"Politically, far left to far right. Normally they wouldn't be caught in the same room together." Remmer shook out a cigarette, lit it, then leaned over and poured himself a glass of mineral water from a bottle on the table.

Osborn leaned against the wall, watching. He'd not been given a copy of the guest list nor had he asked for 1 one. In the last hours, as more information came in and the detectives increased their concentration on it, he'd been almost wholly ignored. Its effect was to alienate him further and intensify the feeling he'd had earlier: that when they left to meet Scholl, he would not be going.

"Naturalized or not, Scholl seems to be the only American. Am I right?" McVey asked, looking at Remmer.

"Everyone else identified is German," Remmer said. There were seventeen names on the guest list Bad Godesberg had so far been unable to trace. But with the exception of Scholl, all of those who had been identified were highly respected, if politically disparate, German citizens.

Looking at the list again, Remmer exhaled a cloud of cigarette smoke that McVey waved off as it passed him.

"Manfred, you mind? Why don't you just up and quit, huh?" Remmer glared and started to reply but McVey held up a hand. "I'm gonna die, I know. But I don't want you to be the one who takes me out."

"Sorry," Remmer said flatly, and stamped the butt into an ashtray.

Increasingly irritable snippets of conversation, underscored by long periods of silence, evidenced the collective frustrations of three markedly tired men trying to piece together what was going on. Beside the fact that the Charlottenburg celebration was being held in a palace instead of a hotel ballroom, on the surface it seemed to be no more than that, the kind of thing done hundreds of times a year by groups all over the world. But the surface was only the surface, and the interest was in what lay beneath. Among them they had more than a hundred years of experience as professional policemen. It gave them an instinct for things others wouldn't have. They had come to Berlin because of Erwin Scholl and, as far as they could tell, Erwin Scholl had come to Berlin because of Elton Lybarger. The question was-Why?

The "why?" became even more intriguing when one realized that, of all the illustrious people invited to the affair in his honor, Lybarger was the least illustrious and least known of any of them.

Bad Godesberg's search of records showed him born Elton Karl Lybarger in Essen, Germany, in 1933, the only child of an impoverished stonemason. Graduated public school in 1951, he'd vanished into the mainstream of postwar Germany. Then, thirty-odd years later, in 1983, he'd suddenly reemerged as a multimillionaire, living in a castle-like estate called Anlegeplatz twenty minutes outside Zurich, surrounded by servants, and controlling considerable shares of any number of first-rate Western European corporations.

The question was-How?

Early income tax filings from 1956 until 1980 showed his occupation as "bookkeeper," and gave addresses that were drab, lower-class apartment complexes in Hannover, Dusseldorf, Hamburg and Berlin, and then, finally, in 1983, Zurich. And in every year until 1983 his income had barely reached the mean wage. Then, with the 1983 filing, his income soared. By 1989, the year of his stroke, his taxable income was in the stratosphere, more than forty-seven million dollars.

And there was nothing, anywhere, to explain it. People were successful, yes. Sometimes almost overnight. But how did anyone, after years of work as an itinerant bookkeeper, living in a world a foot up from poverty, suddenly emerge as a man of opulent wealth and influence?

Even now, he remained a mystery. He sat on the boards of no European corporations, universities, hospitals or charities. He held membership in no private clubs, had no registered political affiliation. He had no driver's license or record of marriage. There wasn't so much as a credit card issued in his name. So who was he? And why were one hundred of Germany's richest and most influential citizens arriving from all parts of the country to applaud his health?

Remmer's reasoned guess was that in all those years, Lybarger had been secretly dealing in the drug world, moving from city to city, amassing a fortune in cash and laundering it into Swiss banks, where in 1983 he had enough to suddenly go legitimate.

McVey shook his head. There was something that struck both him and Noble the moment they had seen the guest list. Something they hadn't shared with Remmer. Two of the names on it-Gustav Dortmund and Konrad Peiper- were principals, along with Scholl, in GDG-Goltz Development Group, the company that had acquired Standard Technologies of Perth Amboy, New Jersey. The firm that in 1966 had employed Mary Rizzo York to experiment with super-subzero cooling gasses. The same Mary Rizzo York, Ph.D., Erwin Scholl had allegedly hired Albert Merriman to murder in that same year.

