Robert Ludlum - Aquatain Progression.txt

by The Aquitaine Progression [lit]

  names, tactics; somewhere there's a crack, a road we

  can take we have to take. Quickly."

  "I'd start with Prudhomme," said Val.

  "We'll call in his hand but maybe not first. Let's

  take things in sequence. Are there two phones in

  here? A certain ex-wife had me too preoccupied to

  notice last night."

  "She's probably pregnant."

  "Wouldn't that be wonderful?"

  "Down, boy. Yes, there's another phone. It's in

  the bathroom."

  "I want you to call this Metcalf, Alan Metcalf, in

  Las Vegas. We'll get the number from information.

  I'll listen."

  "What do I say?"

  "What name did you and Sam use?"

  "The one I told you. Parquette."

  "Say that's who's calling, nothing else. Let him make

  the

  590 ROBERT LUDLUM

  first move. If it's wrong, I'll know we'll both

  know and I'll hang up. You'll hear me and you

  hang up, too."

  "Suppose he's not there? Suppose I get a wife or

  a girl friend or a child?"

  "Leave your name quickly and say you'll call

  back m an hour."

  Peter Stone sat on the sofa, his feet up on the

  coffee table. Across, in two armchairs, were the

  Army captain out of uniform and the young Navy

  lieutenant, also in street clothes.

  "We agree, then," said Stone. "We try this

  Metcalf and hope for the best. If we're wrong if

  I'm wrong we could be traced, and don't fool

  yourselves, you've been seen here, you could be

  identified. But as I told you before, there comes a

  time when you have to take a risk you'd rather not

  take. You're out of safe territory and you hope to

  Christ you get through it fast. I can't promise that

  you will. This phone is tapped into another number,

  a hotel across town, so any trace would be delayed,

  but only delayed while everyone registered is

  checked, every room checked. Once that's over with,

  any experienced telephone repairman could go

  down in the cellars and find the intercept."

  "How much time would that give us?" asked the

  Army of ficer.

  "It's one of the largest hotels in New York,"

  replied the civilian. "With luck, twenty-four to

  thirty-six hours."

  "Go for it!" ordered the Navy man.

  '.Oh, for God's sake," said the captain, running

  his hand through his hair. "Yes, of course, try it, try

  him. But I'm still not sure why."

  "Scat patterns. It was routine information and

  easy to get. Abbott wrote out his schedules every

  day and he was preciseabout them. There was a

  preponderance of lunches alone with Metcalf, and

  dinners with both families at either the Abbott or

  the Metcalf home. I think he trusted the man, and

  as a longtime intelligence officer Metcalf was the

  logical one to go to. Also, there's something else.

  Along with Converse, all three were prisoners of

  war in Vietnam."

  "Go for it!" cried the Navy lieutenant.

  "For Christ's sake, find another phrase," said the

  captain.

  "It's an answering machine!" shouted Val,

  gripping the mouthpiece of the telephone.

  THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 591

  Joel came out of the bathroom. "One hour," he

  whis~ered.

  "One hour," she said. "Miss Parquette will call

  back in n hour." She hung up.

  "And every hour after that," added Converse,

  staring town at the phone. "I don't like this. It's one

  o'clock in the Horning back there, and if there's a

  wife or children aroumd, omeone should have been

  there."

  "Sam didn't mention a wife or children, except his

  own."

  "No reason why he would."

  "There could be a dozen explanations, Joel."

  "I just hope it's not the one I keep thinking about."

  "Let me call Prudhomme," said Valerie. "Let's

  use this atiana family."

  "Not yet."

  "Why not?"

  "We need something else he needs something

  else.' ;uddenly, Converse's gaze fell on the thick

  envelope adlressed to Nathan Simon. It was on the

  bureau, his false pass~ort on top. "My God, we

  may have it," he said quietly. "It's een right there all

  the time and I didn't see it."

  Val followed his eyes. "The analysis you wrote for

  Nahan?"

  "I called it the best brief I ever wrote, but of

  course it's lot a brief at all. It doesn't address points

  of law except in the videst, most abstract sense,

  without acceptable evidence to upport the

  accusations. What it does address is the perverted

  mbitions of powerful men who want to change the

  laws, alering governments, supplanting them with

  raw military conrols, all in the name of maintaining

  the law and preserving he order they themselves will

  be called upon to maintain and ~reserve. And if

  'compromise' means killing if they intend nounting

  wholesale assassinations they can do it."

  "What's your point, Joel?"

