74.

TEN S SECONDS later, McVey, and then Osborn, stepped cautiously into the hallway and closed the door behind them. Both had guns in their hands but there was no need-the hallway was clear. later, McVey, and then Osborn, stepped cautiously into the hallway and closed the door behind them. Both had guns in their hands but there was no need-the hallway was clear.

As far as they could tell, whoever had sent the girl was Still waiting for her, probably downstairs. That meant whoever had sent her had only suspected who they might be, and wasn't sure. They were also giving her time. She was a professional and if she'd had to play sex with the suspects, she would. But McVey knew the time they would give her wouldn't be much.

The interior hallways on the fifth floor of Hotel St.-Jacques were painted gray and had dark red carpeting. Fire stairs were at the end of each corridor, with a second set near the center of the building surrounding the elevator shafts. McVey chose the far stairs, farthest from the elevators. If something happened, he didn't want them caught in the middle.

It took them four and a half minutes to reach the basement, go through a service door and take a back alley to the street. Turning right, they walked off down the boulevard St.-Jacques through a thickening fog. It was 2:15 A.M. A.M., Tuesday, October 11.

At 2:42, Ian Noble's red bedside phone buzzed twice, then stopped, its signal light flashing. Careful not to disturb his wife, who suffered from painful arthritis and hardly slept, he slipped out of bed and pushed through the black walnut door that separated their bedroom from his private study. A moment later he picked up the extension.

"Yes."

"McVey."

"It's been a damn long ninety minutes. Where the hell are you?"

"On the streets of Paris."

"Osborn still with you?"

"We're like Siamese twins."

Touching a button under the overhang of his desk, Noble's desktop slid back, revealing an aerial map of Great Britain. A second press of the button brought up a coded menu. A third, and Noble had a detailed map of Paris and its surrounding environs.

"Can you get out of the city?"

"Where?"

Noble looked back to the map. "About twenty-five kilometers east on Autoroute N3 is a town called Meaux. Just before you get there is a small airport. Look for a civil aircraft, a Cessna, with the markings ST95 stenciled on the tail. Should be there, weather permitting, between eight and nine hundred hours. The pilot will wait until ten. If you miss it, look for it again, same time, the next day."

"Gracias, amigo." McVey hung up and walked out to meet Osborn. They were in a corridor outside one of the entrances to a railroad station, the Gare de Lyon on the boulevard Diderot, just north of the Seine in the northwest quadrant of the city. McVey hung up and walked out to meet Osborn. They were in a corridor outside one of the entrances to a railroad station, the Gare de Lyon on the boulevard Diderot, just north of the Seine in the northwest quadrant of the city.

"Well?" Osborn said, expectantly.

"What do you think about sleep?" McVey said.

Fifteen minutes later, Osborn put his head back and surveyed their accommodations, a stone ledge tucked up under the Austerlitz Bridge over the Quai Henri IV, and in full view of the Seine.

"For a few hours we join the homeless." McVey pulled his collar up in the darkness and rolled over on his shoulder. Osborn should have settled in too, but he didn't. McVey raised up and saw him sitting against the granite, his legs out in front of him, staring at the water, as if he'd just been plunked down in hell and told to sit there for eternity.

"Doctor," McVey said quietly, "it beats the morgue."

Von Holden's Learjet touched down at a private landing strip some thirty kilometers north of Paris at 2:50 A.M. A.M. At 2:37, he'd been radioed that the targets had been identified by the Paris sector leaving the hotel St.-Jacques at approximately 2:10. They had not been seen since. Further information would be provided as it became available. At 2:37, he'd been radioed that the targets had been identified by the Paris sector leaving the hotel St.-Jacques at approximately 2:10. They had not been seen since. Further information would be provided as it became available.

The Organization had eyes and ears on the streets, in police stations, union halls, hospitals, embassies and boardrooms of a dozen major cities across Europe, and a half-dozen more around the world. Through them Albert Merriman had been found, and Agnes Demblon and Merrinman's wife and Vera Monneray. And through them Osborn and McVey would be found as well. The question was when.

