The Aquitaine Progression: A Novel

“That’s all well and good,” said Converse, “but what happens when you run into someone like me? It’s bound to happen.”

  “You’d be surprised how rarely. After all, it was a long time ago, and the people I grew up with in California understood. Kids out there have their names changed according to matrimonial whim, and I was in the East for only a couple of years, just long enough for the fourth and fifth forms at school. I didn’t know anyone in Greenwich to speak of, and I was hardly part of the old Taft crowd.”

  “You had friends there. We were friends.”

  “I didn’t have many. Let’s face it, I was an outsider and you weren’t particular. I kept a pretty low profile.”

  “Not on the mats, you didn’t.”

  Halliday laughed. “Not very many wrestlers become lawyers, something about mat burns on the brain. Anyway, to answer your question, only maybe five or six times over the past ten years has anyone said to me, ‘Hey, aren’t you so-and-so and not whatever you said your name was?’ When somebody did, I told them the truth. ‘My mother remarried when I was sixteen.’ ”

  The coffee and croissants arrived. Joel broke his pastry in half. “And you thought I’d ask the question at the wrong time, specifically when I saw you at the conference. Is that it?”

  “Professional courtesy. I didn’t want you dwelling on it—or me—when you should be thinking about your client. After all, we tried to lose our virginity together that night in New Haven.”

  “Speak for yourself.” Joel smiled.

  Halliday grinned. “We got pissed and both admitted it, don’t you remember? Incidentally, we swore each other to secrecy while throwing up in the can.”

  “Just testing you, counselor. I remember. So you left the gray-flannel crowd for orange shirts and gold medallions?”

  “All the way. Berkeley, then across the street to Stanford.”

  “Good school.… How come the international field?”

  “I liked traveling and figured it was the best way of paying for it. That’s how it started, really. How about you? I’d think you would have had all the traveling you ever wanted.”

  “I had delusions about the foreign service, diplomatic corps, legal section. That’s how it started.”

  “After all that traveling you did?”

  Converse leveled his pale blue eyes at Halliday, conscious of the coldness in his look. It was unavoidable, if misplaced—as it usually was. “Yes, after all that traveling. There were too many lies and no one told us about them until it was too late. We were conned and it shouldn’t have happened.”

  Halliday leaned forward, his elbows on the table, hands clasped, his gaze returning Joel’s. “I couldn’t figure it,” he began softly. “When I read your name in the papers, then saw you paraded on television, I felt awful. I didn’t really know you that well, but I liked you.”

  “It was a natural reaction. I’d have felt the same way if it had been you.”

  “I’m not sure you would. You see, I was one of the honchos of the protest movement.”

  “You burned your draft card while flaunting the Yippie label,” said Converse gently, the ice gone from his eyes. “I wasn’t that brave.”

  “Neither was I. It was an out-of-state library card.”

  “I’m disappointed.”

  “So was I—in myself. But I was visible.” Halliday leaned back in his chair and reached for his coffee. “How did you get so visible, Joel? I didn’t think you were the type.”

  “I wasn’t. I was squeezed.”

  “I thought you said ‘conned.’ ”

  “That came later.” Converse raised his cup and sipped his black coffee, uncomfortable with the direction the conversation had taken. He did not like discussing those years, and all too frequently he was called upon to do so. They had made him out to be someone he was not. “I was a sophomore at Amherst and not much of a student.… Not much, hell, I was borderline-negative, and whatever deferment I had was about to go down the tube. But I’d been flying since I was fourteen.”

  “I didn’t know that,” interrupted Halliday.

  “My father wasn’t beautiful and he didn’t have the benefit of concubines, but he was an airline pilot, later an executive for Pan Am. It was standard in the Converse household to fly a plane before you got your driver’s license.”

  “Brothers and sisters?”

  “A younger sister. She soloed before I did and she’s never let me forget it.”

  “I remember. She was interviewed on television.”

