The Day After Tomorrow

by Allan Folsom

  “What do you think?” McVey said to Remmer as the elevator doors slid closed. “They know we’re here?”

  Remmer shrugged. “All I can tell you is that we were not followed from the plane to Berlin. Nor from the restaurant to here. But who knows what eyes we don’t see. Safer to assume they know, I think, yes?”

  Noble glanced at McVey. Remmer was right: safer to be on guard than not. Even if the “group” didn’t know they J were here, they had to believe they soon would. They’d seen too much of the way they worked already.

  At the sixth floor, the elevator stopped and they walked out into a reception area where they were ushered into a i private office and asked to wait.

  “Do you know this judge? Gravenitz? That his name?” McVey looked around at what was obviously a civil servant’s office. The plain steel desk and chair that went with it would fit into any public building in L.A. So would the inexpensive bookcase and the cheap prints on the wall.

  Remmer nodded. “Not well, but yes.”

  “What can we expect?”

  “Depends what Honig told him. Unquestionably it was enough for him to agree to see us. But don’t think because Honig set it up or Gravenitz agreed to see us right away it’s guaranteed. Gravenitz will take convincing.

  McVey glanced at his watch and sat down on a corner of the desk, then looked at Osborn.

  “I’m okay.” Osborn walked over and leaned against the wall by the window. McVey hadn’t forgotten his assault on Merriman and wouldn’t. That was something else he didn’t want to think about, not now. Still, it hung there because he knew at some point it would become an issue.

  The door opened and Diedrich Honig came in. Judge Gravenitz, he apologized, had been delayed but would see them momentarily. Then he looked at Noble and told him a message had come for him to call his London office immediately.

  “A break, maybe?” Noble went to the desk and picked up the phone. In thirty seconds he had his office. Twenty seconds after that he was transferred to the chief homicide superintendent of the London police.

  “Oh God, no,” he said a moment later. “How did it happen? He had a twenty-four-hour guard.”

  “Lebrun,” McVey breathed.

  “Well where in God’s name is he now?” Noble said irritably. “Find him and when you get him, hold him in isolation. When you have any information at all, relay it through Inspector Remmer’s office in Bad Godesberg.” Hanging up, Noble turned to McVey with the details of Lebrun’s murder and the fact that Cadoux had disappeared in the confusion immediately following his shooting of the orderly.

  “I don’t have to bet whether the orderly’s dead,” McVey said through clenched teeth.

  “No, you don’t.”

  Running a hand through his hair, McVey walked across the room. When he turned back he was looking directly at Honig. “You ever lose one of your friends in the line of duty, Herr Honig?”

  “You don’t do this game without it . . . ,” Honig said quietly.

  “Then how much longer do we have to wait for Judge Gravenitz?” It wasn’t a question, it was a demand.

  94

  * * *

  GRANDIOSE, SHORT and red faced, with a shock of silver white hair, district Kriminal Richter Otto Gravenitz gestured toward a grouping of leather and Burmese teak chairs and bade them in German to sit down. Standing until they were seated, he crossed in front of them and sat down behind a massive rococo desk, the soles of his shoes barely reaching down to the oriental carpet beneath them. In contrast to the Spartan decor of the rest of the building, Gravenitz’s office was a rich oasis of taste, antiques and wealth. It was also a well-calculated display of power and position.

  Turning to the others, Honig explained in English that because of Scholl’s prominence and the severity of the charge against him, Judge Gravenitz had chosen to conduct the deposition himself, without the presence of a state prosecutor.

  “Fine,” McVey said. “Let’s get on with it.

  Leaning forward, Gravenitz turned on a tape recorder “and, at three twenty-five, they got to business.

  In a brief opening statement, translated into German by Remmer, McVey explained who Osborn was, how he chanced to see his father’s murderer in a Paris café and how, in the absence of police and the fear he would lose sight of him, he had followed him to a park along the Seine. There he gathered the courage to approach and question him, only to have Merriman shot to death moments later by an assailant they believed also to have been in the hire of Erwin Scholl.

  Finished, McVey looked at Osborn measuredly, then gave him the floor and sat down. Remmer translated as Gravenitz swore Osborn in, then Osborn began his testimony. In it, he restated what McVey had said and then simply told the truth.

