already gone and not there, waiting for another train.”
“My best suggestion is that you take a Eurail schedule and look over the trains that have left Bern between twelve twelve when he gets there and twelve forty-four, when you do. May I also suggest you have him paged once you get to the station.”
“Paged?”
“Yes, sir.” With that the ticket collector nodded, handed Osborn a train schedule and moved on.
Osborn looked off—“Paged.”
Von Holden waited outside a pastry shop within the depths of the Bern rail station. Vera had gone into the women’s room directly across from him. She was exhausted and had said little on the entire trip but he knew ‘ she’d been thinking of Osborn. And because of that; because she was certain he was taking her to him, he had no doubt she would return to him as she had promised.
The first hour of the trip from Frankfurt to Bern had been his greatest concern. If the black counterman had been less intimidated than he’d seemed when Von Holden had taken him aside and threatened him that skinheads would show up at his door if he didn’t do exactly as he was told, and instead revealed to the police what train he was really on— they would have stopped the train in no time with a battery of police. That hadn’t happened. Nor had he seen any more than the usual station security when they’d reached Bern.
At seven minutes to one, Vera came out of the women’s room and went with him while he purchased two multiday passes on the Eurail system. They were good for travel anywhere on the continent. It would give them flexibility of movement, he told her. What he didn’t tell her was that he could suddenly put them on any train at all without her knowing where it was going.
Osborn stood at a bank of phones, his back against the wall. From there he could see most of the station. The ticket windows, shops, restaurants, the foreign money exchange. If Von Holden was in the station at all -which was a long shot, since from the time Von Holden had arrived until now, at least thirteen trains had left Bern, six for cities within Switzerland, one for Amsterdam and the rest for Italy—but if he was there and moved to answer a courtesy telephone, there was every chance Osborn would see him. The other possibility was that he could be waiting for a train on one of the upstairs platforms. Osborn had counted at least eight tracks as they’d come in from Zurich.
“I’m sorry, sir. Mr. Von Holden does not answer,” the operator said in English.
“Would you please try once more, it’s very important.”
The page came again and Von Holden took Vera by the arm! and moved her quickly away from the ticket windows and into the corridor leading to the tracks.
“Who is it? Who’s calling you?”
“I don’t know.” Von Holden looked over his shoulder. He saw no one he recognized. They turned a corner and started up the stairs toward the tracks. Then they were at the top of the stairs and onto the platform. At the far end of the station a train was waiting.
Osborn hung up and headed for the tracks. If Von Holden had been in the station he hadn’t answered the page, nor had Osborn seen him in the crowds going toward the tracks. If he was there, the only thing left was that he was already on the platform, either on a train or waiting to board one.
Now Osborn was in the corridor leading to the trains. Stairs went up to his left and right, and he had to choose between at least four platforms. He went for the third, knowing it would put him on a platform somewhere toward the middle of the station.
His heart was pounding as he reached the top of the stairs. He expected to see the station filled with people, as it had been when he’d arrived. To his amazement it was all but deserted. Then he saw a train at the far end of the station, two tracks away. A man and a woman were walking rapidly toward it. He could see neither clearly, but he could tell that the man had a pack of some kind thrown over his shoulder. Osborn ran down the platform he was on. He didn’t dare jump the track because he was afraid that if it had a third rail he would be electrocuted. Now, ‘the couple were almost to the train; both had their backs to him. Osborn was running as fast as he could and very nearly coming abreast of them. He saw them reach the train and the man help the woman on, then the man turned back and looked across. As he did, Osborn slid to a stop. For the briefest moment they stared at each other, then the man pulled himself up and disappeared inside the train. A moment later the train gave a lurch and “started forward. Then it picked up speed and pulled out of the station.
Osborn stood frozen where he was. The face that had stared back at him from the train was the face that had stared back at him that night in the Tiergarten. The same face that glared out of the video enhancement taken at the house on Hauptstrasse. It was Von Holden.
The woman he’d only glimpsed for a second as she boarded the train. But in that instant his world and everything in it was destroyed. There was no question who it had been. No question at all.
Vera.
137
“PASCAL,” SCHOLL had said, “be most respectful of the young doctor. Kill him first.”
“Yes . . . ,” Von Holden had answered.
But he hadn’t done it. For whatever myriad of reasons he hadn’t done it. But reasons made no difference when they were excuses. Osborn was alive and had followed him to Bern. How he had accomplished that was beyond comprehension. But it was a fact. It was also a fact that he would be on the next train behind them.
***
“Interlaken,” a railway supervisor on the platform had told Osborn when he asked the destination of the train that had just left the station. Trains to Interlaken left every half hour.
He went downstairs and into the main station in a daze. He wanted to believe Vera was Von Holden’s prisoner and being held against her will. But it wasn’t like that and he knew it, not the way they were walking together toward the train. So what he wanted to believe made no difference. The truth was there and McVey had been right about it. Vera was part of the Organization and wherever Von “Holden was going, she was going too. Osborn had been a fool to believe her, to fall in love.
Reaching the ticket window, he started to buy a ticket to Interlaken when he had the thought that maybe it was only a stop along the way. They might change trains, once, twice, even more. He couldn’t stop to buy a ticket each time. So instead of one ticket, he used a credit card and bought a pass for five days. It was now 1:15, a quarter of an hour before the next train for Interlaken.
Crossing to a restaurant, Osborn ordered a cup of coffee and sat down. He needed to think. Almost immediately he realized he had no idea where Interlaken was. If he knew that, he might have some idea of where Von Holden was going. Getting up, he went to a newsstand next door and bought a map and guidebook of Switzerland. In the distance he heard a train announced in German. He understood only one word, but it was all he needed: “Interlaken.”
“How much farther is it, this place we’re going?” Vera said over the clicking of the wheels as the train glided slowly into the small city of Thun. She’d been half dozing, half staring off into space, and now she was sitting up and questioning him directly. Outside, the huge tower of Thun Castle passed like a hovering stone giant still caught in the twelfth century.
Von Holden was watching for signs of police as they approached the station. If Osborn had alerted the authorities, Thun would be the first logical place to stop the train and search it. He had to be prepared if they did. Vera, he was certain, had not seen Osborn or she would not be acting the way she was. But this was the reason he’d brought her. A card to play that his pursuers wouldn’t have.
