The Aquitaine Progression (58 page)

“Because we can’t
afford
to?” asked the naval officer scathingly. “That’s what you said when Halliday was killed in Geneva. We can’t
afford
to!”

“We can’t. We were outmaneuvered.”

“That’s a
man
out there,” insisted the lieutenant. “
We sent
him out—”

“And they set him up,” the civilian broke in, his voice calm, his eyes sadly knowledgeable. “He’s as good as dead. We’ll have to start looking elsewhere.”

“Why is that?” asked the Army captain. “Why is he as good as dead?”

“They have too many controls, we can see that now. If they don’t have him locked up in a cellar, they know pretty much where he is. Whoever finds him will kill him. A riddled body of a crazed killer is delivered up and there’s a collective sigh of relief. That’s the scenario.”

“And that’s the most cold-blooded analysis of a murder I’ve ever heard!
Murder
, an unwarranted execution!”

“Look, Lieutenant,” said Stone, stepping away from the window, “you asked me to come with you—convinced me I should—because you wanted some experience in this room. With that experience comes the moment when you recognize
and accept the fact that you’ve been beaten. It doesn’t mean you’re finished, but you’ve been punched out of the round. We’ve been punched out, and it’s my guess the punches haven’t stopped yet.”

“Maybe …” began the captain haltingly. “Maybe we should go to the Agency, tell them everything we know—everything we
think
we know—and what we’ve done. It might get Converse out alive.”

“Sorry,” countered the former CIA man. “They want his head and they’ll get it. They wouldn’t have gone to all this trouble if ‘dead’ wasn’t written all over him. He found out something, or they found out something about him. That’s the way it works.”

“What kind of world do you live in?” asked the naval officer quietly, shaking his head.

“I don’t live in it anymore, Lieutenant, you know that. I think it’s one of the reasons you came to me. I did what you two—and whoever else is with you—are doing now. I blew a whistle—only, I did it with two months of bourbon in my veins and ten years of disgust in my head. You say you might go to the Company? Good, go ahead, but you’ll do it without me. No one worth a quarter in Langley will touch me.”

“We can’t go to G-Two or naval intelligence,” said the Army officer. “We know that, we’ve all agreed. Delavane’s people are there; they’d shoot us down.”

“Aptly put, Captain. Would you believe with real bullets?”

“
I
do now,” said the Navy man, nodding at Stone. “The report out of San Diego is that the legal, Remington, was killed in an automobile accident in La Jolla. He’s the one who last spoke to Fitzpatrick, and before he left the base, he asked another legal the directions to a restaurant in the hills. He’d never been there—and I don’t think it was an accident.”

“Neither do I,” agreed the civilian. “But it takes us to the somewhere-else we can look.”

“What do you mean?” said the Army captain.

“Fitzpatrick. SAND PAC can’t find him, right?”

“He’s on leave,” interjected the naval officer. “He’s got another twenty days or so. He wasn’t ordered to list his itinerary.”

“Still, they’ve tried to find him but they can’t.”

“And I still don’t understand,” objected the captain.

“We go after Fitzpatrick,” said Stone. “Out of San Diego,
not Washington. We find a reason to
really
want him back. A SAND PAC emergency, routed strictly through Eyes Only, a base problem—nobody else’s.”

“I hate to repeat myself,” said the Army man, “but you’ve lost me. Where do we start? Whom do we start with?”

“With one of your own, Captain. Right now he’s a very important person. The chargé d’affaires at the Mehlemer House.”

“The what?”

“The American embassy in Bonn. He’s one of them. He lied when it counted most,” said Stone. “His name is Washburn. Major Norman Anthony Washburn, the Fourth.”

The telephone complex was off the lobby of an office building. It was a large square room with five enclosed booths built into three walls and a high, squared counter in the center where four operators sat in front of consoles, each woman obviously capable of speaking two or more languages. Telephone directories of the major European cities and their suburbs were on racks to the left and right of the entrance; small pads with attached ball-point pens had been placed on the ledges above for the convenience of those seeking numbers. The routine was familiar: a caller delivered a written-out number to an operator, specified, the manner of payment—cash, credit card or collect—and was assigned a booth. There were no lines; a half-dozen booths were empty.