  Sitting back, Gravenitz studied Osborn and at the same time listened to the translation. When Osborn finished, he glanced at Honig, then back to Osborn. “You are certain Merriman was your father’s murderer? Certain after nearly thirty years?

  “Yes, sir,” Osborn said.

  “You must have hated him.”

  McVey shot Osborn a warning glance. Be careful, it said. He’s probing.

  “You would too,” Osborn said without flinching.

  “Do you know why Erwin Scholl would have wanted your father to be killed?”

  “No, sir,” Osborn replied quietly and McVey breathed a sigh of relief. Osborn was doing well. “You have to remember I was a little boy. But I saw the man’s face and I never forgot it. And I never saw it again until that night in Paris. I don’t know how much more I can tell you.”

  Gravenitz waited, then looked to McVey.

  “Are you certain, beyond doubt, that the Erwin Scholl who is now here in Berlin is the same man who hired Albert Merriman?”

  McVey stood up. “Yes, sir.”

  “Why do you believe the individual who shot Herr Merriman was also employed by Herr Scholl?”

  “Because Scholl’s men had tried to kill him before and because Merriman had been in hiding for a long time. They finally tracked him down.”

  “And you are certain, beyond doubt, Scholl was behind it.”

  This was the kind of thing McVey had tried to avoid, but Gravenitz, like respected judges everywhere, had a second sense, the same kind parents had, and it carried the same warning: Lie and you’re dead. “Can I prove it? No, sir. Not yet.”

  “I see . . . ,” Gravenitz said.

  Scholl was an international figure, huge and important, and Gravenitz was teetering. A thinking judge would no more casually sign an arrest warrant for Erwin Scholl than he would for the chancellor of the country, and McVey knew it. And Osborn’s deposition, strong as it was, bottom line, was in reality hearsay and nothing more. Something had to be done to push Gravenitz over or they would have to go to Scholl without a writ and that was the last thing he wanted to do. Remmer must have sensed it too because suddenly he was standing up, pushing back his chair.

  “Your Honor,” he said in German. “As I understand it, one of the primary reasons you agreed to see us on such short notice was because two police officers working on the case were shot. One could have been coincidental, but two—”

  “Yes, that was a strong consideration,” Gravenitz said.

  “Then you would know one was a New York detective, killed right in his own home. The second, a highly respected member of the Paris police, was seriously wounded at the main rail station in Lyon, then taken to London and put in a hospital under a false name and a twenty-four-hour police guard.” Remmer paused, then continued. “A short time ago he was shot to death in that very same hospital room.”

  “I’m sorry—” Gravenitz said, genuinely.

  Remmer accepted his sentiment, then went on. “We have every reason to believe the man responsible was working for Scholl’s organization. We need to interrogate Herr Scholl personally, Your Honor, not talk to his lawyers. Without a writ we will never be able to do that.

  Gravenitz put his palms together and sat back, then looked to McVey,
who was staring right at him, waiting for his decision. Expressionless, he leaned forward and made a note on a legal pad in front of him. Then, running a hand through his silvery mane and glancing at Honig, his eyes found Remmer.

  “Okay,” he said in English. “Okay.”

  95

  * * *

  MCVEY WAITED with Noble and Osborn until Gravenitz signed the Haftbefehl, the arrest warrant for Erwin Scholl, and presented it to Remmer. Then, thanking Gravenitz and shaking hands with Honig, the four left the judicial chambers and took Gravenitz’s private elevator to the garage.

  They were walking on eggshells and knew it, Osborn included. For all intents, the court order now resting in McVey’s pocket, as Honig had suggested, was all but useless. Presented to Scholl in your everyday knock and notice—”Good evening, sir, we are the police and have a warrant for your arrest and this is why”—Scholl might be carted off to jail like John Doe, but within the hour would come a battery of attorneys who would do all the talking, and in the end Scholl would walk out, most likely never having said a word.

