The Day After Tomorrow

155

Berlin, Monday, October 17.

VERA SAT alone in the back of a taxi as it turned off Clay Allee onto Messelstrasse and into the heart of Dahlem, one of Berlin’s handsomest districts. A cold rain was falling for the second day and people were already complaining about it. That morning the concierge at the Hotel Kempinski had personally delivered a single red rose. With it had come a sealed envelope with a hastily scrawled note asking her to take it to Osborn when she visited him at the small, exclusive hospital in Dahlem. The note had been signed “McVey.”

Because of road construction, the route to Dahlem backtracked and she found herself being driven past the destruction that had been Charlottenburg. Workmen were out in the heavy rain, gutting the structure. Bulldozers steamrolled over the formal gardens clearing the ruins, pushing them into great piles of charred rubble that were then machine-loaded into dump trucks and driven away. The tragedy had made headlines worldwide and flags flew at half mast across the city. A state funeral had been planned for the victims. Two former presidents of the United States were to attend as was the president of France and the prime minister of England.

“It burned before. In 1746,” the cabdriver told her, his voice strong and filled with pride. “It was rebuilt then. It will be rebuilt again.”

Vera closed her eyes as the taxi turned on Kaiser Friedrichstrasse for Dahlem. She’d come down with him from the mountain and had stayed with him as long as they’d let her. Then she’d been given an escort to Zurich and told Osborn would be taken to a hospital in Berlin. And that’s where she’d gone. It had all happened in too little time. Images and feelings collided, beautiful, painful, horrifying. Love and death rode hand in hand. And too closely. It seemed, almost, as if she’d lived through a war.

Through most of it had been the overriding presence of McVey. In one way, he was a kind and earnest grandfather who cared for the human rights and dignity of everyone. But in another, he was his own sort of Patton. Selfish and ruthless, relentless, even cruel. Driven by pursuit of truth. At any cost whatsoever.

The taxi let her off under an overhang and she entered the hospital. The lobby was small and warm and she was startled to see a uniformed policeman. He watched her carefully until she announced herself at the desk. Then he immediately rang for the elevator and smiled at her as she entered.

Another policeman stood outside the second-floor elevator and a plainclothes inspector was outside the door to Osborn’s room. Both men seemed to know who she was, the last even greeting her by name.

“Is he in danger?” she asked, concerned at the presence of the police.

“It is simply a precaution.”

“I understand.” Vera turned to the door. Beyond it was a man. she barely knew, yet loved as if centuries had passed between them. The brief time they’d spent together had beer! like no other. He’d touched her on a level no one else ever had. Perhaps it was because when they’d looked at each other the first time, they’d also looked down the road. And what they’d seen, they’d seen together, as if there would never be a time when they would part. And then out on the mountain, under the most cruel of situations, he’d confirmed it. For both of them.

At least that was what she thought. Suddenly she was afraid that everything she felt was hers alone. That she’d misread it all and that whatever they’d had between them had been fleeting and one-sided, and that on the other side of the door she’d find not the Paul Osborn she knew but a stranger.

“Why don’t you go in?” The inspector smiled and opened the door.

He lay in bed, his left leg beneath a sprawling web of pulleys and ropes and counterweights; He was wearing his L.A. Kings T-shirt, bright red jockey shorts and nothing else, and when she saw him all her fears vanished and she started to laugh.

“What’s so damn funny?” he demanded.

“Don’t know . . .” She giggled. “I don’t know at all . . . . It just is . . .”

And then the inspector closed the door and she crossed the room and came into his arms. And everything that had been—on the Jungfrau, in Paris, in London and in Geneva came rushing back. Outside, it was raining and Berlin was complaining. But to them, it made no difference at all.