The Aquitaine Progression: A Novel

  She was inches from him, her long, dark hair framing her face in the dim light, that lovely face taut, filled now with anxiety, her wide eyes burning into his.

  “Why, Val? Why did you do it?” he asked, a cry in the question.

  “I didn’t have a choice,” she answered quietly, enigmatically. “Drive away from here, please.”

  28

  They drove for several minutes. Neither of them spoke. Joel was concentrating on the streets, knowing the turns he wanted to make—knowing, too, he wanted to shout. It was all he could do to control himself, to keep from stopping the car and grabbing her, demanding to know why she had done what she did, furiously replying to whatever she said that she was a goddamned fool! Why had she come back into his life? He was death!… Above all, he wanted to hold her in his arms, his face against hers, and thank her and tell her how sorry he was—for so much, for now.

  “Do you know where you’re going?” asked Val, breaking the silence.

  “I’ve had the car since six o’clock. A map of the city came with it and I’ve spent the time driving around, learning what I thought I had to learn.”

  “Yes, you’d do that. You were always methodical.”

  “I thought I should,” he said defensively. “I followed you from the hotel just in case anybody else did. Also I’m better off in a car than on the streets.”

  “I wasn’t insulting you.”

  Converse glanced at her; she was studying him, her eyes roving over his face in the erratic progressions of light and shadow. “Sorry. I guess I’m a little sensitive these days. Can’t imagine why.”

  “Neither can I. You’re only wanted on two continents and in some eight countries. They say you’re the most talented assassin since that maniac they call Carlos.”

  “Do I have to tell you it’s all a lie? All a huge lie with a very clear motive—purpose is better.”

  “No,” replied Valerie simply. “You don’t have to tell me that because I know it. But you’ve got to tell me everything else. Everything.”

  He looked at her again, searching her eyes in the flashes of light, trying to penetrate, trying to peel away the layers of clouded glass that held her thoughts, her reasons. Once he had been able to do that, in love and in anger. He could not do it now; what she felt was too deep inside her, but it was not love, he knew that. It was something else, and the lawyer in him was cautious, oblique. “What made you think I’d see you on television? I almost missed you.”

  “I didn’t think about television, I was counting on the newspapers. I knew my face would be on the front pages all over Europe. I assumed your memory was not so dulled that you wouldn’t recognize me, and reporters always pick up on hotels or addresses—it lends authenticity.”

  “I can’t read anything but English.”

  “Your memory is dulled. I made three trips with you to Europe, two to Geneva and one to Paris. You wouldn’t have coffee in the morning unless the Herald Tribune was on the room-service table. Even when we went skiing in Chamonix—from Geneva—you made an awful fuss until the waiter brought the Tribune.”

  “You were in the Tribune?”

  “Class acts aside, it’s their kind of story. With all the details. I assumed you’d pick one up and realize what I was doing.”

  “Because we were strangers and hadn’t seen each other in years, and, of course, you couldn’t speak German or French or anything else.”

  “Yes. It was an acceptable explanation for those who knew I did. A cover, I guess. A lot of people who speak several languages do it all the time. It’s common practice; it cuts conversations short or at least keeps them to basic statements, and you always know if you’re misquoted.”

  “I forgot, that’s your business in a way.”

  “It’s not where the idea came from. It came from Roger.”

  “Dad?”

  “Yes. He flew in from Hong Kong a few days ago and some hungry clerk alerted the newspapers that he was on the flight. When he got into Kennedy it was a media blitz. He hadn’t read a newspaper or listened to a radio or seen a television screen in two days. He was in a panic and called me. I simply made sure the wire services in West Berlin knew I was flying in.”

  “How is Dad? He can’t handle this.”

  “He’s handling it. So’s your sister—less so than your father, but her husband stepped into the breach and took over. He’s a better man than you thought, Converse.”

  “What’s happening to them? How are they taking it?”

  “Confused, angry, bewildered. They’ve changed their telephone numbers. They speak through attorneys—supporting you, incidentally. You may not realize it but they love you very much, although I’m not sure you gave them much reason to.”

  “I think we’re closer to home,” said Joel quietly, as they approached the Schellingwouder Brug. “Our once and former home.” They entered the dark span of the bridge, diaphanous lights above, speckled dots far below on the water. Valerie did not respond to his statement; it was not like her to avoid a provocation. He could not stand it. “Why, Val?” he cried, “I asked you before, and I have to know! Why did you fly over?”

  “I’m sorry, I was thinking,” she said, her eyes leaving his face, staring straight ahead through the windshield. “I guess it’s better I say it now while you’re driving and I don’t have to look at you. You look awful, you’re a mess, and your face tells me what you’ve gone through, and I don’t want to look at you.”

  “I’m hurt,” said Converse gently, trying genuinely to lessen the impact of his appearance. “Helen Gurley Brown called and wants me for Cosmopolitan’s centerfold.”

  “Stop that! It’s not remotely funny and you know it—worse, you don’t even feel like saying it!”

  “I retreat. There were times when you never did read me right.”