  “Only twice,” Joel broke in, smiling. “She was on your turf and didn’t give a damn who knew it. The White House bunker put the word out to stay away from her. ‘Don’t tarnish the cause, and check her mail while you’re at it.’ ”

  “That’s why I remember her,” said Halliday. “So a lousy student left college and the Navy gained a hot pilot.”

  “Not very hot, none of us was. There wasn’t that much to be hot against. Mostly we burned.”

  “Still, you must have hated people like me back in the States. Not your sister, of course.”

  “Her, too”, corrected Converse. “Hated, loathed, despised—furious. But only when someone was killed, or went crazy in the camps. Not for what you were saying—we all knew Saigon—but because you said it without any real fear. You were safe, and you made us feel like assholes. Dumb, frightened assholes.”

  “I can understand that.”

  “So nice of you.”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it the way it sounded.”

  “How did it sound, counselor?”

  Halliday frowned. “Condescending, I guess.”

  “No guess,” said Joel. “Right on.”

  “You’re still angry.”

  “Not at you, only the dredging. I hate the subject and it keeps coming back up.”

  “Blame the Pentagon PR. For a while you were a bona fide hero on the nightly news. What was it, three escapes? On the first two you got caught and put on the racks, but on the last one you made it all by yourself, didn’t you? You crawled through a couple of hundred miles of enemy jungle before you reached the lines.”

  “It was barely a hundred and I was goddamned lucky. With the first two tries I was responsible for killing eight men. I’m not very proud of that. Can we get to the Comm Tech-Bern business?”

  “Give me a few minutes,” said Halliday, shoving the croissant aside. “Please. I’m not trying to dredge. There’s a point in the back of my mind, if you’ll grant I’ve got a mind.”

  “Preston Halliday has one, his rep confirms it. You’re a shark, if my colleagues are accurate. But I knew someone named Avery, not Press.”

  “Then it’s Fowler talking, you’re more comfortable with him.”

  “What’s the point?”

  “A couple of questions first. You see, I want to be accurate because you’ve got a reputation too. They say you’re one of the best on the international scene, but the people I’ve talked to can’t understand why Joel Converse stays with a relatively small if entrenched firm when he’s good enough to get flashier. Or even go out on his own.”

  “Are you hiring?”

  “Not me, I don’t take partners. Courtesy of John Halliday, attorney-at-law, San Francisco.”

  Converse looked at the second half of the croissant and decided against it. “What was the question, counselor?”

  “Why are you where you’re at?”

  “I’m paid well and literally run the department; no one sits on my shoulder. Also I don’t care to take chances. There’s a little matter of alimony, amiable but demanding.”

  “Child support, too?”

  “None, thank heavens.”

  “What happened when you got out of the Navy? How did you feel?” Halliday again leaned forward, his elbow on the table, chin cupped in his hand—the inquisitive student. Or something else.

  “Who are the people you’ve talked to?” asked Converse.

  “Privileged information, for the moment, counselor. Will you accep
t that?”

  Joel smiled. “You are a shark.… Okay, the gospel according to Converse. I came back from that disruption of my life wanting it all. Angry, to be sure, but wanting everything. The nonstudent became a scholar of sorts, and I’d be a liar if I didn’t admit to a fair amount of preferential treatment. I went back to Amherst and raced through two and a half years in three semesters and a summer. Then Duke offered me an accelerated program and I went there, followed by some specializations at Georgetown while I interned.”

  “You interned in Washington?”

  Converse nodded. “Yes.”

  “For whom?”

  “Clifford’s firm.”

  Halliday whistled softly, sitting back. “That’s golden territory, a passport to Blackstone’s heaven as well as the multinationals.”

  “I told you I had preferential treatment.”

  “Was that when you thought about the foreign service? While you were at Georgetown? In Washington?”

  Again Joel nodded, squinting as a passing flash of sunlight bounced off a grille somewhere on the lakefront boulevard. “Yes,” he replied quietly.

  “You could have had it,” said Halliday.

  “They wanted me for the wrong reasons, all the wrong reasons. When they realized I had a different set of rules in mind, I couldn’t get a twenty-cent tour of the State Department.”

