The Aquitaine Progression: A Novel

by Robert Ludlum

  “Go for it!” cried the Navy lieutenant.

  “For Christ’s sake, find another phrase,” said the captain.

  “It’s an answering machine!” shouted Val, gripping the mouthpiece of the telephone.

  Joel came out of the bathroom. “One hour,” he whispered.

  “One hour,” she said. “Miss Parquette will call back in an hour.” She hung up.

  “And every hour after that,” added Converse, staring down at the phone. “I don’t like this. It’s one o’clock in the morning back there, and if there’s a wife or children around, someone should have been there.”

  “Sam didn’t mention a wife or children, except his own.”

  “No reason why he would.”

  “There could be a dozen explanations, Joel.”

  “I just hope it’s not the one I keep thinking about.”

  “Let me call Prudhomme,” said Valerie. “Let’s use this Tatiana family.”

  “Not yet.”

  “Why not?”

  “We need something else—he needs something else.” Suddenly, Converse’s gaze fell on the thick envelope addressed to Nathan Simon. It was on the bureau, his false passport on top. “My God, we may have it,” he said quietly. “It’s been right there all the time and I didn’t see it.”

  Val followed his eyes. “The analysis you wrote for Nathan?”

  “I called it the best brief I ever wrote, but of course it’s not a brief at all. It doesn’t address points of law except in the widest, most abstract sense, without acceptable evidence to support the accusations. What it does address is the perverted ambitions of powerful men who want to change the laws, altering governments, supplanting them with raw military controls, all in the name of maintaining the law and preserving the order they themselves will be called upon to maintain and preserve. And if ‘compromise’ means killing—if they intend mounting wholesale assassinations—they can do it.”

  “What’s your point, Joel?”

  “If I’m going to build a case, I’d better do it the only way I know how—from premise to conclusion based on affidavits, depositions—starting with my own and ending with pretrial examinations.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “The law, Mrs. Converse,” said Joel, picking up the envelope. “And what it’s meant to do. I can use most of what’s in here—just in a different form. Naturally, I’ll want other corroborating depositions, the farther afield the better. That’s when you’ll call this Prudhomme and join the Tatiana family. Then hopefully we’ll reach Sam’s friend, Metcalf—goddamn it, he’ll have something to give us.… Finally, I’m going to want to examine at least two of the alleged defendants orally—Leifhelm, for one, and probably Abrahms, maybe Delavane himself.”

  “You’re mad!” cried Valerie.

  “No, I’m not,” said Converse simply. “I’ll need help, I know that. But I’ve got enough money to hire a couple of squads of miscreants—and once Prudhomme understands, I have an idea he’ll know where the union hall is. We’ve got a lot of work to do, Val. All courts like immaculate manuscripts.”

  “For Christ’s sake, Joel, speak English.”

  “You’re a romantic, Mrs. Converse,” he said approaching her. “These are the nuts and bolts you don’t find in seascapes.”

  “They do have to be sketched, my darling. And balanced or unbalanced, the colors deliberate—What are you talking about?”

  “A stenographer—a legal secretary, if you can find one. Someone who’s willing to stay here all day and half the night, if need be. Offer three times the going rate.”

  “Say I find one,” said Val. “What in heaven’s name are you going to tell her? Or him?”

  Joel frowned as he crossed aimlessly to the window. “A novel,” he said, turning. “We’re writing a novel. The first twenty or thirty pages are to be read as an upcoming court case, a trial.”

  “Based on real people, men everyone’s read about?”

  “It’s a new kind of fiction, but it’s only a novel. That’s all it is.”

  Morning came to New York and Stone was alone again. The Navy lieutenant and the Army captain were back at their desks in Washington. It was better this way; they could not help him, and the less they were seen around the apartment, the more likely they might escape detection if the hammer came down. And the hammer could come down, Stone knew it. It was as clear as the fact that Colonel Alan Metcalf was the chord they needed to start the music. “Without him,” as Johnny Reb might have said in the old days, “the tune ain’t gonna get out of the fiddle—no stompin’ unless he shows up.” But could he show up? wondered the former operations officer for Central Intelligence. To all intents and purposes he had disappeared, that was the word from Nellis, and the investigating unit did not pretend to understand or appreciate his absence. That, too, was the word and it was delivered harshly.

