“It’s the reality of what we’re dealing with,” Von Holden pressed. “Organized, highly trained neo-Nazi terrorists operating in Europe and the Americas. Osborn found out and came to us. We took him out of Germany for his own safety. The same is true for you.”
“Me?” Vera stared at him in disbelief.
“I am not the one they were after just now, it was you. They know of your involvement with Francois Christian. They will assume you know things whether you do or not.”
All too clearly Vera saw Avril Rocard approaching the farmhouse outside Nancy, the dead French Secret Service agents sprawled on the ground behind her.
“How did you know about François?” she asked painfully.
“Osborn told us. That’s why we got you out of jail, before McVey and his friends could extend their influence further.”
Now they were turning down a platform, walking in a crowd alongside a waiting train. Von Holden was looking for car numbers. A loudspeaker announced the arrival of one train, the departure of another. How had the police known he was on the train? He scanned the faces and body movements of the people around them. Attack could come from anywhere. In the distance came the blare of sirens. Then he saw the car he was looking for.
At 7:46, the Inter City Express pulled out of the Hauptbahnhof. Vera settled uncertainly into a crushed red velvet seat in a first-class compartment next to Von Holden. As the train accelerated, she leaned back and turned to look out the window. That McVey could have been other than what he seemed was impossible. Yet Lebrun was dead and so was Francois Christian. And Von Holden knew too much about all of it not to be believed. And now a hundred more had died in the Charlottenburg fire, to say nothing of the men Von Holden had killed in the railroad station. At another time, under other circumstances, she might have thought more clearly. But too much had happened, too quickly and too brutally.
Most terrifying of all, it had been done beneath the specter of a rising German political movement far too horrendous to contemplate.
133
* * *
FOR AN hour, the idea of anything but the immediate carnage disappeared as Osborn, first with Remmer’s help, then with the aid of the first arriving paramedics, worked emergency triage on the bloody tarmac of the autobahn. All his skills as a surgeon, everything he’d learned from the first day of medical school, he had to draw on. He had no instruments, no medicine, no anesthesia.
The blade of a truck driver’s Swiss Army knife held over a match for sterilization served as a scalpel for a tracheotomy that opened the windpipe of a seventy-year-old nun.
Leaving her, Osborn moved to a middle-aged woman. Her teenage son was near hysteria, screaming that her leg had been horribly cut and that she was bleeding to death. Only the leg wasn’t cut, it had been severed. Tearing off his belt, he used it as a tourniquet to stop the bleeding, but then had to call on her son to hold it tight. Remmer was yelling for him to help pull a young woman from under a small car that was so crushed it looked as if no one could have survived. They were down flat on the tarmac, Osborn easing her out, Remmer talking to her in German, using his legs to lift a pile of tangled steel. Then they had her out and it was only at that moment that they saw she had a baby in her arms. The baby was dead. When she realized it, she simply got up and walked away. Moments later, the driver of a smashed Volkswagen bus, cradling a broken arm himself, ran after her as he realized she was walking back past the rows of stopped cars and into oncoming traffic. Police cars, ambulances and fire equipment were still arriving, and a medevac helicopter was on its way from Frankfurt, when Remmer held the skeletal body of a young man in the last stages of AIDS in his arms while Osborn maneuvered to relocate his badly dislocated shoulder. The man never said a word, never cried out though the pain must have been excruciating. Finally he lay back and mouthed “Danke.”
After that, emergency workers took over. It had been daybreak when they’d started; it was light now. The carnage around them looked like a war zone. They were walking back toward the Mercedes in the soft shoulder off the pavement as the medevac helicopter set down in a roaring churn of dust. Rescue workers ran toward it carrying a litter, a paramedic running alongside holding an IV bottle overhead.
Osborn looked at Remmer. “I think we missed the train,” he said quietly.
