The Day After Tomorrow

by Allan Folsom

  “Danke,” Remmer said, and Lieutenant Kirsch and Schneider left together.

  There was a dull banging as the building’s heat came on. McVey stared at first at one photo, then the other, memorizing them, then handed them to Noble and walked over to the window. He tried to imagine himself in Joanna Marsh’s position. What was she thinking as she stood staring out from that window? How much does she know about what’s going on? And what could or would she tell them if they could get to her?

  Lybarger, he agreed with Osborn, was the key. What was ironic, as well as maddening, was that although they now had a clear photo of Lybarger’s therapist, computer-enhanced from a videotape and identified literally in a matter of minutes by an organization halfway around the world, the only photograph Bad Godesberg had been able to rouse of Lybarger himself was a four-year-old blackly and-white passport picture. And that was it. Nothing else. Not even a snapshot of him. Which was crazy. A man as important, or as seemingly important, as Lybarger should have had his picture published at least once. Somewhere. Some magazine, some newspaper, or, at the very least, some kind of investment journal. But as far as anyone could tell, he hadn’t. It was as if the harder they looked, the fainter he became. Fingerprints would have been a gift from all that was holy, if for nothing else than to run them and, in all likelihood the way things were going, discount them. Clearly, Elton Lybarger had to be the most secretive, most protected man in the civilized world.

  McVey looked at his watch: 4:27.

  Barely thirty minutes before they were to meet Scholl. The one prayer they’d had, or hoped to have anyway, was Salettl, who McVey had desperately wanted to interview before they encountered Scholl. Maybe Karolin Henniger could have helped reach him. Who knew? But Salettl, of anyone, might have given them some insight into Lybarger, the man. Not to mention the possibility that Salettl himself was involved in the murders of the headless men. But unless things changed dramatically in a very short time, such an interview wasn’t to be, and they would have to go with what they had, which was excruciatingly little.

  Suddenly, the thought came to get Joanna Marsh on the telephone and try to pump her for as much as he could before she either hung up or someone did it for her. It was worth a try. At this point anything was, and he was about to ask Remmer to get the phone number of the house on Hauptstrasse when line two on the pair of secured room phones rang. Remmer glanced at McVey and picked up.

  “Cadoux. Patched through from Noble’s office in London,” he said.

  Motioning Noble to the extension, McVey took the phone from Remmer, covering the mouthpiece with his hand. “Get a trace on it.” Remmer nodded and went into the bedroom, where he punched up the other line.

  “Cadoux, this is McVey. Noble is on the extension, Where are you?”

  “A public phone inside a small grocery in the north part of the city.” Cadoux wasn’t comfortable with English and spoke haltingly. He sounded tired and frightened and was talking not to be overheard, just above a whisper. “Klass and Halder are the moles inside Interpol. They arranged for the murders of Albert Merriman and Lebrun and that of his brother in Lyon.”

  “Cadoux, who are they working for?” McVey was pressing him right from the beginning to reveal which side he was on.

  “I— I can’t tell you.”

  “What the hell does that mean? Do you know or don’t you?”

  “McVey, please understand what I’m doing—this is very difficult for me—”

  “All right. Take it easy. . . .”

  “They—Klass and Halder—forced me to participate in the killing of Lebrun because of an old connection to my family. They brought me to Berlin because they know you are here. They wanted to use me to set you up. I cooperated with them once but it’s no good and I told them so . . . I won’t do it again. . . .”

  “Cadoux.” McVey was suddenly sympathetic. “Do they know where you are?”

  “Perhaps, but I think not. At least for the moment. They have informants everywhere. It’s how they knew where to find Lebrun in London. Listen to me, please.” Cadoux’s voice became more urgent. “I know you have a meeting scheduled with Erwin Scholl before the reception at Charlottenburg Palace tonight. I must see you before you confront him. I have information you need. It has to do with a mart named Lybarger and his connection to the headless bodies.”

  McVey and Noble exchanged surprised glances.

  “Cadoux, tell me what it is—”

  “It’s unsafe for me to remain here longer”

  “Cadoux, this is Noble. Was a Doctor Salettl involved in removing the heads?”

