fundamentally equalised. only things he was
interested in were the clothes. They were the option,
the option he had used in the jungle a lifetime ago.
He had crammed himself inside a scout's tattered
uniform, and twice across a narrow riverbank he had
not been shot by the enemy who had spotted him.
Instead, they had waved.
He selected the articles of clothing that fit best
and put them on; the rest he threw into the marsh.
Whatever he looked like, there was little or no
resemblance to the tweedy academic he had tried to
be in Bonn. If anything, he could be mistaken for a
man who worked on the Rhine, a roughhewn mate
or a foreman of a barge crew. He had chosen the
chauffeur's coat, a dark, coarse-woven jacket cut to
the hips with the man's blue denim shirt
underneath both bullet holes washed clean of
blood. The trousers were those of the subordinate
executioner; brown creaseless corduroys, flared
slightly at the ankles, which, thankfully, they reached.
Neither man had worn a hat, and his was somewhere
in the landfill; he would find one or buy one or steal
one. He had to; without a hat or a cap covering part
of his face, he felt as naked as exposed and as
frightened as he would have felt without clothes.
He lay back in the dry wild grass as the sun
disappeared over an unseen horizon and stared up at
the sky.
24
"Well, Ahh'l be . . . !" exclaimed the distinguished-
looking man with the flowing mane of white hair, his
full, nearly white eyebrows arched in astonishment.
"You're Molly Washburn's boy?"
"I beg your pardon?" said the Army officer at the
adjacent table along the banquette in Bonn's Am
Tulpenfeld restaurant. "Have we met, sir?"
"Not so's you'd remember, Major.... Please
forgive my intruding." The Southerner addressed the
apology to the offi
422 ROBERT LUDLUM
cer's companion across the table, a balding
middle-aged man who had been speaking English
with a pronounced German accent. "But Molly
would never forgive this pore old Georgia cracker if
he didn't say hello to her son and insist on buyin'
him a drink. '
"I'm afraid I'm at a loss,' said Washburn
pleasantly but without enthusiasm.
"I would be, too, young fella. I know it sounds
cornpone, but you were just barely in long pants
back then. The last time I saw you, you were in a
blue blazer jacket and madder 'n hell at losing
a.soccer game. I think you blamed it on your left
wing, which in my opinion then and now is a logical
place to blame anythtug. "
The major and his companion laughed
appreciatively.
Good Lord, that does go back a long hme to
when I was at Dalton."
"And captain of the team, as I recall."
"How did you ever recognize me?"
"I dropped in on your momma the other week at
the house in Southampton. Proud girl that she is,
there were a few real handsome photographs of you
in the living room."
"Of course, on the piano."
"That's where they were, silver frames and all."
"I'm afraid I've forgotten your name."
"Thayer. Thomas Thayer, or just plain old T.T.
as your momma calls me." The two shook hands.
"Good to see you again, sir," said Washburn,
gesturing at his companion. "This is Herr Stammler.
He handles a great deal of our press relations with
the West German media."
"How do you do Mr. Stammler."
"A pleasure, Herr Thayer."
"Speakin' of the embassy and I assume you were,
I promised Molly I'd ring you up over there when I
got here. Mah word on it, I was gain' to do just that
tomorrow I'm fightin' .'et lag today. One hell of a
coincidence, isn't it? You bein' here and my bein'
here, right next to each other!"
"Major," interrupted the German courteously.
"Two people who go back so many years must have
a great deal to reminisce about. And since our
business is fundamentally concluded, I think I shall
press on."
"Now, hold on, Mr. Stammler," objected Thayer.
"Ah simply couldn't allow you to do that!"
"No, really, it's perfectly all right." The German
smiled.
THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 423
"Truthfully, Major Washburn felt he should insist on
taking me to dinner this evening after the terrible
things we've had to deal with during the past few
days he far more than I but to be quite honest,
I'm exhausted. Also I am far older than my young
friend and nowhere near as resilient. The bed cries
out, Herr Thayer. Believe me when I tell you that."
"Hey, Mr. Stammler, Ah've got an idea. You're
fanned out and I'm droppin' from the jet stream, so
why don't we leave the young skunk here and both
hit the pillows?"
"But I couldn't allow you to do that." The
German got up from the table and extended his hand
to Thayer. They shook, and Stammler turned to
Washburn, shaking his hand also. "I'll call you in the
morning, Norman."
