The Day After Tomorrow_ A Novel - Allan Folsom [245]
“You killed them,” McVey said.
“Yes.”
Osborn took a step forward, his eyes glistened with emotion. “You said everything would have been sabotaged. What was it? What did you mean?”
Salettl didn’t reply.
“Karolin, Vida, whatever her name was. She was Lybarger’s wife,” Osborn pressed. “The boy was his son.”
Salettl hesitated. “She was also my daughter.”
“Oh, Jesus.” Osborn glanced at McVey. They both felt the same horror.
“Mr. Lybarger’s physical therapist will be on the morning plane to Los Angeles,” Salettl said abruptly, and wholly out of context, almost as if he were inviting them to join her.
Osborn stared at him. “Who the hell are you people? You murdered my father, your own daughter and grandchild and God knows how many others.” Osborn’s voice raged with anger. “Why? For what? To protect Lybarger? Scholl? This ‘Organization’ ?—WHY?”
“You gentlemen should have left Germany to the Germans,” Salettl said quietly. “You survived one fire this evening. You will not survive the next if you do not leave the building immediately.” He tried to force a smile. It didn’t work, and his eyes found Osborn. “This should be the hard part, Doctor. It isn’t.”
In the blink of an eye he raised the automatic to his mouth and pulled the trigger.
124
* * *
“PRIVATE ENTERPRISE,” Lybarger said into the microphone, his voice stabbing to the farthest corners of the gold and green-marbled rococo fantasy of the Golden Gallery, “cannot be maintained in the age of democracy. It is conceivable only if the people have a sound idea of authority and personality.”
Pausing, he stood with both hands on the podium, studying the faces in front of him. His speech, although changed somewhat, was not original, and most there knew it. The original had been given to a similar group of business leaders on February 20, 1933, The speaker allying himself with moneyed institutions that wintery night had been Germany’s newly entrusted chancellor, Adolf Hitler.
On the dais, Uta Baur leaned forward, her strong chin resting on her hands, wholly enraptured by the wonder of what she was witnessing, the agony, doubt, the secret labor of fifty years standing alone, speaking triumphantly before her. Beside her, Gustav Dortmund, chief of the Bundesbank, sat ramrod straight, emotionless, an observer, nothing more. Yet inside, he could feel his bowels churning with the excitement of what was at hand.
Farther down on the dais, Eric and Edward, fists clenched, neck muscles pressing against the starch of their tight collars, hunched forward like matched mannequins, hanging on Lybarger’s every word. Theirs was a different exaltation. Who Lybarger was, within days, one of them would become. Which one was a decision yet to be made. And as the moment wound closer, as it did now with every word, every sentence, the anticipation of that moment when the choice would be made became almost unbearable.
HYDROGEN CYANIDE: an extremely poisonous, mobile volatile liquid or gas that has the odor of bitter almonds; a blood agent that interferes with oxygen in the blood tissues, literally taking the oxygen out of the blood and, in essence, suffocating the victim.
“All worldly goods we possess we owe to the struggle of the chosen, the pure German people!” Lybarger’s words echoed off the hallowed walls of the Golden Gallery and into the hearts and minds of the people who sat within them.
“We must not forget that all the benefits of culture must be introduced with an iron fist! And in that we will restore our power, military and otherwise, to the highest levels—There will be no retreat!