Robert Ludlum - Aquatain Progression.txt
Page 64
got out, now with weapons drawn they raced across
the tracks and down the slope of gravel and tar into
the wild grass. They would be coming back in min-
utes, thought Joel, absently clawing the ragged
surface by his shoulders. They would stop and check
out the deserted building, perhaps call for
assistance, but sooner or later they would examine
the huge mounds of landfill.
Converse looked behind him; there was a dirt
road marked with the tracks of heavy trucks leading
to a tall link fence, the gate held in place with a
thick chain. A man running up that road and
climbing that fence would be seen, he had to stay
where he was, hidden in the putrid rubble.
Another sound interrupted his frantic
calculations a sound like one he had heard only
moments before. On his right, in the parking lot. A
third patrol car came speeding in its claxon howling,
but instead of heading for the ambulance and the
first police vehicle by the platform, it veered to its
left, racing over to jOill the striped car at the south
end of the lot. The two policemen in the field had
radioed for assistance, and Joel felt a numbing sense
of despair. He was looking at his own executioners.
Executioner. The newly arrived patrol
THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 409
car contained only the driver or did it? Did the
policeman turn his head and speak? No, he was
disengaging something, a seat belt probably.
A gray-haired uniformed man got out, looked
around then started walking rapidly toward the
tracks. He crossed them and stood on the top of the
slope, shouting down at the police officers in the
sun-drenched brown grass. Converse had no idea
what the man was saying, but the scene appeared
strangely out of place.
The two policemen came racing into view, their
guns no longer in their hands but holstered. There
was a brief heated conversation. The older officer
was pointing to a distant area south of the landfill;
his words, to judge by their volume, were commands.
Joel looked back at his patrol car; on the panel of
the front door was an insignia that was absent on the
other car. The man held a rank superior to those of
his young associates; he was issuing orders.
The younger policemen ran back across the tracks
to their vehicle, their superior following but not
running. They swung back the doors, literally jumped
in and, in a burst of the engine's roar, swerved to the
right and sped out of the parking lot. The older man
reached his patrol car, but he made no movement to
open the door or get inside. Instead, he spoke at
least his lips moved and five seconds later the rear
doors opened and two men emerged. One man
Converse knew well. His gun was in Joel's pocket. It
was LeifLelm's chauffeur, a taped bandage across his
forehead, another on the ridge of his nose. He pulled
out a gun and barked a command to the other man;
in his voice was the vengeful fury of a soldier
dishonored in combat.
Peter Stone left the hotel in Washington. He had
told the young Navy lieutenant and the slightly older
Army captain that he would contact them in the
morning. Children, he thought. Idealistic amateurs
were the worst, because their righteousness was
usually as valid as their actions were impractical.
Their childish disdain for duplicity and deceit did not
countenance the fact that to rip out the maniacal
bastards frequently required greater malevolence and
far more deception than they could imagine.
Stone got into a taxi leaving his car in the
basement parking area and gave the driver the
address of an apartment building on Nebraska
Avenue. It was a lovely apart
410 ROBERT LUDLUM
meet, but it did not belong to him; it was leased by
an Albanian diplomat at the United Nations who
was rarely there naturally, because he was based in
New York. But the former intelligence officer had
worked hard and turned the Albanian several years
ago, not merely with ideological pleas to a fine
scholar s conscience but also with photographs of
this same scholar in all manner of sexual
indulgences with very strange women women in
their sixties and seventies, bag ladies off the streets,
who after carnal abuse were subject to sheer
physical abuse. He was a winner, the
scholar-diplomat. A psychiatrist in Langley had said
something about wish-fulfillment sexually
repressed matricide. Stone did not need that
nonsense; he had the photographs of a son-of-abitch
sadist. But it was the children that occupied his
mind now, not the excesses of a fool that permitted
him access to a luxury apartment far beyond his
consultation fees.
The children. Jesus! They were so right, their
sensibilities so correctly on target, but they did not
understand that when they took on the Ceorge
Marcus Delavanes of today's world it was war in all
its worst forms of brutality, because that was the
way these men fought. Righteousness had to join
with a commitment to crawl in the gutter if
necessary, no quarter sought, for none would be
given. This was the last fifth of the twentieth century
and the generals were going for it all; the paranoia
of their disgust and frustrations had come to the
end of endurance.
