The Aquitaine Progression: A Novel

by Robert Ludlum

“D’accord.”

  It was explained that the person who wished to speak with her was driving out to De Gaulle Airport from the center of Paris; it would take thirty-five minutes. Waiting, she had coffee and a small glass of Calvados. The man walked through the door. Of late middle age, he was dressed in rumpled clothing, as if his appearance did not matter any longer. His face seemed lined as much from weariness as from age, and when he spoke his voice was tired but nevertheless precise.

  “I will keep you but a few minutes, madame. I’m sure you have places to go, people to see.”

  “As I explained,” said Val, looking hard at the Frenchman, “I’m in Paris to talk with several galleries—”

  “That is no concern of mine,” interrupted the man, holding up his hands. “Forgive me, I do not care to hear. I care to hear nothing unless madame wishes to speak after I’ve spoken to her.”

  “Why did you use the name of Mattilon?”

  “An introduction. You were friends. May I go back before Monsieur Mattilon?”

  “Go back by all means.”

  “My name is Prudhomme. I am with the Sûreté. A man died in a hospital here in Paris several weeks ago. It is said your former husband, Monsieur Converse, was responsible.”

  “I’m aware of that.”

  “It was not possible,” said the Frenchman calmly, sitting down and taking out a cigarette. “Have no fear, this office is not ‘tapped’ or ‘bugged.’ The chief inspector and I go back to the Resistance.”

  “That man died after a brutal fight with my former husband,” said Val cautiously. “I read it in the newspapers, heard it on the radio. Yet you’re telling me he wasn’t responsible for his death. How can you say that?”

  “The man did not die in the hospital, he was killed. Between two-fifteen and two-forty-five in the morning. Your husband was on a flight from Copenhagen to Hamburg during those hours. It has been established.”

  “You know this?”

  “Not officially, madame. I was removed from the case. A subordinate, a man with little police experience but with the Army—later in the Foreign Legion, no less—was given the assignment while I was shifted to more ‘important’ matters. I asked questions; I will not bore you with details, but the man’s lungs collapsed—a sudden trauma unrelated to his wounds. The man was suffocated. It was not in the report. It was removed.”

  Valerie controlled herself, keeping her voice cool and distant despite her anxiety. “Now,” she said, “what about Mattilon? My friend, Mattilon.”

  “Fingerprints,” replied the Frenchman wearily. “They suddenly are discovered twelve hours after the arrondissement police—who are very good—have examined that office. And yet there was a death in Wesel, West Germany, within the rising and the setting of the same sun. Your former husband’s countenance was described, his identity all but confirmed. And an old woman on a train to Amsterdam—the same routing—who is found with a gun in her hand—again a description given. Has this Converse wings? Does he fly unobserved over borders by himself? Again it is not possible.”

  “What are you trying to tell me, Monsieur Prudhomme?”

  The man from the Sûreté inhaled on his cigarette as he tore off a page from his note pad and wrote something on it. “I’m not certain, madame, since I am no longer officially privileged in these matters. But if your former husband did not cause the man in Paris to die and could not have shot your old friend Monsieur Mattilon, how many others did he not kill, including the American ambassador in Bonn and the supreme commander of NATO? And who are these people who can tell government sources to confirm this and confirm that, to change assignments of senior police personnel at will, to alter medical reports removing—suppressing—evidence? There are things I do not understand, madame, but I am certain those are the very things I am not meant to understand. And that is why I’m giving you this telephone number. It is not my office; it is my flat in Paris—my wife will know where to reach me. Simply remember, in an emergency say that you are from the Tatiana family.”

  Stone sat at the desk, the ever-present telephone in his hand. He was alone—had been alone when the call came from Charlotte, North Carolina, from a woman he had once loved very dearly years ago in the field. She had left the “terrible game,” as she called it; he had stayed, their love not strong enough.

  The connection was completed to Cuxhaven, West Germany, to a telephone he was sure would be sterile. That certainty was one of the pleasures in dealing with Johnny Reb.

  “Bobbie-Jo’s Chicken Fry!” was the greeting over the line. “We deliver.”

