by Allan Folsom
Immediately, a razor-sharp image appeared. It was a close-up of a soccer ball. Suddenly a foot flew into the frame and kicked it. As it did, the video camera zoomed back to reveal the manicured lawns at Anlegeplatz and Elton Lybarger’s nephews, Eric and Edward, playfully kicking the soccer ball between them. Then the camera moved to the side to see Elton Lybarger standing with Joanna, watching them. Abruptly, one of the boys kicked the ball in Lybarger’s direction and Lybarger gave it a healthy kick back toward his nephews. Then he looked at Joanna and smiled proudly. And Joanna smiled back, with the same sense of accomplishment.
Then the video cut and Lybarger was seen in his elegant library. Seated before a blazing fire, dressed casually in sweater and slacks, he was talking in detail to someone out of camera range about the axis Paris and Bonn had forged in making the new European Economic Community. Learned and articulate, the clear point he was making was that Britain’s assumed role of “detached moral superiority” only served to keep Britain a malcontent in the equation. And that continuing to play that character would serve neither Britain nor the Economic Community well. His opinion was that there must be a Bonn-London rapprochement for the Community to be the major economic force it was created to be. His discourse ended lightly with a joke that was not a joke. “Of course, what I meant to say was that it should be a Berlin-London rapprochement. Because, as everyone knows, wise lawmakers, refusing to turn back the clock on German unity, have kept the pledge of the last forty years and promised to return the capital to Berlin by the year 2000. In doing so, they have made her once again the heart of Germany.”
Then Lybarger’s image faded and was replaced by something else. Perpendicular and slightly arched, it covered nearly the entire eight feet of the screen’s height. For a moment nothing happened, then the thing turned, hesitated, moved determinedly forward. In that instant everyone recognized what it was. A fully engorged, erect penis.
Abruptly the angle shifted to the silhouette of another man standing in the darkness, watching. Then the angle shifted once more and what the audience saw was Joanna, unclothed and spread-eagled on a large poster bed, her hands and feet tied to the bedposts with lush strands of velvet. Her full breasts clung melon-like to either side of her chest, her legs were comfortably apart, and the dark V where they met undulated gently with the unconscious rhythm of her hips. Her lips were moist. Her eyes, open and glassy, were thrown back, perhaps in anticipation of some ecstasy to come. A portrait of pleasure and consent, she indicated nothing to suggest that any of this was against her will.
And then the man and penis were upon her and she took him wholly and willingly. A complex variety of camera angles recorded the authenticity of the act. The penis strokes were long and forceful, effective, yet unrushed, and Joanna reacted only with increasing pleasure.
A camera angle showed the other man as he stood back. It was Von Holden and he was completely nude. Arms folded over his chest, he watched indifferently.
Then the camera cut back to the bed, and a running time code, clocking the elapsed time from penal insertion to orgasm, appeared in the upper righthand corner of the screen.
At 4:12:04 Joanna visually experienced her first orgasm.
At 6:00:03, an electroencephalographic chart, tracking her brain waves, appeared in the upper middle of the screen. Between 6:15:43 and 6:55:03, she experienced seven separate excessive brain wave oscillations. At 6:57:23 an electroencephalographic chart appeared at the upper left of the screen, representing her male partner’s brain waves. From then until 7:02:07, they were normal. In that time, Joanna had three more episodes of extreme brain wave activity. At 7:15:22, the male’s brain activity increased threefold. As it did, the camera moved in on Joanna’s face. Her eyes were thrown back in her head until only the whites showed and her mouth was open in a silent scream.
At 7:19:19, the male experienced total orgasm.
At 7:22:20, Von Holden stepped into camera range and escorted the male from the room. As they left, two cameras simultaneously focused on the man who had participated in the sex act with Joanna. Documenting without doubt that the man who had been in the bed was the same man who was now leaving the room. There was no question at all who it was, and that he had fully and thoroughly completed the act.
Elton Lybarger.
“Eindrucksvoll!”—Impressive!—Hans Dabritz said as the lights went up and the triangle of abstract paintings slid back into place over the video screen.
