The Aquitaine Progression: A Novel

  “Certainly not! It is the way I treat liars.” The legend of France began to rise. “And I see no reason—”

  “Stay in that chair!” Joel commanded. “Or only your corpse will get back to Paris,” he added simply, without hostility. “I told you, all I wanted was this conversation with you. It won’t take long, and then you’ll be free to go. That’s more charity than any of you showed me.”

  “You were expendable. I apologize for being so blunt, but it is the truth.”

  “If I was so expendable, why didn’t you just kill me? Why the elaborate buildup, all that trouble to make me a killer, an assassin, a man hunted all over Europe.”

  “The Jew gave us that.”

  “The Jew? Chaim Abrahms?”

  “It makes no difference now,” said Bertholdier. “Our man in the Mossad—incidentally, a brilliant analyst—made it clear that if we could not find out where you came from, if you yourself did not know, then we had to put you in ‘forbidden territory’—I believe that was the expression. And that was not preposterous. No one claims you. You were—you are—indeed, untouchable.”

  “Why doesn’t it make any difference now—the fact that you’ve told me what you presume I already know?”

  “You’ve lost, Monsieur Converse.”

  “I have?”

  “Yes, and if you have delusions about drugging me—as we drugged you—let me spare you and me the discomfort of such procedures. I do not have the information. Actually, no one does. Only a machine that is set in motion and issues commands.”

  “To other machines?”

  “Of course not. To men—men who will do what they have been trained to do, who believe in what they’re doing. I have no idea who they are.”

  “That’s the killing, isn’t it? They’re the killers.”

  “All war is reduced to killing, young man. And make no mistake. This is war. The world has had enough. We will put it to rights, as the English say. You will see; we will not be opposed. We are not only needed, we are wanted.”

  “ ‘Accumulation, rapid acceleration,’ those were the words, weren’t they?”

  “The Jew was precipitate. He talks too much.”

  “He says you’re the pompous asshole of creation. He told me that he and Van Headmer were going to put you in a glass room with little boys and girls and watch you screw yourself into a coronary.”

  “His conversations were always tasteless.… But no, I don’t believe you.”

  “So we’re back to my original statement.” Joel walked away from the window and sat down in an armchair diagonally opposite Bertholdier. “Why do you find it so difficult to believe? Because you didn’t think of it?”

  “No, monsieur. Because it’s unthinkable.”

  Converse pointed to a telephone on the desk. “You know their private numbers,” he said. “Call them. Call Leifhelm in Bonn and Abrahms in Tel Aviv. Also Van Headmer, if you like, although I’m told he’s in the States, probably California.”

  “California?”

  “Ask each of them if he came to see me at that little stone house on Leifhelm’s property. Ask them what we talked about. Go on, the phone’s right over there.”

  Bertholdier looked sharply at the telephone as Joel held his breath. Then the soldier turned back to Converse, reluctance winning out over inclination. “What are you trying to do? What sort of trick is this?”

  “What trick? There’s the phone. I can’t rig it, I can’t make it dial numbers or hire people hundreds or thousands of miles away to impersonate those men.”

  The Frenchman looked again at the telephone. “What could I say?” he asked quietly, the question directed more at himself than at Joel.

  “Try the truth. You’re very big on the truth as you see it, as it pertains to large global concepts, and this is only a small matter of several minor omissions. They’re omitting to tell you that each one of them came to see me. Or perhaps the omissions weren’t so minor.”

  “How would I know they came to see you?”

  “You weren’t listening to me. I said ‘Try the truth.’ I had you kidnapped, no one else. I did it because I didn’t understand, and if push comes to shove, I want to save my life. There’s a huge world out there, General. Large parts of it you’ll leave intact, and I could live very nicely as long as I didn’t have to worry about someone coming out of a doorway to blow my head off.”

  “You’re not the man I thought you were—we thought you were.”

  “We’re all what circumstances make us. I’ve had my share of sweat. I’m bowing out of the crusading business, or the lid-blowing business, or whatever you want to call it. Would you like to know why?”

