The Aquitaine Progression (60 page)

A woman carrying packages collided with him, careening into his left shoulder, the bundles plummeting out of her arms, scattering on the floor. He tried to apologize through the abuse she hurled at him, loud words that caused the surrounding travelers to stop and gape. He picked up several shopping bags as the woman’s barking voice reached a crescendo.

“Up yours, lady,” he mumbled, dropping the packages and turning, now running to the closing gate. The conductor saw him and pushed it open.

He got to his seat, gasping, his soft hat pulled down over his forehead. The wound in his left arm was aching sharply, and he thought he might have ripped it open in the collision. He felt under his jacket, past the handle of the gun he had taken from Leifhelm’s chauffeur. There was no blood and he closed his eyes briefly in relief.

He was oblivious of the man across the aisle who was staring at him.

In Paris, the secretary sat at her desk speaking on the telephone in a low voice that was muted further by her cupped hand over the mouthpiece. Her Parisian French was cultured if not aristocratic.

“That is everything,” she said quietly. “Do you have it?”
“Yes,” said the man on the other end of the line. “It’s extraordinary.”

“Why? It’s the reason I’m here.”

“Of course. I should say
you’re
extraordinary.”

“Of course. What are your instructions?”

“The gravest. I’m afraid.”

“I thought so. You have no choice.”

“Can you?”

“It’s done. I’ll see you at Taillevent. Eight o’clock?”

“Wear your black Galanos. I adore it so.”

“The Great Spike anticipates.”

“It is ever so, my dearest. Eight o’clock.”

The secretary hung up the phone, rose from the chair and smoothed her dress. She opened a drawer and took out a purse with long straps; she slipped it over her shoulder and walked to her employer’s closed door. She knocked.

“Yes?” asked Mattilon inside.

“It is Suzanne, monsieur.”

“Come in, come
in
,” said René, leaning back in his chair as the woman entered. “The last letter is filled with incomprehensible language, no?”

“Not at all, monsieur. It’s just that I … well, I’m not sure it’s proper to say.”

“What could be improper? And if it is, at my age I’d be so flattered I’d probably tell my wife.”

“Oh, monsieur …”

“No, really, Suzanne, you’ve been here—what now?—a week, ten days? One would think you had been here for months. Your work is excellent and I appreciate your filling in.”

“Your secretary is a dear friend, monsieur. I could do no less.”

“Well, I thank you. I hope the good Lord sees His way to pull her through. Young people today, they drive so fast—so terribly fast and so dangerously. I’m sorry, what is it, Suzanne?”

“I’ve had no lunch, sir. I was wondering—”

“My
God
, I’m inconsiderate! I’m afraid it goes with two partners who take August seriously and go on holiday! Please, as long as you like, and I insist you bring the bill to me and let me reimburse you.”

“That’s not necessary, but thank you for the offer.”

“Not an offer, Suzanne, an order. Have lots of wine and
let’s both of us make messes of my partners’ clients. Now, off you go.”

“Thank you, monsieur.” Suzanne went to the door, opened it slightly and then stopped. She turned her head and saw that Mattilon was absorbed in reading. She closed the door silently, reached into her purse and withdrew a large pistol with the perforated cylinder of a silencer attached to the barrel. She pivoted slowly and walked toward the desk.

The lawyer looked up as she approached. “
What?
”

Suzanne fired four times in rapid succession. René Mattilon sprang back in his chair, his skull pierced from his right eye to his left forehead. Blood streaked down his face and over his white shirt.

“Where in God’s name have you been?” cried Valerie into the phone. “I’ve been trying to reach you since early this morning!”

“Early this morning,” said Lawrence Talbot, “when the news broke, I knew I had to get the first plane to Washington.”

“You don’t
believe
what they’re saying? You
can’t!
”

“I do, and worse, I feel responsible. I feel as if I’d unwittingly pulled the trigger myself, and in a way that’s exactly what happened.”

“Goddamn you, Larry, explain that.”

