Joel felt the sharp, hollow pain in his lower chest and for the first time noticed the early light in the sky beyond the walls. The day had come, and so had the killing. Everywhere. “Oh, Jesus,” he said.
“The computer, boy!” roared Johnny Reb, his pistol jammed into the temple of the guard beneath him. “You don’t have any choices left, catfish!”
“Baracke vier!”
“Danke! It’s in building four. Come on, Brit, let’s go! Move!”
The enormous, glistening machine covering the length of the fifteen-foot wall stood in an air-filtered room. With Joel’s note pad in front of him, Larson spent nine agonizing minutes studying it, turning dials, punching the keyboard and flipping switches on the console. Finally he announced, “There’s a lock on the inner reels. They can’t be released without an access code.”
“What in goddamned catfish hell are you talkin’ about!” screamed the Rebel.
“There’s a predesigned set of symbols that when inserted releases the springs that permit the locked reels to be activated. It’s why I asked if there was a computer man about.”
Johnny Reb’s radio hummed, and Converse ripped it off the Southerner’s Velcroed chest.
“Val?”
“Darling! You’re all right?”
“Yes. What’s happening?”
“Radio-France. Bombs set off in the Elysée Palace. Two deputies were shot riding to the dawn rallies. The government’s calling in the armed forces.”
“Christ! Out!”
A man was brought into the room by two members of the Scharhörn team, who were gripping him by the arms. “He did not care to admit his function,” said the hired gun on the left. “But when all were against the wall, the others were not so secretive.”
The Rebel went to the man and grabbed him by the throat, but Joel, with the hunting knife in his hand, rushed forward, pushing the Southerner aside.
“I’ve been through a lot because of you bastards,” he said, raising the bloodstained blade to the man’s nose. “And now it’s the end!” He shoved the point into the man’s nostrils; the computer expert screamed as blood erupted and streamed down. Then Converse raised the blade again, the point now in the corner of the man’s right eye. “The codes, or it goes in!” he roared.
“Zwei, eins, null, elf!” Again the technician screamed.
“Process it!” yelled Joel.
“They’re free!” said the Englishman.
“Now the symbols!” cried Converse, shoving the man back into the hands of the Scharhörn invaders.
They all looked in astonishment at the green letters on the black television screen. Name after name, rank after rank, position after position. Larson had punched the printout button, and the curling, continuous sheet of paper spewed out with hundreds of identities.
“It won’t do any good!” shouted Joel. “We can’t get them out!”
“Don’t be so antediluvian, chap,” said the Englishman, pointing to a strange-looking telephone recessed in the console. “This is splendid equipment. There are those lovely satellites in the sky, and I can send this to anyone anywhere with compatible software. This is the age of technology, no longer Aquarius.”
“Get it out,” said Converse, leaning against the wall and sliding down to the floor in exhaustion.
The world watched, stunned by the eruption of widespread assassinations and random homicidal violence. Everywhere people cried out for protection, for leadership, for an end to the savagery that had turned whole cities into battlegrounds, as panicked, polarized groups of citizens hurled rocks and gas at one another and finally turned to bullets because bullets were being fired at them. Since few could tell who their enemies were, anyone who attacked was assumed to be an enemy, and the attackers were everywhere, the orders issued from unseen command posts. The police were helpless; then militias and state troops appeared, but it was soon evident that they and their leaders were also powerless. Stronger measures would have to be implemented to control the chaos. Martial law was proclaimed. Everywhere. And military commanders would assume control. Everywhere.
