The Aquaintaine Progession

by Ludlum, Robert

  “I know the maul” whispered use Fishbein. “Hewas a field marshal, a brilliant General!”

  “Who is he?” asked the Navy lawyer, theninstantly shrugging, dispensing with the question ofidentity as irrelevant. “Never mind. Just tell me whyyou think he’s the right man, this field marshal.”

  “He is greatly respected, although not everyoneagrees with him. He was one of the grossmachtigenyoung commanders, once decorated by my fatherhimself for his brilliancel”

  “But would anyone in the American militaryestablishment know him?”

  “Mein Gott! He worked for the Allies in Berlinand Vienna after the war!”

  “Yes?”

  “And at SHAPE Headquarters in Brussels!”

  Yes, thought Connal, we’re talking aloout the sameman “Fine,” said Fitzpatrick casually but seriously.“Don’t bother giving me his name. It doesn’t matter,and I probably wouldn’t know it anyway. Can youreach him quickly?”

  “In minutes! He’s here in Bonn.”

  “Splendid. I should catch the plane back toMilwaukee by tomorrow noon.”

  “You will come to his house and he will dictatewhat you need to his secretary.”

  “I’m sorry I can’t do that. The deposition must becountersigned by a notary. I understand you have thesame rules over here — and why not, you inventedthem and the Schlosspark Hotel has both typing andnotary services. Say this evening, or perhaps early inthe morning? I should be more than happy to send ataxi for your friend. I don’t want this to cost him apfennig. Any expenses he incurs my firm will behappy to repay.”

  use Fishbein giggled a slightly hysterical giggle.“You do not know my friend, main Herr.”

  “I’m sure we’ll get along. Now, how about lunch?”

  ".Ihave to go to the toilet,” said the Germanwoman, her eyes glass orbs again. As she rose,Connal rising with her, she whispered, “Mein Gott!Zwei Millionen Dollar!”

  “He does not even care to know your namer”cried Ilse Fishbein into the phone. “He’s from aplace called Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and is offeringme two million dollarsAmerican!”

  “He did not ask who I was?”

  “He said it didn’t matter! He probably wouldn’tknow you, in any event. Can you imagine? Heoffered to send a taxi for you! He said you shouldnot spend a penny!”

  “It’s true Goring was excessively generous duringthe last weeks,” mused Leimelm. “Of course, he wasmore often drugged than not, and those whosupplied him with narcotics which were difficult toobtain, were rewarded with the whereabouts ofpriceless art treasures. The one who later smuggledhim the poisoned suppositories still lives like aRoman emperor in Luxembourg.”

  “So you see, it’s true! Goring did these things!”

  “Rarely knowing what he was doing, however,”agreed the general reluctantly. “This is really mostunusual and very inconvenient, Ilse. Did this manshow you any documents, any proof of hisassignment?”

  “Naturally!” lied Fishbein, close to panic, pickingremembered words out of the air. “There was aformal page of legal statements and a . . .deposition all to be handled by the courtsconfidentially! In private! You see, there is a ques-tion of taxes, which would not be paid if the estatewas confiscated “

  “I’ve heard it all before, Ilse,” Leifhelm broke inwearily. “There are no statutes for so-called warcriminals and expatriated funds. So the hypocriteschoke on their hypocritical rules the instant theycost money, and abandon them.”

  “You are always so perceptive, my general, andI have always been so loyal. I’ve never refused youa single request whether it was professional innature or far more intimate. Please. Two millionAmerican! It will take but ten or fifteen minutes!”

  “You’ve been like a good niece, I can’t deny it,Ilse. And there is no way anyone could know aboutyou in other matters…. Very well, this evening then.I’m dining at the Stei

  genberger at nine o’clock. I’ll stop at the Schlossparkat eight-fifteen or thereabouts. You can buy me agift with your shall we say ill-conceived newriches.”

  “I’ll meet you in the lobby.’

  “My driver will accompany me.”

  “Ach, bring twenty men!”

  "He’s worth twenty-five,” Leifhelm said.

