Comm Tech Corporation, for the purpose of
finalising a contemplated business association
referred to hereafter as the Comm Tech-Bern
merger. On the morning of August 10, at
approximately eight o'clock, I was contacted by the
chief counsel representing the Bern Croup, Mr.
Avery Preston Halliday of San Francisco,
California. As he was an American only recently re-
tained by the Swiss companies, I agreed to meet
with him to clarify the existing points of argument
and our positions with respect to them. When I
arrived at the cafe on the Quai du Mont Blanc, I
recognized Mr. Halliday as a student and close
friend I had known years ago at the Taft School in
Watertown, Connecticut. His name then was Avery
P. Fowler. Mr. Halliday readily confirmed this fact,
explaining that his surname had been changed upon
the death of his father and the remarriage of his
mother to a John Halliday of San Francisco. The
explanation was acceptable, the circumstances,
however, were not. Mr. Halliday had ample prior
time and opportunity to apprise me of his
identity the identity with which I was
familiar but did not do so. There was a reason.
On that morning of August 10, Mr. Halliday sought
a confidential meeting with the undersigned regard-
ing a matter totally unrelated to the Comm
Tech-Bern merger. This meeting was the primary
reason for his being in Geneva. It was the first of
many disturbing revelations....
If the very proper and distant British
stenographer had the slightest interest in the
material she was transcribing in segments from
dictation to the typewritten page, she did not show
it. Her thin lips pursed, her grey hair knotted into
a forbidding bun on the top of her head, she
performed like a machine, as if everything was
accepted in rote and by rote. Valerie's somewhat
guarded explanation that her husband was an
American novelist intrigued by recent events in
Europe was
THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 597
greeted with a cold stare and the gratuituous
information that the legal secretary never watched
television and rarely read the newspapers. She was a
member of the Franco-ltalian Alpine Society, whose
purpose was to defend the natural endowments being
eroded by man; working for the society took up all
her time and energy when she was not earning a
living to enable her to remain in her beloved
mountains. She was an automaton putting in her
time; one could dictate the book of Genesis and Val
doubted the woman would know what she was typing.
It was the seventh hour and there was still no
answer at Alan MetcalPs telephone in Las Vegas.
Only a machine. It was time for the eighth call.
"If we don't get him now," said Converse grimly,
above the quiet tapping of the typewriter across the
room, "go ahead and reach Prudhomme. I wanted to
talk to this Metcalf first, but it's possible that_it may
not be possible."
"What difference does it make? You need help
quickly, and he's willing to help."
"The difference is I know where Prudhomme's
coming from, you've told me. I got an idea what he
can do and what he can't do, but I don't know
anything about Metcalf except that Sam put him
way up on a high priority. Whoever I call first I've
got to make specific statements to him, accusations
and observations that'll blow his mind. Those are
commitments, Val, and I have to go with the
strongest.... Try Metcalf again."Joel turned and
headed for the telephone in the bathroom as Valerie
dialed the international codes for Las Vegas, Nevada.
"Caller C, message received. Please reidentify
yourself twice, followed by a slow count to ten. Stay
on the line."
Joel put the phone down on the edge of the basin
and rushed out to the bedroom-sitting room. He
walked over to Val, holding up his hand as he
reached for a pencil on the desk. He wrote out the
words: "Go ahead. Stay calm. P.S.E."
"This is Miss Parquette speaking," said Valerie,
frowning bewildered. "This is Miss Parquette
speaking. One, two, three, four . . ."
Converse returned to the bathroom, picked up
the telephone and listened.
". . . eight, nine, ten."
Silence. Finally, there were two sharp clicks and
the metaJlic voice came back on the line.
"Confirmed, thank you.
598 ROBERT LUDLUM
This is the second tape and will be microed out when
completed. Listen carefully. There is a place on an
island well known for its tribal nights. The King will
be in his chair. That's it. We are burning."
Joel hung up the phone and studied the
half-legible words he had hastily scribbled in soap on
the mirror above the basin. The door opened and
Valerie walked in, a piece of paper in her hand.
"I wrote it down," she said, handing it to him.
"I wrote it sideways your way is better. Christ, a nd
"No more than the one you gave me. What in
heaven's name does 'P.S.E.' mean?"
