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Robert Ludlum - Aquatain Progression.txt

Page 108

by The Aquitaine Progression [lit]


  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.

 

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