It was true that takeover had happened at a time when only Scholl and Dortmund were involved with GDG. Konrad Peiper hadn't come aboard until 1978. But since then, as its president, he had forged GDG to the forefront, however illegally, as a world-class arms supplier. The obvious was that both before Peiper and afterward, Goltz Development was hardly a wholesome, straightforward operation.

When McVey asked Remmer what he knew of Dortmund, the German detective joked and said that aside from his relatively minor position as head of the Bundesbank, the central bank of Germany, Dortmund was already one of the pedigreed super-rich. Like the Rothchilds, his family had been one of the great European banking families for more than two centuries.

"So, like Scholl, he's beyond reproach," McVey said.

"It would take one hell of a scandal to bring him down, if that's what you mean."

"What about Konrad Peiper?"

"Him, I know almost nothing about. He's rich and has an extraordinarily beautiful wife who has a great deal of money and influence of her own. But all one really needs to know about Konrad Peiper is that his paternal grand-uncle, Friedrich, was supplier of arms to half the planet in both world wars. Today that same company does very well making coffeepots and dishwashers."

McVey looked at Noble, who merely shook his head. The thing was as mystifying now as when they started. The Charlottenburg affair had attracted a gathering that included Scholl, the chief of the Bundesbank, the head of an international munitions trade and a guest list of German citizens who were the Who's Who of the ultra-rich and powerful and the truly politically connected; many of whom, under other circumstances, would be philosophically and maybe even physically at each other's throats. Yet here they all were, coming arm in arm to an ornate museum built by Prussian kings, to celebrate the return to wellness of a man with a history so shadowy you could put a hand through it.

And then there was the Albert Merriman situation and the swath of horror that had followed it, including the sabotaging of the Paris-Meaux train and the murders of Lebrun in England, his brother in Lyon and the gunning down of Benny Grossman in New York. Not to mention the hidden Nazi past of Hugo Klass, the respected fingerprint expert at Interpol, Lyon, and Rudolf Halder, the man in charge of Interpol, Vienna.

"The first one taken out was Osborn's father, in April 1966, just after he designed a very special kind of scalpel." McVey padded a few feet across the carpet and sat down on the window ledge. "The latest was Lebrun, sometime this morning," he said, bitterly. "Shortly after he connected Hugo Klass to the killing of Merriman . . . And from first to last, one link through it all, the straight line, from then until now is-"

"Erwin Scholl," Noble finished for him.

"And now we're back to square one with the same questions. "Why "Why For what reason? What the hell is going on?" Most of McVey's career had been spent on the circular route, asking the same question hundreds of times. That's what you did in homicide, unless you just happened to walk in and find somebody holding a smoking gun. And almost always the route ended with a detail overlooked until then, one that was suddenly as clear as if it had been a huge rock sitting there the whole time with the word For what reason? What the hell is going on?" Most of McVey's career had been spent on the circular route, asking the same question hundreds of times. That's what you did in homicide, unless you just happened to walk in and find somebody holding a smoking gun. And almost always the route ended with a detail overlooked until then, one that was suddenly as clear as if it had been a huge rock sitting there the whole time with the word CLUE CLUE spray-painted on it in red. spray-painted on it in red.

But not this one. This was a circle with a beginning but no end. It was round and kept going. The more information they garnered, the bigger the circle got and that was all.

"The headless bodies," Noble said.

McVey threw up his hands. "All right, why not? Let's ' work that angle."

"What angle? What are you talking about-?" Remmer looked from Noble to McVey and back again.

Remmer's Bundeskriminalamt, like all police agencies in the countries where the decapitated bodies had been found, received copies of McVey's status reports to Interpol. Purposely, McVey had not informed Interpol about the bodies' ultra-deep-freezing or the projections about the experiment. that lay behind the freezing. So naturally Remmer was in the dark; he didn't know enough. Under the circumstances, now seemed an extraordinarily good time to tell him.

98.

