by Allan Folsom
Lebrun put a hand to the tubes running in and out of his throat and whispered, hoarsely, “What in God’s name are the East German secret police doing in France? Especially when they no longer exist.”
“I hope and pray McVey will soon be around to tell us,” Noble said soberly.
78
* * *
BY NIGHT, the mangled wreckage of the Paris-Meaux train was even more obscene than by day. Huge worklights illuminated the area as two giant cranes operating from flat cars on the tracks above struggled to remove the twisted, Compressed cars from the side of the embankment.
Late in the afternoon a light mist had begun to fall, and the damp chill woke Osborn from where he slept in the nearby growth of trees. Sitting up, he’d taken his pulse and found it normal. His muscles ached and his right shoulder was badly bruised but otherwise he was in surprisingly good condition. Getting to his feet, he moved through the trees to the edge of the thicket where he could watch the rescue operation and still remain hidden. There was no way to know if McVey had been found, dead or alive, and he dared not go out to inquire for risk of being discovered himself. All he could do was stay concealed and watch, hoping to see or overhear something. It was a terrible, helpless, feeling, but there was nothing else for him to do.
Hunkering down in the sodden leaves, he pulled his jacket around him and for the first time in a long time let his thoughts go to Vera. He let his mind drift back to when they first met in Geneva. And to her smile and the color of her hair and the absolute magic in her eyes when she looked at him. And in that she became everything that love was, or could be.
By nightfall Osborn had heard enough from passing rescue workers and national guardsmen to understand that it had indeed been a bomb that destroyed the train, and he became more certain than ever that he and McVey had been the targets. He. was debating whether or not to go to the National Guard commander and reveal himself in hopes of finding McVey when a fireman working nearby for some reason removed his hat and coat, put them on a temporary police barricade and walked off. It was an invitation he couldn’t let pass. Quickly he stepped out and snatched them up.
Putting the jacket on, he pulled the hat low and moved off through the wreckage, confident he looked official enough to keep from being challenged. Near a tent set up as a media command post, he waded past several reporters and a television crew and found a casualty list. Quickly scanning it, he found only one identified American, a teenage boy from Nebraska. That McVey wasn’t on it meant he’d either walked away, as Osborn had, or was still buried under the hideous sculpture of tangled steel. Looking up, he saw a tall, slim, attractive woman with a press pass around her neck. She obviously had been staring and now she started toward him. Picking up a fire ax, he slung it over his shoulder and walked back into the work area. He looked back once to see if she was following him, but she wasn’t. Setting the ax aside, he moved off into the darkness.
In the distance, he could see the lights of the town of Meaux. Population some forty-odd thousand, he remembered seeing written somewhere. Now and then a plane would take off or land from the small airport nearby. Which was where he would go at first light. He had no idea who McVey had called in London. And with no passport and little money, the best he could do was make his way to the airfield and hope the Cessna would return according to the original plan.
Abruptly, there was a loud shriek and tearing of steel as one of the cranes pulled a passenger car free of the wreckage, lifted it high in the air and swing it back over the top of the embankment and out of sight. A moment later a second crane swung into place, and workers climbed up to secure cables to the next car to be removed. Disheartened, Osborn turned away and went back to the dark of the trees at the top of the hill. Squatting down, he looked off.
How long had he known McVey? Five days, six at most since he first encountered him outside his hotel room in Paris. The memories flooded back. He’d been scared to death, with no idea what the detective was after or why he was even talking to him, but he’d been determined not to show it. Calmly fended off his questions, even lied about the mud on his shoes, all the while praying McVey wouldn’t ask him to empty his pockets and then ask him to explain about the succinylcholine and the syringes. How could either one of them have known how quickly the web would spin, sending them both spiraling headlong into a complex, bloody weave of conspiracy and gunfire that had so abruptly ended here in this awful maze of twisted steel and horror. He wanted to believe that the night would pass without incident and that tomorrow morning he would find McVey on the Meaux airport tarmac waving him toward the waiting Cessna that would fly them to safety. But that was a wish, a dream, and he knew it. As time passed, a truer reality set in: in situations of mass destruction, the longer a person went unfound, the less the chances he would be discovered alive. McVey was out there, all right, maybe even within an arm’s length of where he stood now, and eventually he would be found. All he could hope was that the end had come quickly and mercifully.
