Trojan Gold (30 page)

“And all downhill from the top of the Hexenhut. I expect he took the lift up, and then sashayed down to us. The smoke signal was a grave error on our part, but he must have had some idea before-hand.”

“He overheard us talking about the daffodil bulb.”

John's lips curled in an elegant sneer. He had visited the facilities, as my mother always calls them, and washed the soot and dried blood from his face; the sneer was one of his best.

“He wouldn't have wits enough to reason that one out. It's more likely that your initial visit to the cemetery aroused his suspicions; it wouldn't occur to him that your motives were as pure and charitable as they really were.”

“Or he located someone who saw me leaving town last night. I almost ran over a policeman when I turned into the road leading to the cemetery; I'll bet that's the only place it leads to.” I glanced toward the door. “Where do you suppose Schmidt is? It isn't like him to stay away from food for more than an hour at a stretch. Maybe he's taking a nap.” I put my napkin on the table and stood up.

“It's the best possible place for him,” John said, sipping coffee. “If I were you, I'd leave him there.”

“No, I need him to help me convince the police to dig up that grave. He's got more clout than I have.”

“Oh, very well.” John reached in his pocket. “Er—I seem to have lost my wallet somewhere…”

“Back to your old form,” I said, scribbling my name and room number on the check.

I knocked on Schmidt's door. The mumbled grunt was the reply I had expected. The door wasn't locked, so I opened it and walked in.

Schmidt was napping, all right, hands folded on his stomach, mustache vibrating with the intensity of his snores. I didn't see Dieter until I was well inside the room. He had been behind the door.

John put his hands in his pockets and let his shoulders sag. “Stupid,” he said critically. “I should have anticipated this.”

“Neither of us is at our best this morning,” I
agreed. “I wonder where he got the gun?”

“It isn't his,” John said. “Unless he was carrying it on him the whole time. I searched his luggage—”

The barrel of the gun slashed across the side of his face and sent him reeling back against the closed door.

“Lie down!” Dieter shouted, his face suffused. “On the floor
schnell
, or I will knock you down.”

John spread the fingers of the hand he had clapped to his face and peered at Dieter. “Don't you want to boast about your cleverness before you shoot me?” he asked in wavering but encouraging tones.

“You talk about me as if I were a child,” Dieter cried. “You taunt me—you dare make fun of me! I will kill you, I will kill all of you—”

“He might at that,” I said, before John could come back with another of those cute, provocative, dangerous little quips. “Dieter, calm down. You've won. You are the winner,
número uno
, top dog, and top cheese of all time—”

“‘…the bravest by far in the ranks of the Shah,'” murmured a faint voice from behind the bloody hand.

“It would serve you right if he did shoot you,” I snarled. “Dieter, what have you done to Schmidt?”

Dieter relaxed visibly. “A few sleeping pills. It is easy to drug that fat gourmand; he will eat anything and he eats constantly.” He added in self-congratulatory tones, “It is his gun. He took it from the drawer when he felt himself succumbing to the Valium, but he was so sleepy I think he would have shot himself in the stomach if I had not taken it from him.”

I felt my throat closing up. Poor brave little Schmidt. Damn the courageous old galoot anyway. The fact that he hadn't tried to steal the Colt back should have warned me that he had another gun.

“I was going to take him as a hostage.” Dieter gave Schmidt's rotund and recumbent form a resentful look. “But he is too heavy to carry. So I decided to wait here for you. I knew you would come sooner or later.”

“It's later,” I said, as John continued to watch Dieter through his first and second fingers. “We've already been to the police. They'll be looking for you.”

“Not soon,” Dieter said coolly. “It is
Weihnacht
, and the storm has made for some confusion. But you will come with me, Vicky, and then if anyone tries to interfere with me, I will kill you.”

“Take him,” I said, indicating John.

“Right,” John said. “Take me….” And then the idiot spread both arms wide and sang, “Please do take me—'m all yours if you—”

Dieter was too smart to risk it a second time. He had caught John off guard with the first blow, but he must have seen the flexed hands, poised and ready. He stepped back.