  “Very much so,” said Bertholdier, staring at Joel, confusion and curiosity fighting each other in his eyes.

  “Because I listened to you in Bonn. Maybe you’re right, or maybe I just don’t care anymore because I was left way out in the cold. Maybe the world really does need you arrogant bastards right now.”

  “It does! There’s no other way!”

  “It’s the year of the generals then, isn’t it?”

  “No, not simply the generals! We are the consolidators, the symbols of strength and discipline and lawful order. Surely what follows in the aggregate—in the international marketplaces, in joint foreign policies, and yes, in the legal processes themselves—will reflect our leadership, our example, and out of it all will come what is most lacking in today’s world. Stability, Monsieur Converse! No more madmen like the senile Khomeini or the hollow braggard Qaddafi, or the insane Palestinians. Such men and such nations and would-be nations will be pincered by truly international forces, crushed by the overwhelming might of like-minded governments. Retribution will be swift and total. I am a military strategist of some reputation, so let me assure you the Russians will stand aside, appalled, not daring to interfere—knowing at last that they cannot divide us any longer. They cannot rattle their sabers, frightening one segment while appeasing others, for we are all one!”

  “Aquitaine,” said Joel softly.

  “An adequate code name, yes,” agreed Bertholdier.

  “You’re as convincing as you were in Bonn,” added Converse. “And maybe it could all work, but not this way, not with you people.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Nobody has to divide you—you’re already oceans apart.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Place those calls, General. Make it easy on yourself. Reach Leifhelm first. Tell him you just heard from Abrahms in Tel Aviv and you’re appalled. Say Abrahms wants to meet with you because he has information about me, that he admitted he and Van Headmer came to see me alone in Bonn. You could add that I told Abrahms he and his Afrikaner friend were my second and third visitors. Leifhelm was the first.”

  “Why would I tell him this?”

  “Because you’re angry as hell. No one told you about these separate meetings with me and you consider them highly improper—which, if you don’t you damn well should. A little while ago you said I was expendable. Well, you’re in for a shock, General.”

  “Explain that!”

  “No. Use the phone. Listen to what he says, how he reacts, how they all react. You’ll know. See if I’m telling you the truth.”

  Bertholdier placed both his hands on the arms of the brocaded chair and started to rise, his eyes on the telephone. Converse sat motionless, watching the Frenchman closely, barely breathing, his pulse racing. Suddenly the general pushed himself violently back into the chair and gripped its arms. “All right!” he shouted. “What was said? What did they say?”

  “I think you should use that phone first.”

  “Pointless!” snapped Bertholdier. “As you say, you cannot make it dial other numbers—well, I suppose you could, but to what end? Impostors? Ridiculous! I could ask any of several hundred questions and know they were merely playactors.”

  “All the more reason to call them,” said Joel calmly. “You’d know I was telling the truth.?
??

  “And give an advantage where none was shown to me.”

  Converse breathed normally again. “It’s up to you, General. I’m just looking for a safe way out.”

  “Then tell me what was said to you.”

  “Each asked me the obvious—as if he didn’t trust the drugs or the one who adminstered them or each other. Whom did I really represent?” Joel paused; he was about to fish with a witness, but knew he had to pull back instantly if the pond was barren. “I guess I mentioned Beale on Mykonos,” he offered hesitantly.

  “You did,” confirmed the general. “He was reached several months ago, but our contact never returned. You explained that also.”

  “You thought he might be one of you, didn’t you?”

  “We thought he threw away a brilliant military career out of disgust. Apparently it was a different disgust, the very weakness we abhorred. But these are not the things I want to hear. You made reference to some aspect of expendability. That is what I want to hear. Now.”

  “You want it straight? Without the frills?”

  “No frills, monsieur.”

  “Leifhelm said you’ll be out in a matter of months, if not sooner. You give too many orders; the others are sick of them—and you want too much for France.”

