The Apocalypse Watch

by Robert Ludlum

  “Don’t forget to shave, darling. Your dark stubble is rather apparent in contrast to your hair.”

  “That’s another thing,” mumbled Latham. “I want to wash that stuff out just as soon as possible,” he added clearly, walking into the room and closing the door behind him.

  “Bien,” said Moreau, continuing in French. “We may talk now, madame.”

  “Yes, I knew this was coming. A few moments ago your eyes were like two rifles aimed at me.”

  “Shall we speak German?”

  “No need to. He can’t hear anything in there and French, when spoken rapidly, escapes his ear anyway. Where do we begin?”

  “With the obvious,” replied the chief of the Deuxième matter-of-factly. “When do you intend to tell him? Or do you?”

  “I see,” said Karin, drawing out the two words. “And if I could speak for both of us, I might ask the same of you, mightn’t I?”

  “You refer to my own secret, not so? The reason why I take the risks I do to destroy the fanatical German wherever I can find him.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Very well. You won’t be in a position to spread the information, thus harming my family, so why not?… I had a sister, Marie, quite a bit younger than I, and as our father had died, she looked upon me as taking his place, and certainly I adored her. She was so alive, so filled with the innocence of blossoming youth, and to add to that crown of spring flowers, she was a dancer—perhaps not a prima ballerina, but certainly an accomplished member of the corps de ballet. However, during the angriest years of the Cold War, solely to avenge themselves on me, the East German Stasi destroyed that glorious child. They kidnapped her and rapidly turned her into a drug addict, forcing her into prostitution to support her induced habit. She collapsed and died on the Unter den Linden at the age of twenty-six, begging for food or money, as she could no longer sell her body.… That is my secret, Karin. It’s not very pretty, is it?”

  “It’s horrible,” said De Vries. “And you were helpless to do anything about it, about her?”

  “I did not know. Our mother had passed away, and I was in deep cover in the Mediterranean sector for thirteen months. When I returned to Paris, I found in my long-suspended mail four photographs, courtesy of the East Berlin Polizei, by way of the Stasi. They showed what was left in death of my child sister.”

  “I could cry, and I mean that, Claude, I’m not merely saying it.”

  “I’m sure you do, my dear, for you have an equally agonizing story to tell, is it not so?”

  “How did you find out?”

  “I’ll explain later. First, I must ask you again. When will you tell our American friend? Or don’t you intend to do so?”

  “I can’t right now—”

  “Then you are merely using him,” interrupted Moreau.

  “Yes, I am,” exclaimed De Vries. “That’s the way it started but not the way it’s turned out. Think what you will of me, but I do love him—I’ve come to love him. It’s a far greater shock to me than anyone else. He has so many qualities of the Freddie I married—too many, in fact, and that frightens me. He’s warm and searching and angry; he’s a good man who’s trying to find his focus, or his compass, or whatever you want to call it. He’s as lost as we all are, but he’s determined to find answers. Freddie was like that at the beginning. Before he changed and became an obsessed animal.”

  “We both heard Drew several minutes ago talking about Courtland. I was appalled at his coldness. Is this the Freddie syndrome?”

  “No, not at all. Drew is becoming the brother he’s impersonating. He has to be Harry.”

  “Then how far down the road does he become Freddie? The animal?”

  “He can’t, he can’t. He’s too decent for that.”

  “Then tell him the truth.”

  “What is truth?”

  “Start with honesty, Karin.”

  “What’s honest any longer?”

  “Your husband’s alive. Frederik de Vries is alive, but nobody knows where he is or who he is.”

  The Deuxième escort consisted of the driver of reckless abandon, François, and two guards whose names were spoken so rapidly that Latham dubbed them “Monsieur Frick” and “Monsieur Frack.”

  “Are your daughters speaking to you, François?” asked Drew from the backseat as he and Monsieur Frack flanked Karin.

  “Not a word,” replied the driver. “My wife was quite harsh with them, explaining that they should respect their father.”

  “Did it do any good?”