  "If I'm going to build a case, I'd better do it the

  only way know how from premise to conclusion

  based on affidavits, repositions starting with my

  own and ending with pretrial xaminahons."

  "What the hell are you talking about?"

  ' The law, Mrs. Converse," said Joel, picking up

  the enveope. "And what it's meant to do. I can use

  most of what's in ere just in a different form.

  Naturally, I'll want other coroborating depositions,

  the farther afield the better. That's

  592 R08ERT LUDLUM

  when you'll call this Prudhomme and join the

  Tatiana family. Then hopefully we'll reach Sam's

  friend, Metcalf goddamn it, he'll have something to

  give us.... Finally, I'm going to want to examine at

  least two of the alleged defendants oral-

  ly Leifhelm, for one, and probably Abrahms,

  maybe Delavane himself."

  "You're mad! ' cried Valerie.

  "No, I'm not," said Converse simply. "I'll need

  help, I know that. But I've got enough money to

  hire a couple of squads of miscreants and once

  Prudhomme understands, I have an Idea he'll know

  where the union hall is. We've got a lot of work to

  do, Val. All courts like immaculate menu"

  scripts. "

  "For Christ's sake, Joel, speak English."

  "You're a romantic, Mrs. Converse," he said

  approaching her. These are the nuts and bolts you

  don't find in seascapes. "

  T eydo have to be sketched, my darling. And

  balanced or unbalanced, the colors

  deliberate What are you talking

  "A stenographer a legal secretary, if you can

  find one Someone who's willing to stay here all day

  and half the night; if need be. Offer three times the

  going rate."

  "Say I find one," said Val. ' What in heaven's

  name are you going to tell her? Or him?"

  Joel frowned as he crossed aimlessly to the

  window. 'A novel," he said, turning. "We're writin
g

  a novel. The first twenty or thirty pages are to be

  read as an upcoming court case, a trial."

  'Based on real people, men everyone's read about?"

  It's a new kind of fiction, but it's only a novel.

  That's all

  Morning came to New York and Stone was

  alone again. The Navy lieutenant and the Army

  captain were back at their desks in Washington. It

  was better this way; they could not help him, and

  the less they were seen around the apartment the

  more likely they might escape detection if the

  hammer came down. And the hammer could come

  down, Stone knew It. It was as clear as the fact that

  Colonel Alan Metcalf was the chord they needed to

  start the music. "Without him," as Johnny Reb might

  have said in the old days, "the tune ain't gonna get

  out of the fiddle no stompin' unless he shows up."

  But could he show up? wondered the former

  operations offi

  THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 593

  cer for Central Intelligence. To all intents and

  purposes he had disappeared, that was the word

  from Nellis, and the investigating unit did not

  pretend to understand or appreciate his absence.

  That, too, was the word and it was delivered harshly.

  But Stone understood. Metcalf now knew what

  he knew what they knew and the colonel would

  not play by any rules written in the regulations, not

  if he was any good. Not if he was alive. And the

  ex-agent also understood something else when it

  came to telephone answering machines and

  intelligence personnel. The equipment was adaptable

  and sophisticated, courtesy of the American taxpayer

  and, considering the extraordinary waste, one of his

  better investments. Metcalf would play it well if he

  was alive and any good. He would use a remote,

  programming it and reprogramming it, hearing what

  he wanted to hear, erasing what he wanted to erase,

  and leaving in certain information, preferably

  misleading. There would also be a code, probably

  changed daily, that if not inserted accurately would

  melt the tape with a ten-second burst of

  microwaves all standard. If he was any good. If he

  was alive.

  Stone counted on both that the colonel was

  good and that he was alive. There was no point in

  thinking otherwise; that only led to staying in Johnny

  Reb's hammock or ' gain' fishin'," doing whatever

  one did as a robot. Which was why Stone had left a

  message on MetcalPs machine an hour ago at

  six-thirty-five. He had chosen a name Converse's

  wife former wife would have to have relayed to

  the dead Samuel Abbott. Marcus Aurelius ascending.

  Respond and erase, please. Then Stone had given the

  telephone number at the apartment, which, if traced,

  would lead the tracers to the Hilton Hotel on

  Fifty-third Street.

  There was only one other person in the world

  Stone wished he could reach, but that man was "on

  holiday we have no means of getting in touch." The

  words were patently a lie, but to challenge that lie

  would mean that Peter would have to say more than

  he wanted to say. The man was Derek Belamy, chief

  of Clandestine Operations for Britain's M.1.6 and

  one of the only real friends Stone had ever had in all

  his years with the Central Intelligence Agency.

