The Aquitaine Progression: A Novel

  “That’s one hell of an explanation, Stone.”

  “It’s only part of it. It didn’t explain Anstett’s killing itself. And make no mistake, it was the Mafia down to the man with the gun.” Stone paused and turned a page. “So there had to be a connection somewhere, somehow a link, probably going back years. The boys with the disks looked further, and I think we’ve got it. Guess who was Colonel Delavane’s chief aide in the First Army. No, don’t bother, you couldn’t. He was a Captain Parelli, Mario Alberto Parelli.”

  “Good Christ! The senator?”

  “The five-term senator, thirty years in that august body. Up-from-the-bootstraps Mario, with a slight push from the G.I. Bill, some early benefactors and a few lucrative legal retainers.”

  “Wow …” said the captain softly, without enthusiasm, as he leaned back in the chair. “That’s heavy, isn’t it?”

  “It’s there. It fits. And I don’t mind telling you that in ’62 and ’63, during the Let’s-get-Fidel days, Parelli was a frequent visitor at the White House, courtesy of both the Kennedy boys.”

  “Even in the Senate. He’s one of the biggest cannons on the Hill.”

  “While you’re staring, let me give you the last item. We’ve found Commander Fitzpatrick.”

  “What?”

  “At least we know where he is,” completed Stone. “As to whether we can bring him out, or even want to try, that’s another question.”

  Valerie got in the cab at McCarran Airport in Las Vegas and gave the driver the address of a restaurant on Route 93, repeated twice by Sam Abbott over the phone. The driver, creasing his forehead, looked at her in his rearview mirror. Val was used to men scrutinizing her; she was neither flattered nor annoyed anymore. Frankly, she was just bored by the childishness of it all, by the fantasies of grown-up children abusing themselves with their eyes.

  “Are you sure, miss?” asked the driver.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “That isn’t a restaurant—like I mean a restaurant. It’s a diner, a pit stop for trucks.”

  “It’s where I wish to go,” said Val coolly.

  “Sure, okay, fine.” The taxi pulled out into the departing traffic.

  The driver was right. A half-acre of asphalt surrounded the long, low, L-shaped diner; a dozen huge trucks dwarfed the cars, which were parked at respectful distances from the intimidating rigs. Val paid the driver and went inside; she looked around and walked past the cashier’s counter toward the L-shaped section. Sam had told her he would be in one of the booths in that area.

  He was, at the rear of the second aisle. As Valerie approached she looked at the man she had not seen in nearly seven years. He had not changed much; the brown hair had a fringe of gray around the temples, but the strong, relaxed face was not very different—perhaps the eyes were a little deeper, a few more lines at the sides and the cheekbones a touch more pronounced. It was a better face for a portrait now, she thought; the character beneath was emerging. Their eyes met, and the brigadier general got out of the booth, his clothes denying his rank and profession. He was dressed in an open sport shirt, tan summer slacks and dark loafers. He was somewhat shorter than Joel, but not by much. His gray eyes said she was a welcome sight.

  “Vol.” Abbott held her briefly, obviously not wanting to call attention to them.

  “You look well, Sam,” she said, sitting down across from him, putting the carry-on beside her.

  “You look merely outstanding, which is military for all those other adjectives.” Abbott smiled. “It’s funny, but I come out here a lot because no one pays any attention to me, so I thought, hell, it’s the perfect place. I should have remembered—you walk through that arcade of gorillas and eggs get put in ears with coffee spoons.”

  “Thanks. I could use some confidence.”

  “I could probably use a strong alibi. If someone does recognize me, word will go back that the brigadier’s pulling outside duty.”

  “You’re married, Sam?”

  “Five years ago. Late, but with all the fixings. A lovely bride and two beguiling daughters.”

  “I’m so happy for you. I hope I get a chance to meet her, meet them—but not this trip. Definitely not this trip.”

  Abbott paused, looking into her eyes, a touch of sadness in his. “Thank you for understanding,” he said.

