The Aquitaine Progression: A Novel

by Robert Ludlum

  “English? Do you speak English?”

  “Englisch? Nein.”

  The second cabdriver was equally negative, but the third was not. “As you Americans say, only the asshole would drive a taxi here wizzout the English reasonable. Is so?”

  “It’s reasonable,” said Joel, opening the door.

  “Nein! You cannot do that!”

  “Do what?”

  “Come in the taxi.”

  “Why not?”

  “The line. Allviss is the line.”

  Converse reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew a folded layer of deutsche marks. “I’m generous. Can you understand that?”

  “Is also urgent sickness. Get in, mein Herr.”

  The cab pulled out of the line and sped toward the exit road. “Bonn or Köln?” asked the driver.

  “Bonn,” replied Converse, “but not yet. I want you to drive into the other lane and stop across the way in front of that parking lot.”

  “Was …?”

  “The other lane. I want to watch the entrance back there. I think there was someone on the Hamburg plane I know.”

  “Many have come out. Only those with luggage—”

  “She’s still inside,” insisted Joel. “Please, just do as I say.”

  “She?… Ach, ein Fräulein. Ist ja Ihr Geld, mein Herr.”

  The driver swung the cab into a cutoff that led to the incoming road and the parking lot. He stopped in the shadows beyond the second booth; the terminal doors were on the left, no more than a hundred yards away. Converse watched as weary passengers, carrying assorted suitcases, golf bags, and the ever-present camera equipment, began, to file out of the terminal’s entrance, most raising their hands for taxis, a few walking across the pedestrian lanes toward the parking lot.

  Twelve minutes passed and still there was no sign of the woman from Copenhagen. She could not have been carrying luggage, so the delay was deliberate, or instructed. The driver of the cab had assumed the role of nonobserver; he had turned off the lights and, with a bowed head, appeared to be dozing. Silence.… Across the parallel roads, the travelers from Hamburg had dwindled. Several young men, undoubtedly students, two in cut-off jeans, their companions drinking from cans of beer, were laughing as they counted the deutsche marks between them. A yawning businessman in a three-piece suit struggled with a bulging suitcase and an enormous cardboard box wrapped in a floral print, while an elderly couple argued, their dispute emphasized by two shaking heads of gray hair. Five others, men and women, were by the curb at the far end of the platform apparently waiting for prearranged transportation. But where …

  Suddenly she was there, but she was not alone. Instead, she was flanked by two men, a third directly behind her. All four walked slowly, casually, out of the automatic glass doors, moving to the left, their pace quickening until they reached the dimmest area of the canopied entrance. Then the three men angled themselves in front of the woman, as if mounting a wall of protection, their heads turning, talking to her over their shoulders while studying the crowd. Their conversation became animated but controlled, anger joining confusion, tempers held in check. The man on the right broke away and crossed to the corner of the building, then walked beyond into the shadows. He pulled an object out of an inside pocket and Joel instantly knew what it was; the man raised it to his lips. He was talking by radio to someone in or around the airport.

  Barely seconds passed when the beams of powerful headlights burst through the glass over Converse’s right shoulder, filling the back of the taxi. He pressed himself into the seat, his head turned, neck arched, his face at the edge of the rear window. Beyond, by the exit booth of the parking lot, a dark-red limousine had stopped, the driver’s arm extended, a bill clutched in his hand. The attendant took the money, turning to make change, when the large car lurched forward leaving the man in the booth bewildered. It careened around the taxi and headed for the curve in the road that led to the airport terminal’s entrance. The timing was too precise; radio contact had been made and Joel spoke to the driver.

  “I told you I was generous,” he said, startled by the words he was forming in his head. “I can be very generous if you’ll do as I ask you to.”

  “I am an honest man,” replied the German, uncertainty in his voice, his eyes looking at Joel in the rearview mirror.

  “So am I,” said Converse. “But I’m also honestly curious, and there’s nothing wrong with that. You see the dark-red car over there, the one that’s stopping at the corner of the building?”