“Joel called me from a hotel in Bonn—only, he didn’t know which one. He wasn’t rational, Val. He was calm one moment, shouting the next, finally admitting to me that he was confused and frightened. He rambled on—most of the time incoherently—telling some incredible story of having been captured and thrown into a stone house in the woods, and how he escaped, hiding in the river, eluding guards and patrols and killing a man he called a ‘scout.’ He kept screaming that he had to get away, that men were searching for him, in the woods, along the riverbank.… Something’s happened to him. He’s gone back to those terrible days when he was a
prisoner of war. Everything he says, everything he describes, is a variation of those experiences—the pain, the stress, the tensions of running for his life through the jungles and down rivers. He’s sick, my dear, and this morning was the horrible proof.”

Valerie felt the hollowness in her throat, the sudden, awful vacuum below. She was beyond thinking; she could only react to words. “Why did you say you were responsible, that in some way you pulled the trigger?”

“I told him to go to Peregrine. I tried to convince him that Peregrine would listen to him, that he wasn’t the man Joel thought he was.”

“ ‘Thought he was’? What did Joel say?”

“Very little that made sense. He ranted about generals and field marshals and some obscure historical theory that brought all the commanders from various wars and armies together in a combined effort to take control of governments. He wasn’t lucid. He’d pretend to be, but the minute I questioned a statement he made or a point in his story, he’d blow up and tell me it didn’t matter, or I wasn’t listening, or I was too dense to understand. But at the end he admitted he was terribly tired and confused and how badly he needed sleep. That was when I made my last pitch about Peregrine, but Joel didn’t trust him. He was actually hostile toward him because he said he saw a former German general’s car go through the embassy gates, and as you may or may not know, Peregrine was an outstanding officer during the Second World War. I explained as patiently and as firmly as I could that Peregrine was not one of ‘them,’ that he was no friend of the military.… Obviously, I failed. Joel reached him, set up a rendezvous and killed him. I had no
idea
how sick he was.”

“Larry,” began Valerie slowly, her voice weak. “I hear everything you say, but it doesn’t ring true. It isn’t that I don’t believe you—Joel once said you were an embarrassingly honest man—but something’s missing. The Converse I know and lived with for four years never bent the facts to support abstractions he wanted to believe. Even when he was angry as hell, he couldn’t do that. I told him he’d make a lousy painter because he couldn’t bend a shape to fit a concept. It wasn’t in him, and I think he explained it. At five hundred miles an hour, he said, you can mistake a shadow on the ocean for a carrier if your instruments are out.”

“You’re telling me he doesn’t lie.”

“I’m sure he does—I’m sure he did—but never about important things. It simply isn’t in him.”

“That was before he became ill, violently ill. He killed that man in Paris, he admitted it to me.”

Valerie gasped. “
No!
”

“Yes, I’m afraid. Just as he killed Walter Peregrine.”

“Because of some obscure historical
theory?
It’s all wrong, Larry!”

“Two psychiatrists at the State Department explained it, but in phrases I’m sure I’d mangle if I tried to repeat them. ‘Progressive latent retrogression,’ I think, was one of them.”

“Bullshit!”

“But you may be right about one thing. Geneva. Remember you said it all had something to do with Geneva?”

“I remember. What about Geneva?”

“It’s where it started, everyone in Washington agrees with that. I don’t know if you’ve read the papers—”

“Only the
Globe;
it’s delivered. I haven’t left the phone.”

“It was Jack Halliday’s son—stepson, actually. He was the lawyer who was killed in Geneva. It seems he was a prominent leader of the antiwar movement in the sixties and he was Converse’s opponent in the merger. It was established that they met for breakfast before the conference. The theory is that he baited Joel, and we can assume it was brutal, as he had a reputation for going for the jugular.”

“Why would he
do
that?” asked Val, her frayed nerves now suddenly alert.

“To throw Joel off. To distract him. Remember, they were dealing in millions, and the attorney who came off best could do very well for himself—clients lining up all over Wall Street to retain him. There’s even evidence that Halliday succeeded.”

“What evidence?”

“The first part’s technical, so I won’t try to explain it except to say that there was a subtle transfer of voting stock which under certain isolated market conditions might give Halliday’s clients more say in management than the merger intended. Joel accepted it; I don’t think he would have normally.”

“Normally? What’s the other part?”

