Robert Ludlum - Aquatain Progression.txt
Page 24
"I see he also left a message for you."
The clerk turned and retrieved a sealed envelope
from one of the mailboxes behind him. He handed
it to Converse, who opened it.
Hi, pardner.
If you don't pick this up, I'll get it back in the
morning. Forgive me, but you sounded like too
many
of my less fortunate colleagues who say no when
they
want to say yes. Now collectively in their case, it's
some kind of warped pride because they think I'm
suggesting a handout it's either that or they don't
want to meet someone who may be where I'm
going.
By the looks of you, I'd have to rule out the
former
and stick with the latter. There's someone you
don't
want to meet here in Bonn, and you don't have to.
The room's taken care of and in my name change
that if you like but don't argue about the bill. I
owe
150 ROBERT LUDLUM
you a fee, counselor, and I always pay my debts. At
least during the last four years I have.
Incidentally, you'd make a lousy actor. Your
pauses aren't at all convincing.
Pa Ratchet
Joel put the note back in the envelope, resisting
the temptation to go to a house phone and call
Dowling. The man would have little enough sleep
before going to work; thanks could wait until
morning. Or evening.
"Mr. Dowling's arrangements are generous and
completely satisfactory," he said to the clerk behind
the counter. "He's right. If my clients knew I'd come
to Bonn a day early I'd have no chance to enjoy
your beautiful city."
"Your privacy will be respected, sir. Herr
Dowling is a most thoughtful man, as well as
generous, of course. Your luggage is outside with a
taxi, perhaps?"
"No, that's why I'm so late. It was put on the
wrong plane out of Hamburg and will be here in the
morning. At least that's what I was told at the
airport."
"Ach, so inconvenient, but all too familiar. Is
there anything you might require?"
"No, thanks," replied Converse, raising his
attache case slightly. "The bare necessities travel
with me.... Well, there is one thing. Would it be
possible to order a drink?"
"Of course."
Joel sat up in bed, the dossier at his side, the
drink in his hand. He needed a few minutes to think
before going back into the world of Field Marshal
Erich Leifhelm. With the help of the switchboard,
he had called the all-night number for Lufthansa
and had been assured that his suitcase would be
held for him at the airport. He gave no explanation
other than the fact that he had been traveling for
two days and nights and simply did not care to wait
for his luggage. The attendant could read into his
words whatever she liked; he did not care. His mind
was on other things.
The American embassy! What appalled him was
the stark reality of old Beale's words.... Behind it all
are those who do the convincing, and they're growing
in numbers everywhere.... We're in the countdown ...
three to five Uzbeks that's all you've got.... It's real and
it's coming. Joel was not prepared for the reality. He
could accept Delavane and
THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 151
Bertholdier, certainly I,eifhelm, but the shock of
knowing that ordinary embassy personnel American
personnel were on the receiving end of orders
from Delavane's network was paralysing. How far
had Aquitaine progressed? How widespread were its
followers, its influence? Was tonight the frightening
answer to both questions? He would think about it
all in the morning. First, he had to be prepared for
the man he had come to find in Bonn. As he
reached for the dossier he remembered the sudden
deep panic in Avery Fowler's eyes Preston
Halliday's eyes. How long had he known? How
much had he known?
It is pointless to recount Erich Leifhelm's ex-
ploits in the early to middle years of the war other
than to say his reputation grew, and what is most
important he was one of the very few superior offi-
cers to come up through Nazi party ranks accepted
by the old-line professional generals. Not only did
they accept him but they sought him out for their
commands. Men like Rundstedt and Von
Falkenhausen, Rommel and von Treskow; at one
time or another each asked Berlin for LeifLelm's
services. He was unquestionably a brilliant strategist
and a daring of dicer, but there was something else.
These generals were aristocrats, part of the ruling
class of prewar Germany, and by and large loathed
the National Socialists, considering them thugs,
exhibitionists and amateurs. It is not difficult to
imagine LeifLelm, sitting among these men,
modestly expounding on what was clearly noted in
his military record. He was the son of the late
prominent Munich surgeon Dr. Heinrich Leifhelm,
who had left him considerable wealth and property.