  “I gather that. It’s Stone.”

  “Mah wuhd, the Tatiana re-route!” exclaimed the Southerner. “Someday you must tell me about this here fascinatin’ family of yours, Brer Rabbit.”

  “Someday I will.”

  “I seem to recollect having heard the name somewheres around the late sixties, but I didn’t know what it meant.”

  “Trust whoever used it.”

  “Why should I do that?”

  “Because whoever it was was trusted by the hangingest judges in the world.”

  “Who might that be?”

  “The enemy, Rebel.”

  “If that’s a parable, Yankee, you lost me.”

  “Someday, Johnny, not now. What have you got?”

  “Well, let me tell you, I saw the damnedest little island over here you ever did see. It’s not twenty miles off the coast, near the mouth of the Elbe, right where it’s supposed to be. In the Heligoland Bight, they call it, which is a section of the North Sea.”

  “Scharhörn,” said Stone, making a statement. “You found it.”

  “It wasn’t tough to find—everybody seems to know about it—but nobody goes near a certain southwest shoreline. It used to be a U-boat refueling station in World War Two. The security was so tight most of the German High Command didn’t know about it, and the Allies never got a clue. The old concrete-and-steel structures are still there, and it’s supposed to be deserted except for a couple of caretakers, who, I’m told, wouldn’t pick you out of the water if your boat crashed into one of the old submarine winches.” Johnny Reb paused, then continued softly, “I went out there last night and saw lights, too many lights in too many places. There are people out there on that old base, not just a couple of watchmen, and you can bet a Yankee pot roast your lieutenant commander is one of them. Also around two o’clock in the morning after the lights went out, the tallest mother-lovin’ antenna this side of Houston slid up like a bionic cornstalk, but there was no corn on the top. Instead, it bloomed like a regular sunflower. It was a disk, the kind they use for satellite transmissions.… You want me to mount a team? I can do it; there’s a lot of unemployment these days. Also the cost will be minimal, because the more I think about it, the more I appreciate your swinging me out of the Dardanelles before those guns got there. That was really more important than getting me off the hook with those contingency funds in Bahrain.”

  “Thanks, but not yet. If you go in for him now, we show cards we can’t show.”

  “How long can you wait? Remember I taped that prick Washburn.”

  “How much did you put together?”

  “More than this old brain can absorb, if you want the truth. But not more than I can accept. It’s been a long time coming, hasn’t it? The eagles think they’re gonna catch the goddamned sparrows after all, don’t they? ’Cause they’re gonna turn everyone into sparrows.… You know, Stone, I shouldn’t say this because in your old age you became a bit softer than I did in mine, but if they get it off the ground, a lot of people everywhere may just lie back in their hammocks or go fishin’, and say the hell with it—let the big, uniformed daddies do it. Let’em straighten things out—get the potheads with their guns and switchblades off the streets and out of the parks. Show the Russkies and the oil boys in bathrobes we don’t take their crap anymore. Let’s show Jesus we’re the good guys with a lot of clout. Those soldiers, they got the guts and the guns, the corporations and the
conglomerates, so what does it mean to me? Where do I change, says the Joe in the hammock, except maybe for the better?”

  “Not better,” said Stone icily. “Those same people become robots. We all become robots, if we live. Don’t you understand that?”

  “Yeah, I do,” answered Johnny Reb. “I guess I always have. I live on a hog-high in Bern while you scratch in D.C. Yes, old buddy, I understand. Maybe better than you do.… Forget it, I’m enlisted. But what in all-fire hell are you going to do about this Converse? I don’t think he’s going to get out.”

  “He has to. We think he has the answers—the firsthand answers—that give us the proof.”

  “In my opinion he’s dead,” said the Southerner. “Maybe not now but soon—soon’s they find him.”

  “We have to find him first. Can you help?”

  “I started the night I needled Major Norman Anthony Washburn the Fourth, Fifth, or Sixth—I keep losin’ track of the numerals. You got the computers—the ones you have access to—and I’ve got the streets where they sell things you’re not supposed to buy. So far, nothing.”

