The Day After Tomorrow_ A Novel - Allan Folsom [35]
Turning back, he recrossed the landing to the woods on the far side. He wanted something heavier, something that might begin more to approximate a man’s weight. In a matter of moments he found the uprooted trunk of a dead tree. Struggling for a grip, he hefted it, then carried it to the water’s edge, stepped into the mud once more and heaved it in. For a moment it remained still in the water, as the branch had, then the current picked it up and started forward along the shore. Once it reached the curve of the outcropping it moved swiftly and steadily out toward the main current. Once more he looked at his watch. Thirty-two seconds until it reached mid-river and was swept from view. The tree trunk had to have weighed fifty pounds. Kanarack, he estimated, weighed about one hundred and eighty. The ratio of the weight from the branch to the tree trunk was far greats than the ratio of the tree trunk to what Kanarack weighed, yet both had taken nearly the same time to be swept up and out and then be fully caught up in the current.
Osborn could feel the rise of his pulse and the sweat at his armpits as the reality of it began to set in. It would work, he was certain! Moving sideways at first, then-turning, Osborn started to run, hurrying along the riverbank and past the trees to where the land projected farthest out toward midriver. Here, he found the water deep flowing and free of obstacles. With nothing to stop him, Kanarack, physically helpless under the succinylcholine, would float off like the tree trunk, picking up speed as he reached the flow line. Less than sixty seconds after his body was shoved out from the landing it would reach midriver and be caught up in the Seine’s main current.
Now he had to make sure. Pushing through a stand of high grass, he followed the river’s edge through shrubs and thicket for a half, mile or more. The farther he walked, the steeper the embankment became and the swifter the current flowing between the shorelines. Reaching the top of a hill, he stopped. The river kept on uninterrupted for as far as he could see. There were no small islands, no sandbanks, no yawning catch-alls of dead trees. Nothing but fast-moving open water cutting through raw countryside. Moreover, there were no towns, factories, homes or bridges. No place at all, as far as he could tell, from which to see a thing rushing along with the current.
Especially if it were happening in the rain and darkness.
21
* * *
LEBRUN AND McVey had followed Osborn. and Vera to the gardens of the National Museum of Natural History. There, another unmarked police car had taken over and tailed them to Vera’s apartment on the Île St.-Louis.
As soon as they entered, Lebrun was radioed the address. Forty seconds later they had a printout of the building’s residents, courtesy of a computer cross-check with the Postal Service.
Lebrun scanned it then handed it to McVey, who had to put on his glasses to read it. The listing confirmed that all six of the apartments at 18 Quai de Bethune were occupied. Two of the surnames carried first initials only, indicating they were probably occupied by single women. One was an M. Seyrig, the other a V. Monneray. French permis de conduire—driver’s license—records disclosed that M. Seyrig was Monique Seyrig, who was sixty, and that V. Monneray was one Vera Monneray, who was twenty-six. Less than a minute later a copy of Vera Monneray’s driver’s license came over the fax machine in Lebrun’s unmarked Ford. The accompanying photograph confirmed her as Paul Osborn’s companion.
It was at that moment that headquarters abruptly called off the surveillance. Dr. Paul Osborn, Lebrun was told, was under the spotlight of Interpol, not of the Paris Préfecture of Police. If Interpol wanted somebody to watch from across the street while Osborn had dalliance