By 3:10, Von Holden was in the backseat of a dark blue BMW on Autoroute N2 passing the Aubervilliers exit, moving into Paris. A commanding officer impatiently waiting to hear from his generals in the field.

To kill Bernhard Oven, this McVey, this American policeman, had to have been either very lucky or very good or both. To slip from their fingers just as he was discovered was the same. He didn't like it. The Paris sector was first rate, highly regarded and highly disciplined, and Bernhard Oven had always been one of the best.

And Von Holden would know. Though several years younger, he had been Oven's superior, both in the Soviet Army and, later, in the Stasi, the East German secret police, in the years before reunification and the Stasi's dissolution.

Von Holden's own career had begun early. At eighteen he'd left home in Argentina and gone to Moscow for his final years Of schooling. Immediately afterward he'd started formal training under KGB direction in Leningrad. Fifteen months later, he was a company commander in the Soviet Army, assigned to the 4th Guards Tank Army protecting the Soviet embassy in Vienna. It was there he became an officer in the Spetsnaz special reconnaissance units trained in sabotage and terrorism. It was there too, he met Bernhard Oven, one of a half-dozen lieutenants under his command in the 4th Guards.

Two years later Von Holden was officially discharged from the Soviet Army and became assistant director for the East German Sports Administration assigned to oversee the training of elite East German athletes at the College for Physical Culture in Leipzig; among them had been Eric and Edward Kleist, the nephews of Elton Lybarger.

At Leipzig, Von Holden also became an "informal employee" of the Ministry for State Security, the Stasi. Drawing on his training as a Spetsnaz soldier, he schooled recruits in clandestine operations against East German citizens and developed "specialists" in the art of terrorism and assassination. It was at this point he requested Bern-hard Oven from the 4th Guards Tank Army. Von Holden's appreciation of his talent did not go unrewarded. Within eighteen months, Oven was one of the Stasi's top men in the field and its best killer.

Von Holden remembered vividly the afternoon in Argentina when, as a boy of six, his entire career had been decided. He'd gone riding with his father's business partner, and on the ride the man had asked him what he planned to do when he grew up. Hardly an extraordinary question from a grown man to a boy. What was uncommon was his answer and what he'd done afterward.

"Work for you, of course!" Young Pascal had beamed, giving heels to his horse and racing off across the pampas. Leaving the man sitting alone astride his own horse, watching, as the tiny figure with sure hands and an already impertinent disposition coaxed his big horse up and off the ground, and in a flying leap cleared a high growth of vegetation to disappear from sight. In that instant Von Holden's future was cast. The man who'd asked the question, his riding partner, had been Erwin Scholl.

75.

The S Smooth click of the wheels over the rails beneath was soothing, and Osborn sat back drowsing. If he'd slept at all during the two hours they'd spent huddled under Austerlitz Bridge, he didn't remember. All he knew was that he was very tired and felt grubby and unclean. Across from him, McVey leaned against the window, dozing lightly, and he marveled that McVey seemed to be able to sleep anywhere. click of the wheels over the rails beneath was soothing, and Osborn sat back drowsing. If he'd slept at all during the two hours they'd spent huddled under Austerlitz Bridge, he didn't remember. All he knew was that he was very tired and felt grubby and unclean. Across from him, McVey leaned against the window, dozing lightly, and he marveled that McVey seemed to be able to sleep anywhere.

They'd climbed from their perch over the Seine at five o'clock and gone back to the station, where they'd discovered that trains for Meaux left from the Gare de l'Est, fifteen minutes by cab across Paris. With time pressing, they'd chanced a taxi ride across the city, hoping the randomly chosen taxi driver was no more than he appeared.

Reaching the station, they'd entered separately and through different doors, each man all too aware of the early editions jamming the front racks of every news kiosk inside, bold black headlines hawking the shooting at La Coupole with their photos printed starkly and graphically underneath.

