The Apocalypse Watch

  “We’re reporting only what is happening, monsieur. Shall I send my colleague in to reconnoiter?”

  “A good idea. Tell him to examine the merchandise, inquire as to prices, that sort of thing. If the madame is being fitted, he can leave quickly.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  In a Peugeot sedan that had circled the wide boulevard of the Champs-Élysées and parked in a space across from the Saddle and Bootery, a man in an expensive pinstriped business suit also picked up his car phone. However, instead of calling a number in Paris, he dialed the code for Germany—Bonn, Germany. In a matter of seconds the call was completed.

  “Guten Tag,” said the voice on the line.

  “It is I, again from Paris,” said the well-dressed man in the Peugeot.

  “Was it necessary to kill the marine driver last night?”

  “I had no choice, mein Herr. He recognized me from the Blitzkrieger headquarters in the Avignon Warehouse complex. If you recall, you wanted everything I could learn about their disappearance, and since I was the only one who knew where they operated, you yourself ordered me there.”

  “Yes, yes, I remember. But why kill the marine?”

  “He drove the colonel and the other two, the army officer and the blond woman, out to the warehouse. He saw me then, and again last night. He shouted at me to stop; what was I to do?”

  “Very well, then I congratulate you, I imagine.”

  “You imagine, mein Herr? Had they captured me, they would have filled me with drugs and learned why I was there! That I had killed Moreau’s secretary and learned where he was.”

  “Then I truly congratulate you,” said the voice in Germany. “We’ll get Moreau; he’s far too dangerous to us now. It’s simply a matter of time until you succeed, am I right?”

  “I’m confident of it, but that’s not why I’m calling you.”

  “Then what is it?”

  “I’ve been following an unmarked Deuxième automobile; it was parked for hours in front of the American Embassy. Unusual, I think you’d agree.”

  “I do. So?”

  “They have under surveillance the ambassador’s wife, Frau Courtland. She just entered an expensive leather shop called the Saddle and Bootery—”

  “My God!” interrupted the man in Bonn. “The André conduit!”

  “I beg your pardon—”

  “Stay on the line, I’ll be back to you shortly.” The minutes passed as the man in the Peugeot tapped the fingers of his left hand against the steering wheel, the telephone at his right ear. Finally, the voice from Germany came back on the line. “Listen to me carefully, Paris,” said the man emphatically. “They’ve found her out.”

  “Found who, mein Herr?”

  “Never mind. Just hear your orders and follow them.… Kill the woman as soon as it is humanly possible! Kill her!”

  24

  Daniel Rutherford Courtland, ambassador to the Quai d’Orsay, Paris, stared silently at the pages of the transcript in his hands, reading and rereading them until his eyes were strained. Finally, tears ran down his cheeks; he brushed them away and sat upright in the chair in front of Wesley Sorenson’s desk.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Ambassador,” said the director of Consular Operations. “This pains me no end, but you had to be told.”

  “I understand.”

  “If you have any doubts whatsoever, Karl Schneider is prepared to fly here and speak to you privately.”

  “I’ve heard your taped interview, what more do I need?”

  “May I suggest that you speak to him on the telephone? A deposition may be false, another voice can be used. He’s in the phone book and you can ask for the number from an ordinary operator.… Of course, we could have orchestrated both to substantiate our conclusions, but I doubt even we could alter the telephone information system so quickly.”

  “You want me to do it, don’t you?”

  “Frankly, yes.” Sorenson picked up a phone and placed it in front of Courtland. “This is my private line, a regular telephone, and not connected to my console. You’ll have to take my word for that. Here’s the area code.”

  “I take your word for it.” Courtland picked up the phone, dialed the area code for Centralia, Illinois, as written on the note placed in front of him, and gave the operator the information. He pressed the disconnect, released it, and dialed again.

  “Yes, hello,” said the accented voice in Centralia.

  “My name is Daniel Courtland—”

  “Ach, he told me you might call! I am very nervous, you understand?”

  “Yes, I understand, I’m nervous too. May I ask you a question?”