  “I’m staying at the Hotel Borggreve. Number 17 Borggrevestrasse. Room 412, top floor in the back. I have to hang up now. I’ll expect you.”

  Noble let the phone settle back into the cradle and looked to McVey. “Do we have a sudden light at the end of the tunnel or is it an oncoming train.”

  “No idea,” McVey said. “At least part of what he’s told us is the truth.”

  Remmer came in from the bedroom. “His call came from a food shop near Schonholz subway station. Inspectors are on the way.”

  McVey put his hands on his hips and looked off. “Okay, he was telling the truth about that, too.”

  “You’re worried it’s a setup,” Remmer said.

  “Yeah, I’m worried it’s a setup. But that’s balanced against another worry. The same one I’ve had all along. That other than Osborn’s testimony, our case against Scholl doesn’t exist.”

  “What you’re saying is Cadoux might be able to fill in a lot of blanks,” Noble said quietly. “And trouble or not, you think we ought to meet him.”

  McVey waited a long moment. “I don’t think we have any choice.”

  112

  * * *

  4:57 P.M.

  THE THIN red glow of a setting sun sat on the horizon as a silver Audi sedan turned out of traffic on Hauptstrasse and pulled up to the front gate of the house at number 72. The driver rolled down his window as a security guard came out of the stone guardhouse, and flashed a BKA I.D.

  “My name is Schneider. I have a message for Herr Scholl,” he said in German. Immediately, two other security guards, one with a German shepherd on a leash, appeared out of the enveloping darkness. Schneider was asked to step out of the car and it was thoroughly searched. Five minutes later he drove through the gate and up to the main entry.

  The front door opened and he was ushered inside. A pale, pig-faced man in a tuxedo met him in the foyer. “I have a message for Herr Scholl.”

  “You can tell me.”

  “My orders are to speak to Herr Scholl.”

  They went into a small paneled room where he was frisked.

  “Not armed,” he said as another man, also in a tuxedo, entered. He was tall and good-looking, and Schneider knew instantly he’d met Von Holden.

  “Please, sit down,” he said, then left through a side door. He was younger and more fit than his photograph allowed. Close to Osborn’s age, Schneider thought.

  Ten minutes or more passed with Schneider seated and the pig-faced man standing, watching him, before the same door opened and Scholl entered, followed by Von Holden.

  “I am Erwin Scholl.”

  “My name is Schneider of the Bundeskriminalamt,” Schneider said, getting up. “Detective McVey has unfortunately been delayed. He has asked me to apologize and to see if another time can be arranged.”

  “I’m sorry,” Scholl said. “I am leaving for Buenos Aires this evening.”

  “That’s too bad.” Schneider paused, using the time to try to get a sense of the man.

  “I had very little time as it was. Mr. McVey knew that.”

  “I understand. Well, again his apologies.” Bowing slightly, Schneider nodded to Von Holden, then turned on his heel and left. Moments later, the gate opened and he drove off. He’d been asked to keep a sharp eye for Lybarger or the woman in the photograph. All he’d been allowed to see was the foyer and the small paneled room. Scholl had
addressed him with complete indifference. Von Holden had been cordial, nothing more. Scholl had been there at the appointed time as promised, and there had been nothing to indicate he planned otherwise. That meant there was every chance they had no idea what Cadoux was up to and lessened the probability of a setup. For that, Schneider breathed a sigh of relief.

  Scholl himself had seemed little more than a well-preserved old man used to subservience and getting what he wanted. The curious thing—and it was curious—was not so much the zigzag of deep scratches healing on Scholl’s left hand and wrist, but the prominent way he held the hand up, as if he were displaying it and at the same time saying: Any other man would find pain in this and look for sympathy; I, instead, have found pleasure, which is something you could never understand.