  “None. They marched to their room and closed the door, on which they hung a sign reading Private.”

  “Is this something I should know about?” said De Vries.

  “Only the obvious conclusion that children of the female species can be notoriously cruel to their saintly fathers,” answered Latham.

  “I think I’ll let that pass.”

  Twenty minutes later they arrived at the Deuxième Bureau, a nondescript stone building with an underground parking area that was entered only after the scrutiny of armed guards. Frick and Frack took Drew and Karin up in a steel-encased electronic elevator that required an inordinately long series of codes to operate. They reached the fifth floor and were escorted to Moreau’s office, less of an office actually than a large living room, the Venetian blinds half closed. What comforts existed were shockingly intruded upon by an array of computers and various other high-tech equipment.

  “You know how to make all of this stuff work?” asked Drew, sweeping his hand around the room.

  “What I don’t know, my newly appointed secretary does, and what she doesn’t, my associate Jacques does. And if we really get in trouble, I’ll simply call up my new friend, Madame de Vries.”

  “Mon Dieu,” exclaimed Karin, “this is a technologist’s dream! Look over there, you’re in instant contact with a dozen relaying satellites, and there, telecommunications to every remote section of the world that has receiving equipment, which you obviously have in place or it wouldn’t be here.”

  “I have a little trouble with that one,” said Moreau. “Perhaps you could help.”

  “The frequencies revolve constantly, even mini-second by mini-second,” said De Vries. “The Americans are working on it.”

  “They were, but a computer scientist named Rudolph Metz gave them a little trouble when he fled the United States and disappeared into Germany. He spread an eliminating virus throughout the entire system; they’re still trying to recover.”

  “Whoever perfects it will have the secrets of the globe,” said Karin.

  “Then let us hope the Brüderschaft require the equipment Metz left behind,” added the chief of the Deuxième Bureau. “Yet this is futile speculation. We have other things to show you, or more appropriately, for you to listen to. As promised, and with Witkowski’s help at the embassy, we’ve invaded the ambassador’s private telephone, a telephone that searches all channels and will operate only on one that is supposedly intercept-free. Le Pare de Joie was far simpler; we simply jammed their lines on a pretext of a fire at the phone company. It was widely reported and caused thousands of complaints, but the ruse was accepted.… Actually, we did start a fire, more smoke than flames, but it worked.”

  “Did we learn anything?” asked Latham.

  “Listen for yourselves,” replied Moreau, walking to a console on the left wall. “This tape is from the ambassador’s constantly swept telephone in his private office within the upstairs quarters. We’ve edited it so only the pertinent information is heard. Who cares to listen to innocuous courtesies?”

  “Are you sure they’re innocuous?”

  “My dear Drew, you may listen to the master tape anytime you care to; it’s digitally marked.”

  “Sorry, go ahead.”

  “Madame Courtland has just reached the Saddle and Bootery on the Champs-Élysées.” The tape began.

  “I must talk to André at Le Pare de Joie. It’s urgent, an emergency!”

  “And who spe
aks?”

  “One who knows the code André and was driven to the amusement park in your own vehicle yesterday.”

  “I was told of this. Stay on the line, I’ll be back to you in a few moments.” Silence. “You are to be at the Louvre at one o’clock this afternoon. In the Ancient Egypt exhibition gallery on the second floor. You will recognize each other and he will direct you to follow him. If by any chance you are interrupted, he is known as Louis, Count of Strasbourg. You are old acquaintances. Is this understood?”

  “It is.”

  “Good-bye.”

  “This next tape is between the store manager and André at Le Parc de Joie,” said Moreau. “In fact, he is the Count of Strasbourg.”

  “A real count?” asked Latham.

  “Since there are so many, let’s say he’s more real than most. It’s a rather ingenious cover and quite authentic. He’s the surviving male of an old distinguished family in Alsace-Lorraine who came upon hard times after the war; the family broke apart, you see.”

  “From a count to a carnival owner?” continued Drew. “That’s some drop. What broke up the family?”

