Robert Ludlum - Aquatain Progression.txt
Page 20
now thoughtJoel, bewildered. Was it his words? No,
not the words his voice. The Western inflections were
greatly diminished "I don't know what you're talking
about, but you sound differ ens."
"War, Ah'll jes' be hornswaggled i" said Dowling,
laugh
124 ROBERT LUDLUM
ing. Then he returned to the unaccented tones he
had begun to display. "You're looking at a renegade
teacher of English and college dramatics who said
a dozen years ago to hell with old-age tenure, let's
go after a very impractical dream. It led to a lot of
funny and not very dignified jobs, but the spirit of
Thespis moves in mysterious ways. An old student
of mine, in one of those indefinable jobs like
'production-coordinator,' spotted me in a crowd
scene; it embarrassed the hell out of him.
Nevertheless, he put my name in for several small
parts. A few panned out, and a couple of years later
an accident called Santa Fe came along. That's
when my perfectly respectable name of Calvin was
changed to Caleb. 'Fits the image belter,' said a pair
of Gucci loafers who never got closer to a horse
than a box at Santa Anita.... It's crazy, isn't it?"
'Crazy," agreed Converse, as the stewardess
walked back up the aisle toward them.
'Crazy or not," added Dowling under his breath,
' this good old rancher isn t going to offend anyone.
They want Pa Ratchet, they've got him."
"Your bourbon, sir," said the woman, handing
the actor a glass.
"Why, thank you, li'l darlin'! My oh my, you're
purber than any filly on the showI"
"You are too kind, sir."
"May I have a Scotch, please," said Joel.
"That's better, son," said Dowling, grinning
again as the stewardess left. "And now that you
know my crime, what do you do for a living?"
"I'm an attorney."
"At least you've got something legitimate to
read. This screenplay sure as hell isn't."
Although considered by most of Munich's re
spectable citizens to be a collection of misfits and
thugs, the National Socialist German Workers'
Party,
with its headquarters in Munich, was making itself
felt throughout Germany. The radical-populist
movement was taking hold by basing its inflamma-
tory message on the evil un-German "them." It
blamed the ills of the nation on a spectrum of
targets
ranging from the Bolsheviks to the ingrate Jewish
bankers; from the foreign plunderers who had
raped
an Aryan land to, finally, all things not "Aryan,"
THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 125
namely and especially the Jews and their
ill-gotten wealth.
Cosmopolitan Munich and itsJewish
community laughed at the absurdities; they were
not listening. The rest of Cermany was; it was
hearing what it wanted to hear. And Erich
Stoessel-Leifhelm heard it too. It was his passport
to recognition and opportunity.
In a matter of weeks, the young man literally
whipped his father into shape. In later years he
would tell the story with heavy doses of cruel
humor. Over the dissolute physician's hysterical
objections the son removed all alcohol and
smoking materials from the premises, never
letting his father out of his sight. A harsh
regimen of exercise and diet was enforced. With
the zeal of a puritanical athletic trainer
Stoessel-Leifhelm started taking his father out to
the countryside for Gewaltmarschen forced
marches gradually working up to all-day hikes
on the exhausting trails of the Bavarian
mountains, continually shouting at the older man
to keep moving, to rest only at his son's
commands, to drink water only with permission.
So successful was the rehabilitation that the
doctor's clothes began to hang on him like seedy,
old-fashioned garments purchased for a much
fatter man. A new wardrobe was called for, but
good clothing in Munich in those days was
beyond the means of all but the wealthy, and
Stoessel-Leifhelm had only the best in mind for
his father not out of filial devotion but, as we
shall see, for a quite different purpose.
Money had to be found, which meant it had
to be stolen. He interrogated his father at length
about the house the doctor had been forced to
leave, learning everything there was to learn.
Several weeks later Stoessel-Leifhelm broke into
the house on the Luisenstrasse at three o'clock
one morning, stripping it of everything of value,
including silver, crystal, oil paintings, gold place
settings, and the entire contents of a wall safe.
Sales to fences were not difficult in Munich of
1930, and when everything was disposed of father
and son had the equivalent of nearly eight
126 ROBERT LUDLUM
thousand American dollars, virtually a fortune
in those times.
