The Aquitaine Progression: A Novel

by Robert Ludlum

  “That’s not good enough!” cried Converse. “Not after Paris! Not after the airport last night! I’m not stupid!”

  “I didn’t get the impression he thought you were,” replied the actor. “He told me to tell you something; he thought it might convince you.”

  “What is it?”

  “I hope I get this right; I don’t even like saying it.… He said to tell you a judge named Anstett was killed last night in New York. He thinks you’re being cut loose.”

  8

  The Alter Zoll, the ancient tower that had once been part of Bonn’s southern fortress on the Rhine—razed to the ground three centuries ago—was now a tollhouse standing on a green lawn dotted with antique cannons, relics of a might that had slipped away through the squabblings of emperors and kings, priests and princes. A winding mosaic wall of red and gray stone overlooked the massive river below where boats of various descriptions plowed furrows in the open water, caressing the shorelines on both sides, diligent and somber in their appointed rounds; no Lake Geneva here, far less the blue-green waters of the mischievous Como. Yet in the distance was a sight envied by people the world over: the Siebengebirge, the seven mountains of Westerwald, magnificent in their intrusions on the skyline.

  Joel stood by the low wall, trying to focus on the view, hoping it would calm him, but the exercise was futile. The beauty before him was lost, it would not distract him from his thoughts; nothing could.… Lucas Anstett, Second Circuit Court of Appeals, judge extraordinary and intermediary between one Joel Converse and his employers and an unknown man in San Francisco. Outside of that unknown man and a retired scholar on the island of Mykonos, the only other person who knew what he was doing and why. How in the space of eighteen hours or less could he have been found? Found and killed!

  “Converse?”

  Joel turned, whipping his head over his shoulder, his body rigid. Standing twenty feet away on the far edge of a graveled path was a sandy-haired man several years younger than Converse, in his early to mid thirties; his was a boyish face that would grow old slowly and remain young long after its time. He was also shorter than Joel, but not by much—perhaps five ten or eleven—and dressed in light-gray trousers and a cord jacket, his white shirt open at the neck.

  “Who are you?” asked Converse hoarsely.

  A couple strolled between them on the path as the younger man jerked his head to his left, gesturing for Joel to follow him onto the lawn beyond. Converse did so, joining him by the huge iron wheel of a bronze cannon.

  “All right, who are you?” repeated Joel.

  “My sister’s name is Meagen,” said the sandy-haired man. “And so neither one of us makes a mistake, you tell me who I am.”

  “How the hell …?” Converse stopped, the words coming back to him, words whispered by a dying man in Geneva. Oh, Christ! Meg, the kids … “ ‘Meg, the kids,’ ” he said out loud. “Fowler called his wife Meg.”

  “Short for Meagen, and she was Halliday’s wife—only, you knew him as Fowler.”

  “You’re Avery’s brother-in-law.”

  “Press’s brother-in-law,” corrected the man, extending his hand. “Connal Fitzpatrick,” he added.

  “Then we’re on the same side.”

  “I hope so.”

  “I’ve got a lot of questions to ask you, Connal.”

  “No more than I’ve got for you, Converse.”

  “Are we going to start off belligerently?” asked Joel, noting the harsh use of his own last name and releasing Fitzpatrick’s hand.

  The younger man blinked, then reddened, embarrassed. “Sorry,” he said. “I’m one angry brother—on both sides—and I haven’t had much sleep. I’m still on San Diego time.”

  “San Diego? Not San Francisco?”

  “Navy. I’m a lawyer stationed at the naval base there.”

  “Whew,” whistled Converse softly. “It’s a small world.”

  “I know all about the geography,” agreed Fitzpatrick. “And also you, Lieutenant. How do you think Press got his information? Of course, I wasn’t in San Diego then, but I had friends.”

  “Nothing’s sacred, then.”

  “You’re wrong; everything is. I had to pull some very thick strings to get that stuff. It was about five months ago when Press came to me and we made our … I guess you’d call it the contract between us.”