“Over by the bed. Lie down on the floor. Hands under you.”

The barrel of the gun shifted toward me and John said, “Calm down, old chap. You don't want to shoot anyone.”

“No, I don't. I would rather not attract attention. But if I am forced to shoot, it will be all of you. This gun is a very nice gun.”

It was, too. Nothing but the best for Schmidt—
an automatic pistol—a Beretta, as I later discovered—the kind that fires the whole clip so long as the finger remains on the trigger.

John obeyed. “Face down,” Dieter ordered.

With an expressive look at me, John rolled over. He must have known what was coming. I didn't. I suppose I expected Dieter would bend over and bang him on the back of the head with the gun. Instead, Dieter swung his foot. He didn't hold back, as John had done with him; his toe connected with a sickening soggy crunch that spilled John over onto his back, his head and shoulders under the high antique bed. This time he wasn't faking. His twisted body and outflung hands were as limp as dead fish.

I rocked to a halt as Dieter wriggled the gun admonishingly. He glanced longingly at John's body, but decided not to risk another kick, much as he obviously wanted to. “Come,” he said. “We will go now.”

Lovingly entwined, we went down the stairs and through the lobby. Dieter's left arm was around my shoulders, his fingers caressing my throat, his thumb nudging the nerve ending behind the ear. His right hand was inside his jacket, Napoleonstyle. I could feel the muzzle of the gun through both our jackets.

We had emerged from the hotel before I got my voice under control. “You'll never make it up there, Dieter. The road is too icy.”

“I think of everything,” Dieter said. His thumb jabbed deep, and pain lanced through my head. Reflexively my head turned, away from the pressure.
He forced my face down toward his and kissed me on the mouth.

“You son of a bitch,” I said, licking blood off my lower lip.

“But a romantic son of a bitch,” said Dieter, grinning and nodding at an elderly couple who had paused to smile at the young lovers. He pushed me toward a sleigh strung with bells and bright ribbons. “See what I have hired to take my sweetheart for a drive. I think there will be time for more romance while we wait for the ground to soften. How would you like that, eh?” He went on to enumerate all the “romantic” things he was going to do to me. The lad had quite a vocabulary.

I gritted my teeth and yearned for the moment when he would help me into the sleigh. He'd have to take the gun out of my ribs for a second, and that was all I would need. Boots, fists, teeth…

I should have learned by then not to underestimate him. The moment my foot touched the high step, he gave me a shove that sent me sprawling forward across the seat, my breath stifled by a fuzzy fur wrap. With a hearty chuckle at my clumsiness, he hauled me upright, folded me in a fond embrace, and hit me on the chin.

I don't know what happened after that, but I'll bet we made a charming picture as we drove out of town—bells chiming, horses trotting, and me wrapped cozily in the fur rug with my head on Dieter's shoulder and his arm around me.

He must have hit me again or I wouldn't have stayed unconscious so long. I didn't wake up until we had reached our destination and Dieter had had his way with me. No, not that; but I found myself
flat on my back with my wrists and ankles tied to stakes, all ready and waiting as soon as Dieter found time to attend to me. My jaw hurt and my back was so cold it felt as if it were stuck to the frozen ground, and the arch of bright blue sky, which was all I could see at first, made my eyes ache.

After a while it occurred to me that I could turn my head.

The fire had gone out. Dieter was at work, scraping off the top layer of softened dirt and ash. He had even brought tools, the clever boy. Not shovels and pickaxes; no archeologist in his right senses would use anything so destructive, and this was an archaeological excavation of sorts. One careless thrust of a sharp instrument might penetrate the container and reduce the gold of Troy to a heap of golden scraps.

God bless Hoffman, he had buried it deep. The fire had softened only the top few inches of soil. Before long, Dieter had removed it, along with a handful of pitiful bare bulbs that would never be flowers. Reaching for an armful of kindling, he arranged it with a horrible travesty of Boy Scout tidiness and lit a match. When the wood had caught and was burning brightly, he rose to his feet and looked at me.

