Robert Ludlum - Aquatain Progression.txt

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by The Aquitaine Progression [lit]


  nothing to trace. It was like a series of blips

  disappearing from a radar screen....

  * * *.

  622 ROBERT LUDIUM

  [Stone]

  My years in the CIA 'sClandestine Operations

  taught me that the larger the pattern, the greater the

  numbers, and that those areas with the heaviest

  concentration of activity invariably held the tightest and

  most ruthless security. Nothing terribly original here but

  the reverse application is frequently overlooked. Since

  Washington was the clearinghouse for illegal ex ports

  totaling millions u pon millions in A merican mer-

  chandise and materiel, it stood to reason that there

  would be a range of safeguards, scores of Delavane's

  informants both knowing and unknowing, that is,

  ideologically involved or sim ply hired or

  threatened in the government agencies and

  departments related to the activities of Palo Alto

  International. Without going into specifics, Captain

  Packard confirmed this judgment by telling me that an

  incident had recently taken place that cost the lives of

  three men who tried to follow up on a number of com

  peter erasures. We had moved from the realm of

  ideological extremists into one of fanatics and killers.

  Therefore it was my contention and I hereby assume

  full responsibility for the decision that saferand more

  ra pid progress could be made by sending a man out

  into the peripheral sectors of Delavane's operation with

  enough information to trace connections back to Palo

  Alto International. By the very nature of illegal

  exportlicensingitself thereis more open territory at the

  receiving ends. The obvious place to start was with

  thefourgenerals whose names werefound in Delavane's

  notes. I had no candidate with the expertise If elt was

  necks sary for the assignment....

  [Captain Packard]

  On or aboutJuly 10, Mr. Halliday called me on the

  sterile phone I'd set u p for him and said he believed

  he'd found the proper candidate for the assignment as

  outlined by Mr. Stone. An attorney whose field was

  international law, a man he had known years ago and

  a former prisoner of war in Vietnam who conceivably

  had the motivation to go after someone like General

  Delavane. His name was Joel Converse....

  1, Alan Bruce Metcalf age forty-eight, am an of

  dicer in the United States Air Force, holding the rank

  of colonel and currently stationed at the NellisAirForce

  Base, Clark County Nevada, as chief intelligence of

  dicer. Thirty-six hours ago, as I dictate this statement,

  on August 25 at four o'clock in the

  THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 623

  afternoon, I received a telephone callfromBrigadier

  General Samuel Abbott, commanding officer, Tactical

  Operations Nellis A.F.B. The general said it was urgent

  that we meet preferably off base, as soon as possible.

  He had new and extraordinary information regarding

  the recent assassinations of the supreme commander of

  NA TO and the American ambassador to Bonn, West

  Germany. He insisted that we be in civilian clothes and

  suggested the library at the University of Nevada, Las

  Vegas campus. We met at approximately 5:~30 P.M.

  and talkedforfive hours. I will be as accurate as

  possible, and that will be very accurate, as the

  conversation is stillfresh in my mind, engraved there by

  the tragic death of General Abbott, a close friend for

  many years and a man I admired greatly....

  The above, then, are the events as told to General

  Abbott by the former Mrs. Converse, and as he related

  them to me, and the subsequent actions I took to

  convene an emergency meeting of the highest-level

  intelligence personnel in Washington. General Abbott

  believed what he had been told because of his

  knowledge and perceptions of the individuals involved.

  He was a brilliant and stable man, not given to bias

  where judgments were concerned. In my opinion, he

  was deliberately murdered because he had "new and

  extraordinary information" about a fellow prisoner of

  war, one Joel Converse.

  Nathan Simon, tall, portly, sithng well back in his

  chair, removed the tortoiseshell glasses from his tired

  face and tugged at the Vandyke beard that covered

  the scars of shrapnel embedded at Anzio years ago.

  His thick salt-and-pepper eyebrows were arched

  above his hazel eyes and sharp, straight nose. The

  only other person in the room was Peter Stone. The

  stenographer had been dismissed; Metcalf, exhausted,

  had retired to his room, and the two other officers,

  Packard and Landis, had opted to return to

  Washington on separate planes. Simon carefully

  placed the typewritten affidavits on the table beside

  his chair.

  "There was no one else, Mr. Stone?" he asked, his

  deep voice gentle, far gentler than his eyes.

  "No one I knew, Mr. Simon, ' replied the former

  intelligence officer. "Everyone I've used since what

  we call pulling in old debts was lower-level with

  access to upper-level

  624 ROBERT IUDLUM

  equipment, not decisions. Please remember, three

  men were killed when this thing barely started."

