by Allan Folsom
129
* * *
BAERBEL BRACHER, her small dog tugging at his leash, Stood talking to homicide inspectors from Polizeipräsidium, Berlin’s central police station. Baerbel Bracher was eighty-seven and it was 12:35 in the morning. Her dog, Heinz, was sixteen and had bladder problems. She walked him as often as four times a night. Sometimes five or more on a bad night. Tonight had been a bad night; she’d been out for the sixth time when she’d seen the police cars and then the policemen and teenagers gathered around the parked taxi.
“Yes, I saw him. He was young and handsome and wearing a tuxedo.” She stopped as the coroner’s van arrived and the coroner and white-coated assistants got out and approached the cab. “At the time I thought it strange a good-looking man in a tuxedo should be getting out of a taxi, throwing the keys inside and walking away.” She watched them bring over a gurney and body bag, then open the trunk and lift out the body of the young taxi driver, put her in the bag and then zip it closed over her head.
“But then, it’s none of my business, is it? He had a big white case over his shoulder, too. Something else I thought strange, a young man in a tuxedo, lugging an awkward-looking box like that. But anything can happen these days. I don’t think about anything anymore. I have no opinions.”
The tuxedo was the thing that connected him to Charlottenburg, and by 1:00 A.M. Baerbel Bracher was at police headquarters looking at photographs. Because of the Charlottenburg connection, the BKA was notified. Immediately, Bad Godesberg contacted Remmer.
“Mix in the still picture of Scholl’s director of security made from the videotape taken outside the house on Hauptstrasse,” he said from his hospital room. “Don’t make a point of it. Just put it in with the others.”
Twenty minutes later, Bad Godesberg called back with an affirmative. That meant a member of what Dr. Salettl had called the “Organization” had escaped the Charlottenburg fire and was at large. Instantly an all-points bulletin was issued, and Remmer requested an international arrest warrant for a murder suspect known as Pascal Von Holden, an Argentine national carrying a Swiss passport.
Within the hour a judge in Bad Godesberg issued the warrant. Moments later, Von Holden’s photograph was electronically circulated to all police agencies in Europe, the United Kingdom and North and South America. The circulation was a code “Red”—arrest and detain. Subheading: should be considered armed and extremely dangerous.
“How do you feel?” It was after two when Remmer came into Osborn’s room.
“I’m all right.” Osborn had drifted off but woke as Remmer came in. “How’s your wrist?”
Remmer held up his left arm. “Temporary cast.”
“McVey?”
“Sleeping.”
Remmer came closer, and Osborn could see the intensity in his eyes.
“You’ve found Lybarger’s nurse!”
“No.”
“What, then?”
“Noble’s Spetsnaz soldier, the same man you encountered in the Tiergarten, escaped the fire.”
Osborn started. Another thread still dangling. “Von Holden?”
“A man matching his description was seen boarding the 10:48 train to Frankfurt. We’re not certain it’s him, but I’m going there anyway. It’s too foggy to fly. There are no trains. I’m going to drive.”
“I’m going with you.”
Remmer grinned. “I know.”
Ten minutes later, a dark gray Mercedes left Berlin on the autobahn. The car was a six-liter V-8 police model. Its top speed was classified, but it was rumored to be nearly two hundred miles per hour on a straightaway.
“I have to know if you get carsick,” Remmer looked at Osborn purposefully.
“Why?”
“The Berlin train gets in at four minutes past seven. It’s now a little after two. A fast driver on the autobahn can make Berlin to Frankfurt in five and half hours. I’m a fast driver. I’m also a cop.”
“What’s the record?”
“There is no record.”
Osborn smiled. “Make one.”
130
* * *
VON HOLDEN sat back in the dark and listened to the sound of the train as it skipped over the rails beneath him. A small town flashed by in the darkness, then shortly after, another. Little by little the disaster of Berlin was being left behind, letting him more fully concentrate on what lay ahead. Glancing across, he saw her staring at him from the bunk.
“Please go to sleep,” he said.
“Yes . . . ,” Vera said, then rolled over and tried to do as she’d been told.
It had been after ten when they’d come for her. Taking her from her cell, they’d led her to another room and told her to get dressed, giving her back the clothes she’d been wearing when she was arrested. Then they’d taken her up in an elevator and out to a car where this man waited. He was a Hauptkommissar, a chief inspector, of the federal police; she was being released in his custody and was to do exactly as he said. His name, he told her, was Von Holden.
Moments later they were handcuffed together, crossing a platform and boarding a train at Bahnhof Zoo.
“Where are you taking me?” she’d asked guardedly as he closed the door to a private compartment and locked it.
For a moment he’d said nothing, only slipped a large case from his shoulder and set it on the floor. Then he’d leaned forward and removed the handcuffs.
“To Paul Osborn,” he’d said.
Paul Osborn. The words rocked her.
“He’s been taken to Switzerland.”
“Is he all right?” Her mind raced. Switzerland! Why? My God, what’s happened?
“I have no information. Only orders,” Von Holden had said, then he had shown her to the bunk and taken a chair opposite. Shortly afterward the train left the station and within moments Von Holden had turned off the light.