“But we’re not going to be showing a video, are we, Herr Dabritz,” Erwin Scholl said sharply. Abruptly his gaze shifted to Salettl.
“Will he be capable of our performance, Doctor?”
“I would like more time, But he is remarkable, as we have seen.” In any other room in the world Salettl’s remark would have drawn laughter, but not here. These were not humorous people. They had witnessed a clinical study upon which a decision was to be based. Nothing else.
“Doctor, I asked you if he will be ready to do what is required. Yes or no?” Scholl’s rapier-like stare cut Salettl in two.
“Yes, he will be ready.”
“No cane! No one to assist his walk!” Scholl goaded him.
“No. No cane. No one to assist his walk.”
“Danke,” Scholl said with contempt. Standing, he turned to Uta.
“I have no reservations.” With that, Von Holden opened the door and he walked out.
72
* * *
AVOIDING THE elevator, Scholl walked down the four flights of gallery stairs with Von Holden at his side. At the street, Von Holden opened the door and they stepped into crisp night air.
A uniformed driver opened the door to a dark Mercedes. Scholl got in first and then Von Holden.
“Go down Savignyplatz,” Scholl said as they moved off.
“Drive slowly,” he said as the Mercedes turned onto a tree-lined square and drove at a crawl along a block of crowded restaurants and bars. Scholl leaned forward staring out, watching the people on the street, how they walked and talked to each other, studying their faces, their gestures. The intensity with which he was doing it made it seem as if it were all new, as if he were seeing it for the first time.
“Turn onto Kantstrasse.” The driver swung onto a block of garish nightclubs and loud cafés.
“Pull over, pleasè,” Scholl said finally. Even though he was being polite, his manner was short and clipped, as if everything was a military order.
A half block down, the driver found a spot on the corner, pulled in and stopped. Sitting back, Scholl folded his hands under his chin and watched the squeeze of young Berliners trafficking relentlessly through the neon colors of their clamorous Pop Art world. From behind the tinted windows, he seemed a voyeur intent upon the pleasures of the world he was watching, but keeping his own distance from it.
Von Holden wondered what he was doing. He’d known something was troubling him the moment he’d picked him up at Tegel Airport and taken him to the gallery. He thought he knew what it was, but Scholl had said nothing and Von Holden thought that whatever it might have been had passed.
But there was no reading Scholl. He was an enigma hidden behind a mask of uncompromising arrogance. It was a temperament he seemed helpless or unwilling to do anything about because it had made him what he was. It was not unusual for him to work his staff eighteen hours a day for weeks and. then either criticize them for not working harder or reward them with an expensive holiday halfway around the world. More than once he’d walked out of critical labor negotiations at the eleventh hour and disappeared, going alone to a museum or even a movie, and not returning for hours. And when he did return, he expected the problem to have been resolved in his favor. Usually it was, because both sides knew that he would fire his entire negotiating staff if it were not. If that happened, a new staff would be brought in and negotiations would be started from scratch, a. process that would cost both Scholl and the opposition a fortune in new legal fees. The difference was that Scholl could afford it.
In both cases it was more than simply getting done what he wanted done, it was a control mechanism, the deliberate flaunting of a colossal ego. And Scholl not only knew it, he reveled in it.
Von Holden had been Leiter der Sicherheit—director of security—for Scholl’s general European operations—two printing plants in Spain, four television stations, three in Germany, one in France, and GDG, Goltz Development Group, of Düsseldorf, of which Konrad Peiper was president—for eight years; personally hiring the security staffs and supervising their training. Von Holden’s responsibility, however, did not end there. Scholl had other, darker and more far-ranging investments, and their safeguard fell under Von Holden’s title as well.
The situation in Zurich, for example. The pleasuring of Joanna was a case of manipulation requiring skill and delicacy. Salettl believed Elton Lybarger wholly capable of complete recovery: emotionally, psychologically and physically. But early on, he had voiced concern that with no women in his life, when the time came to test Lybarger’s reproductive capacity, a woman he was unfamiliar with could make him uncomfortable, to the point where he might possibly refuse to perform, or at least, be stilted in his performance.