  “Ja.”

  “Do you think you could follow it without being seen? You’d have to stay pretty far behind, but keep it in sight. Could you do it?”

  “Is not a reasonable request. How generous is the Amerikaner?”

  “Two hundred deutsche marks over the fare.”

  “You are generous, and I am a superior driver.”

  The German did not underestimate his talents behind the wheel. Skillfully he weaved the cab unobtrusively through a cutoff, swinging abruptly left into the parallel exit road and bypassing the entrance to the terminal.

  “What are you doing?” asked Joel, confused. “I want you to follow—”

  “Is only way out,” interrupted the driver, glancing back at the airport platform while maintaining moderate speed. “I shall let him pass me. I am just one more insignificant taxi on the autobahn.”

  Converse sank back into the corner of the seat, his head away from the windows. “That’s reasonably good thinking,” he said.

  “Superior, mein Herr.” Again the driver looked briefly back out the window, then concentrated on the road and the rearview mirror. Moments later he gradually accelerated his speed; it was not noticeable; there was no breaking away, instead merely a faster pace. He eased to the left, passing a Mercedes coupe, staying in the lane to overtake a Volkswagen, then returning to the right.

  “I hope you know what you’re doing,” muttered Joel.

  No reply was necessary as the dark-red vehicle streaked by on the left.

  “Directly ahead the road separates,” said the driver. “One way to Köln, the other to Bonn. You say you are going to Bonn, but what if your friend goes to Köln?”

  “Stay with him.”

  The limousine entered the road for Bonn and Converse lighted a cigarette, his thoughts on the reality of having been found, which meant his name was known from the passenger manifest. So be it; he would have preferred otherwise, but once the initial contact had been made with Bertholdier it was not a vital point. He could operate as himself; his past might even be an asset. Also, there was a positive side to the immediate situation; he had learned something—several things. Those following him—who now had lost him—were no part of the authorities; they were not connected with either the German or the French police, or the coordinating Interpol. If they were, they would have taken him at the gate or on the plane itself, and that told him something else. Joel Converse was not wanted for assault or—God forbid—murder back in Paris. And this assumption could only lead to a third probability: the violent, bloody struggle in the alley was being covered up. Jacques-Louis Bertholdier was taking no chances that because of his severely wounded aide his own name might surface in any connection whatsoever with a wealthy guest of the hotel who had made such alarming insinuations to the revered general. The protection of Aquitaine was paramount.

  There was a fourth possibility, so realistically arrived at it could be considered fact. The men in the dark-red limousine who had met the Hamburg plane were also part of Aquitaine, underlings of Erich Leifhelm, the spoke of Aquitaine in West Germany. Sometime during the last five hours, Bertholdier had learned the identity of the ersatz Henry Simon—probably through the management of the George V—and contacted Leifhelm. Then, both alarmed that no passenger manifest listed an American named Converse flying from Paris to Bonn, they had checked the other airlines and found he had gone to Copenhagen. The alarms must have been strident. Why Copenhagen? He said he was going to Bonn. Why did
this strange man with his extraordinary information go to Copenhagen? Who are his contacts, whom will he meet? Find him. Find them! Another phone call had been made, a description given, and a woman had stared at him in a café in the Kastrup Airport. It was all so through-the-looking-glass.

  He had flown to Denmark for one reason, but another purpose had been served. They had found him, but in the finding they had revealed their own panic. An agitated reception committee, the use of a radio at night to reach an unseen vehicle only a few hundred feet away, a racing limousine: these were the ingredients of anxiety. The enemy was off-balance and the lawyer in Converse was satisfied. At this moment that enemy was a quarter of a mile down the road, speeding into Bonn, unaware that a taxi behind them, skillfully maneuvered by a driver slipping around the intermittent traffic, was keeping them in sight.

