The Aquitaine Progression (86 page)

“How can you be sure?” pressed the Army man.

“
Christ
, Captain, what do you want, a
diagram
? Sam Abbott was shot down over the coast of the Tonkin Gulf. He was a POW and so was Converse. I have an idea that if we put it through the computers, we’d find out they knew each other. I’m so sure I won’t use up another debt.
Fuck it!
”

“You know,” said the Army officer, “I’ve never seen you lose your temper. The cold can get hot, can’t it, Stone. I believe you.”

The former intelligence officer looked hard at the captain, and when he spoke his voice was flat—and cold. “Abbott was a good man—even an exceptional man for someone in uniform—but don’t mistake me, Captain. He
was
killed—and he was killed—because whatever that woman told him was so conclusive he had to be compromised hours later.”

“Compromised?”

“Figure it out.… I’m angry at Sam’s death, yes, you’re damned right. But I’m a lot angrier that we don’t have the woman. Among other things, with us she has a chance, without us I judge very little and I don’t want her on my conscience—what little I’ve got left. Also to get Converse out we have to find her, there’s no other way.”

“But if you’re right she’s somewhere near Nellis, probably Las Vegas.”

“Undoubtedly Las Vegas, and by the time we reached anyone who could check around for us, she’ll be on her way somewhere else.… You know, I’d hate to be her now. The only avenue she had was neutralized. Whom can she turn to, where can she go? It’s what Dowling said about Converse yesterday,
what he didn’t tell Peregrine’s secretary. Our man was systematically isolated and more afraid of U.S. embassy personnel than anyone else. He would never have agreed to a meeting with Peregrine because he knew it’d be a trap, therefore he couldn’t have killed him. He was set up; everywhere he looked there was another trap to keep him running and out of sight.” The civilian paused, then added firmly, “The woman’s finished, Captain. She’s at the end of a bad road—their road. And that may be the best part of it for us. If she panics, we could find her. But we’re going to have to take some risks. How’s that neck of yours? Have you made out a will?”

Valerie wept quietly by the glass doors overlooking the gaudy strip of Las Vegas. Her tears were not only for Sam Abbott and his wife and children, but for herself and Joel. It was permitted under the circumstances, and she could not lie to herself. She had no idea what to do next. No matter whom she went to the answer would be the same.
Tell him to come out of hiding and we’ll listen to him
. And the minute he did, Joel would be dead, fulfilling his own prophecy. And if through a bureaucratic miracle she was granted a meeting with someone of power and influence, how strong would her case be? What words would she use?

I was married to this man for four years and I divorced him—let’s call it incompatibility—but I know him! I know he couldn’t have done what they say he did, he didn’t kill those men.… What proof? I just told you, I know him!… What does incompatibility mean? I’m not sure, we didn’t get along—he was remote, distant. What difference does it make? What are you implying? Oh, God! You’re so wrong! I have no interest in him that way. Yes, he’s successful and he’s paid me alimony, but I don’t need his money. I don’t want it!… You see, he told me about this … this incredible plot to put the military establishments of the United States and the countries of Western Europe in virtual control of their governments, that they could do it by instigating massive rioting in key cities, terrorism, destabilization everywhere. He’s met them and talked with them; there’s a plan already in progress! They see themselves as a dedicated international organization, as a strong alternative to the weak governments of the West who won’t stand up to the Soviet bloc. But they’re not a reasonable alternative, they’re fanatics! They’re killers;
they want total control of all of us!… My former husband wrote it all up, everything he’s learned, and sent it to me, but it was stolen, his own father killed because he read it. No, it was not suicide!… He calls it a conspiracy of generals conceived by a general who’d been labeled a madman. General George Delavane—‘Mad Marcus’ Delavane.… Yes, I know what the police in Paris and Bonn and Brussels say, what Interpol says, what our own embassy has reported—fingerprints and ballistics and seeing him in this place and that place, and drugs, and meeting with Peregrine—but can’t you understand, they’re all lies!… Yes, I know what happened when he was a prisoner of war—what he went through, the things he said when he was discharged. None of that is relevant! His feelings aren’t relevant! He told me that! He told me—he looks so terrible … he’s been so hurt
.

Who would believe her?

Tell him to come in. We’ll listen
.