  “What about the Clifford firm? You were a hell of an image, even for them.” The Californian raised his hands above the table, palms forward. “I know, I know. The wrong reasons.”

  “Wrong numbers,” insisted Converse. “There were forty-plus lawyers on the masthead and another two hundred on the payroll. I’d have spent ten years trying to find the men’s room and another ten getting the key. That wasn’t what I was looking for.”

  “What were you looking for?”

  “Pretty much what I’ve got. I told you, the money’s good and I run the international division. The latter’s just as important to me.”

  “You couldn’t have known that when you joined,” objected Halliday.

  “But I did. At least I had a fair indication. When Talbot, Brooks and Simon—as you put it, that small but entrenched firm I’m with—came to me, we reached understanding. If after four or five years I proved out, I’d take over for Brooks. He was the overseas man and was getting tired of adjusting to all those time zones.” Again Converse paused. “Apparently I proved out.”

  “And just as apparently somewhere along the line you got married.”

  Joel leaned back in the chair. “Is this necessary?”

  “It’s not even pertinent, but I’m intensely interested.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s a natural reaction,” said Halliday, his eyes amused. “I think you’d feel the same way if you were me and I were you, and I’d gone through what you went through.”

  “Shark dead ahead,” mumbled Converse.

  “You don’t have to respond, of course, counselor.”

  “I know, but oddly enough I don’t mind. She’s taken her share of abuse because of that what-I’ve-been-through business.” Joel broke the croissant but made no effort to remove it from the plate. “Comfort, convenience, and a vague image of stability,” he said.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Her words,” continued Joel. “She said that I got married so I’d have a place to go and someone to fix the meals and do the laundry, and eliminate the irritating, time-consuming foolishness that goes with finding someone to sleep with. Also by legitimizing her, I projected the proper image.… ‘And, Christ, did I have to play the part’—also her words.”

  “Were they true?”

  “I told you, when I came back I wanted it all and she was part of it. Yes, they were true. Cook, maid, laundress, bedmate, and an acceptable, attractive appendage. She told me she could never figure out the pecking order.”

  “She sounds like quite a girl.”

  “She was. She is.”

  “Do I discern a note of possible reconciliation?”

  “No way.” Converse shook his head, a partial smile on his lips but only a trace of humor in his eyes. “She was also conned and it shouldn’t have happened. Anyway, I like my current status, I really do. Some of us just weren’t meant for a hearth and roast turkey, even if we sometimes wish we were.”

  “It’s not a bad life.”

  “Are you into it?” asked Joel quickly so as to shift the emphasis.

  “Right up with orthodontists and SAT scores. Five kids and one wife. I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  “But you travel a lot, don’t you?”

  “We have great homecomings.” Halliday again leaned forward, as if studying a witness. “So you have no real attachments now, no one to run back to.”

  “Talbot, Brooks and Simon might find that offensive. Also my father. Since Mother died we have dinner once a week when he’s not flying all over the place, courtesy of a couple of lifetime passes.”

  “He still gets around a lot?”

  “One week he’s in Copenhagen, the next in Hong Kong. He enjoys himself; he keeps moving. He’s sixty-eight and spoiled rotten.”

  “I think I’d like him.”

  Converse shrugged, again smiling. “You might not. He thinks all lawyers are piss ants, me included. He’s the last of the white-scarved flyboys.”

  “I’m sure I’d like him.… But outside of your employers and your father, there are no—shall we say—priority entanglements in your life.”

  “If you mean women, there are several and we’re good friends, and I think this conversation has gone about as far as it should go.”

  “I told you, I had a point,” said Halliday.

  “Then why not get to it, counselor? Interrogatories are over.”

  The Californian nodded. “All right, I will. The people I spoke with wanted to know how free you were to travel.”

  “The answer is that I’m not. I’ve got a job and a responsibility to the company I work for. Today’s Wednesday; we’ll have the merger tied up by Friday, I’ll take the weekend off and be back on Monday—when I’m expected.”

  “Suppose arrangements could be made that Talbot, Brooks and Simon found acceptable?”

  “That’s presumptuous.”

