The Aquitaine Progression: A Novel

  “What was the other half?” asked Converse.

  “He wanted the Bundestag’s restrictions on the armed forces lifted completely, and fought for the expansion of the intelligence services, patterned after the Abwehr, including rehabilitation sentences for political troublemakers. He also sought extensive deletions in German textbooks throughout the school systems. ‘Pride has to be restored,’ he kept saying, and everything he said was in the name of virulent anti-Communism.”

  “The Third Reich’s first strategy in everything when Hitler took over.”

  “You’re quite right. Schmidt saw through him and knew there’d be chaos if he had his way—and he was influential. Bonn could not afford the specter of painful memories. Schmidt forced Leifhelm to resign and literally removed his voice from all government affairs.”

  “But he keeps speaking.”

  “Not openly. However, he’s rich and retains his friends and contacts.”

  “Among them Delavane and his people.”

  “Foremost among them now.”

  Joel once more snapped his lighter and scanned the lower part of the page. There were two lists of names, the row on the left under the heading State Department, the right under Pentagon. There were perhaps twenty-five people in all. “Who are the Americans?” He released the lever; the flame died and he put the lighter back in his pocket. “The names don’t mean anything to me.”

  “Some should, but it doesn’t matter,” said Beale elliptically. “The point is that among those men are disciples of George Delavane. They carry out his orders. How many of them is difficult to say, but at least several from each grouping. You see, these are the men who make the decisions—or conversely, do not oppose decisions—without which Delavane and his followers would be stopped in their tracks.”

  “Spell that out.”

  “Those on the left are key figures in the State Department’s Office of Munitions Control. They determine what gets cleared for export, who under the blanket of ‘national interest’ can receive weapons and technology withheld from others. On the right are the senior officers at the Pentagon on whose word millions upon millions are spent for armament procurements. All are decision makers—and a number of those decisions have been questioned, a few openly, others quietly by diplomatic and military colleagues. We’ve learned that much—”

  “Questioned? Why?” interrupted Converse.

  “There were rumors—there always are rumors—of large shipments improperly licensed for export. Then there’s surplus military equipment—excess supplies—lost in transfers from temporary warehouses and out-of-the-way storage depots. Surplus equipment is easily unaccounted for; it’s an embarrassment in these days of enormous budgets and cost over-runs. Get rid of it and don’t be too particular. How fortunate in these instances—and coincidental—if a member of this Aquitaine shows up, willing to buy and with all his papers in order. Whole depots and warehouses are sent where they shouldn’t be sent.”

  “A Libya connection?”

  “There’s no doubt of it. A great many connections.”

  “Halliday mentioned it and you said it a few moments ago. Laws broken—arms, equipment, technological information sent to people who shouldn’t have them. They break loose on cue and there’s disruption, terrorism—”

  “Justifying military responses,” old Beale broke in. “That’s part of Delavane’s concept. Justifiable escalation of armed might, the commanders in charge, the civilians helpless, forced to listen to them, obey them.”

  “But you just said questions were raised.”

  “And answered with such worn-out phrases as ‘national security’ and ‘adversarial disinformation’ to stop or throw off the curious.”

  “That’s obstruction. Can’t they be caught at it?”

  “By whom? With what?”

  “Damn it, the questions themselves!” replied Converse. “Those improper export licenses, the military transfers that got lost, merchandise that can’t be traced.”

  “By people without the clearances to go around security classifications, or lacking the expertise to understand the complexities of export licensing.”

  “That’s nonsense,” insisted Joel. “You said some of those questions were asked by diplomatic personnel, military colleagues, men who certainly had the clearances and the expertise.”

  “And who suddenly, magically, didn’t ask them any longer. Of course, many may have been persuaded that the questions were, indeed, beyond their legitimate purviews; others may have been too frightened to penetrate for fear of involvement; others still, forced to back off—frankly threatened. Regardless, behind it all there are those who do the convincing, and they’re growing in numbers everywhere.”

  “Christ, it’s a—a network,” said Converse softly.

  The scholar looked hard at Joel, the night light on the water reflecting across the old man’s pale, lined face. “Yes, Mr. Converse, a ‘network.’ That word was whispered to me by a man who thought I was one of them. ‘The network,’ he said. ‘The network will take care of you.’ He meant Delavane and his people.”

  “Why did they think you were a part of them?”

  The old man paused. He looked briefly away at the shimmering Aegean, then back at Converse. “Because that man thought it was logical. Thirty years ago I took off a uniform, trading it for the Harris tweeds and unkempt hair of a university professor. Few of my colleagues could understand, for, you see, I was one of the elite, perhaps a later, American version of Erich Leifhelm—a brigadier general at thirty-eight, and the Joint Chiefs were conceivably my next assignment. But where the collapse of Berlin and the Götterdämmerung in the bunker had one effect on Leifhelm, the evacuation of Korea and the disembowelment of Panmunjom had another effect on me. I saw only the waste, not the cause I once saw—only the futility where once there’d been sound reasons. I saw death, Mr. Converse, not heroic death against animalistic hordes, or on a Spanish afternoon with the crowds shouting ‘Olé,’ but just plain death. Ugly death, shattering death. And I knew I could no longer be a part of those strategies that called for it.… Had I been qualified in belief, I might have become a priest.”

