The Day After Tomorrow_ A Novel - Allan Folsom [239]
“Your orders are to wait in the Royal Apartments until I further notice.”
Thick fog swirled around the rhododendrons on the path where they stood. Further down, the mausoleum loomed against the trees shrouding it like the vortex of a Gothic nightmare, and Von Holden felt himself being drawn toward it as if pulled by some unseen hand. Then they came again, the colossal red and green curtains of the aurora, slowly undulating, threatening to absorb the core of his entire being.
“What is it?” Salettl snapped.
“I—”
“Are you ill?” Salettl snapped again.
Fighting it to break it, Von Holden shook his head. Then he took a deep breath of cold air. The aurora vanished and everything cleared.
“No,” he said, sharply.
“Then go to the Royal Apartments as you have been told.”
120
* * *
8:57 P.M.
JOANNA WAS brushing the lint off Elton Lybarger’s midnight blue tailcoat and thinking of her puppy, now some where over the Atlantic on his way back to the holding kennel at Los Angeles Airport where he would be kept until she picked him up. Abruptly there was a sharp knock at the door and Eric and Edward came in followed by Remmer and Schneider. Behind them were Lybarger’s tuxedoed bodyguards and two men with armbands that identified them as security.
“Uncle,” Eric said protectively. “These men asked to see you for a moment, they are police.”
“Guten Abend.” Lybarger smiled. He was in the process of taking a small group of vitamin pills. One by one, he put them in his mouth, and washed them down with small sips from a water glass.
“Herr Lybarger,” Remmer said. “Excuse the intrusion.” Smiling, polite and offhand, he studied Lybarger quickly and carefully. Little more than one hundred and fifty pounds and five feet seven, he stood erect and looked physically fit. He wore a white stiff-bosomed shirt fastened at the wrists with French cuffs and at the throat by a white bow tie. For all the world, he appeared as he looked, a man in his early to mid-fifties in good health I and dressed to speak to an important audience.
Finishing with the pills, Lybarger turned. “Please, Joanna.” He held out his arms and Joanna helped him on with his jacket.
Remmer immediately recognized Joanna as the woman identified by the FBI as Lybarger’s physical therapist, Joanna Marsh of Taos, New Mexico. He had hoped to find the other man videotaped, the suspected Spetsnaz soldier Noble had I.D.’d getting out of the BMW, but he wasn’t among the men in the room.
“What is the meaning of this?” Eric asked. “My uncle is about to give an important speech”.
Remmer turned and moved into the center of the room, purposefully drawing the attention of Eric and Edward and the bodyguards. As he did, Schneider eased back, glanced around the room, then walked into the bathroom. A moment later he came out.
“We were informed there might be some problem with Mr. Lybarger’s personal safety,” Remmer said.
“What problem?” Eric demanded.
Remmer smiled and relaxed. “I can see there is none. Sorry to bother you, gentlemen. Guten Abend.” Turning, he looked at Joanna and wondered how much she knew, how involved she might be. “Goodnight,” he said courteously, then he and Schneider left.
121
* * *
9:00 P.M.
MCVEY AND Scholl faced each other in silence. The warmth of the room had turned the salve on McVey’s face to an oily liquid, making his facial burns appear even more grotesque than they were.
A moment before, Louis Goetz had advised Scholl not to say another word until his criminal lawyers arrived and McVey had countered by suggesting that while Scholl had every right to do so, the fact that he was not cooperating with a police investigation would not look good when it came time for a judge to make a decision whether or not to grant him bail. Never mind, he’d added measuredly, the not-so-coincidental ramifications once the media got wind that a man as distinguished as Erwin Scholl had been arrested for suspicion of murder for hire, and was being held for extradition to the U.S.
“What kind of crap are you throwing around?” Goetz steamed. “You’ve got no authority