The Day After Tomorrow_ A Novel - Allan Folsom [218]
“How do you know? How do you know for sure?” McVey wasn’t being cruel, he was probing. “You said you met her in Geneva. Did you find her or did she find you?”
“I—It doesn’t make any—”
“Answer me.”
“—She . . . found me. . . .”
“She was François Christian’s mistress. And on the day of this thing with Lybarger, he’s suddenly dead and she shows up in Berlin with an invitation to the ball.”
Osborn was angry. Angry and confused. What was McVey trying to do? That Vera might be part of the “group” was crazy. It wasn’t possible. He believed what she had just told him. They loved each other too much for him .not to! Her love meant too much. Turning away, he looked up at the ceiling. Above him, hanging out of reach from anyone standing on the floor, was a bank of bright lights. Glaring, hundred-and-fifty-watt bulbs that would never be turned off.
“Maybe she is innocent, Doctor,” McVey said. “But it’s out of your hands and in those of the German police.”
Behind them the door opened and Remmer came in. “We have video of the house on Hauptstrasse. Noble is waiting.”
McVey looked back to Osborn. “I want you to see this,” he said directly.
“Why?”
“It’s the house where we’re to meet Scholl. By we, f Doctor, I mean you and me.”
110
* * *
JOANNA’S SUITCASE was on the bed and the last of her things were going into it when Von Holden came in.
“Joanna, I apologize. Forgive me. . . .”
Ignoring him, she went to the closet and took out the Uta Baur original she was to wear this evening. Coming back, she laid it out on the bed and began to fold it. Von Holden stood quietly for a moment, then came up behind her and put his hand on her shoulder. When he did, she froze.
“This is a very tense time for me, Joanna. . . . For you as well, and for Mr. Lybarger. Please forgive me for acting the way I did downstairs”
Joanna remained as she was, her eyes focused on the glare of the distant window
I “I have to tell you the truth, Joanna. . . . In my entire life, no one has ever told me they loved me. You—frightened me. . . .”
He felt the breath go out of her.” I frightened you ?”
“Yes. . . .”
Ever so slowly she turned. The horrid, hate-filled eyes that had terrified her barely an hour before were now soft and vulnerable.
“Don’t do this to me. . . .”
“Joanna, I don’t know if I am capable of love. . . .”
“Don’t . . .” Joanna felt her eyes brim and a tear begin to steal down her cheek.
“It’s true. I don’t—”
Abruptly she pressed her fingers against his lips to stop him. “You are—” she said.
Slowly he put his hands around her waist and she came into his arms. And then he kissed her gently and she returned it and felt him grow hard against her. Emotion crept over her body, taking away reason. .Whatever fearful thing she had seen in him before was gone. Unremembered in the sense that it had never existed.
From a single fly-over at five hundred feet, the helicopter view of the house at 72 Hauptstrasse showed a nineteenth-century villa, a three-story main building with a five-car garage to the rear. A semicircular driveway was entered past a guardhouse, through wrought-iron gates from the street. The driveway to the garage was to the right of the house, while to the left was a red clay tennis court. The entire premises were surrounded by a high stone wall, grown over with deciduous ivy.
“There’s a gate at the back beside the garage. It looks like it opens to a service alley,” Noble said as he watched the fly-over on the large Sony screen.
“It does, and it’s operable,” Remmer said.
The four—Noble, Remmer, McVey and Osborn—were sitting in theater-like seats in a video room one floor up from cell level. Osborn was leaning back, his chin resting on his hand. A floor below, Vera was being interrogated. His imagination flailed at what they might be doing to her. On the other hand—his mind raced—what if, after everything, McVey had been right and she was working with the “group”? What had she learned from François Christian that she might have passed to them? If so, how did he,