been captured and thrown into a stone house in the
woods, and how he escaped, hiding in the river,
eluding guards and patrols and killing a man he
called a 'scout.' He kept screaming that he had to get
away, that men were searching for him, in the woods,
along the riverbank.... Something's happened to him.
He's gone back to those terrible days when he was a
390 ROBERT LUDLUM
prisoner of war. Everything he says, everything he
describes, is a variation of those experiences the
pain, the stress, the tensions of running for his life
through the jungles and down rivers. He's sick, my
dear, and this morning was the horrible proof. '
Valerie felt the hollowness in her throat, the
sudden, awful vacuum below. She was beyond
thinking; she could only react to words. "Why did
you say you were responsible, that in some way you
pulled the trigger?"
"I told him to go to Peregrine. I tried to
convince him that Peregrine would listen to him,
that he wasn't the man Joel thought he was."
" 'Thought he was'? What did Joel say?"
"Very little that made sense. He ranted about
generals and field marshals and some obscure
historical theory that brought all the commanders
from various wars and armies together in a
combined effort to take control of governments. He
wasn't lucid. He d pretend to be, but the minute I
questioned a statement he made or a point in his
story, he'd blow up and tell me it didn't matter, or
I wasn't listening, or I was too dense to understand.
But at the end he admitted he was terribly tired and
confused and how badly he needed sleep. That was
when I made my last pitch about Peregrine, but Joel
didn't trust him. He was actually hostile toward him
because he said he saw a former Gemman general's
car go through the embassy gates, and as you may
or may not know, Peregrine was an outstanding
officer during the Second World War. I explained as
patiently and as fimmly as I could that Peregrine
was not one of 'them,' that he was no friend of the
military. . . . Obviously, I failed. Joel reached him,
set up a rendezvous and killed him. I had no idea
how sick he was."
"Larry, ' began Valerie slowly, her voice weak. '
1 hear everything you say, but it doesn't ring true. It
isn't that I don't believe you Joel once said you
were an embarrassingly honest man but
something's missing. The Converse I know and lived
with for four years never bent the facts to support
abstractions he wanted to believe. Even when he
was angry as hell, he couldn't do that. I told him
he'd make a lousy painter because he couldn't bend
a shape to fit a concept. It wasn't in him, and I
think he explained it. At five hundred miles an
hour, he said, you can mistake a shadow on the
ocean for a carrier if your instruments are out."
"You're telling me he doesn't lie."
THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 391
"I'm sure he does I'm sure he did but never
about important things. It simply isn't in him."
"That was before he became ill, violently ill. He
killed that man in Paris, he admitted it to me."
Valerie gasped. "No!"
"Yes, I'm afraid. Just as he killed Walter Peregrine."
"Because of some obscure historical theory? It's
all wrong, Larry!"
"Two psychiatrists at the State Department
explained it, but in phrases I'm sure I'd mangle if I
tried to repeat them. 'Progressive latent
retrogression,' I think, was one of them."
"Bullshit!"
"But you may be right about one thing. Geneva.
Remember you said it all had something to do with
Geneva?"
"I remember. What about Geneva?"
"It's where it started, everyone in Washington
agrees with that. I don't know if you've read the
papers "
"Only the Globe; it's delivered. I haven't left the
phone."
"It was Jack Halliday's son stepson, actually. He
was the lawyer who was killed in Geneva. It seems
he was a prominent leaderof the antiwar movement
in the sixties and he was Converse's opponent in the
merger. It was established that they met for
breakfast before the conference. The theory is that
he baitedJoel, and we can assume it was brutal, as he
had a reputation for going for the jugular."
"Why would he do that?" asked Val, her frayed
nerves now suddenly alert.
"To throw Joel off. To distract him. Remember,
they were dealing in millions, and the attorney who
came off best could do very well for himself clients
lining up all over Wall Street to retain him. There's
even evidence that Halliday succeeded."
"What evidence?"
"The first part's technical, so I won't try to
explain it except to say that there was a subtle
transfer of voting stock which under certain isolated
market conditions might give Halliday's clients more
say in management than the merger intended. Joel
accepted it; I don't think he would have normally."