  “Try to find something, because you were right before—we don’t have much time. And, Johnny, do you have the same feeling I have about that island, about Scharhörn?”

  “Like Appomattox, way down deep in the stomach. I can taste the bile, Brer Rabbit, which is why I’m going to possum down here for a few days. We found ourselves a beehive, boy, and the drones are restless, I can sense it.”

  34

  Joel put the map and the thick envelope on the grass and began pulling branches down from a small tree in the orchard to cover Hermione Geyner’s car. Each yanking of a limb filled him with pain, as much from fatigue as from the strain on his arms. Finally, he bunched together reeds of tall grass and threw them everywhere over the frame. The effect in the moonlight was that of an immense mound of hay. He picked up the map and the envelope and started walking toward the road two hundred yards away. According to the map, he was on the outskirts of a city or town called Appenweier, ten miles from the border at Kehl, directly across the Rhine from Strasbourg.

  He walked along the road, running into the grass whenever he saw the headlights of a car in either direction. He had traveled perhaps five or six miles—there was no way to tell—and knew that he could go no farther.

  In the jungles he had rested, knowing that rest was as much a weapon as a gun, the eyes and the mind far more lethal when alert than a dozen steel weapons strapped to his body.

  He found a short ravine that bordered a brook; the rocks would be his fortress—he fell asleep.

  Valerie walked out of the Charles De Gaulle Airport on the arm of the man from the Sûreté, Prudhomme, having accepted the scrap of paper with his telephone number but volunteering nothing. They approached the cabstand on the platform and Prudhomme spoke. “I will make myself clear, madame. You may take a taxi here and I shall bid you adieu, or you may permit me to drive you wherever you like—perhaps to another taxi stand in the city, to go wherever you wish—and I will know if anyone is following you.”

  “You would?”

  “In thirty-two years, even a fool learns something. My wife keeps telling me she has no lovers only because I have learned the rudiments of my profession.”

  “I accept your invitation,” interrupted Val, smiling. “I’m terribly tired. A small hotel, perhaps. Le Pont Royal, I know it.”

  “An excellent choice, but I must say that my wife would welcome you—without any questions.”

  “My time must be my own, monsieur,” said Valerie, climbing into the car.

  “D’accord.”

  “Why are you doing this?” she asked as Prudhomme got behind the wheel. “My husband was a lawyer—is a lawyer. The rules can’t be that different. Aren’t you some kind of accessory—assuming what I know damned well you’re assuming?”

  “I only wish that “you will call me, saying that you are from the Tatiana family. That is my risk and that is my reward.”

  Converse looked at his watch—a watch taken from a collapsed body so long ago he could not remember when—and saw that it was five-forty-five in the morning, the sun abruptly illuminating his fortress ravine. The stream was below, and so he took care of his necessities downstream and plunged his face into the flow of water upstream. He had to move; as he remembered, he had five miles to walk to the border.

  He reached Kehl. There he bought a razor, reasoning that a priest would maintain his appearance as best he could even under the duress of poor travel accommodations. He shaved at the river depot, then took the ferry across the scenic Rhine to Strasbourg. The customs officials were so deferential to his collar and his passport as well as to his shabby appearance—undoubtedly taken as a sign of the vow of poverty—that he found himself blessing a number of men, and by extension their entire families, as he was passed through the building.

  Out on the bustling streets he knew that the first thing he had to do was to get into a hotel room, shower off two days of fear and violence, and have his clothes cleaned or replaced. An impoverished-looking priest would not travel to the expensive wonders of Chamonix; it would be unseemly. But a normally dressed priest, would be perfectly acceptable, even desirable, a figure of respectability among the crowds. And a priest he would remain, Converse had decided—the decision here based again on legal experience. Think out—anticipate—what your adversary expects you to do, then do not conform unless you retain the advantage. The hunters of Aquitaine would expect him to shed his priestly habit, as it was his last known means of disguise; he would not do that; there were too many priests in France and too much advantage in being one.