  But Stone understood. Metcalf now knew what he knew—what they knew—and the colonel would not play by any rules written in the regulations, not if he was any good. Not if he was alive. And the ex-agent also understood something else when it came to telephone answering machines and intelligence personnel. The equipment was adaptable and sophisticated, courtesy of the American taxpayer and, considering the extraordinary waste, one of his better investments. Metcalf would play it well—if he was alive and any good. He would use a remote, programming it and reprogramming it, hearing what he wanted to hear, erasing what he wanted to erase, and leaving in certain information, preferably misleading. There would also be a code, probably changed daily, that if not inserted accurately would melt the tape with a ten-second burst of microwaves—all standard. If he was any good. If he was alive.

  Stone counted on both—that the colonel was good and that he was alive. There was no point in thinking otherwise; that only led to staying in Johnny Reb’s hammock or “goin’ fishin’,” doing whatever one did as a robot. Which was why Stone had left a message on Metcalf’s machine an hour ago at six-thirty-five. He had chosen a name Converse’s wife—former wife—would have to have relayed to the dead Samuel Abbott. Marcus Aurelius ascending. Respond and erase, please. Then Stone had given the telephone number at the apartment, which, if traced, would lead the tracers to the Hilton Hotel on Fifty-third Street.

  There was only one other person in the world Stone wished he could reach, but that man was “on holiday—we have no means of getting in touch.” The words were patently a lie, but to challenge that lie would mean that Peter would have to say more than he wanted to say. The man was Derek Belamy, chief of Clandestine Operations for Britain’s M.I.6 and one of the only real friends Stone had ever had in all his years with the Central Intelligence Agency. Belamy was such a good friend that when Peter was station chief in London, the Englishman had told him bluntly to get out for a while before the whisky took over altogether and his ass was nailed to an alcoholic cross: “I have a doctor who’ll certify a minor breakdown, Peter. I’ve a guest cottage on the grounds in Kent. Stay there, get well, old boy.”

  Stone had refused, and it was the most destructive decision he had ever made. The rest was the drunken nightmare Belamy had predicted.

  But it was not Derek’s concern for a friend that made Peter want to reach him. It was Belamy’s brilliance, his perceptiveness, quietly concealed behind a pleasant, even prosaic exterior. And the knowledge that Derek Belamy had the pulse of Europe in his head, and given the most basic information, could smell out a Delavane operation. And, in fact, thought Stone hopefully, he was smelling them out now in Ireland—certainly where he was now. Sooner or later—preferably sooner—Belamy would return his call. When he did, a munitions shipment from Beloit, Wisconsin, would be described in full. Derek Belamy loathed the Delavanes of this world. His old friend would become an ally against the generals.

  The telephone rang; Stone looked at it and let it ring again. Metcalf? He reached over and picked it up. “Yes?”

  “Aurelius?”

  “Somehow I knew you’d
come through, Colonel.”

  “Who the hell are you?”

  “The name’s Stone and we’re on the same side, at least I think we are. However, you wear a uniform and I don’t, so I need a little more confidence in you. Can you understand that?”

  “You’re one of those bastards in D.C. who sent him out!”

  “You’re warmer, Colonel. I came on late, but yes, I am one of those bastards. What happened to General Abbott?”

  “He was killed, you son of a bitch!… I assume this phone is clean.”

  “For at least twenty-four hours. Then we all disappear, just like you disappeared.”

  “No remorse? No conscience? Do you know what you’ve done?”

  “We don’t have time for that, Colonel. Perhaps later, if there’s a later for us.… Get off it, soldier! I’ve lived with this! Now. Where do we meet? Where are you?”

  “Okay, okay,” said the obviously exhausted Air Force officer. “I took a dozen different flights. I’m in—where the hell am I?—in Knoxville, Tennessee. I’ve got a flight to Washington in twenty minutes.”

