"It didn't happen often."
"I'll grant you that; but when it did you were
there. And hurting."
"Which is exactly why I was reached in Gene-
va recruited in Geneva."
"And this Fowler, or Halliday, knew the exact
words to use. Your own."
"Fitzpatrick got it all for him. He thought he was
doing the right thing too."
"Yes, I know, you told me. What do you think
happened to him? Fitzpatrick, I mean."
"For days I've tried to come up with a reason for
them to keep him alive. I can't. He's more
dangerous to them than I am. He's worked the
streets they're undermining; he knows his way
around Pentagon procurements and export clear-
ances so well he could nail them with half the
evidence They've killed him."
"You liked him, didn't you?"
"Yes, I did, and just as important, I was almost
in awe of that mind of his. He was quick and
perceptive and had one hell of an imagination,
which he wasn't afraid to use."
"He sounds like someone I was married to," said
Val gently.
Converse kept his e yes on her for a moment,
then looked away at the water. "If I get out of this
alive and I don't really
THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 495
think I will I'm going hunting. I'm going to find out
who did it, who pulled the trigger. There won't be
any trial, no witnesses for the prosecution the
defence, no circumstances mitigating or otherwise.
Just me and a gun."
"Sorry to hear that, Joel. I always admired your
principles. They were a constant, like your
attraction your reverence, I think for the law. It
wasn't all conceit and ambition, I knew that. It gave
you the only real roots you ever had. You could look
at the law and argue, as a child does with a parent
knowing the parent is some kind of absolute.... Your
father never gave you that by his own admission,
incidentally."
"I think that's pretty tasteless. '
"I'm sorry. He brought it up once. I am sorry."
"It's all right. We're talking. We didn't do much
of that the last year or so together, did we?"
"I didn't think you wanted to."
"You're on target. Forget it. There's now."
'And there's so much you can deny! All they
have is words against you! I said the same thing to
Larry they say you were here, you were there, you
did this and you did that, but you weren't where they
said you were and you didn't do what they say!
You're the lawyer, Converse. For God's sake, stand
up and defend yourself"
"I'd never get near a courtroom, can't you
understand that? Wherever and whenever I showed
up, someone would be there, someone ordered to kill
me even if it meant losing his own life considering
the consequences, an insignificant sacrifice. My idea
was to use the envelope the dossiers and all the
information they contained, the information that
could only have come from government sources,
which means I have partners somewhere in
Washington. With all of that I could reach people I
knew the firm knew and with Nathan's help get
them to listen to me, see I wasn't crazy. Hear from
me what I saw, what I heard, what I learned. But
without that envelope, even Nate couldn't help.
Besides, he'd insist I go by the book and come in,
telling me he had guarantees of full protection.
There is no protection, not from them. They're in
embassies and naval stations and Army bases; in the
Pentagon, police departments, Interpol, and the
Department of State. They're bag ladies on a train
and commuters with attache cases you don't know
who they are but they're there. And they can't afford
to let me live. I've heard their almighty credo
firsthand."
496 ROBERT LUDLUM
'Checkmate," said Val softly.
'Check," agreed Converse.
"Then we have to find somebody else."
"What?'
"Someone those people you want to reach would
listen to. Someone whose presence might force
those men in Washington who sent you out from
Geneva to say who they are to show themselves."
"Who are you thinking of? John the Baptist?"
"Not John. Sam. Sam Abbott."
"Sam? I thought about him that night in Paris!
How did you ?"
"Like you, I've had a lot of time to think. In New
York
t,h~eyOpuane, Ita?s,t, night after I saw my aunt
in Berlin."
"I'll get to that.... I knew that if you were alive
there had to be a reason why you stayed in hiding,
why you didn't come out shouting, denying all those
insane things they were saying about you. It didn't
make sense; it wasn't you And if you'd been killed
or captured it would have been on the front pages
everywhere, on all the broadcasts. Since there was
no such story, I assumed you had to be alive. But
why did you keep running, hiding? Then I thought,
My God, if Larry Talbot doesn't believe him, who
will? And if Larry didn't, it meant that the people
around him, men like him, all your friends and
those so-called contacts you had had been reached
and convinced that you were the maniac everyone
in Europe was talking about. No one would touch
you and you needed someone. Not me, heaven
knows. I'm your ex-wife and I don't carry any weight
and you needed someone who did.... So I thought
about everyone you'd ever talked about, everyone
we knew. One name kept on coming back to me.
