The Aquitaine Progression: A Novel

  It was there, on the right. A small church with fake spires, a silly-looking church with what looked like a decorated Quonset hut for a rectory beside it. Joel ran up the short path to the door, a door with a hideously bejeweled crucifix in the center—a rhinestone Jesus; rock along with Christ—and knocked. Moments later an overweight, cherubic man with very little white hair, though perfectly groomed, opened the door.

  “Ah, Guten Tag, Herr Kollege.”

  “Forgive me,” said Converse, out of breath. “I don’t speak German. I was told you speak English.”

  “Ah, yes, indeed, I should hope so. I spent my novitiate in the Mother Country—as opposed to the Fatherland—you understand the difference in gender, of course. Come in, come in! A visit from a fellow priest calls for a Schnaps. ‘A touch of wine’ sounds better, doesn’t it? Again the Mother Country—so soft, so understanding. My, you’re an attractive young man!”

  “Not so young, Father,” said Joel, stepping inside.

  “That’s relative, isn’t it?” The German priest walked unsteadily into what was obviously his living room. Again there were jeweled figures mounted on black velvet on the walls, the cheap stones glittering, the faces of the saints unmistakably feminine. “What would you like? I have sherry and muscatel, and for rare occasions a port I’ve been saving for very special occasions.… Who sent you? That wicked novice from Lengerich?”

  “I need help, Father.”

  “Great Jesus, who doesn’t? Is this to be a confessional? If so, for God’s sake give me until morning. I love the Lord my God with all my soul and all my strength—and if there are sins of the flesh, they are Satan’s. Not I, but the Archangel of Darkness!”

  The man was drunk; he fell over a hassock and tumbled to the floor. Converse ran to him and lifted him up, then lowered him into a chair—a chair by the only telephone in the room.

  “Please understand me, Father. Or don’t misunderstand me. I have to reach a woman who’s waiting for me at Osnabrück. It’s important!”

  “A woman? Satan! He is Lucifer with the eyes of fire! You think you’re better than me?”

  “Not at all. Please. I need help!”

  It took ten minutes of pleading, but finally the priest calmed down and got on the telephone. He identified himself as a man of God, and moments later Joel heard the name that allowed him to breathe steadily again.

  “Frau Geyner? Es tut mir leid …” The old priest and the old woman talked for several minutes. He hung up and turned to Converse. “She waited for you,” he said, frowning in bewilderment. “She thought you might have gotten off in the freight yards.… What freight yards?”

  “I understand.”

  “I do not. But she knows the way here and will pick you up in thirty minutes or so.… You have sobered me, Father. Was I disgraceful?”

  “Not at all,” said Joel. “You welcomed a man in trouble, there’s nothing wrong with that.”

  “Let’s have a drink. Forget Schnaps and ‘a glass of wine’; they’re a bore, aren’t they? I have some American bourbon in the refrigerator. You are American, are you not?”

  “Yes, and a glass of bourbon would be just fine.”

  “Good! Follow me into my humble kitchen. It’s right through here, mind the sequined curtain, dear boy. It is too much, isn’t it?… Oh, well, for all of that—whatever it is—I’m a good man. I believe that. I give comfort.”

  “I’m sure you do.”

  “Where were you schooled, Father?” asked the priest.

  “Catholic University in Washington,” replied Converse, pleased with himself that he remembered and answered so quickly.

  “Good Lord, I was there myself!” exclaimed the German priest. “They shunted me around, you understand. Do you remember what’s his name …?”

  Oh, my God! thought Joel.

  Frau Hermione Geyner arrived, and took Converse in tow—commandeered him, in fact. She was a small woman, far older than Joel had imagined. Her face was withered, reminding him of the woman in the Amsterdam station, and dominated by wide, intense eyes that seemed to shoot out bolts of electricity. He got in the car and she pushed the lock in place. She climbed behind the wheel and sped up the street, reaching what had to be sixty miles an hour in a matter of seconds.

  “I appreciate everything you’re doing for me,” said Converse, bracing his feet against the floorboard.