  Joel crushed out his cigarette as the driver slowed down to let a pickup truck pass. He could see the large dark-red car ahead on the long curve. The German was no amateur; he knew the moves to make, and Converse understood. Whoever was in that limousine might well be an influential owner, and even two hundred deutsche marks were not worth the probable enmity of a powerful man.

  Probabilities … everything was probabilities. He had built his legal reputation on the study of probabilities, and it was a simpler process than most of his colleagues believed. The approach, that is, was simple, not the work; that was never easy. It demanded the dual discipline of concentrating on the minute and prodding the imagination to expand until the minutiae were arranged and rearranged into dozens of different equations. This exhaustive what-if process was the keystone of legal thinking; it was as simple as that. It was also a verbal trap, Joel reflected, as he thought back several years, smiling an uncomfortable smile alone in the darkness. In one of her moments of pique, Val had told him that if he would spend one iota of the time on the two of them that he spent on his “goddamned probabilities,” he would “probably” come to realize that the “probability” of their surviving together was “very probably nil.”

  She had never lacked for being succinct, nor sacrificed her humor in the pursuit of candor. Her striking looks aside, Valerie Charpentier Converse was a very funny lady. Unable not to, he had smiled at her explosion that night years ago, then they both had laughed quietly until she turned away and left the room, too much sadness in the truth she had spoken.

  Large picturesque buildings gradually replaced the quiet countryside, reminding Converse of huge Victorian houses with filigreed borders and overhanging eaves and grilled balconies beneath large rectangular windows—stark geometric shapes. These in turn gave way to a contradictory stretch of attractive but perfectly ordinary residential homes, the sort that could be found in any traditional wealthy suburb on the outskirts of a major American city. Scarsdale, Chevy Chase, Grosse Pointe or Evanston. Then came the center of Bonn where narrow, gaslit streets ran into wider avenues with modern lighting, quaint squares only blocks away from banks of contemporary stores and boutiques. It was an architectural anachronism—Old World ambience coexisting with up-to-the-minute structures, but with no sense of a city, no sense of electricity or grandeur. Instead it appeared to be a large town, growing rapidly larger, the town fathers uncertain of its direction. The birthplace of Beethoven and the gateway to the Rhine Valley was the most unlikely capital imaginable of a major government. It was anything but the seat of a hard-nosed Bundestag and a series of astute, sophisticated prime ministers who faced the Russian bear across the borders.

  “Mein Herr!” cried the driver. “They take the road to Bad Godesberg. Das Diplomatenviertel.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Embassies. They have Polizeistreifen! Patrols. We could be, how do you say, known?”

  “Spotted,” explained Joel. “Never mind. Do what you’ve been doing, you’re great. Stop, if you have to; park, if you have to. Then keep going. You now have three hundred deutsche marks over the fare. I want to know where they stop.”

  It came six minutes later, and Converse was stunned. Whatever he had thought, wherever his imagination had led him, he was not prepared for the driver’s words.

  “That is the American embassy, mein Herr.”

  Joel tried to focus his thoughts. “Take me to the Hotel Königshof,” he said, remembering, not knowing what else to say.

  “Yes, I believe Herr Dowling left a note to that effect,” said the desk clerk, reaching below the counter.

  “He did?” Converse was astonished. He had used the actor’s name in the outside hope of some possible preferential treatment. He expected nothing else, if indeed that.

  “Here it is.” The clerk extracted two small telephone memos from the thin stack in his hand. “You are John Converse, an American attorney.”

  “Close enough. That’s me.”

  “Herr Dowling said you might have difficulty finding appropriate accommodations here in Bonn. Should you come to the Königshof tonight, he requested that we be as helpful as possible. It is possible, Herr Converse. Herr Dowling is a very popular man.”

  “He deserves to be,” said Joel.

  “I see he also left a message for you.”

  The clerk turned and retrieved a sealed envelope from one of the mailboxes behind him. He handed it to Converse, who opened it.

  Hi, pardner.

