The Apocalypse Watch

  “You’re not going anywhere,” yelled the lieutenant, trying to reach his gun with his right hand, his arm in agony, “because neither are those elevators! I alarmed both of them.”

  “You are quite wrong!” screamed the neo, racing into the nearest elevator; in barely seconds the panels began to close and the deafening bell was abruptly silent. “It is you who are not going anywhere, monsieur!” were the Nazi’s last words.

  Drew burst through the anteroom’s door. “Where is he?” asked Latham furiously.

  “In that elevator,” replied the commando, wincing. “I thought I shorted both of them out, but I guess I didn’t.”

  “Christ, you’ve been hit!”

  “I can handle it, check the lady.”

  “Are you all right?” said Drew, rushing to the receptionist, who was slowly getting to her feet.

  “I’ll be better when I deliver my resignation, monsieur,” she answered, trembling and breathless as Latham helped her up.

  “Can we stop the elevator?”

  “Non. Les directeurs—forgive me, the directors and their deputies have emergency codes that put the lifts into express cycles. No stops until they reach their floors.”

  “Can we prevent him from leaving the building?”

  “On what authority, sir? He is the director of the Deuxième Bureau.”

  “Il est un Nazi d’Allemand!” cried the lieutenant.

  The receptionist stared at Anthony. “I will try, Major.” The woman reached for the telephone on her desk and pressed three numbers. “There is an emergency, have you seen the director?” she asked in French. “Merci.” She depressed the lever, dialed again, and spoke, repeating the same question. “Merci.” The receptionist hung up and looked at Drew and the commando. “I first called the parking area where Monsieur Bergeron keeps his sports car. He did not go through the gate. I then reached our first-floor counter. The guard said the new director just left in a great hurry. I’m sorry.”

  “Thank you for trying,” said Gerald Anthony, holding his bleeding right arm.

  “If I may,” asked Latham, “why did you try? We’re Americans, not French.”

  “Director Moreau held you in extremely high regard, monsieur. He said as much to me when you came to see him.”

  “That was enough?”

  “No.… Jacques Bergeron was all smiles and courtesy when in the company of Monsieur Moreau, but by himself he was an arrogant pig. I prefer to believe your explanation, and, after all, he shot your very charming Major.”

  They were back in Ambassador Courtland’s private quarters at the embassy, Drew, Karin with her wounded shoulder strapped, and Stanley Witkowski, who had flown in from London. The two commandos, the lieutenant’s arm attended to and in a sling, were at the hotel, alternately resting and placing generous orders for room service.

  “He’s disappeared,” said Daniel Courtland, sitting in a chair near the colonel and opposite Drew and Karin on the couch. “Every police and intelligence agency in France is looking for Jacques Bergeron and nothing’s turned up. Every public and private airport and customs checkpoint in Europe has his photograph with a dozen computerized composites of what he may be disguised as—nothing. He’s no doubt safely back in Germany among his own, wherever they are.”

  “We have to find out where that is, Mr. Ambassador,” said Latham. “This Water Lightning failed, but what’s next, and will it fail? Their long-range plans may be on hold, but the Nazi movement isn’t stopped. Somewhere there are records and we have to find them. Those bastards are all over our world, and they’re not calling off their act. Just yesterday a synagogue in Los Angeles and a black church in Mississippi were burned to the ground. Several senators and congressmen who rose to denounce those incidents were accused of covering up their own sympathies. It’s all a goddamn mess!”

  “I know, Drew, we all know. Here in Paris, in the predominantly Jewish arrondissements, shopkeepers’ windows were smashed, the word Kristallnacht spray-painted on the walls. It’s becoming a very ugly world. Very ugly.”

  “When I left London this morning,” said Witkowski quietly, “the papers were filled with the slaughter of several West Indian children, their faces hacked off with bayonets—their faces. The German ‘Neger’ was written in colored crayons around the corpses.”

  “In God’s name, when will it stop!” exclaimed Karin.