GERD L LANG was a good-looking, curly-headed, computer software designer from Munich, in Berlin for a three-day computer arts show. He was staying in room 7056 in the new Casino wing of the Hotel Palace. Thirty-two and coming off a painful divorce, it was only natural that, when an attractive twenty-four-year-old blonde with an engaging smile struck up a conversation with him on the showroom floor, and began asking him questions about what he did and how he did it, and how she could develop skills in that direction, he would invite her to discuss it over a drink and perhaps dinner. It was an unfortunate decision because, after several drinks and very little dinner, and feeling emotionally cheered after a very long depression over his divorce, he was hardly in a state to be fully prepared for what would happen when she accepted his invitation for an after-dinner drink in his room. was a good-looking, curly-headed, computer software designer from Munich, in Berlin for a three-day computer arts show. He was staying in room 7056 in the new Casino wing of the Hotel Palace. Thirty-two and coming off a painful divorce, it was only natural that, when an attractive twenty-four-year-old blonde with an engaging smile struck up a conversation with him on the showroom floor, and began asking him questions about what he did and how he did it, and how she could develop skills in that direction, he would invite her to discuss it over a drink and perhaps dinner. It was an unfortunate decision because, after several drinks and very little dinner, and feeling emotionally cheered after a very long depression over his divorce, he was hardly in a state to be fully prepared for what would happen when she accepted his invitation for an after-dinner drink in his room.

His first thoughts, as they'd sat on the couch touching and exploring each other in the dark, had been that she was simply reaching out to stroke his neck. Then her fingers had tightened and she'd smiled as if she were teasing and asked him if he liked it. When he started to reply, they'd locked in a vise grip. His immediate reaction had been to reach up and jerk her hands away. But he couldn't-she was incredibly strong and she smiled as she watched his attempt, as if it were some sort of game. Gerd Lang struggled to throw her off, to tear out of her iron grasp, but nothing worked. His face turned red and then deep purple. And his last living thought, crazy and perverse as it was, was that the whole time she never stopped smiling.

Afterward, she carried his body into the bathroom, put him in the tub and pulled the curtain. Coming back into the living room, she took a pair of day/night field binoculars from her handbag and trained them on the lighted window of room 6132 at an angle across and one floor below. Adjusting the focus, she could see a translucent curtain had been pulled across it and what appeared to be a man with white hair standing just inside it. Switching to night vision, she swung the glasses up toward the roof. In the greenish glow of the night scope she could see a man standing just back from the edge, an automatic rifle slung over his shoulder.

"Police," she breathed and swung the glasses back toward the window Osborn sat on the edge of a small table, listening as! McVey gave Remmer a basic primer on cryonic physics, then told him the rest: about what appeared to be an attempt at joining a severed head to a different body through a process of atomic surgery that was performed at I temperatures at or near absolute zero. It was a narrative that, as Osborn now heard it, bordered perilously on science fiction. Except it wasn't, because someone was either doing it, or trying to do it. And Remmer, standing with one foot on a straight-backed chair, the blue steel automatic dangling from his shoulder holster, hung, fascinated, on McVey's every word.

Suddenly it all faded as Osborn was hit by the stark and overwhelming thought that McVey might not be able to pull it off. That as good as he was, maybe this time he was in over his head and that Scholl would get the upper hand as Honig had suggested. What then?

The question was no question at all because Osborn knew the answer. Every inch he had gained, as close as he had finally come, it would all blow up in his face. And with it would go every ounce of hope he ever had in his life. Because from that moment on no one from the outside world would ever get that close to Erwin Scholl again.

"Excuse me," he said abruptly. Getting to his feet, he brushed past Remmer and went into the room he was sharing with Noble and stood there in the dark. He could hear their voices filtering in from the other room. They were talking as they had before. It made no difference if he was there or not. And tomorrow it would be the same when, warrant in hand, they would walk out the door to visit Scholl, leaving him behind in the hotel room, with only a BKA detective for company.

For no reason the room suddenly felt unbearably close and claustrophobic. Going into the bathroom, he switched on the light and looked for a glass. Seeing none, he cupped his hand and bent over and drank from the faucet. Then he held his wet hand to the back of his neck and felt its coolness. In the mirror he saw Noble enter the room, pick something off the dresser, then glance in at him before going back to the others.