Moments later, nervous hands had reached for tickets at separate windows, but neither clerk had done more than exchange a ticket for money and serve the next customer in line.

Then they'd waited, apart, but within view of each other, for twenty minutes. Their only jolt came when five uniformed gendarmes had suddenly appeared leading four rough-looking, handcuffed and chained convicts toward a waiting train. It looked as if they were about to board the train to Meaux, but at the last minute they'd veered off and loaded their sullen cargo onto another.

At 6:25, they crossed the platform with a group of others and took separate seats in the same car of the train that left the Gare de l'Est at 6:30 and would arrive in Meaux at 7:10. Ample time for them to get from the station to the airfield by the time Noble's pilot touched down in his Cessna ST95.

The train had eight cars and was a local, part of the EuroCity line. Two dozen people, mostly early commuters, rode in the same Second Class compartment as theirs. The First Class section was empty and had been avoided. Two men alone were easily remembered and described even if they sat seats apart in an empty compartment. The same two men sitting alone among other travelers were less likely to be recalled.

Pulling back a sleeve, Osborn looked at his watch. Six fifty-nine. Eleven minutes until they reached the station at Meaux. Outside, he could see the sun rising on a gray day that made the French farmland seem softer and greener than it already was.

The contrast between it and the dry, sun-scorched brush of Southern California was disquieting. For no particular reason, it conjured up visions of who McVey was and the tall man and the death that surrounded them both. Death had no place here. This train ride, this green land, this birthing of a new day was something that should have been enshrouded in love and wonder. Suddenly Osborn Was swept by an almost unbearable longing for Vera. He wanted to feel her. Touch her. Breathe in the scent of her. posing his eyes, he could see the texture of her hair and the smoothness of her skin. And he smiled as he remembered the almost imperceptible fuzz of hair on her ear-lobes. Vera was what mattered. This was her land he was passing through. It was her morning. Her day.

From somewhere off came a heavy, muffled thud. The train shuddered, and Osborn was suddenly being thrown violently sideways toward a young priest who, seconds before, had been reading a paper. Then the car they were in was turning over and they both fell. It kept rolling, like some horrendous carnival ride. Glass crashing and the wrenching of steel meshed with human screams. He glimpsed the ceiling just as an aluminum crutch glanced hard off his head. A split second later Osborn was upside down with a body on top of him. Then glass exploded above him and he was awash in blood. The car spun again and the person on top of him slid down his chest. It was a woman, and she had no upper torso at all. Then there was horrible grating as steel screamed over steel. It was followed by a tremendous bang. Osborn rocketed backward and everything stopped.

Seconds, minutes afterward, Osborn opened his eyes. He could see a gray sky through trees with a bird circling above them. For a time he lay there doing nothing more than breathe. Finally, he tried to move. First his left leg, then his right. Then his arm, until he could see his still-bandaged left hand. He moved his right arm and hand. Miraculously, he had survived.

Easing up, he saw the massive twist of steel. What remained of a railroad car was lying on its side halfway down an embankment. It was then he realized he had been thrown from the train.

Farther up the embankment, he could see the other cars, some driven, accordion-like, into each other. Others were piled, almost piggyback, one on top of another. Bodies were everywhere. Some were moving; most were not. At the top of the hill, a group of young boys came into view, staring down at the wreckage and pointing.

Slowly Osborn began to understand what had happened. "McVey!" he heard himself say out loud.

"McVey!" he said again, struggling to his feet. Then he saw the first rescuers push past the boys and start down the hill.

The act of standing made him dizzy. Closing his eyes, he grabbed onto a tree for balance and took a deep breath. Reaching up, he felt the pulse at his neck. It was strong and regular. Then somebody, a fireman, he thought, spoke to him in French. "I'm all right," he said in English, and the man moved on.

