Robert Ludlum - Aquatain Progression.txt

by The Aquitaine Progression [lit]

  had to reach a taxi, a taxi with a driver who spoke

  English; he could not remain on foot.... He had been

  captured on foot once, years ago. On a jungle trail,

  where if he had only been able to commandeer a

  jeep an enemy jeep he might have . . . Stop it!

  This is not 'Nam, it's a goddamn airport with a

  million tons of concrete poured between flowers,

  grass and asphalt! He kept moving in and out of the

  shadows, until he had made a complete

  semicircle one-eight zero. He was in darkness, the

  last of the taxis in the line ahead of him. He ap-

  proached the first, which was the last.

  "English? Do you speak English?"

  "~nglisch? Nein. "

  The second cabdriver was equally negative, but

  the third was not. "As you Americans say, only the

  asshole would drive a taxi here wizzout the English

  reasonable. Is so?"

  "It's reasonable, ' said Joel, opening the door.

  "Rein! You cannot do thatl"

  "Do what?"

  "Come in the taxi."

  "Why not?"

  "The line. Allviss is the line."

  Converse reached into his jacket pocket and

  withdrew a folded layer of deutsche marks. "I'm

  generous. Can you understand thatP"

  "Is also urgent sickness. Get in, main Herr."

  The cab pulled out of the line and sped toward

  the exit road. "Bonn or Koln?" asked the driver.

  "Bonn," replied Converse, "but not yet. I want you

  to

  144 ROBERT LUDLUM

  drive into the other lane and stop across the way in

  front of that parking lot."

  '~Was... 9"

  "The other lane. I want to watch the entrance

  back there. I think there was someone on the

  Hamburg plane I know."

  "Many have come out. Only those with luggage "

  "She's still inside," insisted Joel. "Please, just do as I

  say."

  ' She? . . . Ach, ein Fraulein. Ist ja Ihr Geld, main

  Herr. "

  The driver swung the cab into a cutoff that led

  to the incoming road and the parking lot. He

  stopped in the shadows beyond the second booth;

  the terminal doors were on the left, no more than

  a hundred yards away. Converse watched as weary

  passengers, carrying assorted suitcases, golf bags,

  and the ever-present camera equipment, began to

  file out of the terminal's entrance, most raising their

  hands for taxis, a few walking across the pedestrian

  lanes toward the parking lot.

  Twelve minutes passed and still there was no

  sign of the woman from Copenhagen. She could not

  have been carrying luggage, so the delay was

  deliberate, or instructed. The driver of the cab had

  assumed the role of nonobserver; he had turned off

  the lights and, with a bowed head, appeared to be

  dozing. Silence.... Across the parallel roads, the

  travelers from Hamburg had dwindled. Several

  young men, undoubtedly students, two in cut-off

  jeans, their companions drinking from cans of beer,

  were laughing as they counted the deutsche marks

  between them. A yawning businessman in a

  three-piece suit struggled with a bulging suitcase

  and an enormous cardboard box wrapped in a floral

  print, while an elderly couple argued, their dispute

  emphasized by two shaking heads of grey hair. Five

  others, men and women, were by the curb at the far

  end of the platform apparently waiting for pre-

  arranged transportation. But where . . .

  Suddenly she was there, but she was not alone.

  Instead, she was flanked by two men, a third

  directly behind her. All four walked slowly, casually,

  out of the automatic glass doors, moving to the left,

  their pace quickening until they reached the

  dimmest area of the canopied entrance. Then the

  three men angled themselves in front of the woman,

  as if mounting a wall of protection, their heads

  turning, talking to her over their shoulders while

  studying the crowd. Their conversation became

  animated but controlled, anger joining confusion,

  THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 145

  tempers held in check. The man on the right broke

  away and crossed to the corner of the building, then

  walked beyond into the shadows. He pulled an

  object out of an inside pocket and Joel instantly

  knew what it was; the man raised it to his lips. He

  was talking by radio to someone in or around the

  airport.

  Barely seconds passed when the beams of

  powerful headlights burst through the glass over

  Converse's right shoulder, filling the back of the taxi.

  He pressed himself into the seat his head turned,

  neck arched, his face at the edge of the rear window.

  Beyond, by the exit booth of the parking lot, a

  dark-red limousine had stopped, the driver's arm

  extended a bill clutched in his hand. The attendant

  took the money turning to make change, when the

  large car lurched forward leaving the man in the

  booth bewildered. It careened around the taxi and

  headed for the curve in the road that led to the

  airport terminal's entrance. The timing was too

  precise; radio contact had been made and Joel spoke

  to the driver.

