The Aquitaine Progression: A Novel

by Robert Ludlum

  A slight whirring sound preceded the stop; the panel light shone behind the letters SOU-SOL, and the heavy doors parted. Beyond in the wide hallway was a platoon of white-jacketed waiters, maids, porters and a few maintenance personnel commandeering tables, racks of linens, luggage and assorted cleaning materials. Loud, rapid chatter, heightened by bursts of laughter and guttural expletives, accompanied the bustling activity. At the sight of the concierge there was a perceptible lessening of volume and an increase of concentrated movement, along with nods and fawning smiles directed at the man who, with the flick of a pen, could eliminate their jobs.

  “If you’ll just point me in the right direction, I’ll be on my way,” said Joel, not wishing to call further attention to himself in the company of the concierge. “I’ve taken up too much of your time.”

  “Merci. If you will follow that corridor, it will lead to the service exit,” replied the Frenchman, pointing to a hallway on the left, beyond the bank of elevators. “The guard is at his desk and is aware of your departure. Outside in the alley, turn right and walk to the street; your taxi is waiting for you.”

  “I appreciate—my firm appreciates—your cooperation. As I mentioned upstairs, there’s nothing really that secretive, or unusual—just sensitive.”

  The hotel man’s impassive countenance did not change, except for a slightly sharper focus in his eyes. “It is of no matter, monsieur, an explanation is not required. I did not request it, and if you’ll forgive me, you should not feel an obligation to offer one. Au revoir, Monsieur Simon.”

  “Yes, of course,” said Converse, maintaining his composure though he felt like a schoolboy admonished for speaking out of turn, for offering an answer when he had not been called upon. “See you next time I’m in Paris.”

  “We await the day, monsieur. Bonsoir.”

  Joel turned quickly, making his way through the uniformed crowd toward the hallway, apologizing whenever his suitcase made contact with a body. He had just been taught a lesson, one he should not have had to learn. He knew it in a courtroom and in conference: Never explain what you don’t have to. Shut up. But this was not a court or a conference. It was, it suddenly dawned on him, an escape, and the realization was a little frightening, certainly very strange. Or was it? Escape was in his vocabulary, in his experience. He had tried it three times before in his life—years ago. And death had been everywhere. He put the thought out of his mind and walked down the corridor toward the large metal door in the distance.

  He slowed down; something was wrong. Ahead, standing in front of the security desk talking to the guard was a man in a light-colored topcoat. Joel had seen him before but he did not know where; then the man moved and Converse began to remember—an image came back to him. Another man had moved the same way—taking several steps backward before turning—to disappear from an archway, and now he moved the same way to cross the corridor to lean against the wall. Was it the same man? Yes! It was the one who had accompanied Bertholdier to the dining-room entrance of L’Etalon Blanc. The subordinate who had taken leave of a superior then was here now under orders from that same superior.

  The man looked up, the flash of recognition instantly in his eyes. Stretching, he raised himself to his full height and turned away, his hand slowly moving toward the fold in his coat. Converse was stunned. Was the man actually reaching for a gun? With an armed guard barely ten feet away? It was insane! Joel stopped; he considered racing back into the crowd by the elevators but knew it was pointless. If Bertholdier had posted a watchdog in the basement, others would be upstairs, in the corridors, in the lobby. He could not turn and run; there was no place to go, nowhere to hide. So he kept walking, now faster, directly toward the man in the light-brown topcoat, his mind confused, his throat tight.

  “There you are!” he cried out loud, not sure the words were his. “The general told me where to find you!”

  The man stood motionless, in shock, speechless. “Le général?” he said, barely above a whisper. “He … tell you?”

  The man’s English was not good, and that was very good. He could understand, but not well. Rapidly spoken words, persuasively delivered, might get them both out the door. Joel turned to the guard while angling his attaché case into his companion’s back. “My name’s Simon. I believe the concierge spoke to you about me.”

