The Day After Tomorrow_ A Novel - Allan Folsom [155]
Hunkering down in the sodden leaves, he pulled his jacket around him and for the first time in a long time let his thoughts go to Vera. He let his mind drift back to when they first met in Geneva. And to her smile and the color of her hair and the absolute magic in her eyes when she looked at him. And in that she became everything that love was, or could be.
By nightfall Osborn had heard enough from passing rescue workers and national guardsmen to understand that it had indeed been a bomb that destroyed the train, and he became more certain than ever that he and McVey had been the targets. He. was debating whether or not to go to the National Guard commander and reveal himself in hopes of finding McVey when a fireman working nearby for some reason removed his hat and coat, put them on a temporary police barricade and walked off. It was an invitation he couldn’t let pass. Quickly he stepped out and snatched them up.
Putting the jacket on, he pulled the hat low and moved off through the wreckage, confident he looked official enough to keep from being challenged. Near a tent set up as a media command post, he waded past several reporters and a television crew and found a casualty list. Quickly scanning it, he found only one identified American, a teenage boy from Nebraska. That McVey wasn’t on it meant he’d either walked away, as Osborn had, or was still buried under the hideous sculpture of tangled steel. Looking up, he saw a tall, slim, attractive woman with a press pass around her neck. She obviously had been staring and now she started toward him. Picking up a fire ax, he slung it over his shoulder and walked back into the work area. He looked back once to see if she was following him, but she wasn’t. Setting the ax aside, he moved off into the darkness.
In the distance, he could see the lights of the town of Meaux. Population some forty-odd thousand, he remembered seeing written somewhere. Now and then a plane would take off or land from the small airport nearby. Which was where he would go at first light. He had no idea who McVey had called in London. And with no passport and little money, the best he could do was make his way to the airfield and hope the Cessna would return according to the original plan.
Abruptly, there was a loud shriek and tearing of steel as one of the cranes pulled a passenger car free of the wreckage, lifted it high in the air and swing it back over the top of the embankment and out of sight. A moment later a second crane swung into place, and workers climbed up to secure cables to the next car to be removed. Disheartened, Osborn turned away and went back to the dark of the trees at the top of the hill. Squatting down, he looked off.
How long had he known McVey? Five days, six at most since he first encountered him outside his hotel room in Paris. The memories flooded back. He’d been scared to death, with no idea what the detective was after or why he was even talking to him, but he’d been determined not to show it. Calmly fended off his questions, even lied about the mud on his shoes, all the while praying McVey wouldn’t ask him to empty his pockets and then ask him to explain about the succinylcholine and the syringes. How could either one of them have known how quickly the web would spin, sending them both spiraling headlong into a complex, bloody weave of conspiracy and gunfire that had so abruptly ended here in this awful maze of twisted steel and horror. He wanted to believe that the night would pass without incident and that tomorrow morning he would find McVey on the Meaux airport tarmac waving