The Day After Tomorrow

142

OSBORN FELT the press of gravity as the train began to move out of Kleine Scheidegg and start up the long grade toward the face of the Eiger. The bleached-blonde divorcee—her name was Connie and she was a divorcee, twice in fact—kept trying to talk to him. Finally he excused himself and went into the front car. He needed to think. In little more than forty minutes they would reach Jungfraujoch. He had to know what he was going to do, right from the moment the train came into the station and he stepped off. Once again he felt the heft of McVey’s .38 in his waistband. For some reason it made him think about avalanches. More than once a gunshot had set off a thundering avalanche. Mountain teams and ski areas used recoilless rifles to start them on purpose, to clear them away before opening the snow areas to the public. But it was barely mid-October and the weather was clear. An avalanche should be the last thing on his mind.

But it wasn’t.

His subconscious was working toward something. What was it? This was early October, but Von Holden was purposely going into snow country. Jungfraujoch was at an altitude of more than eleven thousand feet and built on top of or within a glacier. Inside were tourist sideshows, rooms carved out of the glacial ice.

Ice.

Cold. Deep cold. A glacier was as cold as you got in nature. Especially if you could get deep inside it. Men and animals had been found in it, perfectly preserved for centuries. Was it possible Jungfraujoch was the place where the experimental surgeries had been done? Was Jungfraujoch, seemingly a tourist attraction, really a cover for a secret medical facility deep within the glacier itself?

The grinding of the engine cogs and the click, click of the wheels over the rails became more pronounced.

Suddenly Osborn was pushing back into the other car.

“Connie,” he said, sliding onto the seat next to her. “You’ve been to Jungfraujoch before.”

“Sure have, darlin’.”

“Is there any place that’s off limits to tourists?”

“What you got in mind, darlin’?” Connie smiled and teasingly ran her fake ruby red nails along the top of his thigh.

Osborn was sure she was a riot after a couple of martinis, but that was something he never wanted to find out.

“Look, Connie. I’m just trying to get some information. Nothing—with a big N—else. Okay. Now, please be a good kid and try and remember.”

“I like you.”

“I know.”

“Well, lemme think.”

Osborn watched as she got up and stood looking out the window. It wasn’t easy, the car was climbing the face of the Eiger and tilted at almost a forty-degree angle. Abruptly everything went dark as they entered a tunnel.

Five minutes later Osborn and Connie were looking out of the cutouts in the Eiger wall at Eigerwand station. Connie had her arm through his and was holding tight.

“I don’t like to admit it, but I do get dizzy.”

Osborn looked at his watch. Von Holden should be there now, or almost there anyway. Maybe he had been wrong about the medical facility. Maybe Von Holden was simply meeting someone there as he’d thought earlier. If that were the case, Von Holden could give him whatever he was carrying in the rucksack and take the next train down. The whole thing could be done in a matter of minutes.

“There’s a weather station.”

“What?” Connie was speaking to him and at the same time they were being called back to the train.

“A weather station, you know some kind of observatory.”

Now they were crossing the platform toward the train. As they did, a train was coming down from Jungfraujoch, passing their train on the siding, slowly winding its way by on the lone track.

“Darlin’, you listenin’ to me or am I just talkin’ to entertain myself?”

“Yes, I hear you.” Osborn was straining to see inside the passing train. It was going slowly enough for him to see faces. He recognized none.

Then they were back in the train and sitting down and the train was moving into the tunnel and upward. Picking up speed.

“I’m sorry. You said something about—”

“A weather station. Did you or did you not ask if there was a place where the public couldn’t go. Well, there’s a weather station there. Upstairs, I think. Must be run by the government or something. ‘Course there’s the kitchen.”

“What kitchen?”

“For the restaurant. Why do you want to know this anyway?”

“Research. I’m—writing a—book.”

“Darlin’—” Connie put her hand on his thigh again and leaned so close her lips were brushing his ear. “I know you’re not writin’ a book,” she whispered. “Because if you were you’d wait to find out what you’re askin’ till we get there and you could see for yourself. I also”—she blew a knot of hot air into his ear— “know you’ve got a gun stickin’ in your belt. What’re you gonna do with it, shoot somebody?” Connie sat back and smiled. “Darlin’, will you promise me one thing? Yell first. I’d like to get the fuck out of the way.”