  The juxtaposition of the name and the title was sufficient for the bewildered guard. He glanced at his papers, nodding. “Oui, monsieur. Le concierge …”

  “Come on!” Converse shoved the attaché case into the man in the topcoat, propelling him toward the door. “The general’s waiting for us outside. Let’s go! Hurry up!”

  “Le général …?” The man’s hands instinctively shot out at the crash bar of the exit door; in less than five seconds he and Joel were alone in the alley. “Que se passe-t-il? Où est le général?… Where?”

  “Here! He said to wait here. You. You’re to wait here! Ici!”

  “Arrêtez!” The man was recovering. He stood his ground. Thrusting his left hand out, he pushed Converse back against the wall. With his right hand he reached into his overcoat.

  “Don’t!” Joel dropped his attaché case, gripping his suitcase and pulling it up in front of him, about to rush forward. He stopped. The man did not pull out a gun; instead, what he had was a thin rectangular object bound in black leather, from which a long metallic needle rose from the narrow flat top. An antenna … a radio!

  All thought was blurred for Converse, but he knew he had to act instantly—only motion counted. He could not permit the man to use that radio, alerting those with other radios elsewhere in the hotel. With a sudden surge of strength he rammed his suitcase into the man’s knees, tearing the radio away with his left hand, whipping his right arm out and over the man’s shoulder. He crooked his elbow around the Frenchman’s neck as he spun on the pavement. Then without thinking, he yanked Bertholdier’s soldier forward, so that both of them hurtled toward the wall, and crashed the man’s head into the stone. Blood spread throughout the Frenchman’s skull, matting his hair and streaking down his face in deep-red rivulets. Joel could not think, he could not allow himself to think. If he did, he would be sick and he knew it. Motion, motion!

  The man went limp. Converse angled the unconscious body by the shoulders, propelling it against the wall, shoving it away from the metal door and letting it drop in the farther shadows. He leaned down and picked up the radio; he snapped off the antenna and shoved the case into his pocket. He stood up, confused, frightened, trying to orient himself. Then, grabbing his attaché case and suitcase, he raced breathlessly out of the alley, conscious of the blood that had somehow erupted over part of his face. The taxi was at the curb, the driver smoking a cigarette in the darkness, oblivious to the violence that had taken place only thirty yards away.

  “De Gaulle Airport!” shouted Joel, opening the door and throwing his luggage inside. “Please, I’m in a hurry!” He lurched into the seat, gasping, his neck stretched above the cushioned rim, swallowing the air that would not fill his lungs.

  The rushing lights and shadows that bombarded the interior of the cab served to keep his thoughts suspended, allowing his racing pulse to decelerate and the air to reach him, slowly drying the perspiration at his temples and his neck. He leaned forward, wanting a cigarette but afraid he would vomit from the smoke trapped in his throat. He shut his eyes so tightly a thousand specks of white light assaulted the dark screen of his mind. He felt ill, and he knew it was not simply fear alone that had brought on the nausea. It was something else, something that was in and of itself as paralyzing as fear. He had committed an act of utter brutality, and it both shocked and appalled him. He had actually physically attacked a man, wanting to cripple him, perhaps kill him—which he may very well have done. No matter why, he may have killed another human being! Did the presence of a hand-held radio justify a shattered skull? Did it constitute self-defense? Goddamn it, he was a man of words, of logic, not blood! Never blood, that was in the past,
so long ago and so painful.

  Those memories belonged to another time, to an uncivilized time, when men became what they were not—in order to survive. Converse never wanted to go back. Above all things, he had promised himself he never would, a promise he made when the terror and the violence were all around him, at their shattering worst. He remembered so vividly, with such pain, the final hours before his last escape—and the quiet, generous man without whom he would have died twenty feet down in the earth, a shaft in the ground designed for troublemakers.

  Colonel Sam Abbott, U.S. Air Force, would always be a part of his life no matter how many years might separate them. At the risk of torture and death, Sam had crawled out at night and had thrown a crudely fashioned metal wedge down the “punishment hole”; it was that primitive tool that allowed Joel to build a crude ladder out of earth and rock and finally to freedom. Abbott and he had spent the last twenty-seven months in the same camp, both officers trying to hold together what sanity there was. But Sam understood the burning inside Joel; the Colonel had stayed behind, and during those final hours before breakout, Joel was wracked by the thoughts of what might happen to his friend.

