through his mind? You see, Doctor, I'm trying to
think like him; I'm putting myself in his place, never
for a second letting him forget that I'm doing just
that. It's very unnerving, like making notes on
margins whenever your opponent says anything,
whether he's saying anything or not. But this time it's
going to be different. I'm not looking for opponents.
I'm looking for allies. In a cause, their cause. I'll start
in Paris, then on to Bonn, or Tel Aviv, then probably
Johannesburg. Only, when I reach these men I won't
try to think like them, I'm going to be one of them."
"That's a very bold strategy. I compliment you."
'talking of options, it's the only one open. Also,
I've got a lot of money I can spread around, not
lavishly but effectively, as befits my unnamed client.
Very unnamed, very much in the background, but
always there." Joel stopped, a thought striking him.
"You know, Dr. Beale, I take it back. I don't want
60 ROBERT LUDLUM
to know who my client is the one in San
Francisco, I mean. I'm going to create my own, and
Icnowing him might distort the portrait I've got in
mind. Incidentally, tell him he'll get a full
accounting of my expenses: the rest will be returned
to him the same way I got it. Through your friend
Laskaris at the bank here on Mykonos."
"But you've accepted the money," objected
Beale. "There's no reason "
"I wanted to know if it was real. If he was real.
He is, and he knows exactly what he's doing. I'll
need a great deal of money because I'm going to
have to become someone I'm not and money is the
most convincing way to do it. No, Doctor I don't
want your friend's money, I want Delavane. I want
the warlord of Saigon. But I'll use his money, just as
I'm using him the way I want him to be. To get
inside that network."
"If Paris is your first stop and Bertholdier is
going to be your initial contact, there's a specific
munitions transfer we think is directly related to
him. It might be worth a try. If we're right, it's a
microcosm of what they intend doing everywhere."
'`Is it in here?" asked Converse, tapping the
manila envelope containing the dossiers.
"No, it came to light only this morning early
this morning. I don't imagine you listened to the
news broadcasts."
"I don't speak any language but English. If I
heard a news program I wouldn't know it. What
happened?"
"All Northern Ireland is on fire, the worst riots
the most savage killing in fifteen years. In Belfast
and Ballyciare, Dromore and in the Mourne
Mountains, outraged vigilantes on both sides are
roaming the streets and the hills, firing indis-
criminately, slaughtering in their anger everything
that moves. It's utter chaos. The Ulster government
is in panic, the parliament tied down, emotionally
disrupted, everyone trying to find a solution. That
solution will be a massive infusion of troops and
their commanders."
"What's it got to do with Bertholdier?"
"Listen to me carefully," said the scholar, taking
a step forward. "Eight days ago a munitions
shipment containing three hundred cases of cluster
bombs and two thousand cartons of explosives was
air-freighted out of Beloit, Wisconsin. Its
destination was Tel Aviv by way of Montreal, Paris,
and Marseilles. It never arrived, and an Israeli trace
employing the Mossad showed that only the
cargo's paperwork reached
THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 61
Marseilles, nothing else. The shipment disappeared
in either Montreal or Paris, and we're convinced it
was diverted to provisional extremists again on
both sides in Northern Ireland."
"Why do you think so?"
The first casualties over three hundred men,
women, and children were killed or severely
wounded, ripped to shreds by cluster bombs. It's not
a pleasant way to die, but perhaps worse to be
hurt the bombs tear away whole sections of the
body. The reactions have been fierce and the
hysteria's spreading. Ulster's out of control, the
government paralysed. All in the space of one day,
one single day, Mr. Converse!"
' They're proving to themselves they can do it,"
said Joel quietly, the fear in his throat.
Precisely,' agreed Beale. it's a test case, a
microcosm of the full-scale horror they can bring
about."
Converse frowned. "Outside of the fact that
Bertholdier lives in Paris, what ties him to the
shipment?"
"Once the plane crossed into France, the French
insurers were a firm in which Bertholdier is a
director. Who would be less suspect than a company
that had to pay for the loss a company,
incidentally, that has access to the merchandise it
covers? The loss was upward of four million francs,
not so immense as to create headlines, but entirely
sufficient to throw off suspicion. And one more
lethal delivery is made mutilation, death, and
chaos to follow."
