The Day After Tomorrow

89

Brandenburg, Germany.

“THIS CHARLOTTENBURG Palace, where Scholl’s attending this shindig. What is it?” McVey was leaning forward from the backseat as Remmer followed the lead car down a boulevard of magnificent autumn yellow trees and past the burgher houses of the fifteenth-century town of Brandenburg, heading east in bright sunshine toward Berlin.

“What is it?” Remmer glanced up at McVey in the mirror. “A treasure of baroque art. A museum, a mausoleum, a house of a thousand riches particularly dear to the German heart. The summer residence of almost every Prussian king from Friedrich the First to Friedrich Wilhelm the Fourth. If the chancellor lived there now, it would be like the White House and all the great museums of America rolled into one.”

Osborn looked off. The morning sun was working its way higher, lifting a cluster of lakes from dark purple to a brilliant blue. The consummation of all that had happened in the last ten days—so quickly, so brutally, and after so many years—was numbing. The idea of what would unfold in Berlin was even more so. In one way he felt as if he’d been swept up in a surging tide over which he had no control. Yet, at the same time, he had the singular and calming sense that he’d been brought to this point because some unknown hand had guided him, and that whatever lay ahead, however obscure or dangerous or horrifying, would be there for a reason, and that instead of fighting it, he should trust in it. He wondered if that were true for the others, McVey and Noble and Remmer were disparate men, from different worlds, with more than thirty years spread across their ages. Had their lives and his been driven together by the same force he now felt? How could it, when barely a week before he’d never met any of them? Yet what other explanation was there?

Letting his mind drift, Osborn turned his gaze back to the passing countryside, a rolling, gently forested, pastoral land, forever dotted with lakes. Abruptly, and for the briefest moment, his. view was blurred by a large stand of conifers. As quickly they vanished and in the distance he saw sunlight touch the highest spires of a fifteenth-century cathedral. And the perception came that he was right, that they were all here—McVey, Noble, Remmer and himself—because of some greater design, that they were part of a destiny beyond their knowing.

Nancy, France.

THE MORNING sun peeked up over the hills, lighting the brown-and-white farmhouse like a Van Gogh.

Outside, Secret Service agents Alain Cotrell and Jean Claude Dumas relaxed on the front porch, with Dumas Cradling a mug of coffee in one hand and a nine-millimeter carbine in the other. A quarter mile down the long driveway, at the halfway point between the highway and the farmhouse, agent Jacques Montant, a French Famas assault rifle slung over his shoulder, leaned against a tree, watching a parade of ants march in and out of a hole at its base.

Inside, Vera sat at an antique vanity near the front bed-, room window, five handwritten pages of a long love letter to Paul Osborn already done. In them, she was trying to make some sense of all that was happening and had happened since they’d met, and at the same time using them as a diversion against the abrupt ending to his phone call the night before.

At first she’d thought it had been a problem with the telephone system and that he would call back. But he hadn’t, and as the hours stretched on she knew something had happened. What that might be, she refused to consider. Stoically, she’d spent the rest of the evening and most of the night reading over two medical journals she’d brought with her almost as an afterthought when she’d so hurriedly left Paris. Anxiety and fear were impossible companions, and this, she’d been afraid, might be a journey filled with them.

By daybreak, when she’d still had no word, she’d decided to talk to Paul. To say things on paper, she would say if he were there with her and they had time alone. As if; none of this had happened and they were everyday people, finding each other under everyday circumstances. It was all, of course, to keep from being overwhelmed by her own imagination.

Laying down her pen, she stopped to read what she’d written and suddenly burst out laughing. What was intended to have come from the heart was, instead, a rambling, long-winded, pseudo-intellectual treatise on the meaning of life. She’d meant to write a love letter, but what she’d put down was more like a writing sample for a position as an English teacher at a private girls’ school. Still smiling, she tore the pages in quarters and threw them in the wastebasket. It was then she saw the car turn off the highway and start up the long drive toward the house.

As it approached, she could see it was a black Peugeot with blue emergency lights mounted on the roof. As it reached the halfway point, she saw agent Montand step into the roadway with his hands raised, motioning the car to stop. When it did, Montand walked to the driver’s window. A moment later he spoke into his radio, waited for a reply, then nodded and the car proceeded on.

As it neared the house, Alain Cotrell walked out to meet it, and like Montand, motioned the driver to stop. Jean Claude Dumas came up behind him, sliding the carbine from his shoulder.

“Oui, madame,” Alain said, as the driver’s window rolled down and a very attractive woman with dark hair looked out.

“My name is Avril Rocard,” she said in French, flashing a picture I.D., “from the First Prefecture of Paris Police. I am here for Mademoiselle Monneray, to bring her to Paris at the request of Detective McVey. She’ll know who I mean.” She produced an official order on French government stationery. “By order of Captain Cadoux of Interpol. And at the behest of the prime minister, Francois Christian.”

Agent Cotrell took the paper, looked at it, then handed it back. As he did, Jean Claude Dumas walked to the far side of the car and looked in. Other than the woman, it was empty.

“One moment,” Cotrell said. Stepping back, he took his own radio from his jacket and walked off. As he did, Dumas came back to the driver’s side.

Glancing in her mirror, Avril saw agent Montand behind her, a hundred feet back down the driveway.

A moment later Cotrell abruptly put away his radio and turned back, approaching the car. His entire body language had changed, and Avril could see his hand moving out of sight behind his jacket.

“Is it all right if I open my purse for a cigarette?” Avril said, looking at Dumas.

“Oui,” Dumas nodded, then watched as Avril’s right hand went to her purse for the cigarette. It was her left hand that took him by surprise. There were two quick pops and he fell backward into Cotrell. For an instant, Cotrell was off balance and all he could see was the Beretta in Avril’s hand. It jumped once. And Cotrell grabbed for his neck. Her second shot, the one between the eyes, killed him.

Montand was running toward her, the Famas assault rifle coming up to fire, when she leveled the Beretta. Her first shot hit him in the leg, punching him down and sending the Famas clattering out of reach across the driveway. He was on the ground, gritting his teeth in pain and straining for it, when she walked up. Looking down at him, she raised the pistol slowly. Gave him a moment to think about it, then shot him. Once just under the left eye. Once in the heart.

Then, straightening her jacket, she turned and started for the farmhouse.