“Goodnight,” he’d said.
“Where in Switzerland?”
“Goodnight.”
Von Holden smiled in the dark. Vera’s reaction had been spontaneous, grave concern followed almost instantly by hope. As frightened and exhausted as she had to be, her main focus remained on Osborn. It meant she would be no trouble as long as she believed she was being taken to him. That she was ostensibly in the custody of a BKA Hauptkommissar was double insurance.
Von Holden had been notified of her arrest by Berlin sector operatives inside the prison earlier that day. At the time the information had been incidental, but in the turn of things it had become highly significant. Within a half hour of his directive, Berlin sector had arranged for her release. In that time Von Holden had changed clothes, secured the box inside a special black nylon case that could either be carried over the shoulder or worn like a knapsack, and been provided with BKA identification.
By arresting Vera, McVey had ironically and unwittingly provided Von Holden the complication he needed. He was no longer one man traveling alone, but one sharing a private first-class compartment with an extremely handsome woman. More important, she served another, more exacting, purpose: she gave him a hostage of prime importance to the police.
Von Holden looked at his watch. In little more than five hours they would be in Frankfurt, He would give himself four hours’ sleep, then decide what to do.
131
* * *
VON HOLDEN woke precisely at six. Across from him, Vera still slept. Getting up, he went into the small bathroom and closed the door.
Washing his face, he shaved with the toiletries provided. As he did, his thoughts went to Charlottenburg. And the ‘more he considered what had happened, the more he believed the betrayal had to have come from someone, maybe several, within the Organization. Thinking back, he remembered Salettl’s ghastly appearance outside the mausoleum. How nervous he’d been when he’d told Von Holden the police were there with a warrant for Scholl. How deliberate he’d seemed when he’d ordered him to take the box and wait in the Royal Apartments, thereby putting him in a situation where he would have d
ied had he not seized the initiative and left.
Yet the idea that Salettl-could have been the one seemed absurd. The doctor had been with “Übermorgen” since its inception in the late 1930s. He had overseen every medical aspect of it, supervised the surgical beheadings and the experimental operations. Why, at the height of everything he’d devoted himself to for more than half a century, would he suddenly turn and destroy it all? It made no sense. Still, who else had as much access as he, not just to Charlottenburg, but to the deepest inner workings of “Übermorgen”?
The sound of the train’s whistle brought Von Holden out of his reverie. In forty minutes they would arrive in Frankfurt. He’d already decided to avoid the airports and rely on the train as far as it would take him—which was, with any luck, the rest of the way. At 7:46 there was an Inter City Express that would get them to Bern, Switzerland, at twelve minutes after noon. From there it would be an hour and a half to Interlaken and then the last changes to the cogwheel trains of the Bernese-Oberland Railway for the breathtaking climb into the Alps and then the final ascent to the top on the Jungfrau Railway.
132
* * *
FOR ALL intents, Remmer had not slept for twenty-one hours, and the day before that he’d barely slept three, which was why he’d had trouble reacting to the line of highway flares on the rain-slicked autobahn just north of Bad Hersfeld. Osborn was the first to cry out, and Remmer’s automatic-pilot reaction on the brakes slowed the big Mercedes from one hundred and eighty to less than a hundred in seconds.
Osborn’s knuckles turned white against the leather seats as the Mercedes’ rear end broke loose and the car spun wildly through a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree skid, giving him his first glimpse of the catastrophe in front of them. At least two trailer trucks and maybe a half-dozen cars were spewed over the highway. The Mercedes was spinning at eighty miles an hour and was no more than fifty yards from the first overturned truck. Osborn, bracing himself for the impact, glanced at Remmer. Remmer sat motionless, with both hands on the wheel as if he were riding directly into an abyss and were powerless to do anything about it. Osborn was about to lurch for the wheel, tear it out of his hands and try to steer past the truck from the passenger side, when the nose came around. As it did, Remmer’s right foot touched the accelerator. Instantly the tires grabbed and the Mercedes snapped out of its spin and shot forward. Then Remmer backed off the gas, tapped the brakes, and the car rocketed past the wrecked truck with inches to spare. With another touch of brakes and turn of wheel, Remmer avoided an overturned Volvo. Then they hit the soft gravel on the shoulder; the Mercedes went up on two wheels, teetered, then settled back down and came to a stop.
* * *
The train was moving at a crawl as it crisscrossed the rail lines coming into the Hauptbahnhof, the main rail station at Frankfurt. Von Holden stood to the side of the window looking out as they entered the station. He was alert, as if he might be expecting something.
Vera sat on the bunk watching him. She’d spent the night half sleeping, half awake, her thoughts whirling. Why was Paul in Switzerland? Why were the police bringing her to him? Was he hurt, even dying—?
She felt the train slow even more, then it stopped. A sharp hiss of air brakes was followed by the sound of the rail car doors being opened.
“When we go out, we will change to another train,” Von Holden said directly. “I remind you that you are still in custody of the federal police.”
