The Day After Tomorrow

109

THE INTERROGATION room in the basement of the building on Kaiser Friedrichstrasse was stark white. Floor, ceiling and walls. The same decor as the half-dozen six-by-eight-foot cells that adjoined it. Few people, even those who worked in the building which housed the collection bureau for the municipal public works department, knew the facility existed. But fully one-third of the six-thousand square-foot subbasement was occupied by a special investigations unit of the BKA. Built immediately following the massacre at the 1972 Olympic games in Munich, its primary use was to interrogate captured terrorists and terrorist informants. It had in the past served as a temporary holding area for members of the Baader-Meinhof group, the Red Army Faction, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and suspects from the bombing of Pan Am flight 103. Besides its stark whiteness, its other distinguishing characteristic was that the lights were never turned off. The effect, in concert, was that within thirty-six hours, prisoners became wholly disoriented, with things usually going downhill from there.

Vera sat alone in the prime interrogation room on a white bench made of a PVC-like plastic molded to the floor. There was no table, no chairs. Only the bench. She had been photographed and fingerprinted. She wore dully gray pull-on slippers and a lighter gray, almost white, nylon jumpsuit with the words GEFANGER, Bundesre-publik Deutschland— PRISONER, Federal Republic of Germany—stenciled in Day-Glo orange on the back. She looked shocked and worn, but was still lucid when the door opened and Osborn entered. For a moment, a short, block-shaped policewoman stood in the doorway behind them. Then almost immediately she stepped back and closed the door.

“My God—” Osborn whispered. “Are you all right?”

Vera’s mouth was open; she was trying to say something but couldn’t. Tears burst forth instead, and then they were in each other’s arms and both were crying. Somewhere between the sobs and frightened caresses he heard her say, “François dead”—“WhyamIhere?”—“Everyone killed at farmhouse”—”What—haveIdone?”—“Came—to—Berlin—only—place—left—to—go—to—find—you.”

“Vera. Shhh. It’s all right, honey.” He held her tight against him. Protectively, like a child. “It’s okay. It’s going to be okay. . . .” Brushing back her hair, he kissed her tears and wiped her cheeks with his hands.’

“They even took my handkerchief,” he said, trying to smile. He had no belt, and they’d taken the laces from his shoes. Then they were holding each other again. Pressed together, arms around each other.

“Don’t let go,” she said. “Don’t ever . . .”

“Vera—tell me what happened. . . .” She took his hand, and held it tight and they sat down on the bench. Brushing away tears, she closed her eyes and thought back. All the way to yesterday.

She could see the farmhouse outside Nancy and the bodies of the three slain Secret Service agents lying where they had fallen. Not far away, Avril Rocard stared unseeingly, blood slowly oozing from her throat.

The phones had been dead when she’d gone back inside. Unable to find the keys to the Secret Service Ford, she’d taken Avril Rocard’s black police Peugeot and driven into the city, where she’d used a public telephone and tried to reach François in Paris. But the phones in both his office and his private number at home had been busy. No doubt, she thought, because news of his resignation had just been released. Still in shock from the killings, she’d gotten back into the Peugeot and driven to a park ori the edge of the city.

There, sitting in the car, trying to work through a blur of fear and emotions, trying to think what to do next, she’d seen Avril’s purse on the floor on the passenger side. Opening it, she’d found Avril’s police I.D. and her passport case. Inside the case, tucked behind the passport, was a first-class Air France ticket from Paris to Berlin and an envelope with a reservation confirmation from the Hotel Kempinski. There was also an elaborate engraved invitation in German to a formal dinner to be held at the Charlottenburg Palace at 8 P.M. Friday October 14, in honor of a man named Elton Lybarger. Among the sponsors was the name Erwin Scholl. The same man who hired Albert Merriman to kill Osborn’s father.

Her only thought was that if Scholl was in Berlin, perhaps Paul Osborn might have found out and gone there too. It wasn’t much to go on, but it was all she had. She looked enough like Avril Rocard that unless someone knew her personally, she could pass for her even though she was several years younger. That had been Thursday, the Charlottenburg thing was Friday. From Nancy the fastest way to Berlin was by train from Strasbourg, and so that was where she went.

Twice on the road from Nancy to Strasbourg she’d stopped to call François. The first time, the lines were tied up. The second time, at a highway rest stop, she got through to his office. By then it was nearly four in the afternoon and François had not been seen or heard from since he’d left his home at seven that morning. The media had not yet been informed that he was missing, but the Secret Service and police were on full alert and the president had ordered François’ wife and children to be taken to an unknown destination and kept there under armed guard.