“Ja.” Remmer’s hand was on the Mercedes’ door when its radio crackled. A brief staccato of code numbers was followed by Remmer’s name. Immediately, Remmer picked up the microphone and replied. Rapid-fire German followed. Remmer listened, then gave a terse answer and clicked off. “Von Holden shot three policemen at the Frankfurt railway station. All three are dead. Von Holden escaped.” Remmer finished the sentence but continued to stare at Osborn.
The look made Osborn uncomfortable. “You’re not telling me something. What is it?”
There was a woman with him.”
“So—”
“Vera Monneray was released from jail at 10:37 last night,” Remmer said over the squeal of tires as they sped from the accident scene. “The administrator responsible for her release was found dead less than an hour ago in the backseat of a car parked near the Berlin railway station.”
“You’re not trying to tell me Vera was the woman with Von Holden.” Osborn could feel the anger and resentment rise within him.
“I’m not making a judgment, merely giving you a fact. In the light of things it was important that you know.”
Osborn stared at him. “She was released but nobody knows what happened after that.”
Remmer shook his head.
“Remmer—what the hell is going on?”
“I wish I could tell you.”
Three people had seen a man and a woman leaving the Berlin-Frankfurt train shortly after it had reached the Hauptbahnhof. They had crossed the platform and disappeared into the station. All three had loud and differing opinions as to where they might have gone. However, the one thing they all agreed upon was that the man was the one in the police photographs and that he had been carrying some kind of case over his shoulder.
From the testimony of the three, and the evidence at hand, grimfaced Frankfurt homicide, inspectors pieced together the chain of events. The deceased policemen had met the Berlin train when it arrived at 7:04. And had been killed very shortly afterward, perhaps within five or six minutes, by shots fired from someone inside the compartment occupied by the man called Von Holden. Their bodies had been discovered at approximately 7:18 by an Italian businessman leaving the next compartment. He had heard people talking in the corridor but had heard no gunshots, suggesting strongly the killer’s weapon had been equipped with a silencer. By 7:25, the first police had arrived on scene. By 7:45 the station was cordoned off. For the next three hours no train, person, bus or taxi was allowed to leave until thoroughly searched.
The radio call had come into Remmer at 7:34. At 8:10, he and Osborn entered the station.
Immediately Remmer went over details with the Frankfurt detectives and then personally questioned the three witnesses. Osborn listened carefully, trying to understand what was being said. But for a word here and there, couldn’t. The main concern, Remmer had pointed out as soon as the radio call had come in, was logistics. As he saw it, Frankfurt was a major transport hub and not a final destination, meaning Von Holden had been on his way elsewhere. The airport was only six miles from the railroad station and was serviced by direct subway. But it was obvious he had been surprised by the detectives or he would have gotten off the train at one of the earlier stops. So, having killed them, the pressure was on. That made it unlikely he would attempt to get on a plane, especially at Frankfurt. That gave him two choices. Escape into the city itself and lie low for a period of time, or get out of the city by means other than air. If he attempted to get out, there were three alternatives: train, bus or car. Unless he hijacked a car or had one waiting, that choice was unlikely because he couldn’t get a rental car without drawing attention to himself simply by the rental process itself. That narrow
ed the alternatives to bus or train. A problem for the police, because two hundred European cities have bus links with Frankfurt. And even though every bus had been searched, it was possible that somehow they could have slipped through. It was the same with trains. Searching of them had only begun once the station was cordoned off at 7:45. In the thirty minutes from 7:15 to 7:45, roughly the time between when the murders had taken place and the station was cordoned off, sixteen trains had left Frankfurt. Bus tickets had to be secured before boarding, and no ticket agents of bus lines at Hauptbahnhof had sold tickets to anyone resembling Von Holden. Train tickets, however, could be, and often were, purchased on the train after it had left the station. Nothing would be left to chance—Frankfurt police would drag the city to find if he was holed up there, the airport would be watched for Mays—buses and trains would continue to be searched. Still, it was Remmer’s gut feeling that Von Holden had taken one of the sixteen trains that had left before the station was cordoned off.