“Joel’s behavior at the conference itself. According to the reports—interviews with everyone in that room—he wasn’t himself, he
was
distracted, some said agitated. Several lawyers
on both sides commented on the fact that he kept to himself, standing by a window most of the time, looking out as if he expected something. His concentration was so lax that questions addressed to him had to be repeated, and when they were, he appeared as though he didn’t understand them. His mind was somewhere else, on something that consumed him.”

“Larry!” shouted Valerie. “What are you
saying?
That Joel had something to do with this Halliday being
killed?
”

“It can’t be ruled out,” said Talbot sadly. “Either psychologically or in light of what people saw in the anteroom when Halliday died.”

“What they
saw?
” whispered Valerie. “The paper said he died with Joel holding his head.”

“I’m afraid there’s more, my dear. I’ve read the reports. According to a receptionist and two other attorneys, there was a violent exchange between them just before Halliday died. No one’s sure what was said, but they all agree it seemed vicious, with Halliday clutching Joel’s lapels, as though accusing him. Later, when questioned by the Geneva police, Joel claimed there was no coherent conversation, only the hysterical words of a dying man. The police report added that he was not a cooperative witness.”

“My God, he was probably in
shock!
You know what he went through—the sight of that man dying literally in his arms must have been traumatic for him!”

“Admittedly, this is hindsight, Valerie, but everything must be examined—above all, his behavior.”

“What do they think he did? What’s the theory
now?
That Joel went out into the street, saw someone who fit the bill and hired him to
kill
a man? Really, Larry, this is ludicrous.”

“There are more questions, than there are answers, certainly, but what’s happened—what we know has happened—isn’t ludicrous at all. It’s tragic.”

“All right, all right,” said Valerie, her words rushed. “But why would he do it? Why would he want Halliday killed?
Why?
”

“I think that’s obvious. How he must have despised someone like Halliday. A man who stayed safely at home, who condemned and ridiculed everything men like Joel went through, calling them goons and murderers and lackeys—and unnecessary sacrifices. Along with his hated ‘commanders,’
the Hallidays of this world must have stood for everything else he loathed. One group ordering men into battle, to be maimed, killed, captured … tortured, the other making a mockery of everything they endured. Whatever Halliday said at that breakfast table must have made something snap in Joel’s head.”

“And you think,” said Valerie quietly, the words echoing in her throat, “that’s why he wanted Halliday dead?”

“Latent vengeance. It’s the prevalent theory, the consensus, if you will.”

“I don’t will.’ Because it’s not true, it couldn’t be true.”

“These are highly qualified experts, Val, doctors in the behavioral sciences. They’ve analyzed everything in the records and they feel the pattern is there. Shock-induced, instant pathological schizophrenia.”

“That’s very impressive. They should embroider it on their Snoopy baseball caps because that’s where it belongs.”

“I don’t think you’re in a position to dispute—”

“I’m in a hell of a position,” interrupted the ex-Mrs. Converse. “But nobody bothered to ask me, or Joel’s father, or his sister—who just happened to have been one of those wild-eyed protesters you all speak of. There’s no way Halliday could have provoked Joel the way they say he did—at breakfast, lunch
or
dinner.”

“You can’t make such a statement, my dear. You simply don’t know that.”

“I
do
know, Larry. Because Joel thought the Hallidays of this world, as you put it, were
right
. He wasn’t always crazy about the way they did things, but he thought they
were right!
”

“I don’t believe that. Not after what he went through.”

“Then go to another source—if that’s what you call it. To some of those records your high priests of the behavioral sciences conveniently overlooked. When Joel came back, there was a parade for him at Travis Air Force Base in California, where he was given everything but the keys to every starlet’s apartment in Los Angeles. Am I right?”

“I recall there was a military welcome for a man who had escaped under extraordinary circumstances. The Secretary of State greeted him at the plane, in fact.”

“In absolute fact, Larry. Then what? Where else was he paraded?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Look at the records. Nowhere. He wouldn’t do it. How many invitations did he get? From how many towns and cities and companies and organizations—all pushed like
hell
by the White House? A hundred, five hundred, five
thousand?
At least that many, Larry. And do you know how many he accepted? Tell me, Larry, do you know? Did those high priests talk about this?”