The Apocalypse Watch

by Robert Ludlum

  “The telephones have all been torn from the walls and the receptacles destroyed,” said a French detective.

  “The lines haven’t, have they?”

  “No. I have a technician from the telephone company on his way. He will restore the lines and we can trace their calls.”

  “Outgoing, maybe, incoming negative. And if I know these bozos, the ones made here were routed for payment to a little old lady in Marseilles who gets a money order and a bonus once a month.”

  “As it is with the drug dealers, no?”

  “Yes.”

  “Still, there are instructions somewhere, yes?”

  “Definitely, but none you can trace. They’ll come from a Swiss or Cayman bank, the secret accounts not to be invaded. That’s the way things work these days.”

  “I investigate domestically, monsieur, in Paris and its environs mainly, not internationally.”

  “Then get me someone who does.”

  “You would have to appeal to the Quai d’Orsay, the Service d’Etranger. These are beyond my province.”

  “I’ll find ’em.”

  The uniformed Latham and a blond-wigged Karin de Vries approached, stepping cautiously on the floor, their feet avoiding the charred, windblown pages. “Have you figured out anything?” asked Drew.

  “Not much, but this sure was the core of their operations, whoever they were.”

  “Who else but the men who attacked us last night?” said Karin.

  “I’ll buy that, but where did they go?” agreed Witkowski.

  “Monsieur l’Américain,” shouted another plainclothes police official, rushing from an outer room. “Look what I found. It was beneath a pillow on a sitting room chair! It is a letter—the beginning of a letter.”

  “Let me have it.” The colonel took the piece of paper. “ ‘Meine Liebste,’ ” Witkowski began, his eyes squinting. “ ‘Etwas Entsetzliches ist geschehen.’ ”

  “Give it to me,” said De Vries, impatient with Witkowski’s hesitation. She translated in English. “ ‘My dearest, tonight is most shocking. We must all leave immediately lest our cause be damaged and we are all to be executed for others’ failures. No one in Bonn must know, but we are flying to South America, to some place where we will be protected until we can return and fight again. I adore you so … I must finish later, someone is coming down the hallway. I will post this at the air—’ … It stops there, the letters slurred.”

  “The airport!” cried Latham. “Which one? Which airlines fly to South America? We can intercept them!”

  “Forget it,” said the colonel. “It’s ten-fifteen in the morning, and there are a couple of dozen airlines that leave between seven and ten and end up in any one of twenty or thirty cities in South America. Those flights are well beyond us. However, there’s a positive. Our killers got the hell out of Paris fast, and their scumbucket brothers in Bonn haven’t a clue. Until others take their place, we’ve got some breathing room.”

  Gerhardt Kroeger, surgeon and alterer of minds, was about to lose his own. He had called the Avignon Ware-houses a dozen times in the past six hours, using the proper codes, only to be told by an operator that all lines to the office he wished to reach were “not in service at this time. Our computers show manual disconnects.” No amount of protestations on his part could change the situation; it was all too obvious. The Blitzkrieger had shut down. Why? What had happened? Zero Five, Paris, had been so confident: The photographs of the kill would be delivered to him in the morning. Where were they? Where was Paris Five?

  There was no other option. He had to reach Hans Traupman in Nuremberg. Someone had to have an explanation!

  “It’s foolish of you to reach me here,” said Traupman. “I don’t have the proper telephone devices.”

  “I had no choice. You cannot do this to me, Bonn cannot do this to me! I’m ordered to find my creation at whatever the cost, even to the point of employing the so-called incomparable skills of our associates here in Paris—”

  “What more can you ask for?” interjected the doctor in Nuremberg arrogantly.

  “Something, anything that makes sense! I’ve been treated abominably, given promise after promise with nothing to show for them. Now, at this minute, our associates cannot even be reached!”

  “They have special arrangements, as befits confidential consultants.”

