by Allan Folsom
“Uncle,” Eric said protectively. “These men asked to see you for a moment, they are police.”
“Guten Abend.” Lybarger smiled. He was in the process of taking a small group of vitamin pills. One by one, he put them in his mouth, and washed them down with small sips from a water glass.
“Herr Lybarger,” Remmer said. “Excuse the intrusion.” Smiling, polite and offhand, he studied Lybarger quickly and carefully. Little more than one hundred and fifty pounds and five feet seven, he stood erect and looked physically fit. He wore a white stiff-bosomed shirt fastened at the wrists with French cuffs and at the throat by a white bow tie. For all the world, he appeared as he looked, a man in his early to mid-fifties in good health I and dressed to speak to an important audience.
Finishing with the pills, Lybarger turned. “Please, Joanna.” He held out his arms and Joanna helped him on with his jacket.
Remmer immediately recognized Joanna as the woman identified by the FBI as Lybarger’s physical therapist, Joanna Marsh of Taos, New Mexico. He had hoped to find the other man videotaped, the suspected Spetsnaz soldier Noble had I.D.’d getting out of the BMW, but he wasn’t among the men in the room.
“What is the meaning of this?” Eric asked. “My uncle is about to give an important speech”.
Remmer turned and moved into the center of the room, purposefully drawing the attention of Eric and Edward and the bodyguards. As he did, Schneider eased back, glanced around the room, then walked into the bathroom. A moment later he came out.
“We were informed there might be some problem with Mr. Lybarger’s personal safety,” Remmer said.
“What problem?” Eric demanded.
Remmer smiled and relaxed. “I can see there is none. Sorry to bother you, gentlemen. Guten Abend.” Turning, he looked at Joanna and wondered how much she knew, how involved she might be. “Goodnight,” he said courteously, then he and Schneider left.
121
* * *
9:00 P.M.
MCVEY AND Scholl faced each other in silence. The warmth of the room had turned the salve on McVey’s face to an oily liquid, making his facial burns appear even more grotesque than they were.
A moment before, Louis Goetz had advised Scholl not to say another word until his criminal lawyers arrived and McVey had countered by suggesting that while Scholl had every right to do so, the fact that he was not cooperating with a police investigation would not look good when it came time for a judge to make a decision whether or not to grant him bail. Never mind, he’d added measuredly, the not-so-coincidental ramifications once the media got wind that a man as distinguished as Erwin Scholl had been arrested for suspicion of murder for hire, and was being held for extradition to the U.S.
“What kind of crap are you throwing around?” Goetz steamed. “You’ve got no authority here whatsoever. The fact that Mr. Scholl has left his guests to meet you is evidence of cooperation enough.”
“If we relax a little, we might finish up and go home,” McVey said, addressing Scholl quietly and ignoring Goetz. “This whole thing is as distasteful to me as it is to you. Besides, my face is killing me, and I know you want to get back to your guests.”
Scholl had left the dais more out of his own curiosity than the threat of McVey’s warrant. Stopping briefly to inform Dortmund of what was happening and, thereby, sending Dortmund immediately in search of a phone and a battery of top German criminal lawyers, he’d left the Golden Gallery by a side door and started down the stairs, when an agitated Salettl came out after him, asked where he was going and how he dared leave their guests at a time like this. Then it had been ten minutes to nine, a full twenty-five minutes before Lybarger would make his entrance.
“I have a brief rendezvous with a policeman, one who obviously leads an exceptionally charmed life.” He’d smiled, arrogantly. “There is ample time for it, my good Doctor, ample time.”
Tanned and resplendent in his hand-tailored tuxedo, Scholl had been exceedingly polite when he’d come in, and all the more so when McVey had introduced him to Osborn. He’d listened attentively and done his best to be forthright with his answers—though he’d seemed genuinely puzzled at the questions—even after McVey had advised him of his rights as an American citizen.
“Let’s go over it again,” McVey had said. “Doctor Osborn’s father was murdered in Boston on April 12, 1966, by a man named Albert Merriman. Albert Merriman was a professional killer who, a week ago in Paris, was found by Doctor Osborn, and confessed to the murder. In doing so, he said that you had hired him to do it. Your reply was that you never knew or heard of Albert Merriman.”
