The Apocalypse Watch

  “My darling, it doesn’t matter—”

  “It does to me!”

  “Ah, ‘mon chou.’ So that’s the way it is. I’m so happy for both of you.”

  “It slipped out, monsieur. Je regrette.”

  “Do not, please. Despite my profession, I’m a romantique au coeur. Also, Colonel Witkowski did mention, most confidentially, a possible liaison between you. It’s far better not to be alone in these situations, loneliness is a terrible detriment when under stress.”

  “Well said, monsieur … mon ami, Claude.”

  “Merci.”

  “One question,” interrupted Latham. “I can understand Stanley’s not being here, but what about you? Aren’t you pretty well known in Paris?”

  “Hardly at all,” replied Moreau. “My photograph has never appeared in the newspapers or on television—that is the policy of the Deuxième Bureau. Even my office door does not have a Le Directeur sign on the glass. I am not saying that our enemies do not have snapshots of me, they obviously do, but my presence is not significant. I am neither a tall man nor do I dress extravagantly, I’m really quite ordinary. As you Americans say, I hardly stand out in a crowd, and I have a large collection of hats; witness the idiotic cap I’m wearing. They’re all I need.”

  “Except in the case of your enemies,” said Drew.

  “That is a risk we all take, is it not, my friend? And now let me bring you up to the moment. As you may or may not know, Ambassador Courtland will be on the Concorde for Washington tomorrow morning—”

  “Sorenson said he was bringing him back for thirty-six hours,” Drew broke in, “the explanation being some trumped-up State Department business that State doesn’t know about.”

  “Precisely. In the meantime, Mrs. Courtland is under our surveillance; believe me, it’s absolute. Every move she makes outside the embassy will be watched, and even within the embassy every telephone number she, calls will be instantly transmitted to my office, courtesy of the colonel—”

  “You can’t tap her conversations?” interrupted Latham.

  “The risk is too great, there isn’t time to reprogram the phones. She’s undoubtedly aware of such tactics and will run tests of her own. Should she confirm an intercept, she will know she’s under surveillance.”

  “In the same way you confirmed that my own telephone was compromised, Drew.”

  “The meetings at specific locations.” Latham nodded. “All right, you’ve got her under a scope. Suppose nothing happens.”

  “Then nothing happens,” said Moreau. “But that would strike me as most unusual. Remember, beneath her charming exterior there is a zealot, a trained believer in a fanatical cause. Here she is, an hour from the borders of the holy Reich of her passions, and she has risen so high in her life’s work, her ego will demand a certain satisfaction. Acclamation says it better, for the Sonnenkinder must have extraordinary egos. The temptation will be equally extraordinary. In my judgment, with the ambassador away, she’ll make a move and we’ll learn something more.”

  “I hope you’re right.” Latham frowned as a waiter approached the table carrying glasses and two bottles of wine on a tray.

  “The owner here always brings me his newest acquisitions of wine for my approval,” interjected the chief of the Deuxième Bureau quietly as the waiter uncorked the bottles. “If you’d prefer something else, please tell me.”

  “No, that’s fine.” Drew glanced at Karin, and both nodded.

  “May I ask,” began De Vries after the waiter had left, “should Drew be right and nothing happen, is it possible we might force Janine to make a move?”

  “In what way?” asked the Frenchman. “À votre santé,” he added softly, raising his glass. “To all of us.… How, my dear Karin?”

  “I’m not sure. The Antinayous, perhaps. I know them and they know me; more to the point, they held my husband in great esteem.”

  “Go on,” said Latham, his eyes fixed on her. “Keeping in mind that Sorenson didn’t exactly give them a clean bill of health.”

  “That’s rubbish.”

  “It may be, but old Wesley has instincts few people are born with—except perhaps Claude here, and probably Witkowski.”

  “You’re too generous where I am concerned, but I can vouch for my friend Sorenson. Brilliant only half describes his talents.”

  “He says the same about you. He also told me you saved his life in Istanbul.”

