The Aquaintaine Progession

by Ludlum, Robert

  Suddenly, Joel saw the figure of a man in theuniform of the United States Army across the roomtalking with two civilians at the bar. He did not knowthe man. It was the uniform that struck him. Itbrought to mind the military charge d’affaires at theembassy, that extraordinarily observant and preciseofficer who was capable of seeing a man who wasnot at a bridge at the exact moment he was notthere. A liar for Aquitaine, someone whose liesidentified him. If that liar did not know whereFitzpatrick was, he could be made to find out.Perhaps there was a way, after all. Converse drew aline on the right side of his list, connecting ConnalFitzpatrick with Admiral Hickman in San Diego. Hedid not give it a number; there was too much toconsider.

  Briefoase? He was still convinced that Leifhelm’smen had not found it. If the generals of Aquitainehad that attache

  case, they would have let him know. It was not likethose men to conceal such a prize, not from theprisoner who had thought he was a match for them.No, they would have told him one way or another,if only to make clear to him how totally he hadfailed. If he was right, Connal had hidden it. At theinn called Das Rektorat? It was worth a try. Joelcircled the word Briefoase and numbered it 2.

  “Speisekarte, main Herr?” said a waiter beforeConverse knew he was standing there.

  “English, please?”

  “Certainly, sir.” The waiter separated his menusas though they were an outsized deck of cards. Heselected one and handed it to Joel as he spoke.“The Spezialitat for today is Wienerschnitzel it is thesame in English.”

  “That’s fine. Keep the menu, I’ll take it.”

  “Danke. ” The man swept away before Joelcould order another drink. It was just as well, hethought.

  $93,000 plus. There was nothing more to besaid, the irritating bulge around his waist said it all.He had the money; it was to be used.

  Embassy out . . . No Larry Talbot, et al . . . NoBeale . . . No A nstett . . . No man in San Francisco.Throughout the meal he thought about each item,each statement, wondering how it all could havehappened. Every step had been considered carefully,facts absorbed, dossiers memorized, cautionuppermost. But everything had been blown away bycomplications far beyond the simple facts providedby Preston Halliday in Geneva.

  Build just two or thme cases that are tied to Dela-vane even circumstantially and it’ll be enough.

  In light of the revelations on Mykonos, then inParis, Copenhagen and Bonn, the simplicity of thatremark was almost criminal. Halliday would havebeen appalled at the depth and the breadth ofinfluence Delavane’s legions had attained, at thepenetrations they had made at the highest levels ofthe military, the police, Interpol and, obviously, nowthose who controlled the flow of news fromso-called authoritative sources in Westerngovernments.

  Converse abruptly checked his racing thoughts.He suddenly realised that he was thinking aboutHalliday in the context of a man who saw only apair of eyes at night in the jungle, unaware of thesize or the ferocity of the unseen animal in thedarkness. That was wrong. Halliday knew thematerials

  Beale was handing over to him on an island in theAegean; he knew about the connections betweenParis, Bonn, Tel Aviv and Johannesburg; he knewabout the decision makers in the State Departmentand the Pentagon he knew it all! He had arrangedit all with unknown men in Washington! Halliday hadlied in Geneva. A California wrestler he hadbefriended years ago in school named Avery Fowlerwas the manipulator, and in the name of A. PrestonHalliday, he had lied.

  Where were those subterranean men inWashington who had the audacity to raise half amillion dollars for an incredible gamble but were toofrightened to come out in the open? What kind ofmen were they? Their scout had been killed, theirpuppet accused of being a psychopathic assassin.How long could they wait? What were they?

  The questions disturbed Converse so much thathe tried not to pursue them they would lead only torage, which would blind his reason. He neededreason and, above all, the strength that came withawareness.

  It was time to find a telephone exchange andreach Mattilon in Paris. Rene would believe him,Rene would help him. It was unthinkable that his oldfriend would do anything else.

  The civilian walked in silence to the hotelwindow, knowing he was expected to deliver apronouncement that would form the basis of amiracle not a solution but a miracle, and there wereno such things in the business he knew so well. PeterStone was by all the rules a relic, a castaway who hadseen it all, and in the final years of seeing had finallyfallen apart. Alcohol had taken the place of trueaudacity, at the end rendering him a professionalmutant, a part of him still proud of pastaccomplishments, another part sickened by the waste,by the knowledge of wasted lives, wastedstrategies morality thrown into a gargantuanwastebasket of a collective nonconscience.

