Reaching the ticket window, he started to buy a ticket to Interlaken when he had the thought that maybe it was only a stop along the way. They might change trains, once, twice, even more. He couldn’t stop to buy a ticket each time. So instead of one ticket, he used a credit card and bought a pass for five days. It was now 1:15, a quarter of an hour before the next train for Interlaken.
Crossing to a restaurant, Osborn ordered a cup of coffee and sat down. He needed to think. Almost immediately he realized he had no idea where Interlaken was. If he knew that, he might have some idea of where Von Holden was going. Getting up, he went to a newsstand next door and bought a map and guidebook of Switzerland. In the distance he heard a train announced in German. He understood only one word, but it was all he needed: “Interlaken.”
“How much farther is it, this place we’re going?” Vera said over the clicking of the wheels as the train glided slowly into the small city of Thun. She’d been half dozing, half staring off into space, and now she was sitting up and questioning him directly. Outside, the huge tower of Thun Castle passed like a hovering stone giant still caught in the twelfth century.
Von Holden was watching for signs of police as they approached the station. If Osborn had alerted the authorities, Thun would be the first logical place to stop the train and search it. He had to be prepared if they did. Vera, he was certain, had not seen Osborn or she would not be acting the way she was. But this was the reason he’d brought her. A card to play that his pursuers wouldn’t have.
Within seconds they were abreast of the station. If the train was going to stop, it would have to be now. As quickly, they were out of the station and the train picked up speed. Von Holden breathed a sigh of relief and a moment later they were back in the countryside and moving along the shores of Lake Thun.
“I asked how much longer it would be until—”
Von Holden’s eyes found hers. “I am not permitted to tell you our destination. It is against orders.”
Abruptly he got up and walked down the aisle “to the lavatory. The train was nearly empty. The early trains would have been busy. Saturday excursions into the mountains began in the morning so that people would have the entire day to explore the stirring Alpine landscape. At Interlaken they would change trains, walking from one end of the station to the other. There would be enough time between trains to provide Von Holden with a distinct opportunity.
Boarding the waiting train with Vera, he would make an excuse—he had to make a phone call or something—then, leaving her on the train, he would get off and go back into the station and wait to kill Osborn when he arrived.
138
* * *
THE ROUTE out of Bern took Osborn across a bridge over the steel green of the river Aare with the magnificent Gothic cathedral, Münster, sitting high above the city behind, it. Then the train leaned into a curve and increased its speed and the vision of Münster faded into a rattle of more tracks and warehouses, then passing trees and abruptly into farmland.
Sitting back, Osborn let his hand slide inside his jacket and he felt the solid butt of McVey’s .38, where it rested fucked in his waistband. He knew McVey would have found it missing by now, along with his badge and identification papers. It wouldn’t take him long to figure out what happened, or who had them. McVey’s anger wasn’t important now. It lived somewhere else, in a different world.
From his study of the map of Switzerland, Osborn had seen that Interlaken was south and east of Bern. Von Holden was going deeper into the country, not out of it. What was in Interlaken or beyond it?
Through a rush of trees Osborn could see sunlight gleam off a river or lake, then his thoughts went to the black rucksack Von Holden had slung over his shoulder as he boarded the train. There had been something inside it, bulky, and boxlike, and he remembered his conversation with Remmer as they’d left Berlin. The old woman who had seen Von Holden leave the taxi cab said he carried a white case, slung from a strap over his shoulder. The witnesses at the station in Frankfurt had described it too. That meant he’d taken it from the taxi cab in Berlin and carried it onto the Berlin-Frankfurt train and then carried it off the train in Frankfurt.
“If I had just killed three policemen and was trying to get the hell out of there, would I worry about a box?” Osborn thought. “I would if it was that important.”
Whatever it was, it was now in the black rucksack and still in Von Holden’s possession. But that didn’t help in trying to understand where he was going or what he was going to do when he got there.