  “In German the Alsace region is known as Elsass-Lothringen. One side fought for Germany, the other for France.”

  “So this Louis, the Count of Strasbourg’s half, went with the Nazis,” said Latham, nodding his head.

  “No, not at all,” disagreed Moreau, his eyes alive with surprise. “That’s what makes his cover ingenious. He was only a child, but his ‘half,’ as you put it, fought valiantly for France. Unfortunately, the German contingent squirreled the fortune away into Swiss and North African banks, and left the nobler part nearly penniless.”

  “Yet he works for the neos?” interrupted Karin. “He is a Nazi.”

  “Obviously.”

  “I don’t get it,” said Drew. “Why would he do it?”

  “He was reached,” answered De Vries, looking at Moreau. “He was corrupted by the side of the family that had the money.”

  “To run a fifth-rate and pretty damned filthy amusement park?”

  “With promises of a great deal more,” added the Deuxième’s chief. “He is one man at Le Parc de Joie, very much another in the salons of Paris.”

  “I’d think he’d be laughed at,” said Latham, “not allowed anywhere near those salons.”

  “Because he runs a ‘carnival’?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “Quite wrong, mon ami. We French admire practicality, especially the humbling practicality of the dethroned rich, who find ways of rebuilding their resources. You do the same in America, and you’re even more blatant about it. A multimillionaire entrepreneur loses his companies, or his hotels, or his various enterprises, loses everything. Then he regains his fortunes, and you make him a hero. We’re not so different, Drew. The overlord becomes the vilified underdog, then with a burst of energy reclaims his throne. We applaud him, regardless of the moralities involved. As to what the count hopes to gain from the Nazis, who really knows?”

  “Let’s hear the tape.”

  “You may, of course, but it merely confirms Strasbourg’s orders to have Madame Courtland at the Louvre at one o’clock this afternoon.”

  * * *

  Washington, D.C. It was shortly past five o’clock in the morning, but Wesley Sorenson could not sleep. Slowly, quietly, he got out of the twin bed next to his wife’s, and walked softly across the master bedroom toward his dressing room.

  “What are you doing, Wes?” said his wife sleepily. “You went to the bathroom barely a half hour ago.”

  “You heard me?”

  “Only most of the night. What is it? Have you got a medical problem you haven’t told me about?”

  “It’s not medical.”

  “Then I mustn’t ask, must I?”

  “Something’s wrong, Kate, something I’m not seeing.”

  “That’s hard to believe.”

  “Why? It’s the story of my life, looking for the missing pieces.”

  “Are you going to look for them in the dark, my dear?”

  “It’s late morning in Paris, not dark at all. Go back to sleep.”

  “I shall. It’ll be quieter.”

  Sorenson plunged his face into a sink of cold water—practices of the field returning—put on his bathrobe, and walked downstairs to the kitchen. He pressed the button on the automatic coffeemaker, programmed by their housekeeper after the previous night’s dinner, waited until nearly a cup was filled, poured it, and trudged into his study beyond the living room. He sat down at his eight-foot-long desk, sipped coffee, and opened a lower drawer for a pack of his “absolutely forbidden” cigarettes—practices of the field returning. Gratefully inhaling the pacifying smoke, he picked up the phone on his elaborate console, checked for intercepts, and dialed Moreau’s private line in Paris.

  “It’s Wes, Claude,” said Sorenson after hearing the brief, curt “Oui?” over the phone.

  “It’s my morning for Americans, Wesley. Your cantankerous Drew Latham just left with the lovely, if enigmatic, Karin de Vries.”

  “Where’s the enigma?”

  “I’m not sure yet, but when I learn, so will you. However, we’re making progress. Your incredible discovery, Janine Clunitz, is leading us right along. Our Sonnenkind is behaving predictably within her sphere of unpredictability.” Moreau described the events of the morning in Paris as they pertained to the ambassador’s wife. “She’s to meet with Strasbourg at the Louvre early this afternoon. We’ll have them covered, naturally.”