  “And you found very difficult to reject.”

  “That’s preposterous.”

  “Try me,” said Halliday. “Five hundred thousand for accepting on a best-efforts basis, one million if you pull it off.”

  “Now you’re insane.” A second flash of light blinded Converse, this one remaining stationary longer than the first. He raised his left hand to block it from his eyes as he stared at the man he had once known as Avery Fowler. “Also, ethics notwithstanding because you haven’t a damn thing to win this morning, your timing smells. I don’t like getting offers—even crazy offers—from attorneys I’m about to meet across a table.”

  “Two separate entities, and you’re right, I don’t have a damn thing to win or lose. You and Aaron did it all, and I’m so ethical, I’m billing the Swiss only for my time—minimum basis—because no expertise was called for. My recommendation this morning will be to accept the package as it stands, not even a comma changed. Where’s the conflict?”

  “Where’s the sanity?” asked Joel. “To say nothing of those arrangements Talbot, Brooks and Simon will find acceptable. You’re talking roughly about two and a half top years of salary and bonuses for nodding my head.”

  “Nod it,” said Halliday. “We need you.”

  “We? That’s a new wrinkle, isn’t it? I thought it was they. They being the people you spoke with. Spell it out, Press.”

  A. Preston Halliday locked his eyes with Joel’s. “I’m part of them, and something is happening that shouldn’t be happening. We want you to put a company out of business. It’s bad news and it’s dangerous. We’ll give you all the tools we can.”

  “What company?”

  “The name wouldn’t mean anything, it’s not registered. Let?
??s call it a government-in-exile.”

  “A what?”

  “A group of like-minded men who are in the process of building a portfolio of resources so extensive it’ll guarantee them influence where they shouldn’t have it—authority where they shouldn’t have it.”

  “Where is that?”

  “In places this poor inept world can’t afford. They can do it because no one expects them to.”

  “You’re pretty cryptic.”

  “I’m frightened. I know them.”

  “But you have the tools to go after them,” said Converse. “I presume that means they’re vulnerable.”

  Haliday nodded. “We think they are. We have some leads, but it’ll take digging, piecing things together. There’s every reason to believe they’ve broken laws, engaged in activities and transactions prohibited by their respective governments.”

  Joel was silent for a moment, studying the Californian. “Governments?” he asked. “Plural?”

  “Yes.” Halliday’s voice dropped. “They’re different nationalities.”

  “But one company?” said Converse. “One corporation?”

  “In a manner of speaking, yes.”

  “How about a simple yes?”

  “It’s not that simple.”

  “I’ll tell you what is,” interrupted Joel. “You’ve got leads, so you go after the big bad wolves. I’m currently and satisfactorily employed.”

  Halliday paused, then spoke. “No, you’re not,” he said softly.

  Again there was silence, each man appraising the other. “What did you say?” asked Converse, his eyes blue ice.

  “Your firm understands. You can have a leave of absence.”

  “You presumptuous son of a bitch! Who gave you the right even to approach—”

  “General George Marcus Delavane,” Halliday broke in. He delivered the name in a monotone.

  It was as if a bolt of lightning had streaked down through the blinding sunlight burning Joel’s eyes, turning the ice into fire. Cracks of thunder followed, exploding in his head.

  The pilots sat around the long rectangular table in the wardroom, sipping coffee and staring down into the brown liquid or up at the gray walls, no one caring to break the silence. An hour ago they had been sweeping over Pak Song, firing the earth, interdicting the advancing North Vietnamese battalions, giving vital time to the regrouping ARVN and American troops who soon would be under brutal siege. They had completed the strike and returned to the carrier—all but one. They had lost their commanding officer. Lieutenant Senior Grade Gordon Ramsey had been hit by a fluke rocket that had winged out of its trajectory over the coastline and zeroed in on Ramsey’s fuselage; the explosion had filled the jet streams, death at six hundred miles an hour in the air, life erased in the blinking of an eye. A severe weather front had followed hard upon the squadron; there would be no more strikes, perhaps for several days. There would be time to think and that was not a pleasant thought.