Joel found the number of Mattilon’s law firm in the Paris directory. He wrote it out, brought it to an operator and said he would pay in cash. He was told to go to booth number seven and wait for the ring. He entered it quickly, the soft cloth brim of his hat falling over his forehead above the tortoiseshell glasses. Any enclosure, whether a toilet stall or a glass booth, was preferable to being out in the open. He felt his pulse accelerating; it seemed to explode when the bell rang.

“
Saint-Pierre, Nelli, et Mattilon
,” said the female voice in Paris.

“Monsieur Mattilon, please—
s’il vous plaît
.”

“
Votre …?
” The woman stopped, undoubtedly recognizing an American’s abysmal attempt at French. “Who may I say is calling, please?”

“His friend from New York. He’ll know. I’m a client.”

René did know. After several clicks his strained voice came on the line. “Joel?” he whispered. “I don’t
believe
it!”

“Don’t,” said Converse. “It’s not true—not what they say about Geneva or Bonn, not even what
you
said. I had nothing to do with those killings, and Paris was an accident. I had every reason to think—I
did
think—that man was reaching for a gun.”

“Why didn’t you stay where you
were
, then, my friend?”

“Because they wanted to stop me from going on. It’s what I honestly believed, and I couldn’t let them do that. Let me talk.… At the George Cinq you asked me questions and I gave you evasive answers and I think you saw through me. But you were kind and went along. You have nothing to be sorry about, take my word for it—my very
sane
word. Bertholdier came to me that evening in my room; we talked and he panicked. Six days ago I saw him again here in Bonn—only, this time it was different. He was ordered to be there, along with three other very powerful men, two generals and a former field marshal. It’s a cabal, René, an international cabal, and they can pull it off. Everything’s secret and moving fast. They’ve recruited key military personnel all over Europe, the Mediterranean, Canada, and the U.S. There’s no way to tell who’s with them and who isn’t—and there isn’t time to make a mistake. They’ve got millions at their disposal, warehouses all over filled with munitions ready to ship to their people when the moment comes.”

“The moment?” Mattilon broke in. “What moment?”

“Please,” insisted Joel, rushing ahead. “They’ve been funneling weapons and explosives to maniacs everywhere—terrorists, provos, certified lunatics—with one purpose only: destabilization through violence. It’s their excuse to move in. Right now they’re blowing up Northern Ireland.”

“The madness in
Ulster?
” interrupted the Frenchman again. “The horrors going on—”

“It’s
their
horror! It’s a trial run. They did it with one massive shipment from the States—to prove they
can
do it! But Ireland’s only a test, a minor exercise. The big explosion’s coming in a matter of days, a few weeks at most. I’ve got to reach the people who can stop them, and I can’t do that if I’m dead!” Converse paused, only to catch his breath, giving Mattilon no chance to speak. “These are the men I was after, René—after
legally
, to build a few cases against them, expose
them in the courts before they got anywhere. But then, I found out. They’re already there. I was too late.”

“But why
you?
”

“It started in Geneva—with Halliday, the man who was shot to death. He was killed by their gunmen, but not before he recruited me. You asked me about Geneva and I lied to you, but that’s the truth. Now, you’ll either help me, or try to help me, or you won’t. Not for me—I’m insignificant—but what I got roped into isn’t. And I
was
roped into it, I know that now. But I’ve seen them,
talked
to them, and they’re so goddamned logical, so fucking persuasive, they’ll turn all Europe fascist; they’ll set up a military federation with my country the progenitor. Because it started in my country; it started in San Francisco with a man named Delavane.”

“Saigon? The Mad Marcus of
Saigon?
”

“Alive and well and living in Palo Alto, pushing his military buttons all over the place. He’s still a magnet and they’re drawn to him like flies to a pig.”

“Joel, are you … are you … all
right?
”

“Let’s put it this way, René. I took a lousy watch off a man who guarded me—a paranoid who nevertheless was nice to me—and it’s got a sweep hand. You’ve got thirty seconds to think about what I’ve told you, then I’ll hang up.
Now
, old friend, twenty-nine seconds.”

Ten passed and Mattilon spoke. “An insane man does not deliver such a precise explanation so precisely. Very well, perhaps I am mad, too, but what you speak of—God knows the times are right, what else can I say?
Everything
is crazy!”

