During what week or on what day it
happened we did not learn, but sometime in
January or February of 1936, Frau LeifLelm,
her children and her father disappeared.
However, the Munich court records,
impounded by the Allies on April 23, 1945, give
a clear, if incom
THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 137
plete, picture of what took place. Obviously driven
by his compulsion to validate his seizure of the estate
in the eyes of the law, he had a brief filed on behalf
of Oberstleutnant Erich Leifhelm listing the articles
of grievance suffered by his father, Dr. Heinrich
Leifhelm, at the hands of a family cabal, said family
of criminals having fled the Reich under indictment.
The charges, as expected, were outrageous lies: from
outright theft of huge nonexistent bank accounts to
character assassination so as to destroy a great doc-
tor's practice. There was the legal certificate of the
'official" divorce, and a copy of the elder Leifhelm's
last will and testament. There was only one true
union and one true son, all rights, privileges and in-
heritances passed on to him: Oberstleutnant Erich
Stoessel-LeiPhelm.
Because we possessed reasonably accurate dates,
survivors were found. It was confirmed that Frau
Leifhelm, her three children and her father perished
at Dachau, ten miles outside of Munich.
The Jewish Leifhelms were gone; the Aryan
Leifhelm was now the sole inheritor of considerable
wealth and property that under existing conditions
would have been confiscated. Before the age of thir-
ty, he had wiped his personal slate clean and
avenged the wrongs he was convinced had been
visited on his superior birth and talents. A killer had
matured.
'You must have one hell of a case there," said
Caleb
Dowling, grinning and poking Joel with his elbow.
"Your butt
burned up in the ashtray a while ago. I reached
over to close
the goddamned lid, and all you did was raise your
hand like
I was out of order."
"I'm sorry. It's . . . it's a complicated brief. Christ, I
wouldn't raise my hand to you, you're a celebrity."
Converse
laughed because he knew it was expected.
"Well, my second bit of news for you, good buddy,
is that
celebrity or no, the smoking lamp's been on for a
couple of
minutes now and you still got a reefer in your
fingers. Now,
I grant you, you didn't light it, but we're getting a
lot of Nazi
looks over here."
"Nazi . . . ?" Joel spoke the word involuntarily as
he
138 ROBERT LUDLUM
pressed the unlit cigarette into the receptacle; he
was not aware that he had been holding it.
"A figure of speech and a bad line, 'said the
actor. "We'll be in Cologne before you put all that
legal stuff away. Come on, good buddy, he's going
in for the approach."
"No," countered Joel without thinking. "He's
making a pitchout until he gets the tower's
instructions. It's standard we've got at least three
minutes."
"You sound like you know what the hell you're
talking about."
"Vaguely," said Converse, putting the Leifhelm
dossier into his attache case. "I used to be a pilot."
"No kidding? A real pilot?"
"Well, I got paid."
"For an airline? I mean, one of these real airlines?"
"Larger than this one, I think."
"Goddamn, I'm impressed. I wouldn't have
thought so. Lawyers and pilots somehow don't seem
compatible."
"It was a long time ago." Joel closed his case and
snapped the locks.
The plane rolled down the runway, the landing
having been so unobtrusive that a smattering of
applause erupted from the rear of the aircraft.
Dowling spoke as he unfastened his seat belt. "I
used to hear some of that after a particularly good
class."
"Now you hear a lot more," said Converse.
"For a hell of a lot less. By the way, where are
you staying, counselor?"
Joel was not prepared for the question.
'Actually, I'm not sure," he replied, again reaching
for words, for an answer. "This trip was a
last-minute decision."
"You may need help. Bonn's crowded. Tell you
what, I'm at the Konigshof and I suspect I've got a
little influence. Let's see what we can do."
"Thanks very much, but that won't be necessary."
Converse thought rapidly. The last thing he wanted
was the attention focused on anyone in the actor's
company. "My firm's sending someone to meet me
and he'll have the accommodations. As a matter of
fact, I'm supposed to be one of the last people off
the plane, so he doesn't have to try to find me in
the crowd."
"Well, if you've got any time and you want a couple
of
THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 139
laughs with some actor types, call me at the hotel
and leave a number."