  Fitzpatrick sat in the chair in the smallconference room on the second floor of the hoteland examined the gun, the manual of instructions onhis lap. He tried to match what the clerk had toldhim to the diagrams and instructions, and wassatisfied that he knew enough. There were basicsimilarities to the standard Navy issue Colt .45, theonly handgun he was familiar with, and the technicalinformation was extraneous to his needs. Theweapon he had purchased was a Heckler & KochPGS auto pistol, about six inches long its calibernine millimeters, and with a nine-shell magazine clip.The instructions emphasized such points as“polygonal rifling” and “sliding roller lock functions’;he let the manual slip to the floor, and practicedremoving the clip and slapping it back into place. Hecould load the weapon, aim it and fire it; those wereall that was necessary and he trusted the last wouldnot be necessary.

  He glanced at his watch) it was almost eighto’clock. He shoved the automatic into his belt,reached down for the instructions and stood up,looking around the room, mentally checking off themovements and the locations he had designated forhimself. As he had expected, the Fishbein womanhad told him Leifhelm would be accompanied bysomeone, a “driver” in this case, and it could beassumed the man had other functions. If so, hewould have no chance to perform them.

  The room one of twenty-odd conference roomsin the hotel that he had reserved under the nameof a fictitious company was not large, but there werestructural arrangements that could be put toadvantage. The usual rectangular table was in thecenter, three chairs on each side and two at theends, one with a telephone. There were additionalchairs against the walls for stenographers andobservers all this was normal. However, in the centerof the left wall was a doorway that led to a verysmall room apparently used for private con-versations. Inside was another telephone, whichwhen off the

  hook caused a button on the first telephone on theconference table to light up; confidentiality had itslimits in Bonn. The hallway door opened onto asmall foyer, thus prohibiting those entering fromscanning the room while standing in the corridor.

  Connalfolded the Heckler & Koch instructions,put them in his jacket pocket, and walked over tothe table to survey his set pieces. He had gone to anoflfice-supply store and purchased the appropriateitems. On the far end of the table by thetelephone which was placed perpendicular to theedge, the buttons in clear view were several filefolders next to an open briefcase (from a distanceits dark plastic looked like expensive leather).Scattered about were papers, pencils and a yellowlegal pad, the top pages looped over. The settingwas familiar to anyone who had ever had anappointment with an attorney, said learned counselhaving put his astute observations down on paperprior to the conference.

  Fitzpatrick retraced his steps to the chair, movedit forward several feet, and crossed to the door ofthe small side room. He had turned on thelights two table lamps flanking a short couch) hewent to the one above the telephone and turned itoff. He then walked back to the open door andstood between it and the wall, peering through thenarrow vertical space broken up by upper and lowerhinges. He had a clear view of the foyer’s entrance;three people would pass into the conference roomand he would come out.

  There was a knock on the hallway door therapid, impatient tapping of an heiress unable tocontrol herself. He had told the Fishbein woman thelocation of the room, but nothing else. No name ornumber, and in her anxiety she had not asked abouteither. Fitzpatrick went to the telephone table in thesmall room, lifted the phone out of its cradle andplaced it on its side. He returned to his positionbehind the door, angling himself so as to lookthrough the crack, his body in the shadows. He tookthe pistol from his belt, held it in front of him andshouted in a friendly voice, loud enough to be heardoutside in the hotel corridor. “Bitte, kommen Sieherein! Die Tare ist offer. Ich telefoniere
gerade!”

  The sound of the door as it opened precededIlse Fishbein as she walked rapidly into the room,her eyes directed at the conference table. She wasfollowed by Erich LeifLelm, who glanced about andthen turned slightly, nodding his head. A third manin the uniform of a chauffeur came into view, his

  hand in the pocket of his black jacket. Connal thenheard the second sound he needed to hear. Thehallway door was slammed shut.

  He yanked back the small door and quicklystepped around it, the gun extended, aimed directlyat the chauffeur.

  “You!” he cried in German. “Take your hand outof your pocket! Slowly!” The woman gasped, thenopened her mouth to scream. Fitzpatrick interruptedharshly. “Be quiet! As your friend will tell you, Ihaven’t anything to lose. I can kill the three of youand be out of the country in an hour, leaving thepolice to look for a Mr. Parnell who doesn’t exist.”

  The chauffeur, the muscles of his jaw rippling,removed his hand from his pocket, his fingers rigid.Leifhelm stared in anger and fear at Connal’s gun,his face no longer ashen but flushed. “You dare?”