  113

  * * *

  THEY WERE riding in two cars. Noble with Remmer in the Mercedes. Osborn at the wheel of a black Ford, with McVey in the passenger seat beside him. Unmarked BKA backup cars, one with veteran inspectors Kellermann and Seidenberg, and one with Littbarski and a boyish-looking detective named Holt, were already outside the hotel. Kellermann/Seidenberg in the back alley, Littbarski/Holt across the street in front. Kellermann and Seidenberg had checked out the small grocery near the Schonholz subway entrance where Cadoux had made his call. The proprietor vaguely remembered a man of Cadoux’s description using the telephone and seemed to think he’d been there only a short time and had been alone.

  In front of them Remmer pulled to the curb and shut out the lights. “Keep going to the corner. When you find a spot pull in,” McVey said to Osborn.

  The Hotel Borggreve was a small residential hotel on a particularly dark section of street northeast of the Tiergarten. Four stories tall, maybe sixty feet wide, it linked two taller apartment buildings. From the front, it looked old and poorly kept. Room 412, Cadoux had told them. Top floor in the back.

  Osborn turned the corner at the end of the block and parked behind a white Alfa Romeo. Unbuttoning his suit coat, McVey slid out the .38 and flipped open the chamber to make sure it was loaded. “I don’t like being lied to,” he said. McVey had said nothing of Osborn’s confession since he’d identified Von Holden during the screening of the Hauptstrasse house video. He was saying it now because he wanted to remind Osborn who was in control of the situation.

  “It wasn’t your father who was murdered,” Osborn said, looking at him. There was no apology, no backing away. He was still angry at the way McVey had used him to try to get Vera to make a mistake and say something he could catch her on. And he was still angry as hell at the way she’d been treated by the police. The whole thing with Vera—the emotional rush of seeing her, of holding her—had played against his doubt of who or what she s might really be, had slammed him once more with the emotional roller coaster his life had been. Seeing her like that had simplified things for him because it focused his priorities. He had to have an answer from Scholl before he could even begin to consider what Vera meant or who she was. That’s why there was no apology to McVey, nor would there be. At this point they were equals or nothing.

  “It’s going to be a long night, Doctor, with a lot on the line. Don’t start getting big for your britches.” Holstering the revolver, McVey picked a two-way radio off the seat and clicked it on.

  “Remmer?”

  “I’m here, McVey.” Remmer’s voice came back sharply through the tiny speaker.

  “Everybody on line?”

  “Ja”

  “Tell them we don’t know what this is, so everybody take it easy.”

  They heard Remmer relay the message in German, then McVey clicked open the glove compartment. Reaching in, he took out the Cz automatic Osborn had carried with him in the park and handed it to him. “Keep the lights out and the doors locked.” Fixing him with a stare, McVey pushed the door open and stepped out. Cold air wafted in, then the door slammed and he was gone. Looking in the rearview mirror, Osborn could see him reach the corner and open his suit coat. Then he turned the corner and the street was empty.

  The rear of the Hotel Borggreve faced a narrow alley lined with trees. On the far side, a row of apartment buildings ran the entire block. Whatever happened in the alley and the back of the Hotel Borggreve belonged to Inspectors Kellermann and Seidenberg. Kellermann was standing in the shadows beside a dumpster, binoculars trained on the window of the room second from the left on the top floor. From what he could tell, a lamp was on in the room, but that was all he could tell. Then he heard Littbarski’s voice through the earphone of his two-way radio.

  “Kellermann, we’re going inside. Anything?”

  “Nein.” He spoke softly into the tiny microphone on his lapel. Across the alley he could see Seidenberg’s bulky form silhouetted against an oak tree. He was holding a shotgun and watching the hotel’s back door.

  “Nothing here, either,” Seidenberg said.

  Salettl stood in a large bedroom on the second floor of the house on Hauptstrasse watching as Edward and Eric playfully helped each other knot the bow ties at the throats of their formal shirts. If they weren’t twin brothers, he thought, they might well be youthful homosexual lovers.

  “How do you feel?” he asked.

  “Well,” Eric said, turning quickly and very nearly coming to attention.

  “And I, the same,” Edward echoed.

  Salettl stood a moment longer, then left.

