no deviation from the accepted norm. The waiter
folded two red napkins into cones and placed one
in front of each.
"What happened?" said Halliday quietly,
rhetorically, after the waiter left. "The beautiful son
of a bitch who was my father embezzled four
hundred thousand from the Chase Manhattan while
he was a trust officer, and when he was caught,
went bang. Who was to know a respected, if trans-
planted, commuter from Greenwich, Connecticut,
had two women in the city, one on the Upper East
Side, the other on Bank Street? He was beautiful."
"He was busy. I still don't understand the Halliday."
After it happened the suicide was covered
up Mother raced back to San Francisco with a
vengeance. We were from California, you know . .
. but then, why would you? With even more
vengeance she married my stepfather, John
THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 9
Halliday, and all traces of Fowler were assiduously
removed during the next few months."
'Even to your first name?"
'No, I was always 'Press' back in San Francisco.
We Californians come up with catchy names. Tab,
Troy, Crotch the 1950's Beverly Hills syndrome. At
Taft, my student ID read 'Avery Preston Fowler,' so
you all just started calling me Avery or that awful
'Ave.' Being a transfer student, I never bothered to
say anything. When in Connecticut, follow the gospel
according to Holden Caulfield."
"That's all well and good," said Converse, "but
what happens when you run into someone like me?
It's bound to happen."
"You'd be surprised how rarely. After all it was
a long time ago, and the people I grew up with in
Caiifornia understood. Kids out there have their
names changed according to matrimonial whim, and
I was in the East for only a couple of years, just long
enough for the fourth and fifth forms at school. I
didn't know anyone in Greenwich to speak of, and I
was hardly part of the old Taft crowd."
"You had friends there. We were friends."
"I didn't have many. Let's face it, I was an
outsider and you weren't particular. I kept a pretty
low profile."
"Not on the mats, you didn't."
Halliday laughed. "Not very many wrestlers
become lawyers, something about mat burns on the
brain. Anyway, to answer your question, only maybe
five or six times over the past ten years has anyone
said to me, 'Hey, aren't you so-and-so and not
whatever you said your name was?' when somebody
did, I told them the truth. 'My mother remarried
when I was sixteen.' "
The coffee and croissants arrived. Joel broke his
pastry in half. "And you thought I'd ask the question
at the wrong time, specifically when I saw you at the
conference. Is that it?"
"Professional courtesy. I didn't want you dwelling
on it or me when you should be thinking about
your client. After all, we tried to lose our virginity
together that night in New Haven."
"Speak for yourself." Joel smiled.
Halliday grinned. "We got pissed and both
admitted it don't you remember? Incidentally, we
swore each other to secrecy while throwing up in the
can."
10 ROBERT LUIlIUM
"Just testing you, counselor.I remember. So you
left the gray-flannel crowd for orange shirts and
gold medallionsP"
"All the way. Berkeley, then across the street to
Stanford."
"Good school.... How come the international field?"
"I liked traveling and figured it was the best way
of paying for it. That's how it started, really. How
about you? I'd think you would have had all the
traveling you ever wanted."
"I had delusions about the foreign service,
diplomatic corps, legal section. That's how it
started."
"After all that traveling you did?"
Converse levered his pale blue eyes at Halliday,
conscious of the coldness in his look. It was
unavoidable, if misplaced as it usually was. "Yes,
after all that traveling. There were too many lies
and no one told us about them until it was too late.
We were conned and it shouldn't have happened."
Halliday leaned forward, his elbows on the table,
hands clasped, his gaze returning Joel's. "I couldn't
figure it," he began softly. "When I read your name
in the papers, then saw you paraded on television,
I felt awful. I didn't really know you that well, but
I liked you."
"It was a natural reaction. I'd have felt the same
way if it had been you."
"I'm not sure you would. You see, I was one of
the honchos of the protest movement."
"You burned your draft card while flaunting the
Yippie label," said Converse gently, the ice gone
from his eyes. "I wasn't that brave."
"Neither was 1. It was an out-of-state library card."
"I'm disappointed."
