The Day After Tomorrow_ A Novel - Allan Folsom [260]
“What happens to—” Osborn said as Remmer hung up, “—her?”
“She will be taken into custody. The same as Von Holden.” Remmer knew what Osborn meant. Police officers had been asked to bring in a cop killer. If the fugitives were on either train, and he was certain they were, their chances of escaping a second time were nonexistent. And if they put up any resistance at all, they would be shot.
“What do we do?” Osborn was staring at him. “You go to one place and I go to the other?”
“Doctor—” Remmer paused, and Osborn suddenly felt as if the rug was about to be jerked out from under him. “I know you want to be there, how important it is to you. But I can’t take a chance that you won’t get caught in the middle.”
“Remmer, I’ll take the chance. Don’t worry about it.”
“I’m not talking about you, Doctor. You’ve got a lot on your mind and you could fuck things up royally. A nineteen-year-old cabdriver and three policemen were murdered in cold blood. The method suggests Noble was right, that this Von Holden, maybe the woman too, whoever she is, is a Spetsnaz soldier. That means he or they were trained by the Soviet Army and maybe after that by GRU, which is about six steps above your most efficient former KGB agent. That puts them into the elite of the best schooled and deadliest killers in the world with a mind-set you could not begin to comprehend. Taking them will not be easy. I won’t risk losing another cop for you or anybody else. Go back to Berlin, Doctor. I promise I will let you question them both at the proper time.” With that, Remmer pushed back from the stationmaster’s desk and started for the door.
“Remmer.” Osborn took him by the arm and pulled him around. “You’re not getting rid of me like that. Not now. McVey wouldn’t—”
“McVey wouldn’t?” Remmer cut him off with a laugh, then took Osborn’s hand from his sleeve. “McVey brought you along for his purposes, Doctor Osborn. And for his purposes only. Don’t ever think he didn’t. Now do as I say, yes? Go back to Berlin. Take a room at our old campground, the Hotel Palace. I will contact you there.”
Opening the door, Remmer brushed past the station-master and went back into the station. Osborn followed, but not closely. In the distance he could see Remmer with the gathering of Frankfurt police, then saw him step aside to talk briefly with the three witnesses and the black counterman. And then they dispersed. All of them. Faceless-people filled the place where they’d been, and it was as if it had all never happened. And like that, Osborn found himself alone in the Frankfurt railroad station. He could have been a tourist passing through with nothing more on his mind than that day’s schedule. Except that he wasn’t.
Von Holden and the woman with him—it was not Vera, Osborn decided, it was someone else, maybe someone with black hair who resembled her, but it was not Vera—were on their way to either France or Switzerland. And then where?
What was worse? That Remmer’s dragnet failed and they got away, or that it didn’t? No matter what Lybarger’s nurse knew or didn’t know, assuming they would find her, it Was Von Holden who was the last of the Organization, the last direct connection to his father’s death. If the police closed in, Von Holden would fight. And in doing so, he would be killed. And that would be the end of everything.
Go back to Berlin Remmer told him. Go there and wait. He’d already waited thirty years. He wasn’t going to do it again.
Suddenly Osborn realized he’d been walking across the station the whole time and was nearly to a door leading to the street. Then