  “I always read you right, Joel!” Valerie continued to focus on the road and the beams of the headlights; she did not move her head. “Don’t play the serious fool any longer. We haven’t time for that; we haven’t time for your flip remarks. It was always a little sad to watch you put people off who really wanted to talk to you, but it’s finished now.”

  “Glad to hear it. Then talk! Why the hell did you walk into this?”

  Their eyes met in anger, in abrupt recognition, in a love once remembered, perhaps. She turned away as Converse steered the car into the right exit off the bridge, then peeled into the road that ran along the coastline.

  “All right,” said Valerie, hesitant but in complete control. “I’ll spell it out as best I can. I say ‘as best I can’ because I’m not entirely sure—there are too many complications to be absolutely sure.… You may be a rotten husband and careless beyond stoning where another person’s feelings are concerned, but you’re not what they say you are. You didn’t kill those men.”

  “I know that. You said you knew it, too. Why did you come over here?”

  “Because I had to,” said Val, her voice firm, still staring straight ahead. “The other night after the news—your picture was on every channel, so different from what it was years ago—I walked along the beach and thought about you. They weren’t pleasant thoughts, but they were honest ones.… You put me through my own personal hell, Joel. You were driven by terrible things in your past, and I tried to understand because I knew what had happened to you. But you never tried to understand me. I, too, had things I wanted to do, but they faded, they weren’t important.… Okay, I thought. Someday it’ll pass and the nightmares will go away for him and he’ll stop and look at me and say, ‘Hey, you’re you.’ Well, the nightmares went away and it never happened.”

  “I concede my adversary’s logic,” said Converse painfully. “I still don’t understand.”

  “I needed you, Joel, but you couldn’t respond. You were amusing as hell, even when I knew you didn’t feel like it, and you were terrific in bed, but your only real concerns were for you, always you.”

  “Conceded again, learned counselor. And?”

&nb
sp; “I remembered something I said to myself that afternoon when you left the apartment, said it silently as I watched you leave. I promised myself that if ever a person I was close to needed me as much as I needed you then, I wouldn’t walk away. Call it the one moral commitment I’ve ever made in my life. Only the irony is that that person turned out to be you. You’re not a madman and you’re not a killer, but someone wants the world to think you are. And whoever it is has done it very well. Even your friends who’ve known you for years believe what’s being said about you. I don’t and I can’t walk away.”

  “Oh Christ, Val—”

  “No strings, Converse. No playing an old sweet song and hopping into bed. That’s out. I came here to help you, not console you. And over here I can. My roots go back several generations. They may be withering underground but they were the underground—undergrounds—and they’re willing to help. For once you need me, and that’s a twist, isn’t it, friend?”

  “A veritable twist,” said Joel, understanding her last statement but little else, speeding down the coast road toward the deserted fields. “Only a few minutes,” he added. “I can’t be seen in the city and neither can you—and you not a chance with me.”

  “I wouldn’t worry so much. We’re being watched by friends.”

  “What? What—‘friends’?”

  “Keep your eyes on the road. There were people in front of the Amstel, didn’t you see them?”

  “I suppose so. No one got in a car and went after you.”

  “Why should they? There were others on the streets and over the canals to the consulate.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “And an old man on a bicycle in the Museumplein.”

  “I saw him. Was he …?”

  “Later,” said Valerie, shifting the large cloth bag at her feet into another position and stretching her long legs. “They may follow us out here but they’ll stay out of sight.”

  “Who are you, lady?”

  “The niece of Hermione Geyner, my mother’s sister. You never knew my father, of course, but if you had he would have regaled you with tales of Mom during the war, but he would have choked at the mention of my aunt. Even according to the French she went too far. The Dutch and German undergrounds worked together. I’ll tell you all about it later.”

  “You’ll tell me later? Following us?”

  “You’re new at this. You won’t see them.”

  “Shit!”

  “That’s expressive.”

  “All right, all right!… What about Dad?”

  “He’s weathering it. He’s staying at my place.”

  “Cape Ann?”

  “Yes.”

  “I sent the envelope there! The ‘sketches’ I mentioned on the phone. It’s everything! Everything about what’s happened. It names the names, gives the reasons. Everything!”

  “I left three days ago. It hadn’t arrived by then. But Roger’s there.” Valerie’s face paled. “Oh, my God!”

  “What?”

  “I’ve been trying to call him! Two days ago, then yesterday and again today!”

  “Goddamn it!” In the distance there were the lights of a bay-front café. Joel spoke rapidly, giving an order that could not be disobeyed. “I don’t care how you do it, but you call Cape Ann! You come back here and tell me my father’s all right, do you understand?”

  “Yes. Because I want to hear it, too.”

  Converse skidded to a stop in front of the café, knowing he should not have done so, but not caring. Valerie rushed out of the car, her purse open, her telephone credit card in her hand. If there was a phone on the premises, she would use it; no one could stop her. Joel lit a cigarette; the smoke was acrid, stinging his throat; it was no relief. He stared out at the dark water, at the lights spanning the bridge in the distance, trying not to think. It was no use. What had he done? His father knew his handwriting, and the instant he recognized it he would rip open the envelope. He would be looking for exculpation for his son and he would find it. He would undoubtedly call Nathan Simon immediately—and therein was the horrible possibility. Val would know enough from the material itself to say little or nothing on the phone, but not his father, not Roger. He would blurt out everything in a frenzy of anger and defense of his son. And if others were listening on that line.… Where was Val? She was taking too long!