  Downstairs, he crossed an ornate, oak-paneled hallway land entered an equally ornate den where Scholl, resplendent in white tie, stood in front of a crackling fire, a snifter of cognac in his hand. Uta Baur, in one of her all-black creations, sat in a chair beside him, smoking a Turkish cigarette held in a cigarette holder.

  “Von Holden is with Mr. Lybarger,” Salettl said.

  “I know,” Scholl said.

  “It was unfortunate that the policeman involved the cardinal—”

  “Nothing should concern you but Eric and Edward and Mr. Lybarger.” Scholl smiled coldly. “This night is ours, good doctor. All of ours.” Suddenly he looked off. “Not just the living, but those now dead who had the vision and courage and the dedication to begin it. Tonight is for them. For them, we will experience and savor and touch the future.” Scholl’s eyes came back to Salettl. “And nothing, good Doctor,” he said quietly, “will take that from us.”

  114

  * * *

  I WOULD like the key to room 412, please,” Remmer said pin German to a gray-haired woman behind the desk. She wore thick glasses and had a brownish shawl pulled up over her shoulders.

  “That room is taken,” she said indignantly, then looked up to McVey, who stood behind him to the left of the elevator.

  “What is your name?”

  “Why should I answer that question? Who the hell do you think you are?” ?

  “BKA,” Remmer said, flashing his I.D.

  “My name is Anna Schubart,” she said quickly. “What; do you want?”

  McVey and-Noble stood halfway between the front door and a stairway covered by a worn burgundy carpet. The lobby itself was small, painted the color of dark mustard. A wood-framed velvet couch sat at an angle to the desk, while behind it, two faded and unmatched over I stuffed chairs faced a fireplace where a small fire was burning. An elderly man dozed in one of them, an open’ newspaper across his lap.

  “The stairway goes all the way to the top floor?”

  “Yes.”

  “That and the elevator are the only ways in and out?”

  “Yes.”

  “The old man sleeping, is he a guest?”

  “He’s my father. What’s going on?”

  “You keep quarters here?”

  “Back there.” Anna Schubart tossed her head, indicating a closed door behind the desk.

  “Take your father and go inside. I’ll tell you when to come out.”

  The woman’s face turned red and she was about to tell him to go to hell, when the front door opened and Littbarski and Holt came in. Littbarski carried a sho
tgun. An Uzi submachine gun dangled at Holt’s side.

  That was enough for Anna Schubart’s pride. Reaching to a wall box behind her, she took out the key to room 412 and gave it to Remmer. Then, walking quickly to the old man, she shook him awake. “Komm, Vater” she said. Helping him up, she walked him, blinking and staring, around the desk and into the back room. With a sharp glance back at the police, she closed the door.

  “Tell Holt to stay here,” McVey said to Remmer “You and Littbarski take the stairs. The old men’ll take the elevator. We’ll wait for you at the top.”

  Crossing to the elevator, McVey punched the button and the door opened immediately and he and Noble stepped inside. The door slid closed, and Remmer and Littbarski went up the stairs.

  Outside, in the back alley, Kellermann thought he saw a light brighten in the room next to Cadoux’s, but even with the binoculars it was hard to tell. Whatever it was, it seemed too insignificant to report.

  The elevator banged to a stop on the top floor and the door opened. Thirty-eight in hand, McVey looked out. The hallway was dimly lit and empty. Putting the elevator on “lock,” he stepped out. Noble followed, carrying a matte black .44 Magnum automatic.

  They’d gone about twenty feet when McVey pulled up and nodded to a closed door across from them.

  Room 412.

  Suddenly a shadow ran up the ceiling at the far end of the hallway, and. both men pressed back against the wall. Then Remmer turned the corner, gun in hand. Littbarski I was at his heels. Stepping out, McVey pointed at the 412 doorway and the men came toward it from either end of the hallway. McVey and Noble from the left, Remmer and Littbarski from the right.

  As they came together, McVey motioned Littbarski into the center of the hallway so he could take up a position that would give him a clear shotgun blast at the door.

  Shifting the .38 to his left hand, McVey stood to the side of the door, then eased the key into the lock and turned it.