The Day After Tomorrow

79

VON HOLDEN sat alone near the back of the Art Deco bar in the Hôtel Meaux sipping a Pernod and soda, listening to stories of the rail disaster from the noisy crowd of media types who’d spent the day covering it. The bar had become an end-of-the-day hangout for veteran reporters, and most were still connected via beeper or walkie-talkie to colleagues who’d remained on the scene. If anything new happened, they—and Von Holden—would know it in a millisecond.

Von Holden looked at his watch and then at the clock over the bar. His LeCoultre analog watch had kept precision time with a cesium atomic clock in Berlin for five years. A cesium atomic clock has an accuracy rate of plus or minus one second every three thousand years. Von Holden’s watch read 9:17. The clock over the bar was one minute and eight seconds slow. Across the room, a girl with short blond hair and an even shorter skirt sat smoking and drinking wine with two men who appeared to be in their mid-twenties. One was thin and wore heavy rimmed glasses and looked like a graduate student. The other had a sturdier build and wore expensive slacks and a maroon cashmere sweater, accented by a mop of long curly hair. The way he tilted back on the legs of his chair, talking and gesturing with both hands, stopping now to light a fresh cigarette and toss the match in the direction of the ashtray on the table, gave him the casually spoiled look of a wealthy playboy on holiday. The girl’s name was Odette. She was twenty-two and the explosives expert who had set the charges along the track. The thin man in the glasses and the playboy were international terrorists. All three worked out of the Paris sector and were there awaiting Von Holden’s direction should either Osborn or McVey be discovered alive.

Von Holden felt they were lucky to be there at all. It had taken the Paris sector several hours to locate McVey and Osborn. But shortly after 6:00 A.M., a EuroCity ticket seller had spotted them at the Gare de l’Est and Von Holden had been alerted that they had tickets for the 6:30 train to Meaux. He had briefly debated trying to kill them in the station, then decided against it. There was too little time to mount a proper attack. And even if there had been, there was no guarantee of success and they would risk an onrush of antiterrorist police. It was better to do it differently.

At 6:20, ten minutes before the Paris-Meaux train left the Gare de l’Est, a lone motorcyclist rode out of Paris on Autoroute N3 to a rendezvous with Odette at a railroad grading two miles east of Meaux. He carried with him four packets of C4 plastic explosive.

Working together, they laid the explosive and set the charge just as the train reached the grading, then immediately disappeared into the countryside. Three minutes later, the full weight of the engine compressed the detonators, sending the entire train careening down the embankment at seventy miles an hour.

It might have been argued that they could have as easily moved one of the rails out of alignment, had the same effect, yet made the whole thing look like an accident.

Yes and no.

A train wreck, accidental or deliberate, did not ensure the death of those targeted. A moved rail could easily be overlooked in a preliminary investigation and a follow-up might or might not uncover it. A flagrant act of terrorism, however, could be laid to a hundred different causes. And a-bomb, later thrown into a hospital ward packed with survivors, would only serve to validate the act.

Glancing at his watch once again, Von Holden got up and left the room without so much as a glance at the threesome, then took the elevator to his room. Before leaving Paris, he’d secured enhanced photographs of the front-page newspaper photos of Osborn and McVey. By the time he reached Meaux, he’d studied them carefully and had a much stronger sense of whom he was dealing with.

Paul Osborn, he decided, was relatively harmless if it ever came to the point of dealing with him. They were about the same age and from his thin features, Osborn seamed to be in reasonable shape. But that ended the similarity. There was a look to a man who’d been trained in combat or even self-defense. Osborn had none of it. If anything, he looked “displaced.”

McVey was different. That he was aging and maybe a little overweight meant nothing. Von Holden saw instantly what it was that had enabled him to kill Bernhard Oven. There was a sense about him ordinary men didn’t have. What he had seen and done in his long career as a policeman was in his eyes, and Von Holden knew instinctively that once he got hold of you, figuratively or physically, he would never let you go. Spetsnaz training had taught him there was only one way to deal with a man like McVey. And that was to kill him the moment you saw him. If you didn’t, you would regret it forever.