" 'Psychological Stress Evaluator,' " answered
Converse, leaning against the wall and reading
MetcalPs message. He looked up at her. "It's a voice
scanner you can attach to a phone or a recording
machine that supposedly tells you whether the person
you're talking to is Iying or not. Larry Talbot played
around with one for a while but claimed he couldn't
find anyone telling the truth, including his nine-
ty-two-year-old mother. He threw it away."
"Does it work?"
"They say it's much more accurate than a lie
detector, and I suppose it is if you know how to read
it or use it. It worked in your case. Your voice was
matched against the other calls you made, which
means this Metcalf is into pretty high-tech equipment.
That scanner tripped the second tape and it was all
done by remote, from another phone, otherwise he
would have answered himself after you passed the
test."
- "But if I passed, why the riddle? Why an island
with tribal
nights?"
"Because any machine like that can be beaten. It's
why they're not admissible in court. Years ago Willie
Sutton was wired into a lie detector, and according to
the result, he never even broke into a piggy bank,
much less Chase Manhattan Metcalf was willing to
take a risk, but not all the way. He's running too."
Converse returned to what Val had written down.
"An island." Val spoke softly, reading the soaped
words on the mirror. "Tribes . . . The Caribe tribes;
they were all through the Antilles. OrJamaica tribal
nights, Obeah rituals, voodoo rites in Haiti. Even the
Bahamas the Lucayan Indians they held puberty
rituals, they all did."
TH
E AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 599
"You impress me," said Joel, looking up from the
paper. "How come?"
"Art courses," she replied. "Those nuts and bolts
you won't grant us that go into the makeup of a
culture's visual work.... And it doesn't fit. It's too
loose."
"Why? It could mean someplace in the
Caribbean, some resort that's advertised a lot. The
King is an emperor and that has to mean
Delavane Mad Marcus, as in Aurelius. It has to be
Marcus; no one's named Aurelius! . . . All those
television commercials, the newspaper ads pictures
of people doing the limbo under torches with
costumed blacks smiling down benignly, counting the
dollars. Which one?"
"Too loose," repeated Val. "Too abstract blocks
and geometric shapes without specifics no
representational images."
"Now what the hell are you talking about?"
objected Converse.
"It's too wide, Joel, too many places to choose
from, places you might not know anything about. It
has to be closer, more familiar to you or to me,
something we can recognize. Like Bruegel or
Vermeer, littered with specific detail."
"They sound like dentists."
Valerie took the paper from him. "Manhattan's an
in land," she said softly, reading and frowning again.
"If there are torches and tribal puberty rites, it's
not my part of town."
"Not tribal rites, tribal nights," corrected Val.
"Tribal not Black but Red? The King will be in his
chair chair . . . table. His table. Tribal . . . nights.
Nights! That's where we're misreading it. Nights!"
"How else can you read it?"
"Not nights but knights! With a k!"
"And a table," broke in Converse. "Knights of the
Round Table."
"But not the King Arthllr legend, not Camelot.
Much nearer, much closer. Tribal American natives.
American Indians. "
"Algonquins. The Round Table!"
"The Algonquin Hotel," cried Valerie. "That's it,
that's what he meant!"
"We'll know in a few minutes," said Joel. "Co
inside and place the call."
The wait was both intolerable and interminable.
Converse looked at his face in-the mirror;
perspiration began to
600 ROBERT LUDLUM
drench his face, the salt sunging his scrapes and
burning his eyes. Far more telling, his hand shook
and his breath was short. The Algonquin
switchboard answered and Val asked for a Mr.
Marcus. There was a stretch of silence, and when
the operator came back on the line, Joel thought he
would smash the telephone into the mirror.
"There are two Marcuses registered, ma'am.
Which one did you wish to speak to?"
"Already it's a rotten day!" Val broke in suddenly
over the phone, startling Converse with her words.
"My boss, the clown, told me to call Mr. Marcus at
the Algonquin right away and give him the time and
place for lunch. Now the clown's disappeared to a
meeting somewhere outside and I'm left holding it.
Sorry, dear, I didn't mean to take it out on you."
"It's okay, hon. we got a few like that around here."
"Maybe you can help me. Which Marcus is
which? Maybe I'll recognize a first name or a
company."
"Sure. Lemme plug into Big Reggie. We all
gotta suck together when it comes to the clowns,
right? . . . Okay, here they are. Marcus, Myron.
