The Aquitaine Progression (26 page)
Read The Aquitaine Progression Online
Authors: Robert Ludlum
Yet the temptation was so damned inviting. The bloodline of Hermann Göring involved with the contemplated resurrection of the generals! In
Germany
. Ilse Fishbein could be an immediate means of unlocking a floodgate of unwanted memories. He held in his hand a spiked club; the moment would come when he would swing it.
Leifhelm’s commanding duties in the field with the West German NATO divisions lasted seventeen years, whereupon he was elevated to SHAPE headquarters, near Brussels, as military spokesman for Bonn’s interests.
Again his tenure was marked by extreme anti-Soviet postures, frequently at odds with his own government’s pragmatic approach to coexistence with the Kremlin, and throughout his final months at SHAPE he was more often appreciated by the Anglo-American right-wing factions than by the political leadership in Bonn.
It was only when the chancellor of the Federal Republic concluded that American foreign policy in the early eighties had been taken out of the hands of professionals and usurped by bellicose ideologues
that he ordered Leifhelm home and created an innocuous post for the soldier to keep him at bay.
Leifhelm, however, had never been a gullible fool, nor was he one now in his new, improvised status. He understood why the politicians had created it—it showed recognition of his own subtle strengths. People everywhere were looking to the past, to men who spoke clearly, with candor, and did not obfuscate the problems facing their countries and the world, especially the Western world.
So he began to speak. At first to veterans’ groups and splinter organizations where military pasts and long-established partisan politics guaranteed him a favorable reception. Spurred by the enthusiastic responses he evoked, Leifhelm began to expand, seeking larger audiences, his positions becoming more strident, his statements more provocative.
One man listened and was furious. The chancellor learned that Leifhelm had carried his quasi-politicking into the Bundestag itself, implying a constituency far beyond what he really had, but by the sheer force of his personality swaying members who should not have been swayed. Leifhelm’s message came back to the chancellor: an enlarged army in far greater numbers than the NATO commitments; an intelligence service patterned after the once extraordinary Abwehr; a general revamping of textbooks, deleting injurious and slanderous materials; rehabilitation camps for political troublemakers and subversives pretending to be “liberal thinkers.” It was all there.
The chancellor had had enough. He summoned Leifhelm to his office, where he demanded his resignation in the presence of three witnesses. Further, he ordered Leifhelm to remove himself from all aspects of German politics, to accept no further speaking engagements, and to lend neither his name nor his presence to any cause whatsoever. He was to retire totally from public life. We have reached one of those witnesses whose name is not pertinent to this report. The following is his recollection:
The chancellor was furious. He said to Leifhelm:
“Herr General, you have two choices, and, if you’ll forgive me, a final solution. Number one, you may do as I say. Or you can be stripped of your rank and all pensions and financial accruals afforded therein, as well as the income from some rather valuable real estate in Munich, which in the opinion of any enlightened court would be taken from you instantly. That is your second choice.”
I tell you, the field marshal was apoplectic! He demanded his rights, as he called them, and the chancellor shouted, “You’ve had your rights, and they were wrong! They’re still wrong!” Then Leifhelm asked what the final solution was, and I swear to you, as crazy as it sounds, the chancellor opened a drawer of his desk, took out a pistol, and aimed it at Leifhelm. “I, myself, will kill you right now,” he said. “You will not, I repeat,
not
take us back.”
I thought for a moment that the old soldier was going to rush forward and accept the bullet, but he didn’t. He stood there staring at the chancellor, such hatred in his eyes, matched by the statesman’s cold appraisal. Then Leifhelm did a stupid thing. He shot his arm forward—not at the chancellor, but away from him—and cried “
Heil Hitler
.” Then he turned in military fashion and walked out the door.
We were all silent for a moment or two, until the chancellor broke the silence. “I should have killed him,” he said. “I may regret it. We may all regret it.”