In Palo Alto, California, former general of the Army George Marcus Delavane sat strapped to his wheelchair, watching the hysteria recorded on three television sets. The set on the left went blank, preceded by the screams of a mobile crew as their truck came under sudden attack and the entire unit was blown up by grenades. On the center screen a woman newscaster, with tears streaming down her face, read in a barely controlled, angry voice the reports of wholesale destruction and wanton murder. The screen on the right showed a Marine colonel being interviewed on a barricaded street in New York’s financial district. His .45 Marine issue Colt automatic was in his hand as he tried to answer questions while shouting orders to his subordinates. The screen on the left pulsated with new light as a familiar anchorman came into focus, his eyes glassy. He started to speak, but could not; he turned in his chair and vomited as the camera swung away to an unsuspecting newsroom editor screaming into a phone, “Goddamned shit-bastards! What the fuck happened?” He, too, was weeping. He pounded the desk with his fist, then collapsed, dropping his head on his arms while his whole body shook in spasms as the screen again went dark.
A slow smile emerged on Delavane’s face. Abruptly he reached for two remote controls, switching off the sets on the right and left, as he concentrated on the center screen. A helmeted Army lieutenant general was picked by the camera as he strode into a press room somewhere in Washington. The soldier removed his helmet, went to a lectern and spoke harshly into the microphone. “We have sealed off all roads leading to Washington, and my words are to serve as a warning to unauthorized personnel and civilians everywhere! Any attempts to cross the checkpoints will be met by immediate force. My orders are brief and clear. Shoot to kill. My authority is derived from the emergency powers just granted to me by the Speaker of the House in the absence of the President and the Vice President, who have been flown out of the capital for security purposes. The military is now in charge, the Army its spokesman, and martial law is in full effect until further notice.”
Delavane snapped off the set with a gesture of triumph. “We did it, Paul!” he said, turning to his uniformed aide, who stood next to the fragmented map on the wall. “Not even the whining pacifists want that law reversed! And if they do…” The general of Aquitaine raised his right hand, his index finger extended, thumb upright, and mimed a series of pistol shots.
“Yes, it’s done,” agreed the aide, reaching down to Delavane’s desk and opening a drawer.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m sorry, General. This also must be done.” The aide pulled out a .357 magnum revolver.
Before he could raise it, however, Delavane’s left hand shot up out of the inside cushion of the wheelchair. In it was a short-barreled automatic. He shouted as he fired four times in rapid succession.
“You think I haven’t been waiting for this? Scum! Coward! Traitor! You think I trust any of you? The way you look at me! The way you talk in whispers in the hallways! None of you can stand the fact that without legs I’m better than all of you! Now you know, scum! And soon the others will know because they’ll be shot! Executed for treason against the founder of Aquitaine! You think any of you are worth trusting? You’ve all tried to be what I am and you can’t do it!”
The uniformed aide had crashed back into the wall, into the fragmented map. Gasping, blood flowing from his neck, he stared wide-eyed at the raving general. From some inner core of strength he raised the powerful magnum and fired once as he collapsed.
George Marcus Delavane was blown across the room, a massive hemorrhage in his chest, as the wheelchair spun and fell on its side, its strapped-in occupant dead.
No one knew when it started to happen, but gradually, miraculously, the gunfire slowly began to diminish. The restoration of order was accompanied by squads of uniformed men, many units having broken away from their commanders, racing through the streets and buildings and confronting ot
her men. It was soldier against soldier, the eyes of the interrogators filled with anger and disgust, staring at faces consumed with arrogance and defiance. The commanders of Aquitaine were adamant. They were right! Could not their inferiors understand? Many refused to surrender, preferring final assaults that cost them their lives. Others bit into cyanide capsules.