  “Clarification, please.”

  The naval officer placed a hand on the barrel of the cannon. “Press Halliday wasn’t just my brother-in-law, he came to be my best friend, closer than any blood brother, I think.”

  “And you with the militaristic hordes?” asked Joel, only half joking, a point of information on the line.

  Fitzpatrick smiled awkwardly, boyishly. “That’s part of it, actually. He stood by me when I wanted to go for it. The services need lawyers too, but the law schools don’t tell you much about that. It’s not where they’re going to get any endowments from. Me, I happen to like the Navy, and I like the life—and the challenges, I guess you’d call them.”

  “Who objected?”

  “Who didn’t? In both our families the pirates—who go back to skimming the earthquake victims—have always been attorneys. The two current old men knew Press and I got along and saw the writing they wrote on their own wall. Here’s this sharp Wasp and this good Catholic boy; now, if they ring in a Jew and a light-skinned black and maybe even a not-too-offensive gay, they’ve got half the legal market in San Francisco in their back pockets.”

  “What about the Chinese and the Italians?”

  “Certain country clubs still have remnants of the old school ties in their lockers. Why soil the fabric? Deals are made on the fairways, the accent on ‘ways,’ not ‘fair.’ ”

  “And you didn’t want anything to do with that, counselor?”

  “Neither did Press, that’s why he went international. Old Jack Halliday pissed bright red when Press began corraling all those foreign clients; then purple when he added a lot of U.S. sharks who wanted to operate overseas. But old Jack couldn’t complain; his wild-eyed stepson was adding considerably to the bottom line.”

  “And you went happily into uniform,” said Converse watching Fitzpatrick’s eyes, Fitzpatrick’s eyes, impressed by the candor he saw in them.

  “Back into uniform, and very happy—with Press’s blessings, legal and otherwise.”

  “You were fond of him, weren’t you?”

  Connal lifted his hand off the cannon. “I loved him, Converse. Just as I love my sister. That’s why I’m here. That’s the contract.”

  “Incidentally,” said Joel kindly, “speaking of your sister, even if I were somebody else I could easily have found out her name was Meagan.”

  “I’m sure you could have; it was in the papers.”

  “Then it wasn’t much of a test.”

  “Press never called her Meagen in his life, except for that one phrase in the wedding ceremony. It was always ‘Meg.’ I would have asked you about that somehow, and if you were lying I’d have known it. I’m very good on direct.”

  “I believe you. What’s the contract between you and … Press?”

  “Let’s walk,” said Fitzpatrick, and as they strolled toward the wall with the winding river below and the seven mountains of Westerwald in the distance, Connal began. “Press came to me and said he was into something pretty heavy and he couldn’t let it go. He’d come across information that tied a number of well-known men—or once well-known men—together in an organization that could do a lot of harm to a lot of people in a lot of countries. He was going to stop it, stop them, but he had to go outside the usual courtroom ballparks to do it—do it legally.

  “I asked the normal questions: Was he involved, culpable, that sort of thing, and he said no, not in any indictable sense, but he couldn’t be sure whether or not he was entirely safe. Naturally, I said he was crazy; he should take his information to the authorities and let them handle it.”

  “Which is exactly what I told him,” interrup
ted Converse.

  Fitzpatrick stopped walking and turned to Joel. “He said it was more complicated than that.”

  “He was right.”

  “I find that hard to believe.”

  “He’s dead. Believe it.”

  “That’s no answer!”

  “You didn’t ask a question,” said Converse. “Let’s walk. Go on. Your contract.”

  Bewilderment on his face, the naval officer began. “It was very simple,” he continued. “He told me he would keep me up to date whenever he traveled, letting me know if he was seeing anyone related to his major concern—that’s what we called it, his ‘major concern.’ Also anything else that could be helpful if … if … goddamn it, if!”

  “If what?”

  Fitzpatrick stopped again, his voice harsh. “If anything happened to him!”

