The Day After Tomorrow_ A Novel - Allan Folsom [223]
The front door opened and he was ushered inside. A pale, pig-faced man in a tuxedo met him in the foyer. “I have a message for Herr Scholl.”
“You can tell me.”
“My orders are to speak to Herr Scholl.”
They went into a small paneled room where he was frisked.
“Not armed,” he said as another man, also in a tuxedo, entered. He was tall and good-looking, and Schneider knew instantly he’d met Von Holden.
“Please, sit down,” he said, then left through a side door. He was younger and more fit than his photograph allowed. Close to Osborn’s age, Schneider thought.
Ten minutes or more passed with Schneider seated and the pig-faced man standing, watching him, before the same door opened and Scholl entered, followed by Von Holden.
“I am Erwin Scholl.”
“My name is Schneider of the Bundeskriminalamt,” Schneider said, getting up. “Detective McVey has unfortunately been delayed. He has asked me to apologize and to see if another time can be arranged.”
“I’m sorry,” Scholl said. “I am leaving for Buenos Aires this evening.”
“That’s too bad.” Schneider paused, using the time to try to get a sense of the man.
“I had very little time as it was. Mr. McVey knew that.”
“I understand. Well, again his apologies.” Bowing slightly, Schneider nodded to Von Holden, then turned on his heel and left. Moments later, the gate opened and he drove off. He’d been asked to keep a sharp eye for Lybarger or the woman in the photograph. All he’d been allowed to see was the foyer and the small paneled room. Scholl had addressed him with complete indifference. Von Holden had been cordial, nothing more. Scholl had been there at the appointed time as promised, and there had been nothing to indicate he planned otherwise. That meant there was every chance they had no idea what Cadoux was up to and lessened the probability of a setup. For that, Schneider breathed a sigh of relief.
Scholl himself had seemed little more than a well-preserved old man used to subservience and getting what he wanted. The curious thing—and it was curious—was not so much the zigzag of deep scratches healing on Scholl’s left hand and wrist, but the prominent way he held the hand up, as if he were displaying it and at the same time saying: Any other man would find pain in this and look for sympathy; I, instead, have found pleasure, which is something you could never understand.
113
* * *
THEY WERE riding in two cars. Noble with Remmer in the Mercedes. Osborn at the wheel of a black Ford, with McVey in the passenger seat beside him. Unmarked BKA backup cars, one with veteran inspectors Kellermann and Seidenberg, and one with Littbarski and a boyish-looking detective named Holt, were already outside the hotel. Kellermann/Seidenberg in the back alley, Littbarski/Holt across the street in front. Kellermann and Seidenberg had checked out the small grocery near the Schonholz subway entrance where Cadoux had made his call. The proprietor vaguely remembered a man of Cadoux’s description using the telephone and seemed to think he’d been there only a short time and had been alone.
In front of them Remmer pulled to the curb and shut out the lights. “Keep going to the corner. When you find a spot pull in,” McVey said to Osborn.
The Hotel Borggreve was a small residential hotel on a particularly dark section of street northeast of the Tiergarten. Four stories tall, maybe sixty feet wide, it linked two taller apartment buildings. From the front, it looked old and poorly kept. Room 412, Cadoux had told them. Top floor in the back.
Osborn turned the corner at the end of the block and parked behind a white Alfa Romeo. Unbuttoning his suit coat, McVey slid out the .38 and flipped open the chamber to make sure it was loaded. “I don’t like being lied to,” he said. McVey had said nothing of Osborn’s confession since he’d identified Von Holden during the screening of the Hauptstrasse house video. He was saying it now