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face turned to look at
him. The scar-faced man stared coldly at Kass, his thin lips like slits cut in
his face with a razor. His eyes seemed to take in everything at a glance,
flicking to the forest left and right, then settling on Kass again, assessing
his enemy, but no sign of fear in his eyes.
    Kass called out shakily, "Stop, do
you hear me! Put down your weapon!"
    He heard the naked fear in his own voice
and barely had time to squeeze the trigger as his adversary swung around and
the silenced pistol gave another hoarse cough. The bullet smashed into Kass's
right jaw, shattering bone and teeth, slicing through flesh, flinging him back
against a tree, the shotgun flying from his grasp.
    As Kass screamed in agony he saw the man
fire into the child's head. Her body jerked and crumpled.
    Kass stumbled back into the trees, but
the man was already rushing toward him. As Kass crashed through the woods and
fled, oblivious to the pain in his shattered jaw, his only thoughts were of
survival and making it back to the car.
    Fifty meters to go and he could see the
Opel through the trees, could hear the man rushing through the forest after
him.
    Fifty long meters that seemed like a
thousand, and Kass ran like a man possessed, a hand on his bloodied face, his
whole body on fire with a powerful will to survive, the savage image of the
young girl's execution replaying in his mind like a terrible nightmare,
spurring him on.
    Please God. Thirty meters. Please.
Twenty. Ten. God Please A bullet zinged through the trees, splintering wood to
his left.
    Sweet Jesus ... And then suddenly he was
out of the woods.
    As he reached the Opel and yanked open
the door the man emerged out of the forest behind him.
    Kass did not hear the shot that hit him
but he felt the bullet slip between his back ribs like a red-hot dagger. It
jerked him forward onto the hood of the Opel.
    He was already dead before he hit the
ground.
    The bodies were found in the woods two
days later. Another hunter, like Kass, but this one more fortunate because he
hadn't been in the wrong place at the wrong time. He threw up when he saw the
child's body.
    Her pretty face was frozen and white. The
flesh around her head wound and behind her neck had been partly chewed away by
forest rodents.
    Even the hardened policemen of the
Lucerne Krindnaiamt thought it one of the most brutal murder scenes they had
ever witnessed. There was always something pitiful and particularly brutal
about the body of a murdered child.
    The subsequent forensic and pathology
examinations determined that the girl was aged between ten and twelve. She had
not been raped, but there was severe bruising on her legs, arms, chest and
genital area, which suggested she had been badly beaten and tortured some hours
before being shot. The same with the man's corpse lying next to hers. Both
bodies were placed in cold storage in the Lucerne police morgue.
    The only corpse that could be identified
was that of Manfred Kass. In his wallet was a driver's license and a shotgun
permit, and he wore a wristwatch with an inscription, "To Manni, with
love, Hilda."
    The police learned that the bakery worker
had gone hunting after his Friday-night shift and deduced that he had perhaps
stumbled onto the slaughter of the man and the child and paid with his life.
    But of the murderer or his identity,
there was no trace at all.
    A month later there was still no evidence
that linked the two unknown corpses to missing persons. Both had no personal
identification and had been wearing the sort of clothes that could be bought in
any large clothing store in Europe. The child's dress and underwear had been
purchased in a Paris department store, the man's suit had been bought from a
very popular chain of men's outfitters in Germany.
    Concerning the bodies, the only clue was
a faded, minute tattoo on the man's right arm. It was of a small white dove,
two centimeters above his wrist.
    Washington, D.C. December 12th It was a
little after eight in the