  Still, he had once been one of the best he couldnot forget that. And when he knew it was all over, hehad faced the fact that he was killing himself with aplethora of bourbon and self-pity. He had pulled out.But not before he had gained the enmity of his pastemployers in the Central Intelligence Agency, not forspeaking out publicly but for telling them privatelywho and what they were. Fortunately, as sobriety re-turned he learned that his past employers had otherenemies in Washington, enemies having nothing todo with foreign en

  tanglements or competition. Simply men and womenserving the republic who wanted to know what thehell was going on when Langley wouldn’t tell them.He had survived was surviving. He thought aboutthese things, knowing that the two other men in theroom believed he was concentrating on the issue athand.

  There was no issue. The file was closed, theborder rimmed in black. The two who were withhim were so young God, so damned young., theywould find it too terrible to accept. Heremembered, vaguely, when such a conclusion wouldhave appalled him. But that was nearly forty yearsago; he was almost sixty now, and he had heardsuch conclusions repeated too often to shed tears ofregret. The regret the sadness was there but timeand repetition had dulled his senses; clearevaluation was everything.

  Stone turned and said with quiet authority, “ Wecan’t do anything ” The Army captain and the Navylieutenant were visibly upset. Peter Stone continued,” I spent twenty-three years in the tunnels, includinga decade with Angleton, and I m telling you there’sabsolutely nothing we can do. We have to let himhang out, we can’t touch him.”

  " Because we can’t afford to?” asked the navaloflicer scathingly. “That’s what you said whenHalliday was killed in Geneva. We can’t afford tot”

  “We can’t. We were outmaneuvered.”

  “That’s a man out there,” insisted the lieutenant.“We sent him out “

  “And they set him up,” the civilian broke in, hisvoice calm, his eyes sadly knowledgeable. “He’s asgood as dead We’ll have to start looking elsewhere.”

  “Why is that?” asked the Army captain. “Why ishe as good as dead?”

  “They have too many controls, we can see thatnow. If they don’t have him locked up in a cellar,they know pretty much where he is. Whoever findshim will kill him. A riddled body of a crazed killeris delivered up and there’s a collective sigh of relief.That’s the scenario.”

  “And that’s the most cold-blooded analysis of amurder I’ve ever heard! Murder, an unwarrantedexecution!”

  “Look, Lieutenant,” said Stone, stepping awayfrom the window, “you asked me to come withyou convinced me I should because you wantedsome experience in this room. With that experiencecomes the moment when you recognize

  and accept the fact that you’ve been beaten. Itdoesn’t mean you’re finished, but you’ve beenpunched out of the round. We’ve been punched out,and it’s my guess the punches haven’t stopped yet.”

  “Maybe . . .” began the captain haltingly. “Maybewe should go to the Agency, tell them everything weknow everything we think we know and whatwe’ve done. It might get Converse out alive.”

  “Sorry,” countered the former CIA man. “Theywant his head and they’ll get it. They wouldn’t havegone to all this trouble if "dead’ wasn’t written allover him. He found out something, or they f
ound outsomething about him. That’s the way it works.”

  “What kind of world do you live in? "asked thenaval officer quietly, shaking his head.

  “I don’t live in it anymore, Lieutenant, you knowthat. I think it’s one of the reasons you came to me.I did what you two and whoever else is withyou are doing now. I blew a whistle only, I did itwith two months of bourbon in my veins and tenyears of disgust in my head. You say you might go tothe Company? Good, go ahead, but you’ll do itwithout me. No one worth a quarter in Langley willtouch me.”

  “We can’t go to G-Two or naval intelligence,”said the Army officer. “We know that, we’ve allagreed. Delavane’s people are there; they’d shoot usdown.”

  “Aptly put, Captain. Would you believe with realbullets?”

  “I do now,” said the Navy man, nodding at Stone.“The report out of San Diego is that the legal,Remington, was killed in an automobile accident inLa Jolla. He’s the one who last spoke to Fitzpatrick,and before he left the base, he asked another legalthe directions to a restaurant in the hills. He’d neverbeen there and I don’t think it was an accident.”

