The Day After Tomorrow

69

MCVEY STEPPED back from Oven’s body and looked at Osborn. “Cover his face, huh?” Then he flashed his badge at a crowd of waiters gawking in horror and fascination a few feet away and told someone to call the police if somebody already hadn’t and to get the spectators out of there.

Pulling a white tablecloth from a nearby table, Osborn covered Bernhard Oven’s face while McVey went over the body for identification. Finding none, he reached into his jacket, ripped the stiff cardboard cover from his pocket notebook. Taking Oven’s hand, he pressed the thumb into his bloodsoaked shirt, then pressed the bloody thumb against the cardboard, giving him a legible thumbprint.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said to Osborn.

Pushing quickly through the lingering onlookers, they crossed the dining room, went into the kitchen, and then out a back door and into an alley. As they came but, they heard the first singsong of sirens.

“This way,” McVey said, not really certain where they were going. From the moment he’d first reacted, McVey’s supposition had been that Oven had been about to shoot Osborn. But now as they stepped onto boulevard du Montparnasse walking toward boulevard Raspail, he realized the intended target could as easily have been himself. The tall man had killed Albert Merriman within hours after it was discovered he was still alive and living in Paris. Then, in quick order, Merriman’s girlfriend, his wife and her family had been found and slaughtered. The last, in Marseilles, some four hundred and fifty miles to the south. But in a wink, the killer was back in Paris and in Vera Monneray’s apartment looking for Osborn.

How had he found everyone in such rapid order? Merriman’s wife, for instance, when every local police force in the country had been put on alert and still had been unable to find her? And Osborn—how had he so quickly discovered Vera Monneray was the “mystery woman” who’d picked Osborn up at the golf course after he’d come out of the Seine when the media was still in the speculation stage and the police were the only ones who knew for sure? And then, in almost the same breath, Lebrun and his brother had been attacked in Lyon. Though probably not by the tall man. Even he couldn’t be in two places at once.

Clearly, what was happening was happening at an increasingly frantic pace. And, in turn, the deadly circle kept narrowing. That the tall man was suddenly out of the picture would probably make little difference. He couldn’t have done what he had without the help of a complex, sophisticated and very well-connected organization. If they had infiltrated Interpol, why not the Paris Prefecture of Police?

A squad car flew by, then another. The city rocked with sirens.

“How did he know we were going to be there?” Osborn said, as they fought through the evening crowd made electric by what had happened.

“Keep going,” McVey urged, and Osborn saw him glance back at the police cars sealing off boulevard du Montparnasse at either end of the block.

“You’re worried about the police, aren’t you?” Osborn said.

McVey said nothing.

Reaching the boulevard Raspail, they turned right and started up the street. In front of them was a Métro station. McVey thought briefly about taking it, then decided against it, and they kept on;

“Why would a policeman be afraid of the police?” Osborn demanded.

Suddenly a blue-black truck turned from a side street and jerked to a stop in the intersection just behind them. Its back door slammed open and a dozen Compagnie de Securité Republicaine antiterrorist police jumped out wearing flak jackets over paratroop jumpsuits and brandishing automatic weapons.

Swearing under his breath, McVey looked around. Two doors down was a small café. “In there,” he said, taking Osborn by the arm and prodding him toward the door.

People were standing at the windows watching the action on the street and barely took notice as they entered. Finding a corner at the end of the bar, McVey turned Osborn into it and held up two fingers to the bartender.

“Vin blanc,” he said.

Osborn leaned back. “You want to tell me what’s going on?”

The bartender set two glasses in front of them and filled them with white wine.

“Merci,” McVey said, picking up a glass and handing it to Osborn. Taking a deep swallow, McVey turned his back to the room and looked at Osborn.

“I’ll ask you your own question. How did he know we were going to be there? Answer. You were followed or I was. Or somebody was tapped into the message board at, the Hotel Vieux and figured I might not be meeting the real Tommy Lasorda for drinks.

“A friend of mine, a Parisian detective, was badly shot up this morning and his brother, also a cop, was murdered because he was trying to find out who, besides you, so suddenly got the line on Albeit Merriman about a quarter of a century after the fact. The police may be involved, they may not, I don’t know. What I do know is that something’s going on that’s making it dangerous as hell for anyone even remotely connected to Merriman. And right now, that’s you and me, and the smartest thing we can do is get off the street.”

“McVey—” Osborn was suddenly alarmed. “There’s someone else who knows about Merriman.”

“Vera Monneray.” In the rush of everything, McVey had forgotten about her.

Dread swept over Osborn. “The French detectives who were guarding her here—I arranged to have them take her to her grandmother’s in Calais.”