Scholl sat expressionless. “Correct.”
“If you didn’t know Merriman, did you know a George Osborn?” !
“No.”
“Then why would you hire someone to kill a man you didn’t even know?”
“McVey, that’s a bullshit question and you know it.” Goetz didn’t like it at all that Scholl was giving McVey his head and allowing the questioning to go on.
“Detective McVey,” Scholl said calmly, without so much as a glance at Goetz, “I never hired anyone to commit murder. The idea is quite outrageous.”
“Where is this Albert Merriman? I’d like to meet him,” Goetz demanded.
“That’s one of our problems, Mr. Goetz. He’s dead.”
“Then there’s nothing more we have to talk about. Your arrest warrant is as full of crap as you. Hearsay from a dead man?” Goetz stood. “Mr. Scholl, we’re finished here.”
“Goetz, the problem is—Albert Merriman was murdered.”
“Big deal.”
“It is a big deal. The man who killed him was a gun for hire too. Also employed by Mr. Scholl. His name was Bernhard Oven.” McVey looked to Scholl. “A member of the East German secret police before he went to work for you.”
“I’ve never heard of a Bernhard Oven, Detective,” Scholl said evenly. A clock on the mantel over McVey’s shoulder read 9:14. In one minute the doors would be opened and Lybarger would enter the Golden Gallery. To his surprise, Scholl was finding himself intrigued. McVey’s knowledge was remarkable.
Tell me about Elton Lybarger,” McVey surprised him, suddenly shifting gears.
“He’s a friend.”
“I’d like to meet him.”
“I’m afraid that’s not possible. He’s been ill.”
“But he’s well enough to give a speech.”
“Yes, he is. . . .”
“I don’t understand. He’s too ill to talk to one man, but not a hundred.”
“He’s under a physician’s care.”
“You mean Doctor Salettl. . . .”
Goetz looked at Scholl. How long was he going to allow this to go on? What the hell was he doing?
“That is correct.” Scholl adjusted the left sleeve of his jacket with his right hand, making a deliberate display of the still-healing abrasions. He smiled. “It’s ironic that we should both have painful physical wounds at the same time, Detective. Mine came from playing with a cat. Yours, obviously, from playing with fire. We both should know better, don’t you think?”
“I wasn’t playing, Mr. Scholl. Somebody tried to kill me.”
“You are fortunate.”
“A few of my friends weren’t.”
“I’m sorry.” Scholl glanced at Osborn, then looked back to McVey. McVey was, without doubt, the most thoroughly dangerous man he’d ever met. Dangerous because he cared about nothing but the truth, and to that end, he was capable of anything.
122
* * *
9:15 P.M.
THE ROOM was hushed. Every eye in it followed Elton Lybarger as he walked alone down the beribboned center aisle of Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff’s grand rococo creation, the green-marbled, gold-gilded, mesmerizing Golden Gallery. One foot place sturdily before the other. No longer reliant on cane or nurse. Smashingly resplendent in dress, he was aloof, practiced, self-assured. A symbolic monarch of the future passing in exhibition for t
hose who had helped bring him here.
A wave of adoration rose in the chests of Eric and Edward as they sat on the dais and watched him make his way toward the podium. Beside them, Frau Dortmund wept openly, unable to control the emotion that washed over her. Then, in a gesture that swept the room, Uta Baur stood and began to applaud. Across the room, Matthias Noll followed. Then Gertrude Biermann. Hilmar Grunel Henryk Steiner and Konrad Peiper. Margarete Peiper stood to join her husband. Next came Hans Dabritz. And then Gustav Dortmund. And then the rest of the one hundred were on their feet making the tribute unanimous. Lybarger’s eyes swept left to right, smiling, acknowledging as the thunder of their applause shook the room, rising in force as each step brought him closer to the podium in front of them. The pinnacle of achievement was at hand and the ovation for it deafened.
Salettl looked at his watch.
9:19.
That Scholl was not yet back was inexcusable. Looking up, he saw Lybarger reach the podium steps and begin to mount them. As he gained the top and looked out, the acclaim soared, rising in a crescendo that pounded the walls and shook the ceiling. This was the prelude to “Übermorgen.” The beginning of “The Day After Tomorrow.”