Reaching to shut off the water, his eyes were drawn to his own image. The color was gone from his face and sweat had beaded up on his forehead and upper lip. He held out his hand and it was trembling. As he stood there, he became aware of the thing stirring inside him again and at almost the same time heard the sound of his own voice. It was so clear that for a moment he thought he'd actually spoken out loud.

"Scholl is here in Berlin, in a hotel across the park."

Suddenly his entire body shuddered and he was certain he was going to faint. Then the feeling passed, and as it did one thing became unequivocally clear. This was something McVey was not going to steal from him, not after everything. Scholl was too close. Whatever it took, however he had to circumvent the men in the other room, he could not and would not live another twenty-four hours without knowing why his father had been murdered.

99.

THE V VIGNETTE of three men talking in a hotel room could be interesting or dull, especially when seen from a darkened room at an angle across from them and photographed in close-up by a motor drive camera using a telephoto lens. of three men talking in a hotel room could be interesting or dull, especially when seen from a darkened room at an angle across from them and photographed in close-up by a motor drive camera using a telephoto lens.

The camera was abruptly discarded in favor of binoculars as a fourth man emerged from a back room, pulling on a suit coat. One of the initial three got up and went to him. There was a brief conversation, then one of the others picked up the telephone. A moment later he hung up and the first man started for the door. He was almost to it when he turned and said something to the man who had gone to him. The man hesitated, then he turned and went out of sight. When he came back he gave the first man something. Then the man opened the door and left.

Putting aside the binoculars, the attractive blonde with the dead software designer working toward rigor mortis in the elegant marble bathroom only feet away picked up a two-way radio. "Natalia," she said.

"Lugo," came the reply.

"Osborn just left."

Osborn was certain McVey would never have given him the automatic, or even let him out of the room, if he'd known what he meant to do. He'd simply said that he had nothing to contribute to the police business, that he was feeling a little woozy and claustrophobic, and wanted to go for a walk to clear his head.

It was then five minutes to ten, and McVey, overly tired and with a great deal on his mind, had considered, then finally agreed. Asking Remmer to have one of the BKA detectives go with him, he'd warned him not to leave the complex and to be back by eleven.

Osborn hadn't protested, just nodded and started for the door. It was then he'd turned and asked McVey for the pistol. It was a calculated move on Osborn's part, but he knew McVey would have to seriously evaluate what had happened and realize, police protection or not, all Osborn was asking for was a little extra insurance. Still, it had been a long, uncomfortable moment before McVey relented and gave him Bernhard Oven's Cz automatic.

Osborn hadn't gone a dozen paces toward the elevator when he was met by BKA Inspector Johannes Schneider. Schneider was about thirty and tall, with a flat hump across the bridge of his nose that suggested it had been broken more than once.

"You want to get some air," he said breezily in accented English. "Let's got for it."

Earlier, when they'd first settled in, Osborn had found a brochure that described the Europa-Center as a complex with more than a hundred shops, restaurants, cabarets and a casino. It was complete with diagrams marking venue locations and building entrances and exits.

Osborn smiled. "Have you ever been to Las Vegas, Inspector Schneider?" he asked.

"No, I haven't."

"I like to gamble a little," Osborn said. "How is the casino here?"

"Spielbank Casino? Excellent and expensive." Schneider grinned.

"Let's go for it." Osborn grinned back.

Taking the elevator down, they stopped at the hotel's front desk while Osborn changed his remaining French francs into Deutschmarks, then he let Schneider lead the way to the casino.

Fifteen minutes later, Osborn asked the policeman to take over his hand at the baccarat table while he made a quick trip to the men's room. Schneider saw him ask a security guard for directions and walk off.

Osborn crossed the casino floor and turned a corner, made sure Schneider hadn't followed, then walked out. Stopping at a newsstand in the lobby, he bought a tourist map of the city, put it in his pocket and went out a side door, taking a left on Nurnbergerstrasse.