Then he realized that the whole time he’d been thinking, he’d been absently scanning the pages of the Swiss guidebook he’d bought in Bern. He realized it because something in it had caught his eye. It wasn’t a picture. It was a word.
Berghaus.
He read the entire piece. “From the trainside of the Jungfraujoch station—the highest in Europe—a rocky corridor used to lead to the Berghaus, Europe’s highest hotel and restaurant. This burned down in 1972, but it has been replaced by the fine Inn-Above-the-Clouds restaurant and cafeteria.”
“Berghaus.” This time he said it out loud and it chilled him. Berghaus had been the name of the group sponsoring the celebration for Elton Lybarger at Charlottenburg.
Quickly he opened the map of Switzerland and ran his finger over it. Jungfraujoch was near the summit of the Jungfrau, one of the highest peaks in the Alps, sister mountain to Monch and Eiger. Looking back to his guidebook he found it was served by Europe’s highest railroad, the Jungfrau Railway. Suddenly he felt the hair stand up on the back of his neck. The starting point for the trip to the Jungfrau was Interlaken.
139
* * *
MCVEY WANTED Remmer and he got him. Finally. At, 1:45 in the afternoon.
“Where the hell is Osborn?”
Remmer was in Strasbourg and there was static on the line. “I don’t know,” his voice crackled through.
“Remmer!—The son of a bitch has my badge, my Interpol letter and my gun! Now where the hell is he?”
The static got louder, then suddenly there was a loud crackle, three bars of Beethoven, and a dial tone. Burning, McVey hung up.
“Goddammit!”
Sunlight cut across the platform at a sharp angle as the Bern train came slowly into Interlaken station. Steel screeched on steel and the train stopped. A ticket collector came down the steps of the first car, followed by three girls in parochial school uniforms. A half-dozen nondescript people came down from the second car, crossed the platform and went into the station. Then twenty or so American railroad enthusiasts noisily exited the third car and moved off in a group. After that everything was still, with the train left sitting there against the distant Alps like an abandoned toy.
Then, on the far side of it, away from the station, a foot touched down on the gravel alongside the track. For a moment it hesitated, then a second foot came down and Osborn turned and walked quickly along the length of the train to the end of it. Easing carefully around the last car, he looked out. The station platform was empty. So were the tracks in front of it. Once again he felt for the pistol in his-waistband. There was no doubt Von Holden had recognized him on the platform in Bern. Nor would Von Holden have any doubt that Osborn would be on the next train. In retrospect he wished he had never taken the ticket collector’s advice and had Von Holden paged in Bern. Its only effect had been to tell him he had been followed. And did he think the man would have been so foolish as to answer a page in the first place? It had been a mistake, the same as running toward the Interlaken train on the platform, letting himself be recognized. Another mistake like that could cost him his life.
In the distance he heard a train whistle. Then the train for Jungfraujoch was announced over the P.A. system. If he missed it, it would be thirty minutes before the next train. That would put him an hour behind Von Holden. Twice the. time he was behind him now. That was unless Von Holden was here, somewhere, waiting for him.
Again came the announcement for Jun
gfraujoch. If he were going to make the train, he would have to cross from where he was and walk the length of the station to reach it. Von Holden would know that too. If he was still here, lying in wait, Osborn’s only ally would be that it was the middle of the afternoon, broad daylight in a small public railway station. It would take a daring move on Von Holden’s part to try something so bold and expect to get away with it. But then, wasn’t that exactly what had happened to his father?
Scanning the station again, Osborn stepped from behind the train, crossed the platform and walked toward the far end of the station. He moved quickly, his jacket open, his hand near the gun. All his senses were alert. A movement in a shadow, a footstep behind him, someone appearing suddenly from a doorway. He flashed back to Paris and the tall man dead on the Montparnasse sidewalk outside La Coupole, with McVey lifting his pant leg to reveal his artificial limbs that could let him be tall or short or somewhere in between at will. Was Von Holden filled with the same tricks? Or had he others, even more bizarre and ingenious?
Osborn stayed out in the open where he could be seen by everyone. He passed an old man walking slowly, using a cane. Osborn wondered if he’d live that long.
An old man with a cane!
Osborn whirled, his hand under his jacket, ready to jerk out the revolver and fire. But the old man was just an old man and kept going. Again the announcement train whistle, and Osborn turned back toward it. Ahead he could see the American railroad enthusiasts. They were going for the Jungfraujoch train too. If he could catch up, he could blend in with them.
“Achtung! Achtung! Doktor Osborn. Telefon, bitte!” The public address page echoed through the station. Osborn stopped in his tracks. Von Holden not only knew he was there, he knew his name.
“Doctor Osborn of the United States, telephone, please!”
Osborn looked around for a telephone. He saw them at the edge of the building. A double phone booth, side by side. Both were empty. His first inclination was to ask someone where the paging operator was located, but he didn’t have time. Through the open door he could see the last of the Americans boarding the train. What was Von Holden doing? Was he positioned somewhere outside with a high-powered rifle targeted on the telephones? Was some kind of high-tech explosive device connected to the phones and set to go off automatically on pickup, or be detonated by remote control like the blast at the Hotel Borggreve?
A final announcement for the Jungfraujoch train was followed immediately by the announcement of an incoming train. Then came another page for him. Outside, conductors were hurrying the last of the passengers onto the, Jungfraujoch train.
Think! Think! Osborn said to himself. You know nothing about Jungfraujoch station or what Von Holden plans to do when he gets there. If this is a trick, and you miss, the train, he’ll be a full hour ahead of you. Enough time to get away completely now that he knows you’re this close. But if he’s still here and watching and you get on the train, all he has to do is wait for it to leave and he’s home free. Takes the next train out and it’s the last you ever hear of him. Maybe he was never going to Jungfraujoch in the first place. On the other hand, what if he was? Jungfraujoch is the last stop on the line. If he is going there, because of the Berghaus thing, think why! What’s his objective? If he’s carted whatever he’s got in his rucksack all the way from Berlin to Interlaken—especially after escaping the fire at Charlottenburg and killing the Frankfurt policemen—whatever it is must be very important, maybe even crucial to the Organization. If so, he may be delivering it to someone at Jungfraujoch, someone even more powerful than Scholl. If that’s the case, what would be more important, the mission or the lone man trying to stop it? If he kills me here, he’s set. But if something goes wrong and he misses, or he’s captured, then whatever he’s doing ends here.
“Attention, Doctor Osborn. Telephone, please!”
No! Don’t fall for it! He’s having you paged but it’s a trick! He’s already on the train ahead of this one! Suddenly Osborn moved. In two steps he was out the door and running for the train. A moment later he reached out, grasped the rear handrail and swung on board. Almost immediately the train started off. Behind him, the colorful hotels and chalets of Interlaken, their planter boxes of geraniums still in bright bloom, slowly slid from view. Then he felt the train begin to climb and he saw the rich reds and yellows of autumn leaves and beyond, as the grade became steeper, the deep blue expanse of Lake Thun.
140
* * *
COMRADE SENIOR Lieutenant they’d called him in the Spetsnaz. Who and what was Von Holden now? Still Leiter der Sicherheit, head of security, or a last, lone soldier on the most critical assignment of his life? Both, he thought. Both.
Beside him, Vera stared out at passing countryside, content, he guessed, simply to pass the time. Von Holden shifted in his seat and looked out. Moments before they had “ changed trains at Grindelwald, and now he heard the grind of the cogs as they took hold of the center rail and the train pushed steeply upward through a forest of lush alpine meadows dappled with wildflowers and grazing dairy cattle.
