The Aquitaine Progression (49 page)

The multiple sounds of animal feet pounding the earth preceded the streaking dark coats of the Dobermans as they raced below the window, instantly stopping and crowding angrily in front of the door. The chauffeur was on his way with a breakfast no prisoner in isolation should expect. Joel climbed off the chair and quickly carried it back to the table, setting it in place and going to his cot. He sat down, kicked off his shoes, and lay back on the pillow, his legs stretched out over the rumpled blanket.

The bolt was slid back, the key inserted and the heavy knob turned; the door opened. As he did every time he entered, the German pushed the center of the door with his right hand as he supported the tray with his left. However, this morning he was gripping a bulging object in his right hand, the blinding sunlight obscuring it for Converse. The man walked in and, more awkwardly than usual, placed the tray on the table.

“I have a pleasant surprise for you,
mein Herr
. I spoke with General Leifhelm on the telephone last night and he asked about you. I told him you were recovering splendidly and that I had changed the bandage on your unfortunate injury. Then it occurred to him that you had nothing to read and he was very upset. So an hour ago I drove into Bonn and purchased three days of the
International Herald Tribune
.” The driver placed the rolled-up newspapers next to the tray on the table.

But it was not the issues of the
Herald Tribune
that Joel stared at. It was the German’s neck and the upper outside pocket of his uniform jacket. For looped around that neck and angled over to that pocket was a thin silver chain, with the protruding top of a tubular silver whistle clearly visible against the dark fabric. Converse shifted his eyes to the door;
the Dobermans were sitting on their haunches, each breathing noisily and salivating, but, to all intents and purposes, immobile. Converse remembered his arrival at the general’s monumental lair and the strange Englishman who had controlled the dogs with a silver whistle.

“Tell Leifhelm I appreciate the reading material, but I’d be even more grateful if I could get out of this place for a few minutes.”

“
Ja
, with a plane ticket to the beaches in the south of France,
nein
?”

“For Christ’s sake, just to take a walk and stretch my legs! What’s the matter? Can’t you and that drooling band of mastiffs handle one unarmed man getting a little air?… No, you’re probably too frightened to try.” Joel paused, then added in an insulting mock-German accent. “ ‘I do vot I am tolt.’ ”

The driver’s smile faded. “The other evening you said you would not apologize but instead break my neck. That was a joke. Do you understand? A joke I find so amusing I can laugh at it.”

“Hey, come on,” said Converse, changing his tone as he swung his legs off the cot and sat up. “You’re ten years younger than I am and twenty times stronger. I felt insulted and reacted stupidly, but if you think I’d raise a hand against you, you’re out of your mind. I’m sorry. You’ve been decent to me and I was stupid again.”

“
Ja
, you were stupid,” said the German without rancor. “But also you were right. I do as I am told. And why not? It is a privilege to take orders from General Leifhelm. He has been
gut
to me.”

“Have you been with him long?”

“Since Brussels. I was a sergeant in the Federal Republic’s border patrols. He heard about my problem and took an interest in my case. I was transferred to the Brabant garrison and made his chauffeur.”

“What was your problem? I’m a lawyer, you know.”

“The charge was that I strangled a man. With my arm.”

“Did you?”

“
Ja
. He was trying to put a knife in my stomach—and lower. He said I took advantage of his daughter. I took no advantage; it was not necessary. She was a whore—it was in the clothes she wore, the way she walked—
es ist klar!
The father was a pig!”

Joel looked at the man, at the clouded malevolence in his eyes. “I can understand General Leifhelm’s sympathies,” he said.

“Now you know why I do as I am told.”

“Clearly.”

“He is calling for his messages at noon. I shall ask him about your walking. You understand that one word from me and the Dobermans will rip your body from its bones.”

“Nice puppies,” said Converse, addressing the pack of dogs outside.