  “While saving my own, he should have added. But back to the Antinayous, Karin. How would we use them to urge the ambassador’s wife into an indiscreet act?”

  “Again, I’m not sure, but their knowledge of the neos is extensive. They’ve unearthed names, codes, methods of contact; their files contain a thousand secrets they will not share. However, this might be an exception.”

  “Why?” asked Drew.

  “I must join him,” added Moreau. “From everything we’ve learned about the Antinayous, they, indeed, share nothing. They are an independent intelligence organization wholly unto themselves, responsible to no one but themselves. Why would they change the rules now and open their files to outsiders?”

  “Not ‘files,’ only appropriately selected information, perhaps simply a method of contact using an emergency code recognized by the Sonnenkinder, if there is one.”

  “You’re not hearing us, lady,” said Latham, leaning forward and gently covering her bandaged hand. “Why would they do it?”

  “Because we have something they don’t know about. We have an authentic, highly visible Sonnenkind right here in Paris. I myself will negotiate.”

  “Wow,” whispered Drew, leaning back in his chair. “That’s powerful bait.”

  “It’s not unreasonable,” said the chief of the Deuxième Bureau, studying De Vries. “But won’t they demand some proof?”

  “Yes, they will, and I think you can provide it.”

  “In what way?”

  “Forgive me, darling,” said Karin, glancing at Latham, “but the Antinayous are somewhat more comfortable with the Deuxième than they are with the Central Intelligence Agency. It’s a European thing, and not necessarily justified.” She turned back to Moreau. “A short note on your stationery—date, time, and secrecy classification registered

  by your security equipment—stating that I’m permitted to describe an ongoing surveillance operation on a confirmed high-ranking Sonnenkind here in Paris, without giving a name until authorized by you. That should be sufficient. If they’re willing to cooperate, we’ll go on scrambler and I’ll call you on a private line.”

  “At the moment I cannot think of a flaw,” said Moreau admiringly.

  “I can,” objected Drew. “Suppose Sorenson’s right? Suppose a neo or two has infiltrated the Antinayous? She’s dead meat and I won’t allow it.”

  “Oh, please,” said De Vries. “The three Antinayous we met together I’ve known since I came to Paris, and two of them were Freddie’s contacts.”

  “What about the third?”

  “For heaven’s sake, darling, he’s a priest!”

  Suddenly there was shouting from the pavement beyond the row of flower boxes. The owner rushed to the table and spoke harshly to Moreau. “There is trouble!” he exclaimed. “You must leave; get up and follow me!” The three of them rose and walked behind the owner, no more than ten feet, where he pressed a concealed button and the last flower box opened. “Run,” he cried, “into the street!”

  “The wine was excellent,” said the Deuxième chief as he and Latham held Karin’s arms and raced through the opening.

  Suddenly all three turned, their attention drawn by the panicked screaming crowd in front of the outdoor café. Then each understood. Karin gasped, Moreau briefly closed his eyes in pain, and Latham swore in fury. The light of a street lamp penetrated the windshield of the unmarked embassy car, illuminating the driver behind the wheel. He was arched back in the seat, a stream of blood rolling down his face from his forehead.

  23

  “Chr
ist, they’re everywhere, and we can’t see them!” roared Drew, hammering his clenched fist down on the hotel desk. “How did they find me?”

  Claude Moreau had been standing silently by a window, looking out. “Not you, my friend,” he said quietly, “not Colonel Webster and his uniform, but me.”

  “You? I thought you said hardly anybody in Paris knew who you were,” Latham broke in abrasively. “That you were so ordinary and had a collection of goddamn hats!”

  “It had nothing to do with recognizing me, they knew where I’d be.”

  “How, Claude?” asked De Vries, sitting on the bed in her room at the Bristol Hotel, where they had decided to retreat, each entering separately.

  “Your embassy is not the only place that’s been infested.” Moreau turned from the window, his expression a mixture of sadness and anger. “My own office has been compromised.”

  “You mean the sacrosanct Deuxième Bureau actually has a mole or two?”

  “Please, Drew,” said Karin, shaking her head, conveying the fact that Moreau was deeply disturbed.