"So was I in myself. But I was visible." Halliday
leaned back in his chair and reached for his coffee.
"How did you get so visible, Joel? I didn't think you
were the type."
"I wasn't. I was squeezed."
"I thought you said 'conned.'"
"That came later." Converse raised his cup and
sipped his black coffee, uncomfortable with the
direction the conversation had taken. He did not
like discussing those years, and all too frequently he
was called upon to do so. They had made him out
to be someone he was not. "I was a sophomore at
Amherst and not much of a student.... Not much,
hell, I was borderline-negative, and whatever
deferment I had was
THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 11
about to go down the tube. But I'd been Hying since
I was fourteen."
"I didn't know that," interrupted Halliday.
'My father wasn't beautiful and he didn't have
the benefit of concubines, but he was an airline
pilot, later an executive for Pan Am. It was standard
in the Converse household to By before you got your
driver's license."
"Brothers and sisters?'
"A younger sister. She soloed before I did and
she's never let me forget it."
"I remember. She was interviewed on television."
"Only twice," Joel broke in, smiling. "She was on
your turf and didn't give a damn who knew it. The
White House bunker put the word out to stay away
from her. 'Don't tarnish the cause, and check her
mail while you're at it.'"
"That's why I remember her," said Halliday. "So
a lousy student left college and the Navy gained a
hot pilot."
"Not very hot, none of us was. There wasn't that
much to be hot against. Mostly we burned."
"Still, you must have hated people like me back
in the States. Not your sister, of course."
'Her, too," corrected Converse. "Hated, loathed,
despised furious. But only when someon
e was
killed, or went crazy in the camps. Not for what you
were saying we all knew Saigon but because you
said it without any real fear. You were safe, and you
made us feel like assholes. Dumb, frightened
assholes."
"I can understand that."
"So nice of you."
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean it the way it sounded."
"How did it sound, counselor?"
Halliday frowned. "Condescending, I guess."
"No guess," said Joel. "Right on."
"You're still angry."
"Not at you, only the dredging. I hate the subject
and it keeps coming back up.''
"Blame the Pentagon PR. For a while you were
a bona fide hero on the nightly news. What was it,
three escapes? On the first two you got caught and
put on the racks, but on the last one you made it all
by yourself, didn't you? You crawled through a
couple of hundred miles of enemy jungle before you
reached the lines."
"It was barely a hundred and I was goddamned
lucky.
12 ROBERT LUDLUM
With the first two tries I was responsible for killing
eight men. I'm not very proud of that. Can we get to
the Comm Tech-Bern business?"
"Give me a few minutes," said Halliday, shoving
the croissant aside. "Please. I'm not trying to dredge.
There's a point in the back of my mind, if you'll
grant I've got a mind."
"Preston Halliday has one, his rep confirms it.
You're a shark, if my colleagues are accurate. But
I knew someone named Avery, not Press."
"Then it's Fowler talking, you re more
comfortable with him."
"What's the point?"
"A couple of questions first. You see, I want to
be accurate because you ve got a reputation too.
They say you're one of the best on the international
scene, but the people I've talked to can't understand
why Joel Converse stays with a relatively small if
entrenched firm when he's good enough to get
flashier. Or even go out on his own."
"Are you hiring?"
"Not me, I don't take partners. Courtesy of John
Halliday attorney-at-law, San Francisco."
Converse looked at the second half of the
croissant and decided against it. "What was the
question, counselor?"
"Why are you where you're at?"
"I'm paid well and literally run the department;
no one sits on my shoulder. Also I don't care to
take chances. There's a little matter of alimony,
amiable but demanding."
"Child support, too?"
"None, thank heavens."
"What happened when you got out of the Navy?
How did you feel?" Halliday again leaned forward,
his elbow on the table, chin cupped in his hand the
inquisitive student. Or something else.
"Who are the people you've talked to?" asked
Converse.
"Privileged information, for the moment,
counselor. Will you accept that?"
