by Allan Folsom
Remmer’s eyes darted around the room. He’d gone as far as he could, or would.
“The Nazis were more than Hitler, Manfred.” McVey was no longer the old country lawyer who didn’t get it, he was a voice piercing Remmer’s subconscious, demanding he dig deeper. “Powerful as he was, it wasn’t just him—”
Remmer was staring at the floor. Slowly he raised his “head, and when he did his eyes were filled with horror. “Like a religion, we believe the myths. They are primitive, tribal, inbred . . . and they lie just beneath the surface waiting for the moment in history when a charismatic leader will rise up to give them life. . . . Hitler was the last of them, and to this day we would follow him any-where. . . . It is the old culture, McVey—of Prussia and long before. Teutonic knights riding out of the mists. Full in armor. Swords thrust high in iron-covered fists. Thundering hooves shaking the ground, trampling everything in their path. Conquerors. Rulers. Our land. Our destiny. We are superior. The master race. Pure-blooded German. Blond hair, blue eyes and all.”
Remmer fixed McVey with a stare. Then, turning away, shook out a cigarette, lit it and crossed the room to sit down on a couch by himself. It was as far away as he could get from the others. Hunching forward, he pulled an ashtray toward him and looked at the floor. The cigarette between his nicotine-stained fingers remained untouched. The smoke from it wisped toward the ceiling.
103
* * *
OSBORN LAY in the dim light of daybreak listening to Noble’s heavy breathing as it rose from the bed across from him. McVey and Remmer were asleep in the other room. They’d turned out the lights at 3:30, it was now a quarter to six. He doubted he’d slept two hours.
Since they’d been in Berlin, he’d felt McVey’s growing frustration, even despair, as they’d tried to tear away the layers protecting Erwin Scholl. It was the reason McVey had put Remmer on the spot, trying, however brutally, to uncover some essential none of them had been able to grasp. And he had—it wasn’t Teutonic knights riding out of the mist Remmer had been talking about. It was arrogance. The idea that they or anyone could dub themselves the “master race” and then set out to destroy everyone else in order to prove it. The word fit Scholl like a condom, the conceit of a man who could manipulate and murder and at the same time tout himself as father confessor to kings and presidents. It was an attitude they would have to deal with when they met Scholl face-to-face. Yet that’s all it was, an angle, an edge up. It wasn’t concrete.
Lybarger was. And Osborn was certain he remained central to everything. Yet there seemed to be nothing more they could uncover about him than the little they already had. The only thing of promise was that Dr. Salettl was on the Charlottenburg guest list, but so far the BKA had been unable to find him anywhere. Austria, Germany, or Switzerland. If he was coming, where was he?
Somehow, some way, there had to be more. But what? And where to find it?
* * *
McVey was awake, making notes, as Osborn came through the door.
“We keep assuming Lybarger has no family. But how do we know for certain?” McVey said forcefully.
“I’m an Austrian physician in Carmel, California, working with a gravely ill Swiss patient for seven months. Little by little he’s getting better. A level of trust is developing. If he had a wife, child, brother—”
“He’d want them to know how he was,” McVey filled in.
“Yes. And if he was a stroke victim like Lybarger, he would have trouble with his speech and probably his handwriting. Communicating would be a problem, so he’d, ask me to do it for him. And I would. Not a letter, but a call. At least once a month, probably more.”
Remmer, awake now, sat up. “Telephone company records.”
Little more than an hour later, a fax came in from FBI Special Agent Fred Hanley in Los Angeles.
Page after page of telephone calls initiated from Salettl’s private line at the Palo Colorado Hospital in Carmel, California. Seven hundred and thirty-six calls in all. Hanley had circled in red the more than fifteen separate numbers around the world made to Erwin Scholl, most of the rest .were either local, or to Austria or Zurich. Interspersed among them, however, were twenty-five calls made to country code 49—Germany. The city code was 30— Berlin.
McVey put down the pages and turned to Osborn. “You’re on a roll, Doctor.” He glanced at Remmer. “It’s your town, what do we do?”
“Same as L.A. We look her up.”
7:45 A.M.