We need no conjecture, however, to understand how
much further he went to ingratiate himself, for the
following is extracted from an interview with
General Rolf Winter, Standortkommandant of the
Wehrbereichskommando in the Saar sectors:
We would sit around having coffee after dinner,
the talk quite depressing. We knew the war was lost.
The insane orders from Berlin most we agreed
would never be carried out guaranteed wholesale
152 R08ERT LUD[UM
slaughter of troops and civilians. It was
madness, national suicide. And always, this
young Leifhelm would say things like "Perhaps
the fools will listen to me. They think I'm one
of them, they've thought so from the early days
in Munich." . . . And we would wonder. Could
he bring some sanity to the collapsing front? He
was a fine officer, highly regarded, and the son
of a well-known doctor, as he constantly re-
minded us. After all, young men's heads were
turned in those early days the cavernous
soul-stirring roars of Sieg hell, the fanatic
crowds; the banners and drums and marching
beside ten thousand torches at night. It was all
so melodramatic, so Wagnerian. But Leifhelm
was different; he wasn't one of the gangsters;
patriotic, of course, but not a hoodlum.... So we
sent dispatches with him to our closest
comrades in Berlin, dispatches that would have
resulted in our executions had they fallen into
the wrong hands. We were told he tried very
hard, but he could not put sanity in the minds
of men who lived in daily fear of death from
rumor and gossip. But he maintained his own
sanity and loyalty which were constant. We
were informed by one of his adjutants not
him, mind
you that he was confronted by an
S.S. colonel who had followed him in the street
and demanded the contents of his briefcase. He
refused, and when threatened with immediate
arrest, he shot the man so as not to betray us.
He was one of us. It was a noble risk and only
a night bombing raid saved his own life.
It is clear what LeifLelm was doing and
equally clear that the dispatches were never
shown to anyone, nor was there an S.S. colonel
shot in the streets during a bombing raid.
According to Winter, those dispatches from the
Saar were so explosive in content
that someone would have remembered them; no
one does. Once again, LeifLelm had seen an
opportunity. The war was lost, and the Nazis
were about to become the ultimate
twentieth-century villains. But not the elite
German general corps there was a distinction.
He wiped another slate clean and joined the
"Prussians." He was so successful that he was
rumored to have been part of the plot to
assassinate
THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 153
Adolf Hitler at Wolfsschanze, and called upon to be
a member of Donitz's surrender team.
During the cold war, Allied Central Command
asked him to join other key elements of the Wehr-
macht officer corps in the Bundesgrenzschutz. He
became a privileged military consultant with full se-
curity clearance. A mature killer had survived, and
history, with the Kremlin's help, took care of the
rest.
In May '49 the Federal Republic was established,
and the following September the Allied occupation
formally came to an end. As the cold war escalated
and West Germany began its remarkable recovery,
the NATO forces demanded material and personnel
support from their former enemies. The new German
divisions were formed under the command of
ex-Field Marshal Erich Leifhelm.
No one had dredged up the questionable deci-
sions of the Munich courts from nearly two decades
past; there were no other survivors and his services
were desired by the victors. During the postwar re-
construction when countless settlements and laby-
rinthine legal resolutions were being sought
throughout Germany, he was quietly awarded all as-
sets and property previously decreed, including some
of the most valuable real estate in Munich. So ends
the third phase of Erich Leifhelm's story. The fourth
phase which concerns us most is the one we know
least about. The only certainty is that he has become
as deeply entrenched in General Delavane's
operation as any other man on the primary list.
There was a rapping on the door. Joel lunged
off the bed, the Leifhelm dossier cascading to the
Qoor. He looked at his watch in fear and
confusion. It was nearly four o'clock. Who wanted
him at this hour? Had they found him? Oh, Christ]
The dossier! The briefcase! "Joe . . . ?Joe, you up?"
The voice was both a whisper and a shout an
actor's sotto voce. "It's me, Cal Dowling." Converse
ran to the door and opened it, his breath coming
in gasps. Dowling was fully dressed, holding up
both his hands for silence as he glanced up and
down the corridor. Sat
154 ROBERT LUDLUM
isfied, he walked rapidly inside, pushing Joel back
and closing the door.
"I'm sorry, Cal," said Converse. "I was asleep. I
guess the sound startled me."
