The Aquitaine Progression: A Novel

  “The mind is a highly complex and delicate instrument. The stresses of the past can leap forward from years ago—”

  “Get off it, Larry!” shouted Valerie. “Save it for a jury, but don’t pin that nonsense on Converse!”

  “You’re upset.”

  “You’re damned right I am! Because you’re looking for explanations that don’t fit the man! They fit what you’ve been told. By those people you say you have to respect.”

  “Only in the sense that they’re knowledgeable—they have access to information we don’t have. Then there’s the overriding fact that they hadn’t the faintest idea who Joel Converse was until the American Bar Association gave them the address and telephone number of Talbot, Brooks and Simon.”

  “And you believed them? With everything you know about Washington you simply accepted their word? How many times did Joel come back from a trip to Washington and say the same thing to me? ‘Larry says they’re lying. They don’t know what to do, so they’re lying.’ ”

  “Valerie,” said the attorney sternly. “This isn’t a case of bureaucratic clearance, and after all these years I think I can tell the difference between someone playing games and a man who’s genuinely angry—angry and frightened, I should add. The man who reached me was an Undersecretary of State, Brewster Tolland—I had a call-back confirmation—and he wasn’t putting on an act. He was appalled, furious, and, as I say, a very worried man.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “The truth, of course. Not only because it was the right thing to do, but it wouldn’t help Joel to do anything else. If he’s ill he needs help, not complicity.”

  “And you deal with Washington every week.”

  “Several times a week, and of course it was a consideration.”

  “I’m sorry, Larry, that was unfair.”

  “But realistic, and I meant what I said. It wouldn’t help Joel to lie for him. You see, I really believe something’s happened. He’s not himself.”

  “Wait a minute,” cried Valerie, the obvious striking her. “Maybe it’s not Joel!”

  “It’s him,” said Talbot simply.

  “Why? Just because people you don’t know in Washington say it is?”

  “No, Val,” replied the lawyer. “Because I spoke with René in Paris before Washington entered the picture.”

  “Mattilon?”

  “Joel went to Paris to ask for René’s help. He lied to him. just as he lied to me, but it was more than the lies—Mattilon and I agreed on that. It was something he saw in Joel’s eyes, something I heard in his voice. An unhinging, a form of desperation; René saw it and I heard it. He tried to conceal it from both of us but he couldn’t. When I last spoke to him, he hung up before we’d finished talking, in the middle of the sentence, his voice echoing like a zombie’s.”

  Valerie stared at the harsh, dancing reflections of sunlight off the waters of Cape Ann. “René agreed with you?” she asked, barely above a whisper.

  “Everything I’ve just told you we said to each other.”

  “Larry, I’m frightened.”

  Chaim Abrahms walked into the room, his heavy boots pounding the floor. “So he did it!” shouted the Israeli. “The Mossad was right, he’s a hellhound!”

  Erich Leifhelm sat behind his desk, the only other person in the book-lined study. “Patrols, alarms, dogs!” cried the German, slamming his frail hand on the red blotter. “How did he do it?”

  “I repeat—a hellhound—that’s what our specialist called him. The longer he’s restricted, the angrier he gets. It goes back a long time. So our provocateur starts his Odyssey before we planned. Have you been in touch with the others?”

  “I’ve called London,” said Leifhelm, breathing deeply. “He’ll reach Paris, and Bertholdier will have the units flown up from Marseilles, one to Brussels, the other here to Bonn. We can’t waste an hour.”

  “You’re looking for him now, of course.”

  “Natürlich! Every inch of the shoreline for miles in both directions. Every back road and path that leads up from the river and into the city.”

  “He can elude you; he’s proven it.”

  “Where can he go, sabra? To his own embassy? There he’s a dead man. To the Bonn police or the Staatspolizei? He’ll be put in an armored van and brought back here. He goes nowhere.”

  “I heard that when he left Paris, and I heard it again when he flew into Bonn. Errors were made in both places, both costing a great many hours. I tell you I’m more concerned now than at any moment in three wars and a lifetime of skirmishes.”