"All right, Gerhard.... Why didn't you just say you
were tired?"
"And conceivably offend one of my largest
clients? Be reasonable, Norman. Good night,
gentlemen." The German smiled again, and walked
away.
"Ah guess we're stuck with each other, young
man," said the Southerner. "Why not move over here
and let me save the embassy a couple of dollars?"
"All right," replied Washburn, getting up with his
drink and sidling between the tables to the chair
opposite Thayer. He sat down. "How is Mother? I
haven't called her in a couple of weeks."
"Molly is always Molly, my boy. She came forth
and they broke the mold, but I don't have to tell you
that. She looks the same as she did twenty years ago.
I swear I don't know how she does ill"
"And she's not going to tell you, either."
Both men laughed as the Southerner raised his
glass and brought it forward for the touch. The
glasses met, a gentle ring was heard. It was the
beginning.
Converse waited, watching from a dark storefront
on the shabby street in Emmerich. Across the way
were the dim lights of a cheap hotel, the entrance
uninviting, sleazy. Yet with any luck he would have
a bed there in the next few minutes. A bed with a
sink in the corner of the room and, with even more
luck, hot water with which he could bathe his wound
and change the bandage again. During the last two
nights he had learned that such places were his only
possibilities for refuge. No questions would be asked
and a false name
424 ROBERT LUDLUM
on a registration card expected. But even the most
sullen greeting was a menace for him. He had only
to open his
mouth and whatever came out identified
him as an American who could not speak German.
He felt like a deaf-mute running a gauntlet,
careening off walls of people. He was helpless, so
goddamned helpless! The killings in Bonn, Brussels
and Wesel had made every American male over
thirty and under fifty suspect. The melodramatic
suspicions were compounded by speculations that
the obsessed man was being aided, perhaps
manipulated, by terrorist organizahons
Baader-Meinhof, the PLO, Libyan splinter groups,
even KGB destabilizahon teams sent out by the
dreaded Voennaya. He was being hunted
everywhere, and as of yesterday, the International
Herald Tribune printed further reports that the
assassin was heading for Paris which meant that
the generals of Aquitaine wanted the concentration
to be on Paris, not where they knew he was, where
their soldiers could run him down, take him, kill
him.
To get off the streets he had to move with the
flotsam and jetsam and he needed a run-down hotel
like the one across the street. He knew he had to
get off the streets; there were too many traps
outside. So on the first night in Wesel he re-
membered the student Johann, and looked for ways
to re-create similar circumstances. Young people
were less prone to be suspicious and more receptive
to the promise of financial reward for a friendly
service.
It was odd, but that first night in Wesel was both
the most difficult and the easiest. Difficult because
he had no idea where to look, easy because it
happened so rapidly, so logically.
First he stopped at a drugstore, buying gauze,
adhesive tape, antiseptic and an inexpensive cap
with a visor. Then he went to a cafe, to the men's
room, where he washed his face and the wound,
which he bound tight, skin joining skin, the bandage
firmly in place. Suddenly, as he finished his
ministrations, he heard the familiar words and
emphatic melody young raucous voices in song: "On,
Wisconsin.... On, Wisconsin . . . on to victoreee. . ."
The singers were a group of students from the
German Society at the University of Wisconsin, as
he later found out who were bicycling through the
northern Rhineland. Casually approaching a young
man getting more beers from the bar and
introducing himself as a fellow American, he told an
THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 425
outrageous story of having been taken by a whore
and rolled by her pimp, who stole his passport-but
never thought of a money belt. He was a respected
businessman who had to sleep it off, gather his wits,
and reach his firm back in New York. However, he
spoke no German, would the student consider the
payment of $100 for helping him out?
He would and did. Down the block was a dingy
hotel where no questions were asked; the young man
paid for a room and brought Converse, who was
waiting outside, his receipt and his key.
All yesterday he had walked, following the roads
in sight of the railroad tracks until he reached a town
named Halden. It was smaller than Wesel, but there
was a run-down, industrial section east of the
railroad yards. The only "hotel" he could find,
however, was a large, shoddy house at the end of a
row of shoddy houses with signs saying ZIMMER, 20
MARK in two first-floor windows and a larger one
over the front door. It was a boardinghouse, and
several doors beyond in the spill of the streetlampsa
heated argument was taking place between an older
woman and a young man. Above, a few neighbors sat
in their windows, arms on the sills, obviously
listening. Joel also listened to the sporadic words
shouted in heavily accented English.