It would have made a great scene in my book—the heroine spread-eagled and helpless, awaiting a fate worse than death. (I was beginning to wonder how I could have found that phrase funny.) I was wearing more clothes than Rosanna would have worn, but I had a feeling Dieter would get around to that before much longer. There was only one
positive aspect to the situation. He'd have done better to tie my wrists and ankles together. The stakes had not been driven deeply into the hard ground. I had already managed to start one wriggling.

“I need more wood,” Dieter explained. “Can't use these wet branches; they make too much smoke. I'll be back in a minute.”

John would have said, “Take your time,” or “Don't hurry back,” or something even wittier. I resisted the temptation. The workings of Dieter's mind were fascinating. He wasn't your usual mad murderer, no such thing. He was perfectly sane. The treasure was his main objective, and he really wasn't sadist enough to risk that or his precious skin for the fun of torturing me.

Cheerful thought. As soon as Dieter was out of my field of vision, I threw all my strength into the muscles of my right arm. The stake popped out with such unexpected ease my arm flew up into the air. I replaced it even more hastily than it had arisen and twisted it around so I could look over my shoulder. Smart of me. He was back sooner than I would have expected, his arms full of wood.

I got back into position, praying he wouldn't notice my arm was free. He went right on past; while he busied himself building up the fire and extending the scope of the fire, I continued working on the left-hand stake. It was exasperating, nerve-racking work, because I didn't want him to realize what I was doing.

All too soon, the methodical woodsman had things going to his satisfaction. I rolled my eyes and made faces as he approached, hoping to focus his attention on my distorted face instead of my
right wrist. He knelt down with his back toward it, took hold of the zipper of my jacket and pulled it down.

Sometimes I really wonder if I am in my right mind. I did not take the course of action I knew prudence and common sense demanded. I was only slightly less helpless with one hand free than with neither. I was wearing so many layers of clothing it would take Dieter quite some time to work his way down to the foundations; his preoccupation and my vigorous reactions would provide excellent cover for freeing my other limbs, or at least making a damn good try.

It was pure kneejerk reflex. The instant the zipper parted, my right arm flew up, without any conscious effort on my part. My fist hit him in the back of the neck. It wasn't a bad attempt, considering that my muscles were stiff with cold and restricted circulation, but of course it only stunned him for a moment. It also irritated him a lot. He jumped up, swearing, and then jumped back as I tried to grab his ankle. The damage was done, so there was no point in pretending to be submissive; I squirmed and struggled and yelled, and tried to get my right hand across to where the left was still pinned. While I was doing that, Dieter reached into his pocket and took out a knife. It was one of those Swiss Army things, with every attachment but a buttonhook.

The left-hand stake would not budge. It didn't take Dieter long to comprehend what I had known all along; he had just been startled for a minute. With a nasty grin he kicked my flailing hand aside and planted one foot on my stomach—not too
hard, just hard enough to hold me down and make me wonder how many ribs were cracking—while he examined his knife. Trying to decide which of the little tools to use? Corkscrew, can opener…

I didn't really want to see which one he picked, but unholy curiosity kept my eyelids from closing. My right hand was out of commission; it was just one gigantic ache. I kept tugging at the stake holding the left one. Dieter unfolded one of the knife blades. That was a relief. I did hate the idea of the corkscrew.

Removing his foot from my diaphragm, Dieter circled to my right. Careful lad; he was going to take care of that limp, flopping right hand before he got down to business. If he hadn't moved, I would have missed it—the most spectacular entrance ever made by a hero rushing to the rescue.

I said spectacular, not impressive. John had to leave the slope, which curved westward above the cemetery, and follow the trail Dieter had taken earlier, through the trees. Only an Olympic-class skier could have done it, and only with the devil's own luck. John wasn't in Dieter's class, and for once his luck seemed to have run out. When I caught sight of him, he was in mid-air, skis crossed and arms flailing. He hit the ground with a thud that sent sympathetic twinges through my straining body. A huge cloud of snow billowed up to cast a merciful veil over the scene.