The Day After Tomorrow

53

BERNHARD OVEN could have flown back to Paris the same way he’d come to Marseilles, but a round-trip ticket bracketing the hours of a multiple murder was too easily traceable by the police. The Grande Vitesse TGV bullet train from Marseilles to Paris took four and three-quarter hours. Time for Oven to sit back in the first-class compartment and assess what had happened and what would come next.

Tracing Michele Kanarack to her sister’s home in Marseilles had been a simple matter of following her to the station the morning she’d left Paris and observing what tram she’d taken. Once he had a train and a destination, the Organization had done the rest. She’d been picked up as she got off the train and followed to her sister’s home in the Le Panier neighborhood. After that, she’d been carefully watched and inventory taken of those she might confide in. That information in hand, Oven had taken an Air Inter flight from Paris to Marseilles and picked up a rental car at Provence Airport. Inside its spare tire casing was a Czechoslovakian CZ .22 automatic, supplemental ammunition and a silencer.

“Bonjour. Ah, le billet, oui.”

Giving his ticket to the ticket collector, Oven exchanged the kind of meaningless pleasantries that would take place between a ticket collector and the successful businessman he appeared to be, then, sitting back, he watched the French countryside as the train moved rapidly north through the green of the Rhone Valley. Estimating, he judged they were traveling in the neighborhood of one hundred and eighty miles per hour.

It was just as well he’d taken care of the women where he had. If somehow they’d eluded him and gotten home, well, hysterical people were always cumbersome targets. And the sight of Marianne’s husband and five children shot to death in their own apartment, no matter how neatly he’d done it, would most certainly have sent both women over the edge, bringing the neighbors and anyone else within earshot.

Of course the husband and children would be found, if they hadn’t been already, and the reverberations would bring police and politicians scrambling out of the woodwork. But Oven had had no choice. The husband had been about to leave to join his cronies at the local café and that would have meant waiting until later in the day when everyone had gathered back at home. And that would have caused a delay he could not afford because he had even more pressing business in Paris; business in which the Organization, so far, had been unable to assist.

Antenna 2, the state-owned television network, had carried an interview with the manager of a golf clubhouse on the Seine near Vernon. A California doctor the police suspected in the murder of an expatriate American named Albert Merriman had crawled out of the river early Saturday morning and spent time recuperating in the manager’s store before being picked up and driven off by a dark-haired Frenchwoman.

To date, everyone intimately involved with Albert Merriman Bernhard Oven had quickly and efficiently eliminated. But somehow, the American doctor, identified as a Paul Osborn, had survived. And now a woman was involved. Both had to be found and accounted for before the police got to them. Not so difficult, if time had not suddenly become the enemy. Today was Sunday, October 9. The agenda had to be cleared no later than Friday, October 14.

“Have you ever worked with Mr. Lybarger while he was in the nude, Ms. Marsh?”

“No, Doctor, of course not,” Joanna said, surprised at the question. “There would be no reason.”

Joanna liked Salettl no more in Zurich than she had in New Mexico. His shortness with her, his distant manner, were more than intimidating. He frightened her.

“Then you’ve never seen him undressed.”

“No, sir.”

“In his underwear, perhaps.”

“Doctor Salettl, I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying.”

At 7:00 sharp that morning, Joanna had been wakened in her room by a call from Von Holden. Instead of the warm and affectionate lover of the night before, he’d been abrupt and to the point. A car would be by to pick up her and her things for transport to Mr. Lybarger’s estate in forty-five minutes; he knew she would be ready. Puzzled by his distance, she said nothing more than yes, she would. Then, as an afterthought, had asked what she should do about her dog in the kennel in Taos.

“It has been taken care of,” Von Holden had said, and with that hung up.

An hour later, still a little hung over from the combination of jet lag, dinner, drinks and marathon sex with Von Holden, Joanna sat in the backseat of Lybarger’s Mercedes limousine as it turned off the main highway and stopped at a security gate. The driver pressed a button and the passenger window lowered enough for a uniformed guard to look inside. Satisfied, he waved them on, and the limousine moved up a long, tree-lined drive toward what Joanna would only later describe as a castle.

A middle-aged housekeeper with a pleasant smile had shown her to her quarters: a large bedroom with its own bath on the ground floor that looked out onto a sprawling lawn that ended at the edge of a thick forest.

Ten minutes later, she answered a knock at the door and was escorted by the same woman to Dr. Salettl’s second-floor office in a separate building, where she was now.

“Judging by your ongoing reports, I see you have been as impressed as the rest of us with Mr. Lybarger’s progress.”

“Yes, sir.” Joanna was determined not to be intimidated by Salettl’s manner. “At the beginning, when I first started working with him, he hardly had any control over his voluntary motor functions. It was even hard for him to follow a clear train of thought. But each step of the way, he continually amazed me. He has an incredibly strong inner will.”

“He is also physically robust.”

“Yes, that too.”

“Comfortable in a social atmosphere. Able to relax with people and converse intelligently with them.”

“I—” Joanna wanted to say something about Lybarger’s continual references to his family.

“You have reservations?”

Joanna hesitated. There was no point in bringing up something that had been wholly between Lybarger and her. Besides, each time he had made those references, he had either been tired or in the course of travel where his daily routine had been interrupted. “It’s just that he tires easily. That’s why I wanted the wheelchair for him last night on the boa—”

“The cane he uses.” Salettl cut her off, made a note, then looked back at her. “Is it possible for him to stand and walk without it?”

“He’s used to having it.”

“Please answer the question. Can he walk without it?”

“Yes, but—”

“But, what?”

“Not very far and not very confidently.”

“He dresses himself. Shaves himself. Uses the toilet without aid, does he not?”

“Yes.” Joanna was beginning to wish she had declined Von Holden’s offer and gone home today as planned.

“Can he pick up a pen, write his name clearly?”

“Pretty clearly.” She forced a smile.

“What about his other functions?”

Joanna knotted her brow. “I don’t know what you mean by other functions.”

“Is he able to have an erection? Partake in sexual intercourse?”

“I—I—don’t know,” she stammered. She was embarrassed. She’d never been asked that kind of a question about one of her patients before. “I should think that’s more of a medical question.”

Salettl stared at her for a moment, then continued. “From your point of view, when would you say he will regain all of his physical abilities and be wholly functional, as if the Stroke never occurred?”

“If—If we are talking about his basic motor functions. Standing, walking, talking, without tiring and that’s all— the other things, as I said, are not my department—”

“Just motor functions. How much longer do you think it will take?”

“I—I’m not sure exactly.”

“Estimate it, please.”

“—I—really can’t.”

“That’s not an answer.” Salettl was glaring at her as if she were a misbehaved child instead of his patient’s professional therapist.

“If—I work with him a lot and he responds like he has. I’d like to guess, maybe another month. . . . But you have to understand it’s only a guess. It all depends on how he—”

“I’m going to give you a goal. By the end of the week, I want to see him walking without a cane.”

“I don’t know if that’s possible.”

Salettl touched a button at his sleeve and spoke into an intercom. “Miss Marsh is ready to work with Mr. Lybarger.”