The Aquitaine Progression: A Novel

  “I really don’t understand.”

  “Converse is a point, but only a point. He’s exploring, studying the forward terrain, trying to understand the tactical forces ahead of him. If he were anything else, he’d deal directly through legitimate authorities and legitimate methods. There’d be no reason for him to use a false name or give false information—or to run away, forcibly overcoming a man he thinks is trying to stop him. He’s an infantry point who has certain information but doesn’t know where he’s going. Well, a point can be sucked into a trap, the advancing company ambushed. Oh, yes, we must give him his conference!”

  “I submit that’s extraordinarily dangerous. He has to know who recruited him, who gave him the names, his sources. We can break him physically or chemically and get that information.”

  “He probably doesn’t have it,” explained the man patiently. “Infantry points are not privileged to know command decisions; frankly, if they were, they might turn back. We have to know more about this Converse, and by six o’clock tonight I’ll have every report, every résumé, every word ever written about him. There’s something here we can’t see.”

  “We already know he’s resourceful,” said the Britisher. “From what we can piece together in Paris, he’s considered an outstanding attorney. If he sees through us or gets away from us, it could be catastrophic. He will have met with our people, spoken with them.”

  “Then once you find him don’t let him out of your sight. By tomorrow I’ll have other instructions for you.”

  “Oh?”

  “Those records that are being gathered from all over the country. For a man to do what Converse is doing, he had to be manipulated very carefully, very thoroughly, a driving intensity instilled in him. It’s the manipulators we have to find. They’re not even who we think they are. I’ll be in touch tomorrow.”

  George Marcus Delavane replaced the telephone in its cradle and slowly, awkwardly twisted his upper body around in the chair. He gazed at the strange, fragmented map as the first light of dawn fired the eastern sky, its orange glow filling the windows. Then, with effort, his hands gripping the arms of the steel chair, he pivoted himself around again, his eyes on the stark pool of light on the desk. He moved his hands to his waist and carefully, trembling, unbuttoned his dark-red velvet jacket, forcing his gaze downward, ordering himself to observe the terrible truth once more. He stared past the five-inch-wide leather strap that diagonally held him in place, now commanding his eyes to focus, to accept with loathing what had been done to him.

  There was nothing to see but the edge of the thick steel seat and, below it, the polished wood of the floor. The long, sturdy legs that had carried his trained, muscular body through battles in the snow and the mud, through triumphant parades in the sunlight, through ceremonies of honor and defiance, had been stolen from him. The doctors had told him that his diseased legs were instruments of death that would kill the rest of him. He clenched his fists and pressed them slowly down on the desk, his throat filled with a silent scream.

  9

  “Goddamn you, Converse, who do you think you are?” cried Connal Fitzpatrick, his voice low, furious, as he caught up with Joel, who was walking rapidly between the tall trees near the Alter Zoll.

  “Someone who knew Avery Fowler as a boy and watched a man named Press Halliday die a couple of hundred years later in Geneva,” replied Converse, quickening his pace, heading toward the gates of the national landmark where there were taxis.

  “Don’t pull that crap on me! I knew Press far better and far longer than you ever did. For Christ’s sake, he was married to my sister! We were close friends for fifteen years!”

  “You sound like a kid playing one-upmanship. Get lost.”

  Fitzpatrick rushed forward, pivoting in front of Joel, blocking him. “It’s true! Please, I can help, I want to help! I know the language; you don’t! I have connections here; you don’t.”

  “You also have your own idea about a deadline, which I don’t. Get out of my way, sailor.”

  “Come on,” pleaded the naval officer. “So I didn’t get everything I wanted. Don’t crowd me out.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  Fitzpatrick shifted his weight awkwardly. “You’ve come on strong before yourself, haven’t you, counselor?”

  “Not if I didn’t know the circumstances.”

  “Sometimes it’s a way of finding them out.”

  “Not with me, it isn’t.”

