The Aquitaine Progression: A Novel

  At Helikon he had done something he had never done before, something that had never occurred to him, an indulgence that was generally attributed to romantic fiction or movie stars or rock idols. Fear and caution had joined with an excess of money, and he had paid for two adjoining seats in first class. He wanted no one’s eyes straying to the pages he would be reading. Old Beale had made it frighteningly clear on the beach last night: if there was the remotest possibility that the materials he carried might fall into other hands—any other hands—he was to destroy them at all costs. For they were in-depth dossiers on men who could order multiple executions by placing a single phone call.

  He reached down for his attaché case, the leather handle still dark from the sweat of his grip since Mykonos early that morning. For the first time he understood the value of a device he had learned about from films and novels. Had he been able to chain the handle of his attaché case to his wrist, he would have breathed far more comfortably.

  Jacques-Louis Bertholdier, age fifty-nine, only child of Alphonse and Marie-Thérèse Bertholdier, was born at the military hospital in Dakar. Father a career officer in the French Army, reputedly autocratic and a harsh disciplinarian. Little is known about the mother; it is perhaps significant that Bertholdier never speaks of her, as if dismissing her existence. He retired from the Army four years ago at the age of fifty-five, and is now a director of Juneau et Cie., a conservative firm on the Bourse des Valeurs, Paris’s stock exchange.

  The early years appear to be typical of the life of a commanding officer’s son, moving from post to post, accorded the privileges of the father’s rank and influence. He was used to servants and fawning military personnel. If there was a difference from other officers’ sons, it was in the boy himself. It is said that he could execute the full-dress manual-of-arms by the time he was five and at ten could recite by rote the entire book of regulations.

  In 1938 the Bertholdiers were back in Paris, the father a member of the General Staff. This was a chaotic time, as the war with Germany was imminent. The elder Bertholdier was one of the few commanders aware that the Maginot could not hold; his outspokenness so infuriated his fellow officers that he was transferred to the field, commanding the Fourth Army, stationed along the northeastern border.

  The war came and the father was killed in the fifth week of combat. Young Bertholdier was then sixteen years old and going to school in Paris.

  The fall of France in June of 1940 could be called the beginning of our subject’s adulthood. Joining the Resistance first as a courier, he fought for four years, rising in the underground’s ranks until he commanded the Calais-Paris sector. He made frequent undercover trips to England to coordinate espionage and sabotage operations with the Free French and British intelligence. In February of 1944, De Gaulle conferred on him the temporary rank of major. He was twenty years of age.

  Several days prior to the Allied occupation of Paris, Bertholdier was severely wounded in a street skirmish between the Resistance fighters and the retreating German troops. Hospitalization relieved him of further activity for the remainder of the European war. Following the surrender he was appointed to the national military academy at Saint-Cyr, a compensation deemed proper by De Gaulle for the young hero of the underground. Upon graduation he was elevated to the permanent rank of captain. He was twenty-four and given successive commands in the Dra Hamada, French Morocco; Algiers; then across the world to the garrisons at Haiphong, and finally the Allied sectors in Vienna and West Berlin. (Note this last post with respect to the following information on Field Marshal Erich Leifhelm. It was where they first met and were friends, at first openly, but subsequently they denied the relationship after both had resigned from military service.)

  Putting Erich Leifhelm aside for the moment, Converse thought about the young legend that was Jacques-Louis Bertholdier. Though Joel was as unmilitary as any civilian could be, in an odd way he could identify with the military phenomenon described in these pages. Although no hero, he had been accorded a hero’s return from a war in which very few were so acclaimed, these generally coming from the ranks of those who had endured capture more than they had fought. Nevertheless, the attention—the sheer attention—that led to privileges was a dangerous indulgence. Although initially embarrassed, one came to accept it all, and then to expect it all. The recognition could be heady, the privileges soon taken for granted. And when the attention began to dwindle away, a certain anger came into play; one wanted it all back.