  “When we find out who they are and where they are,” replied Drew.

  The telephone rang on the ambassador’s antique table that he used as a desk. “Shall I answer it, sir?” asked the colonel.

  “No, thanks, I’ll get it,” said Courtland, getting out of the chair and crossing to the table. “Yes?… It’s for you, Latham, someone called François.”

  “He’s the last person I ever expected to hear from again,” said Drew, rising and walking quickly to the table. He took the phone from the ambassador. “François …?”

  “Monsieur Lat’am, we must meet somewhere privately.”

  “There’s nothing more private than this telephone, believe me. You just spoke to the American ambassador, and his phone is as sterile as any can be.”

  “I believe you, for you have kept your word. I am interrogated, but only for everything I know, not for what I was.”

  “You were in a lousy, untenable position, and as long as you cooperate to the fullest, you can go home to your family.”

  “My gratitude is beyond words, monsieur, as is my wife’s. We have discussed everything—I withheld nothing from her—and together we decided I must make this call, for what it may be worth to you.”

  “What is it?”

  “I must take you back to the night old Jodelle killed himself in the theater where the actor Jean-Pierre Villier was performing. Do you recall?”

  “I’ll never forget it,” said Drew firmly. “What about that night?”

  “It was early morning, actually, when Sous-directeur Bergeron ordered me to come immediately to his office at the Deuxième. I did so, but he was not there. However, I knew he was in the building, for the guards at the gate made sarcastic comments about his rudeness to them, and how he interrupted my sleep, no doubt to assist him to the toilet. I was afraid to leave. I waited until he showed up; he did so carrying a very old file from the cellar archives, so old it had not been entered into the computers. The folder itself was yellow with age.”

  “Isn’t that unusual?” asked Latham.

  “There are thousands upon thousands of files in the archives, monsieur. Much work has been done in transposing them, but it will take years before the job is complete.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Experts, among them historians, are called in to validate their inclusion, and as with governments everywhere, funds are limited.”

  “Go on. What happened?”

  “Jacques instructed me to take the file and deliver it personally to a château in the Loire Valley, using a Deuxième vehicle with papers he signed himself that overrode any police interference in the event I was stopped for speeding, which he ordered me to do. I casually asked him why it was so necessary at this hour, could it not wait until morning? He became furious and shouted at me, yelling that we—he and I—owed everything to this place, this man. That it was our sanctuary, our refuge.”

  “What place? What man?”

  “Le Nid de l’Aigle is the château. General André Monluc, the man.”

  “The something ‘eagle’ …?”

  “The Eagle’s Nest, monsieur. Monluc, I’m told, was a great general of France, honored by De Gaulle himself.”

  “So you think Bergeron may have escaped there?” said Drew.

  “Sanctuary and refuge are the words that come back to me. Also, Jacques is an intelligence expert; he knows the multiple barriers he must surmount to leave the country. He will need help from resourceful associates, and the combinaison of a great general and a château in the Loire would appear to fit his situation. I hope this will be of some assistance to you.”
r />   “It will, and I hope we won’t have to see or speak to each other again. Thank you, François.” Latham hung up the phone and turned to the others. “We’ve got the name of the general Jodelle was hunting, the traitor who he said fooled De Gaulle. Also where he lives, if he’s alive.”

  “That was a pretty strange one-sided conversation, chłopak. Why don’t you fill us in?”

  “Back off, Stanley, I made a deal. That man’s been living in his own personal hell far longer than he deserved, and he never killed anyone for the Nazis. He was a water boy and a messenger with a gun to his family’s collective head. Bottom line: I made a deal.”

  “I’ve made more than I can count,” said the ambassador. “Tell us what we have to know, Drew.”

  “The general’s name is Monluc, André Monluc—”

  “André,” interrupted Karin. “That’s where the code name came from.”

  “Right. The château’s called the Eagle’s Nest, in the Loire Valley. François thinks Bergeron may have fled there because he once called it a sanctuary in a moment of anger and perhaps fear.”