Five days after this confrontation, Jacques-Louis Bertholdier made the first of his two trips to Bonn following his retirement. On his initial visit he stayed at the Schlosspark Hotel, and as hotel records are kept for a period of three years, we were able to obtain copies of his billing charges. There were numerous calls to various firms doing business with Juneau et Cie, too numerous to examine individually, but one number kept being repeated, the name having no apparent business connections with Bertholdier or his company. It was Ilse Fishbein. However, upon checking Erich Leifhelm’s telephone bills for the dates in question, it was found that he, too, had placed calls to Ilse Fishbein, identical in number with
those placed by Bertholdier. Inquiries and brief surveillance further established that Frau Fishbein and Leifhelm have known each other for a number of years. The conclusion is apparent: She is the conduit between Paris and Bonn in Delavane’s apparatus.
Converse lit a cigarette. There was the name again, the temptation again. Ilse Fishbein could be the shortcut. Threatened with exposure, this daughter of Hermann Göring could reveal a great deal. She could confirm that she was not only the liaison between Leifhelm and Bertholdier but conceivably much more, for the two ex-generals had to transmit information to each other. The names of companies, of buried subsidiaries, and of firms doing business related to Delavane in Palo Alto might surface, names he could pursue legally, looking for the illegalities that had to be there. If there only was a way to make his presence felt but not seen.
An intermediary. He had used intermediaries in the past, often enough to know the value of the procedure. It was relatively simple. He would approach a third party to make contact with an adversary carrying information that could be of value to him insofar as it might be deemed damaging to his interests, and if the facts presented were strong enough, an equitable solution was usually forthcoming. The ethics was questionable, but contrary to accepted belief, ethics was in three dimensions, if not four. The end did not justify the means, but justifiable means that brought about a fair and necessary conclusion were not to be dismissed.
And nothing could be fairer or more necessary than the dismantling of Aquitaine. Old Beale was right that night on the moonlit beach on Mykonos. His client was not an unknown man in San Francisco but instead a large part of this so-called civilized world. Aquitaine had to be stopped, aborted.
An intermediary? It was another question he would put off until the morning. He picked up the dossier, his eyes heavy.
Leifhelm has few intimate friends that appear to be constant, probably because of his awareness that he is under watch by the government. He sits on the boards of several prominent corporations,
which have stated frankly that his name justifies his stipend.…
Joel’s head fell forward. He snapped it back, widened his eyes, and scanned the final pages rapidly, absorbing only the general impressions; his concentration was waning. There was mention of several restaurants, the names meaningless; a marriage during the war that ended when Leifhelm’s wife disappeared in November of ’43, presumed killed in a Berlin bombing raid; no subsequent wife or wives. His private life was extraordinarily private, if not austere; the exception here was his proclivity for small dinner parties, the guest lists always varied, again names, again meaningless. The address of his residence on the outskirts of Bad Godesberg.… Suddenly Converse’s neck stiffened, his eyes fully alert.
The house is in the remote countryside, on the Rhine River and far from any shopping areas or suburban concentration. The grounds are fenced and guarded by attack dogs who bark viciously at all approaching vehicles except Leifhelm’s dark-red Mercedes limousine.
A dark-red Mercedes! It was Leifhelm himself who had been at the airport! Leifhelm who had driven directly to the embassy! How could it happen?
How
?
It was too much to absorb, too far beyond his understanding. The darkness was closing in, Joel’s brain telling him it could no longer accept further input; it simply could not function. The dossier fell to his side; he closed his eyes and slept.
He was plunging headlong down through a cavernous hole in the earth, jagged black rocks on all sides, infinite darkness below. The walls of irregular stone kept screaming in frenzy, screeching at him like descending layers of misshapen gargoyles with sharp beaks and raised claws lunging at his flesh. The hysterical clamor was unbearable. Where had the silence gone? Why was he falling into black nothingness?
He flashed his eyes open; his forehead was drenched with sweat, his breath coming in gasps. The telephone by his head was ringing, the erratic bell jarringly dissonant. He tried to shake the sleep and the fear from his semiconsciousness; he reached for the blaring instrument, glancing at his watch as
he did so. It was twelve-fifteen, a quarter past noon, the sun streaking through the hotel window. Blinding.
“Yes? Hello …?”
“Joe?
Joel
?”
“Yes.”
“It’s Cal Dowling. Our boy called.”
“What? Who?”
“This Fowler. Avery Fowler.”
