of identities.
"it won't do any good!" shouted Joel. "We can't
get them vat!"
"Don't be so antediluvian, chap," said the
Englishman, pointing to a strange-looking telephone
recessed in the console. "This is splendid equipment.
There are those lovely satellites in the sky, and I can
send this to anyone anywhere with compatible
software. This is the age of technology, no longer
Aquarius."
"Get it out, " said Converse, leaning against the
wall and sliding down to the floor in exhaustion.
The world watched, stunned by the eruption of
widespread assassinations and random homicidal
violence. Everywhere people cried out for protection,
for leadership, for an end to the savagery that had
turned whole cities into battlegrounds, as panicked,
polarized groups of citizens hurled rocks and gas at
one another and finally turned to bullets because
bullets were being fired at them. Since few could tell
who their enemies were, anyone who attacked was
assumed to be an enemy, and the attackers were
everywhere, the orders issued from unseen command
posts. The police were
692 ROBERT LUDLUM
helpless; then militias and state troops appeared,
but it was soon evident that they and their leaders
were also powerless. Stronger measures would have
to be implemented to control the chaos. Martial law
was proclaimed. Everywhere. And military
commanders would assume control. Everywhere.
In Palo Alto, (California, former general of the
Army George Marcus Delavane sat strapped to his
wheelchair, watching the hysteria recorded on three
television sets. The set on the left went blank,
preceded by the screams of a mobile crew as their
truck came under sudden attack and the entire unit
was blown up by grenades. On the center screen a
woman newscaster, with tears streaming down her
face, read in a barely controlled, angry voice the
reports of wholesale destruction and wanton
murder. The screen on the right showed a Marine
colonel being interviewed on a barricaded street in
New York's financial district. His .45 Marine issue
Colt automatic was in his hand as he tried to answer
questions while shouting orders to his subordinates.
The screen on the left pulsated with new light as a
familiar anchorman came into focus, his eyes glassy.
He started to speak, but could not; he turned in his
chair and vomited as the camera swung away to an
unsuspecting newsroom editor screaming into a
phone, "Goddamned shit-bastards! What the fuck
happened?" He, too, was weeping. He pounded the
desk with his fist, then collapsed, dropping his head
on his arms while his whole body shook in spasms
as the screen again went dark.
A slow smile emerged on Delavane's face.
Abruptly he reached for two remote controls,
switching off the sets on the right and left, as he
concentrated on the canter screen. A helmeted
Army lieutenant general was picked by the camera
as he strode into a press room somewhere in
Washington. The soldier removed his helmet, went
to a lectern and spoke harshly into the microphone.
"We have sealed off all roads leading to
Washington, and my words are to serve as a warning
to unauthorised personnel and civilians everywhere!
Any attempts to cross the checkpoints will be met
by immediate force. My orders are brief and clear.
Shoot to kill. My authority is derived from the
emergency powers just granted to me by the
Speaker of the House in the absence of the
President and the Vice President, who have been
flown out of the capital for security purposes. The
military is now in charge, the Army
THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 693
its spokesman, and martial law is in full effect until
further notice."
Delavane snapped off the set with a gesture of
triumph. "We did it, Paul!" he said, turning to his
uniformed aide, who stood next to the fragmented
map on the wall. "Not even the whining pacifists
want that law reversed! And if they do . . ." The
general of Aquitaine raised his right hand, his index
finger extended, thumb upright, and mimed a series
of pistol shots.
"Yes, it's done," agreed the aide, reaching down
to Delavane's desk and opening a drawer.
"What are you doing?"
"I'm sorry, General. This also must be done." The
aide pulled out a .357 magnum revolver.
Before he could raise it, however, Delavane's left
hand shot up out of the inside cushion of the
wheelchair. In it was a short-barreled automatic. He
shouted as he fired four times in rapid succession.
"You think I haven't been waiting for this? Scum!
Coward! Traitor! You think I trust any of you? The
way you look at me! The way you talk in whispers in
the hallways! None of you can stand the fact that
without legs I'm better than all of you! Now you
know, scum! And soon the others will know because
they'll be shot! Executed for treason against the
founder of Aquitaine! You think any of you are
worth trusting? You've all tried to be what I am and
you can't do it!"