  He registered at the Sofitel on the Place Saint-Pierre-le-Jeune and without elaboration explained to the concierge that he had been through a dreadful three days of traveling and would the land man see to several items he needed rather desperately. He was from a very well-endowed parish in Los Angeles and—An American $100 bill took care of the rest. His suit was cleaned and pressed within the hour, his muddy shoes shined, and two new shirts with clerical collars purchased from a shop “unfortunately quite a distance away on the Quai Kellermann,” thus necessitating an additional chargé. The gratuities, the expenses and the surcharges for rush service—all were a hotelman’s dream. The suntanned priest with a blemish or two on his face, and odd demands based on time, certainly had to come from a “well-endowed” parish. It was worth it. He had checked in at eight-thirty in the morning, and by nine-fifty-five he was ready to make his final arrangements for Chamonix.

  He could not risk taking a plane or going by rail; too much had happened to him at airports and on trains—they would be watched. And sooner or later Hermione Geyner’s car would be found, and his direction if not his destination would be known. Aquitaine’s alarms would go out across the three borders of Germany, France and Switzerland; again the safest way was by automobile. The eagerly accommodating concierge was summoned; a fine rental car was arranged for the youngish monsignor, and a route planned to Geneva, some two hundred thirty-eight miles south.

  Of course, he would not cross over into Geneva but would go along the border roads and head for Chamonix, an hour-plus away. His estimated travel time was between five and six hours; he would reach the base of Mont Blanc by four-thirty in the afternoon, five at the latest. He wasted no time speeding out of Strasbourg on the Alpine Autoroute marked 83 on his map.

  Valerie dressed as the first light silhouetted the irregularly shaped buildings of Paris outside her windows on the Boulevard Raspail. She had not been able to sleep, nor had she made any attempt to to do so; she had lain awake pondering the words of the strange Frenchman from the Sûreté who could not speak officially. She had been tempted to tell him the truth but knew she would not, not yet, perhaps not at all, for the possibility of a trap was considerable—revelations based on truth could too easily be employed to corner the hunted. Still, his plea had the ring of truth, his own truth, not someone else’s: “Call and say you are from
the Tatiana family. That is my wish and my reward.”

  Joel would have an opinion. If the man was not simply bait put out by Aquitaine, it was a crack in their strategy the generals knew nothing about. She hoped he was his own man, but to trust him at this point was impossible.

  She had read the domestic schedules provided by Air France on the plane from Los Angeles and knew the routing she would take to Chamonix. Air Touraine had four flights daily to Annecy, the nearest airport to Chamonix and Mont Blanc. She had hoped to make a reservation on the 7:00 A.M. flight last night but the sudden, unnerving intrusion of Prudhomme had ruled it out, and by the time she called Touraine from the Pont Royal there were no seats—it was summer and Mont Blanc was a tourist attraction. Nevertheless, she was on standby for the eleven o’clock flight. It was better to be at Orly Airport, better to be in the crowds, as Joel insisted.

  She took the open, brass-grilled elevator down to the lobby, paid her bill, and asked for a taxi.

  “A quelle heure, madame?”

  “Maintenant, s’il vous plaît.”

  “Dans quelques minutes.”

  “Merci.”

  The taxi arrived and Val went outside, greeted by a surly, sleepy-eyed driver who had no intention of getting out of the cab to help her in and was only vaguely willing to accept her patronage.

  “Orly, s’il vous plaît.”

  The driver started up, reached the corner and swung his wheel to the left to make a rapid U-turn so as to head back into the Raspail toward the expressway leading to the airport. The intersection appeared to be deserted. It was not.

  The crash behind them was close by and sudden—metal striking metal as glass shattered and tires screeched. The driver slammed on his brakes, screaming in shock and fear as the taxi veered into the curb. Val was thrown against the front seat, her knees scraping the floor. Awkwardly she started to get up as the driver leaped from the cab yelling at the offending parties behind.

  Suddenly the right rear door opened and the lined, weary face of Prudhomme was above her, a trickle of blood rolling down from a gash in his forehead. He spoke quickly, quietly. “Go, madame—wherever it is you go. No one will follow you now.”