"I probably will. I enjoyed riding shotgun. '
'On a cattle drive, pardner?"
Joel waited. The last stragglers were leaving the
plane, nodding at the flanking stewardesses, some
yawning, others in awkward combat with shoulder
bags, camera equipment and suit-carriers. The final
passenger exited through the aircraft's concave door
and Converse got up, gripping the handle of his
attache case and sliding into the aisle. Instinctively
without having a conscious reason to do so, he
glanced to his right, into the rear section of the
plane.
What he saw and what saw him made him
freeze. His breath exploded silently in his chest.
Seated in the last row of the long fuselage was a
woman. The pale skin under the wide brim of the
hat, and the frightened, astonished eyes that abruptly
looked away all formed an image he vividly re-
membered. She was the woman in the cafe at the
Kastrup Airport in Copenhagen! When he last saw
her she was walking rapidly into the baggage-claim
area, away from the row of airlines' counters. She
had been stopped by a man in a hurry words had
been exchanged and now Joel knew they had
concerned him.
The woman had doubled back, unnoticed in the
last-minute rush for boarding. He felt it, he knew it.
She had followed him from Denmark!
6
Converse rushed up the aisle and through the
metal door into the carpeted tunnel. Fifty feet down
the passageway the narrow walls opened into a
waiting area, the plastic seats and the roped-off
stanchions designating the gate. There was no one;
the place was empty, the other gates shut down, the
lights off. Beyond, suspended from the ceiling were
signs in German, French and English directing
>
passengers to the main terminal and the downstairs
baggage claim. There was no time for his luggage; he
had to run, to get away from the
140 ROBERT LUDLUM
airport as fast as possible, get away without being
seen. Then the obvious struck him, and he felt sick.
He had been seen; they knew he was on the Hight
from Hamburg whoever they were. The instant he
walked into the terminal he would be spotted, and
there was nothing he could do about it. They had
found him in Copenhagen; the woman had found
him and she had been ordered on board to make
certain he did not stay in Hamburg, or switch planes
to another destination.
Howe How did they do it?
There was no time to think about it; he would
think about it later if there was a later. He passed
the arches of the closed-down metal detectors and
the black conveyor belts where hand luggage was
X-rayed. Ahead, no more than seventy-five feet
were the doors to the terminal. What was he going
to do, what should he do?
NUR FUR HIER BESCHAFTIGTE
MANNER
Joel stopped at a door. The sign on it was
emphatic, the German forbidding. Yet he had seen
those words before. Where? What was it? . . .
Zurich! He had been in a department store in
Zurich when a stomach attack had descended to his
bowels. He had pleaded with a sympathetic clerk
who had taken him to a nearby employees' men's
room. In one of those odd moments of gratitude
and relief, he had focused on the strange words as
they had drawn nearer. Nur fur trier Beschaftigte.
Manner.
No further memory was required. He pushed the
door open and went inside, not sure what he would
do other than collect his thoughts. A man in green
overalls was at the far end of the line of sinks
against the wall; he was combing his hair while
inspecting a blemish on his face in the mirror. Con-
verse walked to the row of urinals beyond the sinks,
his demeanor that of an airlines executive. The
affectation was accepted; the man mumbled
something courteously and left The door swung shut
and he was alone.
Joel stepped back from the urinal and studied
the tiled enclosure, hearing for the first time the
sound of several voices . . . outside, somewhere
outside, beyond . . . the windows. Three-quarters up
from the floor and recessed in the far wall were
three frosted-glass windows, the painted white
frames melting into the whiteness of the room. He
was con
THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 141
fused. In these security-conscious days of airline
travel with the constant emphasis on guarding
against smuggled arms and narcotics, a room inside
a gate area that had a means of getting outside
before entering customs did not make sense. Then
the obvious fact occurred to him. It could be his way
out! The flight from Hamburg was a domestic flight,
this part of the Cologne-Bonn airport a domestic
terminal; there were no customs! Of course there
were exterior windows in an enclosure like this.
What difference did it make? Passengers still had to
pass through the electronic arches and, conversely,
authorities wanting to pick up a passenger flying
domestically would simply wait by a specific gate.
