The Day After Tomorrow_ A Novel - Allan Folsom [197]
Disturbed and frustrated, McVey looked to Remmer, who was on his third cup of black coffee in the last forty minutes. They’d been over the guest list twenty times and, despite the handful of names Bad Godesberg still had been unable to trace, had found nothing more than they had the first time they went over it. Maybe somewhere among those missing people they’d find a key, maybe they wouldn’t. It was McVey’s sense they should be concentrating on what they had as opposed to what they didn’t, and he asked Remmer to see if they could get a more comprehensive breakdown on the guests that had already been identified. Maybe it wasn’t who the people were or what they did, maybe, like Klass and Halder, it had to do with their families or their backgrounds, something more titan was immediately apparent.
Perhaps they hadn’t had enough to go on to begin with, to make the process work and uncover the big rock with tile red CLUE on it they were after. Then again, maybe there was nothing here at all. It could be that Scholl was in Berlin legitimately and the whole Lybarger thing was nothing more than what it appeared: an innocent testimonial to a man who had been ill. But McVey wasn’t going to let it go until he knew for sure. And while they were waiting for more from Bad Godesberg, they went around again, this time coming back to Cadoux.
“Let’s take the Klass/Halder situation and point it at Cadoux.” McVey was sitting in a chair with his feet up on one of the twin beds. “Could he have had a father, brother, cousin, whatever—who might have been Nazis or Nazi sympathizers during the war?”
“Did you ever hear of Ajax?” Remmer asked.
Noble looked up. “Ajax was a network of French police who worked with the Resistance during the Occupation. After the war they discovered only five percent of its members actually resisted. Most of them were smuggling for the Vichy government.”
“Cadoux’s uncle was a judicial cop. A member of Ajax in Nice. After the war he was relieved of duty following a purge of Nazi collaborators,” Remmer said.
“What about his father, was he in Ajax too?”
“Cadoux’s father died the year after he was born.”
“You’re saying his uncle raised him,” McVey said, then sneezed.
“Correct.”
McVey stared off, then got up and walked across the room. “Is that what this is all about, Manny? Nazis? Is Scholl a Nazi? Is Lybarger?” Coming back, he picked the guest list from the bed. “Are all these wealthy, educated, prominent people—a new breed of German Nazi?”
Just then the light on the fax machine went on. There was a whirring sound and the paper rolled out. Remmer picked it off the machine and read it.
“There is no birth record for an Elton Lybarger in Essen in 1933 or bracketing years. They are checking further.” Remmer read on, then looked up. “Lybarger’s castle in Zurich.”
“What about it?”
“It’s owned by Erwin Scholl.”
Osborn had no idea what he was going to do when he got to the Grand Hotel Berlin. The thing with Albert Merriman in Paris had been different. He’d had time to plan, to think out a course of action while Jean Packard tracked Merriman down. The obvious question now, as he walked a lighted pathway that cut through the dark lawns and trees of Tiergarten, was threefold—how to get Scholl alone, how to make him talk, what to do afterward.
Imagining what a man in Scholl’s position must be like, it was safe to assume he would have an entourage of assistants and hangers-on, and at least one bodyguard, maybe more. That meant getting him alone would be extremely difficult, if not impossible.
That aside, assuming he did get him alone, what would make Scholl reveal what he wanted revealed? Say what he wanted him to say? Scholl, as Diedrich Honig had professed, with or without lawyers, would deny that he ever heard of Albert Merriman, Osborn’s father or any of the others. Succinylcholine might work, as it had on Merriman, but he had no allies in Berlin to help him get it. For an instant his mind went to Vera. How she was, where she was. Why any of this had to be. As quickly he put it away. He had to keep his concentration