The Day After Tomorrow_ A Novel - Allan Folsom [176]
Von Holden stood up and crossed to a sideboard where he filled a glass with mineral water. “Not the best of news but timely and factual just the same. The problem with it is that they have managed to get this far. That’s where our system is no longer working. Bernhard Oven should have shot them both in Paris. Instead, it was the American policeman who shot him. They should have been killed in the train explosion or by the Paris sector operatives who were with me in Meaux waiting for the list of survivors to make our move. It didn’t happen. Now they are coming here a day and a half before Mr. Lybarger is to be presented.”
Von Holden drained the glass and set it back on the sideboard. “It is a problem I cannot resolve if I am in Zurich.”
Scholl leaned back and studied Von Holden. As he did, the cat slid out of the chair where it had been sleeping, and with a feathery leap, jumped into his lap.
“If you leave now, Pascal, you will be back by evening.”
Von Holden stared at him as if he were crazy. “Mr. Scholl, these men are dangerous. Isn’t that clear?”
“Do you know why they are coming to Berlin, Pascal? I can, tell you why in two words: Albert Merriman. He told them about me.” Scholl effected a smile—the idea seemed to flatter him.
“When I first came to Palm Springs in the summer of 1946,I met a man who was then ninety. As a youth in the 1870s, he had been an Indian fighter. One of the many things he told me was that the Indian fighters always killed the young Indian boys whenever they found them. Because, he said, they knew that if they didn’t, one day the boys would grow up to be men.”
“Mr. Scholl, what’s the point of this?”
“The point, Pascal, is that I should have remembered that story when I first hired Albert Merriman.” Scholl’s long fingers stroked through the cat’s silky coat like delicate razors. “A short while ago I went back through my personal files. One of the people Herr Merriman took care of for me was a man who designed medical instruments. His name was Osborn. I have to believe it is his son who is with the policemen coming to Berlin.”
Pushing back from his desk, with the cat cradled in one arm, Scholl got up and walked to the door that opened onto the balcony. As he reached for the handle, Viktor Shevchenko opened it from the outside.
“Leave us,” Scholl said, stepping past him and into the sunshine.
To the outside world Erwin Scholl was an elegant, self-made man, alive with charisma. His own persona all but impenetrable, he had an almost mystical ability to see what motivated others. To presidents and statesmen, it was a gift beyond value because it provided critical insight into the most guarded ambitions of their adversaries. But to those he chose not to charm, he was cold and arrogant, choosing to manipulate through intimidation and fear. And the handful of people close to him—Von Holden among them—he made servile to the darkest side of his nature.
Scholl looked over his shoulder to see that Von Holden had come out onto the balcony and was standing behind him, and for a moment let his gaze fall to the traffic on Friedrichstrasse, eight stories below. He wondered why he. valued young men and at the same time distrusted them. Perhaps it was the reason he could never show himself to them sexually. In fewer years than he cared to count, he would be eighty, and his sexual desire was as strong as ever. Yet, the fact was, he had never in his life had unclothed sex with anyone, man or woman. His partner would disrobe, of course, but for him to do so would be unthinkable because it would involve a degree of trust and vulnerability it was utterly impossible for him to express. It was a truth that he had never been totally naked with another human being since he was a child. And the one child who had seen him that way he later bludgeoned to death with a hammer and hid the body in a cave, and that had been at the age of six.
“They are not coming to Berlin because of Mr. Lybarger, or because they have some idea of what is going on at Charlottenburg. They are coming here because