one in the police photographs and that he had been carrying some kind of case over his shoulder.
From the testimony of the three, and the evidence at hand, grimfaced Frankfurt homicide, inspectors pieced together the chain of events. The deceased policemen had met the Berlin train when it arrived at 7:04. And had been killed very shortly afterward, perhaps within five or six minutes, by shots fired from someone inside the compartment occupied by the man called Von Holden. Their bodies had been discovered at approximately 7:18 by an Italian businessman leaving the next compartment. He had heard people talking in the corridor but had heard no gunshots, suggesting strongly the killer’s weapon had been equipped with a silencer. By 7:25, the first police had arrived on scene. By 7:45 the station was cordoned off. For the next three hours no train, person, bus or taxi was allowed to leave until thoroughly searched.
The radio call had come into Remmer at 7:34. At 8:10, he and Osborn entered the station.
Immediately Remmer went over details with the Frankfurt detectives and then personally questioned the three witnesses. Osborn listened carefully, trying to understand what was being said. But for a word here and there, couldn’t. The main concern, Remmer had pointed out as soon as the radio call had come in, was logistics. As he saw it, Frankfurt was a major transport hub and not a final destination, meaning Von Holden had been on his way elsewhere. The airport was only six miles from the railroad station and was serviced by direct subway. But it was obvious he had been surprised by the detectives or he would have gotten off the train at one of the earlier stops. So, having killed them, the pressure was on. That made it unlikely he would attempt to get on a plane, especially at Frankfurt. That gave him two choices. Escape into the city itself and lie low for a period of time, or get out of the city by means other than air. If he attempted to get out, there were three alternatives: train, bus or car. Unless he hijacked a car or had one waiting, that choice was unlikely because he couldn’t get a rental car without drawing attention to himself simply by the rental process itself. That narrowed the alternatives to bus or train. A problem for the police, because two hundred European cities have bus links with Frankfurt. And even though every bus had been searched, it was possible that somehow they could have slipped through. It was the same with trains. Searching of them had only begun once the station was cordoned off at 7:45. In the thirty minutes from 7:15 to 7:45, roughly the time between when the murders had taken place and the station was cordoned off, sixteen trains had left Frankfurt. Bus tickets had to be secured before boarding, and no ticket agents of bus lines at Hauptbahnhof had sold tickets to anyone resembling Von Holden. Train tickets, however, could be, and often were, purchased on the train after it had left the station. Nothing would be left to chance—Frankfurt police would drag the city to find if he was holed up there, the airport would be watched for Mays—buses and trains would continue to be searched. Still, it was Remmer’s gut feeling that Von Holden had taken one of the sixteen trains that had left before the station was cordoned off.
“What did they say she looked like?” Osborn pushed through the witnesses and up to Remmer. He was incensed and anxious at the same time.
“The descriptions of the woman varied,” Remmer said quietly. “It might have been Ms. Monneray, it might not.”
“Here! This man saw them!” A uniformed cop was pushing through the crowd with a thin black man wearing an apron.
Remmer turned as they came up.
“You saw them?”
“Yes, sir.” The man insisted on looking at the floor.
“He served the woman coffee about seven-thirty,” the policeman said, standing tight against the black man and towering over him by nearly a foot.
“Why didn’t you speak up at once” Remmer asked.
“He’s Mozambique. He’s been beaten up by skinheads before. He’s afraid of anyone white.” ‘
“Look,” Remmer said gently. “Nobody’s going to hurt you. Just tell what you saw.”
The black man raised his eyes, looked at Remmer, then looked back to his feet. “The man order kaffee for woman,” he said in broken German. “She very pretty, very scared. Hands shake, hardly drink kaffee. He go away, then come back with newspaper. Show her paper. Then they go off—”
“Where, which way did they go?”
“There, to train.”
“There, or there. Not sure.” The black man nodded in the direction of one track and another beside it and shrugged. “Didn’t look much after they go.”
“What did she look like?” Osborn was suddenly face to face with the black man; he’d held back long enough.
“Take it easy, Doctor,” Remmer said.
“Ask him what color hair she had,” Osborn pressed. “Ask him!”
Remmer translated into German.
The black man smiled faintly and touched his own hair.
“Jesus God—” Osborn knew what it meant. Black. Like Vera’s.
“Let’s go,” Remmer said to Osborn, then turned and pushed through a crowd of police and onlookers. A moment later they slammed into the stationmaster’s office, with Remmer glancing at the clock as they came in. It was 8:47.
“What trains left tracks C 3 and C 4 between seven-twenty and seven-forty-five?” he demanded of the surprised stationmaster. Behind him was a wall map of Europe, lit with a myriad of little dots and showing every rail line on the continent.
“C 3—Geneva. Inter City Express. Arrives fourteen-six with a change in Basel. C 4. Strasbourg. Inter City. Arrives tea thirty-seven with a change at Offenburg.” The numbers rolled out of him like information stored in a computer.
Remmer bristled. “Switzerland France. Either way they’re out of the country. What time do the trains reach, Basel and Offenburg?”
Within minutes Remmer had taken over the station-master’s inner office and alerted the police in the German town of Offenburg, the Swiss cities of Basel and Geneva, and the French city of Strasbourg. Every passenger getting off the trains at Offenburg and Basel would be guided through a single exit gate, while at the same time teams of plainclothes inspectors would board the trains for the final leg of the journeys to Geneva and Strasbourg. If Von Holden and the woman with him tried to get off at either midway point, they would be surrounded and captured at the exit gate. If they chose to stay on the train, they would be singled out, then overpowered and taken into custody.
“What happens to—” Osborn said as Remmer hung up,
“She will be taken into custody. The same as Von Holden.” Remmer knew what Osborn meant. Police officers had been asked to bring in a cop killer. If the fugitives were on either train, and he was certain they were, their chances of escaping a second time were nonexistent. And if they put up any resistance at all, they would be shot.
“What do
“Doctor—” Remmer paused, and Osborn suddenly felt as if the rug was about to be jerked out from under him. “I know you want to be there, how important it is to you. But I can’t take a chance that you won’t get caught in the middle.”
“Remmer, I’ll take the chance. Don’t worry about it.”
“I’m not talking about you, Doctor. You’ve got a lot on your mind and you could fuck things up royally. A nineteen-year-old cabdriver and three policemen were murdered in cold blood. The method suggests Noble was right, that this Von Holden, maybe the woman too, whoever she is, is a Spetsnaz soldier. That means he or they were trained by the Soviet Army and maybe after that by GRU, which is about six steps above your most efficient former KGB agent. That puts them into the elite of the best schooled and deadliest killers in the world with a mind- set you could not begin to comprehend. Taking them will not be easy. I won’t risk losing another cop for you or anybody else. Go back to Berlin, Doctor. I promise I will let you question them both at the proper time.” With that, Remmer pushed back from the stationmaster’s desk and started for the door.
“Remmer.” Osborn took him by the arm and pulled him around. “You’re not getting rid of me like that. Not now. McVey wouldn’t—”
