The Day After Tomorrow

148

VON HOLDEN came up on his elbows and inched forward. Where were they? They’d come right up to the edge of the light and then disappeared from view. It should have been simple. He’d tested Osborn by showing himself and Vera in the Ice Palace tunnel. If Osborn had followed them he would have dragged him into the side tunnel where he’d taken Vera and killed him there. But he hadn’t. Which was why he’d used Vera now. She’d been a drawing card, nothing more. He knew Osborn had seen them board the train together in Bern. The last time he’d seen her she’d been arrested by the German police in Berlin. What could he think but that she and Von Holden were- co-conspirators, fleeing the disaster at Charlottenburg. Filled with rage and betrayal, Osborn would find a way to free her and no matter her argument otherwise would make her take him to Von Holden, either as a hostage or bargaining chip.

A gust of wind twisted a snow devil across the snow in front of him. Wind. He didn’t like it. Any more than he liked the snow. Looking up, he saw a line of clouds advancing from the west. And it was getting colder. He should have killed them sooner, as soon as they’d started toward the ski school, but taking out two people and getting rid of their bodies that close to the main building was risky, especially when it might jeopardize his main objective. The air tunnel was eighty yards away from it, in the dark and snow, distant enough to be safe for the killing. And Osborn, upset and unbalanced, would follow his footprints straight toward it. The two shots a split second apart wouldn’t make a sound. Then Von Holden would take their bodies to the back of the dog runs where the cliffs fell sharply away and toss them over into the black nothing of the abyss. Osborn first, and then

“Von Holden!” Osborn’s voice echoed out of the darkness. “Vera’s gone back to telephone the police. I thought you might like to know that.”

Von Holden started, then scrambled backward and slid behind a rock outcropping. Whatever had happened had abruptly turned against him. Even if the police were called, it would be an hour or more before they got there. He would have to forget everything else and move on.

Directly in front of him, like some ghostly sentinel, the Jungfrau rose up more than two thousand feet. A hundred yards to his right and down maybe forty feet, a rocky path led around the face of the cliff on which Jungfraujoch was built. Three-quarters of the way down that, hidden by a rock formation, was a secondary air shaft that had been opened in 1944 when the impenetrable system of tunnels and elevators had been constructed below the weather station inside the glacier. If he could reach that before the police came, he could hide. For a week, two weeks. Longer, if need be.