  “There’s nothing to understand, or rather, there’s everything to understand. The fact that you’re willing to meet me after all that’s happened is more than we had a right to expect. Both Joel and I know the risks you’re taking—legally, as a general, all of it—and if there was any other way, we wouldn’t involve you. But after you hear what I have to say, you’ll understand why we can’t wait any longer, why Joel agreed to let me try to find you.… You were my idea, Sam, but Joel wouldn’t have heard of it unless he felt he had to—not for himself; he doesn’t expect to live. That’s what he said and he believes it.”

  A waitress brought coffee and Abbott thanked her. “We’ll order later,” he added, staring at Valerie. “You’ll have to trust my judgment, you understand that, don’t you?”

  “Yes. Because I trust you.”

  “When I couldn’t reach you I made a few calls to people I worked with a couple of years ago in Washington. They’re men who’re deep into these kinds of things, who have answers long before most of us know the questions.”

  “Those are the people Joel wants you to reach!” interrupted Val. “You saw him then; you spent a night at his hotel, don’t you remember? He said you both drank too much.”

  “We did,” agreed Sam. “And talked too much.”

  “You were evaluating aircraft—‘equipment,’ Joel called it—with specialists from various intelligence units.”

  “That’s right.”

  “They’re the ones he has to contact! He has to see them, talk to them, tell them everything he knows! I’m getting ahead of myself, Sam, but Joel thinks those people should have come in at the beginning—the beginning for him. He understands why he was chosen and, incredibly, he doesn’t even now fault that decision! But they should have been there!”

  “You’re way ahead of yourself.”

  “I’ll go back.”

  “Let me finish first. I talked to them, telling them I didn’t believe what I was reading and hearing; it wasn’t the Converse I knew, and to a man they told me to back off. It was hopeless and I could get badly tarnished. It wasn’t the Converse I knew, they said. He’d psyched out; he was another person. There was too much evidence to support the blow-out.”

  “But you took my call. Why?”

  “Two reasons. The first is obvious—I knew Joel; we went through a lot together and none of this makes sense to me, maybe I don’t want it to make sense. The second reason is a lot less subjective. I know a lie when I hear one—when I know it can’t be the truth—and a lie was fed to me just as it was fed to the people who delivered it.” Abbott sipped his coffee, as if telling himself to slow down and be clear. The leader of the squadron was in control; he had to be. “I spoke to three men I knew, men I trust, and each checked with his own sources. They all came back to me, each telling me essentially the same thing but in different language, different viewpoints depending on their priorities—that’s the way it works with these people. But one item didn’t vary so much as a syllable, and it was the lie. The label is drugs. Narcotics.”

  “Joel?”

  “Their words were practically identical. ‘Evidence is pouring in from New York, Geneva, Paris, that Converse was a heavy buyer.’ That was one phrase; the other was ‘Medical opinion has it that the hypodermics finally blew him up and blew him back.’ ”

  “That’s crazy! It’s insane!” cried Valerie as Abbott grabbed her hand to quiet her down. “I’m sorry, but it’s such a terrible lie,” she whispered. “You don’t know—”

  “Yes, Val, I do know. Joel was pumped five or six times in the camps with substances sent down from Hanoi, and no one fought it harder or hated it more than he did.
The only chemicals he’d allow in his body after that were tobacco and alcohol. I’ve seen us both with third-degree hangovers and while I tore medicine cabinets apart for a Bromo or an aspirin, he wouldn’t touch them.”

  “Whenever his passport shots came up, he had to have four martinis before he went to the doctor,” said Valerie. “Good God, who would spread a thing like that?”

  “When I tried to find out I was told that even I couldn’t have that information.”

  The former Mrs. Converse now stared at the brigadier general. “You have to find out, Sam, you know that, don’t you?”

  “Tell me why, Val. Put it together for me.”

  “It began in Geneva, and for Joel the operative name—the operative name—was George Marcus Delavane.”

  Abbott flinched and shut his eyes; his face became suddenly older.

  The cry of the cat on a frozen lake became a scream as the man in the wheelchair fell to the floor, his two stumps that once were legs scissoring maniacally to no avail. With strong arms he pushed his torso up from the rug.

