The Aquitaine Progression (20 page)
Read The Aquitaine Progression Online
Authors: Robert Ludlum
“Crazy,” agreed Converse, as the stewardess walked back up the aisle toward them.
“Crazy or not,” added Dowling under his breath, “this good old rancher isn’t going to offend
anyone
. They want Pa Ratchet, they’ve got him.”
“Your bourbon, sir,” said the woman, handing the actor a glass.
“Why,
thank
you, li’l darlin’! My oh my, you’re purtier than any filly on the show!”
“You are too kind, sir.”
“May I have a Scotch, please,” said Joel.
“That’s better, son,” said Dowling, grinning again as the stewardess left. “And now that you know my crime, what do you do for a living?”
“I’m an attorney.”
“At least you’ve got something legitimate to read. This screenplay sure as hell isn’t.”
Although considered by most of Munich’s respectable citizens to be a collection of misfits and thugs, the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, with its headquarters in Munich, was making itself felt throughout Germany. The radical-populist movement was taking hold by basing its inflammatory message on the evil un-German “them.” It blamed the ills of the nation on a spectrum of targets ranging from the Bolsheviks to the ingrate Jewish bankers; from the foreign plunderers who had raped an Aryan land to, finally, all things not “Aryan,”
namely and especially the Jews and their ill-gotten wealth.
Cosmopolitan Munich and its Jewish community laughed at the absurdities; they were not listening. The rest of Germany was; it was hearing what it wanted to hear. And Erich Stoessel-Leifhelm heard it too. It was his passport to recognition and opportunity.
In a matter of weeks, the young man literally whipped his father into shape. In later years he would tell the story with heavy doses of cruel humor. Over the dissolute physician’s hysterical objections, the son removed all alcohol and smoking materials from the premises, never letting his father out of his sight. A harsh regimen of exercise and diet was enforced. With the zeal of a puritanical athletic trainer, Stoessel-Leifhelm started taking his father out to the countryside for
Gewaltmarschen
—forced marches—gradually working up to all-day hikes on the exhausting trails of the Bavarian mountains, continually shouting at the older man to keep moving, to rest only at his son’s commands, to drink water only with permission.
So successful was the rehabilitation that the doctor’s clothes began to hang on him like seedy, old-fashioned garments purchased for a much fatter man. A new wardrobe was called for, but good clothing in Munich in those days was beyond the means of all but the wealthy, and Stoessel-Leifhelm had only the best in mind for his father—not out of filial devotion but, as we shall see, for a quite different purpose.
Money had to be found, which meant it had to be stolen. He interrogated his father at length about the house the doctor had been forced to leave, learning everything there was to learn. Several weeks later Stoessel-Leifhelm broke into the house on the Luisenstrasse at three o’clock one morning, stripping it of everything of value, including silver, crystal, oil paintings, gold place settings, and the entire contents of a wall safe. Sales to fences were not difficult in Munich of 1930, and when everything was disposed of, father and son had the equivalent of nearly eight
thousand American dollars, virtually a fortune in those times.
The restoration continued; clothes were tailored in the Maximilianstrasse, the best footwear purchased at bootsmiths on the Odeonsplatz, and, finally, cosmetic changes were effected. The doctor’s unkempt hair was trimmed and heightened by coloring into a masculine Nordic blond, and his shabby inch-long beard shaved off, leaving only a small, unbroken, well-trimmed moustache above his upper lip. The transformation was complete; what remained was the introduction.
Every night during the long weeks of rehabilitation, Stoessel-Leifhelm had read aloud to his father whatever he could get his hands on from the National Socialists’ headquarters, and there was no lack of material. There were the standard inflammatory pamphlets, pages of ersatz biological theory purportedly proving the genetic superiority of Aryan purity and, conversely, the racial decline resulting from indiscriminate breeding—all the usual Nazi diatribes—plus generous excerpts from Hitler’s
Mein Kampf
. The son read incessantly until the doctor could recite by rote the salient outrages of the National Socialists’ message. Throughout it all, the seventeen-year-old kept telling his father that following the party’s program was the way to get back everything that had been stolen from him, to avenge the years of humiliation and ridicule. As Germany itself had been humiliated by the rest of the world, the Nazi party would be the avenger, the restorer of all things truly German. It was, indeed, the New Order for the Fatherland, and it was waiting for men of stature to recognize the fact.