  "I told you I was generous," he said, startled by

  the words he was forming in his head. "I can be very

  generous if you'll do as I ask you to."

  "I awn an honest man," replied the German,

  uncertainty in his voice, his eyes looking at Joel in

  the rearview mirror.

  "So am 1," said Converse. "But I'm also honestly

  curious and there's nothing wrong with that. You see

  the dark-red car over there, the one that's stopping

  at the corner of the building?"

  'pa. "

  "Do you think you could follow it without being

  seen? You'd have to stay pretty Or behind, but keep

  it in sight. Could you do it?"

  "Is not a reasonable request. How generous is

  the A merikaner?"

  "Two hundred deutsche marks over the fare."

  "You are generous, and I am a superior driver."

  The German did not underestimate his talents

  behind the wheel. Skillfully he weaved the cab

  unobtrusively through a cutoff, swinging abruptly left

  into the parallel exit road and bypassing the entrance

  to the terminal.

  "What are you doing?" asked Joel, confused. "I

  want you to follow "

  "Is only way out," interrupted the driver, glancing

  back at the airport platform while maintaining

  moderate speed. "I

  146 ROBERT LUDIUM

  shall let him pass me. I am just one more

  insignificant taxi on the autobahn."

  Converse sank back into the corner of the seat,

  his head away from the windows. "That's reasonably

  good thinking," he said.

  "Superior, mein Herr.', Again the driver looked

  briefly back out the window, then concentrated on

  the road and the rearview mirror. Moments later he

  gradually accelerated his speed; it was not

&
nbsp; noticeable; there was no breaking away, instead

  merely a faster pace. He eased to the left, passing a

  Mercedes coupe, staying in the lane to overtake a

  Volkswagen, then returning to the right.

  "I hope you know what you're doing," muttered Joel.

  No reply was necessary as the dark-red vehicle

  streaked by on the left.

  "Directly ahead the road separates," said the

  driver. "One way to Koln, the other to Bonn. You

  say you are going to Bonn, but what if your friend

  goes to KolnP"

  "Stay with him."

  The limousine entered the road for Bonn and

  Converse lighted a cigarette, his thoughts on the

  reality of having been found, which meant his name

  was known from the passenger manifest. So be it; he

  would have preferred otherwise, but once the initial

  contact had been made with Bertholdier it was not

  a vital point. He could operate as himself; his past

  might even be an asset. Also, there was a positive

  side to the immediate situation; he had learned

  something several things. Those following

  him who now had lost him were no part of the

  authorities; they were not connected with either the

  German or the French police, or the coordinating

  Interpol. If they were, they would have taken him at

  the gate or on the plane itself, and that told him

  something else. Joel Converse was not wanted for

  assault or God forbid murder back in Paris. And

  this assumption could only lead to a third

  probability: the violent, bloody struggle in the alley

  was being covered up. Jacques-Louis Bertholdier

  was taking no chances that because of his severely

  wounded aide his own name might surface in any

  connection whatsoever with a wealthy guest of the

  hotel who had made such alarming insinuations to

  the revered general. The protection of Aquitaine

  was paramount.

  There was a fourth possibility, so realistically

  arrived at it could be considered fact. The men in

  the dark-red limou

  THE AQUITAINE rROGRESSION 147

  sine who had met the Hamburg plane were also part

  of Aquitaine, underlings of Erich Leifhelm, the

  spoke of Aquitaine in West Germany. Sometime

  during the last five hours, Bertholdier had learned

  the identity of the ersatz Henry Simon probably

  through the management of the George V and

  contacted Leifhelm. Then, alarmed that no passenger

  manifest listed an American named Converse flying

  from Paris to Bonn, they had checked the other

  airlines and found he had gone to Copenhagen. The

  alarms must have been strident. Why Copenhagen?

  He said he was going to Bonn. Why did this strange

  man with his extraordinary information go to

  Copenhagen? Who are his contacts, whom will he

  meet? Find him. Find them! Another phone call had

  been made, a description given, and a woman had

  stared at him in a cafe in the Kastrup Airport. It was

  all so throughthe-looking-glass.

  He had flown to Denmark for one reason, but

  another purpose had been served. They had found

  him, but in the finding they had revealed their own

  panic. An agitated reception committee, the use of

  a radio at night to reach an unseen vehicle only a

  few hundred feet away, a racing limousine: these

  were the ingredients of anxiety. The enemy was

  off-balance and the lawyer in Converse was satisfied.