Outside, Remmer and Schneider crossed the stone pavement of Charlottenburg’s courtyard. They walked quickly, saying nothing. Ahead of them, a black Mercedes turned in at the gate and was waved through. Stepping aside, they saw the driver stop at the entryway and go inside. Remmer’s first thought was that Scholl was leaving and he hesitated, but then nothing happened. The Mercedes stayed where it was. It could be there for an hour, he thought. Pulling his radio from his jacket, Remmer spoke into it. Then they moved on. Passing the gate, Remmer made deliberate eye contact with the security guards on duty. Both men looked away, and he and Schneider passed unchallenged. As quickly, a dark blue BMW squealed out of traffic and slid to a stop at the curb beside them. The two got in and the car drove off.
If Remmer or Schneider or either of the two BKA detectives in the BMW with them had looked back, they would have seen the palace’s main door open and the driver of the black Mercedes emerge, accompanied not by Scholl or any of the prestigious guests but by Joanna.
Helping her into the rear seat, the driver closed the door and got behind the wheel. Pulling on his seat belt, he started the engine and drove off, circling the courtyard and then turning left on Spandauer Damm, the opposite direction from the way Remmer’s BMW had gone. A moment later the driver saw a silver Volkswagen sedan pull from the curb, make a quick U-turn across traffic, and settle into the lane behind him. So he was being followed. He smiled. He was merely taking her to a hotel. There was no law against that.
Alone in the backseat, Joanna pulled her coat around her and tried not to cry. She didn’t know what had happened, only that Salettl, at the last moment, had sent he away without even giving her a chance to say goodbye to Elton Lybarger. The doctor had entered Lybarger’s room and taken her aside only moments after the police left.
“Your relationship with Mr. Lybarger has ended, Salettl had commanded. He seemed nervous and very jittery. Then in an abrupt turn of character, he became almost kindly. “It’s best for both of you if you think no more about it.” Then he handed her a tiny package that had been wrapped as a gift. “This is for you,” he said “Promise me you won’t open it until you get home.”
Shocked and confused by his abruptness, she vaguely remembered agreeing and thanking him, then absently putting his present in her purse. Her mind had been on Lybarger. They had been together for a long time, and shared a great deal, not all of it entirely pleasant. The least Salettl could have let her do was to wish him well and say goodbye. Gift or not, what he had done had been curt, even rude. But what came next was even worse.
“—I know you expected to spend this last evening with Von Holden,” Salettl said. “Don’t act as if it’s a surprise that I know. Unfortunately, Von Holden will be occupied with duties for Mr. Scholl and will be leaving with him for South America immediately after the dinner.”
“I won’t see him?” She suddenly felt heartsick.
“No.”
She didn’t understand. She was to have spent the night at a Berlin hotel, then fly out to Los Angeles in the morning. Von Holden had said nothing about leaving with Scholl. He was to have come to her after the ceremony at Charlottenburg. The night was to have been theirs together.
“Your things have been packed. A car is waiting downstairs for you. Goodbye, Miss Marsh.”
And that had been that. A security guard had taken her downstairs. And then she was in the car and gone. Turning to look back, she could just see the palace. Barely visible in the thick fog, it slowly faded from sight. It was as if it, and everything she had done leading up to it, Von Holden included, had been a dream. A dream that, like Charlottenburg, simply vanished.
“Hubschrauber” helicopter, Remmer said, cradling the radio against his broken hand. The BMW sped past the Charlottenburg Hospital complex and then, a half mile later, turned abruptly into the dark expanse of Ruhwald park. Two-thirds of the way across it, the BKA detective at the wheel turned out the yellow fog lamps, then abruptly pulled over and stopped. Almost immediately the bright spotlight of a police helicopter illuminated the ground fifty feet away, and with a deafening roar settled down onto the grass. The pilot cut his engine and Schneider got out of the car and ran toward the machine. Ducking under the rotor blades, he opened the door and climbed inside. There was a roar of engine, followed by a storm of blowing grass and dust as the helicopter lifted off. Clearing the tree line, it spun a hundred and eighty degrees to the left and vanished into the night.
