The Day After Tomorrow

“Look, Connie. I’m just trying to get some information. Nothing—with a big N—else. Okay. Now, please be a good kid and try and remember.”

“I like you.”

“I know.”

“Well, lemme think.”

Osborn watched as she got up and stood looking out the window. It wasn’t easy, the car was climbing the face of the Eiger and tilted at almost a forty-degree angle. Abruptly everything went dark as they entered a tunnel.

Five minutes later Osborn and Connie were looking out of the cutouts in the Eiger wall at Eigerwand station. Connie had her arm through his and was holding tight.

“I don’t like to admit it, but I do get dizzy.”

Osborn looked at his watch. Von Holden should be there now, or almost there anyway. Maybe he had been wrong about the medical facility. Maybe Von Holden was simply meeting someone there as he’d thought earlier. If that were the case, Von Holden could give him whatever he was carrying in the rucksack and take the next train down. The whole thing could be done in a matter of minutes.

“There’s a weather station.”

“What?” Connie was speaking to him and at the same time they were being called back to the train.

“A weather station, you know some kind of observatory.”

Now they were crossing the platform toward the train. As they did, a train was coming down from Jungfraujoch, passing their train on the siding, slowly winding its way by on the lone track.

“Darlin’, you listenin’ to me or am I just talkin’ to entertain myself?”

“Yes, I hear you.” Osborn was straining to see inside the passing train. It was going slowly enough for him to see faces. He recognized none.

Then they were back in the train and sitting down and the train was moving into the tunnel and upward. Picking up speed.

“I’m sorry. You said something about—”

“A weather station. Did you or did you not ask if there was a place where the public couldn’t go. Well, there’s a weather station there. Upstairs, I think. Must be run by the government or something. ‘Course there’s the kitchen.”

“What kitchen?”

“For the restaurant. Why do you want to know this anyway?”

“Research. I’m—writing a—book.”

“Darlin’—” Connie put her hand on his thigh again and leaned so close her lips were brushing his ear. “I know you’re not writin’ a book,” she whispered. “Because if you were you’d wait to find out what you’re askin’ till we get there and you could see for yourself. I also”—she blew a knot of hot air into his ear— “know you’ve got a gun stickin’ in your belt. What’re you gonna do with it, shoot somebody?” Connie sat back and smiled. “Darlin’, will you promise me one thing? Yell first. I’d like to get the fuck out of the way.”

143

EISMEER WAS the last station before Jungfraujoch, and like Eigerwand the train stopped while the passengers got out to take pictures and ooh and aah from the cutouts in the rock. But the view from Eismeer was different from Eigerwand and everything else they had passed. Instead of rolling meadows and lakes and deep green forests bathed in lazy autumn sunshine, here was a white, frozen landscape. Vast rivers of snow and glacial ice ran from view or stopped hard against jagged rock cliffs. In the distance, driven snow on a topmost peak was blushed rose red by a dying sun, while overhead hung a thin and endless sky broken only by the smallest wisps of cloud. In the morning, or at midday, it might have looked different. But now, in the last hour before dark, it seemed cold and ominous: a vast and foreign place where man did not belong. The feeling seemed a natural warning: that if, by some accident or design, he were to wander out there, away from people, away from the trains, he should understand that this place was not his. He would be on his own. And God would not protect him.

The whistle sounded for reboarding and the passengers turned back toward the train. Osborn looked at his watch. It was ten minutes to five. It would be just five when they arrived in Jungfraujoch and the last train down left at six. By then it would be pitch dark. At most he would have an hour to find Von Holden and Vera and do his business with them. And, if he lived, to catch the last train down.

Osborn was the last to board. Immediately the door closed behind him, there was a lurch and he felt the cog gears catch on the rail beneath him. Leaning back, he took a deep breath, and then absently glanced around the car.

Connie was sitting near the rear, talking to her railroaders, not so much as looking at him. That was good, he thought, one less thing to deal with. Then, strangely and quite surprisingly, he found himself wishing for her company. He thought that maybe, if he sat down, with an open seat next to him, she might get up and join him. Walking back toward the railroaders, he found a vacant double seat and sat down facing her. If she saw him she didn’t acknowledge it, just kept on talking. He watched her gesture, with her hands and wondered why she wore those long fake red nails. Or bleached her hair that awful blond. It was then he realized he was frightened to death. Remmer had clearly warned him to stay away from Von Holden. Noble had told him that after his encounter with him in the Tiergarten he was extremely lucky to still be alive. The man was a thoroughly schooled assassin who, in the last twenty or so hours, had sharpened his skills by murdering a nineteen year old-woman cabdriver and three German policemen. He knew who Osborn was and that he was following him. And having come this far, would Von Holden be so simple to think he was now blithely chugging his way toward Lucerne? Not likely. Since Von Holden had been on neither train coming down, it meant he was still at Jungfraujoch. And at Jungfraujoch there was no place but Jungfraujoch.

In less than five minutes, he thought, he was going to be delivered straight into a hell of his own creation. A stream of unfinished business spewed through him like an uncontrolled printout. Patients—house—car payments— life insurance—who arranges to get my body home? Who gets my things? After the last divorce I never made another will. He almost laughed. It was a comedy. Life’s loose ends. He had come to Europe to give a speech. He had fallen in love. And after that it was straight downhill. “La descente infernale,” he could hear Vera say in French. The ride to hell.

Vera—he was hearing her as he remembered her, not as who she was. Time and again she had come forward in his thoughts, time and again he’d forced her out. What was was and the way it stood. When the time came and he finally faced her, that’s when he would deal with the reality of it, but for now it was Von Holden who had to stay centered in his mind—

He felt the train slow. A sign passed by the window.

Jungfraujoch.

“Jesus Christ,” he whispered. Instinctively his hand touched the butt of the revolver. At least he still had that.

“Think of your father!” he told himself. “Hear the sound of Merriman’s knife hit him in the stomach! See the look on his face! See his eyes come to you, asking you what happened. See his knees buckle as he collapses on the sidewalk. Somebody screams! He’s scared. He knows he’s going to die. See his hand reach up to you. For you to take, to help him through it. See that, Paul Osborn. See that and do not fear what is ahead.”

There was a shriek of brakes, then a bump, and the train slowed more. There were two tracks and light at the far end, and they were almost there. The station was inside the tunnel like Eigerwand and Eismeer, Connie had told him. Only here the tracks did not continue through, they stopped at the end. The only way out was the way they were coming in. Back through the tunnel.