“This Karolin Henniger,” McVey said, as Remmer pulled the Mercedes up in front of the expensive antique gallery on Kantstrasse. “I don’t think we can assume she’s a direct connection to Lybarger. She could be a relative of Salettl’s, a friend, even a lover.”
“I guess we’ll find out, won’t we?” McVey opened the door and got out. The plan was his and McVey let him run with it. He was an American doctor trying to locate a Dr. Salettl for a colleague in California. Remmer was a German friend, along to translate if Karolin Henniger, did not speak English. Whatever she said, they’d take it from there.
McVey and Noble watched from the Mercedes as they went into the building. Across the street, backup BKA detectives kept surveillance from a light green BMW.
Earlier, as Remmer had-run down Karolin Henniger’s name and address, McVey had called an old friend in Los Angeles, Cardinal Charles O’Connel. Scholl, McVey knew, was Catholic and a major fund-raiser for both the New York and Los Angeles archdioceses and therefore would know O’Connel well. This was the one area where Scholl was like any other Catholic. If a cardinal made a personal request, it was granted, graciously and without question. McVey was in Berlin, he’d told O’Connel, and asked if the cardinal could arrange a late-afternoon meeting between himself and Scholl, who was also in Berlin. It was important. O’Connel did not ask why, only said he would do what he could and get back.
“It’s important to understand,” Remmer said, as he and Osborn climbed up the narrow stairs to the apartments on the gallery’s top floor, “this woman has committed no crime and is under no obligation to answer questions. If she doesn’t want to talk, she doesn’t have to.”
“Fine.” Legal restrictions were something Osborn didn’t want to think about. They were running out of time; getting some kind of a step up on Scholl was all that mattered.
Apartments 1 and 2 were immediately right and left at the top of the stairs. Apartment 3, at the end of a short hallway, was Karolin Henniger’s.
Osborn reached the door first. Glancing at Remmer, he knocked. For a moment there was silence, then they heard footsteps, the dead bolt was thrown and the door opened to the chain lock. An attractive woman in a business suit looked out at them. She had short salt-and-pepper hair and was probably in her mid forties.
“Karolin Henniger?” Osborn asked politely.
She looked at Osborn, then past him to Remmer. “Ja—” she said.
“Do you speak English?”
“Yes.” She glanced at Remmer again. “Who are you? What do you want?”
“My name is Osborn. I’m a doctor from the United States. We’re trying to locate someone you might know— a Doctor Helmuth Salettl.”
Suddenly the woman went white. “I know no one by that name,” she said. “No one, I’m sorry. Auf Wiedersehen!”
Stepping back, she shut the door. They heard the dead bolt fall and she shouted someone’s name.
Osborn pounded on the door. “Please, we need your help!”
From inside, they heard her talking, her voice trailing away. Then came the distant thud of a door slam.
“She’s going out the back.” Osborn turned for the stairs.
Remmer put out a hand, restraining him. “Doctor, I warned you. She’s within her rights, there’s nothing we can do.”
“Maybe you can’t!” Osborn pushed past him.
McVey and Noble were in an exchange about the likelihood that “Salettl himself might be the surgeon responsible for the headless bodies when Osborn came out the front do
or on the run.
“Come on!” he yelled, then cut a corner and disappeared down an alley.
Osborn was going at full speed when he saw them. Karolin Henniger had unlocked the door to a beige Volkswagen van and was hurrying a young boy inside.
“Wait!” he yelled. “Wait! Please!”
Osborn reached the car just as she fired the engine.
“Please, I have to talk to you!” he begged. There was a screech of tires and the car accelerated forward. “Don’t!” Osborn was running alongside. “I won’t harm you—”
It was too late. Osborn saw McVey and Noble jump back as the car reached the end of the alley. Then it fish-tailed onto the street and was gone.
“We took a chance, it didn’t work. Sometimes it doesn’t,” McVey said, minutes later, as they got into the Mercedes and Remmer drove off.
Osborn looked at Remmer in the mirror; he was angry. “You saw her face when I mentioned Salettl. She knows, dammit. About Salettl and, I bet, Lybarger.”
