The Day After Tomorrow

104

SUNLIGHT SUDDENLY streamed in through porthole windows as the sixteen-seat corporate jet broke the cloud deck and banked northeast for the ninety-minute flight to Berlin.

Joanna sat back and for a moment closed her eyes at the release. Switzerland, as beautiful as it was, was behind her. By this time tomorrow she would be at Tegel Airport in Berlin waiting for her flight to Los Angeles.

Across from her, Elton Lybarger dozed peacefully. If he had any concern about the events to take place later in the day, none showed. Dr. Salettl, looking pale and tired, sat in a swivel chair facing him, making notes in black leather notebook in his lap. Occasionally he glanced up to converse in German with Uta Baur, who had flown in from a showing in Milan to accompany them to Berlin. In the seats directly behind her, Lybarger’s nephews, Eric and Edward, played a silent and dramatically rapid game of chess.

Salettl’s presence troubled Joanna as it always did and she purposefully let her thoughts go to “Kelso,” the name she had given the black Saint Bernard puppy Von Holden had given her. Kelso had been fed and walked and kissed goodbye. Tomorrow he would be sent on a direct flight from Zurich to Los Angeles, where he would be held for the few hours before Joanna arrived to meet him. Then they would fly to Albuquerque. A three-hour drive after that, and they would be home in Taos.

Joanna’s first thoughts immediately after she’d seen the video had been to get a lawyer and sue them. But then she’d thought—to what end? A lawsuit would only hurt Mr. Lybarger and could even have serious physical repercussions, especially if it dragged on. And she wouldn’t do that because she cared a great deal for him and besides, he’d been as innocent as she. And later as horrified. All she’d wanted to do was leave Switzerland as quickly as possible and pretend it had never happened. Then Von Holden had come with the puppy and with his deep apology and finally he’d presented her with a check for an enormous amount of money. The company had apologized, so had Von Holden. What else could she really expect?

Still, she wondered if, in accepting Lybarger’s corporate check, she’d done the right thing. She also had second thoughts about having told Ellie Barrs, head nurse at Rancho de Piñon, that she wouldn’t be coming back to work right away, “if at all,” she’d added. Maybe she shouldn’t have done that. But all that money. My God, half a million dollars! The thing she’d do was find an investment counselor and put it all away, then live off the interest. Well, maybe she would buy a few things, but not much. Prudent investment, that was the smart thing.

Suddenly a red light on a telephone mounted in a console directly in front of her began to blink. Uncertain of what it meant, she did nothing.

“The call is for you.” Eric leaned around her seat from behind.

“Thank you,” she said and picked up the phone.

“Good morning. How are you?” Von Holden sounded light and cheery.

“I’m fine, Pascal.” She smiled.

“How is Mr. Lybarger?”

“He’s very well. He’s taking a nap now.”

“You should be landing in one hour. A car will be waiting for you.”

“You won’t be meeting us?”

“Joanna, you flatter me by the disappointment in your voice but I’m sorry, I won’t be seeing you until later in the day. I’m afraid I have last-minute arrangements. I only wanted to make sure all was well.”

Joanna smiled at the warmth in Von Holden’s voice. “All is well. Don’t worry about anything.”

Von Holden hung up the cellular phone in a module next to the gearshift, then slowing, turned the steel gray BMW right onto Friedrichstrasse. Directly ahead a delivery truck pulled up sharply and he had to jam the brakes heavily to avoid hitting it. Cursing, he swung around it, absently passing a hand over a rectangular plastic case on the seat beside him to make sure it was still there and hadn’t been thrown off the seat by the force of his quick stop. A red neon digital clock in the window of a jewelry building read 10:39.

In the last hours things had changed dramatically. Perhaps for the better. Berlin sector had tapped the two supposedly “secure” telephone lines in Room 6132 at the Hotel Palace using a prototype microwave receiver located in a building across the street. Calls to and from the room had been recorded and delivered to the apartment on Sophie-Charlottenstrasse, where they were transcribed and given to Von Holden. The equipment had not been set up until nearly eleven o’clock the night before and so they had missed most of the early transmissions. But what they had recorded afterward was enough for Von Holden to request an immediate meeting with Scholl.

Passing the Hotel Metropole, Von Holden crossed Unter den Linden and pulled up sharply in front of the Grand Hotel. Clutching the plastic case, he got out and went inside, taking an elevator directly to Scholl’s suite.

