The Apocalypse Watch

  “For the moment it has to be,” said Latham, his eyes locked with hers. “But my instinct says there’s something else you won’t tell me.… Why don’t you laugh more? You’re goddamned radiant when you laugh.”

  “There hasn’t been that much to laugh about, has there?”

  “Come on, you know what I mean. A little laughter now and then relieves the tension. Harry once told me that, and we both believed Harry. Years from now, if we run into each other, we’ll probably laugh at the Bois de Boulogne. It had its funny moments.”

  “A life was taken, Drew. Whether it was the life of a good man or a bad man, I killed him, I cut short the life of a very young person. I’ve never killed anyone before.”

  “If you hadn’t, he would have killed me.”

  “I know that, I keep telling myself that. But why does the killing have to go on? That was Freddie’s life, not mine.”

  “And it shouldn’t have to be yours. But to answer your question logically—logic being a part of your lexicon—if we don’t kill when it’s necessary, if we don’t stop the neos, ten thousand times the killings will take place. Ten thousand, hell, let’s start with six million. Yesterday they were Jews and Gypsies and other ‘undesirables.’ Tomorrow they could be Republicans and Democrats in my country who can’t stomach their bilge. Don’t kid yourself, Karin, they get a foothold in Europe, the rest of this discontented world goes down like a row of dominoes, because they’re constantly, incessantly, appealing to every zealot who wants ‘the good old days.’ No crime in the streets because even the onlookers are shot on sight; executions rampant because there are no appeals; no habeas corpus because it’s not necessary; the presumed innocent and the guilty are lumped together, so let’s get rid of them both, prison being more expensive than bullets. That’s the future we’re fighting against.”

  “You think I don’t know that?” said Karin. “Of course I do, you sermonizing fool! Why do you think I’ve lived as I have my entire adult life?”

  “But the exalted Freddie notwithstanding, there’s something else, isn’t there?”

  “You have no right to probe. May we stop this conversation?”

  “For now, sure. But I think I’ve made clear my feelings for you, returned or not, so it may come up again.”

  “Stop it!” said De Vries, tears slowly falling from her blinking eyes. “Do not do this to me.”

  Latham ran to her, kneeling by her chair. “I’m sorry, I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I wouldn’t do that.”

  “I know you wouldn’t,” said Karin, composing herself and cupping his face with her hands. “You are a good person, Drew Latham, but don’t ask any more questions—they do hurt too much. Instead … make love to me, make love to me! I so need someone like you.”

  “I wish you’d eliminate the ‘someone,’ and just say ‘you.’ ”

  “Then I say it. You, Drew Latham, make love to me.”

  Gently, Drew helped her from the chair, then lifted her up in his arms and carried her into the bedroom.

  The rest of the morning was one of sexual excess. Karin de Vries had been too long without a man; she was insatiable. At the last, she threw her right arm over his chest. “My God,” she cried, “was that me?”

  “You’re laughing,” said Latham, exhausted. “Do you know how wonderful you sound when you laugh?”

  “It feels wonderful to laugh.”

  “We can’t go back, you know,” said Drew. “We have something now, we are something now, that we weren’t before. And I don’t think it’s the bed alone.”

  “Yes, my darling, and I’m not sure it’s wise.”

  “Why isn’t it?”

  “Because I must operate coldly at the embassy, and if you’re involved, I don’t think I can act coldly.”

  “Am I hearing what I want to hear?”

  “Yes, you are, you American naïf.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I believe, in your parlance, that it means I think I’m in love with you.”

  “Well, as a good old boy from Mississippi once said, ‘if that don’t beat hens a-wrastlin’!’ ”

  “What?”

  “Come here and I’ll explain it to you.”

  It was twelve minutes to two in the afternoon when Claude Moreau and his most-trusted field officer, Jacques Bergeron, arrived at the Georges Cinq station of the Paris Metro. They walked, separately, to the rear of the platform, each carrying a handheld radio, the frequencies calibrated to each other.