  “Neither do I,” agreed the civilian. “But it takesus to the somewhere-else we can look.”

  “What do you mean?” said the Army captain.

  “Fitzpatrick. SAND PAC can’t find him, right?”

  “He’s on leave,” interjected the naval officer.“He’s got another twenty days or so. He wasn’tordered to list his itinerary.”

  “Still, they’ve tried to find him but they can’t.”

  “And I still don’t understand,” objected the captain.

  “We go after Fitzpatrick,” said Stone. “Out of SanDiego,

  not Washington. We find a reason to really wanthim back. A SAND PAC emergency, routed strictlythrough Eyes Only a base problem nobody else’s.”

  “I hate to repeat myself,” said the Army man,“but you’ve lost me. Where do we start? Whom dowe start with?”

  “With one of your own, Captain. Right now he’sa very important person. The charge d’affaires atthe Mehlemer House.”

  “The what?”

  “The American embassy in Bonn. He s one ofthem. He lied when it counted most,” said Stone.“His name is Washburn. Major Norman AnthonyWashburn, the Fourth.”

  The telephone complex was off the lobby of anoffice building. It was a large square room with fiveenclosed booths built into three walls and a high,squared counter in the center where four operatorssat in front of consoles, each woman obviouslycapable of speaking two or more languages. Tele-phone directories of the major European cities andtheir suburbs were on racks to the left and right ofthe entrance; small pads with attached ball-pointpens had been placed on the ledges above for theconvenience of those seeking numbers. The routinewas familiar: a caller delivered a written-out numberto an operator, specified the manner of pay-ment cash, credit card or collect and wasassigned a booth. There were no lines; a half-dozenbooths were empty.

  Joel found the number of Mattilon’s law firm inthe Paris directory. He wrote it out, brought it to anoperator and said he would pay in cash. He wastold to go to booth number seven and wait for thering. He entered it quickly, the soft cloth brim of hishat falling over his forehead above the tortoiseshellglasses. Any enclosure, whether a toilet stall or aglass booth, was preferable to being out in the open.He felt his pulse accelerating; it seemed to explodewhen the bell rang.

  “Saint-Pierre, Nelli, et Mattilon,” said the femalevoice in Paris.

  “Monsieur Mattilon, please s’il vous plait.”

  “Votre. . . ?” The woman stopped, undoubtedlyrecoginzing an American’s abysmal attempt atFrench. “Who may I say is calling, please?”

  “His friend from New York. He’ll know. I’m aclient.”

  Rene did know. After several clicks his strainedvoice came on the line. "Joel?” he whispered. “I don’tbelieve itI”

  " Don’t,” said Converse. “It’s not true not whatthey say about Geneva or Bonn, not even what yousaid. I had nothing to do with those killings, andParis was an accident. I had every reason to think Idid think that man was reaching for a gun.’

  “Why didn’t you stay where you were, then, myfriend?”

  “Because they wanted to stop me from going on.It’s what I honestly believed, and I couldn’t let themdo that. Let me tally…. At the George Cinq youasked me questions and I gave you evasive answersand I think you saw through me. But you were kindand went along. You have nothing to be sorry about,take my word for it my very sane word. Bertholdiercame to me that evening in my room; we talked andhe panicked. Six days ago I saw him again here inBonn only, this time it was different. He wasordered to be there, along with three other verypowerful men, two generals and a former fieldmarshal. It’s a cabal, Rene, an international cabal,and they can pull it off. Everything’s secret andmoving fast. They’ve recruited key military personnelall over Europe, the Mediterranean, Canada, and theU.S. There’s no way to tell who’s with them and whoisn’t and there isn’t time to make a mistake.They’ve got millions at their disposal, warehouses allover filled with munitions ready to ship to theirpeople when the moment comes.”

  “The moment?” Mattilon broke in. “What moment?”

  “Please,” insistedJoel, rushing ahead. “They’vebeen funneling weapons and explosives to maniacseverywhere terrorists, proves, certifiedlunatics with one purpose only: destabilisationthrough violence. It’s their excuse to move in. Rightnow they’re blowing up Northern Ireland.”

