or handwritten data?"

Faces turned
to Henssen.
 
He shrugged.
 
"It's a problem.
 
We can input some data by hand if only a few
hundred records or so are involved, and in Wiesbaden we have scanning equipment
that can covert typed records directly to computer format.
 
But for all that, if data aren't
computerized, we can only nibble at them."

"So how
much of the data isn't computerized?" asked the
Chief.

Henssen
brightened.
 
"Not a lot.
 
Orwell's 1984
wasn't
so far out."

"What
about
Babel
?"
said the
Chief.

Henssen looked
confused.
 
He looked at the Bear, who
shrugged.

"The
Tower
of
Babel
," explained the Chief.
 
"How do you cope with
records in different languages — English, French, German, Italian,
whatever?"

"Ah,"
said Henssen.
 
"Actually the
Babel
factor — as such —
is not as much of a problem as you'd think.
 
We do have computerized translation facilities that are over ninety
percent accurate.
 
On the other hand,
that ten percent error factor leaves room for some elegant confusion that can
be compounded by multiple meanings within any one language.
 
Consider the word
screw
for example.
 
That can
mean ‘to rotate,’ as in inserting a wood screw; it can mean ‘to cheat or
swindle,’ as in I was screwed on the deal’; it can mean the act of sex as
in..."
 
He went silent, embarrassed.

"Go
on," said Kersdorf irritably.
 
"We can perhaps work out some of the details ourselves."

"Well,"
continued Henssen, "fortunately most police information is held in a
structured way, and so is the majority of commercial data.
 
For example, an airline passenger list
doesn’t take much translation, nor do airline schedules, or subscription lists,
or lists of phone calls, and so on."

"Okay,"
said the Chief, "structured data are held on the computer version of what
we old-fashioned bureaucrats would call a form — so translate the headings and
the meaning of the contents is clear."

"Much
simplified, that's about it," said Henssen.
 
"And unstructured data, to give an
example, might be a statement by a witness consisting of several pages of
free-form text."

"And it's
with the unstructured data that you have most of the problems," said the
Chief.

"Precisely.
 
But
with some human involvement linked to our expert system there is nothing we
can't resolve."

"But it
takes time," said the Chief, "and that's my problem."

There was
silence in the room.
 
Henssen shrugged.

*
         
*
         
*
         
*
         
*

"I'm
surprised people don't use carbon monoxide more often," said Santine.
 
"It's a beautifully lethal
substance.
 
It works through inhalation.
 
It's not quite as exciting as some of the
nerve gases that can be absorbed through the skin.
 
Carbon monoxide is breathed in as normal, is
absorbed by the blood to form carboxyhemoglobin, and all of a sudden you
haven’t got enough oxygenated blood — oxyhemoglobin — and you're history.
 
There is no smell and no color, and a couple
of lungfuls will do you in.
 
Most city
dwellers have some carbon monoxide in the blood from exhaust fumes — say, one
to three percent — and smokers build up to around five percent.
 
These levels don't produce any noticeable
symptoms in the short term, but at around thirty percent you start to feel
drowsy, at fifty percent you're coordination goes, and by between sixty and
seventy percent, you're talking to Saint Peter."

"So if
you're a heavy smoker and someone used carbon monoxide on you, you'll die
faster," said Sylvie.

"Absolutely,"
said Santine, "especially if you’ve been smoking in a confined
space."

"Interesting,"
said Sylvie.
 
"But all it has to do
is buy us a little time if a casual visitor comes along, thought I doubt a
security check would be fooled."

Santine
grimaced.
 
"Come on, Sylvie, I'm not
an amateur.
 
Why do you think I suggested
monoxide?
 
The corpses will stand up to
cursory examination.
 
There will be no
blood.
 
Nothing's perfect, but with a
little sponge work, they won't look too bad — and it'll be dark.
 
You’ve got to remember that monoxide
poisoning is a kind of internal strangulation, so you get some of the same
symptoms.
 
The face gets suffused, you
get froth in the air passages, and the general effect isn't exactly
pretty."

"I take
it you brought along a sponge."

Santine puffed
out his chest.
 
He tapped the bulky black
attaché case in front of him.
 
"Madame, I am fully equipped."

Pompous prick,
thought Sylvie.
 
She looked at the sky
and then at her watch.
 
They'd do it in
about an hour, just after Sangster had checked in and when it was completely
dark.

*
         
*
         
*
         
*
         
*

The team from
Vaybon Security wore white coats and the blank expressions of people who are
paid well not to care about reasons.
 
One
of their board of directors opening his wife's apartment without her knowledge
or permission wasn't the most unusual assignment they'd had, and besides, Beat
von Graffenlaub's signature was on the check that had paid for the original
installation — even if he hadn't known exactly what he was buying.
 