  “Certainly, sir.”

  “What is my wife’s favorite color?”

  “Red, always red. Or lighter—rose or pink.”

  “And what is her favorite dish when dining out?”

  “That veal plate—an Italian name. ‘Piccata,’ I think.”

  “She has a favorite type of shampoo, can you tell me what it is?”

  “Mein Gott, I had to order it from our pharmacy and send it to her at the university. A liquid soap with an ingredient called ketoconzole.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Schneider. This is painful for both of us.”

  “Far more for me, sir. She was such a lovely child, and so brilliant. The ways of the world are beyond my comprehension.”

  “Mine too, Mr. Schneider. Thank you, and good-bye.” Courtland hung up the phone and sank back in the chair. “He might have faked the first two, but not the last.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The shampoo. It can only be ordered by prescription; it’s a preventative remedy for seborrheic dermatitis, a condition she episodically suffers from. She’s never wanted anyone to know, so I have to buy it under my own name—as did Mr. Schneider.”

  “Are you convinced?”

  “I wish I could yell foul and go back to Paris with a clean slate, but that’s not possible, is it?”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “It’s all so crazy. Before Janine, I had a terrific marriage, I thought. Great wife, wonderful kids, but State kept bouncing me around. South Africa, Kuala Lumpur, Morocco, Geneva, all as a chief attaché, then came Finland, a real ambassadorship.”

  “You’d been tested. Good Lord, man, they plucked you out of the chief-attaché pool and made you the ambassador to France, a post usually reserved for the high rollers in political contributions.”

  “Only because I could put out the brushfires,” said Courtland. “The d’Orsay was becoming more and more anti-American, and I could paste over the anti-French stereotypes coming out of Washington. I guess I’m good at that.”

  “Obviously, you are.”

  “And it cost me my family.”

  “How did Janine Clunes come into your life?”

  “You know, that’s a hell of an interesting question. I’m not really sure. I had the normal postpartums after the divorce, the living alone in an apartment, not a house, the wife and the kids back in Iowa, sort of on my own, scratching around for diversions. It was a kind of limbo. But State kept calling me, saying I should put in an appearance at this party or that reception. And then one evening, at the British Embassy, this lovely lady, so alive and so intelligent, seemed attracted to me. She held my arm as we went from group to group, where very nice things were said about me, but they were diplomats I knew, and I didn’t take them seriously. She did, however, and she fed what ego I had left.… I’m sure you can figure out the rest.”

  “It’s not difficult.”

  “No, it’s not. What’s difficult is now. What am I going to do? I suppose I should be filled with anger, furious at her betrayal, ready to behave like a howling animal lunging for the kill, but I don’t feel any of those things. I just feel empty, burned out. I’ll resign, of course, it would be asinine to continue. If a ranking foreign service officer can be duped this way, he should run, not walk, to the nearest plumbing school.”

  “I think you can serve yourself and y
our country in a better way,” said Sorenson.

  “How? Come back and fix the pipes?”

  “No, by doing the most difficult thing of all. Return to Paris as if we’d never met, never had this conversation.”

  Stunned, Courtland stared in silence at the director of Consular Operations. “Besides being impossible,” he said finally, “that’s inhuman. I could never do it.”

  “You’re a consummate diplomat, Mr. Ambassador. You never would have landed in Paris if you weren’t.”

  “But what you’re asking me to do is beyond diplomacy, it goes to the core of subjectivity, hardly a diplomat’s ally. There’s no way I could conceal my contempt. Those feelings I claim not to have now would come rushing to the surface the instant I saw her. What you ask is simply unreasonable.”