Sam Abbott. Brigadier General Abhott now,
according to the papers about SIX months ago."
" 'Sam the Man,' ' said Joel, shaking his head in
approval.
e was shot down three days after I was, and we
were both shoved around from one camp to
another. Once he was in the cell next to mine and
we d tap out Morse on the walls until they moved
me. He stayed in the Air Force for all the right
reasons. He knew he could be his best there."
"He thought the world of you," said Val, her
voice a mixture of conviction and quiet enthusiasm.
"He said you did
THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 497
more for morale than anyone in the camps, that your
last escape gave everyone hope."
"That's a crock. I was a troublemaker that's
what they called me who could afford to take
chances. Sam had the roughest job. He could have
done what I did, but he was the ranking officer. He
knew there'd be reprisals if he ever tried. He held
everyone together, I didn't."
"He said otherwise. I think he's the reason you
never thought much of your sister's husband.
Remember when Sam flew into New York and you
tried to match him up with Ginny? We all had
dinner at that restaurant we couldn't afford."
"Ginny scared the hell out of him. He told
me
later that if she'd been drafted and put in charge of
Command-Saigon it never would have fallen. He
wasn't going to refight that war for the rest of his
life."
"And you lost a desirable brother-in-law." Valerie
smiled then the smile faded and she leaned forward.
"I can reach him Joel. I'll find him and talk to him,
tell him everything you ve told me. Above all, that
you're no more insane than I am, than he is. That
you were manipulated by people you don't know,
men who lied to you so you'd do the work they
either couldn't do or were afraid to do."
"That's unfair," said Converse. "If they started
digging around State and the Pentagon, there could
be a rash of accidents very fatal and very dead....
No, they were right. It had to start over here and be
traced back. It was the only way."
"If you can say that after all you've been through,
you're saner than any of us. Sam will know that.
He'll help."
"He could, " said Joel slowly, pensively, breaking
off another reed of grass. "He'd have to be
careful none of the usual channels but he could
do it. Three or four years ago, after you and I broke
up, he found out I was in Washington for a few days
and called me. We had dinner and later too many
drinks; he ended up spending the night on the sofa
in my hotel room. We talked both of us too much.
Me about me and you and Sam about his newest
monumental frustration."
"Then you're still close. It wasn't the tong ago."
"That isn't my point. It's what he was doing. He'd
worked his ass off to get into the NASA program,
but they turned him down. They said he was too
valuable where he was. No one
498 ROBERT LUDLUM
was in his class when it came to all-altitude,
sub-mach maneuvers. He designed more patterns in
the sky than any designer on Seventh Avenue ever
did on the ground. He could look at an
aircraft specs aside and tell you what it could
do."
"I don't understand."
'Oh, sorry. He'd been brought to Washington
from wherever he was stationed as a consultant to
the National Security Agency, cross-pollinating with
the CIA. It was his job to evaluate the capabilities
of the new Soviet and Chinese equipment. '
"What?"
"Airplanes, Val. He worked over at Langley and
at a dozen different safe houses in Virginia and
Maryland, appraising photographs brought out by
agents, questioning defectors especially pilots,
mechanics and technicians. He knows the people I
have to reach, he's worked with them."
"You're talking about the intelligence service or
services I gather." '
"Not just services," corrected Joel. "Men who
crawl around in the shadows of those paintings of
yours. People trained to cut down bastards like
Delavane and his tribe, cut them out silently by
using methods and techniques you and I know
nothing about drugs and whores and little boys.
They should have been brought in at the beginning!