  “Why?”

  “To blow this fucking thing out of the air, what else?”

  “Forget it, you’re a dead man. I’d think you’d have learned that by now. You set up something on the information Abbott gave you, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “And he was blown out of the air, right?”

  “Goddamn you, shut up!”

  “You should have learned. They’re where you can’t see them or find them. But the wrong word to the wrong person and they can find you.”

  “I know that!” shouted Metcalf. “But I’ve been in this business for twenty years. There’s got to be someone I can trust!”

  “Let’s talk about it, Colonel. Scratch D.C. and fly up to New York. I’ll get a room at the Algonquin—actually, I’ve already reserved one.”

  “What name?”

  “What else? Marcus.”

  “You’re on, but as long as we’re in this deep I should tell you. The woman’s been trying to reach me since one o’clock this morning.”

  “Converse’s wife?”

  “Yes.”

  “We need her. We need him!”

  “I’ll reprogram the machine. The Algonquin?”

  “That’s it.”

  “He’s from New York, isn’t he? I mean he’s a New Yorker.”

  “Whatever that means, yes. He’s lived here for years.”

  “I hope he’s bright—they’re bright.”

  “Neither of them would be alive now if they weren’t very bright, Colonel.”

  “See you in a few hours, Stone.”

  The civilian hung up the phone, his hands shaking, his eyes on a bottle of bourbon across the room. No! There would be no drinks, he had promised himself. He got out of the chair and went to the bed, where his small suitcase was open, a gaping mouth” waiting to be filled. He filled it, leaving the bottle of whisky on the table, and went outside to the elevators down the hall.

  * * *

  I, Joel Harrison Converse, an attorney admitted to practice before the bar of the State of New York and employed by the firm of Talbot, Brooks and Simon, 666 Fifth Avenue, New York City, New York, arrived in Geneva, Switzerland, on August 9 for legal conferences on behalf of our client, the Comm Tech Corporation, for the purpose of finalizing a contemplated business association referred to hereafter as the Comm Tech-Bern merger. On the morning of August 10, at approximately eight o’clock, I was contacted by the chief, counsel representing the Bern Group, Mr. Avery Preston Halliday of San Francisco, California. As he was an American only recently retained by the Swiss companies, I agreed to meet with him to clarify the existing points of argument and our positions with respect to them. When I arrived at the café on the Quai du Mont Blanc, I recognized Mr. Halliday as a student and close friend I had known years ago at the Taft School in Watertown, Connecticut. His name then was Avery P. Fowler. Mr. Halliday readily confirmed this fact, explaining that his surname had been changed upon the death of his father and the remarriage of his mother to a John Halliday of San Francisco. The explanation was acceptable, the circumstances, however, were not. Mr. Halliday had ample prior time and opportunity to apprise me of his identity—the identity with which I was familiar—but did not do so. There was a reason. On that morning of August 10, Mr. Halliday sought a confidential meeting with the undersigned regarding a matter totally unrelated to the Comm Tech-Bern merger. This meeting was the primary reason for his being in Geneva. It was the first of many disturbing revelations.…

  If the very proper and distant British stenographer had the slightest interest in the material she was transcribing in segments from dictation to the typewritten page, she did not show it. Her thin lips pursed, her gray hair knotted into a forbidding bun on the top of her head, she performed like a machine, as if everything was accepted in rote and by rote. Valerie’s somewhat guarded explanation that her husband was an American novelist intrigued by recent events in Europe was greeted with a cold stare and the gratuituous information that the legal secretary never watched television and rarely read the newspapers. She was a member of the Franco-Italian Alpine Society, whose purpose was to defend the natural endowments being eroded by man; working for the society took up all her time and energy when she was not earning a living to enable her to remain in her beloved mountains. She was an automaton putting in her time; one could dictate the book of Genesis and Val doubted the woman would know what she was typing.

  It was the seventh hour and there was still no answer at Alan Metcalf’s telephone in Las Vegas. Only a machine. It was time for the eighth call.