The uniformed aide had crashed back into the
wall, into the fragmented map. Gasping, blood
flowing from his neck, he stared wide-eyed at the
raving general. From some inner core of strength he
raised the powerful magnum and fired once as he
collapsed.
George Marcus Delavane was blown across the
room, a massive hemorrhage in his chest, as the
wheelchair spun and fell on its side, its strapped-in
occupant dead.
No one knew when it started to happen, but
gradually, miraculously, the gunfire slowly began to
diminish. The restoration of order was accompanied
by squads of uniformed men, many units having
broken away from their commanders, racing through
the streets and buildings and confronting other men.
It was soldier against soldier, the eyes of the inter-
rogators filled with anger and disgust, staring at faces
consumed with arrogance and defiance. The
commanders of
694 ROBERT LUDLUM
Aquitaine were adamant. They were right! Could
not their inferiors understand? Many refused to
surrender, preferring final assaults that cost them
their lives. Others bit into cyanide capsules.
In Palo Alto, California, a legless legend named
George Marcus Delavane was found shot to death,
but apparently not before he had been able to kill
his assailant, an obscure Army colonel. No one
knew what had happened. In Southern France, the
bodies of two other legendary heroes were found in
a mountain ravine, each of whom, upon leaving a
chateau in the Alps, had been given a weapon.
Generals Bertholdier and LeifLelm h
ad lost.
General Chaim Abrahms had disappeared. On
military bases throughout the Middle East, all Eu-
rope, Great Britain, Gnada and the United States,
officers of high rank and responsibilities were
challenged by subordinates with levered weapons.
Were they members of an organization called
Aquitaine? Their names were on a list!Answer! In
Norfolk, Virginia, an admiral named Scanlon threw
himself out of a sixth-story window; and in San
Diego, California, another admiral named Hickman
was ordered to arrest a four-striper who lived in La
Jolla the charge: murder of a legal officer in the
hills above that elegant suburb. Colonel Alan
Metcalf personally made the call the chief
operations officer of Nellis Air Force Base; the
order was blunt throw into a maximum-security
cell the major who was in charge of all aircraft
maintenance. In Washington the venerated Senator
Mario Parelli was called out of the cloakroom by a
Captain Guardino of Army G-2 and taken away;
while at State and the Pentagon, eleven men in
armaments controls and procurements were placed
under guard.
In Tel Aviv, Israeli Army intelligence rounded
up twenty-three aides and fellow officers of General
Chaim Abrahms, as well as one of the Mossad's
most brilliant analysts. In Paris, thirty-one
associates military and nonmilitary of General
Jacques-Louis Bertholdier, including deputy
directors of both the Surete and Interpol, were held
in isolation, and in Bonn no fewer than fifty-seven
colleagues of General Erich Leifhelm, among them
former Wehrmacht commanders and current officers
of the Federal Republic's Army and its Luftwaffe,
were seized. Also in Bonn, the Marine Corps guard
at the American embassy, on orders from the State
Department, arrested four attaches, including the
military charge d'affaires, Major Norman Anthony
Washburn IV.
THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 695
And so it went. Everywhere. The fever of
madness that was Aquitaine was broken by legions of
the very military the generals assumed would carry
them to absolute global power. By nightfall the guns
were still and people began to come out from behind
their barricades from cellars, subways boarded-up
buildings, railroad yards, wherever sanctuary could
be found. They wandered out on the streets,
numbed, wondering what had happened, as trucks
with loudspeakers roamed the cities everywhere
telling the citizens that the crisis was over. In Tel
Aviv, Rome, Paris, Bonn, London, and across the
Atlantic in Toronto, New York, Washington and
points west, the lights were turned on, but certainly
the world had not returned to normal. A terrible
force had struck in the midst of a universal cry for
peace. What was it? What had ham pened?
It would be explained on the following day,
blared the sound trucks in a dozen different
languages, pleading for pahence on the part of
citizens everywhere. The hour chosen was 3:00 P.M.,
Greenwich Mean Time; 10:00 A.M. Washington 7:00
A.M. Los Angeles. Throughout the night and the
morning hours in all the hme zones, heads of state
conferred over telephones until the texts of all the
statements were essentially the same. At 10:03 A.M.
the President of the United States went on the air.