  “The Alsace Strasbourgs are a hell of a story, if I remember correctly.”

  “You do, and the count takes it several steps further.”

  “Elsass-Lothringen?” asked the director of Cons-Op.

  “No, those are the additional steps, but we’ll climb them later, my friend. The ambassador, his schedule remains, no?”

  “His schedule remains, yes, and we’re lucky if he doesn’t fall apart and strangle the bitch.”

  “We’re prepared for him here, I assure you.… Now, what about you, mon ami? What is happening on your side of the Pond?”

  “Only the most unholy mess you can imagine. You know those two Nazi killers—what are they called?”

  “I presume you’re talking about the two Witkowski sent to Andrews Air Force Base.”

  “They’re the ones. They spewed out garbage that could bring down the administration if it was released publicly.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “They say they have direct and specific evidence linking the Vice President and the Speaker of the House to the neo-Nazi movement in Germany.”

  “That’s utterly preposterous! Where is this so-called evidence?”

  “The inference was that they could pick up a phone, call Berlin, and the documentation would be forwarded immediately, presumably by fax.”

  “It’s a bluff, Wesley, surely you know that.”

  “Certainly, but a bluff that could include false documents. The Vice President is furious. He wants a full Senate hearing and has gone so far as to line up a slew of enraged senators and congressmen of both parties to refute the allegations.”

  “That might be an imprudent course of action,” said Moreau, “considering the climate over there, the witch-hunts.”

  “That’s what I have to make clear to him. All I can think of is what impact even the phoniest of ‘official evidence’ would have on our frenzy-feeding media. Government letterheads, especially intelligence letterheads, and most especially German intelligence letterheads, can be copied in seconds. Good God, can you imagine, they’d be flashed across television screens all over the country?”

  “The accused are condemned before they’ve been heard,” agreed the chief of the Deuxième Bureau. “Wait a minute, Wesley—” Moreau interrupted himself. “For such events to take place, the two assassins would need the cooperation of the neo-Nazi hierarchy, not so?”

  “Yes. So?”

  “Impossible! The Paris unit
of the Blitzkrieger is in disgrace! They’re considered traitors and would receive no assistance from the hierarchy whatsoever because they’re too dangerous to the Nazi movement. They’re cut off, abandoned.… Who else over there knows about your two prisoners?”

  “Well, we’re damned shorthanded here, so I used the marines and a couple of Knox Talbot’s men to pick them up at Andrews. Also a CIA safe house in Virginia to keep them underwraps.”

  “A CIA safe house? The penetrated CIA?”

  “I didn’t have much choice, Claude. We don’t own any.”

  “I understand that. Still, those two men are major liabilities for the neos.”

  “So you’ve said. And?”

  “Check on those prisoners, Wesley, but give no advance notice that you’re doing so.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m not sure. Call it the instincts we both developed in Istanbul.”

  “On my way,” said Sorenson, disconnecting the line to Paris and touching the speed-dial numbers for Cons-Op transportation. “I need a car at my residence in half an hour.”

  Thirty-six minutes later, shaven and dressed, the director of Consular Operations instructed his driver to take him to the safe house in Virginia. Immediately upon receiving the order, the driver picked up the interceptor-proof UHF radio phone to give the destination to the CIA dispatcher.

  “Don’t bother with that,” said Sorenson from the backseat. “It’s too early for a reception committee.”

  “But it’s standard procedure, sir.”

  “Have a heart, young fella, the sun’s barely up.”

  “Yes, sir.” The driver replaced the radio phone in its cradle, his expression conveying his judgment that the old man was a pretty nice guy for a bigshot. A half hour later they reached the winding country road cut out of the woods that led to the concrete gatehouse flanked by an electrified hurricane fence. The gate remained closed as a voice came from a speaker built into the concrete below a thick, tinted bulletproof window outside the limousine’s left rear door.

  “Please identify yourself and state your business.”

  “Wesley Sorenson, director of Consular Operations,” answered the head of Cons-Op, lowering the car’s window, “and my business is max-classified.”