Osborn nodded slightly, then turned away to avoid further contact, his hand sliding into his jacket pocket, gripping the automatic. The man was barely ten paces past him when he stopped and turned back. The move was unnerving, and Osborn reacted immediately. Jerking the pistol from his jacket, he pointed it directly at the man’s chest.
“Go away!” he said, enunciating the English.
Von Holden stared at him for a moment, then let his eyes fall to the gun. Osborn was agitated and nervous but his hand was steady, his finger resting easily on the trigger. The gun was a Czech Cz. Small caliber but very accurate at close range. Von Holden smiled. The gun was Bernhard Oven’s.
“What’s funny?” Osborn snapped. As he did, he saw the man glance past him over his shoulder. Immediately Osborn stepped backward, keeping the gun where it was. Turning his head slightly, he looked to his right. A second man stood in the shadow of a tree, not fifteen feet away.
“Tell him to walk over next to you.” Osborn’s eyes came back to Von Holden.
Von Holden said nothing.
Still Von Holden was silent.
Von Holden nodded ever so slightly.
“Then tell him to walk over to you.” Osborn held back the hammer with his thumb, the gun’s trigger pulled. If they rushed him, all he had to do was let his thumb slip sideways and the weapon would fire point-blank. “Tell him now!”
Von Holden waited a moment longer, then called out in German: “Do as he says.”
At Von Holden’s command, Viktor stepped from under the tree and slowly crossed over the grass to where Von Holden stood.
Osborn stared at them for a moment in silence, then backed slowly away, the gun still pointed at Von Holden’s chest. He continued walking backward for another twenty yards. Then, passing under a tree, he turned and ran. Crosing a lighted pathway, he bounded up a short flight of steps and ran across the grass through still more trees. Looking back, he saw them come after him. Dark figures silhouetted for only an instant against the night sky as they came on the run through the stand of trees where he had just been.
Ahead, he could see bright lights and traffic. He looked back again. The trees blended into darkness. He had to assume they were still coming, but there was no way to tell. Heart pounding, feet slipping on the wet grass beneath him, he ran on. Finally he felt pavement and saw he’d reached the edge of the park. Streetlights and a steady flow of traffic were directly in front of him. Without stopping, he ran into the street. Horns blared. He dodged one car and then another. There was a shriek of tires, then a tremendous bang as a taxi swerved to avoid him and slammed into a parked car. A split second later, another car plowed into the taxi, a piece of its bumper scything off into the darkness.
Osborn didn’t look back. His lungs on fire, he ducked behind a row of parked cars and ran low for a half block, then cut down a side street. There was an intersection in front of him and a brightly lit street. Breathless, he turned the corner and pushed quickly down a sidewalk filled with pedestrians.
Shoving the gun into his belt, he covered it with his jacket and kept on, trying to gather his wits. Passing a Burger King, he turned and looked behind him. Nothing. Maybe they hadn’t come after him after all. Maybe it had been his imagination. He kept walking, moving with the crowd.
Several preposterously dressed teenagers passed him in the opposite direction and a dark-haired girl smiled at him. Why had he pulled the gun? All the man had done was turn around. For all he knew the second man might not even have been with him, just someone out for a walk. But the stranger’s unnatural stance, the way he had turned back so measuredly after saying good evening, made Osborn believe he was going to be attacked. That was why he had done what he had. Of course it was. Better safe than set upon.
A clock in a window read 10:52.
Until this moment he’d totally forgotten McVey. In eight minutes he was due back to the hotel, and he had no idea where he was. What now? Call him? Make up a story, say you were—turning a corner, he saw the Europa Center directly in front of him. Below it the lighted sign of the Hotel Palace hung over its motor entrance.
At six minutes to eleven, Osborn stepped into an elevator and pushed the button for the sixth floor. The doors closed and the elevator started up. He was alone and safe.
Trying to forget the men in the park, he glanced around the elevator. The wall next to him was a mirror, and he Crushed back his hair and straightened his jacket. On the Wall opposite was a tourism poster of Berlin with photographs of must-see attractions. Centermost was an expo-sure of Charlottenburg Palace. Suddenly he remembered what Remmer had said earlier “The occasion is a welcoming celebration for an Elton Karl Lybarger. An industrialist from Zurich who had a severe stroke a year ago in San Francisco and has now fully recovered.”
“Damn,” he swore under his breath. “Damn.”
He should have realized it before.
101
AT 10:58 exactly, Osborn knocked on the door to room 6132. A moment later McVey opened it. Five men stood behind him and they all stared in silence. Noble, Remmer, Detective Johannes Schneider and two uniformed members of the Berlin Police.
“Well, Cinderella,” McVey said flatly.
“I got separated from Detective Schneider. I looked for him all over the place. What was I supposed to do?” Ignoring McVey’s glare, Osborn crossed the room and picked up the telephone. There was a silence and then it rang through. “Doctor Mandel please,” he said.
Remmer shrugged and thanked the Berlin cops and McVey shook hands with Schneider, then Remmer saw the three men out and closed the door.
“I’ll call back, thank you.” Osborn hung up and looked to McVey. “Tell me if I’m wrong,” he said with an energy McVey hadn’t seen since they’d left England, “but from everything I’ve been party to, arrest warrant or not, the I chances of getting enough evidence to bring Scholl to trial, let alone get a conviction, are close to nil. He’s too powerful, too connected, too far above the law Right?”
“You have the floor, Doctor.”
“Then let’s look at it another way and ask why somebody like Scholl would come halfway around the world to honor a man who seems to hardly exist while at the same time apparently directing a wave of killings that snow- balls as this thing at Charlottenburg gets closer.”
Osborn glanced quickly at the others, then back to McVey. “Lybarger. I bet he’s the key to this. And if we I find out about him, I bet we find out a lot more about Erwin Scholl.”
“You think you can turn up something the German federal police can’t, help yourself,” McVey said.
“I hope I am, McVey.” Osborn nodded toward the phone. He was pumped up. Going it alone, he now knew, was impossible, but they weren’t going to keep him out of the game either.
“That call was to Doctor Herb Mandel. He’s not only the best vascular surgeon I know, he’s chief of staff at San Francisco General Hospital. If it’s true Lybarger had a stroke, he would have a
Von Holden was angry. He should have shot Osborn on the approach, as he sat on the park bench. But he’d wanted to make sure he was the right man. Viktor and Natalia were both trustworthy, but they were only going by Osborn’s photo. The problem was not so much that he might have killed the wrong man as it was in thinking he’d killed the right man when he hadn’t. Which was why he’d come as close to Osborn as he had, even to the point of wishing him a good evening. Then Osborn had surprised him with the gun. It was something he should have been prepared for because it went hand-in-hand with Scholl’s assessment that Osborn was emotionally charged and therefore highly unpredictable.
Even so, he should have been able to kill him. His glance at Viktor had been deliberate, designed to make