And with that hope came a sense of finality, as if McVey had already been found and pronounced dead. Someone he’d only just begun to know and would have wished to know better. The same way a boy, as he grows, might come to know his father. Suddenly Osborn realized there were tears in his eyes, and he wondered why that thought had come to him now. McVey as his father. It was a whimsical, curious thought that just hung there. And the longer it did, the more a feeling of enormous loss began to overtake him.
It was then, while he was trying to break the spell, he realized he’d been staring off for some time, looking down the hill, away from the rescue activity, his attention focused on something in a cluster of trees near the bottom of the embankment. In daylight, because of the thick foliage and the flat light of an overcast sky, it would have been easily missed. It was only now, in darkness, that the spill from the worklights above created the angular shadow that defined it.
Quickly, Osborn started down the steep of the hill. Slipping and sliding on the gravel, grabbing onto small trees for; support, moving from one to the other, he worked his way toward it.
Reaching bottom, he saw the thing was a piece of railroad car, a section of passenger coach that had somehow been ripped intact from the train. It was sitting backward in the brush, the inner part facing out and directly up the hill. Moving closer, he saw it was a complete compartment and the door to it was jammed closed, creased by a massive dent. Then he saw what it was. The car’s lavatory.
“Oh no!” he said out loud. But instead of horror in his voice, there was hilarity.
“Not possible.” Moving closer, he started to laugh. “McVey?” he called as he reached it. “McVey, you in there?”
For a moment there was no reply. Then—
“—Osborn?” came the muffled, uncertain reply from within.
Fear. Relief. Absurdity. Whatever it was, the pin had been stuck in the balloon and Osborn burst into laughter. Roaring, he leaned against the compartment, banging on it with the flat of his hands, then pounding his thighs with his fists, wiping the tears from his cheeks.
“Osborn! What the hell are you doing? Open the damn door!”
“You all right?” Osborn yelled back.
“Just get me the hell out of here!”
As quickly as the laughter came, it vanished. Still in his fireman’s jacket, Osborn rushed back up the hill. Moving purposefully past French troops patrolling with submachine guns, he went to the main salvage area. Under the glare of worklights, he found a short-handled iron crow-bar. Slipping it under his jacket, he walked back the way he had come. At the top of the hill, he stopped and looked around. Certain no one was watching, he stepped over the side and went back down.
Five minutes later there was a loud snap and a creak of steel as the staved-in door popped off its hinges and McVey stepped out into fresh air. His hair and clothes were disheveled, he smelled like hell and had an ugly welt over one eye the size of a baseball. But, other than a silvery five o’clock shadow, he was amazingly s
ound.
Osborn grinned. “You wouldn’t be that guy Livingston?”
McVey started to say something, then, through the darkness, he saw the giant salvage cranes working what was left of the destruction backlit farther up the hill. He didn’t move, just stared.
“Jesus Christ—” he said.
Finally his eyes found Osborn. Who they were, why they were here, meant nothing. They were alive while others were not. Reaching out, they embraced strongly, and for the longest moment clung there. It was more than a spontaneous gesture of relief and camaraderie. It was a spiritual sharing of something only those who have stood in death’s shadow, and been spared, could understand.
79
* * *
VON HOLDEN sat alone near the back of the Art Deco bar in the Hôtel Meaux sipping a Pernod and soda, listening to stories of the rail disaster from the noisy crowd of media types who’d spent the day covering it. The bar had become an end-of-the-day hangout for veteran reporters, and most were still connected via beeper or walkie-talkie to colleagues who’d remained on the scene. If anything new happened, they—and Von Holden—would know it in a millisecond.