"Yesterday an unprecedented wave of violence
swept through the free world taking lives, paralysing
governments, creaking a climate of terror that very
nearly cost free nations everywhere their freedom
and might have led them to look for solutions where
no solutions should be sought in democraUc
societies namely, turning ourselves into police
states handing over controls to men who would
subjugate free people to their collective military will.
It was an organized conspiracy led by demented and
deluded men who sought power for its own sake,
willing even to sacrifice their own fellow conspirators
to achieve it, and to deceive others who were se-
duced into believing it was the way of the future, the
answer to the serious ills of the world. It is not, nor
can it ever be.
"As the days and weeks go by as this terrible
thing is put behind us the facts will be placed
before you. For this has been our warning, the toll
taken in blood and in the shaken confidence of our
institutions. I remind you, however, that our
institutions have prevailed. They will prevail.
'in an hour from now a series of meetings will start
taking
696 ROBERT LUDLUM
place involving the White House, the departments
of State and Defense, the majority and minority
leaders of the House and the Senate, and the
National Security Council. Beginning tomorrow, in
concert with other governments, reports will be
issued on a daily basis until all the facts are before
you.
"The nightmare is over. Let the sunlight of truth
guide us and clear away the darkness."
On the following morning Deputy Director Peter
Stone of the Central Intelligence Agency,
accompanied by Captain Howard Packard and
Lieutenant William Landis, were brought to the
Oval Office for a private ceremony. The specific
honors awarded them were never made public, as
there was no reason to do so. Each man, with deep
respect and grahtude but with no
regrets declined to accept, each stating that
whatever honors were involved belonged to a man
not currently residing in the United States.
A week later, in Los Angeles, California, an
actor named Caleb Dowling stunned the producers
of a television show called Santa Fe by giving them
his notice effective before the start of the new
season. He refused all inducements, claiming simply
that there was not enough time to spend with his
wife. They were going to travel. Alone. And if the
residuals ever ran out, hell, she could always type
and he could always teach. Together. Ciao, friends.
EPILOGUE
Geneva. City of bright reflections and inconstancy.
Joel and Valerie Converse sat at the table where
it had all begun, by the glistening brass railing in the
Chat Botte. The traffic on the lakeside Quai du
Mont Blanc was disciplined, unhurried purpose
mixed with civility. As the pedestrians passed by,
both were aware of the glances directed at Joel.
There he is, the eyes were saying. There is . . . the
man. It was rumored he was living in Geneva, at
least for a while.
By agreement, the second report issued across the
free
THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 697
world made a direct but on Converses
insistence brief reference to his role in the tragedy
that was Aquitaine. He was exonerated of all
charges. The labels were removed and refuted, the
debt to him acknowledged without specifics on the
basis of NATO security. He refused all interviews,
and was not pleased when the media dredged up his
experiences in Southeast Asia and speculated on
correlations with the drama of the generals. But he
was consoled by the knowledge that just.as the
interest in him had dwindled years ago, it would do
so again faster in Geneva, city of purpose.
They had leased a house on the lake, an artist's
house with a studio built on the slope leading to the
water, the skylight catching the sun from early
morning to dusk. The beach house in Cape Ann was
closed, the lease paid in full and returned to the real
estate agent in Boston. Vals friend and neighbor had
packed her clothes and all her paints, brushes and
favorite easel, and sent everything air freight to
Geneva. Valerie worked for several hours each
morning, happier than she had ever been in her life,
permitting her husband to evaluate her progress daily
He judged it to be eminently acceptable, wondering
out loud whether there was a market for "lakescapes"
as opposed to seascapes. It took him two days to
remove the last dabs of paint from his hair.
Nor was Joel without employment; he was Talbot
Brooks and Simons European branch all by himself.
The income itself, however, was not a vital factor, as
Converse never remotely considered himself in the
mold of those attorneys in films and on television
who rarely if ever collected fees. Since his legal
talents had been called upon for crucial evidence, he
billed the major governments a reasonable
$40O,OOO apiece the minor ones, $250,000. No one
argued. The total came to something over $2.5
million, safely deposited in an interestbearing Swiss
account.
"What are you thinking about?" asked Valerie,
reaching for his hand.
Robert Ludlum - Aquatain Progression.txt Page 108
