The Day After Tomorrow

127

BY NOW seventeen engine companies had converged on the horror of Charlottenburg and more were coming from outlying districts. Spectators by the thousands strained to see from distant parameters, held there by several hundred helmeted Berlin police. Despite the heavy fog, media, police and fire helicopters fought for airspace directly over the conflagration.

The fire brigade’s Second Engine Company Feuerwehrmanns had worked their way to the rear, cutting through temporary security fences and trampling formal gardens, trying to concentrate hoses on the furiously burning upper floors, when Osborn came screaming for help out of the dark.

He’d left McVey where he’d dragged him, flat on his back in the grass, as far away from the terrible heat as he could get. The policeman had been unconscious and laboring to breathe and Osborn had torn open his jacket and shirt, tearing away anything that might restrict the flow of air. But he’d been helpless to do anything about violent spasms in McVey’s neck muscles and upper arms. He needed an antidote for the cyanide, and he needed it fast. Across the Spree he could see spectators, and, gagging and nauseated, poisoned himself by the gas but to a lesser degree, he’d run to the river’s edge yelling and waving his arms. But it was only a moment before he’d realized a new enemy. Distance and darkness. No one could see or hear him. Turning back, he saw McVey writhing in the grass, and beyond him, the raging inferno. McVey was going to die and there was nothing he could do about it but watch. It was then the firemen had come.

“Cyanide gas!” he yelled, coughing and choking, into the face of the young, bull-like fireman who rushed with him through a rain of burning embers and swirling fog. He knew American fire companies carried cyanide antidote kits because burning plastics give off cyanide gas; he prayed the Germans were as high-tech.

“We need cyanide antidote! Amyl nitrite! Do you understand? Amyl nitrite! It’s an antidote for the gas!”

“Ich verstehe nicht Englisch”—I don’t understand English—the fireman said, agonizing with the American.

“A doctor! A doctor! Please!” Osborn pleaded, enunciating as carefully as he could. Praying the man would understand.

Then the fireman nodded. “Arzt! Ja!” A doctor, yes! “Ich brauche schnell einen Arzt! Cyanide gas!” He spoke quickly, and authoritatively into the radio microphone on the collar ‘ of his jacket, asking for medical help immediately.

“Amyl nitrite!” Osborn said, then, turning away, bent over and vomited in the grass.

Remmer rode with them in the ambulance as the drug began to take effect. The German paramedic who had administered it and two other paramedics were with them as well. An oxygen mask covered McVey’s nose and mouth. His breathing was returning to normal. Osborn lay beside him, an IV in his arm like McVey, staring up at Remmer, listening to the staccato crackle of his police radio that overrode the singsong of the ambulance siren. It was all in German, but somehow Osborn understood. Charlottenburg and nearly everyone in it had perished in the fire. Only he and McVey and a few of the help and security guards had escaped. The Golden Gallery was still sealed by the metal doors, now a molten, twisted mass. It would be hours, even days, before rescuers with gas masks could go inside.

Lying back, he tried to push away the vision of McVey in the grass. That, as a grown man, he had acquired the skills of a doctor meant nothing. He’d been helpless to do anything but watch—finally to run, screaming, for help. It was the same precious little he’d been able to do for his own father as he lay in the gutter of the Boston street so many years before.

He felt the shudder of an uncontrolled sob as he realized that the enigma of his father’s death was ended, entombed in the fiery rubble of Charlottenburg. The most he’d been able to gain from all that had happened was that his father, and any number of others, had been victims of a complex and macabre conspiracy involving a secret, elitist Nazi group’s experiment in low-temperature atomic surgery. One that, if McVey’s theory about Elton Lybarger was true, had apparently been successful. But for the why of it, he still had no answer. Perhaps what he had learned was already too much. He thought of Karolin Henniger and her son, running from him in the alley. How many more had died because of his own personal quest? Most had been totally innocent. In that, the guilt was his. The nightmare of his existence had been extended unfairly to others. Lives that should never have crossed, tragically had.

Whatever God that had deserted him when he was ten, deserted him still. Even to Vera, who, for a single few days, had been a light he’d never dreamed of. What had this God done about her but brand her a conspirator, tear her away and cast her in prison.

Suddenly he visualized her under the terrible glare of the ever-present lights. Where was she at this moment? What were they doing to. her? How was she managing against them? He wanted to reach out and touch her, comfort her, tell her that eventually everything would be all right. Then the thought came that even if he could tell her, she would pull back, recoiling from his touch, no longer trusting him. Had everything that had happened destroyed that too?

“Osborn . . .” Suddenly McVey’s voice rasped out through the oxygen mask. Looking over, Osborn could see Remmer’s face lit by the interior lights of the ambulance. He was watching McVey. He wanted him to live, to be well again.

“Osborn’s here, McVey. He’s all right,” Remmer said,

Pulling off his own oxygen mask, Osborn moved to take McVey’s hand and saw the detective staring up at him. “We’ll be to the hospital soon,” Osborn said, trying to reassure him.

McVey coughed, his chest heaved painfully and he closed his eyes.

Remmer looked to the German doctor.

“He’ll be okay,” Osborn said, still holding McVey’s hand. “Just let him rest.”

“The hell with that. Listen to me.” Abruptly McVey’s grip tightened on Osborn’s hand and his eyes opened. “Salettl—” McVey paused, breathed deeply, then went on. ‘—said—Lybarger’s physical therapist—the girl—would be on—”

“The morning plane to L.A.!” Osborn finished for him, his words coming in a rush. “Jesus Christ, he said it for a reason! She’s got to be alive. And here, in Berlin!”

“Yes—”