“Oh,
Jesus
!” It was coming back, it was
all
coming back. He was seated at a table in the Chat Botté on the Quai du Mont Blanc, flashes of sunlight bouncing off the grillwork on the lakeside boulevard. No … he was not in Geneva. He was in a hotel room in Bonn, and only hours ago he had been plunged into madness by that name. “Yes,” he choked, catching his breath. “Did you get a telephone number?”
“He said there wasn’t time for games, and besides, he doesn’t have one. You’re to meet him at the east wall of the Alter Zoll as fast as you can get there. Just walk around; he’ll find you.”
“That’s not
good
enough!” cried Converse. “Not after Paris! Not after the airport last night! I’m not stupid!”
“I didn’t get the impression he thought you were,” replied the actor. “He told me to tell you something; he thought it might convince you.”
“What is it?”
“I hope I get this right; I don’t even like saying it.… He said to tell you a judge named Anstett was killed last night in New York. He thinks you’re being cut loose.”
The Alter Zoll, the ancient tower that had once been part of Bonn’s southern fortress on the Rhine—razed to the ground three centuries ago—was now a tollhouse standing on a green lawn dotted with antique cannons, relics of a might that had slipped away through the squabblings of emperors and kings, priests and princes. A winding mosaic wall of red and gray stone overlooked the massive river below where boats of various
descriptions plowed furrows in the open water, caressing the shorelines on both sides, diligent and somber in their appointed rounds; no Lake Geneva here, far less the blue-green waters of the mischievous Como. Yet in the distance was a sight envied by people the world over: the Siebengebirge, the seven mountains of Westerwald, magnificent in their intrusions on the skyline.
Joel stood by the low wall, trying to focus on the view, hoping it would calm him, but the exercise was futile. The beauty before him was lost, it would not distract him from his thoughts; nothing could.… Lucas Anstett, Second Circuit Court of Appeals, judge extraordinary and intermediary between one Joel Converse and his employers and an unknown man in San Francisco. Outside of that unknown man and a retired scholar on the island of Mykonos, the only other person who knew what he was doing and why. How in the space of eighteen hours or less could he have been
found
? Found and killed!
“Converse?”
Joel turned, whipping his head over his shoulder, his body rigid. Standing twenty feet away on the far edge of a graveled path was a sandy-haired man several years younger than Converse, in his early to mid thirties; his was a boyish face that would grow old slowly and remain young long after its time. He was also shorter than Joel, but not by much—perhaps five ten or eleven—and dressed in light-gray trousers and a cord jacket, his white shirt open at the neck.
“Who are you?” asked Converse hoarsely.
A couple strolled between them on the path as the younger man jerked his head to his left, gesturing for Joel to follow him onto the lawn beyond. Converse did so, joining him by the huge iron wheel of a bronze cannon.
“All right, who are you?” repeated Joel.
“My sister’s name is Meagen,” said the sandy-haired man. “And so neither one of us makes a mistake, you tell me who I am.”
“How the
hell
…?” Converse stopped, the words coming back to him, words whispered by a dying man in Geneva.
Oh, Christ! Meg, the kids
… “ ‘Meg, the kids,’ ” he said out loud. “Fowler called his wife Meg.”
“Short for Meagen, and she was Halliday’s wife—only, you knew him as Fowler.”
“You’re Avery’s brother-in-law.”
“Press’s brother-in-law,” corrected the man, extending his hand. “Connal Fitzpatrick,” he added.
“Then we’re on the same side.”
“I hope so.”
“I’ve got a lot of questions to ask you, Connal.”
“No more than I’ve got for you, Converse.”
“Are we going to start off belligerently?” asked Joel, noting the harsh use of his own last name and releasing Fitzpatrick’s hand.
The younger man blinked, then reddened, embarrassed. “Sorry,” he said. “I’m one angry brother—on both sides—and I haven’t had much sleep. I’m still on San Diego time.”
“San Diego? Not San Francisco?”
“Navy. I’m a lawyer stationed at the naval base there.”
“Whew,” whistled Converse softly. “It’s a small world.”
“I know all about the geography,” agreed Fitzpatrick. “And also you, Lieutenant. How do you think Press got his information? Of course, I wasn’t in San Diego then, but I had friends.”