  “I used them. The operator said her computers show that the phones were disconnected, manually disconnected. What more do you need, Hans? The … our associates have cut us off, cut us all off! Where are they?”

  Seconds passed before Traupman spoke. “If what you say is accurate,” he said quietly, “it’s most disturbing. I assume you’re at the hotel.”

  “I am.”

  “Stay there. I’ll drive home, reach several others, and call you back. It may take me over an hour.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Just call me back.”

  Nearly two hours passed before the Lutetia phone rang. “Yes?” said Kroeger, pouncing on it.

  “Something very unusual has happened. What you told me is true … more than true, it’s catastrophic. The one man in Paris who knows where our associates were located went over and found the police everywhere.”

  “Then they have disappeared!”

  “Worse than that. At four thirty-seven this morning, their ‘bookkeeper’ reached our finance department, and with a plausible, if outrageous, story involving women and young boys and drugs and high French officials, requested an enormous sum of money—to be verified later as proper expenditures, of course.”

  “But there is no later, no verification.”

  “Obviously. They’re cowards and traitors. We’ll hunt them to the ends of the earth.”

  “Your hunting them doesn’t help me. My creation has reached the critical period. What do I do? I must find him!”

  “We’ve talked it over. It’s not the most favorable course of action, but we think it’s the only one you’ve got. Reach Moreau at the Deuxième Bureau. He knows everything that happens in French intelligence circles.”

  “How do I reach him?”

  “Do you know what he looks like?”

  “I’ve seen photographs, yes.”

  “It must be done on the outside, no phone calls, no messages, a simple meeting in the street, or a café, someplace where no one would suspect an encounter. Say something short, no more than a sentence or two, in a way that only he can hear. The important thing is for you to use the word brotherhood.”

  “What then?”

  “He may dismiss you, but even as he does so he’ll tell you where to meet him. It will be a common place, probably crowded, and the hour late.”

  “You told me before to be suspicious of him.”

  “We’ve taken that into consideration, but we have a counterattack should he not be the sympathizer he claims to be. To date, we’ve paid over twenty million francs into his Swiss account, substantiated by written records. He would be destroyed, sent to prison for years, if those records were anonymously leaked to the French government, not to mention the press. He could not deny them. Use it if you have to.”

  “I’ll head for the Deuxième immediately,” said Kroeger. “Perhaps tomorrow, Harry Latham.”

  17

  In his office at the Deuxième Bureau, Claude Moreau studied the decoded message from his man in Bonn. The content was judgmental, not factual, and not terribly enlightening, but there was a substance to it that could be helpful.

  In yesterday’s session, the Bundestag fully addressed the problem of the spreading Nazi revivals throughout Germany, the parties coalescing, united in their denunciations. However, my inside sources, several of whom dine frequently with the leaders of the left and the right factions, report that there is rampant cynicism among both. The liberals don’t trust the conservative denouncements, and a small circle of conservatives seem to wink at their own oratory. The leaders of industry, of course, are appalled, fearing the Nazi movement will close markets to them abr
oad, but are reluctant to support the socialistically inclined left, and do not know whom on the right to trust. Their money flows like spreading inkblots throughout Bonn, without sure direction.

  Moreau leaned back in his chair, mentally abstracting the phrase that caught his attention. Not only caught it, but set it on fire. A small circle of conservatives seem to wink at their own oratory. Who, specifically, were they? What were the names? And why didn’t his man in Bonn include them?

  He picked up his console phone, the line to his secretary. “I want to go on absolute scrambler, no intercepts possible.”

  “I’ll activate the procedure, sir, and you’ll know by the five-second hum on line three, as usual,” said the female voice in the outer office.

  “Thank you, Monique, and since my wife expects me for lunch at L’Escargot in a few minutes, she’ll undoubtedly call when I’m not there. Please tell her that I’m delayed but will arrive shortly.”

  “It’s no problem, sir. Régine and I are good friends.”