  “Adjutant! Adjutant!” roared General George Marcus Delavane as the dark-red telephone kept ringing on the desk below the fragmented map.

  A large, muscular middle-aged man in full uniform ran out of a door and rushed to his superior. “Let me help you, sir,” he said emphatically, pulling the wheelchair toward them both.

  “Not me!” yelled Delavane. “The phone! Get the phone! Tell whoever it is I’ll be right there!” The old soldier began crawling pathetically toward the desk.

  “Just one minute, please,” said the adjutant into the phone. “The general will be with you in a moment.” The lieutenant colonel placed the telephone on the desk and ran first to the chair and then to Delavane. “Please, sir, let me help you.”

  With a look of loathing on his face, the half-man permitted himself to be maneuvered back into the wheelchair. He propelled himself forward and took the phone. “Palo Alto International. You’re red! What is the day’s code?”

  “Charing Cross” was the reply in a clipped British accent.

  “What is it, England?”

  “Radio relay from Osnabrück. We’ve got him.”

  “Kill him!”

  Chaim Abrahms sat in his kitchen, tapping his fingers on the table, trying to take his eyes off the telephone and the clock on the wall. It was the fourth time span, and still there was no word from New York. The orders had been clear: the calls were to be placed within thirty-minute periods every six hours commencing twenty-four hours ago, the estimated arrival time of the plane from Amsterdam. Twenty-four hours and nothing! The first omission had not troubled him; rarely were transatlantic flights on schedule. The second he had rationalized; if the woman was in transit, traveling somewhere else either in a car or by plane, the surveillance might find itself in a difficult position to place an overseas call to Israel. The third omission was unacceptable, this fourth lapse intolerable! It was nearly the end of the thirty-minute span, six minutes to go. When in the name of God would it ring?

  It rang. Abrahms leaped from the chair and picked it up.

  “Yes?”

  “We lost her” was the flat statement.

  “You what?”

  “She took a taxi to LaGuardia Airport and bought a ticket for a morning flight to Boston. Then she checked into a motel and must have left minutes later.”

  “Where were our people?”

  “One parked in a car outside, the other in a room down the hall. There was no reason to suspect she would leave. She had a ticket to Boston.”

  “Idiots! Garbage!”

  “They will be disciplined. Our men in Boston have checked every flight, every train. She hasn’t shown up.”

  “What makes you think she will?”

  “The ticket. There was nothing else.”

  “Imbeciles!”

  Valerie had finished; there was nothing more to say. She looked at Sam Abbott, who seemed far older than he had been an hour ago.

  “There are so many questions,” said the brigadier general. “So much I want to ask Joel. The lousy thing is I’m not qualified, but I know someone who is. I’ll talk to him tonight, and tomorrow the three of us will fly to Washington. Like today, I have an early A.M. squadron run, but I’ll be finished by ten. I’ll take the rest of the day off—one of the kids is sick, but nothing serious, nothing out of the ordinary. Alan will know whom we should go to, whom we can trust.”

  “Can you trust him?”

  “Metcalf? With my life.”

  “Joel says you’re to be careful. He warns you that they can be anywhere—where you least expect them.”

  “But somewhere there’s got to be a list. Somewhere.”

  “Delavane? San Francisco?”

  “Probably not. It’s too simple, too dangerous. It’s the first place anyone would look; he’d consider that.… This countdown—Joel thinks it’s tied into massive riots taking place in different cities, various capitals?”

  “On a vast scale, larger and more violent than anything we can imagine. Eruptions, total destabilization, spreading from one place to another, fueled by the same people who are called in to restore order.”

  Abbott shook his head. “It doesn’t sound right. It’s too complicated, and there are too many built-in controls. Police, troops from the National Guard; they have separate commands. The chain would break somewhere.”

  “It’s what he believes. He says they could do it. He’s convinced they have warehouses everywhere stocked with weapons and explosives, even armored vehicles and conceivably planes in out-of-the-way airfields.”

  “Val, that’s crazy—sorry, wrong word. The logistics are simply too overwhelming.”