Stone had seen it coming for years, and there
were fumes when he had come close to applauding,
throwing his hands up in frustration, willing to sell
what was left of his soul. Strategies had been
aborted men lost because of the maddening
bureaucratic restraints that led back to laws and a
conshtudon that were never written with anything
like Moscow in mind. The Mad Marcuses of this
planet this part of the planet had a number of
very plausible points. There were those in the
Company years ago who were adamant and not
squirrelly about it. They said, "Bomb the nuclear
plants in Tashkent and Tselinogradl Blow them the
hell up in Chengdu and Shenyang! Don't let them
begin! We are responsible and they are not!"
Who knew? Would the world have been better off?
Then Peter would wake up in the morning and
that part of his soul he had not sold would tell him,
no, we cannot do that. There had to be another
way, a way without confronta
THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 411
tionand wholesale death. He still clung to that
alternative, but he could not dismiss the Delavanes
as megabomb off-the-willers. Where were we heading
now?
He knew where he was heading had been
heading for years. It was why he had joined the
children. Their righteousness was justified, their
indignation valid. He had seen it all before in too
man
y places, always at the extremes of the political
spectrum. The Delavanes of the planet would turn
everyone into robots. In many ways, death was
preferable.
Stone unlocked the door of the apartment, closed
it, took off his jacket and made himself the only
drink he would permit himself for the evening. He
walked to the leather chair by the telephone and sat
down, taking several swallows before putting the
glass on the table beneath the floor lamp. He picked
up the phone and dialed seven digits, then three
more, and one more after that. A very faint dial tone
replaced the original, and he dialed again. Everything
was in order. The call was being routed through a
KGB diplomatic scrambler cable on an island in the
Cabot Strait southwest of Newfoundland. Only
DzerzLinsky Square would be confused. Peter had
paid six negatives for the service. Five rings preceded
the sound of a male voice in Bern, Switzerland.
"Allo?"
"This is your old friend from Bahrain, also the
vendor in Lisbon and a buyer in the Dardanelles. Do
I have to sing 'Dixie'?"
"Well, mah wahd, " said the man in Bern
stretching out the phrase in a dialect bred in the
American Deep South, the French pretence dropped.
"You go back a long time, don't you, sub?"
"I do, sir."
'1 hear you're one of the bad guys now."
"Unloved, mistrusted, but still appreciated," said
Stone. "That's more accurate. The Company won't
touch me, but it's got its share of unfriendlies in
town who throw me consultations pretty regularly. I
wasn't as smart as you. No deposits from Uncle
No-Name in Swiss accounts."
"I was told you had a little juice problem."
"A big one, but it's over."
"Never negotiate a release from people worse
than you if you can't pass a Breathalyzer test. You've
got to scare them, not make 'em laugh."
412 ROBERT LUDI.UM
"I found that out. I hear you do some consulting
yourself. "
"On a limited basis and only with clients who
could pass Uncle No-Name's muster. That's the
agreement and I stick to it. Either I do or some
Boom Boom Botticelli is flown over and Massa's in
de core, cole ground. '
"Where the threats don't do you any good," said
the civil~an.
"That's the stand-off, Pearlie May. It's our little
detente. "
"Would I pass muster? I give you my word I'm
working with good people. They're young and
they're on to something and they haven't got an evil
thought in their heads, which under the
circumstances is no recommendation. But I can't
tell you anything substantive. For your sake as well
as mine and theirs. Is that good enough?"
'If the consultation doesn't take place in outer
space, it's more than enough, and you know it. You
saved Johnny Reb's ass three times, only y'awl got
the sequence backwards. In the Dardanelles and
Lisbon you got me out before the guns came in.
Over in Bahrain you rewrote a report about a little
matter of missing contingency funds that probably
kept me from five years in a Leavenworth
stockade."
"You were too valuable to lose over a minor
indiscretion. Besides, you weren't the only one, you
merely got caught or nearly did."