  “Leifhelm? The hypocritical weasel who sold his very soul to deny everything he espoused? Who betrayed his leaders in the dock at Nuremberg, furnishing the court with all manner of evidence so as to worm his way into the Allies’ bowels! Everywhere, whatever our commitments, we cringed! He brought dishonor on the most honorable profession in this world. Let me tell you, monsieur, it is not I who will be out, it is he!”

  “Abrahms said you were a sexual embarrassment,” continued Converse, as though Bertholdier’s response was irrelevant. “That was the phrase he used, ‘a sexual embarrassment.’ He mentioned the fact that there was a record—one he obtained, in fact—that spelled out a string of rapes, female and male, that were covered up by the French Army because you were damned good at what you did. But then he asked the question. Could a bisexual opportunist, one who ravaged women at will and who sodomized young men and boys, who corrupted the word ‘interrogations’ as well as whole sections of the officer corps, be truly considered the French leader of code-name Aquitaine. He also said you wanted too many controls centered in your own government. But by the time there were such controls, you’d be gone.”

  “Gone?” cried the Frenchman, his eyes once more on fire as they had been weeks ago in Paris, his whole body trembling with rage. “Convicted by a barbarian, a smelly, uneducated Jew?”

  “Van Headmer didn’t go that far. He said you were simply too vulnerable—”

  “Forget Van Headmer!” roared Bertholdier. “He’s a fossil! He was courted solely on the basis that he might deliver raw materials. He’s of no consequence.”

  “I didn’t think he was,” agreed Joel truthfully.

  “But the strutting, foul-mouthed Israeli thinks he can move against me? Let me tell you, I have been threatened before—by a great man—and nothing ever came of those threats because, as you put it, I was ‘damned good’ at what I did. I still am! And there is another record, one of outstanding and brilliant service, that dwarfs any compilation of filthy rumors and barracks gossip. My record is unmatched by any in code-name Aquitaine, and that includes the legless egomaniac in San Francisco. He believes it was all his idea! Preposterous! I refined it! He merely gave it a name based on a far-fetched reading of history.”

  “He also got the ball started by exporting one hell of a lot of hardware,” interrupted Converse.

  “Because it was there! And there were profits to be made!” The general paused, leaning forward in the chair. “I will be frank with you. As with any elite corps of leadership, one man rises above the others by the sheer strength of his character and his mind. Beside me the others—all others—pale into mediocrity. Delavane is a deformed, hysterical caricature. Leifhelm is a Nazi, and Abrahms is a bombastic polarizer; alone he could set off waves of anti-Semitism, the worst sort of symbol of leadership. When the tribunals rise out of the confusion and the panic, they will look to me. I shall be the true leader of code-name Aquitaine.”

  Joel got out of the chair and walked back to the window, staring out at the mountain fields, feeling the soft breezes on his face. “This examination is finished, General,” he said.

  As if on cue the door opened, and a former sergeant major in the French Army based in Algiers stood there waiting to escort the bewildered legend of France out of the room.

  Chaim Abrahms sprang out of the brocaded chair, his barrel chest straining the seams of his black safari jacket. “He said those things about me? About himself?”

  “I told you before we got into any of this to use the phone,” said Converse, sitting across from the Israeli, a pistol on a table beside his chair. “Don’t take my word for it. I’ve heard it said you’ve got good gut instincts. Call Bertholdier. You don’t have to say where you are—as a matter of fact, I’d put a bullet in your head if you tried. Just tell him one of Leifhelm’s guards, a man you bought to keep his eyes open for you because of a certain innate mistrust you have of Germans, told you that he, Bertholdier, came to see me alone on two separate occasions. Since I haven’t been found, you want to know why. It’ll work. You’ll hear enough to know whether I’m telling you the truth or not.”

  Abrahms stared down at Joel. “But why do you tell me this truth? If it is the truth. Why do you abduct me to tell me these things. Why?”