A female who had been his physical therapist for an extended period and who had accompanied him all the way to Switzerland, to look after him there would be someone he trusted and was comfortable with. He would know her touch, even her smell. And though he might never have looked upon her sexually, he would, at the time he was brought to have intercourse with her, be under the influence of a strong sexual stimulant. Fully aroused, yet not wholly aware of the circumstances, he would instinctively sense the familiar and in doing so relax and proceed.
Hence the choosing of Joanna. Far from home, with no immediate family, and not terribly attractive, she would be physically and emotionally vulnerable to a surrogate’s seduction. A seduction whose sole purpose was to ready her for copulation with Elton Lybarger. The need for the surrogate had been Salettl’s calculated judgment and he’d voiced it to Scholl, who had turned to his Leiter der Sicherheit. Von Holden’s personal participation would not only guarantee Lybarger’s security and privacy, it would further demonstrate Von Holden’s allegiance to the Organization.
Across from the street, a digital neon clock over the entrance to a disco read 22:55. Five minutes to eleven. They had been there for thirty minutes and still Scholl sat in silence, absorbed in the young crowds filling the street.
“The masses,” he said quietly. “The masses.”
Von Holden wasn’t sure if Scholl was talking to him or not. “I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t hear what you said.”
Scholl turned his head and his eyes found Von Holden’s. “Herr Oven is dead. What happened to him?”
Von Holden had been right in the first place. Bernhard Oven’s failure in Paris had been bothering Scholl all along, but it was only now that he’d chosen to discuss it.
“I would have to say he made an error in judgment,” Von Holden said.
Abruptly Scholl leaned forward and told the driver to move on, then turned to Von Holden.
“We had no problems for a very long time, until Albert Merriman surfaced. That he and the factors surrounding him were eliminated as quickly and efficiently as they were only proved that our system continues to work as designed. Now Oven is killed. Always a risk in his profession, but troubling in its implication that the system might not be as efficient as we presumed.”
“Herr Oven was working alone, operating on information provided him. The situation now is under control of the Paris sector,” Von Holden said.
“Oven was trained by you, not the Paris sector!” Scholl snapped angrily He was doing what he always did, making it personal. Bernhard Oven worked for Von Holden, therefore his failure was Von Holden’s.
“You are aware I have given Uta Baur the go-ahead.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then you realize the mechanisms for Friday night are, by now, already in place. Stopping them would be difficult and embarrassing.” Scholl’s stare penetrated Von Holden the same way it had Salettl. “I’m sure you understand.”
“I understand. . . .”
Von Holden sat back. It would be a long night. He’d just been ordered to Paris.
73
* * *
A DAMP fog swirled around and it had started to mist. The yellow headlamps of the few cars still out cut an eerie swath as they moved up the boulevard St.-Jacques past the telephone kiosk.
“Oy, McVey!” Benny Grossman’s voice cut through three thousand miles of underwater fiber-optic cable like bright sunshine. Twelve fifteen, Tuesday morning in Paris, was seven fifteen, Monday evening in New York, and Benny had just come back into the office to check messages after a very long day in court.
Down the hill, through the drizzle and the trees that separated the two-lane street, McVey could just see the hotel. He hadn’t dared call from the room and didn’t want to chance the lobby if the police came back.
“Benny, I know, I’m driving you crazy—”
“No way, McVey!” Benny laughed. Benny always laughed. “Just send my Christmas bonus in hundreds. So go ahead, drive me crazy.”
Glancing out at the street, McVey felt the reassuring heft of the .38 under his jacket, then looked back to his notes.
“Benny. Nineteen sixty-six, Westhampton Beach. An Erwin Scholl—who is he? Is he still alive? If so, where is he? Also 1966—early, the spring, or even late fall of sixty-five, three unsolved murders, professional jobs. In the states of—”
McVey checked his notes again. “Wyoming, California, New Jersey.”