  "Yes, I know."

  "Can you do what Converse said? Can you get

  something 'under seal' and move some mountains

  we can't move?"

  "He told you that?"

  "Yes. It's why I agreed to all of this."

  "He had his reasons. And I have to think."

  "There's no time to think. We have to act, we

  have to do something! Time's running out!"

  "To be sure, but we cannot do the wrong thing, can

  we?"

  "Converse said you had access to powerful

  people in Washington. I could trust you to reach

  them."

  "But you've just told me I don't know whom to

  trust, isn't that right?"

  "Oh, Chr7st!"

  "A lovely and inspired prophet." Simon looked

  at his watch as he gathered up the papers and rose

  from the chair. "It's two-thirty in the morning, Mr.

  Stone, and this weary body has come to the end of

  its endurance. I'll be in touch with you later in the

  day. Don't try to reach me. I'll be in touch.

  "In touch ? The package from Converse is on its

  way here. I m picking it up at Kennedy Airport on

  the Geneva flight at two-forty-five this afternoon.

  He wants you to have it right away. I want you to

  have it!"

  "You'll be at the airport?" asked the lawyer.

  "Yes, meeting our courier. I'll be back here by

  four or four-thirty, depending on when the plane

  gets in and traffic, of course."

  "No, don't do that, Mr. Stone, stay at the

  airport. I'll want everything Joel has compiled for us

  in my hands as soon as possible, of course. Just as

  there is a courier from Geneva, you may be the

  courier from New York."

  "Where are you going? Washington?"r />
  "Perhaps, perhaps not. At this moment I'm going

  home to my apartment and think. Also, I hope to

  sleep, which is doubtful. Give me a name I can use

  to have you paged at the airport."

  Johnny Reb sat low in the small boat, the motor

  idling the waves slapping the sides of the shallow

  hull in the darkness. He was dressed in black

  trousers, a black turtleneck

  THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 625

  sweater and a black knit hat, and he was as close as

  he dared drift into the southwest coast of the island

  of Scharhorn. He had spotted the bobbing green

  glows on the series of buoys the first night; they were

  trip lights, beams intersecting one another above the

  water, ringing the approach to the old U-boat base.

  They formed an unseen wall to penetrate it would

  set off alarms. This was the third night, and he was

  beginning to feel vindicated.

  Trust the gut, trust the stomach and the bile that

  crept up into the mouth. The bellies of the old-time

  whores of the community knew when things were

  going to happen partly out of dread, partly because

  a score was near that would enlarge an account in

  Bern. There was no account in the offing now, of

  course only a succession of outlays to pay back a

  considerable debt, but there was a score to be made.

  Against the Delavanes and the Washburns, and those

  German and French and Jewish catfish who would

  sweep the ponds and make it impossible for

  gentlemen like Johnny Reb to make a high-hog

  living. He didn't know much about the South

  African, except that those rigger-haters had better

  the hell wise up. The coloreds were coming along

  just fine, and that was fine by Johnny; his current

  girlfriend was a lovely black singer from Tallahassee,

  who just happened to be in Switzerland for silly

  reasons involving a little cocaine and a good-sized

  account in Bern.

  But the other catfish were bad. Real bad. Johnny

  Reb had it in for men who would make it jailhouse

  for people to think the way they wanted to. No sir,

  those people had to go! Johnny Reb was very

  seriously committed to that proposition.

  It was happening! He focused his infrared

  binoculars on the old concrete piers of the sub base.

  It was also flat-out crazy! The seventy-foot motor

  launch had pulled into a dock, and moving out on

  the pier was a long, double line of men forty, sixty,

  eighty . . . nearly lO~preparing to board. What was

  crazy was the way they were dressed. Dark suits and

  conservative summer jackets and ties; a number wore

  hats and every damned one of them carried luggage

  and a briefcase. They looked like a convention of

  bankers or a parade of lace-pants from the

  diplomatic corps. Or thought the Rebel as he

  inched his binoculars backward along the line of

  passengers ordinary businessmen, executives, men

  seen every day standing on railroad platforms and

  getting out of taxis and flying in planes. It was the

  very ordinariness of their collective

  626 ROBERT IUDLUM

  appearance contrasted with the exotically macabre

  dark out1ines of the old U-boat refuelingstation that

  gnawed at Johnny's imagination. These men could

  go unnoticed almost anywhere, yet they did not

  come from anywhere. They came from Scharhorn,

  from what was undoubtedly a highly sophisticated

  cell of this multinational military collusion that

  could put the goddamned catfish generals in the

  catbird seats. Ordinary people going wherever they

  were ordered to go_ looking like everyone else,

  behaving like everyone else, opening their attache

  cases on planes and trains, reading company

  reports, sipping drinks but not too many, skimming

  an occasional paperback novel ostensibly to ease the

  strain of business going wherever they were ordered

  to go.

  That was it, thought the Rebel, as he lowered

  the binoculars. That was it! These were the hit

  teams! The stomach never lied; the bile was sent up

  for a reason, its acrid, sickening taste an ugly alarm

  that came to those privileged enough to have

  survived. Johnny Reb turned and fingered the

  motor, cautiously pushing the rudder to the right

  and inching the throttle forward. The small boat

  spun around in the water, and the rogue intelligence

  officer_former intelligence officer_headed back to

  his berth in Cuxhaven, accelerating the engine with

  each fifty feet of distance.

  Twenty-five minutes later he pulled into the slip,

  lashed the lines to the cleats, grabbed his small

  waterproof case, and with effort climbed up onto

  the pier. He had to move quickly, but very, very

  cautiously. He knew vaguely the area of the

  Cuxhaven waterfront where the motor launch would

  return, for he had watched the lights of the vessel as

  it bobbed its way out of the harbor toward the

  island. Once in the vicinity he could determine the

  specific dock as the boat headed into port, and then

  he would have only minutes to scout the area and

  get into position. Carrying his waterproof case, he

  hurried to the base of the pier and turned left,

  walking rapidly through the shadows toward the

  area where he judged the launch had departed. He

  passed a huge warehouse and reached an open

  space beyond; there were five short piers, one after

  the other, extending no more than two hundred feet

  out into the water. It was dockage for small and

  medium-sized craft; several trawlers and a few

  antiquated pleasure boats were lashed to the pilings

  on each of the piers except one. The fourth pier was

  empty. The Rebel knew it belonged to the

  THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 627

  launch; he could taste the bitterness in his mouth.

  He started out across the space; he would find a

  place to conceal himself.

  "Halt stehenbleiben!" shot out the guttural

  command as a man walked out of the darkness from

  around the hull of a trawler at the third pier. "Was

  machen Sie trier? Wer sind Sie?"

  Johnny Reb knew when to use his age; he

  stooped his shoulders and hung his head slightly

  forward. "Passer Sie auf diese alien Kdsten auf?" he

  asked, and continued in German, "I'm a fisherman

  on one of these relics and I lost my billfold this

  afternoon. Is it a crime to look for it?"

  "Come back later, old man. You can't look for it

  now."

  "Ah? What?" The Rebel raised his right hand to

  his ear twisting the ring on his middle finger as he

  did so and pressing a catch on the band. "My

  hearing's not what it was, Mr. Watchman. What did

  you say?"

  The man stepped forward, first looking out at the

  water, as the sound of a powerful engine was heard

  in the distance. "Get out of herel" he shouted, his

  lips close to Johnny's
ear. "Now!"

  "Good heavens, you're Hans!"

  "Who?"

  "Hans! It's so good to see you!" The Rebel

  slapped his hand around the German's

  neck prelude to an affectionate embrace and

  plunged the surface of his ring into the man's flesh,

  deeply embedding the needle.

  "Get your hands off me, you stinking old man!

  My name's not Hans and I never saw you before.

  Get out of here or I'll put a . . . a bullet . . . in your

  . . . head!" The German's hand plunged inside his

  jacket but there it remained as he collapsed.

  "You younger catfish really ought to have more

  respect for your elders," mumbled Johnny as he

  dragged the unconscious body into the shadows to

  the left of the trawler on the third pier. "'Cause you

  don't know the flies we use. Your daddies do, but

  you little pricks don't. And I want your daddies,

  those mind-suckers!"

  The Rebel climbed aboard the trawler and

  dashed across the deck to the gunwale. The motor

  launch was heading directly into the fourth pier. He

  opened his waterproof case into which he had

  snapped the binoculars in place, and adjusted his

  eyes to the dim light, studying the tools of his trade.

  He unlatched a camera and then a lens, a Zeiss-lkon

  telescopic,

  628 ROBERT LUDLUM

  developed by conscientious Germans during World

  War II for photographing Allied installations at

  night) it was the best. He inserted it into the lens

  mount, locked it into position and switched on the

  camera's motor, noting with satisfaction that the

  battery was at full capacity, but then he knew it

  would be. He had been too long in the deadly game

  to make amateurish mistakes.

  The huge motor launch slid into the pier like a

 

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