"What's the name of the insurance company?"
"Compagnie Solidaire. It would be one of the
operative words, I'd think. Solidaire, and perhaps
Beloit and Belfast."
"Let's hope I get to confront Bertholdier with
them. But if I do, I've got to say them at the right
time. I'll catch the plane from Athens in the
morning."
"Take the urgent good wishes of an old man with
you, Mr. Converse. And urgent is the appropriate
word. Three to five weeks, that's all you've got
before everything blows apart. Whatever it is,
wherever it is, it will be Northern Ireland ten
thousand times more violent. It's real and it's
coming."
Valerie Charpentier woke up suddenly, her eyes
wide, her face rigid, listening intently for sounds that
might break the dark silence around her and the
slap of the waves in the distance. Any second she
expected to hear the shattering bell
62 ROBERT IUDLUM
of the alarm system that was wired into every
window and door of the house.
It did not come, yet there had been other
sounds, intrusions on her sleep, penetrating enough
to wake her. She pulled the covers back and got out
of bed, walking slowly, apprehensively, to the glass
doors that opened onto her balcony which
overlooked the rocky beach, the jetty, and the
Atlantic Ocean beyond.
There it was again. The bobbing, dim lights were
unmistakably the same, washing over the boat that
was moored exactly where it had been moored
before. It was the sloop that for two days had
cruised up and down the coastline, always in sight,
with no apparent destination other than this particu-
lar stretch of the Massachusetts shore. At twilight
on the se
cond evening it had dropped anchor no
more than a quarter of a mile out in the water in
front of her house. It was back. After three days it
had returned.
Three nights ago she had called the police, who
in turn reached the Cape Ann Coast Guard patrols,
who came back With an explanation that was no
more lucid than it was satisfactory. The sloop was a
Maryland registry, the owner an officer in the
United States Army, and there were no provocative
or suspicious movements that warranted any official
action.
"I'd call it damned provocative and suspicious,"
Val had said firmly. "When a strange boat sails up
and down the same stretch of beach for two days in
a row, then parks in front of my house within
shouting distance shouting distance being
swimming distance."
"The water rights of the property you leased
don't extend beyond two hundred feet, ma'am" had
been the official reply. "There's nothing we can do."
At the first light of the next morning, however,
Valerie knew that something had to be done. She
had focused her binoculars on the boat, only to gasp
and move back away from the glass doors. Two men
had been standing on the deck of the sloop, their
own binoculars far more powerful than
hers directed at the house, at the bedroom
upstairs. At her.
A neighbor down the beachside cul-de-sac had
recently installed an alarm system. She was a
divorced woman too, but with a hostile ex-husband
and three children; she needed the alarm. Two
phone calls and Val was speaking to the owner of
Watchguard Security. A temporary system had been
THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 63
hooked up that day while a permanent installation
was being designed.
A bell not shatteringly loud but soft and gentle.
It was the quiet clanging of a ship's bell out on the
dark water, its clapper swinging with the waves. It
was the sound that had awakened her, and she felt
relieved yet strangely disturbed. Men out on the
water at night who intended harm did not announce
their presence. On the other hand, those same men
had come back to her house, the boat being only
several hundred yards offshore. They had returned
in the darkness, the moon blocked by a sky thick
with clouds, no moonlight to guide them. It was as
if they wanted her to know they were there and they
were watching. They were waiting.
For what? What was happening to her? A week
ago her phone had gone dead for seven hours, and
when she had called the telephone company from
her friend's house, supervisor in the service
department told her he could find no malfunctions.
The line was operative.
"Maybe for you, but not for me, and you're not
paying the bills."
She had returned home; the line was still dead.
A second, far angrier phone call brought the same
response. No malfunctions. Then two hours later the
dial tone was inexplicably there, the phone working.
She had put the episode down to the rural telephone
complex having less than the best equipment. She
did not know what explanation there could be for
the sloop now eerily bobbing in the water in front of
her house.
Suddenly, in the boat's dim light, she could see a
figure crawl out of the cabin. For a moment or two
it was hidden in the shadows, then there was a brief
flare of intense light. A match. A cigarette. A man
was standing motionless on the deck smoking a
cigarette. He was facing her house, as if studying it.