He can’t! He’ll be killed!… You’ll kill him!

The telephone rang, for a moment paralyzing her. She stared at it, terrified but forcing herself to stay in control. Sam Abbott was dead, and he told her only he would call—only he. My God, thought Val, they’d
found
her, just as they’d found her in New York. But they would not repeat the mistakes they had made in New York. She had to remain calm and think—and outthink them. The ringing stopped. She approached the phone and picked it up, then pressed the button marked
O
. “Operator, this is room nine-one-four. Please send the security police up here right away. It’s an emergency.”

She had to move quickly, be ready to leave the instant the security men arrived. She had to get out and find a safe telephone. She had heard the stories; she knew what to do. She had to reach Joel in Osnabrück.

Colonel Alan Metcalf, chief intelligence officer, Nellis Air Force Base, walked out of the telephone booth and looked around the shopping mall, his hand in the pocket of his sport jacket, gripping the small revolver inside. He glanced at his watch; his wife and three children would be in Los Angeles soon, then reach Cleveland by late afternoon. The four of them would stay with her parents until he said otherwise. It was better this way—since he had no idea what the “way” would be like.

He only knew that Sam Abbott had run that sub-mach
maneuver a thousand times; he knew every stress point and P.S.I. throughout the entire aircraft, and he never flew a jet that had not been scanned electronically. To ascribe that crash to pilot error was ludicrous; instead, someone had lied to that pilot, a circuit and backup shorted. Sam was killed because his friend, Metcalf, had made a terrible mistake. After talking with Abbott for nearly five hours, Metcalf had called a man in Washington, telling him to prepare a conference the following afternoon with two ranking members each from the NSC, G-Two and naval intelligence. The reason-of-record: Brigadier General Samuel Abbott had pertinent and startling information about the fugitive Joel Converse relative to the assassinations of the American ambassador in Bonn and the supreme commander of NATO.

And if they could so readily, so efficiently kill the man who had the information, they might easily go after the messenger, the intelligence officer bringing him in. It was better this way, with Doris and the kids in Cleveland. He had a great deal to do and a terrible debt to repay.

The Converse woman! Oh, Christ, why had she
done
it, why had she run so quickly? He had expected it, of course, but he had hoped against hope that he would reach her in time, but it had not been possible. First there was Doris and the kids and plane reservations and the call to her folks; they had to get out; he could be next. Then racing to the field, his revolver beside him in the car, and ransacking Sam’s office—as Nellis’ intelligence officer, a particularly loathsome duty, but in this case vital—and questioning Abbott’s distraught secretary. A name had emerged: Parquette.

“I’ll pick her up,” Sam had said last night. “She’s staying at the Grand and I promised only I’d phone her. She’s a cool lady, but she had a close call in New York. She wants to hear a voice she knows and I can’t blame her.”

Cool lady
, thought Alan Metcalf, as he climbed into his car,
you made the biggest mistake of your shortened life. With me you had a chance to live—perhaps—but now as they say in this part of Nevada, the odds are heavily against
.

Nevertheless she would be on his conscience, reasoned the intelligence officer, now speeding into the cutoff toward Route 15 and points south.

Conscience. He wondered if those silent bastards in Washington had Joel Converse on their collective conscience. They had sent a man out and abandoned him, not even having
the grace to make sure he was killed quickly, mercifully. The programmers of the kamikazes were saints beside such people.

Converse. Where
was
he?

Joel stood silently as Leifhelm’s man removed his gun and turned to speak to the assembled row of senile old women in the high-backed chairs. He spoke for less than a minute, then grabbed Converse by the arm—his and their trophy—forcing Joel to face Hermione Geyner, whose true prisoner he was. It was a mystical ritual of triumph from a time long past.

“I have just told these brave women of the underground,” said the German looking at Converse, “that they have uncovered a traitor to our cause. Frau Geyner will confirm this,
ja, meine Dame
?”

“
Ja!
” spat out the intense old woman, her face alive with the fierce joy of victory. “Betrayal!” she screamed.

“The telephone calls have been made and our instructions received,” continued Leifhelm’s soldier. “We shall leave now,
Amerikaner
. There’s nothing you can do, so let us go quietly.”