Sugarman's Original Replicas, Los Angeles. And
Marcus, Peter . . . not much help here, sweetie. Just
says Georgetown, Washington, D.C."
"That's the one. Peter. I'm sure of it. Thanks, dear."
"Glad to be of help, hon. I'll ring now."
The folded New York Times resting on his knee,
Stone inked in the last two words of the crossword
puzzle and looked at his watch. It had taken him
nine minutes, nine minutes of relief; he wished it
had been longer. One of the joys of having been
station chief in London was the London Times
crossword. He could always count on at least a
half-hour when he could forget problems in the
search for words and meanings.
The telephone rang. Stone stared at it, his pulse
accelerat~ng, his throat suddenly dry. No one knew
he had checked into the Algonquin under the name
of Marcus. No one! . . . Yes, there was someone,
but he was in the air, flying up from Knoxville,
Tennessee. What had gone wrong? Or had he been
wrong about Metcalf? Was the supposedly angry,
sermonising Air Force intelligence officer one of
them? Had his own insuncts, honed over a thousand
years of sorting out garbage deserted him because
he so desperately sought an opening,
THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 601
an escape from a steel net that was dropping down
on him? He got out of the chair and walked slowly,
in fear, to the bedside table. He picked up the
insistently ringing phone.
"Yes?"
"Alan Metcalf?" said the soft, firm voice of a woman.
"Who?" Stone was so thrown by the natne he
could barely concentrate, barely think!
"I beg your pardon, I have the wrong room."
"Wait! Don't hang up. Metcalfs on his way here."
"I'm sorry."
"Please! Oh Christ, please! I was tired, I was
asleep. We've been up night and day.... Metcalf. I
talked with him two hours ago he said he was going
to reprogram his machine, that someone was trying
to reach him since one o'clock this morning. He had
to get out of there. A man was killed, a pilot. It was
not an accident! Am I making sense to you?"
"Why should I talk to you?" asked the woman.
"So you can trace the call?"
"Listen to me," said Stone, his voice now in total
control. "Even if I wanted to and I don't this is a
hotel, not a private line,-and to do what you suggest
would take at least three men on the trunk lines and
another controlling the switchboard. And even with
such a unit it would be at least four minutes before
they could isolate the wire and send out a tracer sig-
nal which initially would only give us an area
location, not a specific phone. And if you were
calling from overseas we'd have to have another
man, an expert, in that specific location to narrow it
down to perhaps a twenty-mile radius, but only if you
stayed on your phone for at least six minutes.... Now,
for God's sake, give me at least two!"
"Go on. Quickly!"
"I'm going to assume something. Maybe I
shouldn't, but you're a clever woman, Mrs. DePinna,
and you could do it."
"DePinna?"
"Yes. You left a telephone book open to the blue
pages, the government pages. When the accident
happened in Nevada, I made a simple connection
with a listing, and two hours ago I learned I was
right. Metcalf returned my call from a pay phone at
an airport.
A pilot, a general, had talked to him at
length. He's joining us. You ran from the wrong
people, Mrs. DePinna. But as for what I'm thinking,
I think the man we want to find is listening on this
phone."
"There's no one else here!"
602 ROBERT LUDIUM
"Please don't interrupt me, I've got to use every
second." Stone's voice suddenly became stronger.
"Leifhelm, Bertholdier, Van Headmer, Abrahms. And
a fifth man we can't identify, an Englishman who's
down so deep he makes Burgess Maclean and Blunt
look like amateurs. We don't know whohe is, but
he's there, using warehouses in Ireland and offshore
cargo ships, and long-forgotten airfields to transport
materials that shouldn't be going out. Those dossiers
came from us, Converse! We sent them to you!
You're a lawyer, and you know that by using your
name I'm incriminating myself or committing suicide
if anyone's taping this. I'll go further. We sent you
out through Preston Halliday in Geneva. We sent
you out to build a legal case from left field so we
could abort this thing with a minimum of fallout,
sending all those goddamned idiots back to reality.
But we were wrong! They were much further ahead
than we ever suspected we ever suspected but not
Beale on Mykonos. He was dead right, and he's
dead because he was right! Incidentally, he was the
'men from San Francisco.' It was his five hundred
thousand dollars; he came from a rich family, which,
among other things, bequeathed him a conscience.
Think back to Mykonos! To what he told you what
Robert Ludlum - Aquatain Progression.txt Page 93