The restoration continued; clothes were
tailored in the Maximilianstrasse, the best
footwear purchased at bootsmiths on the
Odeonsplatz, and, finally, cosmetic changes
were effected. The doctor's unkempt hair was
trimmed and heightened by coloring into a
masculine Nordic blond, and his shabby
inch-long beard shaved off, leaving only a small,
unbroken, well-trimmed moustache above his
upper lip. The transformation was complete;
what remained was the introduction
Every night during the long weeks of
rehabilitation, Stoessel-Leifhelm had read aloud
to his father whatever he could get his hands on
from the National Socialists' headquarters, and
there was no lack of material. There were the
standard inflammatory pamphlets, pages of
ersatz biological theory purportedly proving the
genetic superiority of Aryan purity and,
conversely, the racial decline resulting from in-
discriminate breeding all the usual Nazi dia-
tribes plus generous excerpts from Hitler's
Mein Kampf. The son read incessantly until the
doctor could recite by rote the salient outrages
of the National Socialists' message. Throughout
it all, the seventeen-year-old kept telling his
father that following the party's program was
the way to get back everything that had been
stolen from him, to avenge the years of
humiliation and ridicule. As Germany itself had
been humiliated by the rest of the world, the
Nazi party would be the avenger, the restorer of
all things truly German. It was, indeed, the New
Order for the Fatherland, and it was waiting for
men of stature to recognize the fact.
The day came, a day when Stoessel-Leifhelm
had learned that two high-ranking party officials
would be in Munich. They were the crippled
propagandist Joseph Goebbels and the
would-be aristocrat Rud
olf Hess. The son
accompanied the father to the National
Socialists' headquarters where the well-tailored,
imposing, obviously rich and Aryan Doktor
requested an audience with the two Nazi
leaders on an urgent and confidential matter. It
was
THE AQUITAINE
PROGRESSION 127
granted, and according to early party historical ar-
chives, his first words to Hess and Goebbels were
the
following.
"Gentlemen, I am a physician of impeccable
credentials, formerly head surgeon at the
Karlstor Hos,
pital and for years I enjoyed one of the most
successful practices in Munich. That was in the
past. I was
destroyed by Jews who stole everything from me. I
am back, I am well, and I am at your service."
The Lufthansa plane began its descent into
Hamburg and Joel, feeling the drag, dog-eared the
page of Leifhelm's dossier and reached down for his
attache case. Beside him, the actor Caleb Dowling
stretched, script in hand, then jammed his screenplay
into an open flight bag at his feet.
"The only thing sillier than this movie," he said,
"is the amount of money they're paying me to be in
it."
"Are you filming tomorrow?" asked Converse.
'.Today," corrected Dowling, looking at his watch.
"It's an early shoot, too. Have to be on location by
five-thirty dawn over the Rhine, or something
equally inspiring. Now if they'd just turn the damn
thing into a travelogue, we'd all be better off. Nice
scenery."
"But you were in Copenhagen."
"Yep."
"You're not going to get much sleep."
"Nope."
"Oh."
The actor looked atJoel, the crow's-feet around
his generous eyes creasing deeper with his smile. "My
wife's in Copenhagen and I had two days off. This
was the last plane I could get."
"Oh? You're married?" Converse immediately
regretted the remark; he was not sure why, but it
sounded foolish.
"Twenty-six years, young fella. How do you think
I was able to go after that impractical dream? She's
a whiz of a secretary; when I was teaching, she'd
always be this or that dean's gal Friday."
"Any children?"
"Can't have everything. Nope."
"Why is she in Copenhagen? I mean, why isn't
she staying with you on location?"
The grin faded from Dowling's suntanned face; the
lines
128 ROBERT LUDLUM
were less apparent, yet somehow deeper. "That's an
obvious question, isn't it? That is, you being a
lawyer would pick it up quickly."
"It's none of my business, of course. Forget I asked
it."
"No, that's okay. I don't like to talk about
it rarely do but friendly seatmates on airplanes
are for telling things. You'll never see them again,
so why not slice off a bit and feel better." The actor
tried haltingly to smile; he failed. "My wife's name
was Oppenfeld. She's Jewish. Her story's not much
different from a few million others, but for her it's
. . . well, it's hers. She was separated from her
parents and her three younger brothers in
Auschwitz. She watched them being taken
away away from her while she screamed, not
understanding. She was lucky; they put her in a
barracks, a fourteen-year-old sewing uniforms until
she showed other endowments that could lead to
other work. A couple of days later, hearing the
rumors, she got hysterical and broke out racing all
over the place trying to find her family. She ran into
a section of the camp they called the A/ofall, the
garbage, corpses hauled out of the gas chambers.