“What did they say she looked like?” Osborn pushed through the witnesses and up to Remmer. He was incensed and anxious at the same time.
“The descriptions of the woman varied,” Remmer said quietly. “It might have been Ms. Monneray, it might not.”
“Here! This man saw them!” A uniformed cop was pushing through the crowd with a thin black man wearing an apron.
Remmer turned as they came up.
“You saw them?”
“Yes, sir.” The man insisted on looking at the floor.
“He served the woman coffee about seven-thirty,” the policeman said, standing tight against the black man and towering over him by nearly a foot.
“Why didn’t you speak up at once” Remmer asked.
“He’s Mozambique. He’s been beaten up by skinheads before. He’s afraid of anyone white.” ‘
“Look,” Remmer said gently. “Nobody’s going to hurt you. Just tell what you saw.”
The black man raised his eyes, looked at Remmer, then looked back to his feet. “The man order kaffee for woman,” he said in broken German. “She very pretty, very scared. Hands shake, hardly drink kaffee. He go away, then come back with newspaper. Show her paper. Then they go off—”
“Where, which way did they go?”
“There, to train.”
“Which train?” Remmer gestured to a maze of waiting trains.
“There, or there. Not sure.” The black man nodded in the direction of one track and another beside it and shrugged. “Didn’t look much after they go.”
“What did she look like?” Osborn was suddenly face to face with the black man; he’d held back long enough.
“Take it easy, Doctor,” Remmer said.
“Ask him what color hair she had,” Osborn pressed. “Ask him!”
Remmer translated into German.
The black man smiled faintly and touched his own hair. “Schwarz.”
“Jesus God—” Osborn knew what it meant. Black. Like Vera’s.
“Let’s go,” Remmer said to Osborn, then turned and pushed through a crowd of police and onlookers. A moment later they slammed into the stationmaster’s office, with Remmer glancing at the clock as they came in. It was 8:47.
“What trains left tracks C 3 and C 4 between seven-twenty and seven-forty-five?” he demanded of the surprised stationmaster. Behind him was a wall map of Europe, lit with a myriad of little dots and showing every rail line on the continent. “Much schnell!” Remmer snorted. Hurry up!
“C 3—Geneva. Inter City Express. Arrives fourteen-six with a change in Basel. C 4. Strasbourg. Inter City. Arrives tea thirty-seven with a change at Offenburg.” The numbers rolled out of him like information stored in a computer.
Remmer bristled. “Switzerland France. Either way they’re out of the country. What time do the trains reach, Basel and Offenburg?”
Within minutes Remmer had taken over the station-master’s inner office and alerted the police in the German town of Offenburg, the Swiss cities of Basel and Geneva, and the French city of Strasbourg. Every passenger getting off the trains at Offenburg and Basel would be guided through a single exit gate, while at the same time teams of plainclothes inspectors would board the trains for the final leg of the journeys to Geneva and Strasbourg. If Von Holden and the woman with him tried to get off at either midway point, they would be surrounded and captured at the exit gate. If they chose to stay on the train, they would be singled out, then overpowered and taken into custody.
“What happens to—” Osborn said as Remmer hung up, “—her?”
“She will be taken into custody. The same as Von Holden.” Remmer knew what Osborn meant. Police officers had been asked to bring in a cop killer. If the fugitives were on either train, and he was certain they were, their chances of escaping a second time were nonexistent. And if they put up any resistance at all, they would be shot.
“What do we do?” Osborn was staring at him. “You go to one place and I go to the other?”
“Doctor—” Remmer paused, and Osborn suddenly felt as if the rug was about to be jerked out from under him. “I know you want to be there, how important it is to you. But I can’t take a chance that you won’t get caught in the middle.”
“Remmer, I’ll take the chance. Don’t worry about it.”