  “Let me tell you what’s unreasonable, Mr. Ambassador,” Sorenson interrupted, his tone harsher than before. “It’s exactly what you said. That a man of your intelligence and vast experience, a foreign service officer who knows his way around embassies all over the world and is on constant alert to the danger of internal and external espionage, could be deceived into marrying a confirmed Sonnenkind, a Nazi. And let me tell you what’s even more unreasonable. These people have been in hiding for anywhere from thirty to fifty years. Their time has come and they’re crawling out of the cracks in the walls, but we don’t know who they are or where they are, only that they’re there. They’ve sent out a list of hundreds of men and women in high places who may or may not be part of their global movement. I don’t have to tell you the climate of fear and confusion that’s spreading across this country and the countries of our closest allies, you can see for yourself. Pretty damn soon there’ll be hysteria—who is and who isn’t?”

  “I’m not disputing anything you say, but how will my going back to Paris as an innocent husband change things?”

  “Knowledge, Mr. Ambassador. We have to learn how these Sonnenkinder operate, who they contact, how they reach their counterparts in the new generation of Nazis. You see, there has to be an infrastructure, a chain of command leading to a hierarchy, and the current Mrs. Courtland, the brilliant wife of the ambassador to France, isn’t small potatoes.”

  “You really think Janine can unwittingly help you?”

  “She’s the best shot we’ve got—let’s be honest, she’s the only shot. Even if we found another Sonnenkind, her rank, the circumstances, and the fact that she’s within minutes by jet of the borders of Germany makes her a prime candidate. If she contacts the hierarchy, or they contact her, she can take us right to those hidden leaders behind the movement. We must find those leaders and expose them. As someone said, it’s the only way to rip out the cancer.… Help us, Daniel, please help us.”

  Again there was silence on Courtland’s part. He shifted his weight in the chair, and, uncharacteristically for a diplomat, he seemed uncertain what to do with his hands. He fidgeted, ran his fingers through his graying hair, and massaged his chin several times. At last, he spoke. “I’ve seen what those bastards do, and I loathe them.… I can’t guarantee I’ll pull it off, but I’ll try.”

  Janine Clunes Courtland approached the exquisite leather counter of the Saddle and Bootery and asked to speak with the manager. Shortly, a small, slender man wearing an expensive yellowish toupee that flowed back over his skull and covered the nape of his neck appeared. He was dressed in a riding outfit, complete with jodhpurs and boots. “Yes, madame, how may I help you?” he said in French, glancing beyond her to several well-dressed customers, some standing, others seated.

  “You have a lovely shop,” replied the ambassador’s wife, her speech betraying her origins.

  “Ah, an American,” enthused the manager.

  “Is it so obvious?”

  “Oh, no, madame, your French is excellent.”

  “My friend, André, constantly tutors me, but sometimes I think André is too gentle. Yes, he must be firmer with me.”

  “André?” asked the short man in the jodhpurs, looking hard at Janine.

  “Yes, he said you might know him.”

  “It’s such a common name, is it not, madame? For instance, a customer named André left a pair of boots here and they were repaired the day before yesterday.”

  “I believe André may have mentioned it.”

  “Please come with me.” The manager walked to his right behind the counter, emerged through a green velvet curtain that covered a narrow entrance, and beckoned his new client. Together they went into a deserted office. “I presume you are who I—presume you are?”

  “Not by my identity, monsieur.”

  “Of course not, madame.”

  “A man in Washington instructed me. He said I should also use the name Catbird.”

  “That is sufficient, it’s an alternate code changed every few weeks. Again, follow me. We’ll go out the back entrance and you will be driven a short distance outside of Paris to an amusement park. Pay your way into the south entrance, second booth, and protest, stating that a courtesy ticket should have been provided by ‘André.’ Do you understand?”

  “South entrance, second booth, protest in the name of André. Yes, I have it.”

  “A moment, please.” The manager reached down and pressed a button on a desk intercom. “Gustav, we have a delivery for Monsieur André. Go to the vehicle immediately, if you please.”

  Outside, in the small alleyway parking area, Janine climbed into the first backseat of a van as the driver jumped in behind the wheel and started the engine. “There will be no conversation between us, please,” he said as he drove out of the alley into the street.

