The Aquitaine Progression (87 page)

Perhaps a minute later, Joel would never know the time, the wounded man was behind the wheel driving with difficulty, the two corpses in the backseat. A tableau of horror—Converse thought he would vomit. Fighting back the nausea, he watched every landmark in the countryside as he directed the driver to take this turn and that—pilotage indelibly
imprinted on the mind for the flight back without a radio or a map or a means to obtain either. They reached what looked like a series of rocky pastures at the base of a mountain, and Converse told the German to get off the road. They clambered over several hundred yards until there was a sharp decline that ended at a dense row of trees. He ordered the driver out.

He had given the last guard a chance. He was a kid in a mismatched uniform; his eyes were intense but his face raised questions. How much was felt, how much indoctrinated? He had given the boy—the child—a simple exam, and a believer had failed the examination
.

“Listen to me,” said Joel. “You told me on the train that you were
hired
but that you didn’t want to kill anybody. You were just unemployed and needed a job, is that right?”

“Yes! I kill
no one
! I only watched, followed!”

“All right. I’ll put the gun away and I’m going to walk out of here. You go wherever you want to go, okay?”

“
Ich verstehe!
Yes, of course!”

Converse shoved the weapon in his belt and turned, his fingers still gripping the handle as he started up the slope. A
scratch
! The crunching sound of rocks displaced by moving feet! He pivoted, dropping to his knees as the German lunged.

He fired once at the body above him. The foot soldier screamed as he arced in the air and rolled down the hill. A believer had failed the examination.

Joel walked up the incline with the envelope addressed to Nathan Simon and across the rocky field to the road. He knew the landmarks; the pilot in him would make no mistakes. He knew what he had to do.

He was concealed far back in the bushes on the edge of Hermione Geyner’s property, thirty yards from the decaying house, twenty from the U-shaped drive, which was filled with ruts and bordered by brown overgrown grass, dead from the heat and lack of water. He had to stay awake, for if it was going to happen, it would happen soon. Human nature could take only so much anxiety; he had played upon the truism too often as a lawyer. Answers had to be given to anxious men—panicked men. The sun was up, the birds foraging in the early light, myriad noises replacing the stillness of the night. But the house was silent, the large casement windows, through which only hours ago the voices of demented old women had helped muffle gunshots, were closed, many of the panes
cracked. And through all the madness, the insanity of violent events, he still wore the clerical collar, still had his priestly passport and the letter of pilgrimage. The next few hours would tell him whether or not they were of any value.

The roar of an engine came first and then the sight of a black Mercedes swerving off the country road into the drive. It sped up to the porch, jolting to a stop; two men climbed out and the driver raced around the trunk to join his companion. They stood for a moment looking up at the porch and the windows of the house, then turned and scanned the grounds, walking over to Hermione Geyner’s car and peering inside. The driver nodded and reached under his jacket to pull out a gun; they went back to the steps, taking them rapidly, heading across the porch to the door. Finding no bell, the man without a gun in his hand knocked harshly, repeatedly, finally pounding with a closed fist while twisting the knob to no avail.

Guttural shouts came from inside as the door swung back, revealing an angry Frau Geyner dressed in a tattered bathrobe. Her voice was that of a shrewish teacher lambasting two students for cheating when in fact they had not. Each time one of the men tried to speak her voice became even more shrill. Cowed, the man with the gun put it away, but his companion suddenly grabbed Valerie’s aunt by the shoulders and spoke harshly, directly, forcing her to listen.

Hermione Geyner did listen, but when she replied her answers were equally harsh and delivered with authority. She pointed down at the overgrown drive and described what she had apparently witnessed in the dark, early-morning hours—what she herself had accomplished. The men looked at each other, their eyes questioning and afraid, but not questioning what the old woman had told them, only what she could not tell them. They raced across the porch and down the steps to their car. The driver started the engine with a vengeance so pronounced the ignition mechanism flew into a high-pitched, grinding scream. The Mercedes plunged forward, skirting past Frau Geyner’s car, and in a sudden attempt to avoid a hole in the overgrown pavement, the driver swung to his left, then to his right, skidding on the surface, the tires sliding on the crawling vine weeds until the side of the car careened into the disintegrating stone gate. Roars of abuse from both men filled the morning air as the Mercedes straightened itself out and raced through the exit. It swung
left and sped down the country road as Hermione Geyner slammed the door shut on the porch.