In Palo Alto, California, a legless legend named George Marcus Delayane was found shot to death, but apparently not before he had been able to kill his assailant, an obscure Army colonel. No one knew what had happened. In Southern France, the bodies of two other legendary heroes were found in a mountain ravine, each of whom, upon leaving a château in the Alps, had been given a weapon. Generals Bertholdier and Leifhelm had lost. General Chaim Abrahms had disappeared. On military bases throughout the Middle East, all Europe, Great Britain, Canada and the United States, officers of high rank and responsibilities were challenged by subordinates with leveled weapons. Were they members of an organization called Aquitaine? Their names were on a list! Answer! In Norfolk, Virginia, an admiral named Scanlon threw himself out of a sixth-story window; and in San Diego, California, another admiral named Hickman was ordered to arrest a four-striper who lived in La Jolla—the charge: murder of a legal officer in the hills above that elegant suburb. Colonel Alan Metcalf personally made the call to the chief operations officer of Nellis Air Force Base; the order was blunt—throw into a maximum-security cell the major who was in charge of all aircraft maintenance. In Washington the venerated Senator Mario Parelli was called out of the cloakroom by a Captain Guardino of Army G-2 and taken away; while at State and the Pentagon, eleven men in armaments controls and procurements were placed under guard.
In Tel Aviv, Israeli Army intelligence rounded up twenty-three aides and fellow officers of General Chaim Abrahms, as well as one of the Mossad’s most brilliant analysts. In Paris, thirty-one associates—military and nonmilitary—of General Jacques-Louis Bertholdier, including deputy directors of both the Sûreté and Interpol, were held in isolation, and in Bonn no fewer than fifty-seven colleagues of General Erich Leifhelm, among them former Wehrmacht commanders and current officers of the Federal Republic’s Army and its Luftwaffe, were seized. Also in Bonn, the Marine Corps guard at the American embassy, on orders from the State Department, arrested four attachés, including the military chargé d’affaires, Major Norman Anthony Washburn IV.
And so it went. Everywhere. The fever of madness that was Aquitaine was broken by legions of the very military the generals assumed would carry them to absolute global power. By nightfall the guns were still and people began to come out from behind their barricades—from cellars, subways, boarded-up buildings, railroad yards, wherever sanctuary could be found. They wandered out on the streets, numbed, wondering what had happened, as trucks with loudspeakers roamed the cities everywhere telling the citizens that the crisis was over. In Tel Aviv, Rome, Paris, Bonn, London, and across the Atlantic in Toronto, New York, Washington and points west, the lights were turned on, but certainly the world had not returned to normal. A terrible force had struck in the midst of a universal cry for peace. What was it? What had háppened?
It would be explained on the following day, blared the sound trucks in a dozen different languages, pleading for patience on the part of citizens everywhere. The hour chosen was 3:00 P.M., Greenwich Mean Time; 10:00 A.M. Washington, 7:00 A.M. Los Angeles. Throughout the night and the morning hours in all the time zones, heads of state conferred over telephones until the texts of all the statements were essentially the same. At 10:03 A.M. the President of the United States went on the air.
“Yesterday an unprecedented wave of violence swept through the free world taking lives, paralyzing governments, creating a climate of terror that very nearly cost free nations everywhere their freedom and might have led them to look for solutions where no solutions should be sought in democratic societies—namely, turning ourselves into police states, handing over controls to men who would subjugate free people to their collective military will. It was an organized conspiracy led by demented and deluded men who sought power for its own sake, willing even to sacrifice their own fellow conspirators to achieve it, and to deceive others who were seduced into believing it was the way of the future, the answer to the serious ills of the world. It is not, nor can it ever be.
“As the days and weeks go by—as this terrible thing is put behind us—the facts will be placed before you. For this has been our warning, the toll taken in blood and in the shaken confidence of our institutions. I remind you, however, that our institutions have prevailed. They will prevail.
“In an hour from now a series of meetings will start taking place involving the White House, the departments of State and Defense, the majority and minority leaders of the House and the Senate, and the National Security Council. Beginning tomorrow, in concert with other governments, reports will be issued on a daily basis until all the facts are before you.
“The nightmare is over. Let the sunlight of truth guide us and clear away the darkness.”
On the following morning Deputy Director Peter Stone of the Central Intelligence Agency, accompanied by Captain Howard Packard and Lieutenant William Landis, were brought to the Oval Office for a private ceremony. The specific honors awarded them were never made public, as there was no reason to do so. Each man, with deep respect and gratitude—but with no regrets—declined to accept, each stating that whatever honors were involved belonged to a man not currently residing in the United States.
