The Ludwig Conspiracy (52 page)

Breathing heavily from the hard work, he sat down on a rock beside the tree and watched Luise and Tristan digging holes at random in the castle courtyard while the industrialist shouted and cursed at the top of her lungs. She had now switched to speaking of herself in the royal plural. Indeed, she seemed to be getting more deranged every minute. She reminded Steven more and more of the defiant ten-year-old who shouted, ranted, and wanted to scratch his eyes out. It seemed as if Luise simply did not realize how pointless all her efforts were.

“The letter will occupy a special position in Our castle,” she gasped, and struck the rocks so hard with the pick that splinters of stone sprayed up. “Right beside Our bed, or maybe in the throne room next to the picture of St. George. We will have a chapel built, a vault for the worthy descendants of Ludwig.”

“And where is this pretty castle of yours?” Steven called to her. “It’s strange that I’ve never heard of it. Must be quite large if all the furniture from Neuschwanstein fits into it.”

“That’s none of your business,” Luise said. Her gray suit was torn and dirty from all her grim digging; her hair stood out around her face in confusion. She looked like a furious little gnome wielding a pick.

Like Alberich in search of the Rhine gold,
Steven thought.
But I am neither Wotan nor Siegfried.

Thoughtfully, he ran one finger through the soil mingled with roots under the contorted tree. Rotting fall leaves clung to his hand. He rubbed them off and let them drop to the ground. They were withered, brown linden leaves, the typical heart shape.

Suddenly he stopped.

Linden leaves . . .

Could it be possible? Steven looked all the way up the tree. It appeared to be old, almost two hundred years, he estimated. The linden must have been standing here when Marot came to Falkenstein in search of a hiding place.

But considerably smaller at the time . . .

Once again, the answer to the puzzle went through Steven’s head.

In the king’s fourth castle a scion shows the dearest of his treasures . . .

Steven felt the blood throbbing in his temples, and all of a sudden his throat seemed as dry as a piece of sandpaper. They had assumed all along that
scion
meant Leopold, Ludwig’s son. But what if
scion
meant something different? What if it referred to its horticultural meaning of a little tree, a young shoot that, someday, would grow into a strong trunk?

A mighty linden tree.

Steven dug his hands far into the heap of withered leaves and then the soil beneath them, and his heart began to beat faster. His fingers slipped as if of their own accord over the roots and up to the trunk, until they met with some tiny indentations that must have been carved in it by someone long ago. They were letters, distorted and almost covered by the bark as it grew with every year’s passing, but Steven recognized them without looking.

Maria.

Steven instinctively smiled. The beginning and the end; it all came full circle here in Falkenstein. The journey was over, and the letter . . .

He felt Luise looking at his back as if her gaze were the tip of an arrow. When he slowly turned around, he saw her standing at the entrance to the castle. She was leaning on her pick and giggling wildly.

“I knew you’d lead me to the hiding place, dearest cousin,” she said, pointing to the linden tree. “I really ought to have figured it out myself.” She shook her head, laughing. “A scion that shows us Ludwig’s son. Friend Theodor really was a poet.” Her face transformed into a frozen grotesque
.
Her lips narrow and bloodless, she turned to her two companions.

“Tristan and Galahad, we need ropes and an ax. And hurry up! We are going to dig my cousin a grave worthy of him.”

Luise Manstein took the pick, and with an ardent cry she drove the implement deep into the bark of the tree.

T
HEY FOUND THE
container about six feet down. It was rusty iron, and so dirty that at first the men thought it was a clod of earth. The beautiful linden tree, felled, lay on the ground, its roots torn apart and shredded as if a bomb had hit it. Luise danced around the wreck of the tree, holding her face up to the drizzling rain.

“Here it is!” she shouted, her voice almost breaking. “Destiny is fulfilled! I have the proof!”

She had the heavily breathing paladins give her the container, and she carefully scratched the layer of mud away. Underneath it was a lid riveted in place and a rusty padlock.

“Quick, a knife!”

