The Aquitaine Progression (74 page)

There had been nothing left to say; he could not dispute her. He had been running so fast, so furiously, wanting it all yet not wanting to remember the reasons why—wanting only to get even. He had concealed the intensity of his feelings with flippancy and a casualness that bordered on disdain, but he was not casual at all, and there was little room for the time consumed in being disdainful. There was also very little room for people, for Val. Being together demanded the responsibility that was part of any relationship, and as the months stretched into a year, then two and three, he knew it was not in him to live up to that responsibility. As much as he profoundly disliked himself for it, he could not be dishonest—with either himself or Valerie. He had nothing left to give; he could only take. It was better to break clean.

The waiting was over; the watching began. The Amstel doorman hailed her a cab and she climbed in, immediately leaning forward in the seat to give instructions. Twenty tense seconds later, during which his eyes scanned the street and the pavements in every direction, he started the car and switched on the headlights. No automobile had crept out from the curb after the taxi; still, he had to be certain. Joel swung the wheel and drove into the street, heading for the most direct route to the consulate. A minute later he saw Val’s cab take the correct right turn over a canal. There were two cars behind her; he concentrated on their shapes and sizes; instead of following, he continued straight ahead, pressing down on the accelerator, using an alternate route on the bare chance that he himself had been picked up by a hunter from Aquitaine.
Three minutes later, after two right turns and a left, he entered the Museumplein. The taxi was directly ahead, the two other automobiles no longer in sight. His strategy was working. The possibility that Val’s phone was being tapped was real—René’s had been, and his death was the result—so in Val’s case he assumed the worst. If it was relayed that the Charpentier woman was heading over to the American consulate to pick up a business acquaintance, one Joel Converse would be ruled out. The consulate was no place for the fugitive assassin; he would not go near it. He was a killer of Americans.

The taxi pulled into the curb in front of 19 Museumplein, the stone building that was the consulate. Converse remained a half-block behind, waiting again, watching again. Several cars went by, none stopping or even slowing down. A lone cyclist pedaled down the street, an old man who braked and turned around and disappeared in the opposite direction. The tactic
had
worked. Val was alone in the cab thirty yards away and no one had followed her from the Amstel. He could make his final move to her, his hand under his coat, gripping the gun with the perforated silencer attached to the barrel.

He got out of the car and walked up the pavement, his gait slow, casual, a man taking a summer night’s stroll in the square. There were perhaps a dozen people—couples mainly—also walking, strolling in both directions. He studied them as a frenzied but rigid cat studies the new mounds of mole holes in a field; no one in the street had the slightest interest in the stationary taxi. He approached the rear door and knocked once on the window. She rolled it down.

They stared at each other for a brief moment, then Val brought her hand to her lips, stifling a gasp. “Oh, my God,” she whispered.

“Pay him and walk back to a gray car about two hundred feet behind us. The last three numbers on the license are one, three, six. I’ll be there in a few minutes.” He tipped his hat, as if he had just answered a question from a bewildered tourist, and proceeded down the pavement. Forty feet past the taxi, at the end of the block, he turned and crossed the square, reaching the other side with his head angled to the left, a pedestrian watching for traffic; in reality he was apprehensively watching a lone woman make her way down the sidewalk toward an automobile. He went swiftly into the shadows of a doorway and stood there watching, breathing erratically,
peering into every pocket of darkness along the opposite pavement. Nothing. No one. He walked out of the doorway, suppressing a maddening desire to run, and ambled casually down the block until he was directly across from the rented car. Again he paused, now lighting a cigarette, the flame cupped in his hand, again waiting, watching.… No one. He threw the cigarette to the curb and, unable to contain himself any longer, ran across the street, opened the door and climbed in behind the wheel.

She was inches from him, her long, dark hair framing her face in the dim light, that lovely face taut, filled now with anxiety, her wide eyes burning into his.

“
Why
, Val? Why did you
do
it?” he asked, a cry in the question.

