by Allan Folsom
“They are not coming to Berlin because of Mr. Lybarger, or because they have some idea of what is going on at Charlottenburg. They are coming here because of me. If the police had any real evidence of my involvement with Merriman, they would have already acted. What they have at best is something told, most probably to Osborn, by a man who is now dead. As a result, theirs will be the probing action of policemen. Strategic, calculated but predictable, easily countered by attorneys, and, in one way or another, disposed of.
“Osborn, I agree, is different. He is coming because of his father. He has no allegiance to the police, and I would assume he has merely used them, hoping somehow to get to me. Once he is here, he will take chances. And that, I’m afraid, is a passion and recklessness that could unsettle things.” Scholl turned to face him, and in the bright sunlight Von Holden could see the deep lines of age time had etched into his face.
“They are coming here heavily protected. Find them, watch them. At some point they will try to get in touch with me, to arrange a time and place where we can talk. That will be our opportunity to isolate them. And then you and Viktor will do as is appropriate. In the meantime, you will go to Zurich.”
Von Holden looked off, then back. “Mr. Scholl. You are underestimating these men.”
Until now Scholl had been quiet and matter-of-fact. Gently stroking the cat in his arms, he’d simply laid out a plan of action. But suddenly his face reddened. “You think I like it that these men, as you call them, are still alive or that Lybarger’s woman therapist is causing trouble? All of it, Pascal, all of it is your responsibility!” The cat rose in alarm in Scholl’s arms but he held it firm, stroking it almost mechanically.
“And after these failures you talk back to me. Did you find out why these men were coming to Berlin? Did you understand what they were after and come to me with a plan about what to do about it?”
Schollheld Von Holden in his stare. The prized son, who could do no wrong, suddenly had. It was more than disappointment, it was a betrayal of faith, and Von Holden knew it. Scholl had had to fight Dortmund, Salettl and Uta Baur to make him director of security for the entire Organization and bring him into the inner circle. It had taken months, and he’d finally done it by convincing them that they were the last of the hierarchy still living. They were old, he told them, and had made no provisions for the future. The greatest empires in history had been lost almost overnight because there had been no clear plan for succession of power. In due course, others would take their place at the head of the Organization. The Peipers, perhaps, or Hans Dabritz, Henryk Steiner, even Gertrude Biermann. But that time was not yet here, and until it was the Organization needed to be protected from within. Scholl had known Von Holden as a boy. He had the background and the training and had long proven his ability and loyalty. They needed to trust him, to make him the man in charge of security, if for nothing else than the future safety of everything they had worked to attain.
“I am sorry, sir, to have disappointed you,” Von Holden said in a whisper.
“Pascal.” Scholl softened. “You know that you are the closest thing to a son I have,” he said quietly. The cat relaxed in his arms, and Scholl began to stroke it again. “But today I cannot afford to talk to you like a son. You are Leiter der Sicherheit, and wholly answerable for the security of the entire operation.”
Suddenly Scholl’s hand closed on the scruff of the cat’s neck. With an abrupt wrench, he lifted the animal free of the arm that had been cradling it and held it out over the side of the balcony and the traffic eighty feet below. The animal shrieked, struggling wildly. Screaming, it rolled up in. a ball, clawing at Scholl’s arm and hand, desperately trying to find a way to cling to it.
“You must never question my orders, Pascal.”
Suddenly the cat’s right forepaw shot out, raking a jagged, bloody path across the back of Scholl’s hand.
“Never. Is that clear?” Scholl ignored the cat. Having torn flesh, it struck again and again until Scholl’s arm and wrist ran with blood. But Scholl’s eyes remained on Von Holden’s. There was no pain because nothing else existed. Not the cat. Not the traffic below. Only Von Holden. He was demanding total allegiance. Not just for now but for as long as he lived.
“Yes, sir. It is clear,” Von Holden breathed.