  “It is nothing!” exclaimed the old woman. “I have myself taken out officers from airplanes that crashed in Bremerhaven and Stuttgart and Mannheim! I spat in soldiers’ eyes, and crashed through barricades! I never failed! The pigs could not touch me!”

  “I only meant that you’re saving my life, and I want you to know I’m grateful. I’m aware that Valerie—your niece, and my … my former wife—told you I didn’t do the things they said I did, and she was right. I didn’t.”

  “Ach, Valerie! A sweet child, but not very reliable, ja? You got rid of her, ja?”

  “That’s not exactly the way it happened.”

  “How could she be?” continued Hermione Geyner, as if he had not spoken. “She is an artist, and we all know how unstable they are. And, of course, her father was a Frenchman. I ask you, could she have a greater disadvantage? Franzose! The worms of Europe! As untrustworthy as their wine, which is mostly in their stomachs. They’re drunkards, you know. It’s in their blood.”

  “But you believed her where I was concerned. You’re helping me, you’re saving my life.”

  “Because we could! We knew we could!”

  Joel stared at the road ahead, at the rapidly oncoming curves taken at sixty miles an hour as the tires screeched. Hermione Geyner was not at all what he had expected, but then nothing was anymore. She was so old and it was late at night and she had been through a great deal these last two days; it had to have taken its toll on her. Old prejudices come to the surface when very old people are tired. Perhaps in the morning they could have a clearheaded conversation. The morning—it was the start of the second day, and Valerie had promised to call him in Osnabrück with news of Sam Abbott and the progress she was making to reach the pilot. She had to make that call! Sam had to be told about the strange language Joel had heard from an old man in Amsterdam, where a word meaning one thing also meant something else entirely. Assassination! Val, call me. For God’s sake, call me!

  Converse looked out the window. The minutes passed; the countryside was peaceful but the silence awkward.

  “Here we are!” shouted Hermione Geyner, turning crazily into the drive that led to a large old three-story house set back off the country road. From what Converse could see, it was a house that had once had a certain majesty, if only by its size and the profusion of roofed windows and gables. In the moonlight now, it looked—like its owner—very old and frayed.

  They walked up the worn wooden steps of the enormous porch and crossed to the door. Frau Geyner knocked rapidly, insistently; in seconds an old woman opened it, nodding solemnly as they went inside.

  “It’s very lovely,” began Joel. “I want you to know—”

  “Sshh!” Hermione Geyner dropped her car keys in a red laquered bowl on a hall table and held up her hand. “This way!”

  Converse followed her to a pair of double doors; she opened them and Joel walked in behind her. He stopped, confused and astonished. For in front of them in the large Victorian room with the subdued lighting was a row of high-backed chairs and seated in each was an old woman—nine old women! Mesmerized, he looked closely at them. Some smiled weakly, several trembled with age and infirmity, obviously senile; a few wore stern, intense expressions, and one seemed to be humming to herself.

  There was an eruption of fragile applauses-hands thin and veined, others swollen with flesh, flesh striking flesh with obvious effort. Two chairs had been placed in front of the women; Valerie’s aunt indicated that they were for Joel and herself. They sat down as the applause dwindled off to silence.

  “Meine Schwestern Soldaten,” cried Hermione Geyner, rising. “Heute
Nacht…”

  The old woman spoke for nearly ten minutes, interrupted occasionally by scattered applause and expressions of wonder and respect. Finally, she sat down. “Nun. Fragen!”

  The women one after another began to speak—frail, halting voices for the most part, yet several were emphatic, almost hostile. And then Converse realized that most were looking at him. They were asking him questions, one or two crossing themselves as they spoke, as if the fugitive they had saved were actually a priest.

  “Come, my friend!” cried Hermione Geyner. “Answer the ladies. They deserve the courtesy of your replies.”

  “I can’t answer what I can’t understand,” protested Joel quietly.

  Suddenly, without any warning, Valerie’s aunt rose quickly out of the chair and struck him across the face. “Such evasive tactics will not serve you here!” she screamed, striking him again, the ring on her finger breaking his skin. “We know you understand every word that’s been spoken! Why do you Czechs and Poles always think you can fool us. You collaborated!. We have proof!”

