the road. And what they’d seen, they’d seen together, as if there would never be a time when they would part. And then out on the mountain, under the most cruel of situations, he’d confirmed it. For both of them.
At least that was what she thought. Suddenly she was afraid that everything she felt was hers alone. That she’d misread it all and that whatever they’d had between them had been fleeting and one-sided, and that on the other side of the door she’d find not the Paul Osborn she knew but a stranger.
“Why don’t you go in?” The inspector smiled and opened the door.
He lay in bed, his left leg beneath a sprawling web of pulleys and ropes and counterweights; He was wearing his L.A. Kings T-shirt, bright red jockey shorts and nothing else, and when she saw him all her fears vanished and she started to laugh.
“What’s so damn funny?” he demanded.
“Don’t know . . .” She giggled. “I don’t know at all . . . . It just is . . .”
And then the inspector closed the door and she crossed the room and came into his arms. And everything that had been—on the Jungfrau, in Paris, in London and in Geneva came rushing back. Outside, it was raining and Berlin was complaining. But to them, it made no difference at all.
156
Los Angeles.
PAUL OSBORN sat on the grass and stone patio of his Pacific Palisades home and stared out at the horseshoe of lights that was Santa Monica Bay. It was seventy-five degrees and ten o’clock at night a week before Christmas.
What had happened on the Jungfrau was too tangled and complex to try to make sense of. The last moments were especially disturbing because he couldn’t say for certain exactly what had happened, or how much of what he thought had happened had really taken place at all.
As a physician, he understood that he had suffered significant physical and emotional trauma. Not just in the last weeks but across the arc of his entire life from childhood to adult, though certainly he could point to the closing days in Germany and Switzerland as the most tumultuous of all. But it had been there on the Jungfrau that the line between reality and hallucination finally ceased to exist. Night and snow had melded with fear and exhaustion. The honor of the avalanche, the certainty of imminent death at the hands of Von Holden, and the excruciating pain of his broken leg rubbed whatever cognizance there still was out of existence. What was real, what was a dream, was all but impossible to tell. And now that he was home, broken but alive and mending, did it make any difference anyway?
Taking a sip of iced tea, Osborn looked back out at the bay. In Paris it was seven in the morning. In an hour Vera would be on the train to Calais to meet her grandmother. Together they would take the Hoverspeed to Dover and from there the train to London. And at eleven the next morning they would fly out of Heathrow Airport on British Airways for Los Angeles. Vera had been to the United States once, with Francois Christian. Her grandmother had never been. What the old Frenchwoman would think of Christmas in Los Angeles he had no idea but there was no doubt she’d make her sentiments known. About tinsel and sunshine and about him, as well.
That Vera was coming was excitement enough. That she was bringing her grandmother gave it legitimacy. If she was going to stay and become a physician in the U.S., it meant, in essence, she would have to satisfy the strict requirements of the Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates. For some things she might have to return to school, for others there would be a strict and tedious internship. It would be a grueling and difficult commitment in time and energy, one that she did not have to make because for all intents she was already a doctor in France. The trouble was he’d asked her to marry him. To come to California to live happily ever after.
Her answer to his proposal, given in his hospital room with a smile, was that—she’d “see.” Those were her words.
“I’ll see. . . .”
See what? he’d asked. If she wanted to marry him? Live in the U.S.? In California?—But all he could get out of her was the same “I’ll see. . . .” Then she’d kissed him and left Berlin for Paris.
The package Vera had brought him from McVey had been his passport, retrieved from the First Paris Prefecture of Police. With it had been a note, written in French and signed by Parisian detectives Barras and Maitrot, wishing him good luck and sincerely hoping that in the future he would do everything in his power to stay out of France. Then, a week to the day after he’d been brought down off the Jungfrau and flown to Berlin, two days after Vera had left for Paris, he’d been released from the hospital.
Remmer, in from Bad Godesberg, had driven him to the airport and brought him up to date. Noble, he learned, had been airlifted back to London and was in a burn rehabilitation center. It would be months and a number of skin graft operations before he could return to a normal life, if that would be possible at all. Remmer himself, broken wrist and all, was back at work full-time, assigned to the investigation of the events leading up to the Charlottenburg fire and the shootout at the Hotel Borggreve. Joanna Marsh, Lybarger’s American therapist, had been found at a Berlin hotel. Questioned extensively and released, she’d ? been escorted back to the U.S. by McVey. What had happened to her after that Remmer didn’t know. He assumed she’d gone home.
“Remmer—” Osborn remembered asking carefully as memories of the last night on the Jungfrau came back. “Do you know where she called the Swiss police from? Which station. Kleine Scheidegg or Jungfraujoch?”
Remmer turned from the wheel to look at him. “You’re talking about Vera Monneray.”
“Yes.”
“It wasn’t she who called the Swiss police.”
“What do you mean?” Osborn was startled.
“The call was made by another American. A woman. She was a tourist. . . . Connie something, I think. . . .”
Connie?”
“That’s right.”
“You’re saying Vera knew where I was out there? That she told them where to find me?”
“The dogs found you,” Remmer wrinkled his brow. “Why would you think it was Ms. Monneray?”
“She was at Jungfraujoch station when they brought me in . . . ,” Osborn said, uncertainly.
“So were a number of other people.”
Osborn looked off. Dogs. All right, let it go at that. Let his image of Vera standing on the trail just after Von Holden fell, an enormous bloody icicle in her hands, remain only that, an illusion. Part of his hallucinatory dreams. Nothing else.
“You’re really asking if she’s innocent. You want to believe she is, but you’re still not sure.”
Osborn looked back. “I am sure.”
“Well, you’re right. We found the printing equipment used to make Von Holden’s false BKA I.D. It was in the apartment of the mole the Organization had working as a supervisor in the jail, the one who released her in Von Holden’s custody. She did believe he was taking her to you. He knew too much for her to expect otherwise until just before the end.”
Osborn didn’t need the confirmation. If he hadn’t believed it on the mountain, he certainly had by the time Vera left Berlin for Paris.
“What about Joanna Marsh?” he asked. “Did she give any indication why Salettl sent us after her?”
Remmer was silent for a long moment, then shook his head. “Maybe one day we will find out, yes?” There was something about Remmer’s manner that suggested he knew more than he was telling. And he had to remember that no matter how much they’d been through together, Remmer was still police. Look what they had done to Vera even when they knew, probably within a few hours, maybe even right away, that she’d had nothing to do with the Organization and that she was not Avril Rocard. It was a frightening power to have because it was so easy to misuse.
“What about McVey?” Osborn said.
“I told you. He escorted Ms. Marsh back home.”
“He sent me my passport.”
“You couldn’t leave Germany without it.” Remmer smiled.
