The Day After Tomorrow_ A Novel - Allan Folsom [254]
“Where are you taking me?” she’d asked guardedly as he closed the door to a private compartment and locked it.
For a moment he’d said nothing, only slipped a large case from his shoulder and set it on the floor. Then he’d leaned forward and removed the handcuffs.
“To Paul Osborn,” he’d said.
Paul Osborn. The words rocked her.
“He’s been taken to Switzerland.”
“Is he all right?” Her mind raced. Switzerland! Why? My God, what’s happened?
“I have no information. Only orders,” Von Holden had said, then he had shown her to the bunk and taken a chair opposite. Shortly afterward the train left the station and within moments Von Holden had turned off the light.
“Goodnight,” he’d said.
“Where in Switzerland?”
“Goodnight.”
Von Holden smiled in the dark. Vera’s reaction had been spontaneous, grave concern followed almost instantly by hope. As frightened and exhausted as she had to be, her main focus remained on Osborn. It meant she would be no trouble as long as she believed she was being taken to him. That she was ostensibly in the custody of a BKA Hauptkommissar was double insurance.
Von Holden had been notified of her arrest by Berlin sector operatives inside the prison earlier that day. At the time the information had been incidental, but in the turn of things it had become highly significant. Within a half hour of his directive, Berlin sector had arranged for her release. In that time Von Holden had changed clothes, secured the box inside a special black nylon case that could either be carried over the shoulder or worn like a knapsack, and been provided with BKA identification.
By arresting Vera, McVey had ironically and unwittingly provided Von Holden the complication he needed. He was no longer one man traveling alone, but one sharing a private first-class compartment with an extremely handsome woman. More important, she served another, more exacting, purpose: she gave him a hostage of prime importance to the police.
Von Holden looked at his watch. In little more than five hours they would be in Frankfurt, He would give himself four hours’ sleep, then decide what to do.
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* * *
VON HOLDEN woke precisely at six. Across from him, Vera still slept. Getting up, he went into the small bathroom and closed the door.
Washing his face, he shaved with the toiletries provided. As he did, his thoughts went to Charlottenburg. And the ‘more he considered what had happened, the more he believed the betrayal had to have come from someone, maybe several, within the Organization. Thinking back, he remembered Salettl’s ghastly appearance outside the mausoleum. How nervous he’d been when he’d told Von Holden the police were there with a warrant for Scholl. How deliberate he’d seemed when he’d ordered him to take the box and wait in the Royal Apartments, thereby putting him in a situation where he would have died had he not seized the initiative and left.
Yet the idea that Salettl-could have been the one seemed absurd. The doctor had been with “Übermorgen” since its inception in the late 1930s. He had overseen every medical aspect of it, supervised the surgical beheadings and the experimental operations. Why, at the height of everything he’d devoted himself to for more than half a century, would he suddenly turn and destroy it all? It made no sense. Still, who else had as much access as he, not just to Charlottenburg, but to the deepest inner workings of “Übermorgen”?
The sound of the train’s whistle brought Von Holden out of his reverie. In forty minutes they would arrive in Frankfurt. He’d already decided to avoid the airports and rely on the train as far as it would take him—which was, with any luck, the rest of the way. At 7:46 there was an Inter City Express that would get them to Bern, Switzerland, at twelve minutes after noon. From there it would be an hour and a half to Interlaken and then the last changes to the cogwheel trains of the Bernese-Oberland Railway for the breathtaking climb into the Alps and then the final ascent to the top on the Jungfrau Railway.
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