  “Then my error was in not knowing you; the circumstances were beyond that scope. With someone else it might have worked.”

  “Now you’re talking tactics, but you meant it when you said ‘two days.’ ”

  “You’re damned right I did,” agreed Connal, nodding. “Because I want whatever it is exposed, I want whoever it is to pay! I’m mad, Converse, I’m mad as hell. I don’t want this thing to linger and die away. The longer nothing is done the less people care; you know that as well as I do and probably better. Have you ever tried to reopen an old case? I have with a few courts-martial where I thought things had been screwed up. Well, I learned something: the system doesn’t like it! You know why?”

  “Yes I do,” said Joel. “There are too many new cases in the dockets, too many rewards in going after the current ones.”

  “Bingo, counselor. Press deserves better than that. Meagen deserves better.”

  “Yes, he does—they do. But there’s a complication that Press Halliday understood better than either of us. Put simply—and cruelly—his life wasn’t terribly important compared with what he was going after.”

  “That’s pretty damned cruel,” said the officer.

  “It’s very damned accurate,” said Converse. “Your brother-in-law would have wrestled you to the mat, burns and all, for walking into this and trying to call the shots. Back off, Commander. Go back to the funeral.”

  “No. I want to come on board. I withdraw the deadline.”

  “How considerate of you.”

  “You call the shots,” said Fitzpatrick, nodding again, exhaling in defeat. “I’ll do what you tell me to do.”

  “Why?” asked Joel, their eyes locked.

  The Navy lawyer did not flinch; he spoke simply. “Because Press trusted you. He said you were the best.”

  “Except for him,” Converse added, permitting his expression to relax slightly, with a hint of a smile. “All right, I believe you, but there are ground rules. You either accept them or, as you put it, on board you’re not.”

  “Let’s hear them. I’ll wince inside so you can’t see it.”

  “Yes,” agreed Joel, “you’ll wince. To begin with, I’ll tell you only what I think you have to know in a given situation. Whatever you develop will be on your own; that way it’s free-wheeling, no way can you tip the evidence we’ve compiled.”

  “That’s rough.”

  “That’s the way it is. I’ll give you a name now and then when I think it will open a door, but it will always be a name you heard second or third hand. You’re inventive; figure out your own unidentifiable sources so as to protect yourself.”

  “I’ve done that on quite a few waterfronts.”

  “You have? How good are you at playacting?”

  “What?”

  “Never mind, I think you just answered that. You didn’t go down to those waterfronts in your dress whites as a lieutenant commander.”

  “Hell, no.”

  “You’ll do.”

  “You’ve got to tell me something.”

  “I’ll give you an overview, a lot of abstractions and a few facts. As we progress—if we progress—you’ll learn more. If you think you’ve put it together, tell me. That’s essential. We can’t risk blowing everything while you operate under wrong assumptions.”

  “Who’s ‘we’?”

  “I wish to hell I knew.”

  “That’s comforting.”

  “Yes, isn’t it.”

  “Why don’t you tell me everything now?” asked Fitzpatrick.
r />   “Because Meagen Halliday lost a husband. I don’t want to see her lose a brother.”

  “I’ll accept that.”

  “By the way, how long have you got? I mean you’re on active duty.”

  “My initial leave is thirty days, with extensions as warranted. Christ, an only sister with five kids and her husband is killed. I could probably write my own ticket.”

  “We’ll stick to the thirty days, Commander. It’s more than we’re allowed. We may not have even two weeks.”

  “Start talking, Converse.”

  “Let’s walk,” said Joel, heading back to the Alter Zoll wall and the view of the Rhine below.

  The “overview” delivered by Converse described a current situation in which like-minded individuals in various countries were coming together and using their considerable influence to get around the laws and ship armaments and technology to hostile governments and organizations.

  “For what purpose?” asked Fitzpatrick.

  “I could say ‘profits,’ but you’d see through it.”