Galahad handed her a knife, and, with a well-aimed thrust, Luise Manstein broke the now-brittle padlock open. She reverently put the little container on the ground, knelt down, and lifted the lid.

Inside lay a sealed envelope, damp and sprinkled with spots of mold, but otherwise intact.

Luise took it out and stroked the seal, which showed a swan with its head raised. The knife passed under the seal, which crumbled into small red fragments. With her fingertips, she took the letter out of the envelope and carefully unfolded it. She seemed to be trembling all over.

“I’ve waited so many years for this moment,” she whispered. “Ever since I was a child. And now my dream has come true at last.”

Luise fished a pair of reading glasses out of her breast pocket, put them on, and silently moved her lips, as if incanting a magic spell.

“Thursday, the tenth of June 1886,”
she began quietly.
“I, King Ludwig the Second of Bavaria, do hereby declare, being in full possession of my intellectual powers, and in the best of health, that . . .”

At that moment the sirens wailed.

L
UISE LOOKED UP IN
irritation. Tristan, Galahad, and Steven also turned around, startled. The bookseller could hardly believe his ears. He was hearing good old police sirens, similar to the fanfare in old Westerns as the cavalry rode to the aid of the beleaguered fort.

But how can this be possible?
Steven thought.
It must be a dream, a beautiful dream, no more.

However, the sirens were distinctly too loud for a dream. Three green and white Audis and a bus, blue lights flashing, raced up the narrow, winding mountain road to the hotel. A second bus followed. When the pilot down in the parking lot saw this large contingent coming, he ran to the helicopter and started the engine. Soon after that, the rotor blades began to turn faster and faster, until finally the helicopter rose from the ground and disappeared among the clouds.

Only seconds later, the police cars had reached the hotel parking lot. Gray-clad men poured out of the two buses, wearing balaclavas and equipped with MP5 submachine guns and Kevlar bulletproof vests. They took up their positions behind the cars. Some of the officers swarmed out into the woods below the peak. There were clicks of safeties being taken off, and then there was an almost eerie silence.

“This is the police!” a croaking voice suddenly announced through a megaphone. “We know you’re up there, Frau Manstein! Give yourself up. Any resistance is useless!”

Luise froze, her face distorted in a grimace of horror, insanity, and bewilderment. For a moment Steven thought she would put the letter down on the ground and surrender. But then she drew out her small pistol from under her suit and put it to Steven’s head.

“Not a step closer!” she shouted. “Or I’ll blow his brains all over the castle!”

With a strangely calm demeanor, she tucked the envelope into her neckline and gave her two paladins a sign.

“Open fire,” she ordered, and then ran with Steven into the shelter of the castle courtyard. “Distract them until the chopper comes back.”

Tristan and Galahad looked at each other uncertainly. Then they threw down their shovels, drew their semiautomatics, and got into position behind the embrasures of the ruined building. Soon after that, the clatter of the Uzis rang out, interrupted by occasional shots from the police officers. Looking through a moss-covered window opening, Steven saw at least four masked men, wearing bulletproof vests and armed with sniper rifles, sprinting from tree to tree and constantly looking for cover. Just before reaching the peak, they finally crouched down behind some rocks and waited.

“I don’t know who tipped them off,” Luise snarled, “but don’t think it changes your situation in any way.” Her voice was close to Steven’s ear now; he could smell her expensive perfume. “The helicopter was really just supposed to take the new antenna over to the tower at Neuschwanstein. But now I’ll have to get myself rescued from here in genuinely majestic style.” She held her cell phone to her ear and waited impatiently for someone to answer.

But however long she waited, no one did.

“Damn it!” Luise shouted at last, throwing her BlackBerry down on the stony ground of the courtyard, where the display smashed into tiny splinters. “That filthy bastard of a pilot has run for it. When I get my hands on him, I’ll . . .”

“Whip him until the blood comes and put his eyes out?” Steven suggested, trying to ignore the cold muzzle of the Derringer against his temple. “Have him sent to a penal colony in Papua New Guinea? Oh, come on, Luise. Don’t make things worse than they already are. Even if you were to get away from here—you heard it for yourself: the police know who you are.”