  “I dare, Field Marshal,” said Fitzpatrick. “Just asyou dared forty years ago to rape a young kid andmake damned sure that she and her whole familynever walked out of the camps. You bet your ass Idare, and if I were you, I wouldn’t give me theslightest cause to be any angrier than I am.’ Connalspoke to the woman. “You. Inside that briefcase onthe table are eight strands of rope. Start with thedriver. Bind his hands and feet; I’ll tell you how.Now! Quickly!”

  Four minutes later the chauffeur and Leifhelmsat in two conference chairs, their ankles and wristsbound, the driver’s weapon removed from his pocket.Connal checked the ropes the knots having been tiedunder his instructions. Everything was secure; themore one writhed, the tighter the knots wouldbecome. He ordered the panicked Fishbein womaninto a third chair; he lashed her hands to the armsand her feet to the legs.

  Rising, Connal picked up the automatic from thetable and approached Leifhelm, who was sitting inthe chair next to the lighted telephone. “Now,” hesaid, the gun pointed at the German’s head. “Assoon as I hang up the phone in the other room we regoing to make a call from here.” He walked quicklyinto the small side room, hung up the telephone, andreturned. He sat down next to the bound Leifhelmand took a scrap of paper out of the open briefcase.On it was written the phone number of the general’sestate on the Rhine beyond Bad Godesberg.

  “What do you think you’ll accomplish? " askedLeifhelm.

  “Trade-off,” replied Fitzpatrick, the barrel of thegun pressed against the German’s temple. “You forConverse.”

  “Mein Gott!” whispered Ilse Fishbein as thechauffeur writhed, his hands straining against theropes, which were now biting into his wrists.

  “You believe anyone will listen to you, much lesscarry out your orders?”

  “They will if they want to see you alive again.You know I’m right, General. This gun isn’t soloud I made sure of that. I can turn on the radioand kill you and be on a plane out of Germanybefore you’re found. This room is reserved for thenight with instructions that we’re not to be disturbedfor any reason whatsoever.” Connal shifted theweapon to his left hand, picked up the telephone,and dialed the number written on the scrap ofpaper.

  “Guten Tag. Hier bet General LeifAelm.”

  “Put someone in authority on this phone,” saidthe Navy lawyer in perfect German. " I have a gunless than a foot away from General Leifhelm’s headand I’ll kill him right now unless you do as I say.’

  There were muffled shouts over the line as ahand was held against the mouthpiece. In seconds acrisp British accent was speaking slowly, deliberatelyin English.

  “Who is this and what do you want?”

  “Well, what do you know? This sounds likeMajor Philip Dunstone that was the name, wasn’tit? You don’t sound half so friendly as you did lastnight.”

  “Don’t do anything rash, Commander. You’ll regretit.”

  “And don’t you do anything stupid, or Leifhelmwill regret it sooner that is, until he can’t regretanything any longer. You’ve got one hour to getConverse to the airport and inside the Lufthansasecurity gate. He has a reservation on the teno’clock flight to Washington, D.C., by way of Frank-furt. I’ve made arrangements. I’ll be calling anumber in a room where he’ll be taken and I’llexpect to talk with him. After I do, I’ll leave hereand call you on another phone, telling you whereyour employer is. Just get Converse to that securitygate. One hour, Major!” Fitzpatrick shoved thephone in front of Leifhelm’s face, and pressed thebarrel of the gun into the German’s temple.

  “Do as he says,” said the General, choking on thewords.

  The minutes went by slowly, stretching into aquarter of an hour, then thirty, the silence finallybroken by Leifhelm.

  “So you found her,” he said, gesturing his head at useFishbein, who trembled as tears streaked down herfull cheeks.

  “Just as we found out about Munich forty yearsago, and a hell of a lot of other things. You’re all onyour way to that great big war room in the sky, FieldMarshal, so don’t worry about whether I’ll go backon my word to your English butler. I wouldn’t missseeing you bastards paraded for everyone to see whatyou really are. People like you give the military ev-erywhere a goddamned rotten name.”

  There was a slight commotion from the hallwaybeyond the door. Connal looked up, raising the gunand holding it directly at Leifhelm’s head.

  “Was ist?” said the Cerman, shrugging.

