The Apocalypse Watch

“Without eliminating anyone, how many?”

  “Fifty-one.”

  “May I see them?”

  “The twenty-four are on their way over to you. I’ll send the other twenty-seven posthaste. Or should I remove yours? I mean, you don’t even work here.”

  “Why did you include it?”

  “A perverse sense of humor, I guess. As I frequently tell our administration colleague, Adam Bollinger, a laugh now and then can put things into perspective.”

  “Granted, my friend, I’m just not feeling very humorous. Have you heard the word from Paris?”

  “Not for the last twenty-some hours.”

  “Hear it now. Karin de Vries has disappeared. She was abducted by the neos.”

  “Oh, my God!”

  “Apparently He’s not around when you need Him.”

  “What does Witkowski say?”

  “He’s worried about Latham. He said Drew behaved like he was under control, but he’s convinced it was an act.”

  “How so?”

  “Because he demanded to know where the leaks were made that blew his cover.”

  “A reasonable request, I’d say. He’s the bait.”

  “You’re not listening, Knox. I said ‘demanded,’ and Stanley made it clear that Latham delivered it on a give-me-or-I’m-out basis.”

  “I still don’t see why that makes him a loose cannon.”

  “We’ve both been married a long time to remember. He’s in love, old boy. It came a bit late maybe, but probably for the first time. His lady was taken from him, and he’s at the height of his professional prowess, which includes a multitude of lethal capabilities. At his age, one frequently has delusions of invincibility. He wants her back.”

  “I read you, Wes. What can we do?”

  “He’s got to do something first, something that gives us an excuse to sandbag him.”

  “Sandbag …?”

  “Short of putting him in a locked room with sponge-rubber walls, at least getting him out of Paris. He’s no good to anybody if the bait becomes the hunter.”

  “I understood he was being watched, under guard.”

  “So was his brother, Harry, and he escaped from the Brotherhood valley. Don’t underestimate the Latham genes. On the other hand, Witkowski and Moreau aren’t exactly pikers in counterinsurgency.”

  “I’m not sure what that means in this context, but I assume it’s reassuring.”

  “I hope to hell it is,” said Sorenson.

  * * *

  Under the glare of the desk lamp, Drew studied the names. On Witkowski’s list of possible leaks there were seven names, including the Antinayous, and on Moreau’s nine, three of them members of the Chamber of Deputies at the Quai d’Orsay, who the Deuxième chief thought were radically to the right of the political mainstream, in a word, Fascists. On Stanley’s list were several rumor-mongering attachés, “floaters,” as he called them, who spent more time sucking up to influential French businessmen than at their jobs; two secretaries whose absences suggested alcohol problems; and a Father Manfried Neuman at the Antinayous’ Maison Rouge. Moreau’s list, beyond the Quai d’Orsay, were the usual paid informers whose allegiances were exclusively to money, ideology and morality nonexistent.

  Working from the viewpoint of reducing the numbers, Latham eliminated Moreau’s informers—he had no entrée into their ranks—as well as two of the deputies; the third he had met at diplomatic functions. He would call that man, listening hard. Witkowski’s list was easier, for he knew five of them by sight and name, casual embassy acquaintances. The remaining two, both women, both suspected of having a drinking problem, he could reach out of the blue, as it were. What he needed were telephone numbers.

  “Stanley, I’m so glad you’re working late, because you left out something with your seven candidates.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” said the angry Witkowski. “Those are the ones we used for observable leaks.”

  “We? Who else? Who did the circulation duty?”

  “My secretary who came with me from the old G-Two, a former sergeant whom I made a first lieutenant before her discharge.”

  “Her? She?”

  “Service-oriented, son. Her husband was a gunny until he retired after his thirtieth, and he was only fifty-three. Kids are all army brats.”

  “What does he do now?”

  “Plays golf, goes to museums, and still takes French lessons. He can’t get the hang of the lingo.”

  “Then I don’t need her telephone number, but I want all the rest. Their residences, including the Antinayous’ Maison Rouge.”

