Robert Ludlum - Aquatain Progression.txt

by The Aquitaine Progression [lit]

  Scattered about were papers, pencils and a yellow

  legal pad, the top pages looped over. The setting

  was familiar to anyone who had ever had an

  appointment with an attorney, said learned counsel

  having put his astute observations down on paper

  prior to the conference.

  Fitzpatrick retraced his steps to the chair, moved

  it forward several feet, and crossed to the door of

  the small side room. He had turned on the

  lights two table lamps flanking a short couch) he

  went to the one above the telephone and turned it

  off. He then walked back to the open door and

  stood between it and the wall, peering through the

  narrow vertical space broken up by upper and lower

  hinges. He had a clear view of the foyer's entrance;

  three people would pass into the conference room

  and he would come out.

  There was a knock on the hallway door the

  rapid, impatient tapping of an heiress unable to

  control herself. He had told the Fishbein woman the

  location of the room, but nothing else. No name or

  number, and in her anxiety she had not asked about

  either. Fitzpatrick went to the telephone table in the

  small room, lifted the phone out of its cradle and

  placed it on its side. He returned to his position

  behind the door, angling himself so as to look

  through the crack, his body in the shadows. He took

  the pistol from his belt, held it in front of him and

  shouted in a friendly voice, loud enough to be heard

  outside in the hotel corridor. "Bitte, kommen Sie

  herein! Die Tare ist offer. Ich telefoniere gerade!"

  The sound of the door as it opened preceded

  Ilse Fishbein as she walked rapidly into the room,

  her eyes directed at the conference table. She was

  followed by Erich LeifLelm, who glanced about and

  then turned slightly, nodding his head. A third man

  in the uniform of a chauffeur came into view, his

  THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 307

  hand in the pocket of his black jacket. Connal then

  heard the second sound he needed to hear. The

  hallway door was slammed shut.

  He yanked back the small door and quickly

  stepped around it, the gun extended, aimed directly

  at the chauffeur.

  "You!" he cried in German. "Take your hand out

  of your pocket! Slowly!" The woman gasped, then

  opened her mouth to scream. Fitzpatrick interrupted

  harshly. "Be quiet! As your friend will tell you, I

  haven't anything to lose. I can kill the three of you

  and be out of the country in an hour, leaving the

  police to look for a Mr. Parnell who doesn't exist."

  The chauffeur, the muscles of his jaw rippling,

  removed his hand from his pocket, his fingers rigid.

  Leifhelm stared in anger and fear at Connal's gun,

  his face no longer ashen but flushed. "You dare?"

  "I dare, Field Marshal," said Fitzpatrick. "Just as

  you dared forty years ago to rape a young kid and

  make damned sure that she and her whole family

  never walked out of the camps. You bet your ass I

  dare, and if I were you, I wouldn't give me the

  slightest cause to be any angrier than I am.' Connal

  spoke to the woman. "You. Inside that briefcase on

  the table are eight strands of rope. Start with the

  driver. Bind his hands and feet; I'll tell you how.

  Now! Quickly!"

  Four minutes later the chauffeur and Leifhelm

  sat in two conference chairs, their ankles and wrists

  bound, the driver's weapon removed from his pocket.

  Connal checked the ropes the knots having been tied

  under his instructions. Everything was secure; the

  more one writhed, the tighter the knots would

  become. He ordered the panicked Fishbein woman

  into a third chair; he lashed her hands to the arms

  and her feet to the legs.

  Rising, Connal picked up the automatic from the

  table and approached Leifhelm, who was sitting in

  the chair next to the lighted telephone. "Now," he

  said, the gun pointed at the German's head. "As

  soon as I hang up the phone in the other room we re

  going to make a call from here." He walked quickly

  into the small side room, hung up the telephone, and

  returned. He sat down next to the bound Leifhelm

  and took a scrap of paper out of the open briefcase.

  On it was written the phone number of the general's

  estate on the Rhine beyond Bad Godesberg.

  "What do you think you'll accomplish? ' asked

  Leifhelm.

  308 ROBERT LUDLUM

  "Trade-off," replied Fitzpatrick, the barrel of the

  gun pressed against the German's temple. "You for

  Converse."

  "Mein Gott!" whispered Ilse Fishbein as the

  chauffeur writhed, his hands straining against the

  ropes, which were now biting into his wrists.