  “I did not say the Bureau, monsieur.” The Deuxième chief locked eyes with Latham and spoke coldly. “I said my own office.”

  “I don’t understand.” Drew lowered his voice, the sarcasm now absent.

  “There’s no way you could, for you do not know our system. As le directeur, my whereabouts must be known at all times in case there are emergencies. Outside of Jacques, who helps me plan my days, I give them to only one person, a subordinate who works closely with me, one whom I trust completely. This person wears a beeper and can be reached any time of day or night.”

  “Who is he?” Karin sat forward on the bed.

  “Not he, I must reluctantly say, but she. Monique d’Agoste, my secretary of over six years, but more than a secretary, a confidential assistant. She was the only one who knew about the café—until she told someone else.”

  “You never had the slightest doubts about her?” continued Karin.

  “Did you about Janine Clunes?” asked Drew.

  “No, but then, she was the ambassador’s wife.”

  “And Monique is unquestionably my wife’s closest friend. In fact, my wife suggested her to me. They went to university together and Monique was trained at the Service d’Etranger, where she worked during a disastrous marriage. All those years, they were like schoolgirls together … and now it’s all so clear.” Moreau stopped and crossed to the desk where Latham sat. He picked up the phone and dialed. “All those years,” repeated the chief of the Deuxième, waiting for the call to be completed. “So amiable, so caring.… No, you were not the targets, my friends, I was. The decision was made, my time was up. I was found out.”

  “What are you talking about?” pressed Latham from the chair.

  “I regret that I cannot tell even you that.” Moreau held up his hand and spoke French into the phone. “Go to Madame d’Agoste’s residence in the St. Germain at once and take her into custody. Bring along a female officer and have the prisoner immediately strip-searched for possible self-administered poison.… I will answer no questions, just do as I say!” The Frenchman hung up the phone and wearily sat down on the small love seat against the wall. “The maddening sorrow of it all,” he mused softly.

  “That’s two different things, Claude,” said Drew. “You can’t be mad and sorry at the same time; at least one’s got to outweigh the other where your life is concerned.”

  “You can’t just leave things suspended, mon ami,” added De Vries. “Considering everything we’ve been through, I submit we deserve some sort of explanation, vague though it may be.”

  “I keep wondering how long she planned this, how much she learned, how much she revealed—”

  “To whom, for God’s sake?” demanded Latham.

  “To those who report to the Brüderschaft.”

  “Come on, Claude,” Drew went on. “Give us something!”

  “Very well.” Moreau leaned back in the chair, massaging his eyes with the fingers of his left hand. “For three years I’ve played a dangerous game, filling my pockets with millions of francs, which will be mine only if I fail and their cause succeeds.”

  “You became a double?” De Vries broke in, startled, and rising from the bed. “Like Freddie?”

  “A double agent?” Latham got out of his chair.

  “Like Freddie,” continued the Deuxième chief, looking at Karin. “They were convinced I was a convenient and powerful informer, but it was a strategy that could not be entered into the Bureau’s records.”

  “On the assumption, no matter how remote, that you were ‘infested,’ ” De Vries completed emphatically.

  “Yes. My great weakness was that I could not find a safety net. There was no one, no one in official Paris I felt I could trust. Bureaucrats come and go, the more influential ones into private business, and politicians are sworn companions of the wind. I had to act alone, without authorization, a highly questionable ‘solo,’ as the term goes.”

  “My God!” exclaimed Drew. “Why did you put yourself in that position?”

  “That part I cannot tell you. It goes back a long time and must remain a forgotten event … except to me.”

  “If it’s forgotten, can it be so important, mon ami?”

  “It is for me.”

  “D’accord.”

  “Merci.”

  “Let me try to piece this together,” said Latham, pacing aimlessly in front of the window. “You did say ‘millions,’ am I right?”

  “Indeed, yes.”

  “Did you spend any of it?”

  “A great deal, moving in circles a directeur’s salary could not permit, always getting closer, paying others who could be bought, learning more and more.”