  “I can figure where you’re coming from. Let me punch up my computer.”

  Claude Moreau was somewhat more difficult. He was at home, arguing with a son over politics. “The youth today, they understand nothing!”

  “Neither do I, but I need telephone numbers, unless you want me to benevolently usher your guards into a long night’s sleep.”

  “How dare you say such a thing?”

  “Easily. I can do it.”

  “Mon Dieu, Stanley is right, you are impossible! Very well, I’ll give you a phone at the Bureau. Call it in five minutes and you’ll be given the numbers you want.”

  “Not want, Claude. Need.”

  Eleven minutes later, Latham had matched the telephone numbers with every name on both lists. He started calling, using essentially the same words with each.

  “This is Colonel Webster, and I believe you know my true identity. What disturbs me is that others have learned it and we’ve traced the leak to you. What have you got to say for yourself, before you’ve got nothing left to say?”

  Every response was a variation on the same theme. Explosive negatives, down to the point of each one offering to have their phone calls checked, both at their offices and their homes; a number volunteered to take lie-detector tests. Those over with, only a holier-than-thou Antinayou at the Maison Rouge was left.

  “Father Neuman, please.”

  “He’s conducting vespers and cannot be disturbed.”

  “Disturb him. This is a matter of extreme urgency, directly related to your secrecy.”

  “Mein Gott, I don’t know what to do. The father is an ardent priest. Can’t you call back in, say, twenty minutes or so?”

  “By that time the Red House may be blown up with no one surviving.”

  “Ach! I will reach him!”

  When Father Manfried Neuman finally came on the line, he snapped, “What is this foolishness? I’m in the middle of the Lord’s work and you take me away from His supplicants.”

  “My temporary name is Colonel Webster, but you know who I am, Father.”

  “Of course I do! So do many others.”

  “Really? That comes as something of a shock. I assumed it was highly privileged information, airtight, in fact.”

  “Well, I presume others know. Now, what’s this about a bomb here?”

  “Maybe I’m the bomber if you don’t answer my questions. I stayed there, remember, and right now I’m pretty desperate.”

  “How can you behave this way? The Antinayous took care of you, we gave you sanctuary in your hour of need.”

  “And refused to take me back when the need was still there.”

  “That was a collective decision based on our own security requirements.”

  “Not good enough, Father. We’re against the same people, aren’t we?”

  “Do not trifle with us, Herr Latham. I am a man of God and abhor violence, but there are others here who are not of my persuasion.”

  “Is that a threat, padre?”

  “Take it as you will, my son. We know where you are and our vehicles constantly roam the city.”

  “Tell me, do you know where Karin de Vries is?”

  “Frau de Vries …? Our colleague?”

  “She’s gone. They took her.”

  “No! That’s wrong …!”

  “You just blew it, Bible freak. What’s right?… I guess we’re not on th
e same side after all.”

  “Untrue! I’ve given up everything—”

  “You’ll give up the last thing you’ve got to give unless you tell me whom you spoke to about me,” broke in Latham. “Now!”

  “As the Lord God is my witness, only to our informant at the embassy … and one other.”

  “First, the informant. Who?”

  “A secretary, a woman named Cranston in need of Christ’s help.”

  “How do you know her?”

  “We speak, we meet, and the flesh is weak, my son. I’m not perfect, may God forgive me.”

  “The other? Who is it?”

  “It is a confidence so deep, it would be a sacrilege to violate it.”

  “So would exposing the Maison Rouge, along with a couple of grenades that would light up the entrance.”

  “You wouldn’t.”

  “The hell I wouldn’t. I’m a Four Zero officer of Consular Operations, and among my bag of tricks are a few the Blitzkrieger never thought of. Give!”

  “Another priest, a former priest. He’s an old man now, but when he was a young scholar, he was a talented crypt-analyst for the branch of French intelligence that became the Deuxième Bureau. The secret services still hold him in high regard, and frequently confide in him, seeking his help. His name is Lavolette, Antoine Lavolette.”