Waiting.
Val shivered as she dragged a heavy chair in
front of the balcony door but not too close, away
from the glass. She pulled the light blanket off the
bed and sat down, wrapping it around her, staring
out at the water, at the boat, at the man. She knew
that if that man or that boat made the slightest move
toward shore she would press the buttons she had
been instructed to press in the event of an
emergency. When activated, the huge circular alarm
bells both inside and outside would be
ear-piercing, erupting in concert, drowning
64 ROBERT LUDLUM
out the sound of the surf and the waves crashing on
the jetty. They could be heard thousands of feet
away the only sound on the beach, frightening,
overwhelming. She wondered if she would cause
them to be heard tonight this morning.
She would not panic. Joel had taught her not to
panic, even when she thought a well-timed scream
was called for on the dark streets of Manhattan.
Every now and then the inevitable had happened.
They had been confronted by drug addicts or punks
and Joel would remain calm icily calm moving
them both back against a wall and offering a cheap,
spare wallet he kept in his hip pocket with a few
bills in it. God, he was icelMaybe that was why no
one had ever actually assaulted them, not knowing
what was behind that cold, brooding look.
"I should have screamed!" she once had cried.
"No," he had said. "Then you would have
frightened him, panicked him. That's when those
bastards can be lethal."
Was the man on the boat lethal were the men
on the boat deadly? Or were they simply novice
sailors hugging the coastline, practicing tacks,
anchoring near the shore for their own
protection curious, perhaps concerned, that the
property owners might object? An Army officer was
not likely to be able to afford a captain for his
sloop, and there were marinas only miles away north
and south marinas without available berths but
with men who could handle repairs.
Was the man out on the boat smoking a
cigarette merely a landlocked young officer getting
his sailing legs, comfortable with a familiar anchor
away from deep water? It was possible, of
course anything was possible_and summer nights
held a special kind of loneliness that gave rise to
strange imaginings. One walked the beach alone and
thought too much.
Joel would laugh at her and say it was all those
demons racing around her artist's head in search of
logic. And he would undoubtedly be right. The men
out on the boat were probably more up-tight than
she was. In a way they were trespassers who had
found a haven in sight of hostile natives; one inquiry
of the Coast Guard proved it. And that clearance,
as it were, was another reason why they had
returned to the place where, if not welcome, at least
they were not harassed. If Joel were with her, she
knew exactly what he would do. He would go down
to the beach and shout across the water to their
temporary neighbors and ask them to come in for a
drink.
THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 65
DearJoel, foolish
Joel, ice-coldJoeL There were
times you were comforting when you were
comfortable. And amusing, so terribly amusing even
when you weren't comfortable. In some ways I miss
you, darling. But not enough, thank you.
And yet why did the feeling the instinct, per-
haps persist? The small boat out on the water was
like a magnet, pulling her toward it, drawing her into
its field, taking her where she knew she did not want
to go.
Nonsense! Demons in search of logic! She was
being foolish foolish Joel, ice-coldJoel stop it, for
Cod's sake! Be reasonable!
Then the shiver passed through her again. Novice
sailors did not navigate around strange coastlines at
night.
The magnet held her until her eyes grew heavy
and troubled sleep came.
She woke up again, startled by the intense
sunlight streaming through the glass doors, its
warmth enveloping her. She looked out at the water.
The boat was gone and she wondered for a
moment whether it had really been there.
Yes, it had. But it was gone.
The 747 lifted off the runway at Athens' Helikon
Airport, soaring to the left in its rapid ascent. Below
in clear view, adjacent to the huge field, was the U.S.
Naval Air Station, permitted by treaty although
reduced in size and in the number of aircraft during
the past several years. Nevertheless, far-reaching,
jet-streamed American craft still roamed the
Mediterranean, lonian and Aegean seas, courtesy of
a resentful yet nervous government all too aware of
other eyes to the north. Staring out the window,
Converse recognized the shapes of familiar
equipment on the ground. There were two rows of
Phantom F-4T's and A-6E's on opposite sides of the
Robert Ludlum - Aquatain Progression.txt Page 10
