The Aquitaine Progression (43 page)

“Don’t apologize,
mein Herr
,” said the chauffeur. “It happens often.”

“I wasn’t going to apologize,” said Converse flatly as he released the man. “I was going to break your neck.” The German moved away, and Joel remained motionless, stunned by
his own words. He had not spoken words like that in over eighteen years.

“This way, sir,” said the man on the steps, his accent oddly yet distinctly British.

Inside, the great hall was lined with medieval banners hanging down from an interior balcony. The hall led into an immense sitting room, the motif again medieval, made comfortable by soft leather chairs and couches, gaily fringed lamps and silver services everywhere on thin polished tables. The room was also made ugly by the profusion of protruding animals’ heads on the upper walls; large cats, elephants and boar looked down in defiant anger. It was a field marshal’s lair.

It was not, however, the furnishings that absorbed Converse’s attention but the sight of the four men who stood beside four separate chairs facing him.

He knew Bertholdier and Leifhelm; they stood beside each other on the right. It was the two on the left he stared at. The medium-sized, stocky man with the fringe of close-cropped hair on a balding head and wearing a rumpled safari jacket, the ever-present boots below his khaki trousers, could be no one but Chaim Abrahms. His pouched, angry face with its slits of glaring eyes was the face of an avenger. The very tall man with the gaunt, aquiline features and the straight gray hair was General Jan van Headmer, the Slayer of Soweto. Joel had read the Van Headmer dossier quickly; fortunately it was the briefest, the final summary saying it all.

“Mein Haus ist dein Haus,”
said Leifhelm, walking toward Joel, his hand outstretched.

Converse stepped forward to accept the German’s hand. Their hands clasped. “That was an odd greeting outside for such a warm sentiment,” said Joel, abruptly releasing Leifhelm’s hand and turning to Bertholdier. “Good to see you again, General. My apologies for the unfortunate incident in Paris the other night. I don’t mean to speak lightly of a man’s life, but in those few split seconds I didn’t think he had much regard for mine.”

Joel’s boldness had the desired effect. Bertholdier stared at him, momentarily unsure of what to say. And Converse was aware that the other three men were watching him intently, without question struck by his audacity, in both manners and words.

“To be sure, monsieur,” said the Frenchman, pointlessly but with composure. “As you know, the man disregarded his orders.”

“Really? I was told he misunderstood them.”

“It is the same!” The sharp, heavily accented voice came from behind.

Joel turned around. “Is it?” he asked coldly.

“In the field, yes,” said Chaim Abrahms. “Either one is an error, and errors are paid for with lives. The man paid with his.”

“May I introduce General Abrahms?” Leifhelm broke in, touching Converse’s elbow and leading him to the Israeli.

“General Abrahms, it’s a privilege,” said Joel with convincing sincerity as they shook hands. “Like everyone here,
I’ve admired you tremendously, although perhaps your rhetoric has been excessive at times.”

The Israeli’s face reddened as soft laughter filled the large room. Suddenly Van Headmer stepped forward, and Converse’s eyes were drawn to the strong face, the brows frowning, muscles taut.

“You are addressing one of my closest associates, sir,” he said; the rebuke was unmistakable. Then a thin smile creased his gaunt, chiseled face. “And I could not have said it better myself. A pleasure to know you, young man.” The Afrikaner’s hand was stretched toward Joel, who accepted it amid the subdued laughter.

“I am insulted!” cried Abrahms, his thick eyebrows raised, his head bobbing in mock despair. “By
talkers
I’m insulted! Frankly, Mr. Converse, they agree with you because none of them has had a woman in a quarter of a century. They may tell you otherwise—others may tell you otherwise—but believe me they hire whores to play cards with them or read stories into their old gray ears just to fool their friends!” The laughter grew louder, and the Israeli, now playing to an audience, went on, leaning forward and pretending to speak sotto voce to Joel. “But you see,
I
hire the whores to tell me the truth while I
shtup
them! They tell me these fancy talkers nod off by nine o’clock, whining for warm milk. With the
Ovaltine
, if it’s possible!”

“My dear sabra,” said Leifhelm, talking through his laughter, “you read your own romantic fiction too assiduously”

“You see what I mean, Converse?” asked Abrahms, shrugging, palms extended. “You hear that? ‘Assiduously.’ Now you know why the Germans lost the war. They forever spoke so dramatically of the
Blitzkrieg
and the
Angriffe
, but actually they were talking—
assiduously
—about what to do next!”

“They should have given you a commission, Chaim,” said Bertholdier, enjoying himself. “You could have changed your name, called Rommel and Von Runstedt Jews and taken over both fronts.”

“The High Command could have done worse,” agreed the Israeli.

“I wonder, though,” continued the Frenchman, “if you would have stopped there? Hitler was a fine orator, as you are
a fine orator. Perhaps you would have claimed that he, too, was a Jew and moved into the chancellery.”

“Oh, I have it on good authority that he
was
a Jew. But from a
very
bad family. Even we have them; of course, they’re all from Europe.”

The laughter grew again and then rapidly began to subside. Joel took the cue. “Sometimes I speak too frankly, General,” he said. “I should learn better, but, believe me, no insult was intended. I have nothing but admiration for your stated positions, your policies.”

“And that’s precisely what we shall discuss,” said Erich Leifhelm, drawing everyone’s attention. “Positions, policies, overall philosophy, if you will. We will stay as far away from specifics as we can, although a few will undoubtedly intrude. However, it is our approach to the larger abstractions that count. Come, Mr. Converse, have a chair. Let us begin our conference, the first of many, I trust.”