  “You said he’s a former priest, so why is it such a sacrilege to give me his name?”

  “Because, damn you, I go to him for religious counseling, not politics! I have a problem, not unlike his own years ago, but mine is far more unforgivable, for it is a compulsion and not confined to one woman. I’m an imperfect man and unworthy of my holy church. What more can I tell you?”

  “Maybe a lot more, I’ll let you know. By the way, padre, why did you say it was ‘wrong’ for Karin to be kidnapped?”

  “Because it was stupid, it’s as simple as that!” spat out the priest.

  “Whose side are you on, for Christ’s sake?”

  “Must you use the Lord’s name in such a manner?”

  “Depends on whose Lord you’re talking about. Now, cut the sideshow. Why was it wrong and stupid to kidnap her?”

  “Speaking selfishly, it could very well compromise our operation here. If their objective was to kill her, then kill her and leave her to God! But to abduct her with no proof of death is to open the floodgates—everyone will be searching for her, as you are searching for her now. Our very headquarters could be revealed—just as you threatened to do with your grenades and your bombs. I ask you in the name of all that is holy and good not to expose us or reveal our whereabouts.”

  “You’ve given me two names, so I’ll do my damnedest not to, but Karin de Vries comes first, and that’s all I can promise.” Latham hung up the phone, immediately tempted to reach Moreau and ask some pointed questions about the former Father Antoine Lavolette, retired crypt-analyst extraordinary. Then he thought otherwise; the head of the Deuxième was a control freak, especially where one Drew Latham was concerned. Undoubtedly, Moreau would interfere, calling the retired priest himself and usurping the initiative. No, that wasn’t the way. This Lavolette had to be cornered, surprised, forced by shock into revealing whatever he knew, or whatever he did not know he knew by disclosing another name or names. The same could be said for the Cranston woman, Phyllis Cranston, errant secretary to a middle-level attaché who was on Witkowski’s list of “floaters,” probably the reason she kept her job.

  First, there was the primary task of getting out of the hotel. Every hour, every minute, he spent there was an hour and a minute lost in his hunt for Karin.

  Karin had said his blond hair was the product of a minor bleach rinse coupled with a “tint coloring,” whatever that was, but she insisted that with a harsh shampoo plus a tube of something that turned gray hair darker, he could return to his normal hair color, or something close to it. She had put the magic tube in the medicine chest, he had moved it to a bedroom drawer so she would not remove it. It was still there.

  A half hour later, the bathroom a steaming mess, a naked Latham kept throwing water on the basin mirror to clear it. His hair was now a strange dark brown with specks of auburn, but it was not blond. He had sent one hockey puck right through a goalie’s legs!

  Now there were Messieurs Frick and Frack to consider, or, more accurately, whoever relieved them for the current shift. And it was another shift, as Karin had mentioned. He knew each of the guards, but he knew Frick and Frack better than the others, and he doubted the pair would have related the details of their embarrassment over a missed code word. A lone American disarming an officer of the Deuxième, ripping his weapon away, and punishing his groin to the point of agony? Mon Dieu, fermez la bouche!

  Drew pulled his other uniform out of the closet and his bureau drawers. It was the all but prescribed dress of the male embassy attaché: gray flannels, dark blazer, white shirt, and a conservative tie—regimental stripes preferable, subdued paisleys permitted for informal evening functions. He was mildly pleased that the supposedly bulletproof vest was accommodated, snug but not inhibiting. Fully clothed, his suitcase packed, he opened the hotel door and walked out into the corridor, standing in place, waiting for the obvious. It came immediately with the appearance of the guard by the elevators, his colleague simultaneously emerging from the shadow at the opposite end of the hallway.

  “S’il vous plaît,” he began in even more awkward French than he was capable of, “voulez-vous venir ici—”

  “En anglais, monsieur!” cried the man from the elevators. “We can understand.”