  The old women began to shout, their lined, contorted faces filled with hate. Converse got to his feet; he understood. Hermione Geyner and everyone else in that room were mad or senile or both. They were living in a violent time that was forty years in the past.

  And then, as if on some demented cue, a door opened across the room and two men came out. One in a raincoat had his right hand in his pocket and was carrying some kind of package in his left. The second man held a topcoat over one arm, no doubt concealing a weapon. And then a third man appeared, and Joel closed his eyes, pressing them shut tight, the pain in his chest unbearable. The third man had a bandage across his forehead and one arm in a sling. Converse had caused those wounds; he had last seen the man in a freight car filled with frantic animals.

  The first man came up to him and held out the package, a thick manila envelope with no stamps on the cover. It was the brief he had sent to Nathan Simon in New York.

  “General Leifhelm sends you his regards, even his respects,” said the man, pronouncing the word “general” with the hard German g.

  32

  Peter Stone watched as the CIA-approved doctor put the third and final stitch into the corner of the Army officer’s mouth as the captain sat straining in the chair.

  “The bridge will have to be repaired,” said the doctor. “I have a man in the laboratory who’ll do it in a few hours, and a dentist on Seventy-second Street, he’ll do the rest. “I’ll call you later when I’ve made the arrangements.”

  “Son of a bitch!” roared the captain, as loud as he could with half his mouth Novocained. “He was a tank, a fucking black tank! He couldn’t have been working for her, he was just a goddamned cabdriver! Why the hell?”

  “Maybe you triggered him,” said Stone, walking away as he looked at several pages of notes. “It happens.”

  “What happens?” yelled the officer.

  “Cut it out, Captain. You’ll break the stitches.” The doctor held up a hypodermic needle; it was a threat.

  “Okay, okay.” The officer spoke in a softer voice. “What does ‘trigger’ mean in that esoteric language of yours?”

  “It’s perfectly clear English.” Stone turned to the doctor. “You know I’m not employed any longer, so you’d better give me a bill.”

  “When you’re in town a dinner will do. The lab and the dentist are different, though. I’d suggest cash. And get him out of uniform.”

  “Will do.”

  “What …?” The captain stopped, seeing Stone’s hand held unobtrusively in front of his chest, telling the officer to be quiet.

  The doctor put his instruments in the black bag and went to the door. “By the way, Stone,” he said to the former CIA agent, “thanks for the Albanian. His wife is spending Moscow’s rubles like mad for every ache I can find a name for.”

  “The ache is her husband. He has an apartment in D.C. she doesn’t know about and some very strange sex habits.”

  “I’ll never tell.”

  The doctor left, and Stone turned back to the captain. “When you’re with men like that, don’t say any more than you have to, and that includes questions. They don’t want to hear and they don’t want to know.”

  “Sorry. What did you mean—I triggered that hulk?”

  “Come on. An attractive woman being chased down the street by a beribboned Army officer. How many memories—black memories—do you think are out there with less than fondness for your ilk.”

  “Ilk? I never thought of myself as an ilk, but I see what you mean.… You were on the phone when I got here, and then there were two other calls. What is it? Any line on the Converse woman?”

  “No.” Stone again looked down at his notes, shuffling the pages. “We can assume she came back to reach someone—someone she and her ex-husband trust.”

  “He knows his way around Washington. Maybe someone on the Hill, or even in the administration, or State.”

  “I don’t think so. If he knew anyone like that and thought his story would get out before his head was shot off, he would have surfaced days ago. Remember, he’s been tried, convicted, and condemned. Can you think of anyone in Washington who wouldn’t play it—play him—strictly by the rules? He’s contaminated. Too many ‘authoritative sources’ have confirmed it, even diagnosed the disease.”

  “And by now he’s learned what we found out months ago. You don’t know where they are or who you’re talking to.”