  In the weeks that followed, a volume of depositions would be filed by Scholl and a number of extremely distinguished others vouching for Scholl’s character and swearing his total noninvolvement, denying he’d ever known, had business with or had reason to have business with Osborn’s father or any of the deceased; denying he’d ever heard of, let alone known and had dealings with, a man called Albert Merriman; avowing he’d been else-where and not at his Long Island estate during the dates mentioned; denying he’d ever heard of, let alone had dealings with, a former Stasi agent named Bernhard Oven; avowing he’d been in the United States and nowhere near Paris at the time of Merriman’s murder. And those sworn testimonies, backed by the prominence of those who had given them, would in effect, warrant Scholl’s complete innocence. Adding to that the fact there was no real evidence, the charges would be promptly dismissed.

  And then, perhaps a year or more later, with Scholl’s name and person fully distanced and the episode all but forgotten, would come the cold, detached retribution Honig had warned about. And McVey, Noble, Remmer and Osborn would see their careers and then their lives crumble into nothing. Friends, co-workers and people they’d never heard of would come forward with accusations of theft, corruption, sexual depravity, malpractice and worse. Their families would be held up to ridicule and their once-proud names would be splashed across media headlines for as long as it took to ruin them. Compared to the]m, Humpty-Dumpty would be a great granite edifice, chiseled eternally whole alongside the other grand survivors atop the cliffs at Mount Rushmore.

  With a squeal of tires Remmer wheeled out of the garage and onto Hardenbergstrasse with a federal police escort car right behind.

  Five minutes later, he pulled into a garage on a street across from the twenty-two-story glass-and-steel Europa Center. “Auf Wiedersehen. Danke,” he said into his radio.

  “Auf bald.” See you later. The escort car accelerated off in traffic.

  I assume you feel we’re safe,” Noble said, as Remmer pulled into a spot away from the entrance.

  “Sure we’re safe.” Getting out, Remmer lifted the submachine gun from its door holder and locked it in the trunk. Then, lighting a cigarette, he led them down a ramp, through a steel utility door and along a corridor filled with electrical and plumbing conduit that ran directly under the street above and connected to the Europa Center complex on the far side.

  “Do we know where Scholl is?” McVey’s voice echoed in the long chamber.

  “The Grand Hotel Berlin. On Friedrichstrasse, across the Tiergarten. From here, a long walk for an aging gentleman like yourself.” Remmer grinned at McVey, then i pushed through a fire door at the end of the corridor Stabbing out his cigarette in an ashtray, he stopped at a service elevator and pressed the button. The door opened almost immediately and the four entered. Remmer punched the sixth-floor button, the doors closed and they started up. It was only then that Osborn realized Remmer had been carrying a gun at his side the entire time.

  Looking at the three as they stood there silently in the pale light of the elevator, he felt wholly out of place, as if he were a fifth for bridge or the best man at an ex-wife’s wedding. These were veteran policemen, professionals, whose lives were intertwined in that world like so much muscle and bone. The warrant in McVey’s pocket had come from one of the state’s most prestigious criminal judges and the man they were going up against was very nearly a world figure who would have an army of his own. McVey had told him the reason he was coming with them to Berlin was to give a deposition, and he had. And now there was no need for him. Was he so naive as to believe McVey was actually going to go the next step and honor what he’d said and let him come along when he confronted Scholl? Suddenly a knot tightened in his stomach. McVey didn’t give a damn about Osborn’s personal war. His agenda was his and nobody else’s.

  “What is it?” McVey caught him staring at him.

  “Just thinking,” Osborn said quietly.

  “Don’t overdo it.” McVey didn’t smile.

  The elevator slowed and then stopped. The door opened and Remmer stepped out first. Satisfied, he led them down a carpeted hallway. They were in a hotel. The Hotel Palace. Osborn saw a brochure on a table as they passed.

  Then Remmer stopped and knocked on the door to room 6132. The door opened and a stocky, tough-looking detective ushered them into a large suite that had two good-sized bedrooms connected by a narrow hallway. The windows in both rooms angled out toward the green of the Tiergarten park, with the window in the first room looking at an angle toward rooms in what appeared to be a newer wing.

  Remmer slipped the gun inside his jacket and turned to talk to the detective who had let them in. McVey went into the hallway and looked into the second bedroom. Then came back. Noble wasn’t particularly fond of the proximity of the new wing, which had any number of rooms that could see, albeit on a slant, into theirs, and said so. McVey agreed.