  Belamy was such a good friend that when Peter was

  station chief in London, the Englishman had told

  him bluntly to get out for a while before the whisky

  took over altogether and his ass was nailed to an

  alcoholic cross: '`I have a doctor who'll certify a

  minor

  594 ROBERT LUDLUM

  breakdown, Peter. I've a guest cottage on the

  grounds in Kent. Stay there, get well, old boy. '

  Stone had refused, and it was the most

  destructive decision he had ever made. The rest was

  the drunken nightmare Belamy had predicted.

  But it was not Derek's concern for a friend that

  made Peter want to reach him. It was Belamy's

  brilliance, his perceptiveness, quietly concealed

  behind a pleasant, even prosaic exterior. And the

  knowledge that Derek Belamy had the pulse of

  Europe in his head, and given the most basic

  information, could smell out a Delavane operation.

  And, in fact, thought Stone hopefully, he was

  smelling them out now in Ireland certainly where

  he was now. Sooner or later preferably

  sooner Belamy would return his call. When he did,

  a munitions shipment from Beloit, Wisconsin, would

  be described in full. Derek Belamy loathed the

  Delavanes of this world. His old friend would

  become an ally against the generals.

  The telephone rang; Stone looked at it and let

  it ring again. Metcalf? He reached over and picked

  it up. 'Yes?"

  "AureliusP"

  "Somehow I knew you'd come through, Colonel."

  "Who the hell are you?"

  "The name's Stone and we're on the same side,

  at least I think we are. However, you wear a

  uniform and I don't, so I need a little more

  confidence in you. Can you understand

  "You're one of those bastards in D.C. who sent him

  outl" "You're warmer, Colonel. I came on late, but

  yes, I am one of those bastards. What happened to

  General Abbott?"

  "He was killed, you son of a bitchl . . . I assume

  this phone s clean."

  "For at least twenty-four hours. Then we all

  disappear just like you disappeared."

  "No remorse? No conscience? Do you know

  what you've done?"

  "We don't have time for that, Colonel. Perhaps

  later, if there's a later for w.... Get to, it, soldier!

  I've lived with thisl Now. Where do we meet?

  Where are you?"

  "Okay, okay," said the obviously exhausted Air

  Force officer. "I took a dozen different Bights. I'm

  in where the hell am 1? in Knoxville, Tennessee.

  I've got a night to Washington in twenty minutes."

  THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 595

  "Why?"

  "To blow this tucking thing out of the air, what else?"

  "Forget it, you're a dead man. I'd think you'd

  have learned that by now. You set up something on

  the information Abbott gave you, right?"

  "Yes."

  "And he was blown out of the air, right?"

  "Goddamn you, shut up!"

  "You should have learned. They're where you

  can't see them or find them. But the wrong word to

  the wrong person and they can find you."

  "I know that!" shouted Metcalf. "But I've been in

  this business for twenty years. There's got to be

  someone I can trust!"

  "Let's talk about it, Colonel. Scratch D.C. and fly

  up to New York. I'll get a room at the

  Algonquin actually, I've already reserved one."

  "What name?"

  "What else? Marcus."

  "You're on, but as long as we're in this deep I

  should tell you. The woman's been trying to reach

  me since one o'clock
this morning."

  "Converse's wife?"

  "Yes."

  "We need her. We need him!"

  "I'll reprogram the machine. The Algonquin?"

  "That's it."

  "He's from New York, isn't he? I mean he's a

  New Yorker."

  "Whatever that means, yes. He's lived here for

  years."

  "I hope he's bright they're bright."

  "Neither of them would be alive now if they

  weren't very bright, Colonel."

  "See you in a few hours, Stone."

  The civilian hung up the phone, his hands

  shaking, his eyes on a bottle of bourbon across the

  room. No! There would be no drinks, he had

  promised himself. He got out of the chair and went

  to the bed, where his small suitcase was open, a gap-

  ing mouth waiting to be filled. He filled it, leaving

  the bottle of whisky on the table, and went outside to

  the elevators down the hall.

  * * *

  596 ROBERT LUDLUM

  1, Joel Harrison Converse, an attorney admitted

  to practice before the bar of the State of New York

  and employed by the firm of Talbot, Brooks and

  Simon, 666 Fifth Avenue, New York City, New

  York arrived in Geneva, Switzerland, on August 9

  for legal conferences on behalf of our client, the