  "You believe anyone will listen to you, much less

  carry out your orders?"

  "They will if they want to see you alive again.

  You know I'm right, General. This gun isn't so

  loud I made sure of that. I can turn on the radio

  and kill you and be on a plane out of Germany

  before you're found. This room is reserved for the

  night with instructions that we're not to be disturbed

  for any reason whatsoever." Connal shifted the

  weapon to his left hand, picked up the telephone,

  and dialed the number written on the scrap of

  paper.

  "Guten Tag. Hier bet General LeifAelm."

  "Put someone in authority on this phone," said

  the Navy lawyer in perfect German. ' I have a gun

  less than a foot away from General Leifhelm's head

  and I'll kill him right now unless you do as I say.'

  There were muffled shouts over the line as a

  hand was held against the mouthpiece. In seconds a

  crisp British accent was speaking slowly, deliberately

  in English.

  "Who is this and what do you want?"

  "Well, what do you know? This sounds like

  Major Philip Dunstone that was the name, wasn't

  it? You don't sound half so friendly as you did last

  night."

  "Don't do anything rash, Commander. You'll regret

  it."

  "And don't you do anything stupid, or Leifhelm

  will regret it sooner that is, until he can't regret

  anything any longer. You've got one hour to get

  Converse to the airport and inside the Lufthansa

  security gate. He has a reservation on the ten

  o'clock flight to Washington, D.C., by way of Frank-

  furt. I've made arrangements. I'll be calling a

  number in a room where he'll be taken and I'll

  expect to talk with him. After I do, I'll leave here

  and call you on another phone, telling you where

  your employer is. Just get Converse to that security

  gate. One hour, Major!" Fitzpatrick shoved the

  phone in front of Leifhelm's face, and pressed the

  barrel of the gun into the German's temple.

  "Do as he says," said the General, choking on the

  words.

  The minutes went by slowly, stretching into a />
  quarter of an hour, then thirty, the silence finally

  broken by Leifhelm.

  THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 309

  "So you found her," he said, gesturing his head at use

  Fishbein, who trembled as tears streaked down her

  full cheeks.

  "Just as we found out about Munich forty years

  ago, and a hell of a lot of other things. You're all on

  your way to that great big war room in the sky, Field

  Marshal, so don't worry about whether I'll go back

  on my word to your English butler. I wouldn't miss

  seeing you bastards paraded for everyone to see what

  you really are. People like you give the military ev-

  erywhere a goddamned rotten name."

  There was a slight commotion from the hallway

  beyond the door. Connal looked up, raising the gun

  and holding it directly at Leifhelm's head.

  "Was ist?" said the Cerman, shrugging.

  "Seine Bewegung!"

  From the hotel corridor came the strains of a

  melody sung by several male voices more off key

  than on. Another conference in one of the other

  rooms had broken up, obviously as much from the

  excessive intake of alcohol as from the completion of

  a business agenda. Raucous laughter pierced a

  refrain as harmony was unsuccessfully attempted.

  Fitzpatrick relaxed, lowering the automatic; no one

  on the outside knew the name or number of the

  room.

  "You say men like me give your

  profession which is my profession as well a

  seriously bad name," said Leifhelm. "Has it occurred

  to you, Commander, that we might elevate that

  profession to one of indispensable greatness in a

  world that needs us badly?"

  "Needs us?" asked Connal. "We need the world

  first and not your kind of world. You tried it once

  and blew it, don't you remember?"

  "That was one nation led by a madman trying to

  impose his imprimatur over the globe. This is many

  nations with one class of self-abnegating

  professionals coming together for the good of all."

  "Whose definition? Yours? You're a funny fellow,

  General. Somehow I question your benevolent

  tendencies."

  "Indiscretions of a deprived youth whose name

  and rightful opportunities were stolen from him

  should not be held against the man a half-century

  later."

  "Deprived or depraved? I think you made up for

  lost time pretty quickly and as brutally as you could.

  I don't like your remedies."

  "You have no vision."

  310 ROBERT LUDIUM

  "Thanks be to Jesus, Mary, and Joseph it's not

  yours. " The singing out in the corridor faded

  briefly, then swelled again, more discordant and

  louder than before. "Maybe that's some of your old

  Dachau playboys having a beer bust."

  Leifhelm shrugged.

