The Day After Tomorrow

137

“PASCAL,” SCHOLL had said, “be most respectful of the young doctor. Kill him first.”

“Yes . . . ,” Von Holden had answered.

But he hadn’t done it. For whatever myriad of reasons he hadn’t done it. But reasons made no difference when they were excuses. Osborn was alive and had followed him to Bern. How he had accomplished that was beyond comprehension. But it was a fact. It was also a fact that he would be on the next train behind them.

***

“Interlaken,” a railway supervisor on the platform had told Osborn when he asked the destination of the train that had just left the station. Trains to Interlaken left every half hour.

“Danke,” Osborn said.

He went downstairs and into the main station in a daze. He wanted to believe Vera was Von Holden’s prisoner and being held against her will. But it wasn’t like that and he knew it, not the way they were walking together toward the train. So what he wanted to believe made no difference. The truth was there and McVey had been right about it. Vera was part of the Organization and wherever Von “Holden was going, she was going too. Osborn had been a fool to believe her, to fall in love.

Reaching the ticket window, he started to buy a ticket to Interlaken when he had the thought that maybe it was only a stop along the way. They might change trains, once, twice, even more. He couldn’t stop to buy a ticket each time. So instead of one ticket, he used a credit card and bought a pass for five days. It was now 1:15, a quarter of an hour before the next train for Interlaken.

Crossing to a restaurant, Osborn ordered a cup of coffee and sat down. He needed to think. Almost immediately he realized he had no idea where Interlaken was. If he knew that, he might have some idea of where Von Holden was going. Getting up, he went to a newsstand next door and bought a map and guidebook of Switzerland. In the distance he heard a train announced in German. He understood only one word, but it was all he needed: “Interlaken.”

“How much farther is it, this place we’re going?” Vera said over the clicking of the wheels as the train glided slowly into the small city of Thun. She’d been half dozing, half staring off into space, and now she was sitting up and questioning him directly. Outside, the huge tower of Thun Castle passed like a hovering stone giant still caught in the twelfth century.

Von Holden was watching for signs of police as they approached the station. If Osborn had alerted the authorities, Thun would be the first logical place to stop the train and search it. He had to be prepared if they did. Vera, he was certain, had not seen Osborn or she would not be acting the way she was. But this was the reason he’d brought her. A card to play that his pursuers wouldn’t have.

Within seconds they were abreast of the station. If the train was going to stop, it would have to be now. As quickly, they were out of the station and the train picked up speed. Von Holden breathed a sigh of relief and a moment later they were back in the countryside and moving along the shores of Lake Thun.

“I asked how much longer it would be until—”

Von Holden’s eyes found hers. “I am not permitted to tell you our destination. It is against orders.”

Abruptly he got up and walked down the aisle “to the lavatory. The train was nearly empty. The early trains would have been busy. Saturday excursions into the mountains began in the morning so that people would have the entire day to explore the stirring Alpine landscape. At Interlaken they would change trains, walking from one end of the station to the other. There would be enough time between trains to provide Von Holden with a distinct opportunity.

Boarding the waiting train with Vera, he would make an excuse—he had to make a phone call or something—then, leaving her on the train, he would get off and go back into the station and wait to kill Osborn when he arrived.