  If you don’t pick this up, I’ll get it back in the morning. Forgive me, but you sounded like too many of my less fortunate colleagues who say no when they want to say yes. Now collectively in their case, it’s some kind of warped pride because they think I’m suggesting a handout—it’s either that or they don’t want to meet someone who may be where I’m going. By the looks of you, I’d have to rule out the former and stick with the latter. There’s someone you don’t want to meet here in Bonn, and you don’t have to. The room’s taken care of and in my name—change that if you like—but don’t argue about the bill. I owe you a fee, counselor, and I always pay my debts. At least during the last four years I have.

  Incidentally, you’d make a lousy actor. Your pauses aren’t at all convincing.

  Pa Ratchet

  Joel put the note back in the envelope, resisting the temptation to go to a house phone and call Dowling. The man would have little enough sleep before going to work; thanks could wait until morning. Or evening.

  “Mr. Dowling’s arrangements are generous and completely satisfactory,” he said to the clerk behind the counter. “He’s right. If my clients knew I’d come to Bonn a day early, I’d have no chance to enjoy your beautiful city.”

  “Your privacy will be respected, sir. Herr Dowling is a most thoughtful man, as well as generous, of course. Your luggage is outside with a taxi, perhaps?”

  “No, that’s why I’m so late. It was put on the wrong plane out of Hamburg and will be here in the morning. At least that’s what I was told at the airport.”

  “Ach, so inconvenient, but all too familiar. Is there anything you might require?”

  “No, thanks,” replied Converse, raising his attaché case slightly. “The bare necessities travel with me.… Well, there is one thing. Would it be possible to order a drink?”

  “Of course.”

  Joel sat up in bed, the dossier at his side, the drink in his hand. He needed a few minutes to think before going back into the world of Field Marshal Erich Leifhelm. With the help of the switchboard, he had called the all-night number for Lufthansa and had been assured that his suitcase would be held for him at the airport. He gave no explanation other than the fact that he had been traveling for two days and nights and simply did not care to wait for his luggage. The attendant could read into his words whatever she liked; he did not care. His mind was on other things.

  The American embassy! What appalled him was the stark reality of old Beale’s words.… Behind it all are those who do the convincing, and they’re growing in numbers everywhere.… We’re in the countdown … three to five weeks, that’s all you’ve got.… It’s real and it’s coming. Joel was not
prepared for the reality. He could accept Delavane and Bertholdier, certainly Leifhelm, but the shock of knowing that ordinary embassy personnel—American personnel—were on the receiving end of orders from Delavane’s network was paralyzing. How far had Aquitaine progressed? How widespread were its followers, its influence? Was tonight the frightening answer to both questions? He would think about it all in the morning. First, he had to be prepared for the man he had come to find in Bonn. As he reached for the dossier he remembered the sudden deep panic in Avery Fowler’s eyes—Preston Halliday’s eyes. How long had he known? How much had he known?

  It is pointless to recount Erich Leifhelm’s exploits in the early to middle years of the war other than to say his reputation grew, and—what is most important—he was one of the very few superior officers to come up through Nazi party ranks accepted by the old-line professional generals. Not only did they accept him but they sought him out for their commands. Men like Rundstedt and Von Falkenhausen, Rommel and von Treskow; at one time or another each asked Berlin for Leifhelm’s services. He was unquestionably a brilliant strategist and a daring officer, but there was something else. These generals were aristocrats, part of the ruling class of prewar Germany, and by and large loathed the National Socialists, considering them thugs, exhibitionists and amateurs. It is not difficult to imagine Leifhelm, sitting among these men, modestly expounding on what was clearly noted in his military record. He was the son of the late prominent Munich surgeon Dr. Heinrich Leifhelm, who had left him considerable wealth and property. We need no conjecture, however, to understand how much further he went to ingratiate himself, for the following is extracted from an interview with General Rolf Winter, Standort-kommandant of the Wehrbereichskommando in the Saar sectors: