Robert Ludlum - Aquatain Progression.txt
Page 97
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?"
"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