Von Holden looked at his watch and then at the clock over the bar. His LeCoultre analog watch had kept precision time with a cesium atomic clock in Berlin for five years. A cesium atomic clock has an accuracy rate of plus or minus one second every three thousand years. Von Holden’s watch read 9:17. The clock over the bar was one minute and eight seconds slow. Across the room, a girl with short blond hair and an even shorter skirt sat smoking and drinking wine with two men who appeared to be in their mid-twenties. One was thin and wore heavy rimmed glasses and looked like a graduate student. The other had a sturdier build and wore expensive slacks and a maroon cashmere sweater, accented by a mop of long curly hair. The way he tilted back on the legs of his chair, talking and gesturing with both hands, stopping now to light a fresh cigarette and toss the match in the direction of the ashtray on the table, gave him the casually spoiled look of a wealthy playboy on holiday. The girl’s name was Odette. She was twenty-two and the explosives expert who had set the charges along the track. The thin man in the glasses and the playboy were international terrorists. All three worked out of the Paris sector and were there awaiting Von Holden’s direction should either Osborn or McVey be discovered alive.
Von Holden felt they were lucky to be there at all. It had taken the Paris sector several hours to locate McVey and Osborn. But shortly after 6:00 A.M., a EuroCity ticket seller had spotted them at the Gare de l’Est and Von Holden had been alerted that they had tickets for the 6:30 train to Meaux. He had briefly debated trying to kill them in the station, then decided against it. There was too little time to mount a proper attack. And even if there had been, there was no guarantee of success and they would risk an onrush of antiterrorist police. It was better to do it differently.
At 6:20, ten minutes before the Paris-Meaux train left the Gare de l’Est, a lone motorcyclist rode out of Paris on Autoroute N3 to a rendezvous with Odette at a railroad grading two miles east of Meaux. He carried with him four packets of C4 plastic explosive.
Working together, they laid the explosive and set the charge just as the train reached the grading, then immediately disappeared into the countryside. Three minutes later, the full weight of the engine compressed the detonators, sending the entire train careening down the embankment at seventy miles an hour.
It might have been argued that they could have as easily moved one of the rails out of alignment, had the same effect, yet made the whole thing look like an accident.
Yes and no.
A train wreck, accidental or deliberate, did not ensure the death of those targeted. A moved rail could easily be overlooked in a preliminary investigation and a follow-up might or might not uncover it. A flagrant act of terrorism, however, could be laid to a hundred different causes. And a-bomb, later thrown into a hospital ward packed with survivors, would only serve to validate the act.
Glancing at his watch once again, Von Holden got up and left the room without so much as a glance at the threesome, then took the elevator to his room. Before leaving Paris, he’d secured enhanced photographs of the front-page newspaper photos of Osborn and McVey. By the time he reached Meaux, he’d studied them carefully and had a much stronger sense of whom he was dealing with.
Paul Osborn, he decided, was relatively harmless if it ever came to the point of dealing with him. They were about the same age and from his thin features, Osborn seamed to be in reasonable shape. But that ended the similarity. There was a look to a man who’d been trained in combat or even self-defense. Osborn had none of it. If anything, he looked “displaced.”
McVey was different. That he was aging and maybe a little overweight meant nothing. Von Holden saw instantly what it was that had enabled him to kill Bernhard Oven. There was a sense about him ordinary men didn’t have. What he had seen and done in his long career as a policeman was in his eyes, and Von Holden knew instinctively that once he got hold of you, figuratively or physically, he would never let you go. Spetsnaz training had taught him there was only one way to deal with a man like McVey. And that was to kill him the moment you saw him. If you didn’t, you would regret it forever.
Entering his room, Von Holden locked the door behind him and sat down at a small table. Opening a briefcase, he took out a compact shortwave radio. Clicking it on, he punched in a code and waited. It would take eight seconds before he had a clear channel.
“Lugo,” he signed on, identifying himself.
“Ecstasy,” he said. Code name for the operation that had begun with Albert Merriman and was now focused on McVey and Osborn.
