“Don’t let go,” she said. “Don’t ever . . .”
“Vera—tell me what happened. . . .” She took his hand, and held it tight and they sat down on the bench. Brushing away tears, she closed her eyes and thought back. All the way to yesterday.
She could see the farmhouse outside Nancy and the bodies of the three slain Secret Service agents lying where they had fallen. Not far away, Avril Rocard stared unseeingly, blood slowly oozing from her throat.
The phones had been dead when she’d gone back inside. Unable to find the keys to the Secret Service Ford, she’d taken Avril Rocard’s black police Peugeot and driven into the city, where she’d used a public telephone and tried to reach Francois in Paris. But the phones in both his office and his private number at home had been busy. No doubt, she thought, because news of his resignation had just been released. Still in shock from the killings, she’d gotten back into the Peugeot and driven to a park ori the edge of the city.
There, sitting in the car, trying to work through a blur of fear and emotions, trying to think what to do next, she’d seen Avril’s purse on the floor on the passenger side. Opening it, she’d found Avril’s police I.D. and her passport case. Inside the case, tucked behind the passport, was a first-class Air France ticket from Paris to Berlin and an envelope with a reservation confirmation from the Hotel Kempinski. There was also an elaborate engraved invitation in German to a formal dinner to be held at the Charlottenburg Palace at 8 P.M. Friday October 14, in honor of a man named Elton Lybarger. Among the sponsors was the name Erwin Scholl. The same man who hired Albert Merriman to kill Osborn’s father.
Her only thought was that if Scholl was in Berlin, perhaps Paul Osborn might have found out and gone there too. It wasn’t much to go on, but it was all she had. She looked enough like Avril Rocard that unless someone knew her personally, she could pass for her even though she was several years younger. That had been Thursday, the Charlottenburg thing was Friday. From Nancy the fastest way to Berlin was by train from Strasbourg, and so that was where she went.
Twice on the road from Nancy to Strasbourg she’d stopped to call Francois. The first time, the lines were tied up. The second time, at a highway rest stop, she got through to his office. By then it was nearly four in the afternoon and Francois had not been seen or heard from since he’d left his home at seven that morning. The media had not yet been informed that he was missing, but the Secret Service and police were on full alert and the president had ordered Francois’ wife and children to be taken to an unknown destination and kept there under armed guard.
She remembered hanging up and feeling only numbness. Nothing existed. There was no Francois Christian. No Dr. Paul Osborn of Los Angeles. Nor was there a Vera Monneray who could go back to her apartment and her life in Paris and carry on as if nothing had ever happened. Four people were dead at a farmhouse behind her and the only men she had ever known and cared about, loved as completely and deeply as she had, were gone, vanished, like steam into the air. It was then a sense came over hen that what was happening was only a prelude to what was to come. And once again she felt the awful and shadowed echo of her grandmother’s past, and the horror and unending fear that went with it. The only answer seemed to lie in Berlin, as it had in her grandmother’s day. Only now it had become a great deal more personal. Whatever had happened to Francois was part of it, but Osborn was too because he was on the same path as well.
She’d checked into Avril’s room and found Avril’s clothes already there. Then room service brought her breakfast. On the tray had been the newspaper and the word of Francois’ suicide. Feeling faint at first, she knew she needed to get outside and into the air to recover, to think, to plan what to do when and if someone contacted her. Or what to do if they did not, and if she should simply go to Charlottenburg that night alone. So, hiding her passport under the mattress for fear someone would discover who she really was, she’d gone out.
It was while she was walking she’d come upon the Church of Mary Queen of Martyrs. Ironically it was a religious memorial, dedicated to the martyrs for the freedom of belief and conscience from 1933 to 1945. It was like an omen beckoning her, and she thought that inside she might find some kind of answer to what was happening. What she’d found instead were the German police waiting when she came out.
Detective Schneider had lied when he’d told Osborn that if anything happened he was to take him back to the hotel. The truth was that if Vera Monneray was found, Osborn was to be taken directly to where she was being held. McVey wanted Osborn and Ms. Monneray to think they were alone, thereby giving McVey the chance to garner whatever candid information such a meeting would reveal. The idea was to make it seem the concept had been Osborn’s; and with Schneider’s help it worked; Osborn had played right into it.
Suddenly the door to the interrogation room was pulled open. Osborn swung around and saw McVey coming through the doorway. “Get him out of here, now!” McVey said angrily, and abruptly two uniformed federal policemen were jerking Osborn to his feet and hustling him out. “Vera!” he cried out, trying to look back. “Vera!” His second cry was followed by the booming slam of a heavy steel door. Then he was walked quickly down a narrow hallway and up a short flight of stairs. A door was opened and he was taken into another white room. The policemen I went out, and the door was closed and locked.
Ten minutes later McVey came in. His face was red and he was breathing heavily, as if he’d just climbed a long flight of stairs.
“What’d you get on the tape? Anything of interest?” Osborn said icily the moment the door opened. “Convenient” for me to get there first, wasn’t it! Maybe, she’d tell me what she wouldn’t tell you or the German police and the mikes would pick everything up. But it didn’t work, did it? All you got was the truth from a terrified woman.”
“How do you know it was the truth?”
“Because I do, dammit!”
“Did she ever mention Captain Cadoux of Interpol— ever talk about him, say his name?”
“No. Never.”
McVey glared at him, then softened. “Okay. Let’s believe her. Both of us.”
“Then let her go.”
“Osborn. You are here because of me. And by that I mean not dead on the floor of some Paris bistro with a Stasi shooter’s bullet between your eyes.”
“McVey, that has nothing to do with this and you know it! The same as you have no reason to hold her. You know that too!”
McVey never took his eyes from Osborn’s. “You want to know the
“What happened to my father has got nothing to do with Vera.”
“How do you know? How do you know for sure?” McVey wasn’t being cruel, he was probing. “You said you met her in Geneva. Did you find her or did she find you?”
“I—It doesn’t make any—”
“Answer me.”
“—She . . . found me. . . .”
“She was Francois Christian’s mistress. And on the day of this thing with Lybarger, he’s suddenly dead and she shows up in Berlin with an invitation to the ball.”
Osborn was angry. Angry and confused. What was McVey trying to do? That Vera might be part of the “group” was crazy. It wasn’t possible. He believed what she had just told him. They loved each other too much for him .not to! Her love meant too much. Turning away, he looked up at the ceiling. Above him, hanging out of reach from anyone standing on the floor, was a bank of bright lights. Glaring, hundred-and-fifty-watt bulbs that would never be turned off.
“Maybe she is innocent, Doctor,” McVey said. “But it’s out of your hands and in those of the German police.”
Behind them the door opened and Remmer came in. “We have video of the house on Hauptstrasse. Noble is waiting.”
McVey looked back to Osborn. “I want you to see this,” he said directly.
“Why?”
“It’s the house where we’re to meet Scholl. By
