The Day After Tomorrow

130

VON HOLDEN sat back in the dark and listened to the sound of the train as it skipped over the rails beneath him. A small town flashed by in the darkness, then shortly after, another. Little by little the disaster of Berlin was being left behind, letting him more fully concentrate on what lay ahead. Glancing across, he saw her staring at him from the bunk.

“Please go to sleep,” he said.

“Yes . . . ,” Vera said, then rolled over and tried to do as she’d been told.

It had been after ten when they’d come for her. Taking her from her cell, they’d led her to another room and told her to get dressed, giving her back the clothes she’d been wearing when she was arrested. Then they’d taken her up in an elevator and out to a car where this man waited. He was a Hauptkommissar, a chief inspector, of the federal police; she was being released in his custody and was to do exactly as he said. His name, he told her, was Von Holden.

Moments later they were handcuffed together, crossing a platform and boarding a train at Bahnhof Zoo.

“Where are you taking me?” she’d asked guardedly as he closed the door to a private compartment and locked it.

For a moment he’d said nothing, only slipped a large case from his shoulder and set it on the floor. Then he’d leaned forward and removed the handcuffs.

“To Paul Osborn,” he’d said.

Paul Osborn. The words rocked her.

“He’s been taken to Switzerland.”

“Is he all right?” Her mind raced. Switzerland! Why? My God, what’s happened?

“I have no information. Only orders,” Von Holden had said, then he had shown her to the bunk and taken a chair opposite. Shortly afterward the train left the station and within moments Von Holden had turned off the light.

“Goodnight,” he’d said.

“Where in Switzerland?”

“Goodnight.”

Von Holden smiled in the dark. Vera’s reaction had been spontaneous, grave concern followed almost instantly by hope. As frightened and exhausted as she had to be, her main focus remained on Osborn. It meant she would be no trouble as long as she believed she was being taken to him. That she was ostensibly in the custody of a BKA Hauptkommissar was double insurance.

Von Holden had been notified of her arrest by Berlin sector operatives inside the prison earlier that day. At the time the information had been incidental, but in the turn of things it had become highly significant. Within a half hour of his directive, Berlin sector had arranged for her release. In that time Von Holden had changed clothes, secured the box inside a special black nylon case that could either be carried over the shoulder or worn like a knapsack, and been provided with BKA identification.

By arresting Vera, McVey had ironically and unwittingly provided Von Holden the complication he needed. He was no longer one man traveling alone, but one sharing a private first-class compartment with an extremely handsome woman. More important, she served another, more exacting, purpose: she gave him a hostage of prime importance to the police.

Von Holden looked at his watch. In little more than five hours they would be in Frankfurt, He would give himself four hours’ sleep, then decide what to do.