  “He’s a tall man, quite slender,” said the Deuxième chief into his instrument. “With a propensity for bending over due to his usually addressing shorter people—”

  “I’ve got him!” exclaimed the agent. “He’s leaning against the wall, waiting for the next train to come in.”

  “When it does, do as I told you.”

  The underground train arrived and came to a halt; the doors opened, disgorging several dozen passengers.

  “Now,” said Moreau into his radio. “Fire.”

  As ordered, Bergeron’s blank gunshots reverberated along the platform as the Metro riders raced en masse to the exit. Moreau ran to the panicked Gerhardt Kroeger, grabbing his arm and shouting. “They’re trying to kill you! Come with me!”

  “Who’s trying to kill me?” screamed the surgeon, running with Moreau into a prearranged open storage room.

  “What’s left of your idiotic K Unit, you fool.”

  “They’ve disappeared!”

  “To your ears from their mouths. They must have bribed a maid or a maintenance man and placed a tap in your room.”

  “Impossible!”

  “You heard the gunfire. Shall we bring back the train and see where the bullets came from? You were lucky it was crowded.”

  “Ach, mein Gott!”

  “We have to talk, Herr Doktor, or we both may be within their gun sights.”

  “But what about Harry Latham? Where was he?”

  “I saw him,” lied Jacques Bergeron, walking behind them, his pistol filled with spent blank shells in his pocket. “When he heard the gunfire, he got back on the train.”

  “We must talk,” said Moreau, staring at Kroeger, and heading for a large steel door that was partially open, “otherwise, we all lose.” They walked inside.

  The Deuxième chief found the light switch and flipped it on. They were in a medium-size enclosure of dull white cinder block, housing huge antiquated switches and track lights along with unopened crates of new equipment. “Wait outside, Jacques,” said Moreau to his agent. “When the police arrive, as they surely will, identify yourself and tell them you were on the train and got off when you heard the gunshots. Close the door, please.”

  Alone with the German in the dim gray light of a wire-enclosed ceiling bulb, Moreau sat on one of the crates. “Make yourself comfortable, Doctor, we’ll be here for a while, at least until the police have come and gone.”

  “But if they find me in here—”

  “They won’t, the door locks upon closing. We were most fortunate that some idiot left it open. On the other hand, who’d want to steal anything here? Who could even carry anything?”

  “We missed him, we missed him!” cried Kroeger, banging his fist on a crate, then sitting on the large wood box, shaking his bruised hand.

  “He’ll call again,” offered Moreau. “Perhaps not today, but certainly tomorrow. Remember, we’re dealing with a desperate man, an isolated man. But I must ask you, why is it so important that you find Latham?”

  “He’s … he’s dangerous.”

  “To whom? You? The Brotherhood?”

  “Yes … to all of us.”

  “Why?”

  “How much do you know?”

  “Everything, naturally. I am the Deuxième Bureau.”

  “I mean specifically.”

  “Very well. He escaped from your Alpine valley, somehow made his way through the mountain snows until he reached a road, and was picked up by a villager in a truck.”
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  “A villager? Now you’re the fool, Herr Moreau. The Antinayous, that’s who picked him up. His escape was arranged from inside, a traitor inside the valley. We must find that Hochverräter!”

  “ ‘Traitor,’ yes, I understand.” Over the years the head of the Deuxième had learned to sense a lie when told by amateurs under stress. The vacuous desperation in the eyes, the words tumbling over one another, often accompanied by spittle forming at the corners of the mouth. As he studied Gerhardt Kroeger, the signs were all there. “So that’s why you must find him? To interrogate him before executing him, so as to learn the identity of your traitor?”

  “You must understand, it was a woman, and she has to be someone very high up in the organization. She must be eliminated!”

  “Yes, of course, I understand that too.” Beads of perspiration began to form on Kroeger’s hairline, and the underground room was cool. “So that’s it, the reason for your K Unit, the reason such an important man as yourself would come to Paris—to learn the identity of a traitor high in the ranks of the Brotherhood.”