  These were the feelings of someone with no hunger for authority—success, yes; power, no. But what of a man whose whole being was shaped by the fabric of authority and power, whose earliest memories were of privilege and rank, and whose meteoric rise came at an incredibly young age? How does such a man react to recognition and the ever-increasing spectrum of his own ascendancy? One did not lightly take away much from such a man; his anger could turn into fury. Yet Bertholdier had walked away from it all at fifty-five, a reasonably young age for one so prominent. It was not consistent. Something was missing from the portrait of this latter-day Alexander. At least so far.

  Timing played a major part in Bertholdier’s expanding reputation. After posts in the Dra Hamada and pre-crisis Algiers, he was transferred to French Indochina, where the situation was deteriorating rapidly for the colonial forces, then engaged in violent guerrilla warfare. His exploits in the field were instantly the talk of Saigon and Paris. The troops under his command provided several rare but much needed victories, which although incapable of altering the course of the war convinced the hard-line militarists that the inferior Asian forces could be defeated by superior Gallic courage and strategy; they needed only the materials withheld by Paris. The surrender at Dienbienphu was bitter medicine for those men who claimed that traitors in the Quai d’Orsay had brought about France’s humiliation. Although Colonel Bertholdier emerged from the defeat as one of the few heroic figures, he was wise enough or cautious enough to keep his own counsel, and did not, at least in appearance, join the “hawks.” Many say that he was waiting for a signal that never came. Again he was transferred, serving tours in Vienna and West Berlin.

  Four years later, however, he broke the mold he had so carefully constructed. In his own words, he was “infuriated and disillusioned” by De Gaulle’s accords with the independence-seeking Algerians; he fled to the land of his birth, North Africa, and joined General Raoul Salan’s rebellious OAS, which violently opposed policies it termed betrayals. During this revolutionary interim of his life he was implicated in an assassination attempt on De Gaulle. With Salan’s capture in April of 1962, and the insurrectionists’ collapse, once again Bertholdier emerged from defeat stunningly intact. In what can only be described as an extraordinary move—and one that has never really been understood—De Gaulle had Bertholdier released from prison and brought to the Elysée. What was said between the two men has never been revealed, but Bertholdier was returned to his rank. De Gaulle’s only comment of record was given during a press conference on May 4, 1962. In reply to a question regarding the reinstated rebel officer, he said (verbatim translation): “A great soldier-patriot must be permitted and forgiven a single misguided interlude. We have conferred. We are satisfied.” He said no more on the subject.

  For seven years Bertholdier was stationed at various influential posts, rising to the rank of general; more often than not he was the chief military chargé d’affaires at major embassies during the period of France’s participation in the Military Committee of NATO. He was frequently recalled to the Quai d’Orsay, accompanying De Gaulle to international conferences, always visible in newspaper photographs, usually within several feet of the great man himself. Oddly enough, although his contributions appear to have been considerable, after these conferences—or summits—he was invariably sent back to his previous station while internal debates continued and decisions were reached without him. It was as though he was constantly being groomed but never summoned for the critical post. Was that ultimate summons the si
gnal he had been waiting for seven years before at Dienbienphu? It is a question for which we have no answer here, but we believe it’s vital to pursue it.

  With De Gaulle’s dramatic resignation after the rejection of his demands for constitutional reform in 1969, Bertholdier’s career went into an eclipse. His assignments were far from the centers of power and remained so until his resignation. Research into bank and credit-card references as well as passenger manifests shows that during the past eighteen months our subject made trips to the following: London, 3; New York, 2; San Francisco, 2; Bonn, 3; Johannesburg, 1; Tel Aviv, 1 (combined with Johannesburg). The pattern is clear. It is compatible with the rising geographical pressure points of General Delavane’s operation.

  Converse rubbed his eyes and rang for a drink. While waiting for the Scotch he scanned the next few paragraphs, his memory of the man now jogged; the information was familiar history and not terribly relevant. Bertholdier’s name had been put forward by several ultraconservative factions, hoping to pull him out of the military into the political wars, but nothing had come of the attempts. The ultimate summons had passed him by; it never came. Currently, as a director of a large firm on the Paris stock exchange, he is basically a figurehead capable of impressing the wealthy and keeping the socialistically inclined at bay by the sheer weight of his own legend.