But no one waited for him. He had been the
last the second to last passenger off the late night
flight. The roped-off gate had been deserted; anyone
sitting in one of the plastic chairs or standing beyond
the counter would be obvious. Therefore, those who
were keeping him in their sights did not want to be
seen themselves. Whoever they were, they were
waiting, watching for him from some remote spot
inside the terminal. They could wait.
He approached the far-right window and lowered
his attache case to the floor. When he stood erect,
the sill was only inches above his head. He reached
for the two white handles and pushed; the window
slid easily up several inches. He poked his fingers
through the space; there was no screen. Once the
window was raised to its full height, there would be
enough room for him to crawl outside.
There was a clattering behind him, rapid slaps of
metal against wood. He spun around as the door
opened, revealing a hunched-over old man in a white
maintenance uniform carrying a mop and a pail.
Slowly, with deliberation, the old man took out a
pocket watch, squinted at it, said something in Ger-
man, and waited for an answer. Not only was Joel
aware that he was expected to speak, but he assumed
that he had been told the employees' men's room
was being closed until moming. He had to think; he
could not leave; the only way out of the airport was
through the terminal. If there was another he did not
know where, and it was no time to be running
around a section of an airport shut down for the
remainder of the night. Patrolling guards might
compound his problems.
His eyes dropped, centering on the metal pail,
and in desperation he knew what he had to do, but
not whether he could do it. With a sudden grimace
of pain, he moaned and grabbed
142 ROBERT LUDLUM
his chest, falling to his knees. His face contorted, he
sank to the floor.
"Doctor, doctor . . . doctor!" he shouted over
and over again.
The old man dropped the mop and the pail; a
guttural stream of panicked phrases accompanied
several cautious steps forward. Converse rolled to
his right against the wall he gasped for breath as he
watched the German with wide, blank eyes.
"Doctor. . . !" he whispered.
The old man trembled and backed away toward
the door; he turned, opened it and ran out, his frail
voice raised for help.
There would be only seconds! The gate was no
more than two hundred feet to the left, the entrance
to the terminal perhaps a hundred to the right. Joel
got up quickly, raced to the pail, turned it upside
down, and brought it back to the window. He
placed it on the floor and stepped up with one foot,
his palms making contact with the base of the
window; he shoved. The glass rose about four inches
and stopped, the frame lodged against the sash. He
pushed again with all the strength he could manage
in his awkward positron. The window would not
budge; breathing hard he studied it, his intense gaze
zeroing in on two small steel objects he wished to
God were not in place, but they were. Two
protective braces were screwed into the opposing
sashes, preventing the window from being opened
more than six inches. Cologne-Bonn might not be
an international airport with a panoply of sophis-
bcated security devices, but it was not without its
&
nbsp; own safeguards.
There were distant shouts from beyond the
door; the old man had reached someone. The sweat
rolled down Converse's face as he stepped off the
pail and reached for his attache case on the floor.
Action and decision were simultaneous, only instinct
unconsciously governing both. Joel picked up the
leather case, stepped forward and crashed it
repeatedly into the window, shattering the glass and
finally breaking away the lower wooden frame. He
stepped back up on the pail and looked out.
Beyond below was a cement path bordered by a
guardrail, floodlights in the distance, no one in
sight. He threw the attache case out the window,
and pulled himself up, his left knee kicking
fragments of glass and what was left of the frame to
the concrete below. Awkwardly, he hunched his
whole body, pressing his head into his shoulder
blades, and
THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 143
plunged through the opening. As he fell to the
ground he heard the shouts from inside: they grew in
volume, all in counterpoint, a mixture of
bewilderment and anger. He ran.
Minutes later, at a sudden curve in the cement
path, he saw the floodlit entrance of the terminal
and the line of taxis waiting for the passengers of
Flight 817 from Hamburg to pick up their luggage
before the drivers collected their inHated night
prices to Bonn and Cologne. There were entrance
and exit roads leading to the platform, broken by
pedestrian crosswalks, and beyond these an immense
parking lot with several lighted booths still operating
for those driving their own cars. Converse slipped
over the guardrail and ran across an intersecting
lawn until he reached the first road, racing into the
shadows at the first blinding glare of a floodlight. He
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