The Day After Tomorrow

119

WEARING A big Hollywood smile, Louis Goetz came down the grand stairway toward the men waiting at the bottom.

“Detective McVey,” he said, immediately picking McVey out and extending his hand. “I’m Louis Goetz, Mr. Scholl’s attorney. Why don’t we go someplace we can talk.”

Goetz led the way through a maze of hallways and into a large paneled gallery and closed the door. The room had polished gray-white marble floor and was coupled at either end by enormous fireplaces of the same material. A sidewall groaned with the weight of heavy tapestries and opposite, French doors opened to a lighted formal garden that faded quickly into the darkness beyond. Over the door they had entered hung a 1712 portrait of Sophie-Charlotte herself, the corpulent, double-chinned queen of Prussia.

“Sit down, gentlemen,” Goetz gestured toward a gathering of high-backed chairs placed around a long, ornate table. “Geez, Detective, that’s a mess. What happened?” he said, looking at McVey’s facial burns.

“I was kind of sloppy about watching what was cooking,” McVey said with a straight face and eased into one of the chairs. “Doctor suspects I’ll live.”

Osborn sat down across from McVey, and Remmer pulled up a chair beside him. Schneider stood back near the door. They didn’t want this looking like an invasion of detectives.

“Mr. Scholl had set time aside to see you earlier. I’m afraid he’s tied up for the rest of the evening. Right afterward he leaves for South America.” Goetz sat down at the head of the table.

“Mr. Goetz, we’d just like to see him for a few minutes before he leaves,” McVey said.

“That won’t be possible tonight, Detective. Maybe when he gets back to L.A.”

“When’s that?”

“March of next year.” Goetz smiled as if he’d just given a punch line, then held up a hand. “Hey, it’s true. I’m not trying to be a wise-ass.”

“Then I guess we better see him now.” McVey was dead serious and Goetz knew it.

Goetz sat back sharply. “You know who Erwin Scholl is? You know who he’s entertaining up there?” He glanced at the ceiling. “What the hell do you think, he’s gonna get up in the middle of everything and come down here to talk to you?”

From upstairs came the sound of an orchestra playing a Strauss waltz. It reminded McVey of the radio inside the room where they found Cadoux. He looked to Remmer.

“I’m afraid Mr. Scholl will have to change his plans,” Remmer said, dropping the Haftbefehl, the arrest warrant, on the table in front of Goetz. “He comes down and he talks to Detective McVey, or he goes to jail. Right now.”

“What the hell is this, for Chrissake? Who the fuck do you think you’re dealing with?” Goetz was outraged. Picking up the warrant, he glanced at it, then threw it back on the table in disgust. It was written totally in German.

“With a little cooperation maybe we can save your client a great deal of embarrassment. Maybe even keep him on his schedule.” McVey shifted in his chair. The painkiller Osborn had given him was beginning to wear off, but he didn’t want more for fear it would make him groggy and he’d lose his edge. “Why don’t you just ask him to step down here for a few minutes.”

“Why don’t you just tell me what the fuck this is all about?”

“I’d just as soon discuss that with Mr. Scholl. Of course you have every right to be present. Or—we can all go with Detective Remmer here and have our conversation in much less historical surroundings.”

Goetz smiled. Here was a civil servant, totally out of his league and not even in his own country, trying to play hardball with one of the world’s top power brokers. The problem was the warrant. It was something none of them had anticipated, chiefly because not one of them would have believed McVey capable of convincing a German judge to issue one. Scholl’s German lawyers would handle it as soon as they’d been notified. But that would take a little time, and McVey wasn’t about to give it. There were two ways to deal with it. Tell McVey to go fuck himself or play the mensch and ask Scholl to come down and spread a little confectionery sugar around and hope everything would ease over long enough to get the Kraut lawyers here.

“I’ll see what I can do,” he said. Getting up, he glanced briefly at Schneider standing by the door and left.

McVey looked at Remmer. “This might be a good time to see what you can do about finding Lybarger.

Von Holden turned the taxi onto a darkened residential street a dozen blocks from Charlottenburg. Finding a space, he parked and shut off the lights. The neighborhood was quiet. In the fog and damp people were inside. Opening the door, he got out and looked around. He saw no one. Reaching back inside, he pulled out the white plastic case, attached a nylon carrying strap to clips at the top, and hefted it over his shoulder. Tossing the keys back in the taxi, he locked it and walked off.

Ten minutes later he was in sight of Charlottenburg. Crossing a footbridge over the Spree River at Tegeler Weg, he approached a service gate at the back of the palace grounds. Beyond it, he could see the building’s lights looming through the damp and realized how much heavier the fog had become in the last hour. By now the airports would be closed and unless the weather changed, no planes would fly until morning.

A guard stationed at the service gate let him in and he walked down a path lined with chestnut trees. Crossing another bridge, he followed the path under an avenue of pines to an intersection where he turned left and approached the mausoleum.

“It’s nine o’clock. Where have you been?” Salettl’s voice shot out at him from the darkness and then he appeared on the pathway directly in front of Von Holden. Pencil-thin and wrapped in a dark cloak, his skull alone stood out in the blackness.

“The police are here. They have a warrant for Scholl’s arrest.” Salettl came closer. As he neared, Von Holden could see the pupils in his eyes were little more than dots and every part of him seemed wired, as if he were pumped full of amphetamine.

“Yes, I know,” Von Holden said.

Salettl’s eyes darted to the white case thrown over Von Holden’s shoulder. “You treat it as. if it were some kind of picnic box.”

“I apologize. There was no other way.”

“For now the ceremony here at the mausoleum is postponed.”

“By whose order?”

“Dortmund.”

“Then I will return to der Garten.”

“Your orders are to wait in the Royal Apartments until I further notice.”

Thick fog swirled around the rhododendrons on the path where they stood. Further down, the mausoleum loomed against the trees shrouding it like the vortex of a Gothic nightmare, and Von Holden felt himself being drawn toward it as if pulled by some unseen hand. Then they came again, the colossal red and green curtains of the aurora, slowly undulating, threatening to absorb the core of his entire being.

“What is it?” Salettl snapped.

“I—”

“Are you ill?” Salettl snapped again.

Fighting it to break it, Von Holden shook his head. Then he took a deep breath of cold air. The aurora vanished and everything cleared.

“No,” he said, sharply.

“Then go to the Royal Apartments as you have been told.”