“Can we go back there?” McVey nodded toward the hallway.
“Not without cause.”
McVey looked down at his shoes. “What about a search warrant?”
Remmer smiled cautiously. “On what grounds?”
McVey looked up. “Let’s get out of here.”
Von Holden watched on closed-circuit television as the detectives descended the stairs and went out. He’d returned from his meeting with Scholl barely ten minutes earlier to find Cadoux seated in his office, still trying to get through to Avril Rocard at the Hotel Kempinski: Seeing him, Cadoux had slammed the phone down, outraged. At first her line had been busy! Now there was no answer at all! Angered, Von Holden had told him forget it, he was not in Berlin on vacation. It was then the police had arrived. Instantly Von Holden knew how and why, and that he’d had to act quickly, delaying them at the front door while he replaced one of the female secretaries in the front room With the male security guard.
Now, as he watched the door close behind the policemen and saw McVey turn back to study the building’s exterior, he turned angrily to Cadoux, his sharp features illuminated by the bank of black-and-white security monitors.
“You were a fool to call her room from a telephone here.” His voice had the warmth of a steel rod.
“I am sorry, Herr Von Holden.” Cadoux was apologetic but refused to relinquish his soul to a man fifteen years his junior. The rest of the world, Von Holden included, could go to hell when it came to Avril Rocard.
Von Holden looked up at him. “Forget it. By this time tomorrow, it will have made little difference.” A moment before he had been ready to tell him Avril Rocard was dead. To throw it in his face coldly, in simple conversation, and enjoy the pleasure of his anguish. There was something else he could tell him too. Avril Rocard had not only been beautiful and an excellent marksman, she’d also been an internal spy inside the Paris sector and as such, not only Von Holden’s confidante but his lover as well. It was why she had been invited to Berlin. As added security for Lybarger inside Charlottenburg once the celebration had begun; and later, for Von Holden’s own pleasure. All of that could be told to Cadoux to amplify his pain, but none of it would be, at least not now. Cadoux had been brought to Berlin for another reason entirely, one that would require his full and undivided attention, and because of that, Von Holden would say nothing.
Osborn was trying not to think of Vera, where she was and what she might be doing, the idea that she, of anyone, might be involved with the group was impossible, but why else was she here playing someone called Avril Rocard? His entire being felt raw and unnerved, and he heard himself talking to Schneider and Littbarski, attempting to explain the elements of American football over the din of the tavern, crowded, it seemed, with every tourist in Berlin.
At first, the prattle through Schneider’s hand radio had seemed to be simply a routine police broadcast in German. The volume was up and heads in nearby booths turned at the staccato intrusion. Immediately Schneider reached over to turn the volume down. As he did, Vera’s name came through, and Osborn’s heart jumped in his throat.
“What the hell is it?” he said, grabbing Schneider’s wrist. At the move Littbarski stiffened
Osborn released his grip and Littbarski relaxed.
“What about her?” Schneider could see the tenseness in Osborn’s neck muscles.
“Two federal policewomen apprehended Ms. Monneray as she was coming out of the Church of Mary Queen of Martyrs,” Schneider said in his heavily accented English.
Church? Why would Vera be in church? Osborn’s mind raced. He never remembered her mentioning church or religious beliefs or anything like it. “Where are they taking her?”
Schneider shook his head. “Don’t know.”
“That’s a lie. You do know.”
Again Littbarski tensed.
Schneider picked up the radio and started to get up. “My orders are that if anything happened, I am to take you back to the hotel.”
Unmindful of Littbarski, Osborn put out a hand to stop him. “Schneider, I don’t know what’s going on. I want to believe this is a mistake but I can’t know anything until I see her. Talk to her. I don’t want McVey getting her alone first. Dammit, Schneider. I’m asking you, please—help me.”
Schneider looked at him. “I can see it in your eyes. You are crazy about her. That’s the right saying in American— crazy about her?”
“Yes, that’s the right saying. And I am crazy about her. . . . Take me to wherever they’re taking her—” If Osborn wasn’t begging he was close to it.
“You ran out on me before.”
“Not this time, Schneider. Not this time.”
108
VON HOLDEN watched the city in a blur, alternatively slowing, accelerating, then stopping the BMW completely in heavy midday traffic, only to move on again a few moments later. He was driving on automatic pilot, his mind torn by outrage and absurdity. Three of the four men he had sworn to kill, one of them McVey himself, had walked into his offices and bullied his help as if he were some kind of street front merchant. Worse, he had been helpless, unable to do anything but let them in and then watch from behind closed doors for fear that failure to do so would bring a full-scale invasion by the federal police.
The madness of it was that it had been set off by Cadoux’s emotional appetite for a woman who hadn’t the slightest interest in him beyond what information he could unknowingly pass on about the loyalty of the operatives inside Interpol. It was then, in his anger at Cadoux’s stupidity, the final pieces of his strategy came together.
72 Hauptstrasse, 12:15 P.M.
Joanna saw the BMW turn in from the street, stop briefly at the guardhouse, then pass through the gate and swing around the circular drive to stop in front of the residence. From where she stood in the upstairs bedroom window it was difficult to see directly below, but she was sure she caught a glimpse of Von Holden as he got out and started for the house.
Going quickly to the mirror, she ran a brush through her hair and touched up the expensive, wet-look lipstick Uta Baur had given her. For reasons she couldn’t explain or begin to understand, and despite all that had happened to her, she felt more sexually aroused than she ever had in her life. As if some insatiable hunger or thirst had suddenly and uncontrollably swept over her so powerfully that it could only be satisfied by the act itself.
Opening the door, she stepped into the hallway and saw Von Holden in the downstairs foyer conferring with Eric and Edward. A moment later he stepped off and disappeared from view. Her instinct was to fly down the stairs after him, but she couldn’t with Lybarger’s nephews still there.
Trying to shake the feeling free, she crossed the hall and knocked gently on a closed door. Immediately it was opened by a white-haired, pale, pig-faced man in a tuxedo. His skin had so little pigmentation she thought he might be albino.
“I—I’m Mr. Lybarger’s . . .” The man’s appearance and almost superior way he looked at her made her nervous.
“I know who you are,” he said in a throaty voice.
“I would like to see Mr. Lybarger,” she said, and was shown in without hesitation.
Elton Lybarger was sitting in a chair by the window reading from a dog-eared sheaf of papers typed with very large print. It was the speech he would give tonight, and in the last few days he’d done almost nothing but go over it.
“I wanted to make sure you were comfortable and that everything was all right, Mr. Lybarger,” she said. It was then she noticed another man, also in a tuxedo, standing back near a window that looked out onto a large backyard. Why Mr. Lybarger needed two bodyguards in his room, in house as elegant and genteel as this, and with