  “Don’t worry about me, sailor. Just keep your minimum wits about you and get rid of that wedge.

  Take care, Sam.

  You take care. This is the last shot you’ve got.

  I know.

  Joel moved over toward the door and rolled down the window several inches more to increase the rush of wind from the highway. Christ, he needed Sam Abbott’s quiet objectivity now! His lawyer’s mind told him to get hold of himself; he had to think and his thoughts had to stimulate whatever imagination he had. First things first. Think! The radio—he had to get rid of the radio. But not at the airport—it might be found in the airport; it was evidence, and worse, a means of tracing him. He rolled the window further down and threw it out, his eyes on the rearview mirror above the windshield. The driver glanced up at him, saw the bloody face but showed no alarm; Joel took repeated deep breaths and then rolled the window back up. Think. He had to think! Bertholdier expected him to go from Paris to Bonn and when the general’s soldier was found—and he had undoubtedly been found by now—all flights to Bonn would be watched, whether the man was alive or dead.

  He would buy a ticket for somewhere else, someplace where connections to Cologne-Bonn were accessible on a regular basis. As the stream of air cooled his face it occurred to him to remove the handkerchief from his breast pocket and wipe away the moist blood that covered his right cheek and lower chin.

  “Scandinavian Air Lines,” he said, raising his voice to the driver. “SAS. Do you … comprends?”

  “Very clearly, monsieur,” said the bereted man behind the wheel in good English. “Do you have a reservation for Stockholm, Oslo, or Copenhagen? They are different gates.”

  “I’m … I’m not sure.”

  “We have time, monsieur. At least fifteen minutes.”

  The voice over the telephone from London was frigid, the words and the delivery an impersonal rebuke. “There is no attorney by that name in Chicago, and certainly not at the address you gave me. In fact, the address does not exist. Do you have something else to offer, or do we put this down as one of your more paranoid fantasies, mon général?”

  “You are a fool, l’Anglais, with no more comprehension than a frightened rabbit. I heard what I heard!”

  “From whom? A nonexistent man?”

  “A nonexistent man who has put my aide in a hospital! A fractured skull with a great loss of blood and severe brain damage. He may not live, and if he does, he will no doubt be a vegetable. Speak to me not of fantasies, daffodil. The man is real.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Call the hospital! L’hôpital Saint-Jérôme. Let the doctors tell you.”

  “All right, all right, compose yourself. We must think.”

  “I am perfectly composed,” said Bertholdier, getting up from the desk in his study and carrying the phone to the window, the extension cord snaking across the floor. He looked out; it had begun to rain, the street lights diffused in the spattered glass. “He’s on his way to Bonn,” continued the general. “It was his next stop, he was very clear about it.”

  “Intercept him. Call Bonn, reach Cologne, give them his description. How many flights can there be from Paris with a lone American on board? Take him at the airport.”

  Bertholdier sighed audibly into the phone, his tone one of discouragement bordering on disgust. “It was never my intention to take him. It would serve no purpose and probably cut us off from what we have to learn. I want him followed. I want to know where he goes, whom he calls, whom he meets with; these are the things we must learn.”

  “You said he made a direct reference to our associate. That he was going to reach him.”

  “Not our people. His people.”

  “I’ll say it again,” insisted the voice from London. “Call Cologne, reach Bonn. Listen to me, Jacques, he can be found, and once he is, he can be followed.”

  “Yes, yes, I’ll do as you say, but it may not be as easy as you think. Three hours ago I would have thought otherwise, but that was before I knew what he was capable of. Someone who can take another man and rush that man’s head into a stone wall at full force is either an animal, a maniac, or a zealot who will stop at nothing. In my judgment, he is the last. He said he had a commitment—and it was in his eyes. And he’ll be clever; he’s already proven he can be clever.”