  “As the only motive, yes,” said the Navy lawyer pensively. “Influential people—as I understand the word ‘influential’ as related to existing laws—would operate singly or at best in small groups within their own countries. That is, if profits were the primary objective. They wouldn’t coordinate outside; it isn’t necessary. It’s a sellers’ market; they’d only water down the profits.”

  “Bingo, counselor.”

  “So?” Fitzpatrick looked at Joel, as they strolled toward a break in the stone wall where a bronzed cannon was in place.

  “Destabilization,” said Converse. “Mass destabilization. A series of flash points in highly volatile areas that will call into question the ability of democratic governments to cope with the violence.”

  “I’ve got to ask you again, for what purpose?”

  “You’re quick,” said Joel, “so I’ll let you answer that. What happens when an existing political structure is crippled by disorder, when it can no longer function, when things are out of control?”

  The two men stopped by the cannon, the naval officer’s eyes following the line of the huge, threatening barrel. “It’s restructured or replaced,” he said, turning to look at Converse.

  “Bingo again,” said Converse softly. “That’s the overview.”

  “It doesn’t make sense.” Fitzpatrick creased his eyes in the sunlight, as well as in thought. “Let me recap. Am I allowed?”

  “You’re allowed.”

  “ ‘Influential individuals’ connotes people in pretty good standing in very high places. Assuming we’re not talking about an out-and-out criminal element—which the lack of a pure profit motive would seem to eliminate—we’re talking about reasonably respectable citizens. Is there another definition I’m not aware of?”

  “If there is, I’m not aware of it, either.”

  “Then why would they want to destabilize the political structures that guarantee them their influence? It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Ever hear of the phrase ‘Everything’s relative’?”

  “To a fare-thee-well. So what?”

  “So think.”

  “About what?”

  “Influence.” Joel took out his cigarettes, shook one to his lips and lighted it. The younger man stared at the Seven Mountains of the Westerwald in the distance.

  “They want more,” said Fitzgerald slowly, turning back to Converse.

  “They want it all,” said Joel. “And the only way they can get it is to prove that their solutions are the only solutions, all others having proved worthless against the eruption of chaos suddenly everywhere.”

  Connal’s expression was fixed, immobile, as he absorbed Converse’s words. “Holy Mary …” he began, his voice a whisper, yet still a cry. “An international plebiscite—the peoples’ will—for the almighty state. Fascism. It’s multinational fascism.”

  “I’m sick of saying ‘Bingo,’ so I’ll say ‘Right on,’ counselor. You’ve just said it better than any of us.”

  “Us? Which is ‘we,’ but you don’t know who you are!” added Fitzpatrick, both bewildered and angry.

  “Live with it,” said Joel. “As I have.”

  “Why?”

  “Avery Fowler. Remember him?”

  “Oh, Jesus!”

  “And an old man on the island of Mykonos. That’s all we have. But what they said is true. It’s real. I’ve seen it, and that’s all I need to know. In Geneva, Avery said there was very little time left. Beale refined it; he called it a countdown. Whatever’s going to happen will happen before your leave is up—two weeks and four days is the earliest report. That’s what I meant before.”

  “Oh my God,” whispered Fitzpatrick. “What else can you tell me—will you tell me?”

  “Very little.”

  “The embassy,” Connal interrupted. “It’s been a couple of years, but I was there. I worked with the military attaché. I don’t need any introductions. We can get help there.”

  “We can also get killed there.”

  “What?”

  “It’s not clean. Those three men you saw at the airport, the ones from the embassy—”

  “What about them?”

  “They’re on the other side.”

  “I don’t believe you!”

  “Why do you think they were at the airport?”

  “To meet you, talk to you. There could be a dozen different reasons. Whether you know it or not, you’re considered a hotshot lawyer on the international scene. Foreign service personnel frequently want to touch base with guys like you.”

  “I’ve had this conversation before,” said Converse, irritated.

  “What does that mean?”

