tall man, how did it happen that Osborn became a victim as well? And why a guy like Osborn, a clean-cut, if somewhat fiery, orthopedic surgeon from California?
And then there was the drug the French police had found in Osborn’s room. Succinylcholine.
A call to Dr. Richman at the Royal College of Pathology in London had established succinylcholine as a presurgery anesthetic, a synthetic curare used to relax the muscles. Richman had warned that outside professional hands it could be very dangerous. The drug completely relaxed the skeletal muscles, and could cause suffocation if improperly administered.
“Is it unusual for a surgeon to have that kind of a drug in his possession?” McVey had asked directly.
Richman’s reply had been as forthcoming. “In his hotel room while he was ostensibly on vacation? I’d sure as hell say so!”
McVey had paused, thought a moment, then asked the million-dollar question, “Would you use it if you were going to sever a head?”
“Possibly. In conjunction with other anesthetics.”
“What about the freezing? Would you use it for that?”
“McVey, you have to understand, this is a sport neither I nor the colleagues whom I’ve queried have ever encountered before. We don’t have enough information about what was attempted or actually happened to even begin to suggest a procedure.”
“Doctor, do me a favor,” McVey had asked. “Get with Doctor Michaels and go over the corpses once more.”
“Detective, if you’re looking for succinylcholine, it breaks down in the body minutes after it’s injected. You’d never find a trace of it.”
“But you might find puncture wounds that would tell us they’d been injected with something, right?”
McVey could distinctly hear Richman agree with him and the sound of the phone as he hung up. Then all of a sudden it hit him. “Son of a bitch!” he said out loud. The little dog under the table jerked out of his sleep and started barking, while the two elderly ladies, who obviously understood enough English to be appalled, glared at him.
“Pardon,” McVey said. Getting up, he left a twenty-franc note on the table. “You too,” he said to the dog as he walked off.
Crossing Place Victor Hugo, McVey bought a token and entered the Metro. “Lebrun,” he heard himself say, as if he were still in the inspector’s office. “We never made a three-way association, did we?”
Looking at the Metro routes on a master scheduling board, McVey picked the route he thought would take him where he wanted to go and got on. His mind still focused on his imaginary meeting with Lebrun.
“We found Merriman because he left his print at the Jean Packard murder scene, right?”
“We knew Osborn hired Packard to find somebody. Osborn told me it was Vera Monneray’s boyfriend and, at the time, it seemed reasonable. But what if he was lying about that, like he did about the mud on his shoes? What if it was Merriman he was trying to find? On our mothers’ graves, how the hell could we miss that?”
Crowding onto a Metro car, McVey grabbed an overhead handrail and stood. Incensed as he was for not seeing the obvious sooner, he was still pumped up by the flow of thoughts.
“Osborn sees Merriman in the brasserie, maybe by accident, and recognizes him. He tries to grab him, but the waiters wrestle him off and Merriman gets away. Osborn chases him into the Metro, where he gets picked up by Metro police and then turned over to you. He makes up a phony story that Merriman picked his pocket and your men say okay and let him go. Not unreasonable. Then Osborn contacts Kolb International, who assigns him Packard. Packard and Osborn put their heads together and a couple of days later Packard comes up with Merriman, hiding out as Henri Kanarack.”
The train slowed in the tunnel, then entered a station, slowed more and stopped. McVey glanced at the station sign and stood back as half-a-dozen noisy teenagers got on. As quickly- the doors closed, the train moved off again. The entire time McVey heard nothing but his own inner voice.
“I’d say it’s a safe bet Merriman found out Packard was after him, and went after him instead, wanting to know what the hell was going on. And Packard, a tough-guy soldier of fortune, doesn’t like being pushed around, especially in his own house. There’s a big argument and it comes out in Merriman’s favor. Or seems to have, until he leaves a fingerprint. Then this whole other business starts.
“After that it all begins to get a little fuzzy. But the key, if I’m right, is that it was Merriman who Osborn jumped in the cafe that first night. Your men determined it was Osborn who was the perpetrator, but nobody ever identified the victim. Unless Packard did, and that’s how he got on Merriman’s trail in the first place. But if it was Merriman Osborn attacked, and if we can find out why, it could very well make the circle back to the tall man.”
The train slowed again. Again McVey looked for the name of the station as they came in. This was it! The place he was to change trains—Charles de Gaulle— Etoile.
Getting off, he pushed through a rush of passengers, went up a flight of stairs, passed a vendor selling sweet corn and rushed back down another flight of stairs. At the bottom, he made a right and followed the crowd into the station, pressing ahead, looking for the train that he wanted.
Twenty minutes later he walked out of the St.-Paul Metro station and onto the rue St.-Antoine. A half block down the street on his right was the Brasserie Stella. It was 7:10, Sunday evening, October 9.
57
BERNHARD OVEN stood in the darkened bedroom window of Vera Monneray’s apartment and watched the taxi pull up. A moment later, Vera got out and entered the building. Oven was about to step away when he saw a car turn the corner with its headlights out. Pressing back against the curtain, he watched a late-model Peugeot come down the street in darkness, then pull over and stop. Easing a palm-sized monocular from his jacket pocket, he put the glass on the car. Two men were in the front seat.
Police.
So they were doing it too, using Vera to find the American. They’d been watching her; when she left the hospital suddenly, they followed. He should have anticipated that.
Bringing the glass up again, he saw one of them pick up a radio microphone. Most likely they were calling in for instructions. Oven smiled; the police weren’t the only ones aware of Mademoiselle Monneray’s personal relationship with the prime minister. The Organization had been aware of it since Francois Christian had been appointed. And because of it, and the awkward political consequences that might follow if something went wrong, the likelihood the surveillance inspectors would be given a free hand to come in after her, no matter what they suspected, were almost nil. They would either remain where they were and continue the surveillance from outside or wait until superiors arrived. That delay was all the window Oven would need.
Quickly he left the bedroom and walked down the hall, stepping into the darkened kitchen just as the apartment door opened. Two people were talking and he saw a light go on in the living room. He couldn’t make out what was being said, but was certain the voices belonged to Vera and the doorman.
Suddenly they were out of the living room and coming down the hall directly toward the kitchen. Moving around the center console, Oven stepped into a walk-in pantry, lifted the Walther automatic from his waistband and waited in the dark.
A moment later Vera came into the kitchen with the doorman at her heels and turned on the light. She was halfway across and heading for the rear service door when she stopped.
“What is it, mademoiselle?” the doorman said.
“I’m being a fool, Philippe,” she said, coldly. “And the police are being clever. They found the vial and delivered it to you presupposing you would notify me and I’d do just what I did. They assume I know where Paul is, so they sent a tall inspector, hoping I would think it was the gunman and be frightened enough to lead them to Paul.”
Philippe wasn’t as certain. “How can you be sure? No one, not even Monsieur Osborn, has seen the tall man closely. If this man was a policeman, he’s one I’ve never seen before.”