Shrieks and cries of victims cleared his mind further, and he saw that everything around him was chaos. Rescue workers poured down the hillside. Climbed into cars. Began lifting people out through smashed windows, easing them out from beneath the wreckage. Blankets were tossed, in a rush, over the dead. The entire area became a frantic hill of activity.

And settling over everything-the shouts, the screams, the distant sirens, the cries for help-was the pungent, overwhelming, odor of hot brake fluid as it leaked from sheared lines.

The smell of it made Osborn cover his nose as he pushed through the tragedy around him.

"McVey!" he cried out again. "McVey! McVey!"

"Sabotage," he heard someone say in passing. Turning, he found himself looking into a rescue worker's face.

"American," he said. "An older man. Have you seen him?" The man stared back as if he didn't understand. Then a fireman came up and they ran back up the hill.

Stepping over broken glass, climbing over torn and ravaged steel, Osborn moved from one victim to another. Watching the doctors work on the living, lifting the blankets to stare at the faces of the dead. McVey was nowhere among them.

Once, lifting the blanket to look at the face of a dead man, he saw the man's eyes flicker once, then close again. Reaching, he felt for a heartbeat and found it. Looking up, he saw a paramedic.

"Help!" he shouted. "This man is alive!"

The paramedic came with a rush and Osborn moved back. As he did, he began to feel cold and lightheaded. Shock, he knew, was beginning to set in. His first thought was to ask the paramedic where he could get a blanket and he started to, but suddenly had enough presence of mind to realize that if the train had been sabotaged, the act could well have been meant for McVey and himself. If he asked for a blanket, they would know he'd been a passenger. They would demand his name and he would be reported alive.

"No," he thought and backed away. "Best to get out of sight and stay there."

Looking around, he saw a thick stand of trees near the top of the grade not far from where he stood. The paramedic had his back to him and the other rescue workers were farther down the hill. It became a major physical effort for him to climb the few yards to the trees, and he was afraid it was taking too long and he would be seen. Finally he reached them and turned back. Still, no one looked his way. Satisfied, he melted into the thick under-growth. And there, away from the hysteria, he lay down in the damp leaves and, using his arm for a pillow, closed his eyes. Almost immediately deep sleep overtook him.

76.

WORD O OF the Paris-Meaux train derailment reached Ian Noble less than an hour after it happened. First reports indicated sabotage. A second report confirmed that an explosive device had been set off directly under the engine. the Paris-Meaux train derailment reached Ian Noble less than an hour after it happened. First reports indicated sabotage. A second report confirmed that an explosive device had been set off directly under the engine.

That McVey and Osborn would be on the same route, at the same time, to rendezvous with Noble's pilot at the Meaux airstrip was too coincidental. And since the pilot had landed, waited the allotted time and then taken off with no sign of them, there was every reason to believe McVey and Osborn had been on the train.

Immediately, Noble put in a call to Captain Cadoux at his residence in Lyon and informed him what had happened. It was important he know what Cadoux had found out in his investigations into the German fingerprint expert, Hugo Klass, and the death of Lebrun's brother, Antoine. Noble was going under the assumption that McVey and Osborn had been on the train and that whatever organization Klass was working for, or Antoine might have been involved with, was responsible for the derailment. It was another demonstration of just how far their intelligence network reached. Never mind they had found Merriman, Agnes Demblon and the others, and knew who Vera Monneray was and where she lived-that they'd been able to pinpoint McVey's clandestine meeting with Osborn at La Coupole and then discover they were on the Paris-Meaux train was nothing short of astonishing.

Cadoux was speechless, and the situation made his own frustration all the worse. The tail he'd put on Klass had so far turned up nothing more sinister than the fact that he'd gone to work as usual on Monday. A tap on his phone had given up nothing. As for Antoine, he'd come directly home Sunday night after a late dinner with his brother, and gone directly to bed. For some reason he'd gotten up and gone to his study before dawn, which was not his habit. And it was there his wife found him at 7:30. He was on the floor beside his desk with his nine-millimeter Beretta on the carpet beside him. The gun had been fired once and there was a single gunshot wound in his right temple. An autopsy-ballistics report proved the bullet had come from the same weapon. The doors leading outside were locked, but the latch in a kitchen window was open. So it was possible someone had both come in and gone out that way, though there were no signs of it.