  “I thought I made that clear. My money’s running out, and although I’m not wild about lox or kreplach, I’d be better off living in Israel under a protective cover than being hunted and ultimately killed running around Europe. You can do that for me, but I know I’ve got to deliver something to you first. I’m delivering it now. Bertholdier intends to take over what he calls code-name Aquitaine. He said you’re a foul-mouthed Jew, a destructive symbol, you’ll have to go. He said the same about Leifhelm; the specter of a Nazi couldn’t be tolerated, and Van Headmer was a ‘fossil’—that was the word, ‘fossil.’ ”

  “I can hear him,” said Abrahms softly, his hands clasped behind his back, pacing toward the window. “Are you sure our military boulevardier with the cock of steel did not say ‘smelly Jew’? I’ve heard our French hero use such words—always, of course, apologizing to me, saying I was exempt.”

  “He used them.”

  “But why? Why would he say such things to you? I don’t deny his logic, for Christ’s sake. Leifhelm will be shot once controls are established. A Nazi running the goddamned German government? Absurd! Even Delavane understands this, he will be eliminated. And poor old Van Headmer is a relic, we all know that. Still, there is gold in South Africa. He. could deliver it. But why you? Why would Bertholdier come to you?”

  “Ask him yourself. There’s the phone. Use it.”

  The Israeli stood motionless, his narrow eyes encased in swells of flesh riveted on Converse. “I will,” he said quietly, emphatically. “You are far too clever, Mr. Lawyer. The fire inside you remains in your head—it has not reached your stomach. You think too much. You say you were manipulated? I say you manipulate.” Abrahms turned and strode like a bulky Coriolanus to the phone. He stood for a moment, squinting, remembering, then picked up the phone and dialed the series of numbers long ago committed to memory.

  Joel remained in the chair, every muscle in his body taut, his throat suddenly dry. Slowly he inched his hand over the arm of the chair nearer the pistol. In seconds he might have to use it, his strategy—his only strategy—blown apart by a phone call he had never thought would be made. What was wrong with him? Where were his vaunted examining tactics taking him? Had he forgotten whom he was dealing with?

  “Code Isaiah,” said Abrahms into the phone, his angry eyes again staring across the room at Converse. “Patch me through to Verdun-sur-Meuse. Quickly!” The Israeli’s massive chest heaved with every breath, but it was the only part of
his stocky frame that moved. He spoke again, furiously. “Yes, code Isaiah! I have no time to waste! Reach Verdunsur-Meuse! Now!” Abrahms’ eyes grew wide as he listened. He looked briefly away from Converse, then snapped his head back toward him, his eyes filled with loathing. “Repeat that!” he shouted. And then he slammed the telephone down with such force the desk shook. “Liar!” he screamed.

  “You mean me?” asked Joel, his hand inches from the gun.

  “They say he disappeared! They cannot find him!”

  “And?” Converse’s throat was now a vacuum. He had lost.

  “He lies! The cock of steel is no more than a whining coward! He’s hiding—he avoids me! He will not face me!”

  Joel swallowed repeatedly as he moved his hand away from the weapon. “Force the issue,” he said, somehow managing to keep the tremor out of his voice. “Trace him down. Call Leifhelm, Van Headmer. Say it’s imperative you reach Bertholdier.”

  “Stop it! And let him know I know? He had to give you a reason! Why did he come to see you in the first place?”

  “I wanted to wait until you’d spoken to him,” said Converse, crossing his legs and picking up a pack of cigarettes next to the pistol. “He might have told you himself—then again, he might not. He has this idea that I was sent out by Delavane to test all of you. To see who might betray him.”

  “Betray him? Betray the legless one? How? Why? And if our French peacock believed that, again why would he say these things to you?”

  “I’m an attorney. I provoked him. Once he understood how I felt about Delavane, what that bastard did to me, he knew I couldn’t possibly have anything to do with him. His defenses were down; the rest was easy. And as he talked I saw a way to save my own life.” Joel struck a match, lighting a cigarette. “By reaching you,” he added.