"Normally? What's the other part?"
"Joel's behavior at the conference itself.
According to the reports interviews with everyone
in that room he wasn't himself, he was distracted,
some said agitated. Several law
392 ROBERT IUDLUM
yers on both sides commented on the fact that he
kept to himself, standing by a window most of the
time, looking out as if he expected something. His
concentration was so lax that questions addressed to
him had to be repeated, and when they were, he
appeared as though he didn't understand them. His
mind was somewhere else, on something that
consumed him."
"Larry!" shouted Valerie. "What are you saying?
That Joel had something to do with this Halliday
being killed?"
"It can't be ruled out," said Talbot sadly. "Either
psychologically or in light of what people saw in the
anteroom when Halliday died."
"What they saw?" whispered Valerie. "The paper
said he died with Joel holding his head."
"I'm afraid there's more, my dear. I've read the
reports. According to a receptionist and two other
attorneys, there was a violent exchange between
them just before Halliday died. No one's sure what
was said, but they all agree it seemed ViCiOUS,
with Halliday clutching Joel's lapels, as though
accusing him. Later, when questioned by the
Geneva police, Joel claimed there was no coherent
conversation, only the hysterical words of a dying
man. The police report added that he was not a
cooperative witness."
"My God, he was probably in shock! You know
what he went through the sight of that man dying
literally in his arms must have been traumatic for
him!"
"Admittedly, this is hindsight, Valerie, but
&nb
sp; everything must be examined above all, his
behavior."
"What do they think he did? What's the theory
now? That Joel went out into the street, saw
someone who fit the bill and hired him to kill a
man? Really, Larry, this is ludicrous. "
"There are more questions, than there are
answers, certainly, but what's happened what we
know has happened isn't ludicrous at all. It's
tragic."
"All right, all right," said Valerie, her words
rushed. "But why would he do it? Why would he
want Halliday killed? Why. "
"I think that's obvious. How he must have
despised someone like Halliday. A man who stayed
safely at home, who condemned and ridiculed
everything men like Joel went through, calling them
goons and murderers and lackeys and unnecessary
sacrifices. Along with his hated 'commanders,'
THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 393
the Hallidays of this world must have stood for
everything else he loathed. One group ordering men
into battle, to be maimed, killed, captured . . .
tortured, the other making a mockery of everything
they endured. Whatever Halliday said at that
breakfast table must have made something snap in
Joel's head."
"And you think," said Valerie quietly, the words
echoing in her throat, "that's why he wanted Halliday
dead?"
"Latent vengeance. It's the prevalent theory, the
consensus, if you will."
"I don's 'will.' Because it's not true, it couldn't be
true."
"These are highly qualified experts, Val, doctors
in the behavioral sciences. They've analyzed
everything in the records and they feel the pattern is
there. Shock-induced, instant pathological
schizophrenia."
"That's very impressive. They should embroider
it on their Snoopy baseball caps because that's where
it belongs."
"I don't think you're in a position to dispute "
"I'm in a hell of a position," interrupted the
ex-Mrs. Converse. "But nobody bothered to ask me,
or Joel's father, or his sister who just happened to
have been one of those wild-eyed protesters you all
speak of. There's no way Halliday could have
provoked Joel the way they say he did at breakfast,
lunch or dinner."
"You can't make such a statement, my dear. You
simply don't know that."
"I do know, Larry. Because Joel thought the
Hallidays of this world, as you put it, were right. He
wasn't always crazy about the way they did things,
but he thought they were right!"
"I don't believe that. Not after what he went
through."
"Then go to another source if that's what you
call it. To some of those records your high priests of
the behavioral sciences conveniently overlooked.
When Joel came back, there was a parade for him at
Travis Air Force Base in California, where he was
given everything but the keys to every starlet's
apartment in Los Angeles. Am I right?"
"I recall there was a military welcome for a man
who had escaped under extraordinary circumstances.
The Secretary of State greeted him at the plane, in
fact."
"In absolute fact, Larry. Then what? Where else
was he paraded?"
"I don't know what you mean."