  “Precisely.”

  “I see. And there’s no other reason?”

  “None.” Two rivulets of sweat rolled down the German’s forehead, fell over his brows, and continued down his cheeks. “It’s terribly warm in here,” said Kroeger, wiping his face with the back of his right hand.

  “I hadn’t noticed it. Actually, I thought it was rather cool, but then, such events as this afternoon are not unfamiliar to me, and do not excessively fray my nerves. Off and on, gunfire has been a part of my life.”

  “Yes, yes, that’s you, not me. I daresay if I brought you into an operating room during a particularly nasty procedure, you’d probably faint.”

  “There’s no debate, undoubtedly I would. But you see, Doctor, for me to be at my most efficient, I must know everything, and something tells me you haven’t told me everything.”

  “What more can you possibly need?” Kroeger’s sweat was more profuse.

  “Perhaps you’re right, at times I’m overzealous. Then this is how we’ll proceed. When Harry Latham calls again, I will not phone you at the Lutetia, but instead take him ourselves. Once taken, we’ll treat him handsomely, and after a few hours I’ll reach you.”

  “Unacceptable!” cried the surgeon, rising from the crate, his hands trembling. “I must be there when you find him! I must be alone with him before any interrogation takes place, away from all of you, for I’ll be discussing information no one else can overhear. It’s vital, and those are your orders from the Brüderschaft!”

  “And if, for my own well-being, I don’t comply?”

  “News of over twenty million francs deposited into your account in Switzerland could find its way to the Quai d’Orsay and the French press.”

  “Well, that certainly is a persuasive argument, isn’t it?”

  “I should hope so.”

  “When you say ‘away from all of you,’ what do you mean?”

  “Just what I say. I carry with me several syringes and various narcotics that will force Harry Latham to reveal to me what we must know. Natürlich, no one else may be in the vicinity.”

  “You mean in a room by yourselves?”

  “Absolutely not. Conversations in a room can be transmitted, as you claim my own hotel room is tapped.”

  “Then how can we accommodate you?”

  “An automobile of my own choosing, not one of yours. I will drive Latham somewhere, administer my chemicals, learn what I must learn, and bring him back to you.”

  “No execution?”

  “Only if I’m followed.”

  “Again, I understand. It seems I have no choice.”

  “Time, Moreau, time! It’s extremely important. He must be found within the next thirty-six hours!”

  “What? Now I don’t understand you at all. Why thirty-six hours? Does the earth stop moving around the sun then? Please explain to me.”

  “Very well, it’s what you perceived, what I haven’t told you.… Remember, I’m a doctor, some say the finest cranial surgeon in Germany, and I will not dispute that judgment. Harry Latham is insane, a combination of schizophrenia and manic-depressive syndrome. I saved his life in our valley, operating to relieve the pressures that caused his illness. In looking over my notes, I found a horrible realization. Unless given medication within six days after he escaped, he will die! He’s reached four and a half of those six days. Now do you see? We must question him before he takes the name of the traitor to his grave.”

  “Yes, now I do understand, but, Doctor, are you all right?”

  “What?”

  “You’ve grown quite pale and your face is drenched with perspiration. Are there pains in your chest, perhaps? I can have an ambulance here in minutes.”

  “I don’t want an ambulance, I want Harry Latham! And I have no chest pains, no angina, only an intolerance for slow-witted bureaucrats.”

  “Would you believe I understand that too? For you’re a learned man, a brilliant man, and in addition to my devotion to your cause, I’m honored to know you.… Come, we’ll leave now, and I shall press my energies to their zenith.”

  Out on the Champs-Élysées, Moreau and his field officer saluted as Gerhardt Kroeger climbed into a taxi, then headed for their Deuxième vehicle. “Hurry!” said the veteran of Istanbul and more posts than one could name. “That bastard was lying to the point of swallowing his spit! But what was he lying about?”

  “What are you going to do, Claude?”

  “Sit and think and make several phone calls. One to the eminent scholar Heinrich Kreitz, the German ambassador. He and his government are going to dig out some records for me whether they like it or not.”