  “When?” Witkowski broke in. “When did he call it that?”

  “Very astute, Stanley,” replied Drew. “When Bergeron ordered an old, buried file on Monluc to be delivered there—the night Jodelle killed himself in the theater.”

  “Thus removing any possible connection between Jodelle and the general,” said the ambassador. “Does anyone know anything about this Monluc?”

  “Not by name,” answered Latham, “because the classified files that contained it were also removed from Washington. But the preliminary documentation on Jodelle detailed his accusation, an accusation that lacked any evidence, say nothing of proof. It’s why D.C. intelligence considered him a madman. He claimed that a French general, a leader of the Resistance, was in reality a traitor who worked for the Nazis. It was Monluc, of course, the man who ordered Jodelle’s wife and children executed, and had Jodelle sent to a death camp.”

  “The younger child who survived being Jean-Pierre Villier,” added Karin.

  “Exactly. According to Villier’s father—the only father he ever knew—Jodelle’s suspicions obviously reached the unknown general, who protected his cover while becoming rich with Nazi gifts of gold and expropriated valuables.”

  “I think I should have that mythical meeting with the French President,” said Courtland. “Write a complete report on everything, Drew. Dictate it to a secretary or two, whatever you need, just do it quickly, say in an hour or so, and have it on my desk downstairs.”

  Latham and Witkowski exchanged glances. The colonel nodded at Drew. “That won’t work, sir,” said Latham.

  “What?”

  “To begin with, there isn’t time, and then we don’t know who the President will confer with, but we do know there are neos in the Quai d’Orsay, possibly in the President’s inner circle. We don’t even know who we can call for help, or who he might call.”

  “Are you suggesting that we take action ourselves, American Embassy personnel in a foreign country? If so, you’ve lost your senses, Drew.”

  “Mr. Ambassador, if there’s anything to learn in that château, any records, papers, telephone numbers, names, we can’t take the chance of their being destroyed. Forget Bergeron for the moment, if that place is a sanctuary or a refuge, there’s got to be more than beer and sausages and Horst Wessel songs. We’re not talking just about France here, we’re talking about all of Europe and the United States.”

  “I understand that, but we can’t take unilateral American action in a host country!”

  “If Claude Moreau were alive, the situation would be different,” interrupted Witkowski. “He could and would accept the mantle of a French covert operation in the interests of France. Our FBI accepts that kind of thing all the time!”

  “Moreau’s not alive, Colonel.”

  “I realize that, sir, but there may be a way.” Witkowski turned to Latham. “This François you just spoke to, he owes you, doesn’t he?”

  “Get off it, Stosh, I won’t involve him.”

  “I don’t know why not. You just made a pretty good case for serious diplomatic interference, serious enough to have an ambassador replaced.”

  “What’s your point?” said Drew, staring at the colonel.

  “The Deuxième works with the Service d’Etranger—that’s the French foreign service, Mr. Ambassador—and their lines of authority frequently cross, not unlike our CIA and FBI and DIA. That’s understandable, isn’t it?”

  “Go ahead, Colonel.”

  “Both the blessing and the curse of all intelligence bureaucracies is the confusion that results from these conflicts—”

  “What the hell is your point, Stanley?”

  “Simple, chłopak. Have this François call someone he knows pretty well at the Etranger and repeat, say, half the story he told you.”

  “Which half?”

  “That he suddenly remembered that Bergeron, who everybody’s looking for, sent him with some old file to that château in the Loire. That’s all he has to say.”

  “Why wouldn’t he give the information to his own people at the Deuxième?”

  “Because no one’s in charge. Moreau was killed yesterday, Bergeron disappeared a few hours ago, and he doesn’t know whom to trust.”

  “Then what?”

  “I’ll take care of the rest,” replied Witkowski softly.

  “I beg your pardon?” said Courtland.

  “Well, sir, there are always things a man in your position can legitimately deny because he didn’t know about them.”