  “Seine Bewegung!”

  From the hotel corridor came the strains of amelody sung by several male voices more off keythan on. Another conference in one of the otherrooms had broken up, obviously as much from theexcessive intake of alcohol as from the completion ofa business agenda. Raucous laughter pierced arefrain as harmony was unsuccessfully attempted.Fitzpatrick relaxed, lowering the automatic; no oneon the outside knew the name or number of theroom.

  “You say men like me give yourprofession which is my profession as well aseriously bad name,” said Leifhelm. “Has it occurredto you, Commander, that we might elevate thatprofession to one of indispensable greatness in aworld that needs us badly?”

  “Needs us?” asked Connal. “We need the worldfirst and not your kind of world. You tried it onceand blew it, don’t you remember?”

  “That was one nation led by a madman trying toimpose his imprimatur over the globe. This is manynations with one class of self-abnegatingprofessionals coming together for the good of all.”

  “Whose definition? Yours? You’re a funny fellow,General. Somehow I question your benevolenttendencies.”

  “Indiscretions of a deprived youth whose nameand rightful opportunities were stolen from himshould not be held against the man a half-centurylater.”

  “Deprived or depraved? I think you made up forlost time pretty quickly and as brutally as you could.I don’t like your remedies.”

  “You have no vision.”

  “Thanks be to Jesus, Mary, and Joseph it’s notyours. ” The singing out in the corridor fadedbriefly, then swelled again, more discordant andlouder than before. “Maybe that’s some of your oldDachau playboys having a beer bust.”

  Leifhelm shrugged.

  Suddenly the door burst open, crashing into thewall as three men raced in, spits filling the air assilenced guns fired hands jerking back and forth, thesurface of the table chewed up, splinters of woodflying everywhere. Fitzpatrick felt the repeated stabsof intense pain in his arm as the automatic wasblown out of his grip. He looked down and saw theblood drenching the fabric of his right sleeve.Though in shock he glanced about him. IlseFishbein was dead, her bleeding skull shattered bya fusillade of bullets; the chauffeur was smilingobscenely. The door was closed as if nothing hadhappened.

  “Stumper,” Leifhelm said as one of the invaderscut the ropes around his wrists. “I used that termonly yesterday, Commander, but I did not knowhow right I was. Did you think a single telephonecall could not be traced to a single room? It was alltoo coincidentally
symmetrical. Converse is ours andsuddenly this poor whore comes into immenseriches American riches. I grant you it was entirelypossible such bequests are made frequently bysausage-soaked idiots who don’t realize the harmthey do, but the timing was too perfect,too amateurish.”

  “You’re one son of a bitch.” Connal shut hiseyes, trying to force the pain out of his mind,unable to move his fingers

  “Why, Commander,” said the general, gettingout of the chair, “do I sense the bravado of fear?Do you think I’m going to have you killed?”

  “You sense it. I won’t give you any more than that.”

  “You’re quite wrong. Considering the nature ofyour military leave, you can be of minor but uniqueservice to us. One more statistic to disrupt apattern. You’ll be our guest, Commander, but notin Germany proper. You are gomg on a trip.”

  Converse slowly opened his eyes, a dead, ironweight on his lids and nausea in his throat blurreddarkness everywhere and a terrible stinging at hisside, on his arm, flesh separated from flesh, stretchedand inflamed. Blindly he tried to touch the offendingspot, then gasping, pulled back in pain. Somewherelight was creeping around the dark space above him,picking its way through moving obstructions, peeringinto the shadows. Objects slowly came into focus themetal rim of the cot next to his face, two woodenchairs opposite each other at a small table in thedistance, a door also in the distance, but farther awayand shut . . . then another door, this one open, awhite sink with a pair of dull-metal faucets on the leftin a far-away cubicle. The light? It was still moving,now dancing, flickering. Where was it?

  He found it: high in the wall on either side of theclosed door were two rectangular windows, the shortcurtains billowing in the breeze. The windows wereopen, but oddly not open, not clear, the spacesinterrupted. Joel raised his head, supporting himselfon his forearm and squinted, trying to see moreclearly. He focused on the interruptions behind theswelling curtains thin black metal shafts verticallyconnecting the window frames. They were bars. Hewas in a cell.