  The stocky detective threw up his hands and told them with a heavy accent they’d been lucky to get rooms at all, let alone a suite. Berlin was alive with trade shows and conventions. Even the federal police didn’t have a lot of pull when rooms had been overbooked three months in advance.

  “Manfred, in that case, we’re overjoyed,” McVey said. Remmer nodded, then said something in German to the detective and the man left. Remmer locked the door behind him.

  “You and I’ll camp out here,” McVey said to Remmer. “Noble and Osborn can have the other room.” Crossing to the window, he fingered the feather-light material of the draw shade and looked down at the traffic on the Kurfürstendamm below. “Phones secured?” His gaze lifted to the dark expanse that was the Tiergarten across the street.

  “Two lines.” Remmer lit a cigarette and took off his leather jacket, revealing a muscular upper body and an old-fashioned leather shoulder holster that cradled what Osborn now saw was a very large automatic.

  McVey pulled off his own jacket and looked at Noble. “Check on the situation with Lebrun, huh? See if they’ve found who the shooter was. How he got in. What the word is on Cadoux. See if anybody knows where he went, where he is now. We need to determine if he was there by chance or on purpose.” Hanging up his jacket, he looked at Osborn. “Make yourself at home. We’re gonna be here for a while.” Then he went into the bathroom and washed his hands and face. When he came out he was drying his hands on a towel and talking to Remmer.

  “This Charlottenburg deal tomorrow night. Let’s find out what it is and who’s going to be there. I trust your people in Bad Godesberg can do that for us.”

  Osborn left them, went into the second bedroom and looked around. He was working like hell to control the paranoia growing inside him. Twin beds with olive-and blue bedspreads. Small table between the beds. Two small chests of drawers. A TV. A window looking out. Its own bathroom. He knew McVey’s mind was tracking the whole, a field officer with a slim ace up his sleeve maneuvering a small combat un
it against a king’s army and searching every way possible to gain advantage against it. Osborn wasn’t even in his thoughts. He’d been purposely roomed with Noble so McVey wouldn’t find himself in a position where they would be alone and Osborn might ask questions. Because then McVey would be in the awkward situation of having to explain why Osborn would not be going along when they went to meet Scholl. That was smart. String him along. Save it to the last minute. Just go out the door saying, “Sorry, this is police business.” Then leave him in the custody of the federal police waiting out side in the hallway.

  96

  * * *

  “PRIVATE DINNER . Black tie. One hundred guests. Invitation only.” Remmer was sitting in his shirt sleeves at a small table, a coffee cup in one hand, a cigarette in the other. In the last hour a half-dozen calls had gone back and forth between Remmer and operatives at the Intelligence Division at Bundeskriminalamt—BKA—Headquarters in Bad Godesberg as they tried to work a profile of the affair at Charlottenburg Palace.

  Osborn sat in the room with them, his sleeves rolled up, I watching McVey pace up and down in his stockinged feet. He’d decided the best thing would be to use McVey as McVey had used him. Quietly, unassumingly. Try to find some way to take advantage of-his situation without giving the police any sense of what he was thinking. The Hotel Palace, he’d learned, was part of the giant Europa-Center complex of shops and casinos smack in the heart of Berlin. The Tiergarten, directly across from them, was like Central Park in New York, huge and sprawling, with roads cutting through it and pathways everywhere. From what he’d been able to conclude from a variety of conversations between the policemen themselves and a battery of phone conversations with others, besides the plainclothes BKA detectives stationed in the hallway outside their room, others were downstairs working two-man shifts watching the lobby, two more were posted on the roof and backup radio-car units were on standby alert. A security check had been done on the guests occupying the six rooms in the wing across with sight lines into theirs. Four were occupied by Japanese tourists from Osaka, the other two by businessmen attending a computer trade show. One was from Munich, the other from Disney World in Orlando. All were who they said they were. What it meant was they were about as safe as they could be even if the “group” had discovered where they were and tried to do something about it. The problem was, it also meant Osborn’s chances of doing anything other than what McVey wanted were all but nil.