The Aquitaine Progression: A Novel

  “Your second best must have been pretty good.”

  “All he wanted to hear was the truth. It wasn’t hard.”

  “Where is he? Where are they?”

  “The Alps, that’s all he’d say—”

  “Goddamn it!”

  “—for now,” completed the civilian. “He wants something from me first.”

  “What?”

  “Affidavits. You could call them depositions.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me. Affidavits from myself and the people I’m working with—working for, actually—stating what we know and what we did.”

  “He’s out to hang you, and I don’t blame him.”

  “That’s part of it, and I don’t blame him, either, but he says it’s secondary and I believe that. He wants Aquitaine. He wants Delavane and his crowd of maniacs nailed to the wall before the whole damn thing erupts—before the killing begins.”

  “That was Sam Abbott’s judgment. The killing—multiple assassinations, here and throughout Europe, the quickest and surest way to international chaos.”

  “The woman told him.”

  “No, he pieced it together from things Converse told her. Converse didn’t understand the words.”

  “He does now,” said Stone. “Did I say I was petrified? What’s a stronger phrase?”

  “Whatever it is, it applies to both of us because we both know how simple it would be—so simple. We’re not dealing with woolly-brained crazies or even your run-of-the-mill terrorists—we’ve got thirty years’ experience and ninety percent of them are in our computers. When the signals break out, we know where they are and usually we can stop them. But here we’re dealing with the roughest professionals in our own and in allied ranks, also with years of experience. They’re walking around the Pentagon, and on Army and Navy bases—and at an Air Force base in Nevada. Christ, where are they? You open your mouth and you don’t know whom you’re talking to, who’ll cut you down or program an aircraft to break apart in the sky. How can we stop what we can’t see?”

  “Perhaps Converse’s way.”

  “With affidavits?”

  “Maybe. Incidentally, he wants one from you. Your meeting with Abbott, everything he told you, as well as your evaluation of his mental capacities and stability. That means you’ll have to stay here tonight. A half-hour ago I reserved three other rooms—I said I’d give the front desk the names later.”

  “Would you mind answering my question? What the hell are affidavits going to do? We’re dealing with an army out there—how large and how widespread we don’t know—but it is an army! At minimum, a couple of battalions, here and in Europe. Professional officers trained to carry out orders, believing in those orders and in the generals who are issuing them. Affidavits, depositions, for Christ’s sake! Is this some kind of flaky legal handspring that doesn’t mean anything? Do we have time for this?”

  “You’re not thinking anything I didn’t think, Colonel. But then, I’m not a lawyer and neither are you. Converse is, and I had a long conversation with him. He’s taking the only route he knows. The legal route. Oddly enough, it’s why we sent him out.”

  “Give me an answer, Stone,” said Metcalf coldly.

  “Protection,” replied Stone. “What Converse wants is instant protection and for all of us to be taken seriously. Not as psychopaths or as cranks or as people with mental aberrations or diminished capacities—I think those were his words.”

  “Aren’t they nice? What in the name of sweet Jesus do they mean? How?”

  “With formal legal documents. Responsible men setting forth what they know and, in the case of depositions, under qualified examination. Through the courts, Colonel. A court—it only takes one, only one judge. On the basis of the affidavits a petition is made to the court—a court, a judge—that protection be given under seal.”

  “Under what?”

  “Under seal. It’s completely confidential—no press, no divulging of information, simply an order from the court transmitted to the authorities most suited to carry out the order. In this case, all the branches of the Secret Service instructed by the court to provide extraordinary service.”

  “Extraordinary? For whom?”

  “The President of the United States, the Vice-President, the Speaker of the House, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of State—right on down the line. The law, Colonel. That’s what the law can do—also his words, I think.”

  “Jesus!”

  There was a rapping on the door. This time Stone covered his automatic with the folded New York Times. He got up and admitted a waiter, who rolled in a table with a pot of coffee, two cups, a bottle of Canadian whisky, ice and glasses. He signed the bill and the man left.