The day came, a day when Stoessel-Leifhelm had learned that two high-ranking party officials would be in Munich. They were the crippled propagandist Joseph Goebbels and the would-be aristocrat Rudolf Hess. The son accompanied the father to the National Socialists’ headquarters where the well-tailored, imposing, obviously rich and Aryan
Doktor
requested an audience with the two Nazi leaders on an urgent and confidential matter. It was
granted, and according to early party historical archives, his first words to Hess and Goebbels were the following.
“Gentlemen, I am a physician of impeccable credentials, formerly head surgeon at the Karlstor Hospital and for years I enjoyed one of the most successful practices in Munich. That was in the past. I was destroyed by Jews who stole everything from me. I am back, I am well, and I am at your service.”
The Lufthansa plane began its descent into Hamburg, and Joel, feeling the drag, dog-eared the page of Leifhelm’s dossier and reached down for his attaché case. Beside him, the actor Caleb Dowling stretched, script in hand, then jammed his screenplay into an open flight bag at his feet.
“The only thing sillier than this movie,” he said, “is the amount of money they’re paying me to be in it.”
“Axe you filming tomorrow?” asked Converse.
“Today,” corrected Dowling, looking at his watch. “It’s an early shoot, too. Have to be on location by five-thirty—dawn over the Rhine, or something equally inspiring. Now, if they’d just turn the damn thing into a travelogue, we’d all be better off. Nice scenery.”
“But you were in Copenhagen.”
“Yep.”
“You’re not going to get much sleep.”
“Nope.”
“Oh.”
The actor looked at Joel, the crow’s-feet around his generous eyes creasing deeper with his smile. “My wife’s in Copenhagen and I had two days off. This was the last plane I could get.”
“Oh? You’re married?” Converse immediately regretted the remark; he was not sure why, but it sounded foolish.
“Twenty-six years, young fella. How do you think I was able to go after that impractical dream? She’s a whiz of a secretary; when I was teaching, she’d always be this or that dean’s gal Friday.”
“Any children?”
“Can’t have everything. Nope.”
“Why is she in Copenhagen? I mean, why isn’t she staying with you—on location?”
The grin faded from Dowling’s suntanned face; the lines
were less apparent, yet somehow deeper. “That’s an obvious question, isn’t it? That is, you being a lawyer would pick it up quickly.”
“It’s none of my business, of course. Forget I asked it.”
“No, that’s okay. I don’t like to talk about it—rarely do—but friendly seatmates on airplanes are for telling things. You’ll never see them again, so why not slice off a bit and feel better.” The actor tried haltingly to smile; he failed. “My wife’s name was Oppenfeld. She’s Jewish. Her story’s not much different from a few million others, but for her it’s … well, it’s hers. She was separated from her parents and her three younger brothers in Auschwitz. She watched them being taken away—away from her—while she screamed, not understanding. She was lucky; they put her in a barracks, a fourteen-year-old sewing uniforms until she showed other endowments that could lead to other work. A couple of days later, hearing the rumors, she got hysterical and broke out, racing all over the place trying to find her family. She ran into a section of the camp they called the
Abfall
, the garbage, corpses hauled out of the gas chambers. And there they were, the bodies of her mother and her father and her three brothers, the sight and the stench so sickening it’s never left her. It never will. She won’t set foot in Germany and I wouldn’t ask her to.”
No alarms, just surprises … and another Iron Cross for the Erich Leifhelms of the past, retroactively presented
.
“Christ, I’m sorry,” murmured Converse. “I didn’t mean to—”
“You didn’t. I did.… You see, she knows it doesn’t make sense.”
“Doesn’t make
sense?
Maybe you didn’t hear what you just described.”
“I heard, I know, but I didn’t finish. When she was sixteen, she was loaded into a truck with five other girls, all on their way to that different type of work, when they did it. Those kids took their last chance and beat the hell out of a Wehrmacht corporal who was guarding them in the van. Then with his gun they got control of the truck from the driver and escaped.” Dowling stopped, his eyes on Joel.
