Black Ops (Presidential Agent 5)

"Steeple, singular," Gorner corrected him, and then went on: "The church was built to honor Elisabeth of Hungary, twelve hundred seven to twelve hundred thirty-one. She was a daughter of King Andrew II of Hungary. He married her off at age fourteen to Ludwig IV, one of whose descendants was Mad King Ludwig of Bavaria, who lost his throne because he became involved with an American actress whose name I can't at the moment recall, possibly because, before this came up, I got into the wassail cup.

"Anyway, Ludwig IV, the presumably sane one, went off somewhere for God and Emperor Frederick II of the Holy Roman Empire. While so nobly employed, he caught a bug of some sort and died.

"Elisabeth, now a widow, interpreted this as a sign from God and thereafter devoted her life and fortune to good works and Holy Mother Church. For reasons I have never had satisfactorily explained, she came here and founded a hospital for the poor, right here behind the church--our destination, you understand?"

"I know where we're going, Herr Gorner."

To see a dead man, he thought. A murdered man.

So why am I getting this Gottverdammt history lesson--because he's feeling no pain?

Or because he doesn't want to think about the real reason we're here?

"That was before the church was built, you understand," Gorner had gone on. "The church came after she died in 1231. By then she had become a Franciscan nun and given all her money and property to the church.

"So, they decided to canonize her. Pope Gregory IX did so in 1235, and in the fall of that year, they laid the cornerstone of the church. It took them a couple of years to finish it, and nobody was so impolite as to mention that one of the steeples was crooked.

"But everybody saw it, of course, and a legend sprang up--possibly with a little help from the Vatican--that the steeple would be straightened by God himself just as soon as Saint Elisabeth's bones were reburied under the altar. That happened in 1249. The steeple didn't move.

"The legend changed to be that the steeple would be fixed when the first virgin was married in t

he church." He paused, then drily added, "Your choice, Schmidt--either there was a shortage of virgins getting married, or the legend was baloney."

Schmidt raised an eyebrow but said nothing.

"The steeple was still crooked three hundred years later," Gorner continued, "when Landgrave Phillip of Hesse threw the Romans out of the church and turned it over to the Protestants. That was in 1527, if memory serves, and it usually does.

"He threw the Dominicans out of their monastery on the top of the hill"--Gorner turned and pointed over his shoulder--"at about the same time and turned it into a university, which he modestly named after himself. That's where I went to school."

"So I have heard, Herr Gorner."

"Enough is enough," Gorner said.

"Sir?"

"It could be argued that inasmuch as poor Gunther is dead, there is no reason for us to hurry," Gorner said. "But an equally heavy argument is there is no reason we should wait while they stand there with their fucking candles waiting for a fucking virgin. Sound the horn, Schmidt, and drive through them."

"Herr Gorner, are you sure you--"

Gorner reached for the steering wheel and pressed hard on the horn for what seemed to Schmidt an interminable time.

This earned them looks of shock and indignation from the candle-bearing worshippers, but after a moment the crowd began to make room and the big Mercedes moved through the gap.

In the block behind the church, at Gorner's direction, Schmidt illegally parked the car before a PARKEN VERBOTEN! sign at the main entrance to the hospital, between a somewhat battered silver-and-white Opel Astra police car and an apparently brand-new, unmarked Astra that bore a magnet-based police blue light on its roof.

[TWO]

There were two men sitting on a bench in the corridor of the hospital. One was a stout, totally bald, decently dressed man in his fifties, the other a weasel-faced thirty-something-year-old in a well-worn blue suit that had not received the attention of a dry cleaner in a very long time.

When they saw Gorner, they both rose, the older one first.

"Herr Gorner?" he said.

Gorner nodded and perfunctorily shook their hands.

"Where is he?" Gorner said.

"You wish to see the victim, Herr Gorner?"