From his seat next to the pilot, Schneider could just make out the fog lamps of the BMW as it circled out of the field and turned left toward Charlottenburg Palace. Leaning back, he tightened his shoulder harness, then unbuttoned his coat and lifted out the handkerchief-covered prize he was taking to the fingerprint laboratory at Bad Godesberg: the water glass Elton Lybarger had used to swallow his vitamin pills.
123
* * *
“SEVERAL DAYS before Doctor Osborn’s father was murdered”—McVey had taken a small, dog-eared notebook from his jacket, and was half looking at it as he talked to Scholl—”he designed a scalpel. A very special kind of scalpel. Designed and made for his employer, a small company outside Boston. It was a company you owned, Mr. Scholl.”
“I never owned a company that manufactured scalpels.”
“I don’t know if they manufactured scalpels, I only know one was made.”
McVey had known from the moment Goetz went upstairs, to advise him what had happened, that Scholl would leave his guests and come down to meet him. His ego would make him. How could he pass up the chance to meet the man who had just survived a deadly ambush and still had the hubris to invade his private arena? But the curiosity would be fleeting, and as soon as he had seen enough he would leave. That is, unless McVey could take that same curiosity and run with it. That was the trick, working the curiosity, because the next level was emotion and he had a gut sense that Scholl was a lot more emotional than he let on to anyone. Once people started reacting emotionally, they were apt to say anything.
“The company was called Microtab and based in Waltham, Massachusetts. At the time, it was controlled by a privately held company called Wentworth Products Limited, of Ontario, Canada. The man who owned it was”—McVey squinted at his handwriting—“Mr. James Tallmadge of Windsor, Ontario. Tallmadge and the board of directors of Microtab—Earl Samules, Evan Hart and a John Harris, all of Boston—died within a half-dozen months of each other. The Microtab people in 1966. Tallmadge in 1967.”
“I never heard of a company called Microtab, Mr. McVey,” Scholl said. “Now, I think I’ve given you enough time. Mr. Goetz will entertain you while I return to my guests. Within the hour the proper attorneys will be here to answer your warrant.”
Scholl pushed back his chair and stood, and McVey could see Goetz sigh with relief.
<
br /> “Tallmadge and the others were involved with two other of your companies.” McVey kept on as if Scholl had never spoken. “Alama Steel, Limited of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Standard Technologies of Perth Amboy, New Jersey. Standard Technologies, by the way, was a subsidiary of a company called T.L.T. International of New York, which was dissolved in 1967.”
Scholl stared in amazement. “What is the purpose of this recitation?” he said coldly.
“I’m simply giving you the opportunity to explain.”
“Just what is it you wish me to explain?”
“Your connection to all these companies and the fact that—”
“I have no connection to these companies.”
“You don’t?”
“Absolutely not.” Scholl’s retort was crisp and edged with anger.
Good, McVey thought. Get mad. “Tell me about Omega Shipping Lines—”
Goetz stood up. It was time to stop it. “I’m afraid that’s all, Detective. Mr. Scholl, your guests are waiting.”
“I was asking Mr. Scholl about Omega Shipping Lines.” McVey’s eyes were locked on Scholl. “I thought you had no connection to these companies. Isn’t that what you told me?”
“I said no more questions, McVey,” Goetz said.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Goetz, I’m trying to help your client stay out of jail. But I can’t get a straight answer from him. A moment ago he told me he had no connection to Microtab, Alama Steel, Standard Technologies or T.L.T. International. T.L.T. International controlled those companies and is, itself, controlled by Omega Shipping Lines. Mr. Scholl happens to be the principal stockholder of Omega Shipping Lines. I’m sure you see what I’m getting at. It’s got to be one way or the other. Mr. Scholl, you either were involved in these companies or you weren’t. Which is it?”
“Omega Shipping Lines no longer exists,” Scholl replied flatly. Clearly he had underestimated McVey. His a persistence as well as his resilience. It was his fault he hadn’t given Von Holden his head in killing him. But that was a situation that would be rectified soon enough. “I’ve given you all the consideration you asked for and a great I deal more. Good evening, Detective.”