  “Be reasonable, Chaim, and try to be calm. He has no clothes but what he wears in the river and the mud; he possesses no identification, no passport, no money. He doesn’t speak the language—”

  “He has money!” yelled Abrahms, suddenly remembering. “When he was under the needle, he spoke of a large sum of money promised in Geneva and delivered on Mykonos.”

  “And where is it?” asked Leifhelm. “In this desk, that’s where it is. Nearly seventy thousand American dollars. He hasn’t got a deutsche mark in his pocket, or a watch or a piece of jewelry. A man in filthy, soaked clothing, with no identification, no money, no coherent use of the language, and telling an outlandish tale of imprisonment involving der General Leifhelm, would undoubtedly be put in jail as a vagrant or a psychopath or both. In which case, we shall be informed instantly and our people will bring him to us. And bear in mind, sabra, by ten o’clock tomorrow morning it won’t make any difference. That was your contribution, the Mossad’s ingenuity. We simply had the resources to make it come to pass—as is said in the Old Testament.”

  Abrahms stood in front of the enormous desk, arms akimbo above the pockets of his safari jacket. “So the Jew and the field marshal set it all in motion. Ironical, isn’t it, Nazi?”

  “Not as much as you think, Jude. Impurity, as with beauty, is in the eye of the frightened beholder. You are not my enemy; you never were. If more of us in the old days had your commitment, your audacity, we never would have lost the war.”

  “I know that,” said the sabra. “I watched and listened when you reached the English Channel. You lost it then. You were weak.”

  “It was not us! It was the frightened Debutanten in Berlin!”

  “Then keep them away when we create a truly new order, German. We can’t afford weakness.”

  “You do try me, Chaim.”

  “I mean to.”

  The chauffeur felt the bandages on his face, the swelling around his eyes and his lips painful to the touch. He was in his own room, where the doctor had turned on the television—probably as an insult, as he could barely see it.

  He was disgraced. The prisoner had escaped in spite of his own formidable talents and the supposedly impassable pack of Dobermans. The American had used the silver whistle, that much the other guards had told him, and the fact that it had been removed from his neck was a further embarrassment.

  He would not add to his disgrace. With blurred vision he had gone through his pockets—which no one in the panic of the chase had thought to do—and found that his billfold, his expensive Swiss watch, and all his money had been taken. He would say nothing about them. He was embarrassed enough, and any such revelations might be cause for dismissal—or conceivably his death.

  * * *

  Joel headed for the shoreline as fast as he could, submerging his head underwater whenever the beam of the searchlight swept toward him. The boat was a large motor launch, its bass-toned engines signifying power, its sudden turns and circles evidence of rapid maneuverability. It hugged the overgrown banks, then would sweep out toward the open water at the slightest sign of an object in the river.

  Converse felt the soft mud below; he half swam, half trudged toward the darkest spot on the shore, the chauffeur’s gun securely in his belt. The boat approached, its penetrating beam studying every foot, every moving branch or limb or cluster of river weeds. Joel took a deep breath and slowly lowered himself under the water,
his face angled up toward the surface, his eyes open, his vision a muddy dark blur. The searchlight grew brighter and seemed to hover above him for an eternity; he inched his way to the left and the beam moved away. He rose to the surface, his lungs bursting, but suddenly realized he could make no sound, he could not fill his chest with gasps of air. For directly above him, less than five feet away loomed the broad stern of the motor launch, bobbing in the water as if idling. The dark figure of a man was peering through very large binoculars at the riverbank.

  Converse was bewildered; it was too dark now to see anything even with magnification. Then he remembered, and the memory accounted for the size of the binoculars. The man was focusing through infrared lenses; they had been used by patrols in Southeast Asia and were often the difference, he had been told, between search-and-destroy and search-and-be-destroyed. They revealed objects in the darkness, soldiers in the darkness.