Converse, silent, returned the look, unsure of its meaning, but moved by what he had heard. “That’s a marvelous story,” he said quietly. “It really is.”
“And,” continued the actor, “for the next two years they
were hidden by a succession of German families, who surely knew what they were doing and what would happen to them if they got caught. There was a pretty frantic search for those girls—a lot of threats made, more because of what they could tell than anything else. Still, those Germans kept moving them around, hiding them, until one by one they were taken across the border into occupied France, where things were easier. They were smuggled across by the underground, the
German
underground.” Dowling paused, then added. “As Pa Ratchet would say, ‘Do you get my drift, son?’ ”
“I’d have to say it’s obvious.”
“There’s a lot of pain and a lot of hate in her and God knows I understand it. But there should be some gratitude, too. Couple of times clothing was found, and some of those people—those German people—were tortured, a few shot for what they did. I don’t push it, but she could level off with a little gratitude. It might give her a bit more perspective.” The actor snapped on his seat belt.
Joel pressed the locks on his attaché case, wondering if he should reply. Valerie’s mother had been part of the German underground. His ex-wife would tell him amusing stories her mother had told her about a stern, inhibited French intelligence officer forced to work with a high-spirited, opinionated German girl, a member of the
Untergrund
. How the more they disagreed, and the more they railed against each other’s nationality, the more they noticed each other. The Frenchman was Val’s father; she was proud of him, but in some ways prouder of her mother. There had been pain in that woman, too. And hate. But there had been a reason, and it was unequivocal. As there had been for one Joel Converse years later.
“I said it before and I mean it,” began Joel slowly, not sure he should say anything at all. “It’s none of my business, but I wouldn’t ever push it, if I were you.”
“Is this a lawyer talkin’ to ole Pa?” asked Dowling in his television dialect, his smile false, his eyes far away. “Do I pay a fee?”
“Sorry, I’ll shut up.” Converse adjusted his seat belt and pushed the buckle in place.
“No,
I’m
sorry. I laid it on you. Say it. Please.”
“All right. The horror came first, then the hate. In side-winder language that’s called prima facie—the obvious, the first sighting … the real, if you like. Without these, there’d
be no reason for the gratitude, no call for it. So, in a way, the gratitude is just as painful because it never should have been necessary.”
The actor once again studied Joel’s face, as he had done before their first exchange of words. “You’re a smart son of a bitch, aren’t you?”
“Professionally adequate. But I’ve been there … that is, I
know
people who’ve been where your wife has been. It starts with the horror.”
Dowling looked up at the ceiling light, and when he spoke his words floated in the air, his harsh voice quietly strained. “If we go to the movies, I have to check them out; if we’re watching television together, I read the TV section … sometimes on the news—with some of those fucking nuts—I tense up, wondering what she’s going to do. She can’t see a swastika, or hear someone screaming in German, or watch soldiers marching in a goose step; she can’t stand it. She runs and throws up and shakes all over … and I try to hold her … and sometimes she thinks I’m one of them and she screams. After all these years …
Christ!
”
“Have you tried professional help—not my kind—but the sort she might need?”
“Oh, hell, she recovers pretty quick,” said the actor defensively, as if slipping into a role, his teacher’s grammar displaced for effect. “Also, until a few years ago we didn’t have the money for that kind of thing,” he added somberly in his natural voice.
“What about now? That can’t be a problem now.”
Dowling dropped his eyes to the flight bag at his feet. “If I’d found her sooner … maybe. But we were both late bloomers; we got married in our forties—two oddballs looking for something. It’s too late now.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I never should have made this goddamn picture.
Never
.”
“Why did you?”
“She said I should. To show people I could play something more than a driveling, south-forty dispenser of fifth-rate bromides. I told her it didn’t matter.… I was in the war, in the Marine Corps. I saw some crap in the South Pacific but nothing to compare with what she went through, not a spit in the proverbial bucket.
Jesus!
Can you imagine what it must have been like?”
“Yes, I can.”
The actor looked up from the flight bag, a half-drawn smile on his lined, suntanned face. “You, good buddy? Not unless you were caught in Korea—”