McVey studied him for a moment. “But personally, you say what? The mood is ripe—”
Remmer hesitated, then nodded. “It will never be spoken of. When it comes, you will never hear the word
On that pronouncement, the men in the car fell silent, and Osborn thought of what Vera had said about the resignation of Francois Christian and the new Europe. Her grandmother’s haunted memories of the Nazi occupation of France: people taken away for no reason and never seen again, neighbor spying on neighbor, family on family, and everywhere, men with guns. “I feel that same shadow now—” The sound of her voice was as clear as if she were there beside him, and the fear in it chilled him.
The cars slowed as they reached the outskirts of a small town and started through it. Looking out, Osborn saw the early sun reaching across rooftops. Saw autumn leaves carpeting the village in bright red and gold. Schoolchildren waited on street corners, and an elderly couple walked along the sidewalk, the old woman leaning on a cane, her free arm tucked proudly into that of her husband. A traffic cop stood near an intersection arguing with a truck driver, and everywhere shopkeepers were setting out their goods.
It was hard to tell how big the town was. Two or three thousand maybe, if you counted the side streets and neighborhoods you couldn’t see but knew were there. How many more like it were waking throughout Germany this morning? Hundreds, thousands? Towns, villages, small cities; each with its people going about their daily lives somewhere on the arc from birth to death. Was it possible that any of them still secretly yearned for the sight of goose-stepping storm troopers in tight shirts and swastika armbands, or hungered for the sound of their polished jackboots ringing off every door and window in the Fatherland?
How could they? The terrible era was a half century past. The moral right and wrong of it were worn and everyday themes. Collective guilt and shame still weighed on generations born decades after it was over. The Third Reich and what it stood for was dead. Maybe the rest of the world wanted always to remember, but Germany, Osborn was certain as he looked around, wanted to forget. Remmer had to be wrong.
“I have another name for you,” Remmer said, breaking the silence. “The man who was instrumental in securing permanent positions for Klass and Halder within Interpol. Its current assignment director, a former officer in the Paris Prefecture of Police. I think you know him.”
“Cadoux? No. It can’t be! I’ve known him for years!” Noble was shocked.
“Yes, that’s right.” Remmer leaned back from the wheel and lit another cigarette. “Cadoux.”
87
AT 6:45 AM., Erwin Scholl stood at the window in the office of his top-floor suite in the Grand Hotel Berlin watching the morning sun come up over the city. A gray Angora cat was in his arms and he stroked it absently.
Behind him Von Holden was on the phone to Salettl in Anlegeplatz. Through the closed door to the outer office, he could hear his secretaries fielding a battery of international calls, none of which he was taking.
Outside, on the balcony, Viktor Shevchenko smoked a cigarette and looked out over what had been East Berlin, waiting for instructions. Shevchenko was thirty-two, with the tough, wiry build of a street brawler. He, like Bern-hard Oven, had been recruited from the Soviet Army and brought into the Stasi as an enforcer by Von Holden. Then, with reunification, he had moved over and joined the Organization as chief of the Berlin sector.
“No. Not necessary!” he said in German and shook his head.
Scholl turned back to the window, still stroking the cat. He’d heard the only words he’d needed at the beginning of Von Holden’s conversation: Elton Lybarger was resting comfortably and would arrive in Berlin tomorrow as scheduled.
In thirty-six hours, one hundred of Germany’s most influential citizens would have come from across the country and gather at Charlottenburg Palace to see him. At a little after nine, the doors to the private dining room would be opened, the room would hush and Lybarger would make his grand entrance. Resplendent in formal dress, no cane at his side, he would walk alone down the beribboned center aisle, wholly aloof from those who watched him. At room’s end, he would climb the half dozen stairs to the podium, and there, to a thunderous ovation, he would turn like a monarch to face them. Finally, he would raise his arms for silence and then would deliver the most important -and magnificent address of his life.
Hearing Von Holden sign off, Scholl came out of his reverie. Dropping the cat on an overstuffed chair, he sat down at his desk.
“Mr. Lybarger found the video by accident and showed it to Joanna,” Von Holden said. “This morning he has little or no memory of it. She, however, is still causing some trouble. Salettl will take care of it.”
“He wanted you to do it, to come there to smooth it over. That was the argument?”
“Yes, but it is not necessary.”
“Pascal, Dr. Salettl is correct. If the girl continues to be disturbed, it will carry over to Lybarger, which is something quite unacceptable. Salettl may assuage her but hardly to the extent you can. It’s the difference between thinking and feeling. Consider how much more difficult it is to change an emotion than a thought. Even if he changes her mind, she can simply change it back again and cause the kind of disruption we cannot have. But if she’s soothed and stroked, she will end up purring and content like the cat who now sleeps peacefully on the chair.”
“That may be so, Mr. Scholl, but right now my place is here in Berlin.” Von Holden looked at Scholl squarely. “You were concerned our system might not be as efficient as we thought. Well, it is and it isn’t. London sector has found the wounded French policeman, Lebrun, at Westminster Hospital in London. He’s protected around the clock by the London police. London sector working with Paris traced a phone call made in London by the American, Osborn, to a farmhouse outside Nancy. Vera Monneray is there, under the guard of the French Secret Service.” Scholl sat motionless, listening, his hands clasped on the desk in front of him.
“Osborn and McVey have been joined, by a Special Branch commander of the Metropolitan Police,” Von Holden continued. “His name is Noble. They came into Havelberg by private aircraft just before dawn and were picked up and driven off by a Bundeskriminalamt inspector named Remmer. They were escorted by two unmarked Bundeskriminalamt police cars. We have to assume they are coming here, to Berlin.”
Von Holden stood up and crossed to a sideboard where he filled a glass with mineral water. “Not the best of news but timely and factual just the same. The problem with it is that they have managed to get this far. That’s where our system is no longer working. Bernhard Oven should have shot them both in Paris. Instead, it was the American policeman who shot him. They should have been killed in the train explosion or by the Paris sector operatives who were with me in Meaux waiting for the list of survivors to make our move. It didn’t happen. Now they are coming here a day and a half before Mr. Lybarger is to be presented.”
Von Holden drained the glass and set it back on the sideboard. “It is a problem I cannot resolve if I am in Zurich.”
Scholl leaned back and studied Von Holden. As he did, the cat slid out of the chair where it had been sleeping, and with a feathery leap, jumped into his lap.
“If you leave now, Pascal, you will be back by evening.”
Von Holden stared at him as if he were crazy. “Mr. Scholl, these men are dangerous. Isn’t that clear?”
“Do you know why they are coming to Berlin, Pascal? I can, tell you why in two words: Albert Merriman. He told them about me.” Scholl effected a smile—the idea seemed to flatter him.
“When I first came to Palm Springs in the summer of 1946,I met a man who was then ninety. As a youth in the 1870s, he had been an Indian fighter. One of the many things he told me was that the Indian fighters always killed the young Indian boys whenever they found them. Because, he said, they knew that if they didn’t, one day the boys would grow up to be men.”
“Mr. Scholl, what’s the point of this?”
“The point, Pascal, is that I should have remembered that story when I first hired Albert Merriman.” Scholl’s long fingers stroked through the cat’s silky coat like delicate razors. “A short while ago I went back through my
