The Day After Tomorrow_ A Novel - Allan Folsom [148]
The Organization had eyes and ears on the streets, in police stations, union halls, hospitals, embassies and boardrooms of a dozen major cities across Europe, and a half-dozen more around the world. Through them Albert Merriman had been found, and Agnes Demblon and Merrinman’s wife and Vera Monneray. And through them Osborn and McVey would be found as well. The question was when.
By 3:10, Von Holden was in the backseat of a dark blue BMW on Autoroute N2 passing the Aubervilliers exit, moving into Paris. A commanding officer impatiently waiting to hear from his generals in the field.
To kill Bernhard Oven, this McVey, this American policeman, had to have been either very lucky or very good or both. To slip from their fingers just as he was discovered was the same. He didn’t like it. The Paris sector was first rate, highly regarded and highly disciplined, and Bernhard Oven had always been one of the best.
And Von Holden would know. Though several years younger, he had been Oven’s superior, both in the Soviet Army and, later, in the Stasi, the East German secret police, in the years before reunification and the Stasi’s dissolution.
Von Holden’s own career had begun early. At eighteen he’d left home in Argentina and gone to Moscow for his final years Of schooling. Immediately afterward he’d started formal training under KGB direction in Leningrad. Fifteen months later, he was a company commander in the Soviet Army, assigned to the 4th Guards Tank Army protecting the Soviet embassy in Vienna. It was there he became an officer in the Spetsnaz special reconnaissance units trained in sabotage and terrorism. It was there too, he met Bernhard Oven, one of a half-dozen lieutenants under his command in the 4th Guards.
Two years later Von Holden was officially discharged from the Soviet Army and became assistant director for the East German Sports Administration assigned to oversee the training of elite East German athletes at the College for Physical Culture in Leipzig; among them had been Eric and Edward Kleist, the nephews of Elton Lybarger.
At Leipzig, Von Holden also became an “informal employee” of the Ministry for State Security, the Stasi. Drawing on his training as a Spetsnaz soldier, he schooled recruits in clandestine operations against East German citizens and developed “specialists” in the art of terrorism and assassination. It was at this point he requested Bern-hard Oven from the 4th Guards Tank Army. Von Holden’s appreciation of his talent did not go unrewarded. Within eighteen months, Oven was one of the Stasi’s top men in the field and its best killer.
Von Holden remembered vividly the afternoon in Argentina when, as a boy of six, his entire career had been decided. He’d gone riding with his father’s business partner, and on the ride the man had asked him what he planned to do when he grew up. Hardly an extraordinary question from a grown man to a boy. What was uncommon was his answer and what he’d done afterward.
“Work for you, of course!” Young Pascal had beamed, giving heels to his horse and racing off across the pampas. Leaving the man sitting alone astride his own horse, watching, as the tiny figure with sure hands and an already impertinent disposition coaxed his big horse up and off the ground, and in a flying leap cleared a high growth of vegetation to disappear from sight. In that instant Von Holden’s future was cast. The man who’d asked the question, his riding partner, had been Erwin Scholl.
75
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The Smooth click of the wheels over the rails beneath was soothing, and Osborn sat back drowsing. If he’d slept at all during the two hours they’d spent huddled under Austerlitz Bridge, he didn’t remember. All he knew was that he was very tired and felt grubby and unclean. Across from him, McVey leaned against the window, dozing lightly, and he