“A snap, boobalah. And while I’m at it why don’t I find out who the hell really killed Kennedy.”
“Benny, if I didn’t need it—” McVey looked out toward the hotel. Osborn was tucked in the room with the tall man’s Cz, the same as the first time, and with the same orders not to answer the phone or open the door for anyone but .him. This was the kind of business McVey heartily disliked, being in danger with no idea where it might come from or what it might look like. Most of his last years had been spent picking up the pieces and putting together evidence after drug dealers had concluded business transactions. Most of the time it was safe, because men who were dead usually didn’t try to kill you.
“Benny”—McVey turned back to the phone—"the victims would have been working in some kind of high-tech field. Inventors, precision tool designers, scientists maybe, even a college professor. Somebody experimenting with extreme cold—three, four, five hundred degrees below zero cold. Or maybe, the reverse—somebody exploring heat. Who were they? What were they working on when killed? Now, last: Microtab Corporation. Waltham, Massachusetts, 1966. Are they still in business? If so, who runs the shop, who owns them? If not, what happened to them and who owned them in 1966?”
“McVey—what am I, Wall Street? The IRS? The Department of Missing Persons? Just punch this into a computer and out comes your answers?—When the hell you want it, New Year’s 1995?”
“I’m going to call you in the morning.”
“What?”
“Benny, it’s very, very important. If you draw a blank, if yon need help, call Fred Hanley at the FBI in L.A. Tell him it’s for me, that I asked for the assistance.” McVey paused. “One other thing. If you haven’t heard from me by noon tomorrow, your time, call Ian Noble at Scotland Yard and give him everything you have.”
“McVey—” Benny Grossman’s voice lost its testy ebullience. “You in trouble?”
“Lots.”
“Lots? What the hell’s that mean?”
“Hey, Benny, I owe you—”
Osborn stood in the darkened window looking down at the street below. The fog was thick and the traffic almost nonexistent. No one passed on the sidewalks. People were home asleep, waiting for Tuesday. Then he saw a figure walk under a streetlamp and cross the boulevard toward the hotel. He thought it was McVey, but he couldn’t be sure. Pulling the curtain back across the window, he sat
down and clicked on a small bedside lamp, illuminating Bernhard Oven’s .22 Cz. He felt like he’d been hiding for half a century, yet it had only been eight days since he’d first looked up and had seen Albert Merriman sitting across from him in the Brasserie Stella.
How many had died in eight days? Ten, twelve? More. If he’d never met Vera and come to Paris, each one of those people would still be alive. Was the guilt his? There was no answer because it was not a reasonable question. He had met Vera and he had come to Paris, and nothing could change what had happened since.
In the last hours, while McVey had been gone, he’d tried not to think of Vera. But in the moments when he did, when he couldn’t help not think of her, he had to tell himself she was all right, that the inspectors who had taken her to her grandmother’s in Calais were good, trustworthy cops, and not a corrupt tentacle of whatever the hell was going on.
Violence had struck him at an early age and its after-math had been with him ever since. The nightmares after Merriman had been shot, the crippling emotional breakdown that had ended on the floor in the attic hideaway in Vera’s arms had been little more than a desperate wrenching against an ungodly truth: that the death of Albert Merriman had settled nothing. The horrid, scar-faced killer he’d pursued from childhood had been simply replaced by a name and precious little else. In leaving Vera’s building—in coming out of hiding, risking the tall man, the Paris police and the chance that McVey, once face to face, would arrest him on the spot—he was admitting that he could no longer go it alone. It wasn’t mercy he’d come to McVey for, it was help.
A knock at the door startled him like a pistol shot. His chin came up and his head snapped around as if he’d been caught somewhere with his pants down. He stared at the door, uncertain if his mind was playing tricks.
The knock came again.
If it was McVey he’d say something or use his key. Osborn’s fingers closed around the Cz just as the knob began to turn. The door pressed inward just enough to insure it was locked. As quickly the pressure ceased.