“Maybe she does, Doctor,” McVey said quietly. “But she’s not Albert Merriman, and you can’t try to kill her to find out.
104
* * *
SUNLIGHT SUDDENLY streamed in through porthole windows as the sixteen-seat corporate jet broke the cloud deck and banked northeast for the ninety-minute flight to Berlin.
Joanna sat back and for a moment closed her eyes at the release. Switzerland, as beautiful as it was, was behind her. By this time tomorrow she would be at Tegel Airport in Berlin waiting for her flight to Los Angeles.
Across from her, Elton Lybarger dozed peacefully. If he had any concern about the events to take place later in the day, none showed. Dr. Salettl, looking pale and tired, sat in a swivel chair facing him, making notes in black leather notebook in his lap. Occasionally he glanced up to converse in German with Uta Baur, who had flown in from a showing in Milan to accompany them to Berlin. In the seats directly behind her, Lybarger’s nephews, Eric and Edward, played a silent and dramatically rapid game of chess.
Salettl’s presence troubled Joanna as it always did and she purposefully let her thoughts go to “Kelso,” the name she had given the black Saint Bernard puppy Von Holden had given her. Kelso had been fed and walked and kissed goodbye. Tomorrow he would be sent on a direct flight from Zurich to Los Angeles, where he would be held for the few hours before Joanna arrived to meet him. Then they would fly to Albuquerque. A three-hour drive after that, and they would be home in Taos.
Joanna’s first thoughts immediately after she’d seen the video had been to get a lawyer and sue them. But then she’d thought—to what end? A lawsuit would only hurt Mr. Lybarger and could even have serious physical repercussions, especially if it dragged on. And she wouldn’t do that because she cared a great deal for him and besides, he’d been as innocent as she. And later as horrified. All she’d wanted to do was leave Switzerland as quickly as possible and pretend it had never happened. Then Von Holden had come with the puppy and with his deep apology and finally he’d presented her with a check for an enormous amount of money. The company had apologized, so had Von Holden. What else could she really expect?
Still, she wondered if, in accepting Lybarger’s corporate check, she’d done the right thing. She also had second thoughts about having told Ellie Barrs, head nurse at Rancho de Piñon, that she wouldn’t be coming back to work right away, “if at all,” she’d added. Maybe she shouldn’t have done that. But all that money. My God, half a million dollars! The thing she’d do was find an investment counselor and put it all away, then live off the interest. Well, maybe she would buy a few things, but not much. Prudent investment, that was the smart thing.
Suddenly a red light on a telephone mounted in a console directly in front of her began to blink. Uncertain of what it meant, she did nothing.
“The call is for you.” Eric leaned around her seat from behind.
“Thank you,” she said and picked up the phone.
“Good morning. How are you?” Von Holden sounded light and cheery.
“I’m fine, Pascal.” She smiled.
“How is Mr. Lybarger?”
“He’s very well. He’s taking a nap now.”
“You should be landing in one hour. A car will be waiting for you.”
“You won’t be meeting us?”
“Joanna, you flatter me by the disappointment in your voice but I’m sorry, I won’t be seeing you until later in the day. I’m afraid I have last-minute arrangements. I only wanted to make sure all was well.”
Joanna smiled at the warmth in Von Holden’s voice. “All is well. Don’t worry about anything.”
Von Holden hung up the cellular phone in a module next to the gearshift, then slowing, turned the steel gray BMW right onto Friedrichstrasse. Directly ahead a delivery truck pulled up sharply and he had to jam the brakes heavily to avoid hitting it. Cursing, he swung around it, absently passing a hand over a rectangular plastic case on the seat beside him to make sure it was still there and hadn’t been thrown off the seat by the force of his quick stop. A red neon digital clock in the window of a jewelry building read 10:39.
In the last hours things had changed dramatically. Perhaps for the better. Berlin sector had tapped the two supposedly “secure” telephone lines in Room 6132 at the Hotel Palace using a prototype microwave receiver located in a building across the street. Calls to and from the room had been recorded and delivered to the apartment on Sophie-Charlottenstrasse, where they were transcribed and given to Von Holden. The equipment had not been set up until nearly eleven o’clock the night before and so they had missed most of the early transmissions. But what they had recorded afterward was enough for Von Holden to request an immediate meeting with Scholl.