  “Coffee or a drink first?” asked Stone.

  “My God, a drink. Please.”

  “I envy you.”

  “You’re not going to join me?”

  “Sorry, I can’t. I allow myself one in the evening; I’ll join you then. You live in Las Vegas, so you’ll understand. I’m trying to beat the odds, Colonel. I intend to beat them. I was fired, remember?” Stone brought the Air Force officer a drink and sat down.

  “You can’t beat the odds, don’t you know that?”

  “I’ve beaten a few. I’m still here.”

  “The courts,” said Metcalf, shaking his head. “A court! It’s an end run. He’s using the law to go around the flanks of the government people he should reach but whom he can’t trust. Can it work?”

  “It buys time, a few days perhaps, it’s hard to tell. ‘Under seal’ lasts only so long. The law also calls for full disclosure. But what’s most important is that it legitimately tightens the security around potential targets, hopefully screwing up whatever tactics Aquitaine is mounting, forcing the generals to regroup, rethink. Again time.”

  “But that’s only over here in the States.”

  “Yes. That’s why Converse wants the time.”

  “What for?”

  “He won’t tell me, and I’m in no position to make demands.”

  “I see,” said the Colonel, his drink to his lips.

  “You said three rooms. Who are the others?”

  “You’ll meet them and you won’t like them. They’re two kids who stumbled into this along with a few others I don’t know, and they won’t say who they are. After Halliday reached them—or one of them—they provided the dossiers for Converse. They’re young, but they’re all right, Colonel. If I ever had a son, I’d like to think he’d be one of them.”

  “I have a son and I expect he would be,” said Metcalf. “Otherwise, I blew it. What are the procedures?”

  Stone sat rigidly back in the chair and spoke slowly, his voice pitched to the static emphasis of a monotone. He was repeating instructions not of his own making and certainly not to his liking. “At three o’clock this afternoon I’m to call an attorney named Simon, Nathan Simon, one of the senior partners of Converse’s firm here in New York. Presumably by then Converse’s wife will have reached him, telling him to expect a call from me and to please do as I ask—apparently they believe he will. To be brief about it, Simon will come over here to the hotel accompanied by a stenographer and take all our depositions, along with our credentials, ranks, and current responsibilities. He’ll stay until he’s finished.”

  “You were right on the phone,” interrupted the military man. “We’re dead.”

  “I said as much to Converse and he asked me how it felt. He was inquiring, of course, from firsthand knowledge.”

  “He wants all of you.”

  “But not you,” said Stone. “He’d like your testimony—and, by extension, Abbott’s—but he won’t insist on it. He knows he can’t ask you to walk in on this.”

  “I walked in when that plane went down. Also there’s something else. If we can’t stop Delavane and his generals, what the hell’s left for people like us?… Converse wouldn’t tell you what he was going to do?”

  “Not in terms of what he
calls the countdown, but yes, as far as tomorrow is concerned. He’s sending over his own affidavit and, he expects, another from a man from the Sûreté who has information showing that most of the official reports out of Paris are lies.… And we’re not dead yet, Colonel. Converse made it clear that Nathan Simon was the best attorney we could have—as long as he believes us.”

  “What can a lawyer do?”

  “I asked Converse the same thing, and he gave me a strange answer. He said, ‘He can use the law, because the law isn’t men, it’s the law.’ ”

  “That’s beyond me,” said Metcalf, irritated. “Not in a philosophical context but how it applies now—right goddamned now!… Hell, it doesn’t make any difference—we don’t make any difference! Once those guns go off and the bodies fall in Washington and London, Paris or Bonn—wherever—they’ve got the controls and we won’t get them back. I know that because I know how long so many people have wanted someone to take control. Stop the carnage, make things safe, piss on the Soviets. God help me, there were times I thought that way myself.”

  “So did I,” said the civilian quietly.

  “We were wrong.”

  “I know that. It’s why I’m here.”

