The Day After Tomorrow_ A Novel - Allan Folsom [215]
Suddenly the pupils in his eyes receded to tiny dots and the eyes themselves seemed to press back into his skull. Joanna’s breath caught and she pulled back. Never, ever, had she seen anyone filled with anger or as dangerous as von Holden was now.
“Get out,” he hissed.
With a cry, she turned, bumped into a chair, then pushed around it and ran from the room, the door left open behind her. He could hear her heels on the stone foyer and the sound as she ran up the stairs. He was about to cross to the door to close it when Salettl came in.
“You are angry,” Salettl said.
Von Holden turned his back and stared out the window. He had called Scholl from the car with the final plan. Scholl had listened and agreed. Then, as quickly, he’d taken Von Holden out of it. It was too dangerous, he’d said. Von Holden was too well known as Scholl’s director of European security, and Scholl could not afford to chance the possibility that something would go wrong, with Von Holden killed or captured and the connection made back to him. The police were too close. No, Von Holden would plan it, but Viktor Shevchenko would execute it. That evening Von Holden would be seen publicly escorting Mr. Lybarger to Charlottenburg. And, afterward, he would quietly leave “to do the other,” as Scholl had put it. Those had been the orders and he’d hung up.
“You know, Herr Letter der Sicherheit,” Salettl said softly. “On this day, of all days, your personal safety is beyond value.”
“Yes, I know.” Von Holden turned to face him. Obviously Salettl knew what had taken place between Scholl and Von Holden because it was the “other” he was referring to. Immediately following the celebration at Charlottenburg, there was to be a second ceremony for very privileged few of the guests. Secret and unannounced, it was to take place in the mausoleum, the temple-like building on the palace grounds that housed the tombs of the Prussian kings. Von Holden was to deliver the highly sensitive material to be presented there, and the access codes necessary to retrieve it had been programmed for him, and him alone, and could not be changed.
That he had been selected was in recognition of the high regard in which he was held and the power he had been given. Angry as he’d been, Scholl had been right, as had Salettl. For more than one reason, today of all days, his personal safety was beyond value. He had to realize he was no longer the Spetsnaz soldier that was still in his blood. He was no longer a Bernhard Oven or Viktor Shevchenko. He was Leiter der Sicherheit. Chief of security was no longer a job description but a mandate for the ‘future. As the man who would one day oversee the succession of power for the entire Organization, it made him, for all intents, “keeper of the flame.” And if he hadn’t fully understood it before, he should now, today, more than ever.
109
* * *
THE INTERROGATION room in the basement of the building on Kaiser Friedrichstrasse was stark white. Floor, ceiling and walls. The same decor as the half-dozen six-by-eight-foot cells that adjoined it. Few people, even those who worked in the building which housed the collection bureau for the municipal public works department, knew the facility existed. But fully one-third of the six-thousand square-foot subbasement was occupied by a special investigations unit of the BKA. Built immediately following the massacre at the 1972 Olympic games in Munich, its primary use was to interrogate captured terrorists and terrorist informants. It had in the past served as a temporary holding area for members of the Baader-Meinhof group, the Red Army Faction, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and suspects from the bombing of Pan Am flight 103. Besides its stark whiteness, its other distinguishing characteristic was that the lights were never turned off. The effect, in concert, was that within thirty-six hours, prisoners became wholly disoriented, with things usually going downhill from there.
Vera sat alone in the prime interrogation room on a white bench made of a PVC-like plastic molded