  19

  Drew Latham, attaché case in hand, presented himself at the Inter-Continental’s front desk. He placed on the counter an American Embassy requisition order for a reservation and a military identification card. They were swiftly picked up and studied by a formally dressed hotel clerk who pulled a card out of his file.

  “Ah, oui, Colonel Webster, you are a most welcome guest. The embassy requested a mini-suite and would you believe we found one for you. A Spanish couple left early.”

  “I’m very grateful.”

  “Further,” said the clerk, reading the card, “you may be having visitors, and we are to call you before giving them your room number, n’est-ce pas?”

  “Quite correct.”

  “Your luggage, monsieur?”

  “I left it at the concierge’s desk and gave him my name.”

  “Excellent. You are a traveler, then.”

  “The army has me going from one place to another,” said Drew, signing the register. Anthony Webster, Col., U.S. Army. Washington, D.C., U.S.A.

  “Ah, so interesting.” The clerk spun the registry pad around and withdrew the hotel record.

  He raised his eyes and tapped his bell. “Take Monsieur le Colonel to Suite 703, and inform the concierge to send up his luggage. The name is Webster.”

  “Oui,” replied the uniformed bellman. “Follow me, monsieur. Your luggage will arrive in a few minutes.”

  “Thank you.”

  The elevator ride to the seventh floor was uneventful except for a middle-aged American couple who were arguing. The woman, hair bluish and neck and wrists replete with jewels, berated her obese husband, who was wearing a wide-brimmed Stetson.

  “Lucas, you can at least be pleasant!”

  “What’s to be pleasant about? Ah cain’t git a real limo, jest one of those tiny jobs you can barely put yer ass in, and nobody speaks American till you give ’em a tip, then you’d think they were brought up in Texarkana.”

  “That’s because you won’t learn the money.”

  “You did?”

  “I shop. Do you know what you gave the last taxi driver?”

  “Hell, no, Ah jest peeled off some paper.”

  “The fare was fifty-five francs, roughly ten dollars. You gave him a hundred, which is nearer twen
ty dollars.”

  “Ah’ll be swaggled. Mebbe that’s why he kept winkin’ at me when you got out, sayin’ in perfectly good English that he’d be outside the hotel most of the night and I should look for him.”

  “Really!” Fortunately, the door to the sixth floor opened and the couple walked out.

  “I apologize for my countrymen,” said Drew, lacking for anything else to say as he saw the raised eyebrows of the bellman.

  “Don’t, Monsieur le Colonel. Later tonight it’s quite possible the gentleman will be on the pavement looking for that taxi.”

  “Touché.”

  “D’accord. This is the Paree of their dreams, n’est-ce pas?”

  “C’est vrai, I’m afraid.”

  “It’s all harmless.… Here is your floor, monsieur.”

  The suite was small, a bedroom and a separate living area, but it was charming, very European, and what made it rather outstanding was a bottle of Scotch on the small bar. Witkowski must have had pangs of guilt, which were definitely appropriate. Latham hated the goddamned uniform. His chest, his waist, and his rear end were encased in a cloth tube. Why weren’t there massive resignations in the armed forces on the basis of clothing alone?

  The bellman gone, Drew waited for his suitcase, which held a basic change of civilian clothes, taken from his flat by a blond-wigged Karin. He removed the suffocating tunic, poured himself a drink, turned on the television set, switching the channels until he found the CNN station, and sat down. The current news was on sports, mainly American baseball, which did not interest him; when the hockey season arrived, it was different.

  The doorbell rang; it was a young bellboy with his suitcase. Drew thanked and tipped him, astonished to hear him say, “This is for you, monsieur.” The wide-eyed youngster gave him a note. “It is, how do you say, confidentiel?”

  “That’s good enough, thanks very much.”

  Call Room 330. A friend.

  Karin? It was so like her very unpredictable behavior. They were lovers now—more than lovers. There was something between them that no one could take away. So like her!