  “Certainly. You both conspire against me. The scrambler, please.”

  The low-toned hum on the line-three telephone completed, Moreau dialed his man in Bonn.

  “Hallo,” said the man in Germany.

  “Ihr Mann in Frankreich.”

  “Go ahead and talk,” the man in Bonn broke in. “I’m so clean here, I’m wired into the Saudi Arabian Embassy.”

  “What?”

  “I use their lines, not their receivership. Think of the money I save France. I should be given a bonus.”

  “You are a rogue.”

  “Why else would you pay me, Paris?”

  “I read your communiqué to us. Several things were left out.”

  “Such as?”

  “Who comprises that ‘small circle of conservatives who wink at their own oratory.’ You deliver no names, not even a hint of their affiliations.”

  “Naturally. Isn’t that part of our very personal agreement? Do you really want the entire Deuxième Bureau to have the information? If so, your bank in Switzerland is entirely too generous to this rogue.”

  “Enough!” snapped Moreau. “You do what you do, and I do what I do, and neither has to know what the other is doing. Is that understood?”

  “I imagine it has to be. So what do you want to know?”

  “Who are the people leading, or behind, this small circle you describe?”

  “Most are nothing but opportunists with little ability who wish to catch on to a tail that will bring back the old days. Others are followers who march to past drums because they have none of their own—”

  “Their leaders?” said Moreau curtly. “Who are they?”

  “That’ll cost you, Claude.”

  “It will cost you if you don’t spell them out. Monetarily and otherwise.”

  “I believe you. Alas, my presence would barely be missed. You’re a tough man, Moreau.”

  “And eminently fair,” countered the Deuxième chief. “You’re well paid, both on and off the books, the former far more dangerous for you. I wouldn’t have to leave this office, or issue a single order except one: ‘Quietly release selected top-secret information to our friends in Bonn.’ Your demise probably wouldn’t even make the papers.”

  “And if I give you what I have?”

  “Then a lovely, productive friendship will continue.”

  “It’s not much, Claude.”

  “I trust that’s not a prelude for your withholding anything.”

  “Of course it isn’t. I’m not a fool.”

  “There’s logic in your words. So give me this disappointing, limited information that concerns your ‘small circle.’ ”

  “My informants tell me that every Tuesday night a meeting is held at one or another’s house along the Rhine, usually a large house, an estate. Each has docking facilities and all those coming together arrive by boat, never by automobile.”

  “A boat’s wake is somewhat less identifiable than tire tracks,” interrupted Moreau, “or vehicles with license plates.”

  “Understood. Therefore, these meetings are secret and the identities of those attending concealed.”

  “The houses, however, are not, are they? Or hadn’t that fact occurred to your informants?”

  “I was getting to them. For God’s sake, give me some credit.”

  “I’m impatient. The owners’ names, please.”

  “It’s a mixed bag, Claude. Three are upstanding aristocrats whose families opposed Hitler and paid for it; three, possibly four, are part of the new rich who guard their assets from further government appropriations; and two are men of the cloth—one an old Catholic priest, the other a Lutheran minister who apparently takes his vows of nonostentation seriously. He’s listed as the lessee of the smallest house on the river.”

  “The names, damn you!”

  “I have only six—”

  “Where are the others?”

  “The unknown three are also renters, and the leasing agents in Switzerland won’t reveal anything. That’s standard practice among the very rich who want to avoid taxes on outside income.”

  “Give me the six, then.”

  “Maximilian von Löwenstein, he owns the largest—”

  “His father, the general, was executed by the SS in the Wolfsschanze incident, the attempted assassination of Hitler. Next?”

  “Albert Richter, once a playboy, now a converted, serious politician.”

  “He’s still a dilettante, with property in Monaco. His family was about to cut him off unless he changed his ways. It’s an act. Next?”

  “Günter Jäger, he’s the Lutheran minister.”

