110
JOANNA’S SUITCASE was on the bed and the last of her things were going into it when Von Holden came in.
“Joanna, I apologize. Forgive me. . . .”
Ignoring him, she went to the closet and took out the Uta Baur original she was to wear this evening. Coming back, she laid it out on the bed and began to fold it. Von Holden stood quietly for a moment, then came up behind her and put his hand on her shoulder. When he did, she froze.
“This is a very tense time for me, Joanna. . . . For you as well, and for Mr. Lybarger. Please forgive me for acting the way I did downstairs”
Joanna remained as she was, her eyes focused on the glare of the distant window
I “I have to tell you the truth, Joanna. . . . In my entire life, no one has ever told me they loved me. You— frightened me. . . .”
He felt the breath go out of her.”
“Yes. . . .”
Ever so slowly she turned. The horrid, hate-filled eyes that had terrified her barely an hour before were now soft and vulnerable.
“Don’t do this to me. . . .”
“Joanna, I don’t know if I am capable of love. . . .”
“Don’t . . .” Joanna felt her eyes brim and a tear begin to steal down her cheek.
“It’s true. I don’t—”
Abruptly she pressed her fingers against his lips to stop him. “You are—” she said.
Slowly he put his hands around her waist and she came into his arms. And then he kissed her gently and she returned it and felt him grow hard against her. Emotion crept over her body, taking away reason. .Whatever fearful thing she had seen in him before was gone. Unremembered in the sense that it had never existed.
From a single fly-over at five hundred feet, the helicopter view of the house at 72 Hauptstrasse showed a nineteenth-century villa, a three-story main building with a five-car garage to the rear. A semicircular driveway was entered past a guardhouse, through wrought-iron gates from the street. The driveway to the garage was to the right of the house, while to the left was a red clay tennis court. The entire premises were surrounded by a high stone wall, grown over with deciduous ivy.
“There’s a gate at the back beside the garage. It looks like it opens to a service alley,” Noble said as he watched the fly-over on the large Sony screen.
“It does, and it’s operable,” Remmer said.
The four—Noble, Remmer, McVey and Osborn—were sitting in theater-like seats in a video room one floor up from cell level. Osborn was leaning back, his chin resting on his hand. A floor below, Vera was being interrogated. His imagination flailed at what they might be doing to her. On the other hand—his mind raced—what if, after everything, McVey had been right and she was working with the “group”? What had she learned from Francois Christian that she might have passed to them? If so, how did he, Osborn, fit in? What did she want with him? Maybe that he had been involved with Merriman had been an accident, a sheer coincidence. She couldn’t have known about that in Geneva because he hadn’t seen Merriman until he followed her to Paris.
“This was taken from a laundry truck while the driver made a delivery to the house across the street,” Remmer said, as broadcast-quality color video rolled on the screen. “We only have short pieces shot from different vehicles. That’s the reason there’s only one fly-over take. We don’t want to create suspicion they are under surveillance.
Now the hidden camera pushed in toward the house. A Mercedes limousine was parked in the driveway and a gardener was at work on the lawn. Nothing else seemed to be happening. The camera held, then started to pull back.
“What’s that?” McVey said abruptly. “A movement in the upstairs window, second from the right.”
Remmer stopped the machine, backed it up. Then played it forward again in slow motion.
“Someone’s standing in the window,” Noble said.
Again Remmer replayed it. This time in extreme slow motion and using a special zoom lens on the playback to move in on the window. “It’s a woman. Can’t see much of her.”
“Get it enhanced, will you?” Noble said.
“Right.” Touching the intercom and asking for a technician, Remmer took out the cassette, put it aside and inserted another. Basically it was the same shot of the house but from a slightly different angle. A small movement in the upstairs window suggested McVey was right, that someone was standing there looking out. Suddenly a gray BMW pulled in off the street and stopped at the guard house. A moment later the gate opened and the car drove in. Pulling up at the main entrance, a tall man got out and went inside.
“Any idea who he is?” McVey asked. Remmer shook his head.
“This will be unmitigated joy,” Noble said flatly as he opened an alphabetized file of photographs. So far, Bad Godesberg had sent them photos of sixty-three of the one hundred invited guests. Most were driver’s license Polaroids, but others Were copies of publicity, corporate or news photographs. “I’ll take A through F, the rest of you can fight over what remains of the alphabet.”
“Let’s put him on the zoom.” Remmer punched rewind, then hit the slow-mo play button. This time the car entered in slow motion and Remmer moved in on it with the zoom. As it reached the front of the house, the car stopped and the man got out—
“Jesus Christ—” Osborn said.
McVey’s head came around like a bullwhip. “You know that guy?” Remmer backed up the tape and froze the picture as Von Holden was just stepping out of the car.
“He followed me into the park.” Osborn pulled away from the screen to look directly at McVey.
“What park? What the hell are you talking abou—”
“The night I went put. I ditched Schneider on purpose.” Osborn was pumped up. His lie had come back on him but he didn’t care. “I was walking through the Tiergarten, on my way to Scholl’s hotel. Suddenly I realized I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. That I might blow the whole thing. I was turning back when this guy—that guy there”— he looked back at Von Holden on the screen— “is coming up behind me. I had the gun in my pocket. I freaked, I guess. I pulled it on him. He had a friend, hiding in the bushes—I told them to leave me alone. Then I ran like hell.”
“You sure it’s him?”
“Yes.”
“That means they’re watching the hotel,” Remmer said.
Noble looked at Remmer. “Could we see him walk into the house? At normal speed, please.”
Remmer hit “play,” and Von Holden’s image unfroze. Closing the door to the BMW, he crossed the driveway and moved quickly up a short flight of steps, someone opened the front door and he entered.
Noble sat back. “Once more, please.” Remmer repeated the action, stopping the tape once Von Holden had gone inside.
“One hundred to one he was trained as a Spetsnaz soldier,” Noble said. “A saboteur and terrorist, schooled in special reconnaissance units of the old Soviet army. It takes a bit of experience to recognize it. They may not even know they do it, but their training effects a certain walk, a kind of bearing and balance that make them look as if they were on a circus wire.” Noble turned to Osborn. “If he
“If Lybarger is staying in the house, it’s possible our friend here is a security operative, possibly even the man in charge.”
“Either that or he’s securing it for Scholl,” Remmer said.
“Or doing something else entirely.” McVey sat staring at the screen, intent on the frozen image of Von Holden.
“Setting us up?” Noble said.