"You always sleep in your trousers with the
lights on?" asked the actor quietly. "Keep your voice
down. I checked the hallways, but you can never be
clear about what you didn't see."
"Clear about what?"
"One of the first things we reamed on Kwajalein
in '44. A patrol doesn't mean shit unless you've got
something to report. All it means is that they were
better than you were."
"I was going to call you, to thank you "
"Cut it, good buddy," Dowling broke in, his
expression serious. "I'm hming this down to the last
couple of minutes, which is about all we've got.
There's a limo downstairs waiting to take me out to
the cameras over an hour away. I didn't want to
come out of my room before in case anyone was
hanging around, and I didn't want to call you
because a switchboard can be watched or
bribed ask anyone in Cuckooburg. I don't worry
about the desk; they're not too fond of our crowd
over here." The actor sighed. "When I got to my
room, all I wanted was sleep, and all I got was a
visitor. I'm down the hall and I was hoping to
Christ if you came here he wouldn't see
you."
"A visitor?"
"From the embassy. The US. embassy. Tell me,
Joe "
"Joel," interrupted Converse. "Not that it matters."
"Sorry, I've an obstruction in my left ear and
that doesn't matter, either. He spent damn near
twenty-five minutes with me asking questions about
you. He said we were seen talking together on the
plane. Now, you tell me, counselor, are you okay, or
are my instincts all bucked up?"
Joel returned Dowling's steady gaze. "Your
instincts are perfectly fine," he said without
emphasis. "Did the man from the embassy say
otherwise?"
"Not exactly. As a matter of fact, he didn't say
a hell of a lot. Just that they wanted to talk to you,
wanted to know why you'd come to Bonn, where
you were."
"But they knew I was on the plane?"
"Yep, said you'd flown out of Paris."
"Then they knew I was on that plane."
"That's what I just said what he said."
THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 155
"Then why didn't they meet me at the gate and
ask me themselves?"
Dowling'sface creased further, his eyes narrowing
within the wrinkles of bronzed flesh. "Yeah, why
didn't they?" he asked himself.
"Did he say?"
"No, but then, Paris didn't come up until he was
about to leave."
"What do you mean?"
"It was like he figured I was holding back some-
thing which I certainly was but he couldn't be
sure. I'm pretty good at what I do, Joe Joel."
"You also took a risk," said Converse,
remembering that he was talking to a risk-taker.
"No, I covered myself. I specifically asked if there
were charges against you or anything like that. He
said there weren't. "
"Still, he was "
"Besides, I didn't like him. He was one of those
pushy oflficial types. He kept repeating things, and
when he couldn't come up with anything, he said,
'We know he flew out of Paris,' as if he was
challenging me. I said I didn't."
"There's not much time, but can you tell me what
else he asked you?"
"I told you, he wanted to know everything we
talked about. I said I didn't have a tape record
er in
my head, but it was mainly small talk, the kind of
chatter I get all the hme from people I meet on
planes. About the show, the business. But he didn't
want to settle for that; he kept pushing, which gave
me the opportunity to get a little pissed off myself."
"How so?"
"I said, yes, we did talk about something else but
it was very personal, and none of his damn business.
He got pretty upset at that, and that let me get even
angrier. We exchanged a few barbs but his weren't
very sharp; he was too uptight. Then he asked me
for about the tenth time if you'd said anything about
Bonn, especially where you were staying. So I told
him for the tenth time the truth at least what you
said. That you were a lawyer and here to see clients
and I didn't know where the hell you were. I mean
I didn't actually know you were here."
"That's fine."
"Is it? Instincts are okay for first reactions,
counselor, but
156 ROBERT LUDLUM
then, you have to wonder. An aggravating Ivy
League government man, waving an embassy ID
and acting obnoxious may be very annoying in the
middle of the night, but he is from the Department
of State. What the hell's this all about?'
Joel turned and walked to the foot of the bed;
he looked down at the LeifLelm dossier on the
floor. He turned again and spoke clearly, hearing
the exhaustion in his voice. "Something I wouldn't
for the life of me involve you in. But for the record,
those instincts of yours were right on, pardner."
"I'll be honest," said the actor, his clear eyes