  Metcalf drank, holding the cold glass against his warm cheek. “I keep thinking about what Sam said to me. “There’s got to be a list,” he said. ‘A master list of everyone in this Aquitaine.’ He ruled out all the obvious places—not in a vault, not on paper—probably electronically programmed, flashed on with codes, as his aerial tactics were frequently flashed on a screen inside a jet’s cockpit. Someplace no one would ever think of, away from anything official or tied in with anyone remotely military. ‘A list. There has to be a list!’ he kept saying. For a pilot, he had a hell of an imagination. I guess it’s why he was so good at that tactical stuff at forty thousand feet in the air. Come out of the sun where they don’t expect you, or from a dark horizon where the radar can’t pick you up. He knew it all. He was a tactical genius.”

  As Metcalf talked, Stone leaned forward in the chair, looking intently at the Air Force officer and absorbing every word he spoke.

  “Scharhörn,” he said, barely above a whisper. “It’s Scharhörn!”

  The twin-engined Riems 406 circled the private airfield at Saint-Gervais, fifteen miles east of Chamonix, the amber lights of the two runways throwing an orange glow up into the lower night sky. Inside, Prudhomme checked the strap of his seat belt as the pilot on his left received clearance to make his final approach to the north-south strip.

  Mon Dieu, what an incredible day! thought the man from the Sûreté as he glanced at his right hand under the spill of the panel lights. The dark bruises on his fingers were at least less noticeable than the blood that had covered his entire hand only hours ago. His would-be executioner had not even bothered to conceal his assignment, such was his arrogance—bred undoubtedly in the Légion etrangère! And the sentence of death had been delivered right inside the car at the far end of the parking area in the Bois de Boulogne! The man had called him at the office and, in truth, it had entered Prudhomme’s mind that this man might call him, and so it was less a surprise than it could have been—and certainly gave him cause to be prepared. The man had asked his recent superior to meet him at the Bois, in the parking lot—he had startling news. He would be driving his official Peugeot, and since he could not leave his radio phone, would the inspector mind joining him. Of course not.

  But there had been no startling news. Only questions, asked very arrogantly.

  “Why did you do what you did this morning?”

  “Shave? Go to the toilet? Eat breakfast? Kiss my wife good-bye? What are you talking about?”

  “You know what I refer to! Earlier! The man on the Boulevard Raspail. You crashed into his car, stopping him. You threw narcotics inside. You arrested him falsely!”

  “I didn’t approve of what he was doing. Any more than I approve of this conversation.” Prudhomme had awkwardly reached for the handle of the door with his left hand, his right having other business.

  “Stop!” his former subordinate had shouted, grabbing his shoulder. “You were protecting the woman!”

  “Read my report. Let me go.”

  “I’ll let you go to hell! I’m going to kill you, meddler! Insignificant bureaucrat!”

  The former subordinate had yanked a gun from his jacket holster but he was too late. Prudhomme had fired twice the small weapon he gripped under his coat. Unfortunately, it was small caliber and the ex-colonel of the Legion was a very large man; he had lunged at Prudhomme inside the automobile. However, the veteran of the Resistance had gone back to an old wartime habit—just in case: along the lapels of his coat was threaded a long wire—a wire with two braided loops at each end. He had whipped it out, and looping it over his would-be executioner’s head with his wrists crossed, he violently yanked it taut until the flesh burst around the throat and blood drenched Prudhomme’s hands.

  “We’re cleared for landing, Inspector,” said the pilot, grinning. “I swear to Christ no one would believe this! Of course I have no intention of saying a thing, I swear on my mother’s grave!”

  “She’s probably drinking brandy in Montmartre at this moment,” interjected Prudhomme dryly. “Say nothing, and you may have another six months flying in your foolish tobacco from Malta.”

  “Nothing else! Never anything else, Inspector. I am a father!”

  “You are to be commended. Six months and then get out, do you understand?”

  “On my father’s grave, I swear!”

  “He’s very much alive and in jail—he’ll be out in sixty days. Tell him to stop his presses. Government relief checks—really.”