". . . 'I hate it here!' Das habe ich ihm gesagt. 'I
do not care to stay, Onkel! I vill go back to
Germany! Maybe join .Baader-Meinhofl' Das halve
ich item gesagt."
"Barr!" screamed the woman, turning and going
up the steps. "Schweinehund!" she roared, as she
opened the door, went inside and slammed it shut
behind her.
The young man had looked up at his audience in
the windows and shrugged. A few clapped, so he
made an exaggerated, elaborate bow. Converse
approached; there was no harm in trying, he thought.
"You speak very good English," he said.
"dye not?" replied the German. "They spend bags
of groceries for five years to give me lessons. I must
go to her brother in America. I say Nein! They say
da! I go. I hate it!"
"I'm sorry to hear that. I'm an American and I
like the Cerrnan people. Where were you?"
"In Yorktown."
"Virginia?"
"Nein! The city of New York."
"Oh, that Yorktown."
426 ROBERT LUDLUM
'Ja, my uncle has two butcher shops in New
York, in what they call Yorktown. Shit, as you say
in America!'
"I'm sorry. Why?"
"The Schwarzen and theJuden! If you speak like
me, the black people steal from you with knives, and
the Jews steal from you with their cash registers.
hreinie, they call me, and Nazi. I told a Jew he
cheated me I vas nice, I vas not impolite and he
told me to get out of his shop or he call the 'cops !
I vas shit, he said! . . . You vear a good German
suit and spend good German money, they don t say
those things. You are a delivery boy trying to learn,
they kick the shit out of you, What do I know! My
father vas only a fourteen-year-old sol dier. Shit!"
"Again, I'm telling you I'm sorry. I mean it. It's
not in our nature to blame children.'
"Shit!"
"Perhaps I can make up for a little of what you
went through. I m in trouble because I was a
stupid American. But I'll pay you a hundred
American dollars . . ."
The young German happily got him a room at
the boardinghouse. It was no better than the one in
Wesel, but the water was hotter, the toilet nearer
his door.
Tonight was different from the other nights he
had spent in Germany, thought Joel, as he looked
across the street at the decrepit hotel in Emmerich.
Tonight could lead to his passage into Holland. To
Cort Thorbecke and a plane to Washington The
man Joel had recruited was somewhat older than
the oth ers who had helped him. He was a merchant
seaman out of Bremerhaven, in Emmerich to make
a duty call on his family with whom he felt ill at
ease. He had made the obligatory call been soundly
rebuked by his mother and father, and had returned
to the place and the people he loved best a bar at
the bend of the riverbank.
Again, as it had been in Wesel, it was the
English Iyrics of a song that had caught Joel's
attention. He stared at the young seaman stan
ding
at the bar and playing a guitar. This time it was not
a college football song but an odd, haunting mixture
of slow biting rock and a sad madrigal: ". . . When
you finally came down, when your feet hit the
ground, did you know where you were? When you
finally were real, could you touch what you feel,
were you there in the know? . . . '
The men around the bar were caught up by the
precise
THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 427
beat of the minor-key music. When the seaman
finished there was respectful applause, followed by a
resumption of fast talk and faster refilling of mugs of
beer. Minutes later Converse was standing next to
the seagoing troubador, the guitar now slung over his
shoulder and held in place by a wide strap like a
weapon. Joel wondered if the man really knew
English or only Iyrics. He would find out in seconds.
The seaman laughed at a companion's remark; when
the laughter subsided, Converse said, 'I'd like to buy
you a drink for reminding me of home. It was a nice
song."
The man looked at him quizzically. Joel
stammered thinking that the seaman had no idea
what he was talking about. Then, to Converse's
relief, the man answered. "Danke. It is a good song.
Sad but good, like some of ours. You are
Amerikaner?"
"Yes. And you speak English."
"Okay. I don't read no good, aber I speak okay.
I'm on merchant ship. We sail Boston, New York,
Baltimore sometimes ports, Florida."
"What'll you have?"
Robert Ludlum - Aquatain Progression.txt Page 66