Across the street, Viktor Shevchenko saw him come out. Dressed in jeans and a dark sweater, he was standing on the sidewalk just out of the glare of a brightly lit Greek restaurant listening to heavy metal through the headset of 'what appeared to be a Sony Walkman. Lifting his hand as if to stifle a cough, he spoke into it.

"Viktor."

Lugo." Von Holden's voice crackled through Viktor's headset.

"Osborn just came out alone. He's crossing Budapesterstrasse toward the Tiergarten."

Dodging traffic, Osborn crossed Budapesterstrasse to the far sidewalk and glanced back toward the Europa-Center. If Schneider was following, he couldn't see him. Stepping back from the glare of the streetlights, he started .'off in the direction of the Berlin Zoo, then, sensing he was going in the wrong direction, turned back the way he had come. The pavement was covered with leaves made slick by a light drizzle and the air was cold enough for him to see his breath. Looking back, he saw a man in a raincoat and hat slowly walking a dog that wanted to sniff at every tree and lamppost. There was still no sign of Schneider. Picking up his pace, he walked a good two hundred yards farther before stopping under the lighted overhang of a parking structure, and opened the map.

It took several minutes before he found what he was looking for. Friedrichstrasse was on the far side of the Brandenburg Gate. By his estimate it was a ten-minute cab ride or a half hour walk through the Tiergarten. A taxi they could trace. Walking was better. Besides, it would give him time to think.

"Viktor?"

"Lugo," Von Holden's voice said.

"I have him. He's walking east. Going into the Tiergarten."

Von Holden was still in his office in the apartment on Sophie-Charlottenstrasse. He was on his feet talking into his two-way radio, unable to believe his good luck.

"Still alone?"

"Yes." Viktor's voice was crystal clear through the radio's tiny speaker.

"The fool."

"Instructions?"

"Follow him. I will be there in five minutes."

100.

NOBLE H HUNG up and looked at McVey. "Still nothing from Cadoux. Nor is there an answer at his confidential number in Lyon." up and looked at McVey. "Still nothing from Cadoux. Nor is there an answer at his confidential number in Lyon."

Disturbed and frustrated, McVey looked to Remmer, who was on his third cup of black coffee in the last forty minutes. They'd been over the guest list twenty times and, despite the handful of names Bad Godesberg still had been unable to trace, had found nothing more than they had the first time they went over it. Maybe somewhere among those missing people they'd find a key, maybe they wouldn't. It was McVey's sense they should be concentrating on what they had as opposed to what they didn't, and he asked Remmer to see if they could get a more comprehensive breakdown on the guests that had already been identified. Maybe it wasn't who the people were or what they did, maybe, like Klass and Halder, it had to do with their families or their backgrounds, something more titan was immediately apparent.

Perhaps they hadn't had enough to go on to begin with, to make the process work and uncover the big rock with tile red CLUE CLUE on it they were after. Then again, maybe there was nothing here at all. It could be that Scholl was in Berlin legitimately and the whole Lybarger thing was nothing more than what it appeared: an innocent testimonial to a man who had been ill. But McVey wasn't going to let it go until he knew for sure. And while they were waiting for more from Bad Godesberg, they went around again, this time coming back to Cadoux. on it they were after. Then again, maybe there was nothing here at all. It could be that Scholl was in Berlin legitimately and the whole Lybarger thing was nothing more than what it appeared: an innocent testimonial to a man who had been ill. But McVey wasn't going to let it go until he knew for sure. And while they were waiting for more from Bad Godesberg, they went around again, this time coming back to Cadoux.

"Let's take the Klass/Halder situation and point it at Cadoux." McVey was sitting in a chair with his feet up on one of the twin beds. "Could he have had a father, brother, cousin, whatever-who might have been Nazis or Nazi sympathizers during the war?"

"Did you ever hear of Ajax?" Remmer asked.

Noble looked up. "Ajax was a network of French police who worked with the Resistance during the Occupation. After the war they discovered only five percent of its members actually resisted. Most of them were smuggling for the Vichy government."

"Cadoux's uncle was a judicial cop. A member of Ajax in Nice. After the war he was relieved of duty following a purge of Nazi collaborators," Remmer said.

"What about his father, was he in Ajax too?"