  He travels everywhere in a company limousine (read: staff car), and wherever he goes his arrival is expected, the proper welcome arranged. The vehicle is a dark-blue American Lincoln Continental, License Plate 100–1. The restaurants he frequents are: Taillevent, the Ritz, Julien, and Lucas-Carton. For lunches, however, he consistently goes to a private club called L’Etalon Blanc three to four times a week. It is a very-off-the-track establishment whose membership is restricted to the highest-ranking military, what’s left of the rich nobility, and wealthy fawners who, if they can’t be either, put their money on both so as to be in with the crowd.

  Joel smiled; the editor of the report was not without humor. Still, something was missing. His lawyer’s mind looked for the lapse that was not explained. What was the signal Bertholdier had not been given at Dienbienphu? What had the imperious De Gaulle said to the rebellious officer, and what had the rebel said to the great man? Why was he consistently accommodated—but only accommodated—never summoned to power? An Alexander had been primed, forgiven, elevated, then dropped? There was a message buried in these pages, but Joel could not find it.

  Converse reached what the writer of the report considered relevant only in that it completed the portrait, adding little, however, to previous information.

  Bertholdier’s private life appears barely pertinent to the activities that concern us. His marriage was one of convenience in the purest La Rochefoucauld sense: it was socially, professionally and financially beneficial for both parries. Moreover, it appears to have been solely a business arrangement. There have been no children, and although Mme. Bertholdier appears frequently at her husband’s side for state and social occasions, they have rarely been observed in close conversation. Also, as with his mother, Bertholdier has never been known to discuss his wife. There might be a psychological connection here, but we find no evidence to support it. Especially since Bertholdier is a notorious womanizer, supporting at times as many as three separate mistresses as well as numerous peripheral assignations. Among his peers there is a sobriquet that has never found its way into print: La Grand Machin, and if the reader here needs a translation, we recommend drinks in Montparnasse.

  On that compelling note the report was finished. It was a dossier that raised more questions than it answered. In broad strokes it described the whats and the hows but few of the whys; these were buried, and only imaginative speculation could unearth even the probabilities. But there were enough concrete facts to operate on. Joel glanced at his watch; an hour had passed. He had two more to reread, think, and absorb as much as possible. He had already made up his mind about whom he would contact in Paris.

  Not only was René Mattilon an astute lawyer frequently called upon by Talbot, Brooks and Simon when they needed representation in the French courts, but he was also a friend. Although he was older than Joel by a decade, their friendship was rooted in a common experience, common in the sense of global geography, futility and waste. Thirty years ago Mattilon was a young attorney in his twenties conscripted by his government and sent to French Indochina as a legal officer. He witnessed the inevitable and could never understand why it cost so much for his proud, intractable nation to perceive it. Too, he could be scathing in his comments about the subsequent American involvement.

  “Mon Dieu! You thought you could do with arms what we could not do with arms and brains? Déraisonnable!”

  It had become standard that whenever Mattilon flew to New York or Joel to Paris they found time for dinner and drinks. Also, the Frenchman was amazingly tolerant of Converse’s linguistic limitations; Joel simply could not learn another language. Even Val’s patient tutoring had fallen on deaf and dead ears and an unreceptive brain. For four years his ex-wife, whose father was French and whose mother was German, tried to teach him the simplest phrases but found him hopeless.

  “How the hell can you call yourself an international lawyer when you can’t be understood beyond Sandy Hook?” she had asked.

  “Hire interpreters trained by Swiss banks and put them on a point system,” he had replied. “They won’t miss a trick.”

  Whenever he came to Paris, he stayed in a suite of two rooms at the opulent George V Hotel, an indulgence permitted by Talbot, Brooks and Simon, he had assumed, more to impress clients than to satisfy a balance sheet. The assumption was only half right, as Nathan Simon had made clear.