There was nothing any longer without risk, thought Joel, as he crawled out of the foliage, but the risk for him now was one he faced with a degree of confidence. Aquitaine had used up Frau Geyner; there was nothing more it could learn from her. To return to a madwoman held a greater risk for them. Envelope in hand, he walked across the ugly drive, up the creaking steps, and across the sagging porch to the door. He knocked, and ten seconds later a screeching Hermione Geyner opened it. He then did something so totally unpredictable; so completely out of character, he did not believe it himself as he followed through with the sudden impulse.

He punched the old woman squarely in the center of her lower jaw. It was the beginning of the longest eight hours of his life.

The bewildered security police from the MGM-Grand Hotel reluctantly refused Valerie’s offer of a gratuity, especially as she had raised it from $50 to $100, thinking that the economy of Las Vegas was somewhat different from New York’s and certainly Cape Ann’s. They had driven around the streets of the old and the new city for nearly forty-five minutes, until both men, both professionals in their work, assured her that no one was following their car. And they would put a special patrol on the ninth floor in an attempt to catch the man who had harassed her, who had attempted to gain entrance to the room. They were, of course, naturally chagrined that she took a room across the boulevard at Caesars Palace.

Val tipped the bellman, took her small overnight bag from him, and closed the door. She ran to the phone on the table by the bed.

“I
haff
to go to the toilet!” shouted Hermione Geyner, holding an ice pack under her chin.

“Again?” asked Converse, his eyes barely open, sitting across from the old woman, the envelope and the gun in his lap.

“You make me nervous. You struck me.”

“You did the same and a hell of a lot more to me last night,” said Joel, getting up from the chair and shoving the gun under his belt, the envelope in his hand.

“I vill see you hanging from a rope!
Betrayer!
How many
hours now? You think our operatives in the
Untergrund
will not
miss
me?”

“I think they’re probably feeding pigeons in the park, cooing along with the best of them. Go on, I’ll follow.”

The telephone rang. Converse grabbed the old woman by the back of her neck and propelled her to the antique desk and the phone. “Just as we practiced,” he whispered, holding her firmly. “
Do
it!”

“
Ja?
” said Hermione Geyner into the telephone, Joel’s ear next to hers.

“
Tante! Ich bin’s, Valerie!
”

“Val!” shouted Converse, pushing the old woman away. “It’s me! I’m not sure the phone’s clean; she was set up,
I
was set up! Quickly! Tell Sam I was
wrong
—I
think
I was wrong! The countdown could be
assassinations
—all over the goddamned place!”

“He knew that!” shouted Valerie in reply. “He’s dead, Joel! He’s dead! They killed him!”

“Oh, Christ! There’s no time, Val, no time! The
phone
!”

“Meet me!” screamed the ex-Mrs. Converse.

“Where? Tell me
where
?”

The pause was less than several seconds, an eternity for both. “Where it began, my darling!” cried Valerie. “Where it began but
not
where it began.… The clouds, darling! The patch and the clouds!”

Where it began. Geneva. But not Geneva. Clouds, a patch. A patch!

“Yes, I
know!
”

“Tomorrow! The next day! I’ll be there!”

“I have to get out of here.… Val … I love you so much!
So
much!”

“The clouds, my darling—my only darling—oh,
God
, stay alive!”

Joel ripped the telephone out of the wall as Hermione Geyner came rushing at him, swinging a heavy brass-handled poker from the fireplace. The iron hook glanced off his cheek; he grabbed her arm and shouted, “I haven’t got time for you, you crazy bitch! My client doesn’t have time!” He spun her around and pushed her forward, picking up the envelope from the table. “You were on your way to the bathroom, remember?”