  “The madness in Ulster?” interrupted theFrenchman again. “The horrors going on “

  “It’s their horror! It’s a trial run. They did it withone massive shipment from the States to prove theycan do it! But Ireland’s only a test, a minor exercise.The big explosion’s coming in a matter of days, a fewweeks at most. I’ve got to reach the people who canstop them, and I can’t do that if I’m dead!” Conversepaused, only to catch his breath, giving Mattilon nochance to speak. “These are the men I was after,Rene after legally, to build a few cases againstthem, expose

  them in the courts before they got anywhere. Butthen, I found out. They’re already there. I was toolate.”

  “But why you?”

  "it in Geneva with Halliday, the man who wasshot to death. He was killed by their gunmen, butnot before he recruited me. You asked me aboutGeneva and I lied to you, but that’s the truth. Now,you’ll either help me, or try to help me, or youwon’t. Not for me I’m insignificant but what I gotroped into isn’t. And I was roped into it, I knowthat now. But I’ve seen them, talked to them, andthey’re so goddamned logical, so bucking persuasive,they’ll turn all Europe fascist; they’ll set up amilitary federation with my country the progenitor.Because it started in my country, it started in SanFrancisco with a man named Delavane.”

  “Saigon? The Mad Marcus of Saigon?”

  “Alive and well and living in Palo Alto, pushinghis military buttons all over the place. He’s still amagnet and they’re drawn to him like flies to a pig.”

  “Joel, are you . . . are you . . . all right?”

  “Let’s put it this way, Rene. I took a lousy watchoffa man who guarded me a paranoid whonevertheless was nice to me and it’s got a sweephand. You’ve got thirty seconds to think about whatI’ve told you, then I’ll hang up. Now, old friend,twenty-nine seconds.”

  Ten passed and Mattilon spoke. “An insane mandoes not deliver such a precise explanation soprecisely. Very well, perhaps I am mad, too, butwhat you speak of God knows the times are right,what else can I say? Everything is crazy’”

  “I’ve got to get back to the States alive, toWashington. I know people there. If I can reachthem and show myself for what I am, they’ll listento me. Can you help?”

  “I have contacts in the Quai d’Orsay. Let me go tothem.”

  “No,” objected Converse. “They know we’refriends. One word to the wrong person and you’d bekilled. Forgive wee"cbaunttmaffrOedimthpotrtant,your talking would set off alarms.

  “Very well,”
said Mattilon. “There is a man inAmsterdam don’t ask me how I know him_whocan arrange such things. I assume you have nopassport.”

  “I have one but it’s not mine. It’s German. Itook it off a guard who was ready to put a bullet inmy head.”

  “Then I’m sure he’s not in a position tocomplain to the authorities.”

  “He’s not.”

  “In your mind you really did go back, didn’t you,my friend?”

  “Let’s not talk about it, okay?”

  “Bien. You are you. Keep that passport, it will beuseful.”

  “Amsterdam. How do I get there?”

  “You are in Bonn, no?”

  “Yes.”

  “There is a train to Emmerich on the Dutchborder. In Emmerich, switch to localtransport streetcars, autobuses, whatever. Thecustoms are lax, especially during the peak hourswhen workers go back and forth. No one looks, sojust show the passport you have quickly, partiallycovering the photograph, perhaps. It’s good that it’sGerman. You should have no trouble.”

  “Suppose I do?”

  “Then I can’t help you, my friend. I’m beinghonest. And then I must go to the Quai d’Orsay.”

  “All right. I get across, then what?”

  “You’ll reach Arnhem. From there you take thetrain to Amsterdam.”

  “And then?”

  “The man. His name is on a card in my bottomdrawer. Do you have something to write on writewith?”

  “Go ahead,” said Converse, reaching for the notepad and the ball-point pen on the ledge beneath thetelephone.

  “Here it is. Thorbecke. Cort Thorbecke. Theapartment house is on the southwest corner ofUtrechtsestraat and Kerkstraat. The telephonenumber is zero-two-zero, four-oneone-three-zero.When you call for an appointment, tell him you area member of the Tabana family. Do you have that?Tatiana. “