The Day After Tomorrow_ A Novel - Allan Folsom [233]
Remmer’s smile faded. “You actually think this Timothy Ashford’s fingerprints could belong to Lybarger?”
McVey raised a hand and touched the salve covering his burns. Wincing, he took his hand away and looked at the black flecks of his own charred skin in clear salve.
“These people have gone to a lot of trouble to keep anyone from finding out what’s going on, and a lot of people are dead because of it. Yes, I’m guessing, Manfred. But Scholl’s not going to know that, is he?”
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THE SPRAWLING works of the German Romantic artists Runge, Overbeck, and Caspar David Friedrich—whose brooding landscapes portrayed humans as insignificant against the overwhelming enormity of nature—covered the walls of Charlottenburg’s Gallery of Romantic Art, while a string quartet alternating with a concert pianist played a selection of Beethoven sonatas and concertos, to provide an apt mood and setting for the gathering of the powerful guests come to honor Elton Lybarger. Intermingling loudly, they argued politics, the economy and Germany’s future, while formally dressed waiters danced among them with cornucopian trays brimming with drink and hors d’oeuvres.
Salettl stood alone near the gallery entrance watching the whirlwind. From what he could tell, nearly everyone invited had come, and he smiled at the turnout. Crossing the room, he saw Uta Baur with Konrad Peiper. And Scholl, along with German newspaper magnate Hilmar Grunel and Margarete Peiper, stood listening to his American attorney, Louis Goetz, hold court in English. Four words Goetz threw out in a matter of seconds told the direction of his take. Hollywood. Talent agencies. Kikes.
Then Gustav Dortmund entered with his wife, a staid, white-haired woman in a dark green evening dress whose plainness was offset by a dazzling show of diamonds. Almost immediately Scholl went over to Dortmund and the two went off to a corner to talk.
Summoning a waiter, Salettl lifted a glass of champagne, then looked at his watch. It was 7:52. At 8:05 the guests would be ushered up the grand stairway to the Golden Gallery, where dinner would be served. At 9:00 exactly, he would excuse himself and go to the mausoleum to check on Von Holden’s preparations for the privileged proceedings that would take place there following Lybarger’s speech. By 9:10, he would have made his way to Lybarger’s quarters, where Lybarger, in the company of Joanna and Eric and Edward, would be in the final stages of his preparation.
Taking Joanna aside, he would tell her her assignment was complete and dismiss her, ordering a driver to take her immediately from the palace. That meant that once she had gone, and with the exception of carefully screened security and service personnel, the entire building would now be free of outsiders. At 9:15, Lybarger would make his entrance into the Golden Gallery; His speech would be over at 9:30, and by 9:45 everything would be done.
Behrenstrasse was a street of town homes lined with stately and ancient trees. A middle-aged couple out for a stroll after dinner passed under a streetlight and walked on as Von Holden’s taxi pulled up in front of number 45.
Telling the driver to wait, he got out, pushed through an iron gate and went quickly up the steps of the four-story building. Pressing the bell, he stood back and looked up. The clear sky of earlier had turned to a low overcast and the weather service called for drizzle and fog later in the evening. It was a bad sign. Fog kept planes grounded, and Scholl was due to fly out for his estate in Argentina immediately after the final ceremony at Charlottenburg, Of all nights, this was not the one for fog.
There was a sharp sound and abruptly the door opened, and a bone-thin man of sixty or so squinted out at him.
“Guten Abend,” he said, recognizing Von Holden and standing aside to let him enter.
“Yes, good evening, Herr Frazen.
Two women and a man, all Frazen’s age, looked up .from a card table as Von Holden passed the sitting room and disappeared down