  “A real solo operation. What’s for who and what’s for you and who’s to tell.”

  “Unfortunately, that’s quite accurate.”

  “But you told us,” interrupted Karin. “That has to mean something.”

  “You are not French, my dear. Instead, you are part of the secret movements, the covert operations no country cares to reveal, but which for the average citizen are filled with corruption.”

  “I don’t think you’re corrupt,” stated Drew emphatically.

  “I don’t think so either,” agreed Moreau, “but we both could be wrong. I have a wife and children, and before I subject them to the calumny of a disgraced husband and father—to say nothing of an unsanctioned firing squad or years in prison—I will flee with my millions and live comfortably wherever I wish in the world. Remember, I am an experienced intelligence officer with talons everywhere. No, my friends, I’ve thought this out. I will survive, even if I fail. I owe it to my family.”

  “And if you do not fail?” asked Karin.

  “Then every remaining sou will be turned over to the Quai d’Orsay, along with a complete accounting of every franc used in my solo operation.”

  “Then you’re not going to fail,” said Latham. “We’re not going to fail. Among other things, I haven’t got any millions, I’ve got only a brother whose face was blown away, and Karin has a husband who was tortured to death. I don’t know what your problem is, Moreau, and you won’t tell us, but I have to assume it’s as important to you as ours is to us.”

  “You may assume that.”

  “So I think we should go to work.”

  “With what, mon ami?”

  “With our heads, our imaginations. It’s all we’ve got.”

  “I like your phraseology,” said the Deuxième chief. “It is, indeed, all we have.”

  “In death, his brother lives after him,” said Karin, crossing to Drew and taking his hand.

  “Let’s go back to Traupman and Kroeger and the second Mrs. Courtland,” said Latham, releasing Karin’s hand and sitting down at the desk, impatiently opening a drawer and removing several pages of hotel stationery. “A connection’s going to be made, it has to be. But how? The first assumption is your secretary, Claude, your Monique??
?whatever her name.”

  “Entirely possible. We can get her internal telephone calls; they’ll show us whom she reached.”

  “Also the calls she made at home—”

  “Certainement. I can do that in minutes.”

  “Put ‘em all together and confront her with them. Tell her she’s expendable—put a gun to her head if you have to. If Sorenson’s right, this Traupman has to know what’s going on, and she’s the bitch who can tell him! Then we move on to that all-too-waffling scholar, Heinrich Kreitz, ambassador from Germany, and I don’t give a damn if we put him into a tank until he sends out the alarms to Bonn.”

  “You move swiftly, my friend; you cut through diplomatic imperatives. It’s attractive, but it could backfire on you.”

  “Fuck it! I’m impatient!”

  The telephone rang. Moreau picked it up, identified himself, and listened. The muscles in his strong face fell; his flesh went pale. “Merci,” he said, hanging up. “Another failure,” he added, closing his eyes. “Monique d’Agoste was beaten to death. Obviously, that’s how the information of my whereabouts was extracted from her.… Where is our God?”

  Vice President Howard Keller was five feet eight inches tall, but he gave the impression of being a much larger man. Many had remarked on this fact, but few had rendered a satisfactory explanation. Perhaps the closest was that of an aging New York choreographer who had observed the Vice President during one of those White House cultural evenings. He had whispered to a dancer, “Watch him. He’s simply walking to a microphone to introduce someone, but watch him. He breaks the space in front of him, parting the air with his body. Truman did that; it’s a gift. A rooster in the barnyard.”

  Gift or rooster notwithstanding, Keller was a politician to be reckoned with, a Washington insider to the core, having spent four terms as a congressman and twelve years as a senator, rising to chair the powerful Finance Committee. He had weathered the Beltway’s slings and deadly arrows, accepting the nomination for Vice President despite the fact that he was older and far wiser than his party’s nominee for President. He did so because he knew he could deliver the states to guarantee the election, which for him was a national priority. Beyond this, he was genuinely fond of the President, admiring his courage as well as his brains, although the latter had a hell of a lot more to absorb about Washington than was evidenced so far.