  “Tell me about it,” interrupted the ambassador. “It seems I spend considerable time learning about those things I’m not supposed to know about. What can you tell me now that will still support my deniability?”

  “Very innocuous, sir. I have friends, let’s say professional colleagues, at the higher levels of the Etranger. There could have been times when American criminals, say members of organized crime or drug barons, were in France, and we’ve kept better track of them than they have.… I’ve been generous with our information.”

  “That’s about as oblique as you can get, Colonel.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Ambassador.”

  “To repeat,” said an agitated Latham, “what’s your point?”

  “As long as the information comes from a French Intelligence source, I can move in. The Frenchies will jump at it, and we’ll have whatever support personnel we might need in an emergency. Above all, we’ll have the secrecy that’s vital because we have to move quickly.”

  “How can you be sure of these things, Colonel?”

  “Because, sir, we in the clandestine services love to propagate the myth of our invincibility. We especially like it if we come up with astonishing results when nobody knew we were there. It’s idiosyncratic, Mr. Ambassador, and in this case, that works in our favor. You see, we’re on top of the information, we orchestrate, and the French take all the credit. It’s heaven-sent.”

  “I’m not sure I understood a word you’ve said.”

  “You’re not supposed to, sir,” said the veteran G-2 officer.

  “What about me?” asked De Vries. “I’ll be with you, of course.”

  “Yes, you will, my dear.” Witkowski smiled gently, glancing at Drew. “We’ll study the area charts—the Etranger has every square foot of France mapped—and find some high ground within sight of the château. You’ll be on the radio.”

  “That’s nonsense. I deserve to be with you.”

  “Don’t be unfair, Karin,” said Latham. “You’ve been hurt and no amount of painkillers can bring you up to a hundred percent. In plain words, on the scene you’d be more of a concern than an asset. Certainly to me.”

  “Do you know,” said De Vries quietly, her eyes level with Drew’s, “I can understand that and accept it.”

  “Thanks. Besides, our lieutenant will be of very little use and will stay way back in the boondocks. He’s worse off than yo
u; the only way he can fire a gun is if it’s cemented to his hand.”

  “He can be on the radio with Karin, a backup relay,” added the colonel. “Coordinators, so we don’t have to be in constant communication, just open earplugs.”

  “That sounds terribly patronizing, Stanley.”

  “Maybe it is, Karin, but you never know.”

  The career senior deputy of the Service d’Etranger was an ambitious forty-one-year-old analyst whose good fortune was to know François the Wheelman. He had been a suitor of François’s wife, Yvonne, before her marriage, and although he had traveled faster and further up the government ladder than François, they remained friends and François knew why. The opportunistic analyst never stopped probing about the secretive Deuxième.

  “I know just the man to call,” François had said in answer to Latham’s request. “It’s the least I can do for you, and, I imagine, for him, after all those expensive lunches and dinners where he learned nothing. He’s paid very well, you know; he graduated from university and is quite intelligent. I think he’ll be most enthusiastic.”

  They all knew that analysts were not field men, nor did they pretend to be. Even so, given a specific operation and hypothetical circumstances, they could usually provide precedents and strategies that were frequently very valuable. Directeur Adjoint Cloche, for that was his name and it fit, met with the N-2 unit at the Plaza-Athénée.

  “Ah, Stanley!” he exclaimed, walking into the suite with a briefcase. “When you telephoned soon after François’s rather hysterical call, I was so relieved. It is all so tragic, so catastrophique, but with your sense of control, well, I was relieved.”

  “Thanks, Clément, it’s good to see you. Let me introduce you.” Introductions were made, and they all sat around the circular dining room table. “Were you able to bring what I asked you for?” continued the colonel.

  “Everything, but I must tell you, I did so on the basis of fichiers confidentiels.”

  “What’s that?” asked Drew, his tone of voice bordering on the discourteous.

  “The copies were made for Monsieur Cloche in terms of confidential extrusion,” explained Karin.

  “What’s that?”