  “But your colleagues who couldn’t understand,” said Joel, mesmerized by Beale’s words, words that brought back so much of his own past. “They thought it was something else?”

  “Of course they did. I’d been praised in evaluation reports by the holy MacArthur himself. I even had a label: the Red Fox of Inchon—my hair was red then. My commands were marked by decisive moves and countermoves, all reasonably well thought out and swiftly executed. And then one day, south of Chunchon, I was given an order to take three adjacent hills that comprised dead high ground—vantage points that served no strategic purpose—and I radioed back that it was useless real estate, that whatever casualties we sustained were not worth it I asked for clarification, a field officer’s way of saying ‘You’re crazy, why should I?’ The reply came in something less than fifteen minutes, ‘Because it’s there, General.’ That was all. ‘Because it’s there.’ A symbolic point was to be made for someone’s benefit or someone else’s macho news briefing in Seoul.… I took the hills, and I also wasted the lives of over three hundred men—and for my efforts I was awarded another cluster of the Distinguished Service Cross.”

  “Is that when you quit?”

  “Oh, Lord no, I was too confused, but inside, my head was boiling. The end came, and I watched Panmunjom, and was finally sent home, all manner of extraordinary expectations to be considered my just rewards.… However, a minor advancement was denied me for a very good reason: I didn’t speak the language in a sensitive European post. By then my head had exploded; I used the rebuke and I took my cue. I resigned quietly and went my way.”

  It was Joel’s turn to pause and study the old man in the night light. “I’ve never heard of you,” he said finally. “Why haven’t I ever heard of you?”

  “You didn’t recognize the names on the two lower lists, either, did you? ‘Who a
re the Americans?’ you said. ‘The names don’t mean anything to me.’ Those were your words, Mr. Converse.”

  “They weren’t young decorated generals—heroes—in a war.”

  “Oh, but several were,” interrupted Beale swiftly, “in several wars. They had their fleeting moments in the sun, and then they were forgotten, the moments only remembered by them, relived by them. Constantly.”

  “That sounds like an apology for them.”

  “Of course it is! You think I have no feelings for them? For men like Chaim Abrahms, Bertholdier, even Leifhelm? We call upon these men when the barricades are down, we extol them for acts beyond our abilities.…”

  “You were capable. You performed those acts.”

  “You’re right and that’s why I understand them. When the barricades are rebuilt, we consign them to oblivion. Worse, we force them to watch inept civilians strip the gears of reason and, through oblique vocabularies, plant the explosives that will blow those barricades apart again. Then when they’re down once more, we summon our commanders.”

  “Jesus, whose side are you on?”

  Beale closed his eyes tightly, reminding Joel of the way he used to shut his own when certain memories came back to him. “Yours, you idiot,” said the scholar quietly. “Because I know what they can do when we ask them to do it. I meant what I said before. There’s never been a time in history like this one. Far better that inept, frightened civilians, still talking, still searching, than one of us—forgive me, one of them—”

  A gust of wind blew off the sea; the sand spiraled about their feet. “That man,” said Converse, “the one who told you the network would take care of you. Why did he say it?”

  “He thought they could use me. He was one of the field commanders I knew in Korea, a kindred spirit then. He came to my island—for what reason I don’t know, perhaps a vacation, perhaps to find me, who knows—and found me on the waterfront. I was taking my boat out of the Plati Harbor when suddenly he appeared, tall, erect and very military in the morning sun. ‘We have to talk,’ he said, with that same insistence we always used in the field. I asked him aboard and we slowly made our way out of the bay. Several miles out of the Plati he presented his case, their case. Delavane’s case.”

  “What happened then?”

  The scholar paused for precisely two seconds, then answered simply, “I killed him. With a scaling knife. Then I dropped his body over a cluster of sharks beyond the shoals of the Stephanos.”

  Stunned, Joel stared at the old man—the iridescent light of the moon heightened the force of the macabre revelation. “Just like that?” he said in a monotone.

  “It’s what I was trained to do, Mr. Converse. I was the Red Fox of Inchon. I never hesitated when the ground could be gained, or an adversarial advantage eliminated.”

  “You killed him?”

  “It was a necessary decision, not a wanton taking of life. He was a recruiter and my response was in my eyes, in my silent outrage. He saw it, and I understood. He could not permit me to live with what he’d told me. One of us had to die, and I simply reacted more swiftly than he did.”

  “That’s pretty cold reasoning.”

  “You’re a lawyer, you deal every day with options. Where was the alternative?”

  Joel shook his head, not in reply but in astonishment. “How did Halliday find you?”

  “We found each other. We’ve never met, never talked, but we have a mutual friend.”

  “In San Francisco?”

  “He’s frequently there.”

  “Who is he?”

  “It’s a subject we won’t discuss. I’m sorry.”

  “Why not? Why the secrecy?”

  “It’s the way he prefers it. Under the circumstances, I believe it’s a logical request.”