  “You have a fancy sitting room,” Nate had told him in his sepulchral voice. “Use it for conferences and you can avoid those ridiculously expensive French lunches and—God forbid—the dinners.”

  “Suppose they want to eat?”

  “You have another appointment. Wink and say it’s personal; no one in Paris will argue.”

  The impressive address could serve him now, mused Converse, as the taxi weaved maniacally through the midafternoon traffic on the Champs-Elysées toward the Avenue George V. If he made any progress—and he intended to make progress—with men around Bertholdier or Bertholdier himself, the expensive hotel would fit the image of an unknown client who had sent his personal attorney on a very confidential search. Of course, he had no reservation, an oversight to be blamed on a substituting secretary.

  He was greeted warmly by the assistant manager, albeit with surprise and finally apologies. No telexed request for reservations had come from Talbot, Brooks and Simon in New York, but naturally, accommodations would be found for an old friend. They were; the standard two-room suite on the second floor, and before Joel could unpack, a steward brought a bottle of the Scotch whisky he preferred, substituting it for the existing brand on the dry bar. He had forgotten the accuracy of the copious notes such hotels kept on repeating guests. Second floor, the right whisky, and no doubt during the evening he would be reminded that he usually requested a wake-up call for seven o’clock in the morning. It would be the same.

  But it was close to five o’clock in the afternoon now. If he was going to reach Mattilon before the lawyer left his office for the day, he had to do so quickly. If René could have drinks with him, it would be a start. Either Mattilon was his man or he was not, and the thought of losing even an hour of any kind of progress was disturbing. He reached for the Paris directory on a shelf beneath the phone on the bedside table; he looked up the firm’s number and dialed.

  “Good Christ, Joel!” exclaimed the Frenchman. “I read about that terrible business in Geneva! It was in the morning papers and I tried to call you—Le Richemond, of course—but they said you’d checked out. Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine. I was just there, that’s all.”

  “He was American. Did you know him?”

  “Only across a table. By the way, that cra
p about his having something to do with narcotics was just that. Crap. He was cornered, robbed, shot and set up for postmortem confusion.”

  “And an overzealous official leaped at the obvious, trying to protect his city’s image. I know; it was made clear.… It’s all so horrible. Crime, killing, terrorism; it spreads everywhere. Less so here in Paris, thank God.”

  “You don’t need muggers, the taxi drivers more than fill the bill. Except nastier, maybe.”

  “You are, as always, impossible, my friend! When can we get together?”

  Converse paused. “I was hoping tonight. After you left the office.”

  “It’s very short notice, mon ami. I wish you had called before.”

  “I just got in ten minutes ago.”

  “But you left Geneva—”

  “I had business in Athens,” interrupted Joel.

  “Ah, yes, the money flees from the Greeks these days. Precipitously, I think. Just as it was here.”

  “How about drinks, René. It’s important.”

  It was Mattilon’s turn to pause; it was obvious he had caught the trace of urgency in Converse’s brevity, in his voice. “Of course,” said the Frenchman. “You’re at the George Cinq, I assume?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll be there as soon as I can. Say, forty-five minutes.”

  “Thanks very much. I’ll get a couple of chairs in the gallery.”

  “I’ll find you.”

  That area of the immense marble-arched lobby outside the tinted glass doors of the George V bar is known informally as the “gallery” by habitués, its name derived from the fact that there is an art gallery narrowly enclosed within a corridor of clear glass on the left. However, just as reasonably, the name fits the luxurious room itself. The deeply cushioned cut-velvet chairs, settees, and polished low, dark tables that line the marble walls are beneath works of art—mammoth tapestries from long-forgotten châteaux and huge heroic canvases by artists, both old and new. And the smooth stone of the floor is covered with giant Oriental rugs, while affixed to the high ceiling are a series of intricate chandeliers, throwing soft light through filigrees of lacelike gold.