“E.B.D.”—European Bloc Division—he followed. “Nichts.”—Nothing.
Von Holden punched in his sign-off code and clicked off. He’d just informed the Organization’s European Bloc Division that there was no confirmation on liquidation of the Ecstasy fugitives. Officially they were still “at large,” and all operatives within the E.B.D. were to be alerted.
Putting the radio away, Von Holden shut out the light and looked out the window. He was tired and frustrated. By this time at least one of them should have been found. They had been seen boarding the train and it had made no stops. Either they were still under the wreckage or they had vanished like magicians.
Von Holden sat down on the bed and turned on the lamp, then picked up the phone and placed a call to Joanna in Zurich. He hadn’t seen her since the night she’d run hysterical and naked from his apartment.
“Joanna, it’s Pascal. Are you better?” For a moment there was silence. “Joanna?”
“—I haven’t been feeling well,” she said.
He could hear distance and anxiety in her voice. Something had happened to her that night, of course. But she would have no real memory of it because the drugs he’d given her beforehand had been too complex. Her reaction afterward had been akin to a bad LSD trip and that was what she was remembering.
“I was very concerned. I wanted to call sooner but it wasn’t possible. . . . Frankly, you were acting a little crazy that night. Maybe too much cognac and jet lag don’t mix. Maybe too much passion, too, do you think?” He laughed.
“No, Pascal. It wasn’t that.” She was angry. “I’ve had to work very hard with Mr. Lybarger. All of a sudden he has to be able to walk without a cane by this Friday. I don’t know why, either. I don’t know what happened the other night. I don’t like working Mr. Lybarger so hard. It’s not s good for him. I don’t like the way Doctor Salettl treats me or the way he bosses people around.”
“Joanna, let me explain something. Please. I think Doctor Salettl is acting the way he is because he is nervous. This Friday, Mr. Lybarger has to make a speech to the major shareholders of his corporation. The wealth and direction of the entire company depends on whether or not they feel he is competent to resume his position as chairman once more. Salettl is on the spot because the supervision of Mr. Lybarger’s recovery has been his responsibil
ity. Do you understand?”
“Yes— No. I’m sorry, I didn’t know. . . . But it’s still no reason to—”
“Joanna, Mr. Lybarger’s speech is to be given in Berlin. Friday morning, you and I, and Mr. Lybarger and Eric and Edward, will fly there on Mr. Lybarger’s corporate jet.”
“Berlin?” Joanna hadn’t heard the rest, only Berlin. Von Holden could tell by her response that the idea upset her. He could feel that she had had enough and wanted to get back to her beloved New Mexico as quickly as possible.
“Joanna, I understand you must be tired. Maybe I have rushed you too much personally. I care for you, you know that. I’m afraid it is my nature to follow my feelings. Please, Joanna, bear up just a little longer. Friday will be here before you know it, and Saturday you can fly home, directly from Berlin if you like.”
“Home? To Taos?” He could hear the rush of excitement.
“Does that make you happy?”
“Yes, it does.” Designer clothes and castles aside, she was, she’d decided finally, just a plain country girl who liked the simplicity of her life in Taos. And that’s where she wanted to go, more than anything.
“I can count on you then, seeing this through?” Von Holden’s voice was warm and soothing.
“Yes, Pascal. You can count on me being there.”
“Thank you, Joanna. I’m sorry for any discomfort, it wasn’t meant that way. If you wish, I will look forward to one last night together in Berlin. Alone, perhaps to dance and say goodbye. Goodnight, Joanna.”
“Goodnight, Pascal.”
Von Holden could see her smile as she hung up. What he’d said had been enough.
80
* * *
CHIMES WOKE Benny Grossman from a sound sleep. It was 3:15 in the afternoon. Why the hell was the doorbell ringing? Estelle was still at work. Matt would be at Hebrew school, and David would be at football practice. He was in no mood for solicitations; let whoever it was knock on somebody else’s door. He was starting to doze off when the chimes rang again.