  “If we don’t get him now,” said Converse grimly, above the quiet tapping of the typewriter across the room, “go ahead and reach Prudhomme. I wanted to talk to this Metcalf first, but it’s possible that—it may not be possible.”

  “What difference does it make? You need help quickly, and he’s willing to help.”

  “The difference is I know where Prudhomme’s coming from, you’ve told me. I got an idea what he can do and what he can’t do, but I don’t know anything about Metcalf—except that Sam put him way up on a high priority. Whoever I call first I’ve got to make specific statements to him, accusations and observations that’ll blow his mind. Those are commitments, Val, and I have to go with the strongest.… Try Metcalf again.” Joel turned and headed for the telephone in the bathroom as Valerie dialed the international codes for Las Vegas, Nevada.

  “Caller C, message received. Please reidentify yourself twice, followed by a slow count to ten. Stay on the line.”

  Joel put the phone down on the edge of the basin and rushed out to the bedroom-sitting room. He walked over to Val, holding up his hand as he reached for a pencil on the desk. He wrote out the words: “Go ahead. Stay calm. P.S.E.”

  “This is Miss Parquette speaking,” said Valerie, frowning, bewildered. “This is Miss Parquette speaking. One, two, three, four …”

  Converse returned to the bathroom, picked up the telephone and listened.

  “… eight, nine, ten.”

  Silence. Finally, there were two sharp clicks and the metallic voice came back on the line. “Confirmed, thank you. This is the second tape and will be microed out when completed. Listen carefully. There is a place on an island well known for its tribal nights. The King will be in his chair. That’s it. We are burning.”

  Joel hung up the phone and studied the half-legible words he had hastily scribbled in soap on the mirror above the basin. The door opened and Valerie walked in, a piece of paper in her hand.

  “I wrote it down,” she said, handing it to him.

  “I wrote it sideways—your way is better. Christ, a riddle!”

  “No more than the one you gave me. What in heaven’s name does ‘P.S.E.’ mean?”

  “ ‘Psychological Stress Evaluator,’ ” answered Converse, leaning against the wall and reading Metcalf’s message. He looked up at her. “It’s a voice scanner you can
attach to a phone or a recording machine that supposedly tells you whether the person you’re talking to is lying or not. Larry Talbot played around with one for a while but claimed he couldn’t find anyone telling the truth, including his ninety-two-year-old mother. He threw it away.”

  “Does it work?”

  “They say it’s much more accurate than a lie detector, and I suppose it is if you know how to read it or use it. It worked in your case. Your voice was matched against the other calls you made, which means this Metcalf is into pretty high-tech equipment. That scanner tripped the second tape, and it was all done by remote, from another phone, otherwise he would have answered himself after you passed the test.”

  “But if I passed, why the riddle? Why an island with tribal nights?”

  “Because any machine like that can be beaten. It’s why they’re not admissible in court. Years ago Willie Sutton was wired into a lie detector, and according to the result, he never even broke into a piggy bank, much less Chase Manhattan. Metcalf was willing to take a risk, but not all the way. He’s running too.” Converse returned to what Val had written down.

  “An island.” Val spoke softly, reading the soaped words on the mirror. “Tribes … The Caribe tribes; they were all through the Antilles. Or Jamaica—tribal nights, Obeah rituals, voodoo rites in Haiti. Even the Bahamas—the Lucayan Indians—they held puberty rituals, they all did.”

  “You impress me,” said Joel, looking up from the paper. “How come?”

  “Art courses,” she replied. “Those nuts and bolts you won’t grant us that go into the makeup of a culture’s visual work.… And it doesn’t fit. It’s too loose.”

  “Why? It could mean someplace in the Caribbean, some resort that’s advertised a lot. The King is an emperor and that has to mean Delavane—Mad Marcus, as in Aurelius. It has to be Marcus; no one’s named Aurelius!… All those television commercials, the newspaper ads—pictures of people doing the limbo under torches with costumed blacks smiling down benignly, counting the dollars. Which one?”