  Converse let the emotion of the moment pass. “And he told you he was going to Geneva to see me. The man who knew Avery Preston Fowler Halliday as Avery Fowler roughly twenty-odd years ago in school.”

  “Yes. We’d been over that before when I got him the security material on you. He said the time was right, the circumstances right. By the way, he thought you were the best.” Connal permitted himself a brief uncomfortable smile. “Almost as good as he was.”

  “I wasn’t,” said Joel, a half-smile returned. “I’m still trying to figure out his position on some Class B stock in the merger.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. What about Lucas Anstett? I want to hear about that.”

  “It’s in two parts. Press said they’d worked through the judge to spring you if you’d agree to take on the—”

  “They? Who’s they?”

  “I don’t know. He never told me.”

  “Goddamn it! Sorry, go ahead.”

  “That Anstett had talked to your firm’s senior partners and they said okay if you said okay. That’s part one. Part two is a personal idiosyncrasy; I’m a news freak, and like most of my ilk, I’m tuned into the hourly AFR.”

  “Clarification.”

  “Armed Forces Radio. Oddly enough, it’s probably got the best news coverage on the air; it pools all the networks. I have one of those small transistorized jobs with a couple of shortwave bands I pack when I’m traveling.”

  “I used to do that,” said Converse. “For the BBC, mainly because I don’t speak French—or anything else for that matter.”

  “They’ve got good coverage, but they shift bands too much. Anyway, I had AFR on early this morning and heard the story, such as it was.”

  “What was it?”

  “Short on details. His apartment on Central Park South was broken into around two in the morning, New York time. There were signs of a struggle and he was shot in the head.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Not quite. According to a housekeeper, nothing was taken, so robbery was ruled out. That’s it.”

  “Jesus. I’ll call Larry Talbot. He may have more information. There wasn’t anything else?”

  “Only a quick sketch of a brilliant jurist. The point is, nothing was taken.”

  “I understand that,” broke in Joel. “I’ll talk to Talbot.” They started walking again, south along the wall. “Last night,” continued Converse, “why did you tell Dowling you were an embassy man? You must have been at the airport.”

  “I’d been at that airport for seven hours going from counter to counter asking for passenger information, trying to find out what plane you were on.”

  “You knew I was on my way to Bonn?”

  “Beale thought you were.”

  “Beale?” asked Joel, startled. “Mykonos?”

  “Press gave me his name and the number but said I wasn’t to use either unless the worst happened.” Fitzpatrick paused. “The worst happened,” he added.

  “What did Beale tell you?”

  “That you went to Paris, and as he understood it, you were going to Bonn next.”

  “What else?”

  “Nothing. He said he accepted my credentials, as he called them, because I had his name and knew how to reach him; only Press could have given me that information. But anything else I’d have to learn from you, if you felt there was something to tell me. He was pretty damned cold.”

  “He had no choice.”

  “Although he did say that in case I couldn’t find you, he wanted to see me on Mykonos before I began raising my voice … ‘for everything Mr. Halliday stood for.’ That’s the way he put it. I was going to give you two more days to get here, if I could hold up.”

  “Then what? Mykonos?”

  “I’m not sure. I figured I’d call Beale again, but he’d have to tell me a lot more than he did to convince me.”

  “And if he didn’t? Or couldn’t?”

  “Then I’d have flown straight to Washington and gone to whomever the top floor of the Navy Department suggested. If you think for one goddamned minute I’m going to let this thing pass for what it isn’t, you’re wrong and so is Beale.”

  “If you’d have made that clear to him, he would have come up with something. You’d have gone to Mykonos.” Converse reached into his shirt pocket for his cigarettes; he offered one to Fitzpatrick, who shook his head. “Avery didn’t smoke either,” said Joel aimlessly as he snapped his lighter. “Sorry … Press.” He inhaled.

  “It’s okay; that name’s how I got you to see me.”

  “Let’s go back to that a minute. There’s a slight inconsistency in your testimony, counselor. Let’s clear it up—just so neither one of us makes a mistake.”