A male secretary announced him and then showed him in. Scholl was on the phone at his desk when Von Holden entered. Across from him was a man he disliked immensely and hadn’t seen in some time, Scholl’s American attorney, H. Louis Goetz.

“Mr. Goetz.”

“Von Holden.”

Slick and crude, Goetz was fifty, too fit and too studied. He looked as if he spent half the day getting to look like he looked. Nails manicured and polished, deeply tanned and dressed in a blue pinstripe Armani suit, his dark, blow-dried hair showed just the toniest touch of white at the temples, as if it had been bleached that way on purpose. He carried an air of having just flown in from a tennis match in Palm Springs. Or a funeral in Palm Beach. There were rumors he was connected to the mob, but all Von Holden knew for certain was that at the moment he was a key figure in helping Scholl and Margarete Peiper buy into a top Hollywood talent agency where the Organization could more effectively influence the recording, movie and television industries. And, not so coincidentally, the audiences they served. Cold was a lacking description of Goetz’s demeanor. Ice, with a mouth, was more like it.

Von Holden waited for Scholl to hang up, then set the plastic case in front of him and opened it. Inside was a small playback machine and the tapes of the conversations the Berlin sector had recorded.

“They have the complete guest list and a detailed dossier on Lybarger. They know about Salettl. Furthermore, McVey has arranged to have the cardinal of Los Angeles call you sometime this morning to request you meet with him at Charlottenburg this evening, one hour prior to when the guests will arrive. He knows you will be distracted and is counting on that for purposes of interrogation.”

Ignoring the others, Scholl took the transcripts and studied them. When he finished, he handed them to Goetz, then pulled on the headset and listened to the tapes, fast-forwarding through them just enough to pick up excerpts. Finally, he clicked off the machine and removed the headset.

“All they have done, Pascal, is precisely what I anticipated. Using their resources and predictable pathways to gather information about my business here in Berlin and then arranging a way to meet with me. That they know about Mr. Lybarger and Doctor Salettl, that they have the guest list even, is meaningless. However, now that we know for certain they are coming, we shall do what we want.”

Goetz looked up from the transcripts. He didn’t like what he was reading or hearing. “Erwin, you’re not gonna whack’ em? Three detectives and a doctor?”

“Something like that, Mr. Goetz. Why, is it a problem?”

“Problem? For Chrissakes, Bad Godesberg has the guest list. You knock these guys off, you get the whole goddamn federal police involved, what the fuck is that? You want them to start sticking their fucking noses up everybody’s asshole?”

Von Holden said nothing. How Americans loved the ugly vernacular, no matter who they were.

“Mr. Goetz,” Scholl said quietly. “Tell me how the federal police will become involved. What would they have to report? A middle-aged man recovered from a grave illness gives a mildly rousing, but in essence boring, speech to a hundred sleepy well-wishers at Charlottenburg and then everyone goes home. Germany is a free country for its citizens to do in and believe as they please.”

“But you still got three dead cops and a dead doctor Who put them onto this in the first place. What’re they fuckin’ gonna do about that, let it ride?”

“Mr. Goetz. The gentlemen in question, like you and Von Holden and myself, are in a major European city filled with any number of ambitious and nefarious people. Before the day’s end Detective McVey and his friends will find themselves in a situation wholly untraceable to the Organization. And when the authorities begin to put it together they will be quite surprised to find that these seemingly outstanding citizens have quite sordid, interconnected pasts, filled with dark and private secrets they successfully kept hidden from families and co-workers. In essence, not the kind of men who should be point accusing fingers at figures like myself or one hundred of Germany’s most respected friends and citizens, unless, of course, it were to be for private gain, for instance through blackmail or extortion. Am I not right, Pascal?”

Von Holden nodded. “Of course.” The isolation and execution of McVey and Osborn and Noble and Remmer was his responsibility; the rest Scholl would take care of through sector operatives in Los Angeles, Frankfurt and London.

“There, you see, Mr. Goetz. We have nothing at all to concern ourselves with. Nothing at all. So, unless you think I have overlooked something worth further discussion, I would prefer to return to the subject of our agency acquisition.”

Scholl’s telephone buzzed and he picked it up. Listening, he looked to Goetz and smiled. “By all means,” he said. “I am always available for Cardinal O’Connel.”