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[ONE]
Marburg an der Lahn
Hesse, Germany
1905 24 December 2005
It was a picture-postcard Christmas Eve.
Snow covered the ground. It had been snowing on and off all day, and it was gently falling now.
The stained-glass windows of the ancient Church of St. Elisabeth glowed faintly from the forest of candles burning inside, and the church itself seemed to glow from the light of the candles in the hands of the faithful who had arrived to worship too late to find room inside and now stood outside.
A black Mercedes-Benz 600SL was stopped in traffic by the crowds on Elisabethstrasse, its wipers throwing snow off its windshield.
The front passenger door opened and a tall, heavyset, ruddy-faced man in his sixties got out. He looked at the crowds of the faithful, then up at the twin steeples of the church, then shook his head in disgust and impatience, and got back in the car.
"Seven hundred and sixty-nine fucking years, and they're still waiting for a fucking virgin," Otto Gorner said, as much in disgust as awe.
"Excuse me, Herr Gorner?" the driver asked, more than a little nervously.
Johan Schmidt, the large forty-year-old behind the wheel, was wearing a police-type uniform; he was a supervisor in the security firm that protected the personnel and property of Gossinger Beteiligungsgesellschaft, G.m.b.H. Otto Gorner was managing director of the holding company, among whose many corporate assets was the security firm.
Schmidt's supervisor was in charge of security for what in America would be called the corporate headquarters of Gossinger Beteiligungsgesellschaft, G.m.b.H., in Fulda, another small Hessian city about one hundred kilometers from Marburg an der Lahn. The supervisor had arrived at Schmidt's home an hour and a half before, and had come right to the point.
"Herr Gorner wants to go to Marburg," he'd announced at Schmidt's door. "And you're going to drive him."
He had then made two gestures, one toward the street, where a security car was parked behind the SL600, and one by putting his thumb to his lips.
Schmidt immediately understood both gestures. He was to drive Herr Gorner to Marburg in the SL600, and the reason he was going to do so was that Herr Gorner--who usually drove himself in a 6.0-liter V12-engined Jaguar XJ Vanden Plas--had been imbibing spirits. Gorner was fond of saying he never got behind the wheel of a car if at any time in the preceding eight hours he had so much as sniffed a cork. The Mercedes was Frau Gorner's car; no one drove Otto Gorner's Jag but Otto Gorner.
Gorner's physical appearance was that of a stereotypical Bavarian; he visually seemed to radiate gemutlichkeit. He was in fact a Hessian, and what he really radiated--even when he had not been drinking--was the antithesis of gemutlichkeit. It was said behind his back that only three people in the world were not afraid of him. One was his wife, Helena, who was paradoxically a Bavarian but looked and dressed like a Berlinerin or maybe a New Yorker. It was hard to imagine Helena Gorner in a dirndl, her hair in pigtails, munching on a wurstchen.
Frau Gertrud Schroeder, Gorner's secretary, had been known to tell him no and to shout back at him when that was necessary in the performance of her duties.
The third person who didn't hold Gorner in fearful awe didn't have to. Herr Karl Wilhelm von und zu Gossinger was by far the principal stockholder of Gossinger Beteiligungsgesellschaft, G.m.b.H. Gorner worked for him, at least theoretically. Gossinger lived in the United States under the polite fiction that he was the Washington, D.C., correspondent of the Tages Zeitung newspaper chain--there were seven scattered over Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary--which constituted another holding of Gossinger Beteiligungsgesellschaft, G.m.b.H.
It was commonly believed that the heir to the Gossinger fortune seldom wrote anything but his signature on a corporate check drawn to his credit and instead spent most of his time chasing movie stars, models, and other female prey in the beachside bars of Florida and California and in the apres-ski lounges of Colorado and elsewhere.
"I said it's been seven hundred and sixty-nine fucking years, and they're still waiting for a fucking virgin," Gorner repeated.
"Yes, sir," Schmidt said, now sorry he had asked.
"You do know the legend?" Gorner challenged.
Schmidt resisted the temptation to say "of course" in the hope that would end the conversation. Instead, afraid that Gorner would demand to hear what the legend was, he said, "I'm not sure, Herr Gorner."
"Not sure?" Gorner replied scornfully. "You either do or you don't."
"The crooked steeples?" Schmidt asked, taking a chance.