  “I don’t know what you think you’re crowding in on, but go ahead.”

  “You said you were going to give me two more days to get here, is that right?”

  “Yes, if I could make arrangements, get some sleep and hold up.”

  “How did you know I didn’t get here two days before you did?”

  Fitzpatrick glanced at Joel. “I’ve been a legal officer in the Navy for the past eight years, both as defense counsel and as judge advocate in any number of situations—not always courts-martial. They’ve taken me to most of the countries where Washington has reciprocal legal agreements.”

  “That’s a mouthful, but I’m not in the Navy.”

  “You were, but I wasn’t going to use it if I didn’t have to, and I didn’t. I flew into Düsseldorf, showed my naval papers to the Inspektor of immigration, and asked for his cooperation. There are seven international airports in West Germany. It took roughly five minutes with the computers to find out that you hadn’t entered any of them during the past three days, which was all I was concerned about.”

  “But then you had to get to Cologne-Bonn.”

  “I was there in forty minutes and called him back. No Converse had been admitted, and unless you were crossing the border incognito—which I suspect I know more about than you do—you had to fly in sooner or later.”

  “You’re tenacious.”

  “I’ve given you my reasons.”

  “What about Dowling and that embassy routine at the hotel.”

  “Lufthansa had you listed on the passenger manifest from Hamburg—you’ll never know how relieved I was. I hung around the counter in case there was a delay or anything like that when these three embassy guys showed up flashing their ID’s, the head man speaking rotten German.”

  “You could tell?”

  “I speak German—and French, Italian, and Spanish. I have to deal with different nationalities.”

  “I’ll let that pass.”

  “I suppose that’s why I’m a lieutenant commander at thirty-four. They move me around a lot.”

  “Pass again. What caught you about the embassy people?”

  “Your name, naturally. They wanted confirmation that you were on flight Eight-seventeen. The clerk sort of glanced at me and I shook my head; he cooperated without a break in his conversation. You see, I’d given him a few deutsche marks but that wasn’t it. These people don’t really dig the official U.S. over here.”
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  “I heard that last night. From Dowling. How did he come up?”

  “Dowling himself, but later. When the plane arrived I stood at the rear of the baggage claim; the embassy boys were by the entrance to the gates about fifty feet away. We all waited until there was only one piece of luggage on the conveyor belt. It was yours, but you never showed up. Finally a woman came out and the embassy contingent surrounded her, everyone excited, upset. I heard your name mentioned, but that’s all I heard because by that time I had decided to go back and speak to the clerk.”

  “To see if I’d really been on the plane?” asked Converse. “Or whether I turned out to be a no-show.”

  “Yes,” agreed Fitzpatrick. “He was cute; he made me feel like I was suborning a juror. I paid him, and he told me this Caleb Dowling—whom I think I was expected to know—had stopped at the desk before going out to the platform.”

  “Where he left instructions,” said Joel, interrupting quietly.

  “How did you know?”

  “I picked up a set at the hotel.”

  “That was it, the hotel. Dowling told him he’d met this lawyer on the plane, a fellow American named Converse who’d sat with him since Copenhagen. He was worried that his new friend might not have accommodations in Bonn, and if he asked Lufthansa for suggestions, the clerk should send him to the Königshof Hotel.”

  “So you totaled up the figures and decided to become one of the embassy people who’d lost me,” said Converse, smiling. “To confront Dowling. Who among us hasn’t taken advantage of a hostile witness?”

  “Exactly. I showed him my naval ID and told him I was an attaché. Frankly, he wasn’t very cooperative.”

  “And you weren’t very convincing, according to his theatrical critique. Neither was I. Strangely enough, that’s why he got us together.” Joel stopped, crushed out his cigarette against the wall and threw it over the stone. “All right, Commander, you’ve passed muster or roster or whatever the hell you call it. Where do we stand? You speak the language and you’ve got government connections I don’t have. You could help.”