  “Newark, Watts, Miami. They were also overwhelming.”

  “They were different. They were essentially racial and economic.”

  “The cities burned, Sam. People were killed and order came with guns. Suppose there were more guns than either of us could count? On both sides. Just like what’s happening in Northern Ireland right now.”

  “Ireland? The slaughter in Belfast? It’s a war no one can stop.”

  “It’s their war! They did it! Joel called it a test, a trial run!”

  “It’s wild,” said the pilot.

  “ ‘Accumulation, rapid acceleration.’ Those were the words Abrahms used in Bonn. Joel tried to figure them out. He couldn’t buy Leifhelm’s Statement that they referred to blackmail or extortion. It wouldn’t work, he said.”

  “Extortion?” Abbott frowned. “I don’t remember your mentioning that.”

  “I probably didn’t because Joel discounted it. Leifhelm asked him what he thought about powerful figures in various governments being compromised, and Joel said it wouldn’t work. The cleansing process was too certain, the reactions too quick.”

  “Compromised?” Sam Abbott leaned forward in the booth. “Compromised, Val?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, my God.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Mean?… Meaning, that’s what I mean. ‘Compromised’ has more than one meaning; Like ‘neutralize’ and ‘take out,’ and probably a dozen others I don’t know about.”

  “You’re beyond me, Sam.”

  “In one context, the word ‘compromise’ means killing. Pure and simple murder. Assassination.”

  Valerie checked into the MGM-Grand Hotel giving the bewildered clerk three days’ advance payment for the room in lieu of a credit card. Key in hand, she took the elevator up to the ninth floor and let herself into a room with the kind of pleasantly garish opulence found only in Las Vegas. She stood briefly on the balcony, watching the orange setting sun, thinking about the insanity of everything. She would call Joel first thing in the morning—noon or thereabouts in Osnabrück, West Germany.

  She ordered from room service, ate what she could, watched an hour or so of mind-numbing television, and finally lay down on the bed. She had been right about Sam Abbott. Dear Sam, straight-as-the-proverbia
l-arrow Sam, direct and uncomplicated. If anyone would know what to do, Sam would, and if he did not know, he would find out. For the first time in days, Val felt a degree of relief. Sleep came, and this time there were no horrible dreams.

  She awoke to the sight of the early sun firing the mountains beyond the balcony doors in the distance. For a moment or two while she emerged through the layers of vanishing sleep she thought she was back at Cape Ann, the sunlight streaming into her bedroom from the balcony outside, and vaguely recalled a distant nightmare. Then the bold floral drapes came into focus, and then the faraway mountains and the slightly stale odor of thick hotel carpeting, and she knew the nightmare was very much with her.

  She got out of the oversized bed, and navigated to the bathroom, stopping on the way to switch on the radio. She reached the door and suddenly stopped, gripping its edge to brace herself, her head detonating with a thousand explosions, her eyes and throat on fire.

  She could only scream. And scream again and again as she fell to the floor.

  Peter Stone turned up the radio in the New York apartment, then walked quickly to the table where there was an open telephone directory, the pages blue, the book itself having been taken from “Mrs. DePinna’s” room in the St. Regis Hotel. Stone listened to the news report as he scanned the opposing blue pages of government listings.

  “… It has now been confirmed that the earlier reports of the crash of an F-18 jet fighter plane at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada are accurate. The accident took place this morning at seven-forty-two, Pacific time, during first-light maneuvers over the desert thirty-eight miles northwest of the Nellis field. The pilot, Brigadier General Samuel Abbott, was chief of Tactical Operations and considered one of the finest pilots in the Air Force as well as a superb aerial tactician. The press officer at Nellis said a full inquiry will be launched, but stated that according to the other pilots the lead plane of the squadron, flown by General Abbott, plunged to the ground after executing a relatively low-altitude maneuver. The explosion could be heard as far away as Las Vegas. The press officer’s remarks were charged with emotion as he described the downed pilot. “The death of General Abbott is a tragic loss for the Air Force and the nation, ’he told reporters. A few minutes ago the President …”