"Or just gone out," Noble said.

"Yes, we'd thought of that too," Cadoux said in his heavy French accent. "That Antoine had let someone in the front door and relocked it. At that hour he would have known whoever it was or he would not have let them in. Then they killed him and went out the window. Still, there were no signs of it, and the coroner has officially ruled it a suicide."

Noble was as baffled as he'd ever been. Everyone who knew Albert Merriman was either dead or a definitive target, and the man who had discovered him through a fingerprint seemed completely innocent.

"Cadoux. Interpol, Washington-who did Klass get there to request the Merriman file from the New York police?"

"He didn't."

"What?"

"Washington has no record of it."

"That's impossible. They were faxed there directly by New York."

"Old codes, my friend," Cadoux said. "In the past, top people at Interpol had private codes that gave them access to information no one else could get. That practice is no longer in effect. Still, there are those that remember them and can use them, and there is no way to trace it. The New York police may have faxed the material to Washington but it came straight to Lyon, somehow electronically by passing Washington."

"Cadoux-" Noble hesitated. "I know McVey is against it, but I think we're running out of time. Have Klass quietly taken into custody and interrogate him. If you want, I'll come myself."

"I understand, my friend. And I agree. You will let me know the moment you get word on McVey. For better or worse, eh?"

"Yes, of course. For better or worse."

Hanging up, Noble thought a moment, then swiveled to a pipe tree behind his desk. Selecting a worn and yellowed Calabash, he filled it, then tamped the tobacco and lit it.

If McVey and Osborn had not been on the Paris-Meaux train and had simply missed connecting with his pilot at the Meaux airstrip, then they would be there when he touched down tomorrow. But twenty-four hours was too long to wait. He had told Cadoux he'd had to assume they had been on the train. And that was what he would go with now. If they were dead, that was one thing, but if they were alive, they had to be gotten out of there now, before the other side discovered the same thing.

A little after ten forty-five, almost four hours after the derailment, a tall, slim, very attractive reporter with press credentials from the newspaper Le Mond Le Mond parked her car along the single-lane road with the other media vehicles, and joined the swarm of journalists already on the scene. parked her car along the single-lane road with the other media vehicles, and joined the swarm of journalists already on the scene.

French Garde Nationale troops had joined Meaux police and firefighters in the rescue effort that, so far, counted thirteen dead, including the train's driver. Thirty six more were hospitalized, twenty in serious condition, and fifteen more had been treated for minor abrasions and released. The rest were still buried in the wreckage, and grim estimates ranged from hours to days before the accounting would be complete.

"Is there a list of names and nationalities?" she said, entering a large media tent set up fifty feet back from the tracks. Pierre Andre, a graying medical adjutant in charge of victim identification for the Garde Nationale, glanced up from a worktable to the LeMond LeMond press pass around her neck, then looked at her and smiled, perhaps his only smile of the day. Avril Rocard was indeed a handsome piece. press pass around her neck, then looked at her and smiled, perhaps his only smile of the day. Avril Rocard was indeed a handsome piece.

"Oui, madame-" Immediately he turned to a subordinate. "Lieutenant, a casualty accounting for madame, Immediately he turned to a subordinate. "Lieutenant, a casualty accounting for madame, s'il vous plait." s'il vous plait."

Selecting a sheet from inside one of several manila folders in front of him, the officer stood smartly and handed it to her.

"Merci," she said. she said.

"I must warn you, madame, that it is far from complete. Nor is it for publication until the next of kin have been informed," Pierre Andre said, this time without the smile.

"Of course."