She remembered hanging up and feeling only numbness. Nothing existed. There was no François Christian. No Dr. Paul Osborn of Los Angeles. Nor was there a Vera Monneray who could go back to her apartment and her life in Paris and carry on as if nothing had ever happened. Four people were dead at a farmhouse behind her and the only men she had ever known and cared about, loved as completely and deeply as she had, were gone, vanished, like steam into the air. It was then a sense came over hen that what was happening was only a prelude to what was to come. And once again she felt the awful and shadowed echo of her grandmother’s past, and the horror and unending fear that went with it. The only answer seemed to lie in Berlin, as it had in her grandmother’s day. Only now it had become a great deal more personal. Whatever had happened to François was part of it, but Osborn was too because he was on the same path as well.

She’d checked into Avril’s room and found Avril’s clothes already there. Then room service brought her breakfast. On the tray had been the newspaper and the word of François’ suicide. Feeling faint at first, she knew she needed to get outside and into the air to recover, to think, to plan what to do when and if someone contacted her. Or what to do if they did not, and if she should simply go to Charlottenburg that night alone. So, hiding her passport under the mattress for fear someone would discover who she really was, she’d gone out.

It was while she was walking she’d come upon the Church of Mary Queen of Martyrs. Ironically it was a religious memorial, dedicated to the martyrs for the freedom of belief and conscience from 1933 to 1945. It was like an omen beckoning her, and she thought that inside she might find some kind of answer to what was happening. What she’d found instead were the German police waiting when she came out.

Detective Schneider had lied when he’d told Osborn that if anything happened he was to take him back to the hotel. The truth was that if Vera Monneray was found, Osborn was to be taken directly to where she was being held. McVey wanted Osborn and Ms. Monneray to think they were alone, thereby giving McVey the chance to garner whatever candid information such a meeting would reveal. The idea was to make it seem the concept had been Osborn’s; and with Schneider’s help it worked; Osborn had played right into it.

Suddenly the door to the interrogation room was pulled open. Osborn swung around and saw McVey coming through the doorway. “Get him out of here, now!” McVey said angrily, and abruptly two uniformed federal policemen were jerking Osborn to his feet and hustling him out. “Vera!” he cried out, trying to look back. “Vera!” His second cry was followed by the booming slam of a heavy steel door. Then he was walked quickly down a narrow hallway and up a short flight of stairs. A door was opened and he was taken into another white room. The policemen I went out, and the door was closed and locked.

Ten minutes later McVey came in. His face was red and he was breathing heavily, as if he’d just climbed a long flight of stairs.

“What’d you get on the tape? Anything of interest?” Osborn said icily the moment the door opened. “Convenient” for me to get there first, wasn’t it! Maybe, she’d tell me what she wouldn’t tell you or the German police and the mikes would pick everything up. But it didn’t work, did it? All you got was the truth from a terrified woman.”

“How do you know it was the truth?”

“Because I do, dammit!”

“Did she ever mention Captain Cadoux of Interpol— ever talk about him, say his name?”

“No. Never.”

McVey glared at him, then softened. “Okay. Let’s believe her. Both of us.”

“Then let her go.”

“Osborn. You are here because of me. And by that I mean not dead on the floor of some Paris bistro with a Stasi shooter’s bullet between your eyes.”

“McVey, that has nothing to do with this and you know it! The same as you have no reason to hold her. You know that too!”

McVey never took his eyes from Osborn’s. “You want to know the why about your father.”

“What happened to my father has got nothing to do with Vera.”

“How do you know? How do you know for sure?” McVey wasn’t being cruel, he was probing. “You said you met her in Geneva. Did you find her or did she find you?”

“I—It doesn’t make any—”

“Answer me.”

“—She . . . found me. . . .”

“She was François Christian’s mistress. And on the day of this thing with Lybarger, he’s suddenly dead and she shows up in Berlin with an invitation to the ball.”

Osborn was angry. Angry and confused. What was McVey trying to do? That Vera might be part of the “group” was crazy. It wasn’t possible. He believed what she had just told him. They loved each other too much for him .not to! Her love meant too much. Turning away, he looked up at the ceiling. Above him, hanging out of reach from anyone standing on the floor, was a bank of bright lights. Glaring, hundred-and-fifty-watt bulbs that would never be turned off.

“Maybe she is innocent, Doctor,” McVey said. “But it’s out of your hands and in those of the German police.”

Behind them the door opened and Remmer came in. “We have video of the house on Hauptstrasse. Noble is waiting.”

McVey looked back to Osborn. “I want you to see this,” he said directly.

“Why?”

“It’s the house where we’re to meet Scholl. By we, f Doctor, I mean you and me.”