The Day After Tomorrow_ A Novel - Allan Folsom [109]
Crowding onto a Métro 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 café 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 Métro 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 François 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