  Converse could not stop himself. He cracked the handle of the door and leaped out of the car. He raced toward the entrance of the café, then stopped abruptly on the gravel. Valerie walked out, gesturing for him to back away. He could see the tears rolling down her cheeks.

  “Get in the. car,” she said, approaching him.

  “No. Tell me what happened. Now.”

  “Please, Joel, get back in the car. Two men in there kept watching me while I was on the phone. I spoke German, but they knew I was placing a call to the States, and they saw I was upset. I think they recognized me. We have to get out of here.”

  “Tell me what happened!”

  “In the car.” Valerie tossed her head to the side, her dark hair flying over her shoulder as she brushed away her tears, and walked past Converse to the automobile. She opened the door and got in, sitting motionless in the seat.

  “Goddamn you!” Trembling, Converse ran to the car, jumped in behind the wheel and started the engine, slamming the door shut as he pulled on the gearshift. Turning the wheel, he backed up, then shot forward into the road, the tires spinning on the border of gravel. He kept his foot on the accelerator until the dark scenery outside was a racing blur.

  “Slow down,” said Val simply, without emphasis. “You’ll only call attention to us.”

  He could barely hear her through his panic, but he heard the order. He eased his foot off the pedal. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, Christ! What happened? What did they tell you? Whom did you talk to?”

  “A neighbor, the name’s not important. We have keys to each other’s house. She volunteered to take in the newspapers and check the place until the police reached me. She happened to be there when I called. I asked her if there was a large envelope sent from Germany in the pile of mail. She said there wasn’t.”

  “The police? What happened?”

  “You know my house is on the beach. There’s a jetty of rocks about a hundred yards up-water. It’s not large or long really, just some kind of marking from years ago—”

  “Tell me!” shouted Joel, gripping the wheel.

  “They say he must have gone for a walk last night, went out on the jetty and slipped on the wet rocks. There was a large bruise on his head. His body was washed up onshore and found this morning.”

  “Lies! Lies! They heard him! They went after him!”

  “My telephone? On the plane over here I thought about that.”

  “You would, he wouldn’t! I killed him. Goddamn it, I killed him!”

  “No more than I did, Joel,” insisted the ex-Mrs. Converse, touching his arm, wincing at the sight of tears in his eyes. “And I loved him very much. You and I left each other, but he was still a very close friend, perhaps my closest.”

  “He called you ‘Valley,’ ” said Joel, choking, trying to push back the pain. “The bastards! Bastards!”

  “Do you want me to drive?”

  “No!”

  “The telephone. I have to ask you—I thought the police or the FBI or people like that might get a court order.”

  “Of course they would! It’s why I knew I couldn’t call you. I was going to call Nate Simon.”

  “But you’re not talking about the police or the FBI. You’re talking about someone else, some thing else.”

  “Yes. No one knows who they are—where they are. But they’re there. And they can do whatever they want to do. Jesus! Even Dad! That’s what’s so goddamned frightening.”

  “And that’s what you’re going to tell me about, isn’t it?” said Valerie, gripping his arm.

  “Yes. A few min
utes ago I was going to hold back and not tell you everything, instead try to convince you to get Nate to fly over here so we could meet and he could see I wasn’t crazy. But not now. There’s no time now; they’re cutting off every outlet. They’ve got the envelope—it was all I had!… I’m sorry, Val, but I am going to tell you everything. I wish to God I didn’t have to—for your sake—but like you, I don’t have a choice anymore.”

  “I didn’t come over here to give you a choice.”

  He drove into the field near the water’s edge and stopped the car. The grass was high, the moon a bright crescent over the bay, the lights of Amsterdam in the distance. They got out and he led her to the darkest spot he could find, holding her hand, suddenly realizing that he had not held her hand in years—the touch, the grip, so comfortable, so much a part of them. He repelled the thought; he was a provider of death.

  “Here, I guess,” he said, releasing her hand.

  “AH right.” She lowered herself gracefully, like a dancer, and sat down on the soft grass, pushing the reeds aside. “How do you feel?” she asked.

  “Awful,” said Joel, looking up at the dark sky. “I meant what I said. I killed him. All the years of trying—his trying, my trying—and I end up killing him. If I’d only let him alone, let him be himself, not someone I wanted him to be, he’d probably be drinking up a storm somewhere thousands of miles away, telling his crazy stories, making everyone laugh. But not in your house at Cape Ann yesterday.”

  “You didn’t force him to fly back from Hong Kong, Joel.”

  “Oh, hell, not by pleading or giving him an order, if that’s what you mean. But the order was there nevertheless. After Mother died it was the unspoken words between us. ‘Grow up, Dad! Have your little trips but don’t stay away so long, people worry. Be responsible, father mine.’ Christ, I was so fucking holier than thou! And I end up killing him.”