  The manager returned to the deserted office, again reached for the intercom, pressed a second button, and spoke. “I’m leaving early today, Simone. It’s slow and I’m exhausted. Lock up at six, and I’ll see you in the morning.” He went out to his motorbike in the parking area behind the row of shops. He jammed his foot on the ignition pedal; the motor erupted and he sped down the alleyway.

  Inside the leather boutique the telephone rang. A clerk at the counter picked it up. “La Selle et les Bottes,” he said.

  “Monsieur Rambeau!” yelled the man on the line. “Immédiatement!”

  “I’m sorry,” answered the clerk, offended by the arrogance of the caller. “Monsieur Rambeau has left for the day.”

  “Where is he?”

  “How the hell would I know? I’m not his mother or his lover.”

  “This is important!” screamed the man on the phone.

  “No, you’re not important, I am. I sell the merchandise, you merely interrupt, and there are customers in the store. Go to the devil.” The clerk hung up the phone and smiled at a young woman who wore a Givenchy cocktail dress obviously designed for her obviously expensive body. She oiled her way across the parquet floor and spoke in the half-whispered voice of a well-kept mistress.

  “I have a message for André,” she intoned seductively. “André will wish to hear it.”

  “I am desolate, mademoiselle,” said the clerk, his eyes straying to her swelling décolletage. “But all messages for Monsieur André are delivered to the manager alone, and he has left for the day.”

  “What am I to do, then?” cooed the courtesan.

  “Well, you could give the message to me, mademoiselle. I am a confidant of Monsieur Rambeau’s, the manager.”

  “I don’t know that I should. It’s very confidential.”

  “But I just explained, I am a close confidant, a confidential associate of Monsieur Rambeau’s. Perhaps you would rather tell me over an aperitif at the café next door.”

  “Oh, no, my friend watches me wherever I go, and the limousine is right outside. Just tell him that he’s to call Berlin.”

  “Berlin?”

  “What do I know? I gave you the message.” The Givenchy-dressed young woman, buttocks swiveling, walked out of the store.

  “Berlin?” said the clerk to himself. It was crazy, Rambeau hated Germans. When they came into the shop,
he treated them with contempt and doubled the prices.

  * * *

  The Deuxième agent walked calmly out of the leather store, then rushed up the pavement to the unmarked car. He opened the door, quickly climbed in beside the driver, and swore. “Dammit, she wasn’t there!”

  “What are you talking about? She didn’t come outside.”

  “I assume that.”

  “Then where is she?”

  “How the hell do I know? Probably in another arron-dissement across the city.”

  “She made contact with someone and they left by another exit.”

  “My God, you’re smart!”

  “Why bite my head off?”

  “Because we both should have known better. Places like this have delivery entrances; when I went in, you should have driven around and found it, then waited.”

  “We’re not psychic, my friend, at least I’m not.”

  “No, we’re stupid. How many times have we done this sort of thing? One of us follows a subject, the other covers the rear.”

  “You’re too hard on us,” protested the driver. “This is the Champs-Élysées, not the Montmartre, and the woman is the wife of an ambassador, not a killer we’re stalking.”

  “I hope Director Moreau sees it that way. For reasons he will not explain, he seems almost obsessed with this particular ambassador’s wife.”

  “I’d better call him.”

  “Please do. I forgot the number.”

  The fashionably dressed man in the Peugeot several hundred feet across the wide boulevard was more than impatient, he was deeply troubled. Nearly an hour had passed and Frau Courtland had not emerged from the leather shop. He could accept the time; women were notoriously sluggish shoppers, especially the wealthy ones. What troubled him was the fact that the Deuxième vehicle had sped away, sped away, thirty-odd minutes ago, apparently prompted by the second Deuxième agent’s running to the car and conferring with his colleague, the driver. What had happened? Something, certainly, but what? He had been torn between following the official automobile and waiting longer for the ambassador’s wife. Remembering his orders, and the intensity with which they were delivered, he had decided to wait. “Kill the woman as soon as it’s humanly possible!” His control in Bonn had been apoplectic; the assassination was to be immediate. The meaning was clear: dire consequences would result if there was a delay.