“I’ve got to get back to the States alive, to Washington. I know people there. If I can reach them and show myself for what I am, they’ll listen to me. Can you help?”

“I have contacts in the Quai d’Orsay. Let me go to them.”

“
No
,” objected Converse. “They know we’re friends. One word to the wrong person and you’d be killed. Forgive me, but more important, your talking would set off alarms. We can’t afford that.”

“Very well,” said Mattilon. “There is a man in Amsterdam—don’t ask me how I know him—who can arrange such things. I assume you have no passport.”

“I have one but it’s not mine. It’s German. I took it off a guard who was ready to put a bullet in my head.”

“Then I’m sure he’s not in a position to complain to the authorities.”

“He’s not.”

“In your mind you really did go back, didn’t you, my friend?”

“Let’s not talk about it, okay?”

“
Bien
. You are you. Keep that passport; it will be useful.”

“Amsterdam. How do I get there?”

“You are in Bonn, no?”

“Yes.”

“There is a train to Emmerich on the Dutch border. In Emmerich, switch to local transport—streetcars, autobuses, whatever. The customs are lax, especially during the peak hours when workers go back and forth. No one looks, so just show the passport you have quickly, partially covering the photograph, perhaps. It’s good that it’s German. You should have no trouble.”

“Suppose I do?”

“Then I can’t help you, my friend. I’m being honest. And then I
must
go to the Quai d’Orsay.”

“All right. I get across, then what?”

“You’ll reach Arnhem. From there you take the train to Amsterdam.”

“And then?”

“The man. His name is on a card in my bottom drawer. Do you have something to write on—write with?”

“Go ahead,” said Converse, reaching for the note pad and the ball-point pen on the ledge beneath the telephone.

“Here it is. Thorbecke. Cort Thorbecke. The apartment house is on the southwest corner of Utrechtsestraat and Kerkstraat. The telephone number is zero-two-zero, four-one-one-three-zero. When you call for an appointment, tell him you are a member of the Tatiana family. Do you have that?
Tatiana
.”

“René?” said Joel, writing. “I never would have guessed. How come you know someone like this?”

“I told you not to ask, but on the other hand he may probe and you should have at least vague answers—everything was always vague. Tatiana is a Russian name, one of the Czar’s daughters reputedly executed at Ekaterinburg in 1918. I say ‘reputedly’ because many believe she was spared along with her sister Anastasia and smuggled out with a nurse who had a fortune in jewels on her. The nurse favored Tatiana and, once free, gave everything to the child and nothing to her sister.
It’s said she lived anonymously in great wealth—may even be living today—but no one knows where.”

“That’s what I have to know?” asked Converse.

“No, it’s merely the origins of its present meaning. Today it is a symbol of trust given to very few people in recent years, people who themselves are trusted by the most suspicious men on earth, men who cannot afford to make mistakes.”

“Good Lord, who?”

“Russians, powerful Soviet commissars who have a fondness for Western banking, who broker money out of Moscow for investments. You can understand why the circle is small. Few are called and fewer chosen. Thorbecke is one of them, and he does an extensive business in passports. I’ll reach him and tell him to expect your call. Remember, no name, just Tatiana. He’ll have you on a KLM to Washington in short order. You’ll need money, however, so we must think how I can—”

“Money’s one thing I don’t need,” interrupted Converse. “Just a passport and a plane ticket to Dulles Airport without being picked up.”

“Get to Amsterdam. Thorbecke will help.”

“Thank you, René. I wanted to count on you and you came through. It means a lot to me. It means my life.”

“You’re not in Washington yet, my friend. But call me when you get there, no matter the hour.”

“I will. Thanks, again.”

Joel hung up, put the note pad and the pen into his pocket, and went out of the booth to the counter. He asked for his charges, and while the English-speaking operator was getting them he remembered the item he had marked
2
on his list. His attaché case with the dossiers and the names of the decision makers at the Pentagon and the State Department. Das Rektorat. Through some extraordinary oversight on Leifhelm’s part, had Connal managed to hide it somewhere? Could it have been found perhaps by an employee at the country inn? Converse spoke to the operator who was handing him his bill.