“You think I should surrender?” Luise laughed as her paladins launched into a new orgy of noise with their Uzis. Splinters of stone sprayed off the rocks where the police marksmen had taken cover. “Never! I have plenty of money in my overseas accounts. More than Ludwig could ever have dreamed of. I’ll move to a small, unknown island and realize his dream there. Away from this sick civilization that gives romantics like us no scope. I will . . .”

A scream was heard, and Steven saw Tristan stagger back with a bleeding wound gaping in his left arm. One of the snipers behind the rocks had aimed through the embrasure and hit him.

“The battle of the Burgundians in King Etzel’s hall,” said Luise. “You remember the Nibelung saga?
Hundreds now lie slain, by my hand alone . . .
The heroes fall one by one, and the floor of the hall is wet with blood.”

“You are totally out of your mind!” Steven yelled. “Give up! It’s not too late!”

“Would Ludwig have given up? What do you think?” But Luise seemed unsure of herself. She gnawed her lower lip, and the mascara ran over her mud-stained face, making her look like a vampire drained of blood.

Then she seized Steven’s arm.

“No. I don’t think Ludwig would have given up. On the contrary.”

She pulled him away behind the castle and toward the abyss. Only now did the bookseller see, to his horror, that sparkling new iron rungs led down the precipitous wall, now wet with rain.

“Follow me, Cousin,” Luise commanded, with a grave and majestic expression. “It is time for you to set foot in our great-great-grandfather’s halls.”

T
HEY CLIMBED DOWN THE
rocky wall one after the other, while the bullets went on rattling overhead.

Steven looked down, his heart thudding, as he made his way from rung to rung, using those above him as handholds. It must have been a good hundred thirty feet down to the grassy ground below, overgrown with small bushes. Flight was out of the question; Luise was right above him. She had slung the nylon bag with the little treasure chest inside it over her shoulder, and she kept stopping and threatening Steven with her pistol to make him hurry.

At last he felt ground beneath his feet, and soon after that Luise was beside him. A narrow path wound its way along the precipitous rock wall to the hotel. There was nothing to be seen now of the chaos raging in the castle above. Only now and then did the sound of shots come down to them.

“Right, keep going,” Luise ordered, pushing her cousin forward. “Who knows how long my faithful paladins up there will hold out.”

Steven staggered along the muddy path that ended, just below the hotel building, at a square, wooden annex. A narrow flight of steps led into a small room made of pale spruce planks with an aromatic scent of resin. Several old etchings showing Falkenstein Castle at an earlier date hung on the wall; there was a model of the castle in a glass display case, and notices provided information about the details of its history.

“The Falkenstein Museum,” Luise explained as she searched the pockets of her suit. “The previous owner of the hotel had it built for his guests, but I have found another use for it.”

She took out a small key and inserted it into a keyhole fitted to the side of the display case. There was a quiet hum, and then the case moved aside to reveal a flight of stairs leading down. They climbed down the stairs until they reached an elevator with doors that slid soundlessly aside.

“Welcome to Hades.”

Luise sketched a slight bow before ushering Steven into the elevator. “This is really only my escape hatch. I would have liked to show you my hotel suite. But the way things seem, I fear we have no time for that now.”

She tapped a combination of several numbers into a keypad, the doors closed, and the elevator, humming, went down.

When the doors opened again, Steven was in the Middle Ages.

A long corridor lined with wood veneer stretched before him, and like the rooms in Neuschwanstein, it was adorned with life-sized murals from the world of the Germanic legends. Chandeliers with white candles in them hung from the ceiling, giving a faint light, and from somewhere came the soft notes of one of Wagner’s overtures. Only when he looked again did he see that small halogen bulbs and not candles were burning, and the music came from tiny loudspeakers mounted everywhere in the corridor. On closer inspection, he found that the corridor itself had a rather temporary appearance: some of the planks under the thick rugs were missing, and the ceiling had not yet been fully plastered.

Like Ludwig’s own building style,
Steven thought.
A half-finished castle cobbled together from several different periods.