“I didn’t have a choice,” she answered quietly, enigmatically. “Drive away from here, please.”

They drove for several minutes. Neither of them spoke. Joel was concentrating on the streets, knowing the turns he wanted to make—knowing, too, he wanted to shout. It was all he could do to control himself, to keep from stopping the car and grabbing her, demanding to know why she had done what she did, furiously replying to whatever she said that she was a goddamned
fool
! Why had she come back into his life? He was
death
!… Above all, he wanted to hold her in his arms, his face against hers, and thank her and tell her how sorry he was—for so much, for now.

“Do you know where you’re going?” asked Val, breaking the silence.

“I’ve had the car since six o’clock. A map of the city came with it and I’ve spent the time driving around, learning what I thought I had to learn.”

“Yes, you’d do that. You were always methodical.”

“I thought I
should
,” he said defensively. “I followed you from the hotel just in case anybody else did. Also I’m better off in a car than on the streets.”

“I wasn’t insulting you.”

Converse glanced at her; she was studying him, her eyes roving over his face in the erratic progressions of light and shadow. “Sorry. I guess I’m a little sensitive these days. Can’t imagine why.”

“Neither can I. You’re only wanted on two continents and in some eight countries. They say you’re the most talented assassin since that maniac they call Carlos.”

“Do I have to tell you it’s all a lie? All a huge lie with a very clear motive—purpose is better.”

“No,” replied Valerie simply. “You don’t have to tell me that because I know it. But you’ve got to tell me everything else.
Everything
.”

He looked at her again, searching her eyes in the flashes of light, trying to penetrate, trying to peel away the layers of clouded glass that held her thoughts, her reasons. Once he had been able to do that, in love and in anger. He could not do it now; what she felt was too deep inside her, but it was not love, he knew that. It was something else, and the lawyer in him was cautious, oblique. “What made you think I’d see you on television? I almost missed you.”

“I didn’t think about television, I was counting on the newspapers. I knew my face would be on the front pages all over Europe. I assumed your memory was not so dulled that you wouldn’t recognize me, and reporters always pick up on hotels or addresses—it lends authenticity.”

“I can’t read anything but English.”

“Your memory
is
dulled. I made three trips with you to Europe, two to Geneva and one to Paris. You wouldn’t have coffee in the morning unless the
Herald Tribune
was on the room-service table. Even when we went skiing in Chamonix—from Geneva—you made an awful fuss until the waiter brought the
Tribune
.”

“You were in the
Tribune
?”

“Class acts aside, it’s their kind of story. With all the details. I assumed you’d pick one up and realize what I was doing.”

“Because we were strangers and hadn’t seen each other in years, and, of course, you couldn’t speak German or French or anything else.”

“Yes. It was an acceptable explanation for those who knew I did. A cover, I guess. A lot of people who speak several languages do it all the time. It’s common practice; it cuts conversations
short or at least keeps them to basic statements, and you always know if you’re misquoted.”

“I forgot, that’s your business in a way.”

“It’s not where the idea came from. It came from Roger.”

“
Dad?
”

“Yes. He flew in from Hong Kong a few days ago and some hungry clerk alerted the newspapers that he was on the flight. When he got into Kennedy it was a media blitz. He hadn’t read a newspaper or listened to a radio or seen a television screen in two days. He was in a panic and called me. I simply made sure the wire services in West Berlin knew I was flying in.”

“How
is
Dad? He can’t handle this.”

“He’s handling it. So’s your sister—less so than your father, but her husband stepped into the breach and took over. He’s a better man than you thought, Converse.”

“What’s happening to them? How
are
they taking it?”

“Confused, angry, bewildered. They’ve changed their telephone numbers. They speak through attorneys—supporting you, incidentally. You may not realize it but they love you very much, although I’m not sure you gave them much reason to.”

“I think we’re closer to home,” said Joel quietly, as they approached the Schellingwouder Brug. “Our once and former home.” They entered the dark span of the bridge, diaphanous lights above, speckled dots far below on the water. Valerie did not respond to his statement; it was not like her to avoid a provocation. He could not stand it. “
Why
, Val?” he cried, “I asked you before, and I have to know! Why did you fly over?”