  “Or whom they’ve hired,” added Stone. “Or whom they’ve blackmailed into doing what they want without giving away any trade secrets.” He sat down opposite the Army officer. “But a couple of other things have fallen into place. We’re getting a pattern and a few additional names. If we could pull Converse out and combine what he’s learned with what we’ve got—it might just possibly be enough.”

  “What?” The captain shot forward in the chair.

  “Take it easy. I said just possibly. I’ve been calling in some old debts, and if we could put it all together, there are one or two left I can trust.”

  “That’s why we called you in,” said the officer quietly. “Because you know what to do, we don’t.… What have you got?”

  “To begin with, have you ever heard of an actor named Caleb Dowling—actually, it’s Calvin, but that’s not important except for the computers.”

  “I know who he is. He plays the father on a television show called Santa Fe. Don’t shout it from the rooftops, but my wife and I watch it now and then. What about him?”

  Stone looked at his watch. “He’ll be here in a few minutes.”

  “No kidding? I’m impressed.”

  “You may be more impressed after we’ve talked to him.”

  “Jesus, fill me in!”

  “It’s one of those odd breaks we all look for that seem to come out of left field but are perfectly logical. It’s the timing that’s not logical.… Dowling was in Bonn filming a picture and struck up a friendship with Peregrine. American celebrity, et cetera. He also met Converse on a plane and got him a hotel room when they were tough to find. Most significant, Dowling was the initial contact between Peregrine and Converse—which didn’t work out because Fitzpatrick stepped in.”

  “So?”

  “When Peregrine was killed, Dowling called the embassy a number of times trying to get an appointment with the acting ambassador, but he was put on hold. Finally he sent a note to Peregrine’s secretary saying he had to see her, that it was important. The secretary met with him, and this Dowling dropped a bomb on her lap. Apparently he and Peregrine had an agreement that if Converse called the embassy and contact was to be made, Dowling would go along. He didn’t think Peregrine would go back on his word. Secondly, Peregrine told Dowling that something was rotten in the embassy ranks, some very odd behavior. One incident Dowling witnessed himself. He said there were too many things that didn’t make sense—from Converse’s sane and lucid conversations to the fact that he, Dowling, hadn’t been offici
ally questioned, as if people were avoiding one of the last people to see Converse. The bottom line was that he didn’t think Converse had anything to do with Peregrine’s murder. The secretary damn near fainted but told him he would be contacted. She knew the Agency’s station chief in Bonn and called him. So did I, two days ago, telling him I was brought in deep down by State.”

  “He confirmed all of this?”

  “Yes. He called Dowling in, listened to him, and has begun digging himself. He’s coming up with names, one of which we know, but there’ll be others. I was on the phone with him when you got here. Dowling flew in yesterday; he’s at the Pierre and will be here by eleven-thirty.”

  “That’s movement,” said the captain, nodding. “Anything else?”

  “Two other things. You know how stymied we were when Judge Anstett caught it and how strong the case was made for a mob killing. Hell, we weren’t even sure why Halliday used Anstett in the first place. Well, the computer boys at the Army data banks have come up with the answer. It goes back to October of 1944. Anstett was a legal officer in Bradley’s First Army, where Delavane held a battalion command. Delavane railroaded a sergeant who’d cracked through a court-martial. The charge was desertion under fire, and Colonel Delavane wanted an example both for his own troops and for the Germans, to let the first know they were being led by a ramrod, and the second that they were fighting one. The verdict was guilty, the sentence execution.”

  “Oh, my God,” exclaimed the Army officer. “Slovik all over again.”

  “Exactly. Except that a lowly lieutenant named Anstett heard about it and came rolling in with all his legal barrels smoking. By using psychiatric evaluation reports he not only got the sergeant sent home for treatment but literally turned the proceedings around and put Delavane himself on trial. Using the same kind of psychological evaluations—stress, mainly—he called into question Delavane’s fitness for command. It damned near ruined an illustrious military career, and would have if it wasn’t for the colonel’s friends in the War Department. They buried the report so well it was under another Delavane’s name and wasn’t picked up until all the records were computerized in the sixties.”