  “You say three hours?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then he may already be in Bonn.”

  “I know.”

  “Have you called our associate?”

  “Yes, he’s not at home and the maid could not give me another number. She doesn’t know where he is, or when he’s expected.”

  “Probably in the morning.”

  “No doubt.… Attendez! There was another man at the club this afternoon. With Luboque and this Simon, whose name is not Simon. He brought him to Luboque! Good-bye, l’Anglais. I’ll keep you informed.”

  René Mattilon opened his eyes. The streaks of light on the ceiling seemed to shimmer, myriad tiny clots bursting, breaking up the linear patterns. Then he heard the sound of the rain on the windows and understood. The shafts of light from the streetlamps had been intercepted by the glass, distorting the images he knew so well. It was the rain, he concluded; that was what had awakened him. That and perhaps the weight of his wife’s hand between his legs. She stirred and he smiled, trying to make up his mind—or find the energy—to reach for her. She had filled a void for him he had thought would always be there after his first wife died. He was grateful, and along with his feeling of gratitude came excitement, two emotions satisfyingly compatible. He was becoming aroused; he rolled over on his side and pulled down the covers, revealing the swell of her breasts encased in laced silk, the diffused light and the pounding on the windows heightening the sensuality. He reached for her.

  Suddenly, there was another sound besides the rain, and though still wrapped in the mists of sleep he recognized it. Quickly he withdrew his hand and turned away from his wife. He had heard that noise only moments before; it was the sound that had awakened him, an insistent tone that had broken the steady rhythm of the downpour: the chimes of his apartment doorbell.

  Mattilon climbed out of bed as carefully as he could, reaching for his bathrobe on a nearby chair and sliding his feet into his slippers. He walked out of the bedroom, closing the door quietly behind him, and found the wall switch that turned on the lamps in the living room. He glanced at the ornate clock on the fireplace mantel; it was nearly two-thirty in the morning. Who could possibly be calling on them at this hour? He tied the sash around his robe and walked to the door.

  “Yes, who is it?”

  “Sûreté, monsieur. Inspector Prudhomme. My state identification is zero-five-seven-two-zero.” The man’s accent was Gascon, not Parisian. It was often said that Gascons made the best police officials. “I shall wait
while you call my station, monsieur. The telephone number is—”

  “No need,” said Mattilon, alarmed, unlatching the door. He knew the man was genuine not only from the information offered, but anyone from the Sûreté calling on him at this hour would know he was an attorney. The Sûreté was legally circumspect.

  There were two men, both in raincoats spotted by the downpour, their hats drenched; one was older than the other and shorter. Each held out an open identification card for René’s inspection. He waved the cards aside and gestured for the two men to come in, adding, “It’s an odd time for visitors, gentlemen. You must have pressing business.”

  “Very pressing, monsieur,” said the older man, entering first. He was the one who had spoken through the door, giving his name as Prudhomme, and was obviously the senior. “We apologize for the inconvenience, of course.” Both men removed their hats.

  “Of course. May I take your coats?”

  “It won’t be necessary, monsieur. With your cooperation we’ll only be a few minutes.”

  “And I shall be most interested to know how I can cooperate with the Sûreté at this time of night.”

  “A matter of identification, sir. Monsieur Serge Antoine Luboque is a client of yours, we are informed. Is this so?”

  “My God, has something happened to Serge? I was with him only this afternoon!”

  “Monsieur Luboque appears to be in excellent health. We left his country house barely an hour ago. And to the point, it is your meeting with him this afternoon—yesterday afternoon—that concerns the Sûreté.”

  “In what way?”

  “There was a third party at your table. Like yourself, an attorney, introduced to Monsieur Luboque—a man named Simon. Henry Simon, an American.”

  “And a pilot,” said Mattilon warily. “With considerable expertise in aircraft litigation. I trust Luboque explained that; it was the reason he was there at my request. Monsieur Luboque is the plaintiff in just such a lawsuit. That, of course, is all I can say on the subject.”