In the hall Converse saw what he had hoped he would
see in the red lacquered bowl on the wall table; the old woman had dropped them there last night—the keys to her car. The bathroom door pulled out—it was the solution. Once she was inside, Joel dragged over a heavy chair from against the wall and jammed the thick rim under the knob, kicking the legs in place, wedging them into the floor. She heard the commotion and tried to open the door; it held. The harder she pressed, the more firmly the legs became embedded.

“We convene again tonight!” she roared. “We will send out our best people! The
best
!”

“God help Eisenhower when you meet,” muttered Converse, inwardly relieved. If Aquitaine did not have the phone covered, the old woman would be found in a few hours. The envelope under his arm, he took the keys from the lacquered bowl and pulled the gun from his belt. He ran to the front door and opened it cautiously. There was no one, nothing, only Hermione Geyner’s car parked on the weed-ridden drive. He went outside and pulled the door shut, leaving it unlocked, and raced down the steps to the automobile. He started the engine; there was half a tank of gas, enough to get him far away from Osnabrück before refilling. Until he could get a map, he would go by the sun heading south.

Valerie made arrangements at the travel office in Caesars Palace, paying cash and using her mother’s maiden name, perhaps hoping some of that resourceful woman’s wartime expertise might find its way to the daughter. There was a 6:00
P.M
. Air France flight to Paris from Los Angeles. She would be on it, the hour’s trip to LAX made on a chartered plane to which she would be chauffeured, thus avoiding the terminal at McCarran Airport. Such courtesies were always available, usually for celebrities and casino winners. There was no basic problem with a false name on the Air France passenger manifest—at worst, only embarrassment, in her case easily explained: her former husband, now a stranger, was an infamous man, a hunted man; she preferred anonymity. She would not legally be required to produce her passport until she arrived at immigration in Paris, and once through, she could travel anywhere she wished, under any name she gave, for she would not be leaving the borders of France. It was why she had thought of Chamonix.

She sat in the chair, looking out the window, thinking of those days in Chamonix. She had flown over with Joel to Geneva,
where he had three days of conferences with the promise of five days off to go skiing at Mont Blanc, a bonus from John Brooks, the brilliant international negotiator of Talbot, Brooks and Simon, who flatly refused to give up some reunion dinner for what he termed “lizard-shit meetings between idiots—our boy can do it. He’ll charm their asses off while emptying their corporate pockets.” It was the first time Joel really knew that he was on his way, yet oddly enough he was almost as excited about the skiing. They both enjoyed it so much. Together. Perhaps because they were both good.

But Joel had not enjoyed the skiing at Chamonix that trip. On the second day he had taken a terrible fall and sprained his ankle. The swelling was enormous, the pain as acute in his head as in his foot. She had knighted him “Sir Grump”; he demanded his
Herald Tribune
in the morning, childishly refusing to have his breakfast before the paper arrived, and even more childishly playing the martyr as his wife went off to the slopes. When she had suggested that she really did not care to go without him, it was worse. He had charged her with trying to be some kind of saint. He would be perfectly fine—he had things to read, which artists would not understand. Reading, that was.

Oh, what a little boy he had been, thought Val. But during the nights it was so different, he was so different. He became the man again, loving and tender, at once the generous lion and the sensitive lamb. They made love, it seemed, for hours on end, the moonlight on the snow outside, finally the hint of the sun’s earliest rays on the mountains until they fell—together—into exhausted sleep.

On their last day before heading back to Geneva for the night flight to New York, she had surprised him. Instead of going out for a few final hours of skiing, she had gone downstairs at the hotel and bought him a sweater, to which she sewed a large patch on the sleeve. It read:
DOWNHILL RACER
—
CHAMONIX
. She had presented it to him while a porter waited outside the door with a wheelchair—she had made arrangements through the influential manager of the hotel. They were taken to the center of Chamonix, to the cable car that scaled thirteen thousand feet to the top of Mont Blanc—through the clouds to the top of the world, it seemed. When they reached the final apex, where the view was breathtaking, Joel had turned to her, with that silly, oblique look in his eyes that belied everything he was and everything
he had been through—again, as always, his way of thanking her.