“If you had this whole thing so organized, why those two men on the train, including that one?” asked Joel, nodding at the man with his arm in the sling, instinctively stalling for time, an attorney allowing an adversary to compliment himself.

“Observed, not organized,” answered the German. “We had to be sure you did everything expected of you. Everyone here agrees,
Stimmt das, Frau Geyner
?”

“
Ja!
” exploded Valerie’s aunt.

“The other one is dead,” said Joel.

“A loss for the cause and we shall mourn him. Come!” The German bowed to the ladies, as did his two companions, and led Converse through the large double doors to the front entrance. Outside on the decrepit porch, Leifhelm’s hunter gave the thick envelope to the man with the sling and issued
orders. Both nodded and walked rapidly down the steps, the wounded man steadying himself on a rickety railing, and then they hurried to the right of the long circular drive. Down at the far exit, near the country road, Joel could see the shape of a long sedan in the darkness.

The three prison guards led him out of the compound. It was the middle of the night, and he was being transferred either to another camp or to his own execution, the killing ground somewhere in the dense jungle where his screams would be muted. The head guard barked a command to his two subordinates, who bowed and began running down the road toward a captured American Jeep several hundred yards away in the darkness. He was alone with the man, thought Converse, knowing the moment would not come again except as a corpse. If it was going to happen, it had to happen now. He moved his head slightly, lowering his gaze to the dark outline of the gun in the guard’s hand.…

The German’s hand was steady, the weapon it held rigid against Joel’s chest. Inside the house, the old women had broken into song; their pathetic frail voices were raised in some victory anthem heard through the large casement windows open for the summer breezes. Converse inched his right foot around the floorboards on the porch, testing several and finding one weaker than the others. He pressed down with his full weight; the resulting creak was loud and sharp. Startled, the German turned at the echoing sound.

Now
. Joel grabbed the barrel of the gun, twisting hand and steel back and clockwise; he hammered the man across the porch into the wall while gripping the weapon with all his strength, twisting tighter and shoving it into the man’s stomach.

The gunshot was partially muffled by cloth and flesh, by the noise of an engine starting and the excited singing of senile voices that came through the open windows. The German collapsed, his head snapping, his eyes bulging; there was a stench of burnt fabric and intestines—he was dead. Converse crouched, then whipped around to look down at the long U-shaped drive, half expecting to see the two other men racing toward him with guns extended. Instead, he saw the lights of the car in the distance; it was on the country road outside, now turning into the entrance gate on the left. It would be at the porch in moments.

Prying the weapon out of the German’s hand, Joel
dragged him across the floorboards into the shadows to the right of the steps. Seconds now.

Get the Jeep. Use the Jeep. The nearest vehicle check was five miles down the road—they had seen it on work details. Get the Jeep! Cover the ground! The Jeep!

The long sedan pulled up in front of the porch and the man with his arm in the sling got out of the right front door. Converse watched him from behind the thick corner pillar as the wounded German stood on the pavement, looking up into the shadows.

“König?” he asked softly, questioning. “König,
was ist
?” He started up the steps, his left hand awkwardly, tentatively, going inside his jacket.

Joel spun around the pillar and rushed down the old staircase. Grabbing the wounded man by the sling, he jammed the pistol into the foot soldier’s throat; he turned him around and rushed him back to the car, then crashed his head against the roof as he crouched and thrust the weapon through the open front window.

The astonished driver was quicker than the foot soldier; he was already yanking his gun out of an unseen holster. He fired wildly, shattering the windshield. Converse fired back, blowing the man’s head half out of the window.

Take the bodies into the jungle! Don’t leave them here near the compound! Every second counts, every minute!

Joel sprang up and pulled the wounded German away from the car as he opened the front door. “You’re going to help me, you good Christian!” he whispered, remembering the whining supplication of a killer in a freight car. “You do as I tell you or you’ll join your friends.
Capisce
, or is it
verstehen
? Whatever the hell it is, you do as I say, do you understand me? I’m a panicked man; mister—on the
edge
, and I’ll argue that position in front of the Supreme Court!… What the hell am I
saying
? I’ve got the gun and I’ve killed again—it gets easier when you don’t want to be killed yourself.
Move!
That lousy son of Gestapo on the porch! Bring him down here! In the back!”