Noon came and the privilege was granted. The walk was to take place after lunch when the driver returned to remove the tray. He returned, and after several severe warnings Joel ventured outside, the Dobèrmans crowding around him, black nostrils flared, white teeth glistening, bluish-red tongues flattened out in anticipation. Converse looked around; for the first time he saw that the small house was made of thick, solid stone. The unique squad began its constitutional up the path, Joel growing bolder as the dogs lost a degree of interest in him under the harsh admonitions of the German’s commands. They began racing ahead and regrouping in circles, snapping at one another but always whipping their heads back or across at their master and his prisoner. Converse walked faster.

“I used to jog a lot back home,” he lied.

“
Was ist?
‘Jog’?”

“Run. It’s good for the circulation.”

“You run now,
mein Herr
, you will have no circulation. The Dobermans will see to it.”

“I’ve heard of people getting coronaries from jogging too,” said Joel, slowing down, but not reducing the speed with which his eyes darted in all directions. The sun was directly overhead; it was no help in determining direction.

The dirt path was like a marked single line in an intricate network of hidden trails. It was bordered by thick foliage, more often than not roofed by low-hanging branches, then breaking open into short stretches of wild grass that might or might not lead to other paths. They reached a fork, the leg to the right curving sharply into a tunnel of greenery. The dogs instinctively raced into it but were stopped by the chauffeur, who shouted commands in German. The Dobermans spun around, bouncing off each other, and returned to the fork, then raced into the wider path on the left. It was an incline
and they started up a steep hill, the trees shorter and less full, the bramble bush wilder, coarser, lower to the ground. Wind, thought Converse. A valley wind; a wind whipping up from a trough, a long narrow slice in the earth, the kind of wind a pilot of a small plane avoided at the first sign of weather. A river.

It was there. To his left; they were traveling east. The Rhine was below, perhaps a mile beyond the lower line of tall trees. He had seen enough. He began breathing audibly. The exhilaration inside him was intense; he could have walked for miles. He was back on the banks of the Huong Khe, the dark watery lifeline that would take him away from the Mekong cages and the cells and the chemicals. He had done it before; he was going to do it again!

“Okay, Field Marshal,” he said to Leifhelm’s driver, looking at the silver whistle in the German’s pocket. “I’m not in as good shape as I thought I was. This is a mountain! Don’t you have any flat pastures or grazing fields?”

“I do as I am told,
mein Herr
,” replied the man, grinning. “Those are nearer the main
house
. This is where you must walk.”

“This is where I say thank you and no thank you. Take me back to my little grass shack and I’ll play you a simple tune.”

“I do not understand.”

“I’m bushed and I haven’t finished the newspapers. Seriously, I want to thank you. I really needed the air.”

“
Sehr gut
. You are a pleasant fellow.”

“You have no idea, good ole Aryan boy.”

“
Ach
, so amusing.
Die Juden sind in Israel, nein?
Better than in Germany.”

“Nate Simon would love you. He’d take your case for nothing just to blow it—No, he wouldn’t. He’d probably give you the best defense you ever had.”

Converse stood on the wooden chair under the window to the left of the door. All he had to hear and see was the sound and the sight of the dogs; after that he had twenty or thirty seconds. The faucets in the bathroom were turned on, the door open; there was sufficient time to run across the room, flush the toilet, close the door and return to the chair. But he would not be standing on it. Instead, it would be gripped in his hands, laterally. The sun was descending rapidly; in an
hour it would be dark. Darkness had been his friend before as the waters of a river had been his friend. They had to be his friends again. They
had
to be!

The sounds came first—racing paws and nasal explosions—then the sight of gleaming dark coats of animal fur rushing in circles in front of the jailhouse. Joel ran to the bathroom, concentrating on the seconds as he waited for the sliding of the bolt. It came; he flushed the toilet, then closed the bathroom door and raced back to the chair. He raised it and stood in place, his legs and feet locked to the floor. The door was opened several inches—only seconds now—then the German’s right hand pushed it back.

“Herr Converse?
Wo sind …? Ach, die Toilette
.”

The chauffeur walked in with the tray, and Joel swung the chair with all his strength into the German’s head. The driver arched back off his feet, tray and dishes crashing to the floor. He was stunned, nothing more. Converse kicked the door shut and brought the heavy chair repeatedly down on the chauffeur’s skull until the man went limp, blood and saliva pouring down his eyes and face.