  “If they wanted to see me, why didn’t they go to the gate?”

  “Because they thought you’d come into the terminal like everybody else.”

  “And when I didn’t—according to you—they were upset, angry. That’s what you said.”

  “They were.”

  “All the more reason to meet me at the gate.”

  Fitzpatrick frowned. “Still, that’s kind of flimsy—”

  “The woman. Do you remember the woman?”

  “Of course.”

  “She spotted me in Copenhagen. She followed me. Also, there’s something else. Later, on the platform, all four were picked up by a car belonging to a man we know—we know—is part of everything I’ve described to you. They drove to the embassy, and you’ll have to take my word for that. I saw them.”

  Connal fixed his gaze on Joel, accepting what he had heard. “Oh, Jesus,” he said. “Okay, no embassy. What about Brussels, SHAPE? There’s a Navy intelligence unit; I’ve dealt with those people before.”

  “Not yet. Maybe not at all.”

  “I thought you wanted to use the uniform, my connections.”

  “Maybe I will. It’s nice to know they’re there.”

  “Well, what do you want me to do? I’ve got to do something.”

  “Are you really fluent in German?”

  “Hochdeutsch, Schwäbisch, Bayerisch, and several dialects in between. I told you, I can handle five languages—”

  “You’ve made it obnoxiously clear,” interrupted Converse. “There’s a woman named Fishbein here in Bonn. That’s the first name I’m going to give you. She’s involved; we’re not sure how, but she’s suspected of being a conduit—a relayer of information. I want you to meet her, talk with her, establish a relationship. We’ll have to think of something that’ll be convincing in order for you to do it. She’s in her forties, and she’s the youngest daughter of Hermann Göring. She married a survivor of the holocaust for obvious reasons; he’s long gone. Any ideas?”

  “Sure,” said Fitzpatrick without hesitating. “Inheritance. There are a couple of thousand last wills and testaments every year that the deceased want processed through the military. They’re from crazies who leave everything they’ve got to the other survivors. The true Aryan Germani
c stock and all that horseshit. We bounce them back to the civil courts, which don’t know what to do with them, so they end up in limbo and eventually in the Treasury Department’s coffers.”

  “No kidding?”

  “Eins, zwei, drei. Believe me, those people mean it.”

  “Can you use the device?”

  “How about a million-plus legacy from a small Midwest brewer of lager beer?”

  “You’ll do,” said Joel. “You’re on board.”

  Converse did not mention Aquitaine or George Marcus Delavane or Jacques-Louis Bertholdier or Erich Leifhelm, or twenty-odd names at the State Department and the Pentagon. Nor did he describe the network as it appeared in the dossiers, or as described by Dr. Edward Beale on Mykonos. He gave Connal Fitzpatrick the barest bones of the body of information. Joel’s reasoning was far less benign than he had stated: if the Navy lawyer was taken and interrogated—no matter how brutally—there was little of substance he could reveal.

  “You’re not really telling me a hell of a lot,” said Fitzpatrick.

  “I’ve told you enough to get your head blown off, and that’s not a phrase normally in my lexicon.”

  “Nor mine.”

  “Then consider me a nice fellow,” said Converse, as the two men headed for the entrance gate of the Alter Zoll.

  “On the other hand,” continued Halliday’s brother-in-law, “you’ve been through a lot more than I ever have. I read that stuff about you in the security files—files, not file—they were cross-correlated with the files of a lot of other prisoners. You were something else. According to most of the men in those camps, you held them together—until they put you into solitary.”

  “They were wrong, sailor. I was shaking and scared to death and would have fucked a Peking duck to save my skin.”

  “That’s not what the files say. They say—”

  “I’m really not interested, Commander,” said Joel as they passed through the ornate gate, “but I’ve got an immediate problem you can help solve.”

  “What is it?”

  “I gave my word I’d call Dowling on some mobile phone line. I wouldn’t know how to ask for it.”