The Day After Tomorrow

126

JOANNA LOOKED out from her hotel room. Berlin was obscured, enclosed in an ever-thickening shroud of fog. She wondered if her plane would be able to take off in the morning. Going into the bathroom, she brushed her teeth and then swallowed two sleeping pills.

Why Dr. Salettl had so abruptly and rudely changed her plans, she had no idea. Why Von Holden had said nothing of leaving with Mr. Scholl immediately after the ceremony troubled her deeply, and she wondered even if it were true.

Who was Salettl anyway? What power did he have that he could control the comings and goings of someone like Von Holden, or even Scholl for that matter? Why he had even bothered to give her a present was beyond her. She meant no more to him than a mosquito clinging to a screen, to be suddenly snapped free or crushed at will. He was cruel and manipulative, and she was certain the dreadfully dark sexual incident with Elton Lybarger could be traced directly to him. But it didn’t mater. Von Holden was the one, he had made everything else that happened seem merely a dream.

She went to bed thinking of him. She saw his face and felt his touch, and knew that for the rest of her life she would never love anyone else.

Von Holden’s entire being bordered on complete exhaustion. Never, through all his training with the Spetsnaz, the KGB and the Stasi, had he experienced such mental and physical weariness. They could take his Spetsnaz evaluation—that he “performs constantly, under the highest stress, with calm and clear judgment”—and send it back for “evaluation.”

Immediately following his encounter with Salettl outside the mausoleum, he had gone to the apartments within the Golden Gallery complex to wait for Scholl as ordered.

But the moment he’d closed the door he’d felt the stab I of the Vorahnung—the premonition. It wasn’t a full-blown attack, but he could feel its clock counting off the seconds like a time bomb and after five minutes he’d left. Salettl was old, so was Scholl, so were Dortmund and Uta Baur. Power and wealth and time had made them despotic. Even Scholl, for all his seeming concern that McVey and Osborn could destroy everything, did not really believe it. The concept of true danger had long since vanished. The idea that they could somehow fail was absurd. Even the arrival of McVey and BKA inspectors with an arrest warrant did not faze them.

The ceremony at the mausoleum had not been canceled, only postponed. And would go on as planned as soon as the lawyers had intervened and the police had left the premises. The final arrogance of it was that the ceremony not only involved the presentation of the Organization’s most closely guarded secret, it centered around murder. Step two of “Übermorgen”—the ritualistic assassination of Elton Lybarger. The prelude to what “Übermorgen” was truly about.

Let them play the insolent fools if they could do no better, but Von Holden was different, he was Leiter der Sicherheit, the last guardian of the Organization’s security. He had taken the vow to protect it from enemies within and without, at whatever cost. Scholl had prevented him from leading the attack at the Hotel Borggreve, and Salettl had relayed Dortmund’s order to wait in the Royal Apartments in the Golden Gallery complex for his next command. Waiting there, alone, with the dark throb of the Vorahnung ticking inside him, hearing the roar of applause as Lybarger entered the Golden Gallery in the room next to him, he made the decision that at that moment the enemies from within were as dangerous as those from without. And that because of it, the next command would not be theirs, but his. Taking a back staircase, he’d gone out a side door, ordered a car from the security force and driven the white Audi directly back to the house at 45 Behrenstrasse, intending to return the box to the deep safety of der Garten. It wasn’t possible. The street was filled with fire equipment. And the house itself was fully engulfed in flame.

Sitting there, in the darkness halfway down the street, the unimaginable before him, he’d felt the honor begin to rise once more. It began as transparent waves undulating slowly like spots before his eyes, then came the red of the Aurora and with it the unearthly green.

Fighting it off, he picked up the radio. Damn them and. what they were doing, but someone of them had to be informed. Scholl, Salettl, Dortmund or even Uta Baur. But even as the radio was in his hand, the call had come through from the palace. “Lugo!” His radio had crackled “ with the desperate voice of Egon Frisch, Charlottenburg’s acting security chief—”Lugo!”

For a moment he’d hesitated, then finally replied. “Lugo.”

“All hell has broken loose! The Golden Gallery is locked and on fire! All entrances and exits are sealed!”

“Sealed? How?”

“By security doors, latched into place. There is no electricity, no way to move them!”

Leaving Behrenstrasse, Von Holden had driven like a madman through Berlin. How could this be? There had been no sign, no indication. The security doors had been installed in every room in the palace two years before in case of fire and to prevent vandalism, a full eighteen months before the date or even the location for celebration had been chosen. Automated computer security checks scanned the Behrenstrasse house twenty-four hours a day, and had done the same for the last week at Charlottenburg. Late that afternoon Von Holden had personally inspected the systems within the Golden Gallery, and in the Galerie der Romantik where the cocktail reception had been held. Nothing was out of place. Everything had checked.

Nearing the palace, he’d found the entire area sealed off. The crossing at Caprivi Bridge was as close as he could get, and he’d had to do that on foot. Even from there, a quarter of a mile away, he could see the flames rampaging into the sky. By morning the entire palace would be reduced to ashes. It was a national tragedy of profound proportion, and headlines, he knew, would liken it to the Reichstag fire of 1933. Whether they would find reason later to liken it to what happened in German immediately afterward, he had no idea. What he did know was that had he obeyed Salettl’s order and stayed, he and the priceless box he had retrieved from der Garten would have been in the center of the conflagration he now watched. Neither would have survived.

It was then, while he stood on Caprivi Bridge, watching Charlottenburg burn, Von Holden unilaterally put Sector 5, the “Entscheidendes Verfahren”—the Conclusive Procedure—into operation. Planned in 1942 as the last and final measure in the face of impossible odds, it had been refined and rehearsed by those in charge for half a century. Each member of the Organization’s highest circle had been taught the procedure, had practiced it two dozen time, could do it in his sleep. Purposely designed to be operational for one man acting alone and under extreme pressure, the route and modes of transportation were left open to ingenuity at the time of execution. Its charm was its simplicity and its mobility, and because of that it I worked. And had, time and again, even against top Organization operatives acting as enemy agents attempting to stop it.

The decision made, Von Holden returned to the Audi and drove off through a horde of rubberneckers rushing to get a view of the fire. That both fires, Charlottenburg and Behrenstrasse, were obviously the work of saboteurs, meant it was essential he get out of Germany as quickly as possible. Whoever was responsible—the BKA, German Intelligence, the CIA, the Mossad, French or British Military Intelligence—would be watching every exit point for anyone in the Organization who might have escaped the terror. The heavy fog that had concerned him earlier prohibited escape by air, even by private jet. Using the Audi was an alternative, but the drive was long and there could be roadblocks or mechanical failure. A bus, if stopped, left ho room for escape. That left the train. A man could lose himself in a crowded station and then take a private sleeping compartment. The borders were not checked as closely as they once had been and besides, if there was a problem, a pulled emergency cord could stop a train anywhere along the line and a passenger could slip away in the confusion. Still, a man alone buying overnight passage in a sleeping compartment could be remembered. And if he was remembered, he could be traced and then captured. Yet there was no other way, and Von Holden knew it. What he needed was a complication.