The phalanx of dogs had lurched as one at the suddenly closed door and began to bark maniacally while clawing at the wood.

Joel grabbed the silver chain, slipped it over the unconscious German’s head and pulled the silver whistle out of the pocket. There were four tiny holes on the tube; each meant something. He pulled the remaining chair to the window at the right of the door, climbed up and put the whistle to his lips. He covered the first hole and blew into the mouthpiece. There was no sound, but it had an effect.

The Dobermans went mad! They began to attack the door in suicidal assaults. He removed his finger, placed it over the second hole and blew.

The dogs were confused; they circled around each other, snapping, yelping, snarling, but still they would not take their concentration off the door. He tried the third tiny hole and blew into the whistle with all the breath he had.

Suddenly, the dogs stopped all movement, their tapered, close-cropped ears upright, shifting—they were waiting for a second signal. He blew again, again with all the breath that was in him. It was the sound they were waiting for, and again, as one, the pack raced to the right beneath the window,
pounding to some other place where they were meant to be by command.

Converse leaped down from the chair and knelt by the unconscious German. He went rapidly through the driver’s pockets, taking his billfold and all the money he had, as well as his wristwatch—and his gun. For an instant Joel looked at the weapon, loathing the memories it evoked. He shoved it under his belt and went to the door.

Outside, he pulled the heavy door shut, heard the click of the lock and slid the bolt in place. He ran up the dirt path estimating the distance to the fork where the right leg was
verboten
and the left led to the steep hill and the sight of the Rhine below. It was actually no more than two hundred yards away, but the winding curves and the thick bordering foliage made it seem longer. If he remembered accurately—and on the walk back he was like a pilot without instruments relying on sightings—there was a flat stretch of about eighty feet below the fork.

He reached it, the same flat area, the same diverging paths up ahead. He ran faster.

Voices!
Angry, questioning? Not far away and coming nearer! He dove into the brush to his right, rolling over the needle-like bushes until he could barely see through the foliage. Two men walked rapidly into his limited view, talking loudly, as if arguing but somehow not with each other.

“Was haben die Hunde?”

“Die sollten bei Heinrich sein!”

Joel had no idea what they were saying; he only knew as they passed him that they were heading for the isolated cabin. He also knew that they would not spend much time trying to raise anyone inside before they took more direct methods. And once they did, all the alarms in Leifhelm’s fortress would be activated. Time was measured for him in minutes and he had a great deal of ground to cover. He crept cautiously out of the brush on his hands and feet. The Germans were out of sight, beyond a rounding curve. He got up and raced for the fork and the steep hill to the left.

The three guards at the immense iron gate that was the entrance to Leifhelm’s estate were bewildered. The pack of Dobermans were circling around impatiently in the out grass, obviously confused.

“Why are they here?” asked one man.

“It makes no sense!” replied a second.

“Heinrich has let them loose, but why?” said the third.

“Nobody tells us anything,” muttered the first guard, shrugging. “If we don’t hear something in the next few minutes, we should call.”

“I don’t like this!” shouted the second guard. “I’m calling right now!”

The first guard walked into the gatehouse and picked up the telephone.

Converse ran up the steep hill, his breath short, his lips dry, his heartbeat thundering in his chest. There it was! The river! He started running down, gathering speed, the wind whipping his face, stinging him. It was exhilarating. He
was
back! He was racing through the sudden, open clearings of another jungle, no fellow prisoners to worry about, only the outrage within himself to prod him, to make him break through the barriers and somehow, somewhere, strike back at those who had stripped him naked and raped an innocence and—
goddamn it
—turned him into an animal! A reasonably pleasant human being had been turned into a half-man with more hatreds than a person should live with. He would get back at them all, all enemies, all
animals
!

He reached the bottom of the open slope of gnarled grass and bush, the trees and intertwining underbrush once more a wall to be penetrated. But he had his bearings; no matter how dense the woods, he simply had to keep the last rays of the sun on his left, heading due north, and he would reach the river.