  Joel and Valerie listened in silence as the man from the Sûreté told his story. He was finished now; there was nothing left to say. Interpol had been compromised, the arrondissement police manipulated, the Sûreté itself corrupted, and official government communiqués issued on the basis of lies—all lies. Why?

  “I’ll tell you because I want your help—much more help,” said Converse, getting out of the chair and going to the desk, where the typewritten pages of his affidavit were in the center of the green blotter. “Better, you can read it yourself, but I’m afraid you’ll have to read it here. In the morning I’ll have copies made; until then I don’t want it to leave this room. By the way, Val got you a reservation, a single—don’t ask me how, but a clerk downstairs will have a new wardrobe if not a new house by tomorrow.”

  “Merci, madame.”

  “The name is French,” added Joel.

  “Yes.”

  “No, I mean the name is French.”

  “Oui.”

  “No, what I mean is—”

  “Pardon, monsieur,” interrupted Valerie. “Le nom sur le registre est ‘Monsieur French,’ mais ‘French,’ comme en anglais—French. Arthur French.”

  “But I will have to sign, talk. Surely they will know.”

  “You sign nothing and you say nothing,” said Val, taking a key off the bedside table and handing it to Prudhomme. “The room is paid for—three days, to be precise. After that—before, if possible, if you agree to help—the three of us will be someplace else.”

  “Formidable. I must read.”

  “Mon ami—mon époux—est un avocat exceptionnel.”

  “Je comprends.”

  “There are some forty pages here,” said Converse, bringing the papers to Prudhomme. “To absorb it will take you at least an hour. We’ll go downstairs and grab a bite to eat and leave you alone.”

  “Bien. There is much I wish to learn.”

  “What about you?” asked Joel, standing over the Frenchman. “I mean now. They’ll find that body in the car.”

  “Most certainly,” agreed Prudhomme. “I left it where it was along with that pig from the Legion. But for the Sûreté there will be no connection to me.”

  “Fingerprints? The fact that you were away from your office?”

  “Another old ha
bit from the war,” said the man from the Sûreté, reaching into his pocket. He pulled out a pair of extremely thin rubberized gloves—surgical gloves—cut off at the wrist. “I washed these out at the Bois. The German occupation forces had all our fingerprints in a thousand files. There was no point in asking for our own executions. As for my absence at my desk, it is quite simple. I explained to an assistant that I would be in Calais for several days on a contraband investigation and would call in. My years permit a certain latitude and flexibility.”

  “That’s the Sûreté, not the others. Not where the Legionnaire came from.”

  “I am aware of that, monsieur. So I must be careful. It will not be the first time.”

  “Enjoy your reading,” said Converse, nodding at Val to join him. “If you want anything, call room service.”

  “Bon appétit,” said Prudhomme.

  Chaim Abrahms lifted the stiffening wrist of his dead wife’s hand, the weapon gripped fiercely in her white fingers, and angled the gun toward her chest, into the bloody cavern between her breasts.

  The wide, brown eyes would not stay closed. They stared up at him, accusing—accusing!

  “What do you want from me!” he screamed. “I have seen the dead. I have lived with the dead! Leave me be, woman! You couldn’t understand!”

  Yet she had, for so many years. She had cooked the meat—the desert chicken and the lamb, caught in the outlying marshes—and fed the units of the Irgun and the Haganah, never questioning death then. Fighting for a hope, a simple hope that was the beginning of a dream. The land was theirs, rightfully, Biblically, logically theirs! They had fought and they had won! Two thousand years of being outcasts—despised, reviled, and spat upon by the almighty Gentiles until the tribes were burned and gassed and told to eliminate themselves from the face of the earth—and yet they had survived. Now the tribes were strong. They were the conquerors, not the conquered.

  “It’s what we fought for! What we prayed for! Why do you insult me with your eyes!” Chaim Abrahms roared as he pressed his forehead against the dead flesh of his wife’s face.