In another twenty minutes they’d reach Kleine Scheidegg where the meadows would abruptly end against the base of the Alps. There they would change once more, this time to the brown-and-cream-colored train of the Jungfrau Railway that would take them up into the marrow of the Alps, past the stops of Eigerwand and Eismeer, and finally into Jungfraujoch station. To Von Holden’s left was the Eiger, and beyond it the snow-covered summit of the Monch. Beyond them, not yet in view, but as familiar as the lines in his hand, was the Jungfrau. Its summit at thirteen and a half thousand feet was nearly half a mile higher than rail’s end at Jungfraujoch station. Looking back, he studied the Eiger’s harrowing north face, a sheer limestone cliff rising fifty-four hundred feet straight from the Eiger meadows to the top, and thought of the fifty or more true professionals who had died trying to climb it. It was a risk, like anything else. You prepared, you did your best, and then something unforeseen happened and you fell. Death, all around you, simply closed in.
Thun had been the first logical place the police would have intercepted the train. That they hadn’t left only Interlaken. But there had been no police there either, and that meant however Osborn had managed to catch up, he’d done it alone. How many trains per day passed through Interlaken, Von Holden didn’t know. What he did know was that a train for Lucerne had left ten minutes after his train had arrived from Bern. Lucerne was a major connecting point for destinations as disparate as Amsterdam, Belgium, Austria, Luxembourg and Italy. Jungfraujoch was a side trek, an interlude for tourists, Alpine hikers or serious mountaineers. Von Holden was a man on the run from the law and would hardly be expected to take a leisurely afternoon’s excursion into the mountains, especially where the destination was a dead end. No, he would be trying to put as much distance between himself and his pursuers as possible. And if, in doing that, he could cross the border into a different country, so much the better.
Von Holden had abandoned the idea of killing Osborn at Interlaken as too risky. Instead, he’d turned Osborn’s trick against him and had him paged, with the intention of both throwing him off and frightening him. Muddle whatever cunning and instinct that had brought him this far and in the process send him scurrying, none too coherently, after the only thing left. Logic. After arriving from Bern, there were only two ways out of Interlaken, the train up into the mountains or the narrow-gauge train to Lucerne. And a train for Lucerne, Osborn would learn, had left Interlaken only minutes after Von Holden had arrived from Bern. Von Holden would have no choice but to be on it. Accepting that, Osborn would rush onto the next train after it in pursuit of a shadow.
Osborn jumped from the train at Grindelwald station and quickly crossed to the waiting cars of the train that would connect with one at Kleine Scheidegg and take him the final leg to Jungfraujoch. This time there was no hesitation. He was certain Von Holden would be on the train ahead of him, not lying in wait here. Von Holden was arrogant enough to thi
nk he’d thrown him off at Interlaken and believe he was either still there, frightened and wondering what to do, or, better yet, had done the most obvious and followed the train Von Holden should have been On to Lucerne.
Jungfraujoch station, he’d learned in a brief conversation with one of the American railroad buffs on board, consisted of a tiny post office and souvenir shop, a tourist exhibit called the Ice Palace with ice sculptures literally cut into glacier walls on which the station was built, a small, automated weather station, and the Inn-Above-the-Clouds restaurant. Most of these were on different levels and served by elevators. Other than that there was nothing but the mountain and the desolate expanse of the great Aletsch glacier that lay before it. If Von Holden was meeting someone to transfer the contents of the rucksack, it would be within the confines of the station. Who that Would be, or where it might take place, he had no idea. But there was nothing he could do until he got there.
With a sharp, grate of engine cogs, the train leaned into a curve, and for the first time Osborn saw the full expanse of the mountains above him, their peaks stark white against the late afternoon sky. Closest was the Eiger, and even at this distance he could see wind-driven snow devils dance just below its summit.
“We’re going straight up there, once we get past Kleine Scheidegg, darlin’.” A smiling bleached blonde, one of the American railroaders, was talking to him, referring to the summit he was looking at. It wasn’t hard to see she’d had a face-lift, nor, as she patted his knee with a ringless left hand, that she was single and making a point of it. “Right up into the wall of Eiger and a tunnel inside where you can look out and see this whole valley all the way back to Interlaken.”