The Day After Tomorrow_ A Novel - Allan Folsom [141]
“Hier sink sie”—Here they are—Uta said to the guests, at the same time glancing sharply at the hostesses, who immediately left through a side door.
A moment later, a strikingly handsome and exceedingly well-dressed man of seventy-five entered. “Dortmund is tied up in Bonn. We will go on without him,” Erwin Scholl said in German to no one in particular, then sat down next to Steiner. Dortmund was Gustav Dortmund, chief of the Federal Bundesbank, Germany’s central bank.
Von Holden closed the door and crossed to the table. Pouring a glass of mineral water, he handed it to Scholl, then stepped back to stand near the door.
Scholl was tall and slim, with close-cropped gray hair, a deep tan and startlingly blue eyes. Age considerable fortune had done nothing but add character to an already chiseled face of broad forehead, aristocratic nose and deeply cleft chin. He possessed an old-style military bearing that commanded attention the moment he appeared.
“The presentation, please,” he said quietly to Uta. A curious blend of studied shyness and complete arrogance, Erwin Scholl was the perfect American success story: a penniless German immigrant who had risen to become baron of a vast publishing empire, and, in turn, had taken on the mantle of philanthropist, fund-raiser, and intimate of U.S. presidents from Dwight Eisenhower to Bill Clinton. Like most of the others here, he depended on the masses for his wealth and influence but, out of choice and careful orchestration, was all but unknown to them.
“Bitte”—Please—Uta said into an intercom. Instantly the room darkened and a wall of abstract paintings in front of them broke into thirds and pulled back, revealing a flat, eight-by-twelve-foot high-definition television screen.
Immediately, a razor-sharp image appeared. It was a close-up of a soccer ball. Suddenly a foot flew into the frame and kicked it. As it did, the video camera zoomed back to reveal the manicured lawns at Anlegeplatz and Elton Lybarger’s nephews, Eric and Edward, playfully kicking the soccer ball between them. Then the camera moved to the side to see Elton Lybarger standing with Joanna, watching them. Abruptly, one of the boys kicked the ball in Lybarger’s direction and Lybarger gave it a healthy kick back toward his nephews. Then he looked at Joanna and smiled proudly. And Joanna smiled back, with the same sense of accomplishment.
Then the video cut and Lybarger was seen in his elegant library. Seated before a blazing fire, dressed casually in sweater and slacks, he was talking in detail to someone out of camera range about the axis Paris and Bonn had forged in making the new European Economic Community. Learned and articulate, the clear point he was making was that Britain’s assumed role of “detached moral superiority” only served to keep Britain a malcontent in the equation. And that continuing to play that character would serve neither Britain nor the Economic Community well. His opinion was that there must be a Bonn-London rapprochement for the Community to be the major economic force it was created to be. His discourse ended lightly with a joke that was not a joke. “Of course, what I meant to say was that it should be a Berlin-London rapprochement. Because, as everyone knows, wise lawmakers, refusing to turn back the clock on German unity, have kept the pledge of the last forty years and promised to return the capital to Berlin by the year 2000. In doing so, they have made her once again the heart of Germany.”
Then Lybarger’s image faded and was replaced by something else. Perpendicular and slightly arched, it covered nearly the entire eight feet of the screen’s height. For a moment nothing happened, then the thing turned, hesitated, moved determinedly forward. In that instant everyone recognized what it was. A fully engorged, erect penis.
Abruptly the angle shifted to the silhouette of another man standing in the darkness, watching. Then the angle shifted once more and what the audience saw was Joanna, unclothed and spread-eagled on a large poster bed, her hands and feet tied to the bedposts