Scholl stared for a moment longer. “Thank you, Pascal,” he said quietly. With that he opened his hand and the cat, screaming in terror, dropped out of sight like a stone. Then Scholl brought his hand in from over the balcony railing, palm held upward, the blood running in a half circle around his Wrist before disappearing into the stark white of his shirt sleeve.
“Pascal,” he said, “when the time comes, be most respectful of the young doctor. Kill him first.”
Von Holden’s eyes went to the hand in front of him and then back to Scholl. “Yes, sir...,” he breathed again.
Then, as if following a dark and ancient ritual, Scholl lowered his hand and Von Holden sunk to his knees and took the hand in his. Bringing it to his mouth, he began to lick the blood from it. First the fingers. Then slowly working his way to the palm and then farther up, to the wrist itself. He did it deliberately and with his eyes open, knowing that Scholl stood above him, watching transfixed. And he continued that way, his tongue and lips suckling the wounds over and over until finally and at length Scholl gave a profound shudder and drew back.
Von Holden stood slowly and for a moment stared, then quickly turned and went back inside, leaving Scholl in private to recover from the fulfillment of his desire.
88
* * *
London, 7:45 A.M.
MILLIE WHITEHEAD, Lebrun’s extraordinarily large bosomed, and therefore his favorite, nurse, had just finished giving him a sponge bath and was fluffing the pillows under his head when Cadoux walked in in full uniform.
“Much easier to get through airports this way,” he said of his uniform, with a broad smile.
Lebrun raised a hand to take his old friend’s. Oxygen was still being fed through tubes to his nose and the way they hung down over his mouth made talking difficult.
“Of course I didn’t come to see you, I came to see a lady,” Cadoux bantered, smiling at Nurse Whitehead. Blushing, she giggled, winked at Lebrun, and then left the room.
Pulling up a chair, Cadoux sat down next to Lebrun. “How are you my friend? How are they treating you?”
For the next dozen or so minutes Cadoux carried on about old times; recalling their days growing up, best friends in the same neighborhood, the girls they’d known, the women they’d finally married, the children they’d had with them, laughed out loud at the vivid memory of running away to enlist in the Foreign Legion then being rejected and escorted abruptly back home by two real legionnaires because they were only fourteen. Cadoux’s smile was broad and he laughed often in a genuine attempt to cheer his wounded comrade:
All the while they talked, the index finger of Lebrun’s .right hand rested on the stainless steel trigger of a .25 caliber automatic, concealed beneath his bedclothes and pointed at Cadoux’s chest. The coded warning from McVey had been absolutely clear. Never mind that Cadoux was an old and cherished friend; there was every indication he was a major conspirator working with the “group,” as they were now calling it. Most likely, it was he who controlled the covert operations within Interpol, Lyon, and he who had ordered the execution of Lebrun’s brother and the attempted murder of Lebrun himself at the Lyon railway station.
If McVey was right, Cadoux had come visiting for one reason: to finish the job on Lebrun himself.
But the more he talked, the more convivial he became, and Lebrun began to wonder if McVey could have been wrong or his information incorrect. Further, how would he dare attempt it when there were armed police standing twenty-four-hour guard just a few feet away on the other side of the door, and the door itself open?
“My friend,” Cadoux said, standing. “Forgive me but I must have a cigarette and I know I can’t do that in here.” Gather
ing his cap, he started toward the door. “I’ll go down to the lounge and come back in a few moments.”
Cadoux left and Lebrun relaxed. McVey had to have been wrong. A moment later, one of the Metropolitan policemen outside his room entered.
“Everything all right, sir?”
“Yes, thank you.”
“Chap here to change your bed.” The policeman stood aside as a large man in the dress of a hospital orderly came in with fresh linens.
“Good day, sir,” the man said with a Cockney accent, setting the linens down on a chair next to the bed. The policeman went back into the hallway.
“We’ll have a little privacy, eh, sir?” he said and, taking two steps, closed the door.
Lebrun’s danger alarm went off. “Why are you closing the door?” he cried out in French. The man turned and smiled. Then suddenly reached across and jerked the tubes from Lebrun’s nose. A split second later, a pillow was shoved over his face and the man’s full weight came down on it.