Not Geneva, not me. They kill when it's the
pragmatic thing to do, and justify the killing because
it's in the ultimate interests of the country. And
Lord, how I railed against them, the righteous
attorney in me demanding that they be held
accountable. Well, Mr. Naive has changed been
changed because I've seen the enemy and he isn't
us, not the us I think we are. If it takes a garrote to
choke off a cancer when legal medicine can't do it,
hand me the wire, pal, and I'll read the manual."
"I thought you loathed fanatics."
"I do. I . . . do."
"Sam," persisted Valerie. "I'll go home tomorrow
and find him."
"No," said Converse. "I want you to fly back
tonight. You always carried your passport in your
purse still the same?"
"Of course. But I have "
"I don't want you going back to the Amstel.
You've got to get out of Amsterdam. There's a
KLM night Hight to New York at eleven-forty-five."
"But my things "
THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 499
"They're not worth it. Call the hotel when you get
back. Wire them money and say it was an
emergency. They'll mail everything to you. '
"You're serious, aren't you?',
"Never more so in my life. I think you should
know the truth about Rene. He wasn't killed because
we met in Paris nothing had happened then. I called
him from Bonn four days ago and we talked. He
believed me. He was shot to death because he sent
me to Amsterdam, to reach a man who might have
gotten me on a plane to Washington. That's out now
and it doesn't matter. You do. You came here and
you found me, and the people who are looking for
me all over the city will know it soon if they don't
know it already."
"I never said I was going to Amsterdam," Valerie
broke in. "I specifically left word at the Kempinski
that I was Hying directly home, that if I got any calls
to refer them to New York."
"Did you have a reservation on the plane?"
"Naturally. I just never showed up."
"Good, but not good enough. Delavane's people
are efficient. Leifhelm has connections at every
airport and immigration point in Germany. They'll
find out otherwise. We might have fooled them once
tonight, not twice. My guess is there's a German
waiting for you at the Amstel now, probably in your
room. I want him to think you're coming back, that
you're still here."
"If someone like that goes to my room into my
room he's in for a shock."
"What do you mean?"
"Someone else is there. An old man with a long
memory, who's been given instructions I'd rather not
repeat."
"Your aunt's doing?"
"She sees things in black and white, no grays.
There is the enemy and there is not the enemy. And
anyone who would harm her sister's daughter is very
definitely the enemy. You don't know these people,
Joel. They live in the past; they never forget. They're
old now and not what they once were, but they
remember what they were and why they did the
things they did. It was so simple for them. Good and
evil. They live with those memories frankly, it's a
little scary, they're a little scary, to tell you the truth.
Nothing in their lives since has been so alive, so
important to them. I honestly think they'd all prefer
going back to those days, the horror and all."
500 ROBERT LUDLUM
"What about your aunt, though? After everything
that's been said about me in the newspapers and on
television, she went along with you? She didn't ask
any questions? The fact that you were her sister's
daughter was enough ?"
"Oh, no, she asked one very specific question
and I
answered it. That was enough. I must tell you,
though. She's odd very odd but she can do what
has to be done and that's all that matters."
"Okay.... You will go back tonight?"
"Yes," said Val, nodding. "It's reasonable and I
can do more from New York in the morning than
from here. From everything you've said, every hour's
important."
"Vital. Thanks.... Also you may have trouble
reaching Sam. I don't have any idea where he is and
the services aren't cooperative when it comes to a
woman trying to locate an oflicer especially one
with high rank. It's too complicated an overseas
love affair, a child the man never knew about,
probably not his they're very circumspect."
"Then I won't ask them to tell me where he is.
I'll say I'm a relative he's been trying to reach, that
I travel a great deal and if he wishes to call me, I'll
be at the such-and-such hotel for the next
twenty-four hours. Certainly they have to relay that
kind of message to a general."
"Certainly," agreed Joel. "But if you leave your
name you're risking too much. For you and Sam."
"I'll use a variation, one he'll recognize." Valerie
blinked, staring at the ground. "Like Parquet only,
I'll feminine it Parquette. A floor,
wood something associated with a Charpentier, a
carpenter. Then I'll add Virginia he'd remember
Ginny because of you. Virginia Parquette, he'll fig-
ure it out."
Robert Ludlum - Aquatain Progression.txt Page 77