  “Oh, thanks a lot, I appreciate that. If one of you would help me out, I just got a telephone message and I wrote out the words as best I could. It’s an address, I think, but the fellow couldn’t speak English.”

  “You go, Pierre,” said the guard at the opposite end in French. “I’ll stay here.”

  “Very well,” replied the man walking down from the bank of elevators. “Don’t they teach any other language but English in America?”

  “Did the Romans learn French?”

  “They didn’t have to, there’s your answer.” The first guard entered Latham’s suite as Drew followed and closed the door. “Where is the message, monsieur?”

  “Over at the desk,” said Latham, walking behind the Frenchman. “It’s the paper with the writing on it. Right in the center, I turned it around so you could read it.”

  The guard picked up the sheet of paper with the strange words spelled out phonetically. As he did so, Latham raised both arms, hands angled downward, two hammers that crashed into the man’s shoulder blades, rendering him instantly unconscious. It was a stunning blow, painful but not injurious. Drew dragged the body into the bedroom, where he had stripped the bed and ripped the sheets into long lengths of narrow cloth. Ninety seconds later the guard was strapped facedown on top of the mattress, arms and legs lashed to the bedposts, his mouth immobilized by a thin strip of cloth, allowing breath to enter and leave.

  Picking up a handful of torn sheets, Latham raced out of the bedroom, closing the door. He dropped the strips of cloth on a chair and opened the hallway door. He walked out calmly and addressed the second guard, who was barely seen in the far shadows. “Your friend Pierre says he must talk to you at once, before he calls that fellow, what’s his name? Montreaux or Moneau?”

  “Monsieur le directeur?”

  “Yeah, that’s the guy. He says what I wrote down is encredeebal.”

  “Get out of my way!” yelled the second guard, running up the corridor and rushing into the suite. “Where …?” His question was stopped by an aikido chop to his neck, followed by a two-fingered prong to the space below his ribcage, the combination leaving the guard temporarily breathless and unconscious, but again without harm. Drew pulled him over to the couch and performed the same exercise he had with the first Deuxième officer, only with necessary variations. He lay prone on the pillows, legs and arms stretched and tied to the sofa’s feet, mouth gagged, but his
head angled, with no loss of air. Latham’s final gesture was to yank out the telephones in both rooms. He was now free to begin the hunt.

  31

  He walked up the steps of Phyllis Cranston’s apartment house in the rue Pavée, entered the lobby, and pressed the bell for her flat. There was no answer, so he kept ringing, thinking she might be in a stupor, if Witkowski’s opinion was justified. He was about to give up, when an obese, elderly woman came out of the locked hallway, noticed the button he was pressing, and spoke in French.

  “You looking for the Butterfly?”

  “I’m not sure I understand you.”

  “Ah, Américain. Your French is terrible,” she added in English. “I was the sorriest woman in Paris when your airdromes left France.”

  “You know Miss Cranston?”

  “Who here does not? She’s a sweet thing and once was very pretty, as I was. Why should I tell you anything else?”

  “Because I have to speak with her, it’s urgent.”

  “Because you’re ‘horny,’ as you Americans call it? Let me tell you, monsieur, she may have the malady, but she is no whore!”

  “I’m not looking for a whore, madame. I’m trying to find someone who can give me information I need very quickly, and that person is Phyllis Cranston.”

  “Hmm,” mused the old woman, studying Drew. “You are not looking to take advantage of her because of her malady? If you are, you should know that her friends in this building protect her. She is, as I said, sweet and kind and helps out people who need help. We are not poor here, but many of us are close to being so, what with the taxes and the high prices. The Butterfly is free with her American money and never asks for repayment. On her days off she cares for children so their mothers can work. You will not harm her, not here.”

  “I don’t want to harm her, and I’m not looking for a Mother Teresa. I told you, I want to find her because she may have information I need.”

  “Do not mention catholique to me, monsieur. I am a Catholic, but we told that filthy priest to stay away from her!”

  Bingo, thought Latham.

  “A priest?”

  “He took advantage of her, he still takes advantage of her!”