  The boat moved forward, but the idle increased only slightly, entering the slowest of trawling speeds. Again Joel was confused. What had brought Leifhelm’s searching party to this particular spot on the riverfront? There were several other boats behind and out in the distance, their searchlights sweeping the water, but they kept moving, circling. Why did the huge motor launch concentrate on this stretch of the shore? Could they have spotted him through infrared binoculars? If they had, they were proceeding very strangely; the North Vietnamese had been far swifter—more aggressive, more effective.

  Silently, Converse lowered himself beneath the surface and breaststroked out beyond the boat. Seconds later he raised his head above the water, his vision clear, and he began to understand the odd maneuverings of Leifhelm’s patrol. Beyond the darkest part of the riverbank into which he had lurched for concealment were the lights he had seen eight or nine minutes ago, before the launch and its searchlight monopolized all his attention. He had thought they were the lights of a small village, but he was in the wrong part of the world. Instead they were the inside lights of four or five small houses, a river colony with a common dock, summer homes perhaps of those fortunate enough to own waterfront property.

  If there were houses and a dock, there had to be a drive—an open passage up to the road or roads leading into Bonn and the surrounding towns. Leifhelm’s men were combing every inch of the riverbank, cautiously, quietly, the searchlights angled down so as not to alarm the inhabitants or forewarn the fugitive if he had reached the cluster of cottages and was on his way up to the unseen road or roads. A ship’s radio would be activated, its frequency aligned to those in cars roaming above, ready to spring the trap. In some ways it was the Huong Khe again for Joel, the obstacles far less primitive but no less lethal. And then as now there was a time to wait, to wait in the black silence and let the hunters make their moves.

  They made them quickly. The launch slid into the dock, the powerful twin screws quietly churning in reverse, as a man jumped off the bow with a heavy line and looped it around a piling. Three others followed, instantly racing off the short pier up onto the sloping lawn, one heading diagonally to the right, the other two toward the first house. What they were doing was obvious: one man would position himself in the bordering woods of the downhill entrance drive while his colleagues checked the houses, looking for signs of entry.

  Converse’s arms and legs began to feel like weights, each an anvil he could barely support, much less keep moving, but there was no choice. The beam of the searchlight kept moving up and down the base of the riverbank, its spill illuminating everything in its vicinity. A head surfacing at the wrong moment would be blown out of the water. Huong Khe. Tread water in the reeds. Do it! Don’t die!

  He knew the waiting was no longer than thirty minutes, but it seemed more like thirty hours or thirty days suspended in a floating torture rack. His arms and legs were now in agony; sharp pains shot through his body everywhere; muscles formed cramps that he dispersed by holding his breath and floating in a fetal position, his thumbs pressing relentlessly into the cores of the knotted muscles. Twice while gasping for air he swallowed water, coughing it out below the surface, his nostrils drowning, and twice found the air again. There were moments when it crossed his inner consciousness that it would be so simple just to drift away. Huong Khe. Don’t do it! Don’t die!

  Finally through waterlogged eyes he saw the men returning. One, two … three?… They ran down to the dock, to the man with the rope. No! The man with the rope had rushed forward! His eyes were playing tricks! Only two men had run onto the dock, the first man joining them, asking questions. The line man returned to the piling and released the rope; the other two jumped on board. The first man once again joined his companions, now on the bow of the launch—leaving another on shore, a lone observer somewhere unseen between the riverbank and the road above. Huong Khe. An infantry scout separated from his patrol.

  The motor launch swung away from the dock and sped within a few feet past Joel, who was buffeted underwater by its wake. Once more the boat veered toward the shoreline and slowed down, its searchlight peering into the dense foliage of the bank, heading west, back toward Leifhelm’s estate. Converse held his head above the surface, his mouth wide open, swallowing all the air he could as he made his way slowly—very slowly—into the mud. He pulled himself up through the wet reeds and branches until he felt dry ground. Huong Khe. He pulled the underbrush over him as best he could, finally covering his upturned face. He would rest until he felt the blood flowing steadily if painfully through his limbs, until the muscles of his neck lost their tension—it was always the neck; the neck was the warning signal—and then he would consider the man on the dark hill above him.