But then, thought the technician in charge,
who knows what a wife is really up to?

"Can you
open it without leaving any sign?"

The senior
technician consulted the blueprint he was carrying and had a brief, whispered
conversation with his colleagues.
 
He
turned back to von Graffenlaub.
 
"There will be minute marks, Herr Direktor, but they would not be
noticed unless the door was being examined by an expert."

Equipment was
wheeled into the foyer outside the door.
 
Von Graffenlaub had the feeling the technicians were going to scrub up
before commencing.
 
"Will it take
long?"

"Fifteen
minutes, no longer," said the senior technician.

"You are
aware that the door is electrified," said von Graffenlaub.

The senior
technician shot him what started off as a pitying glance but changed in
mid-expression to obsequiousness when he remembered to whom he was
speaking.
 
"Thank you, Herr
Direktor," he said.

He withdrew a
sealed security envelope and opened it with scissors.
 
Von Graffenlaub noticed that the other
instruments were laid out on a tiered cart close at hand.
 
The senior technician removed a sheet of
heavy paper from the envelope, read it, and punched a ten-digit number into a
keyboard.
 
He hit the return key.
 
A junior technician checked the door with a
long-handled instrument.

"
Phase
one completed," said the senior technician.
 
From his bearing one could believe that he
had just successfully completed a series of complex open-heart procedures.
 
"The electrical power source attached to
the door can be deactivated by radio if the correct code is used.
 
Your wife provided us with such a code, which
was kept in this envelope in a safe until required.
 
The same system can also be used for the
lock, but in this case, unfortunately, she has not deposited the necessary
information.
 
We shall have to activate
the manufacturer's override.
 
That
requires drilling a minute hole in a specific location and connecting an
optical fiber link thought which a special code can be transmitted to override
the locking mechanism.
 
The optical fiber
link is used to avoid the possibility of the door's being opened by anyone
other than the manufacturer.
 
The
location of the link is different with each installation and—"

"Get on
with it," said von Graffenlaub impatiently.

Eleven minutes
later the door swung open.
 
He waited
until the Vaybon team had departed before he walked into the apartment and shut
the door behind him.
 
He found the
electrification controls and reactivated the system, following the instructions
given to him by the technician.
 
Reassured by the sophisticated perimeter security of electrification,
steel
 
door, and hermetically sealed
armor-plated windows — installed originally with the excuse that the
construction of Erika's little apartment was an ideal opportunity to put in
some really good security — Erika had made little serious attempt to conceal
things inside the apartment.

Twenty minutes
later Beat von Graffenlaub had completed a thorough search of the
apartment.
 
What he had
found,
detailed in photographs but with other quite specific
evidence, was worse than anything he had — or could have — imagined.
 
Nauseated, white-faced, and almost numb with
shock, he waited for Erika to return.
 
He
was unaware of time.
 
He was conscious
only that his life, as he had known it, was over.

*
         
*
         
*
         
*
         
*

The Bear was
drinking coffee and eating gingerbread in the kitchen when Fitzduane entered,
and the sweet, sharp aroma of baked ginger reminded the Irishman of Vreni.
 
The Bear looked up.
 
Fitzduane sat across from him at the kitchen
table, lost in thought about a scared, lonely, vulnerable girl hiding in the
mountains.

"Thinking
about the girl?" said the Bear.
 
One
piece of gingerbread remained.
 
He
offered it to Fitzduane, who shook his head.
 
Instead, he spoke.
 
"She was
so bloody scared."

"As we
now know, with excellent reason," said the Bear.
 
"But she won't talk, and there's not
much else we can do now except see that she has security and try to find the
Hangman."

"Henssen
was building in some slack when he spoke to the Chief.
 
He now thinks he might be ready to do a final
run in about four hours."

"A
name," said the Bear, "at last."

"A short
list anyway."

"Any candidates?"
 
The Bear was checking through various containers.
 
A morsel of gingerbread couldn’t be termed a
serious snack or even an adequate companion to a cup of coffee.
 
His hunt was in vain, and he began to look
depressed.
 
"The people here eat too
much," he said.
 
"Kersdorf, for
instance, has an appetite like a greyhound.
 
The least he could do is
bring
in a cake now
and then."

"He
does,"
said
Fitzduane, "and you eat
it."
 
He wrote a name on a piece of
paper.
 
"Here's my nomination,"
he said, handing it to the Bear, who looked at it and whistled.

"A
hundred francs you're wrong."

"Done,"
said Fitzduane.
 
"But I've got a
proposal.
 
Let's have one last crack at
Vreni.
 
You can come along for the ride,
and maybe we can find somewhere nice to eat on the way back."