Entering his room, Von Holden locked the door behind him and sat down at a small table. Opening a briefcase, he took out a compact shortwave radio. Clicking it on, he punched in a code and waited. It would take eight seconds before he had a clear channel.

“Lugo,” he signed on, identifying himself.

“Ecstasy,” he said. Code name for the operation that had begun with Albert Merriman and was now focused on McVey and Osborn.

“E.B.D.”—European Bloc Division—he followed. “Nichts.”—Nothing.

Von Holden punched in his sign-off code and clicked off. He’d just informed the Organization’s European Bloc Division that there was no confirmation on liquidation of the Ecstasy fugitives. Officially they were still “at large,” and all operatives within the E.B.D. were to be alerted.

Putting the radio away, Von Holden shut out the light and looked out the window. He was tired and frustrated. By this time at least one of them should have been found. They had been seen boarding the train and it had made no stops. Either they were still under the wreckage or they had vanished like magicians.

Von Holden sat down on the bed and turned on the lamp, then picked up the phone and placed a call to Joanna in Zurich. He hadn’t seen her since the night she’d run hysterical and naked from his apartment.

“Joanna, it’s Pascal. Are you better?” For a moment there was silence. “Joanna?”

“—I haven’t been feeling well,” she said.

He could hear distance and anxiety in her voice. Something had happened to her that night, of course. But she would have no real memory of it because the drugs he’d given her beforehand had been too complex. Her reaction afterward had been akin to a bad LSD trip and that was what she was remembering.

“I was very concerned. I wanted to call sooner but it wasn’t possible. . . . Frankly, you were acting a little crazy that night. Maybe too much cognac and jet lag don’t mix. Maybe too much passion, too, do you think?” He laughed.

“No, Pascal. It wasn’t that.” She was angry. “I’ve had to work very hard with Mr. Lybarger. All of a sudden he has to be able to walk without a cane by this Friday. I don’t know why, either. I don’t know what happened the other night. I don’t like working Mr. Lybarger so hard. It’s not s good for him. I don’t like the way Doctor Salettl treats me or the way he bosses people around.”

“Joanna, let me explain something. Please. I think Doctor Salettl is acting the way he is because he is nervous. This Friday, Mr. Lybarger has to make a speech to the major shareholders of his corporation. The wealth and direction of the entire company depends on whether or not they feel he is competent to resume his position as chairman once more. Salettl is on the spot because the supervision of Mr. Lybarger’s recovery has been his responsibility. Do you understand?”

“Yes— No. I’m sorry, I didn’t know. . . . But it’s still no reason to—”

“Joanna, Mr. Lybarger’s speech is to be given in Berlin. Friday morning, you and I, and Mr. Lybarger and Eric and Edward, will fly there on Mr. Lybarger’s corporate jet.”

“Berlin?” Joanna hadn’t heard the rest, only Berlin. Von Holden could tell by her response that the idea upset her. He could feel that she had had enough and wanted to get back to her beloved New Mexico as quickly as possible.

“Joanna, I understand you must be tired. Maybe I have rushed you too much personally. I care for you, you know that. I’m afraid it is my nature to follow my feelings. Please, Joanna, bear up just a little longer. Friday will be here before you know it, and Saturday you can fly home, directly from Berlin if you like.”

“Home? To Taos?” He could hear the rush of excitement.

“Does that make you happy?”

“Yes, it does.” Designer clothes and castles aside, she was, she’d decided finally, just a plain country girl who liked the simplicity of her life in Taos. And that’s where she wanted to go, more than anything.

“I can count on you then, seeing this through?” Von Holden’s voice was warm and soothing.

“Yes, Pascal. You can count on me being there.”

“Thank you, Joanna. I’m sorry for any discomfort, it wasn’t meant that way. If you wish, I will look forward to one last night together in Berlin. Alone, perhaps to dance and say goodbye. Goodnight, Joanna.”

“Goodnight, Pascal.”

Von Holden could see her smile as she hung up. What he’d said had been enough.