  He dozed, until a slapping wave below woke him. He pushed the branches and the leaves away from his face and looked at the chauffeur’s watch on his wrist, squinting at the weak radium dial. He had slept for nearly an hour—fitfully, to be sure, the slightest sounds forcing his eyelids briefly open, but he had rested. He rolled his neck back and forth, then moved his arms and legs. Everything still hurt, but the excruciating pain was gone. And now he faced a man on a hill above him. He tried to examine his thoughts. He was frightened, of course, but his anger would control that terrible fear; it had done so before, it would do so now. The objective was all that mattered—some kind of sanctuary, a place where he could think and put things together and somehow make the most important telephone call in his life. To Larry Talbot and Nathan Simon in New York. Unless he could do these things he was dead—as Connal Fitzpatrick was undoubtedly dead. Jesus! What had they done to him? A man with the purity of vengeance purely sought caught in a diseased web called Aquitaine! It was an unfair world.… But he could not think about it; he had to concentrate on a man on the hill.

  He crept on his hands and knees. Stretch by stretch he crawled through the woods bordering the dirt road that wound up the hill from the lawn and the riverbank. Whenever a twig crunched or a rock was displaced he stopped, waiting for the moment to dissolve back into the sounds of the forest. He kept telling himself he had the advantage; he was the unexpected. It helped counteract the fear of the darkness and the knowledge that a physical confrontation was before him. Like the patrol scout years ago in the Huong Khe, that man above him now had things he needed. The combat could not be avoided, so it was best not to think about it but to simply force himself into a mind-set empty of any feeling, and do it. But do it well, his mind had to understand that, too. There could be no hesitation, no intrusions of conscience—and no sound of a gun, only the use of the steel.

  He saw him, oddly enough, silhouetted in the distant glare of a single streetlamp far above on a road. The man was leaning against the trunk of a tree and facing down, his sweep of vision taking in everything below. As Joel crept up the slope the space between his hands and knees became inches, the stops more frequent, silence more vital. He made his way in an arc above the tree and the man and then started down, like a large cat descending on its prey. He was the predator he had once been long ago, everything blocked out but the requ
irement of the lifeline.

  He was within six feet; he could hear the man’s breathing. There was a snap beneath him. A branch! The scout turned, his eyes alive in the glare of light. Converse lunged, the barrel of the gun gripped in his hand. He crashed the steel handle into the German’s temple and then into his throat. The man fell backward, dazed but not unconscious; he started to scream. Joel sprang for his enemy’s neck and half choked him before bringing the steel handle down with all his strength on the German’s forehead; instantly there was an eruption of blood and crushed tissue.

  Silence. No movement. Another scout separated from his patrol had been taken out. And as he had years ago, Converse permitted himself no feeling. It was done, and he had to go on.

  The man’s dry clothes, including the dark leather jacket, fit reasonably well. Like most small or medium-sized commanders, Leifhelm surrounded himself with tall men, as much to protect himself as to proclaim his superiority over his larger compatriots.

  There was also another gun; Joel struggled with the clip, removed it, and threw it along with the weapon into the woods. The bonus came with the German’s billfold; it contained a sizable sum of money as well as a frayed, much stamped passport. Apparently, this trusted employee of Leifhelm traveled widely for Aquitaine—probably knowing nothing and being very expendable, but always available at the moment of decision. The man’s shoes did not fit; they were too small. So Converse used his drenched clothing to wipe his own, and the German’s dry socks helped to absorb some of the moisture of the leather inside. He covered the man with branches and walked up the hill to the road.

  He stayed out of sight between the trees as five cars passed by, all sedans, all possibly belonging to Erich Leifhelm. Then he saw a bright-yellow Volkswagen come into view, weaving slightly. He stepped out and held up his hands, the gesture of a man in trouble.

  The small car stopped—a blond girl in the passenger seat, the driver no more than eighteen or twenty, another young man in back, also blond, who looked as though he might be the girl’s brother.