394 ROBERT LUDLUM
'Look at the records. Nowhere. He wouldn't do
it. How many invitations did he get? From how
many towns and cities and companies and
organisations all pushed like hell by the White
House? A hundred, five hundred, five thousand? At
least that many, Larry. And do you know how many
he accepted? Tell me, Larry, do you know? Did
those high priests talk about this?"
"It wasn't an issue."
"Of course it wasn't. It warped the pattern, it
bent the shapes Joel Converse wouldn't bend! The
answer is zero Larry. He wouldn't do it, any of it!
He thought one day more of that war was one more
day in hell too long. He refused to lend his name."
"What are you trying to say?" said Talbot sternly.
"Halliday wasn't his enemy, not the way you're
trying to paint him. The brushstrokes aren't there.
They're not on the canvas."
"Your metaphors are more than I can handle,
Val. What are you trying to tell meP"
"That something smells, Larry. It's so rotten I
can hardly breathe, but the stench isn't coming from
my former husband. It's coming from all of you."
"I have to take exception to that. All I want to
do is help I thought you knew that."
"I do, really I do. It's not your fault. Good-bye,
Larry."
"111 call you the minute I learn anything."
"Do that. Good-bye." Valerie hung up the phone
and looked at her watch. It was time to get down to
Logan Airport in Boston to pick up Roger
Converse.
"Koln in zehn Minuten!" shouted the voice over
the loudspeaker.
Converse sat by the window, his face next to the
glass as the towns sped by on the way to
Cologne Bornheim, Wesel, Bruhl. The train was
perhaps three-quarters full which was to say that
each double seat had at least one occupant. When
they pulled out of the station a woman had been
sitting where he sat now, a fashionably dressed
suburbanite. Several seats behind them another
woman a friend spotted her. His seatmate spoke
to Joel. The brief attention she had called to both of
them when he could not reply unnerved him. He
shrugged and shook his head; she exhaled im-
patient}y, got up in irritation and joined her friend.
THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 395
She had left a newspaper behind, the same
newspaper with his photograph on the front page,
which remained flat out on the seat. He stared at it
until he realized what he was doing and instantly
shifted seats, picking up the paper and folding it so
that the picture would be out of sight. He glanced
around cautiously, holding his hand casually above
his lips, frowning, pensive, trying to seem like a man
in thought whose eyes saw nothing. But he had seen
another pair of eyes and they were studying
him staring at him while the owner was engaged in
what appeared to be a lively conversation with an
elderly woman next to him. The man had looked
away, and Converse had a brief half-second to
observe the face before he turned to the window. He
knew that face; he had talked to that man, but he
could not remember where it was or when it was,
only that they had spoken. The realisation was as
maddening as it was frightening. Where was it? When
was it? Did the man know him, know his name?
If the man did, he had done nothing about it. He
had returned his concentration to the woman, the
conversation still lively. Joel tried to picture the
whole man, perhaps it would help. H
e was large, not
so much in height as in girth, and on the surface
jovial, but Converse sensed a meanness in him. Was
that now or before? When was before? Wherek Ten
minutes or so had passed since the exchange of
looks, end Joel was no further ahead in peeling away
the layers of memory. He was stymied and afraid.
"Wir kommen in zwei Minuten in Koln an. Bitte
achten Sie auf Ihr Gepa'ck!"
A number of passengers got up from their seats,
tugging at their jackets and skirts, reaching for
luggage. As the train began to slow down, Converse
pressed his forehead against the cool glass of the
window. He let his mind go slack, unfocused,
expecting the next few minutes to tell him what to
do.
The minutes passed, the suspension on hold, his
mind blank as passengers got off and others got in,
many carrying attache cases, several very much like
his own, which he had left in a trash can in Bonn. He
had wanted to keep it but he could not. It had been
a gift from Valerie, as his gold pen was a gift, both
initiated in those better days.... No, not better, he
told himself, simply different. Nothing was better or
worse; there were no comparisons where
commitments were con
396 ROBERT LUDLUM
corned. They either stuck or they did not. Theirs
came unstuck.
Then why, he asked himself, as the train ground
to a stop at Cologne, had he sent the contents of his
briefcase to Val? His answer was the essence of
Robert Ludlum - Aquatain Progression.txt Page 61