Lebrun struggled frantically, his right hand digging for the automatic. But the large man’s weight, combined with his own weakness, made it a battle out of Lebrun’s favor. Finally his hand closed around the gun and he fought to bring it up so he could fire into the man’s belly. Abruptly the man’s weight shifted and the gun barrel caught in the sheets. Lebrun grunted, feverishly trying to jerk the pistol free. His lungs screamed for air but there was none. And in that single moment he realized he was going to die, as quickly everything faded to gray, then to an even darker gray that was almost black but wasn’t. He thought he felt someone take the gun from his hand, but he couldn’t be certain. Then he heard a muffled pop and saw the brightest light he’d ever seen.
It would have been impossible for Lebrun to see the orderly tug back the sheets, rip the automatic from his hand and put it to his ear beneath the pillow. In the same way, it would have been as impossible for him to see the bloody rush of his brains and pieces of his skull splatter off the wall next to his bed and cling to the white-painted plaster like so much flecked crimson Jell-O.
Five seconds later, the door opened. Startled, the orderly swung the gun toward it. Cadoux, entering, put up a hand and calmly closed the door behind him. Easing off, the orderly lowered the gun and nodded in the direction of Lebrun. As he did, he glimpsed the revolver as it cleared Cadoux’s service holster.
“What’s that?” he yelled. His cry was drowned out by a thundering explosion.
The Metropolitan police running in from the hallway heard two more shots and found Cadoux standing over the dead man. Lebrun’s .25 automatic still in the orderly’s hand. “This man just shot Inspector Lebrun,” he said.
89
* * *
Brandenburg, Germany.
“THIS CHARLOTTENBURG Palace, where Scholl’s attending this shindig. What is it?” McVey was leaning forward from the backseat as Remmer followed the lead car down a boulevard of magnificent autumn yellow trees and past the burgher houses of the fifteenth-century town of Brandenburg, heading east in bright sunshine toward Berlin.
“What is it?” Remmer glanced up at McVey in the mirror. “A treasure of baroque art. A museum, a mausoleum, a house of a thousand riches particularly dear to the German heart. The summer residence of almost every Prussian king from Friedrich the First to Friedrich Wilhelm the Fourth. If the chancellor lived there now, it would be like the White House and all the great museums of America rolled into one.”
Osborn looked off. The morning sun was working its way higher, lifting a cluster of lakes from dark purple to a brilliant blue. The consummation of all that had happened in the last ten days—so quickly, so brutally, and after so many years—was numbing. The idea of what would unfold in Berlin was even more so. In one way he felt as if he’d been swept up in a surging tide over which he had no control. Yet, at the same time, he had the singular and calming sense that he’d been brought to this point because some unknown hand had guided him, and that whatever lay ahead, however obscure or dangerous or horrifying, would be there for a reason, and that instead of fighting it, he should trust in it. He wondered if that were true for the others, McVey and Noble and Remmer were disparate men, from different worlds, with more than thirty years spread across their ages. Had their lives and his been driven together by the same force he now felt? How could it, when barely a week before he’d never met any of them? Yet what other explanation was there?
Letting his mind drift, Osborn turned his gaze back to the passing countryside, a rolling, gently forested, pastoral land, forever dotted with lakes. Abruptly, and for the briefest moment, his. view was blurred by a large stand of conifers. As quickly they vanished and in the distance he saw sunlight touch the highest spires of a fifteenth-century cathedral. And the perception came that he was right, that they were all here—McVey, Noble, Remmer and himself—because of some greater design, that they were part of a destiny beyond their knowing.
Nancy, France.
THE MORNING sun peeked up over the hills, lighting the brown-and-white farmhouse like a Van Gogh.
Outside, Secret Service agents Alain Cotrell and Jean Claude Dumas relaxed on the front porch, with Dumas Cradling a mug of coffee in one hand and a nine-millimeter carbine in the other. A quarter mile down the long driveway, at the halfway point between the highway and the farmhouse, agent Jacques Montant, a French Famas assault rifle slung over his shoulder, leaned against a tree, watching a parade of ants march in and out of a hole at its base.