  At this moment that enemy was a quarter of a mile

  down the road speeding into Bonn, unaware that a

  taxi behind them, skillfully maneuvered by a driver

  slipping around the intermittent traffic, was keeping

  them in sight.

  Joel crushed out his cigarette as the driver

  slowed down to let a pickup truck pass. He could see

  the large dark-red car ahead on the long curve. The

  German was no amateur, he knew the moves to

  make, and Converse understood. Whoever was in

  that limousine might well be an influential owner,

  and even two hundred deutsche marks were not

  worth the probable enmity of a powerful man.

  Probabilities . . . everything was probabilities. He

  had built his legal reputation on the study of

  probabilities, and it was a simpler process than most

  of his colleagues believed. The approach, that is, was

  simple, not the work; that was never easy. It

  demanded the dual discipline of concentrating on the

  minute and prodding the imagination to expand until

  the minutiae were arranged and rearranged into

  dozens of different equations. This exhaustive what-if

  process was the keystone of legal thinking; it was as

  simple as that. It was also

  148 ROBERT LUDIUM

  a verbal trap, Joel reflected, as he thought back

  several years, smiling an uncomfortable smile alone

  in the darkness. In one of her moments of pique,

  Val had told him that if he would spend one iota of

  the time on the two of them that he spent on his

  "goddamned probabilities," he would "probably"

  come to realize that the 'probability" of their

  surviving together was 'very probably nil."

  She had never lacked for being succinct nor

  sacrificed her humor in the pursuit of candor. Her

  striking looks aside, Valerie Charpentier Converse

  was a very funny lady. Unable not to, he had smiled

  at her explosion that night years ago, then they both

  had laughed quietly until she turned away and left

  the room, too much sadness in the truth she had

  spoken.

  Large picturesque buildings gradually replaced

  the quiet countryside, reminding Converse of huge

  Victorian houses with filigreed borders and

  overhanging eaves and grilled balconies beneath

  large rectangular windows stark geometric shapes.

  These in turn gave way to a contradictory stretch of

  attractive but perfectly ordinary residential homes,

  the sort that could be found in any traditional

  wealthy suburb on the outskirts of a major

  American city. Scarsdale, Chevy Chase Grosse

  Pointe or Evanston. Then came the center of Bonn

  where narrow, gaslit streets ran into wider avenues

  with modern lighting, quaint squares only blocks

  away from banks of contemporary stores and

  boutiques. It was an architectural

  anachronism Old World ambience coexisting with

  up-tothe-minute structures, but with no sense of a

  city, no sense of electricity or grandeur. Instead it

  appeared to be a large town, growing rapidly larger,

  the town fathers uncertain of its direction. The

  birthplace of Beethoven and the gateway to the

  Rhine Valley was the most unlikely capital

  imaginable of a major government. It was anything

  but the seat of a hard-nosed Bundestag and a series

  of astute, sophisticated prime ministers who faced

  the Russian bear across the borders.

  "Mein Herrl" cried the driver. "They take the

  road to Bad Godesberg. Das Diplomatenviertel."

>   "What does that mean?"

  "Embassies. They have Polizeistreifen! Patrols.

  We could be, how do you say, known ?"

  "Spotted," explained Joel. "Never mind. Do what

  you've been doing, you're great. Stop, if you have

  to; park, if you have

  THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 149

  to. Then keep going. You now have three hundred

  deutsche marks over the fare. I want to know where

  they stop."

  It came six minutes later, and Converse was

  stunned. Whatever he had thought, wherever his

  imagination had led him, he was not prepared for

  the driver's words.

  'That is the American embassy, mein Herr. "

  Joel tried to focus his thoughts. "Take me to the

  Hotel Konigshof," he said, remembering, not

  knowing what else to say.

  "Yes, I believe Herr Dowling left a note to that

  effect," said the desk clerk, reaching below the

  counter.

  "He did?" Converse was astonished. He had used

  the actor's name in the outside hope of some

  possible preferential treatment. He expected nothing

  else, if indeed that.

  "Here it is." The clerk extracted two small

  telephone memos from the thin stack in his hand.

  "You are John Converse, an American attomey."

  "Close enough. That's me."

  "Herr Dowling said you might have difficulty

  finding am propriate accommodations here in Bonn.

  Should you come to the Konigshof tonight, he

  requested that we be as helpful as possible. It is

  possible, Herr Converse. Herr Dowling is a very

  popular man."

  "He deserves to be," said Joel.