And there they were, the bodies of her mother and
her father and her three brothers, the sight and the
stench so sickening it's never left her. It never will.
She won't set foot in Germany and I wouldn't ask
her to."
No alarms, just surprises . . . and another Iron
Cross for the Erich Leilhelms of the past, retroactively
presented.
"Christ, I'm sorry," murmured Converse. "I
didn't mean to ,,
"You didn't. I did.... You see, she knows it
doesn't make sense."
"Doesn't make sense? Maybe you didn't hear
what you just described."
"I heard, I know, but I didn't finish. When she
was sixteen, she was loaded into a truck with five
other girls, all on their way to that different type of
work, when they did it. Those kids took their last
chance and beat the hell out of a Wehrmacht
corporal who was guarding them in the van. Then
with his gun they got control of the truck from the
driver and escaped." Dowling stopped, his eyes on
Joel.
Converse, silent, returned the look, unsure of its
meaning, but moved by what he had heard. "That's
a marvelous story " he said quietly "It really is."
'And," continued the actor, "for the next two years
they
THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 129
were hidden by a succession of German families, who
surely knew what they were doing and what would
happen to them if they got caught. There was a
pretty frantic search for those girls a lot of threats
made, more because of what they could tell than
anything else. Still, those Germans kept moving them
around, hiding them, until one by one they were
taken across the border into occupied France, where
things were easier. They were smuggled across by the
underground, the German underground. 'Dowling
paused, then added. "As Pa Ratchet would say, 'Do
you get my drift, son?' '
"I'd have to say it's obvious."
"There's a lot of pain and a lot of hate in her and
God knows I understand it. But there should be
some gratitude, too. Couple of times clothing was
found, and some of those people those German
people were tortured, a few shot for what they did.
I don't push it, but she could level off with a little
gratitude. It might give her a bit more perspective."
The actor snapped on his seat belt.
Joel pressed the locks on his attache case,
wondering if he should reply. Valerie's mother had
been part of the German underground. His ex-wife
would tell him amusing stories her mother had told
her about a stern, inhibited French intelligence
officer forced to work with a high-spirited, opinion-
ated German girl, a member of the Untergmud How
the more they disagreed, and the more they railed
against each other's nationality, the more they
noticed each other. The Frenchman was Val's father;
she was proud of him, but in some ways prouder of
her mother. There had been pain in that woman,
too. And hate. But there had been a reason, and it
was unequivocal. As there had been for one Joel
Converse years la
ter.
"I said it before and J mean it," began Joel
slowly, not sure he should say anything at all. "It's
none of my business, but I wouldn't ever push it, if
I were you."
"Is this a lawyer talkin'to ole Pa?" asked Dowling
in his television dialect, his smile false, his eyes far
away. "Do I pay a fee?"
"Sorry, 111 shut up." Converse adjusted his seat
belt and pushed the buckle in place.
"No, I'm sorry. I laid it on you. Say it. Please."
"All right. The horror came first, then the hate.
In sidewinder language that's called prima facie the
obvious, the first sighting . . . the real, if you like.
Without these, there'd
130 ROBERT LUDLUM
be no reason for the gratitude, no call for it. So, in
a way, the gratitude is just as painful because it
never should have been necessary. "
The actor once again studied Joel's face, as he
had done before their first exchange of words.
"You're a smart son of a bitch, aren't you?"
"Professionally adequate. But I've been there . .
. that is, I know people who've been where your wife
has been. It starts with the horror."
Dowling looked up at the ceiling light, and
when. he spoke his words floated in the air, his
harsh voice quietly strained. "If we go to the movies,
I have to check them out; if we're watching
television together, I read the TV section . . .
sometimes on the news with some of those tucking
nuts I tense up, wondering what she's going to do.
She can't see a swastika' or hear someone screaming
in German, or watch soldiers marching in a goose
step; she can't stand it. She runs and throws up and