  “Logic? Find me logic in any of this! Halliday reaches a man in San Francisco who just happens to know you, a former general thousands of miles away on a Greek island who just happens to have been approached by one of Delavane’s people. Now, that’s coincidence, but damned little logic!”

  “Don’t dwell on it. Accept it.”

  “Would you?”

  “Under the circumstances, yes, I would. You see, there’s no alternative.”

  “Sure there is. I could walk away five hundred thousand dollars richer, paid by an anonymous stranger who could only come after me by revealing himself.”

  “You could but you won’t. You were chosen very carefully.”

  “Because I could be motivated? That’s what Halliday said.”

  “Frankly, yes.”

  “You’re off the wall, all of you!”

  “One of us is dead. You were the last person he spoke with.”

  Joel felt the rush of anger again, the sight of a dying man’s eyes burned into his memory. “Aquitaine,” he said softly. “Delavane.… All right, I was chosen carefully. Where do I begin?”

  “Where do you think you should begin? You’re the attorney; everything must be done legally.”

  “That’s just it. I’m an attorney, not the police, not a detective.”

  “No police in any of the countries where those four men live could do what you can do, even if they agreed to try, which, frankly, I doubt. More to the point, they would alert the Delavane network.”

  “All right, I’ll try,” said Converse, folding the sheet with the list of names and putting it in his inside jacket pocket. “I’ll start at the top. In Paris. With this Bertholdier.”

  “Jacques-Louis Bertholdier,” added the old man, reaching down into his canvas bag and taking out a thick manila envelope. “This is the last thing we can give you. It’s everything we could learn about those four men; perhaps it can help you. Their addresses, the cars they drive, business associates, cafes and restaurants they frequent, sexual preferences where they constitute vulnerability … anything that could give you an edge. Use it, use everything you can. Just bring us back briefs against men who have compromised themselves, broken laws—above all, evidence that shows they are not the solid, respectable citizens their life-styles would indicate. Embarrassment, Mr. Converse, embarrassment. It leads to ridicule, and Preston Halliday was profoundly right about that. Ridicule is the first step.”

  Joel started to reply, to agree, then stopped, his eyes riveted on Beale. “I never told you Halliday said anything about ridicule.”

  “Oh?” The scholar blinked several times in the dim light, momentarily unsure of himself, caught by surprise. “But, naturally, we discussed—”

  “You never met, you never talked!” Converse broke in.

  “—through our mutual friend the strategies we might employ,” said the old man, his eyes now steady. “The aspect of ridicule is a keystone. Of course we discussed it.”

  “You just hesitated.”

  “You startled me with a meaningless statement. My reactions are not what they once were.”

  “They were pretty good in a boat beyond the Stephanos,” corrected Joel.

  “An entirely different situation, Mr. Converse. Only one of us could leave that boat. Both of us will leave this beach tonight.”

  “All right, I may be reaching. You would be, too, if you were me.” Converse withdrew a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket, shook one up nervously to his lips and took out his lighter. “A man I knew as a kid under one name approaches me years later calling himself something else.” Joel snapped his lighter and held the flame under the cigarette, inhaling. “He tells a wild story that’s just credible enough so I can’t dismiss it. The believable aspect is a maniac named Delavane. He says I can help stop him—stop them—and there’s a great deal of money for nodding my head—provided by a man in San Francisco who won’t say who he is, expedited by a former general on a fashionably remote island in the Aegean. And for his efforts, this man I knew under two names is murdered in daylight, shot a dozen times in an elevator, dying in my arms whispering the name ‘Aquitaine.’ And then this other man, this ex-soldier, this doctor, this scholar, tells me ano
ther story that ends with. a ‘recruiter’ from Delavane killed with a scaling knife, his body thrown overboard into a school of sharks beyond the Stephanos—whatever that is.”

  “The Aghios Stephanos,” said the old man. “A lovely beach, far more popular than this one.”

  “Goddamn it, I am reaching, Mr. Beale, or Professor Beale, or General Beale! It’s too much to absorb in two lousy days! Suddenly I don’t have much confidence. I feel way beyond my depth—let’s face it, overwhelmed and underqualified … and damned frightened.”

  “Then don’t overcomplicate things,” said Beale. “I used to say that to students of mine more often than I can remember. I would suggest they not look at the totality that faced them, but rather at each thread of progression, following each until it met and entwined with another thread, and then another, and if a pattern did not become clear, it was not their failure but mine. One step at a time, Mr. Converse.”

  “You’re one hell of a Mr. Chips. I would have dropped the course.”

  “I’m not saying it well. I used to say it better. When you teach history, threads are terribly important.”

  “When you practice law, they’re everything.”

  “Go after the threads, then, one at a time. I’m certainly no lawyer, but can’t you approach this as an attorney whose client is under attack by forces that would violate his rights, cripple his manner of living, deny his pursuit of peaceful existence—in essence, destroy him?”

  “Not likely,” replied Joel. “I’ve got a client who won’t talk to me, won’t see me, won’t even tell me who he is.”

  “That’s not the client I had in mind.”

  “Who else? It’s his money.”

  “He’s only a link to your real client.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “What’s left of the civilized world, perhaps.”