A week later, in Los Angeles, California, an actor named Caleb Dowling stunned the producers of a television show called Santa Fe by giving them his notice—effective before the start of the new season. He refused all inducements, claiming simply that there was not enough time to spend with his wife. They were going to travel. Alone. And if the residuals ever ran out, hell, she could always type and he could always teach. Together. Ciao, friends.
EPILOGUE
Geneva. City of bright reflections and inconstancy.
Joel and Valerie Converse sat at the table where it had all begun, by the glistening brass railing in the Chat Botté. The traffic on the lakeside Quai du Mont Blanc was disciplined, unhurried—purpose mixed with civility. As the pedestrians passed by, both were aware of the glances directed at Joel. There he is, the eyes were saying. There is … the man. It was rumored he was living in Geneva, at least for a while.
By agreement, the second report issued across the free world made a direct but—on Converse’s insistence—brief reference to his role in the tragedy that was Aquitaine. He was exonerated of all charges. The labels were removed and refuted, the debt to him acknowledged without specifics on the basis of NATO security. He refused all interviews, and was not pleased when the media dredged up his experiences in Southeast Asia and speculated on correlations with the drama of the generals. But he was consoled by the knowledge that just as the interest in him had dwindled years ago, it would do so again—fester in Geneva, city of purpose.
They had leased a house on the lake, an artist’s house with a studio built on the slope leading to the water, the skylight catching the sun from early morning to dusk. The beach house in Cape Ann was closed, the lease paid in full and returned to the real estate agent in Boston. Val’s friend and neighbor had packed her clothes and all her paints, brushes and favorite easel, and sent everything air freight to Geneva. Valerie worked for several hours each morning, happier than she had ever been in her life, permitting her husband to evaluate her progress daily. He judged it to be eminently acceptable, wondering out loud whether there was a market for “lakescapes” as opposed to seascapes. It took him two days to remove the last dabs of paint from his hair.
Nor was Joel without employment; he was Talbot, Brooks and Simon’s European branch all by himself. The income, itself, however, was not a vital factor, as Converse never remotely considered himself in the mold of those attorneys in films and on television who rarely if ever collected fees. Since his legal talents had been called upon f
or crucial evidence, he billed the major governments a reasonable $400,000 apiece; the minor ones, $250,000. No one argued. The total came to something over $2.5 million, safely deposited in an interest-bearing Swiss account.
“What are you thinking about?” asked Valerie, reaching for his hand.
“About Chaim Abrahms and Derek Belamy. They haven’t been found—they’re still out there, and I wonder if they will ever be found. I hope so, because until they are, it really isn’t over.”
“It’s over, Joel, you’ve got to believe it. But that’s not what I meant. I meant you. How do you feel?”
“I’m not sure. I only knew I had to come here and find out.” He looked into her eyes, and at the cascading dark hair that fell to her shoulders, framing the face he loved so much. “Empty, I think. Except for you.”
“No anger? No resentment?”
“Not against Avery, or Stone or any of the others. That’s past. They did what they had to do; there wasn’t any other way.”
“You’re far more generous than I am, my darling.”
“I’m more realistic, that’s all. The evidence had to be gotten by penetrating the outside—by an outsider wanting to get inside. The core was too tight, too lethal.”
“I think they were bastards. And cowards.”
“I don’t. I think they should all be canonized, immortalized, bronzed and with poems written about them for the ages.”
“That’s absolute rubbish! How can you possibly say such a thing?”
Joel again looked into his wife’s eyes. “Because you’re here. I’m here. And you’re painting lakescapes, not seascapes. And I’m not in New York and you’re not in Cape Ann. And I don’t have to worry about you, hoping that you’re worrying about me.”
The Aquitaine Progression: A Novel Page 83