  “I don’t know him, at least nothing that comes to mind. Next?”

  “Monsignor Heinrich Paltz, he’s the priest.”

  “An ancient right-wing Catholic who covers his biases with sanctimonious drivel. Next?”

  “Friedrich von Schell, he’s the third of the rich people we’ve identified. His estate has more than—”

  “He’s smart,” interrupted Moreau, “and he’s tough where the unions are concerned. A nineteenth-century Prussian in Armani suits. Next?”

  “Ansel Schmidt, very outspoken; an electronics engineer who made millions in high-technology exports and fights the government at every turn.”

  “A pig who went from one firm to another stealing technology until he had it all, and formed his own companies.”

  “That’s what I have, Claude; it’s hardly worth my life.”

  “Who are the Swiss rental agencies?”

  “The contact is a real estate company here in Bonn. One sends an emissary with a hundred thousand deutsche marks as a sign of serious intent, and they forward it to a bank in Zurich, along with a profile of the would-be lessee. If the money’s returned, there’s no deal. If it isn’t, someone goes to Zurich.”

  “Telephone and household bills? I trust you’ve looked into these with our unknown three.”

  “In each case they are sent to personal managers, two in Stuttgart, one in Munich, all coded, no names included.”

  “Certainly the Bundestag has a list of addresses.”

  “Private residences are closely guarded, as they are in governments everywhere. I could try, but it might be dangerous if I were caught. Frankly, I can’t stand pain, even the thought of it.”

  “Then you don’t have the specific addresses?”

  “There, I’m afraid, I’ve failed you. I could describe them from a distance, and from the river, but the residence numbers have been removed, the gates closed, and there are patrols with guard dogs both within and without. There are no mailboxes, of course.”

  “It’s one of those three, then,” said Moreau softly.

  “Who’s one of what?” asked the man in Bonn.

  “The leader of our ‘small circle.’ … Put your people on the roads to these houses and order them to identify the vehicles driving through the gates. Then match them with those at the Bundestag.”

  “My dear Claude, p
erhaps I wasn’t clear. These estates are patrolled both inside and outside, dozens of cameras mounted throughout the grounds. If I could hire such men, which is unlikely, and they were caught, the trail would lead to me, and, as I mentioned, even the prospect of pain is abhorrent to your obedient servant.”

  “I often wonder how you got to where you are.”

  “By living well, with the proper finances to ingratiate myself among the powerful, but most important, by not being caught. Does that answer you?”

  “God help you if you ever get caught.”

  “No, Claude, God help you.”

  “I won’t pursue that.”

  “My fee?”

  “When mine comes in, yours will follow.”

  “Whose side are you on, my old friend?”

  “No one’s and everyone’s, but especially my own.” Moreau hung up the phone and looked at the notes he had taken. He circled three names: Albert Richter, Friedrich von Schell, and Ansel Schmidt. One was probably the leader he sought, but each had a reason to be and the wherewithal to build a constituency. At the least, they provided him with the immediate ammunition he needed. He saw that the blue strip on line three was lit; the scrambler was still activated. He picked up the phone and dialed a number in Geneva.

  “L’Université de Genève,” said the operator four hundred miles away.

  “Professor André Benoit, if you please.”

  “Allô?” said the voice of the university’s most prominent scholar of political science.

  “It’s your confidant from Paris. May we talk?”

  “In a moment.” The phone was silent for eight seconds. “Now we may,” said Professor Benoit, back on the line. “No doubt you’re calling about the problems we’ve had in Paris. I can tell you now, I know nothing. Nobody does! Can you enlighten us?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Where have you been?”

  “In Monte Carlo, with the actor and his wife. I got back just this morning.”

  “Then you haven’t heard?” asked the man in Geneva, astonished.

  “About the attacks on the American Latham and his subsequent murder at the country restaurant, no doubt engineered by your psychopathic K Unit here in the city? It was a stupid act.”