“I’m sorry, I was thinking,” she said, her eyes leaving his face, staring straight ahead through the windshield. “I guess it’s better I say it now while you’re driving and I don’t have to look at you. You look awful, you’re a mess, and your face tells me what you’ve gone through, and I don’t
want
to look at you.”

“I’m hurt,” said Converse gently, trying genuinely to lessen the impact of his appearance. “Helen Gurley Brown called and wants me for
Cosmopolitan
’s centerfold.”

“Stop that! It’s not remotely funny and you know it—worse, you don’t even feel like saying it!”

“I retreat. There were times when you never did read me right.”

“I always read you right, Joel!” Valerie continued to focus on the road and the beams of the headlights; she did not move her head. “Don’t play the serious fool any longer. We haven’t time for that; we haven’t time for your flip remarks. It was always a little sad to watch you put people off who really wanted to talk to you, but it’s finished now.”

“Glad to hear it. Then
talk
! Why the hell did you walk into this?”

Their eyes met in anger, in abrupt recognition, in a love once remembered, perhaps. She turned away as Converse steered the car into the right exit off the bridge, then peeled into the road that ran along the coastline.

“All right,” said Valerie, hesitant but in complete control. “I’ll spell it out as best I can. I say ‘as best I can’ because I’m not entirely sure—there are too many complications to be absolutely sure.… You may be a rotten husband and careless beyond stoning where another person’s feelings are concerned, but you’re not what they say you are. You didn’t kill those men.”

“I know that. You said you knew it, too. Why did you come over here?”

“Because I had to,” said Val, her voice firm, still staring straight ahead. “The other night after the news—your picture was on every channel, so different from what it was years ago—I walked along the beach and thought about you. They weren’t pleasant thoughts, but they were honest ones.… You put me through my own personal hell, Joel. You were driven by terrible things in your past, and I tried to understand because I knew what had happened to you. But you never tried to understand
me
. I, too, had things I wanted to do, but they faded, they weren’t important.… Okay, I thought. Someday it’ll pass and the nightmares will go away for him and he’ll stop and look at me and say, ‘Hey, you’re
you
.’ Well, the nightmares went away and it never happened.”

“I concede my adversary’s logic,” said Converse painfully. “I still don’t understand.”

“I needed you, Joel, but you couldn’t respond. You were amusing as hell, even when I knew you didn’t feel like it, and you were terrific in bed, but your only real concerns were for you, always you.”

“Conceded again, learned counselor.
And?
”

“I remembered something I said to myself that afternoon when you left the apartment, said it silently as I watched you
leave. I promised myself that if ever a person I was close to needed me as much as I needed you then, I wouldn’t walk away. Call it the one moral commitment I’ve ever made in my life. Only the irony is that that person turned out to be you. You’re not a madman and you’re not a killer, but someone wants the world to think you are. And whoever it is has done it very well. Even your friends who’ve known you for years believe what’s being said about you. I don’t and I can’t walk away.”

“Oh
Christ
, Val—”

“No strings, Converse. No playing an old sweet song and hopping into bed. That’s out. I came here to help you, not console you. And over here I can. My roots go back several generations. They may be withering underground but they
were
the underground—undergrounds—and they’re willing to help. For once you need
me
, and that’s a twist, isn’t it, friend?”

“A veritable twist,” said Joel, understanding her last statement but little else, speeding down the coast road toward the deserted fields. “Only a few minutes,” he added. “I can’t be seen in the city and neither can you—and you not a chance with me.”

“I wouldn’t worry so much. We’re being watched by friends.”

“
What?
What—‘friends’?”

“Keep your eyes on the road. There were people in front of the Amstel, didn’t you see them?”

“I suppose so. No one got in a car and went after you.”

“Why should they? There were others on the streets and over the canals to the consulate.”