The Day After Tomorrow_ A Novel - Allan Folsom [175]
“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.
“Nein!” Von Holden said sharply, and Scholl turned around.
“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