"Regardless, Johrmy Reb owes. What is it?"
Stone reached for his glass and took a drink. He
spoke, choosing his words carefully. "One of our
commanders is missing. It's a Navy problem, SAND
PAC-based, and the people I'm with want to keep
it contained. No Washington input at this stage."
"Which is part of what you can't tell me," said
the Southerner. "Okay. SAND l'AC that's San
Diego and points west and wet until the date line,
right?"
"Yes, but it's not relevant. He's the chief legal
out there maybe was, by now. If he's not past
tense, if he's alive he's nearer you than me. Also if
I get on a plane, my passport ignites the computers
and things can't go that way."
"Which is also part of what you can't tell me."
"Check."
"What can you tell me?"
"You know the embassy in Bonn?"
"I know it's in trouble. Just like the security unite in
Brus
THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 413
sets. psycho's cutting one hell of a path. What about
Bonn?"
"It's all related. Our commander was last seen there."
"He's got something to do with this Converse?"
Steve paused. "You can probably fill in more
spaces than is good for any of us, but the bones of
the scenario are as follows. Our commander was a
very upset man. His brother-in-law who,
incidentally, was his closest friend was killed in
Geneva "
"Down the road from here," interrupted the
expatriate in Bonn. "The American lawyer whose
demise was engineered by Converse, at least that's
what I've read."
'That's what our commander believed. How or
from whom he got the information no one knows,
but apparently he found out that Converse was
heading for Bonn. He went on leave to go after him."
' Commendable but dumb," said the Southerner.
"A one-man Iynching mobs"
"Actually, no. By simple equations we can assume
he went to the embassy at least he met
someonefrom the embassy to explain why he was
there, perhaps to warn them, who knows? But the
rest speaks for itself. This Converse struck and our
commander disappeared. We'd like to find out
whether he's alive or dead."
It was the Southerner's turn to pause, but his
breathing was clearly heard on the line. Finally: "Brer
Rabbit, you've simply got to put a little flesh on
those bones."
"I'm about to, General Lee."
"Much obliged, Yankee."
"It's also related. If you were a lieutenant
commander in the United States Navy and wanted to
reach someone at the embassy in Bonn, someone
who would accord you the attention your rank
deserved, who would you call?"
"The military charge d'affaires, who else?"
"That's the man, Uncle Remus. Among other
things, he's a liar, but I can't go into that. It's our
thinking that the commander spoke with him and the
charge dismissed him as a fringe case, probably
didn't even give him an appointment with
Ambassador Peregrine. And when it happened, to
save his ass and his career well, people do strange
things."
"What you're suggesting is awful damned strange.''
"I won't back away from it," said the civilian.
"Okay, what's his name?"
414 ROBERT IUDLUM
'Washburn. He's a "
"Norman Washburn? Major Norman Anthony
Washburn, the Third, Fifth, or Sixth?"
"That's the one. '
"Don't back away. You left the f
ield too early.
Washburn was in Beirut, then Athens and, after
that, Madrid. He gave every Company flack in the
territories the business! He d nail his Park Avenue
mama to a velvet wall for a good evaluation report.
He figures by forty-five he'll be heading the Joint
Chiefs and he intends to."
'By forty-five?"
"I've been out of touch for a couple of years, but
he can't be any more than thirty-six, thirty-seven.
The last I heard they were going to jump the
light-colonel status and make him a full bird, then a
brigadier soon after that. He is loved, Yan
'He's a liar," said the civilian in the dimly lit
apartment on Nebraska Avenue.
"Sure 'nuff," agreed the man in Bern, "but I
never figured anything this radical. I mean, he's got
to be scratchin' mule shit for oil to do something so
far out."
"I still won't back away," repeated the civilian,
drinking his bourbon.
"Which means you know."
"Check."
"And you can't talk about that, either." A statement.
"Check again."
"Are you firm?" i f No room for error. He knows
where the command
"Holy Jesus! What are you Northern boys into?"
"Will you track? Starting yesterday?"
"With pleasure, Yankee. How do you want it?"
"In the twilight zone. Only words that come with
needles that's important He has to wake up
thinking he ate a bad piece of meat."
"Women?"