Passing the Hotel Metropole, Von Holden crossed Unter den Linden and pulled up sharply in front of the Grand Hotel. Clutching the plastic case, he got out and went inside, taking an elevator directly to Scholl’s suite.
A male secretary announced him and then showed him in. Scholl was on the phone at his desk when Von Holden entered. Across from him was a man he disliked immensely and hadn’t seen in some time, Scholl’s American attorney, H. Louis Goetz.
“Mr. Goetz.”
“Von Holden.”
Slick and crude, Goetz was fifty, too fit and too studied. He looked as if he spent half the day getting to look like he looked. Nails manicured and polished, deeply tanned and dressed in a blue pinstripe Armani suit, his dark, blow-dried hair showed just the toniest touch of white at the temples, as if it had been bleached that way on purpose. He carried an air of having just flown in from a tennis match in Palm Springs. Or a funeral in Palm Beach. There were rumors he was connected to the mob, but all Von Holden knew for certain was that at the moment he was a key figure in helping Scholl and Margarete Peiper buy into a top Hollywood talent agency where the Organization could more effectively influence the recording, movie and television industries. And, not so coincidentally, the audiences they served. Cold was a lacking description of Goetz’s demeanor. Ice, with a mouth, was more like it.
Von Holden waited for Scholl to hang up, then set the plastic case in front of him and opened it. Inside was a small playback machine and the tapes of the conversations the Berlin sector had recorded.
“They have the complete guest list and a detailed dossier on Lybarger. They know about Salettl. Furthermore, McVey has arranged to have the cardinal of Los Angeles call you sometime this morning to request you meet with him at Charlottenburg this evening, one hour prior to when the guests will arrive. He knows you will be distracted and is counting on that for purposes of interrogation.”
Ignoring the others, Scholl took the transcripts and studied them. When he finished, he handed them to Goetz, then pulled on the headset and listened to the tapes, fast-forwarding through them just enough to pick up excerpts. Finally, he clicked off the machine and removed the headset.
“All they have done, Pascal, is precisely what I anticipated. Using their resources and predictabl
e pathways to gather information about my business here in Berlin and then arranging a way to meet with me. That they know about Mr. Lybarger and Doctor Salettl, that they have the guest list even, is meaningless. However, now that we know for certain they are coming, we shall do what we want.”
Goetz looked up from the transcripts. He didn’t like what he was reading or hearing. “Erwin, you’re not gonna whack’ em? Three detectives and a doctor?”
“Something like that, Mr. Goetz. Why, is it a problem?”
“Problem? For Chrissakes, Bad Godesberg has the guest list. You knock these guys off, you get the whole goddamn federal police involved, what the fuck is that? You want them to start sticking their fucking noses up everybody’s asshole?”
Von Holden said nothing. How Americans loved the ugly vernacular, no matter who they were.
“Mr. Goetz,” Scholl said quietly. “Tell me how the federal police will become involved. What would they have to report? A middle-aged man recovered from a grave illness gives a mildly rousing, but in essence boring, speech to a hundred sleepy well-wishers at Charlottenburg and then everyone goes home. Germany is a free country for its citizens to do in and believe as they please.”
“But you still got three dead cops and a dead doctor Who put them onto this in the first place. What’re they fuckin’ gonna do about that, let it ride?”
“Mr. Goetz. The gentlemen in question, like you and Von Holden and myself, are in a major European city filled with any number of ambitious and nefarious people. Before the day’s end Detective McVey and his friends will find themselves in a situation wholly untraceable to the Organization. And when the authorities begin to put it together they will be quite surprised to find that these seemingly outstanding citizens have quite sordid, interconnected pasts, filled with dark and private secrets they successfully kept hidden from families and co-workers. In essence, not the kind of men who should be point accusing fingers at figures like myself or one hundred of Germany’s most respected friends and citizens, unless, of course, it were to be for private gain, for instance through blackmail or extortion. Am I not right, Pascal?”