Rear Admiral Hickman slowly put down the transcript on his desk, and looked aimlessly—past his propped-up feet—out the window at the ocean under a gray sky. He crossed his arms, lowered his head and frowned. He was as bewildered now as he had been when he first read the transcript, as convinced now as he was then that Remington’s conclusions—conclusion, really—was off the mark. But then the legal officer was too young to have any real knowledge of the events as they had actually happened; no one who had not been there could really understand. Too many others did; it was the reason for the flag, but it made no sense to apply that reasoning to this Converse eighteen years later. It was exhuming a corpse that had died from a fever, whether the shell of a man lived on or not. It had to be something else.

Hickman looked at his watch, unfolded his arms and removed his feet from the edge of the table. It was three-ten in Norfolk; he reached for the telephone.

“Hello, Brian,” said Rear Admiral Scanlon of the Fifth Naval District. “I want you to know how much we appreciate SAND PAC’s help in this thing.”

“SAND PAC’s?” asked Hickman, bemused that no credit was given to the State Department.

“All right, Admiral,
your
help. I owe you one, old Hicky.”

“Start paying by dropping that name.”

“Hey, come on, don’t you remember the hockey games?
You’d come racing up the ice and the whole cadet corps would shout: ‘Here comes
Hicky
! Here comes
Hicky
!’ ”

“May I unblock my ears now?”

“I’m just trying to thank you, pal.”

“That’s just it, I’m not sure for what? Have you read the transcript?”

“Naturally.”

“What the hell’s
there
?”

“Well,” answered Scanlon tentatively. “I read it pretty quickly. It’s been an awful day and, frankly, I just passed it on. What do
you
think is there? Between you and me, I’d like to know, because I barely had time to skim through it.”

“What do I think is there? Absolutely
nothing
. Oh, sure, we kept flags on stuff like that back then because the White House passed the order to put a lid on officially recorded criticism and we all went along. Also we were pretty sick and tired of it ourselves. But there’s nothing in that transcript that hasn’t been heard before, or that has any value for anyone but military historians a hundred years from now as a very small footnote.”

“Well,” said Scanlon, even more tentatively, “this Converse had some pretty harsh things to say about Command-Saigon.”

“About
Mad Marcus
? Christ, I said worse during the Force-Tonkin conferences and
my
CO did me ten times better. We ferried in those kids up and down the coast when all they were ready for was a day at the beach with hot dogs and Ferris wheels.… I don’t get it. You and my legal zero in on the same thing, and I think it’s old hat and discredited. Mad Marcus is a relic.”

“Your who?”

“My legal exec. I told you about him, Remington.”

“Oh, yes. The stickler prick.”

“He picked up on the Saigon thing too. ‘That’s it,’ he said. ‘It’s in those remarks. It’s Delavane.’ He wasn’t around to know Delavane was fair game for every antiwar group in the country. Hell,
we
gave him the name Mad Marcus. No, it’s not Delavane, it’s something else. Perhaps it’s in those escapes, specifically Converse’s last escape. Maybe there’s some MIA input we don’t know about.”

“Well,” repeated the admiral in Norfolk for the third time, but now far less tentatively. “You may have something there, but it doesn’t concern us. Look, I’ll be honest with you.
I didn’t want to say anything because I didn’t want you to think you went to a lot of trouble for nothing, but the word I get is that the whole thing is a bust-negative.”

“Oh?” said Hickman, suddenly listening very carefully. “How so?”

“It’s the wrong man. Apparently an overenthusiastic JG was doing some digging in the same time period, the same general circumstances. He saw the flag and drew six wrong conclusions. I hope he enjoys taking five
A.M
. muster.”

“And that’s it?” asked SAND PAC’s admiral, controlling his astonishment.

“That’s the feedback we get here. Whatever your CLO had in mind hasn’t anything to do with our people.”

Hickman could not believe what he was hearing. Of course Scanlon had not mentioned the State Department’s efforts. He knew nothing about them! He was quickly putting as much distance between himself and the Converse flag as he could, lying because he had not been told. State was working quietly—probably through Cons Op—and Scanlon had no reason to think “old Hicky” knew a damn thing about Bonn or Converse or Connal Fitzpatrick’s whereabouts. Or about a man named Preston Halliday who had been murdered in Geneva. What was
happening
? He would not find out from Scanlon. Nor did he care to.

“To hell with it, then. My CLO will be back in three or four days and maybe I’ll learn something.”

“Whatever it is, it’s back in your sandbox, Admiral. My people had the wrong man.”

“Your people couldn’t navigate a row boat in the D.C. Reflecting Pool.”

“Can’t blame you for that, Hicky.”

Hickman hung up the phone and resumed his standard position when in thought, gazing beyond his propped-up shoes at the ocean. The sun was trying to break through the overcast without much success.

He had never liked Scanlon for reasons too petty to examine. Except one; he knew Scanlon was a liar. What he had not known was that he was such a stupid liar.

Lieutenant David Remington was flattered by the call. The well-known four-striper had invited him to lunch—not only invited him but had apologized for the lateness of the invitation and told him that it was perfectly understandable
if it was inconvenient. Further, the captain wanted him to know that the call was of a personal nature, having nothing to do with naval business. The high-ranking officer, although a resident of La Jolla, was in port for only a few days and needed legal advice. He had been told that Lieutenant Remington was just about the best lawyer in the United States Navy. Would the lieutenant accept?

Of course Remington had made it perfectly clear that whatever advice he might offer would be offered on the basis of
amicus-amicae;
no remuneration could possibly be considered, as that would be a violation of Statute …

“May I buy you lunch, Lieutenant, or do we have to split the check?” the four-striper had asked—somewhat impatiently, thought Remington.