Inside, Vera sat at an antique vanity near the front bed-, room window, five handwritten pages of a long love letter to Paul Osborn already done. In them, she was trying to make some sense of all that was happening and had happened since they’d met, and at the same time using them as a diversion against the abrupt ending to his phone call the night before.
At first she’d thought it had been a problem with the telephone system and that he would call back. But he hadn’t, and as the hours stretched on she knew something had happened. What that might be, she refused to consider. Stoically, she’d spent the rest of the evening and most of the night reading over two medical journals she’d brought with her almost as an afterthought when she’d so hurriedly left Paris. Anxiety and fear were impossible companions, and this, she’d been afraid, might be a journey filled with them.
By daybreak, when she’d still had no word, she’d decided to talk to Paul. To say things on paper, she would say if he were there with her and they had time alone. As if; none of this had happened and they were everyday people, finding each other under everyday circumstances. It was all, of course, to keep from being overwhelmed by her own imagination.
Laying down her pen, she stopped to read what she’d written and suddenly burst out laughing. What was intended to have come from the heart was, instead, a rambling, long-winded, pseudo-intellectual treatise on the meaning of life. She’d meant to write a love letter, but what she’d put down was more like a writing sample for a position as an English teacher at a private girls’ school. Still smiling, she tore the pages in quarters and threw them in the wastebasket. It was then she saw the car turn off the highway and start up the long drive toward the house.
As it approached, she could see it was a black Peugeot with blue emergency lights mounted on the roof. As it reached the halfway point, she saw agent Montand step into the roadway with his hands raised, motioning the car to stop. When it did, Montand walked to the driver’s window. A moment later he spoke into his radio, waited for a reply, then nodded and the car proceeded on.
As it neared the house, Alain Cotrell walked out to meet it, and like Montand, motioned the driver to stop. Jean Claude Dumas came up behind him, sliding the carbine from his shoulder.
“Oui, madame,” Alain said, as the driver’s window rolled down and a very attractive woman with dark hair looked out.
“My name is Avril Rocard,” she said in French, flashing a picture I.D., “from the First Prefecture of Paris Police. I am here for Mademoiselle Monneray, to bring her to P
aris at the request of Detective McVey. She’ll know who I mean.” She produced an official order on French government stationery. “By order of Captain Cadoux of Interpol. And at the behest of the prime minister, Francois Christian.”
Agent Cotrell took the paper, looked at it, then handed it back. As he did, Jean Claude Dumas walked to the far side of the car and looked in. Other than the woman, it was empty.
“One moment,” Cotrell said. Stepping back, he took his own radio from his jacket and walked off. As he did, Dumas came back to the driver’s side.
Glancing in her mirror, Avril saw agent Montand behind her, a hundred feet back down the driveway.
A moment later Cotrell abruptly put away his radio and turned back, approaching the car. His entire body language had changed, and Avril could see his hand moving out of sight behind his jacket.
“Is it all right if I open my purse for a cigarette?” Avril said, looking at Dumas.
“Oui,” Dumas nodded, then watched as Avril’s right hand went to her purse for the cigarette. It was her left hand that took him by surprise. There were two quick pops and he fell backward into Cotrell. For an instant, Cotrell was off balance and all he could see was the Beretta in Avril’s hand. It jumped once. And Cotrell grabbed for his neck. Her second shot, the one between the eyes, killed him.
Montand was running toward her, the Famas assault rifle coming up to fire, when she leveled the Beretta. Her first shot hit him in the leg, punching him down and sending the Famas clattering out of reach across the driveway. He was on the ground, gritting his teeth in pain and straining for it, when she walked up. Looking down at him, she raised the pistol slowly. Gave him a moment to think about it, then shot him. Once just under the left eye. Once in the heart.
Then, straightening her jacket, she turned and started for the farmhouse.