“You’re taking me to Paul—do you think I’m going to run away?”
Suddenly there was a sharp knock at the door.
“Police. Open the door, please!”
Police? Vera looked at Von Holden.
Ignoring her, he went to the window and looked out. People moved up and down the platform, but he saw no other police, at least not in uniform.
The knock came again. “Police. Open the door immediately!”
“A mistake, they must be looking for someone else.” Von Holden turned back.
Crossing the compartment, he opened the door just enough to peer out. “Ja?” he said, pulling on a pair of glasses, as if to see them better.
Two men in civilian clothes stood there, one a little taller than the other. Behind them was a uniformed policeman, a submachine gun in his hands. The first two were obviously detectives.
“Step out of the compartment, please,” the taller one said.
“BKA,” Von Holden said, opening the door wider, letting them see Vera.
“Step out of the compartment!” the taller man said again. They’d been sent after a fugitive named Von Holden. This man might be him, but it might not. They hid only a photograph and in it the man did not wear glasses. Besides, the BKA? What was that business? And who was the woman?
“Of course.” Von Holden stepped into the passageway. The short detective was staring in at Vera. The uniform was staring at him. Von Holden smiled at him.
“Who is she?” the taller man asked.
“Prisoner in transit. A terrorist suspect.”
“Transit to where?”
“Bad Godesberg. BKA headquarters.”
“Where is the female officer? The policewoman?”
Vera looked at Von Holden. What were they talking about?
“There is none,” Von Holden said calmly. “There was no time. It has to do with Charlottenburg.”
“Identification.”
Von Holden saw the uniform glance out the window as an attractive woman passed by. They were relaxing, beginning to believe him.
“Of course.” Reaching into his lapel pocket with his right hand, he lifted out a thin wallet and handed it to the shorter detective.
Von Holden looked at Vera. “Are you all right, Miss Monneray?”
“I don’t understand what’s going on.”
“Nor do I.”
Von Holden turned back and there were two quick sounds like someone spitting. The uniform’s eyes suddenly went wide and his knees buckled. At the same time the squat muzzle of a silencer came up against the shorter detective’s forehead. There was another pop and he jolted backward, the rear of his skull shot away. Von Holden twisted sideways as the taller detective’s nine-millimeter Beretta cleared his jacket. His silenced, palm-sized .38 automatic caught him twice, once above and once below the breast bone. For an instant the man’s face twinged with anger, then he fell back and slid to the floor.
A moment later Von Holden and Vera were coming down out of the train and walking across the platform, mixing with the crowd from the train moving toward the interior of the station. Von Holden had the nylon case over his left shoulder; his right hand grasped Vera’s arm tightly. She was white with horror.
“Listen to me.” Von Holden was looking ahead, as if engaged in no more than casual conversation. “Those people were not police.”
Vera walked on, trying to regain her composure.
“Forget that it happened,” he said. “Erase the image from your mind.”
Now they were inside the station. Von Holden looked around for police but saw none. A clock over a newspaper kiosk read 7:25. Looking up, he scanned the overhead schedule of trains. When he saw what he wanted, he directed Vera into a fast-food kiosk and ordered coffee. “Drink it, please,” he said. When she hesitated, he smiled encouragingly. “Please.”
Vera picked up the cup. Her hands were shaking. She realized how frightened she still was. Taking a sip, she felt the coffee’s warmth run down inside her. She sensed that Von Holden had turned away; when he came back he was holding a newspaper.
“I said those people were not police.” He leaned close, talking so as not to be overheard. “Inside Germany there is a new kind of Nazi movement that has come together since unification, underground at the moment but determined to become a major power once again. Last night one hundred of Germany’s most powerful and influential democratic Germans gathered at Charlottenburg Palace in Berlin. They were there to be enlightened about what was going on in their country and to pledge their support
in fighting it.”
Glancing at the clock over the kiosk, Von Holden opened the newspaper. On the cover was a dramatic photo of Charlottenburg engulfed in flame. The headline, in German, read “Charlottenburg Brent! “—Charlottenburg Burns!
“It was fire-bombed. Everyone there, was killed. This new Nazi movement was responsible.”
“You have a reason for telling me.” Vera knew he was keeping something back.
In the distance, Von Holden saw a half-dozen uniformed police running toward the train they had just left. Again he glanced at the clock: 7:33.
“Walk with me, please.”
Taking her arm, Von Holden moved off toward a waiting train.
“Paul Osborn discovered the men he was with were not who they seemed.”
“McVey?” Vera didn’t believe it.
“For one, yes.”
“No, never. He’s an American, like Paul.”
“Is there some coincidence that the French policeman McVey was working with in Paris was shot and killed in a London hospital at almost the same hour yesterday that the body of the prime minister was found?”
“Oh God—” Vera could see Lebrun standing with McVey in her apartment. It was the horror of the German occupation of France all over again. Pick a thousand faces and trust not one. It was the essence of what François Christian had been fighting against in France. What he feared most—French sentiment slipping under the influence of Germany. While Germany itself, torn by strife and cavil unrest, sleepwalked into the hands of fascists.