“I’m not talking about you, Doctor. You’ve got a lot on your mind and you could fuck things up royally. A nineteen-year-old cabdriver and three policemen were murdered in cold blood. The method suggests Noble was right, that this Von Holden, maybe the woman too, whoever she is, is a Spetsnaz soldier. That means he or they were trained by the Soviet Army and maybe after that by GRU, which is about six steps above your most efficient former KGB agent. That puts them into the elite of the best schooled and deadliest killers in the world with a mind-set you could not begin to comprehend. Taking them will not be easy. I won’t risk losing another cop for you or anybody else. Go back to Berlin, Doctor. I promise I will let you question them both at the proper time.” With that, Remmer pushed back from the stationmaster’s desk and started for the door.
“Remmer.” Osborn took him by the arm and pulled him around. “You’re not getting rid of me like that. Not now. McVey wouldn’t—”
“McVey wouldn’t?” Remmer cut him off with a laugh, then took Osborn’s hand from his sleeve. “McVey brought you along for his purposes, Doctor Osborn. And for his purposes only. Don’t ever think he didn’t. Now do as I say, yes? Go back to Berlin. Take a room at our old campground, the Hotel Palace. I will contact you there.”
Opening the door, Remmer brushed past the station-master and went back into the station. Osborn followed, but not closely. In the distance he could see Remmer with the gathering of Frankfurt police, then saw him step aside to talk briefly with the three witnesses and the black counterman. And then they dispersed. All of them. Faceless-people filled the place where they’d been, and it was as if it had all never happened. And like that, Osborn found himself alone in the Frankfurt railroad station. He could have been a tourist passing through with nothing more on his mind than that day’s schedule. Except that he wasn’t.
Von Holden and the woman with him—it was not Vera, Osborn decided, it was someone else, maybe someone with black hair who resembled her, but it was not Vera—were on their way to either France or Switzerland. And then where?
What was worse? That Remmer’s dragnet failed and they got away, or that it didn’t? No matter what Lybarger’s nurse knew or didn’t know, assuming they would find her, it Was Von Holden who was the last of the Organization, the last direct connection to his father’s death. If the police closed in, Von Holden would fight. And in doing so, he would be killed. And that would be the end of everything.
Go back to Berlin Remmer told him. Go there and wait. He’d already waited thirty years. He wasn’t going to do it again.
Suddenly Osborn realized he’d been walking across the station the whole time and was nearly to a door leading to the street. Then something caught his eye and he saw the bla
ck counterman walking quickly in his direction. He was looking over his shoulder, as if someone might be following him, and at the same time tearing off his white work apron. Reaching the door, he gave a final glance back, then, tossing the apron into a trash receptacle, pushed through to the street. For a moment Osborn wondered what was going on. Then it hit.
“The son of a bitch was lying!”
134
* * *
BRIGHT, HAZY sunlight hit Osborn like a wall, and for a moment he was blinded by it. Shading his eyes, he tried to find the man in the traffic in front of the station but couldn’t. Then he saw him dart across the street and turn a popper. Osborn went after him.
Turning the same corner, he saw him halfway down the block on the far side of the street, walking quickly along a maze of curio shops and storefront cafés. Osborn crossed to the same side of the street and picked up his pace. Suddenly it was Paris again and instead of a black man it was Albert Merriman, or Henri Kanarack, as he’d called himself. Kanarack had fled into the subway system and vanished. It had taken three days to find him again. Can’t let that happen this time, Osborn thought. In three days Von Holden arid whoever’s with him will be on the far side of the earth.
Osborn started to run. At the same time the man looked back and saw him. He started to run himself. Twenty paces later, he cut into an alley.
Knocking a bag of groceries from a middle-aged woman in glasses, Osborn turned into the same alley, ignoring her angry shouts. Down the block, the man vaulted a fence. Osborn did the same. On the far side was a courtyard and the back door to a restaurant. The door was just swinging closed as Osborn hit the ground.