Joel smiled. "You are a shark.... Okay, the gospel
according to Converse. I came back from that
disruption of my life wanting it all. Angry, to be
sure, but wanting everything. The nonstudent
became a scholar of sorts, and I'd be a liar if I
didn't admit to a fair amount of preferential
treatment. I went back to Amberst and raced
through two and a half years in three semesters and
a summer. Then Duke offered me an ac
THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 13
celerated program and I went there, followed by
some specializations at Georgetown while I
interned."
"You interned in Washington?"
Converse nodded. "Yes."
"For whom?"
"Clifford's firm. '
Halliday whistled softly, sitting back. "That's
golden territory, a passport to Blackstone's heaven as
well as the multinationals."
'1 told you I had preferential treatment."
"Was that when you thought about the foreign
service? While you were at Ceorgetown? In
WashingtonP"
Again Joel nodded, squinting as a passing flash of
sunlight bounced off a grille somewhere on the
lakefront boulevard. "Yes," he replied quietly.
"You could have had it," said Halliday.
'They wanted me for the wrong reasons, all the
wrong reasons. When they realized I had a different
set of rules in mind, I couldn't get a twenty-cent tour
of the State Department. "
"What about the Clifford firm? You were a hell
of an image, even for them." The Californian raised
his hands above the table, palms forward. 1 know, I
know. The wrong reasons."
"Wrong numbers," insisted Converse. ' There
were forty-plus lawyers on the masthead and another
two hundred on the payroll. I'd have spent ten years
trying to find the men's room and another ten
getting the key. That wasn't what I was looking for.'
What were you looking for?"
"Pretty much what I've got. I told you, the
money's good and I run the international division.
The latter's just as important to me."
'You couldn t have known that when you joined,"
objected Halliday.
But I did. At least I had a fair indication. When
Talbot, Brooks and Simon as you put it, that small
but entrenched firm I'm with came to me, we
reached understanding. If after four or five years I
proved out, I'd take over for Brooks. He was the
overseas man and was getting tired of adjusting to all
those time zones." Again Converse paused.
'Apparently I proved out."
14 ROBERT LUDLUM
' And just as apparently somewhere along the
line you got married.
Joel leaned back in the chair. 'Is this necessary?"
"It's not even pertinent, but I'm intensely
interested."
"Why?"
"It's a natural reaction," said Halliday, his eyes
amused. "I think you'd feel the same way if you
were me and I were you, and I'd gone through what
you went through."
"Shark dead ahead," mumbled Converse.
"You don't have to respond, of course, counselor."
"I know, but oddly enough I don't mind. She's
taken her share of abuse because of that
what-l've-been-through business." Joel broke the
croissant but made no effort to remove it from the
plate. "Comfort, convenience, and a vague image of
stability," he said.
"I beg your pardon?"
"Her words," continued Joel. "She said that I got
married so I'd have a place to go and someone to
fix the meals-and do the laundry, and eliminate the
irritating, time-consuming foolishness that goes with
finding someone to sleep with. Also by legitimising
her, I projected the. proper image.... 'And, Christ,
did I have to play the part' also her words."
"Were they true?"
"I told you, when I came back I wanted it all and
she was part of it. Yes, they were true. Cook, maid,
laundress, bedmate, and an acceptable
, attractive
appendage. She told me she could never figure out
the pecking order."
"She sounds like quite a girl."
"She was. She is."
"Do I discern a note of possible reconciliation?"
"No way." Converse shook his head, a partial
smile on his lips but only a trace of humor in his
eyes. "She was also conned and it shouldn t have
happened. Anyway, I like my current status, I really
do. Some of us just weren't meant for a hearth and
roast turkey, even if we sometimes wish we were."
"It's not a bad life."
"Are you into it?" asked Joel quickly so as to
shift the emphasis.
"Right up with orthodontists and SAT scores.
Five kids and one wife. I wouldn t have it any other
way."
"But you travel a lot, don't your"
"We have great homecomings." Halliday again
leaned
THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 15
forward, as if studying a witness. '~So you have no
real attachments now, no one to run back to.'
' Talbot, Brooks and Simon might find that
Robert Ludlum - Aquatain Progression.txt Page 2
