Free The Ludwig Conspiracy by Oliver Pötzsch Page A

moment there was an unnatural silence. Steven was hesitantly approaching the lifeless body when the second man suddenly jumped up and shoved him aside. The bookseller stumbled back over a bookshelf and fell to the floor.
    “Hey!” Sara shouted, but the stranger pushed her away with his elbow and ran upstairs. Steven caught a brief glimpse of a black hooded sweatshirt with some kind of slogan on it, and then the man was gone.
    “Put the light on, for Christ’s sake,” Sara gasped. She clutched her right side; obviously the stranger had hit her harder than it had looked. Steven made his way out of the stockroom, groping about until he finally found the fuse box on the back wall of the corridor. Running his hand over the switches, he could tell that they were all pressed down. He clicked them up, there was a brief crackle, and then the corridor was suddenly bathed in bright light.
    “Someone’s been at the fuse box . . .” he began. But Sara was already speaking, her voice low and strangely husky.
    “Forget the damn fuse box. Take a look at this.”
    Steven went back into the cellar, now brightly lit, and saw a chaotic scene: overturned bookshelves, crates, books with pages torn out. Among them lay the powerful stranger with the pistol. Only now, in the light, could the bookseller see him properly. He was a giant, almost six feet tall, in jeans, work boots, and a dark green tracksuit jacket. A pool of red blood had formed around his fashionably shaved skull. It was quickly spreading and had almost reached the nearest books. The man’s eyes stared at the ceiling like two blue glass marbles.
    “My God, he’s dead,” Steven said, kneeling over the lifeless body. His corduroy pants were soaking up blood, but he didn’t notice. “I killed him. I’ve killed a man.”
    Sara came closer and cautiously touched the body with the toe of one of her ballet flats. The art detective, pale and trembling, was still clutching her stomach where the man had driven his elbow into it as he ran away.
    “It’s one of those thugs who was after us a few hours ago, no doubt about it,” she said to herself. “But then who was the other one?”
    She hesitated, then bent down to the dead man and, firmly compressing her lips, searched his pockets. At last, using just her fingertips, she pulled a wallet from his tracksuit jacket.
    Sara held the opened wallet up to her eyes and peered at it. “His ID says his name is Bernd Reiser. Ever heard of him?”
    Steven shook his head. Without much hope, he pressed his fingertips to the man’s carotid artery, but there was no pulse. His own pulse raced; he was incapable of rational thought. Meanwhile, Sara seemed to have regained her composure. Secretly, the bookseller admired how coolly she searched the dead body, although at the same time it made him wonder.
    What is this woman? Art detective? More like a female Philip Marlowe . . .
    “A man might think you’ve done something like this before,” he said. “Part of standard art detective training, is it? Robbing dead bodies?”
    “Not that it’s any business of yours,” Sara replied without looking up, “but you can assume that I have a certain amount of experience.”
    “As an
art
detective? But . . .”
    “Well, what have we here?” Sara drew out a small pendant from under the dead man’s T-shirt. Engraved on it was the image of a golden swan, wings outspread. Under it there was an ornate inscription.
    “Tmeicos Ettal,”
she said thoughtfully, letting the pendant on its chain swing in front of Steven like a hypnotist’s pendulum. “I wonder what that means? It’s not in any language I know. Could it . . .”
    “Never mind that,” Steven snapped. “There’s a dead man here. And I killed him.”
    “He was about to kill someone else.” After a moment’s hesitation, Sara put the amulet in her pocket. “And he was aiming a gun at me. Don’t forget that.”
    Steven was still staring at the corpse and the pool of