  Suddenly the door burst open, crashing into the

  wall as three men raced in, spits filling the air as

  silenced guns fired hands jerking back and forth, the

  surface of the table chewed up, splinters of wood

  flying everywhere. Fitzpatrick felt the repeated stabs

  of intense pain in his arm as the automatic was

  blown out of his grip. He looked down and saw the

  blood drenching the fabric of his right sleeve.

  Though in shock he glanced about him. Ilse

  Fishbein was dead, her bleeding skull shattered by

  a fusillade of bullets; the chauffeur was smiling

  obscenely. The door was closed as if nothing had

  happened.

  "Stumper," Leifhelm said as one of the invaders

  cut the ropes around his wrists. "I used that term

  only yesterday, Commander, but I did not know

  how right I was. Did you think a single telephone

  call could not be traced to a single room? It was all

  too coincidentally symmetrical. Converse is ours and

  suddenly this poor whore comes into immense

  riches American riches. I grant you it was entirely

  possible such bequests are made frequently by

  sausage-soaked idiots who don't realize the harm

  they do, but the timing was too perfect,

  too amateurish."

  "You're one son of a bitch." Connal shut his

  eyes, trying to force the pain out of his mind,

  unable to move his fingers

  "Why, Commander," said the general, getting

  out of the chair, "do I sense the bravado of fear?

  Do you think I'm going to have you killed?"

  "You sense it. I won't give you any more than that."

  "You're quite wrong. Considering the nature of

  your military leave, you can be of minor but unique

  service to us. One more statistic to disrupt a

  pattern. You'll be our guest, Commander, but not

  in Germany proper. You are gomg on a trip."

  17

  Converse slowly opened his eyes, a dead, iron

  weight on his lids and nausea in his throat blurred

  darkness everywhere and a terrible stinging at his

  side, on his arm, flesh separated from flesh, stretched

  and inflamed. Blindly he tried to touch the offending

  spot, then gasping, pulled back in pain. Somewhere

  light was creeping around the dark space above him,

  picking its way through moving obstructions, peering

  into the shadows. Objects slowly came into focus the

  metal rim of the cot next to his face, two wooden

  chairs opposite each other at a small table in the

  distance, a door also in the distance, but farther away

  and shut . . . then another door, this one open, a

  white sink with a pair of dull-metal faucets on the left

  in a far-away cubicle. The light? It was still moving,

  now dancing, flickering. Where was it?

  He found it: high in the wall on either side of the

  closed door were two rectangular windows, the short

  curtains billowing in the breeze. The windows were

  open, but oddly not open, not clear, the spaces

  interrupted. Joel raised his head, supporting himself

  on his forearm and squinted, trying to see more

  clearly. He focused on the interruptions behind the

  swelling curtains thin black metal shafts vertically

  connecting the window frames. They were bars. He

  was in a cell.

  He fell back on the cot, swallowing repeatedly to

  lessen the burning in his throat, and moved his arm in

  circles trying to lessen the pain of the . . . wound?

  Yes, a wound, a gunshot! The realization jarred his

  memory; a dinner party had turned into a

  battleground filled with hysteria. Blinding lights and

  sudden jolts of pain had been accompanied by strident

  voices bombarding him, incessant echoes pounding in

  his ears as he tried desperately to repel the piercing

  assaults. Then there had been moments of calm, the

  drone of a single voice in the mists. Converse closed

  his eyes, pressing his lids tightly together with all his

  strength as another realization struck him

  3

  312 ROBERT LUDLUM

  and disturbed him deeply. That voice in the swirling

  mists was his voice; he had been drugged, an
d he

  knew he had given up secrets.

  He had been drugged before, a number of times

  in the North Vietnamese camps, and as always there

  was the sickening feeling of numbed outrage. His

  mind had been stripped and violated, his voice made

  to perform obscenities against the last vestiges of his

  will.

  And, again as always, there was the empty hole

  in his stomach, a vacuum that ran deep and

  produced only weakness. He felt starved and

  probably was. The chemicals usually induced

  vomiting as the intestines rejected the unnatural

  substance. It was strange, he reflected, opening his

  eyes and following the moving shafts of light, but

  those memories from years ago evoked the same

  self-protective instincts that had helped him

  then so many years ago. He could not waste en-

  ergy; he had to conserve what strength he had.

  Regain new strength. Otherwise there was nothing

  but the numbed outrage and neither his mind nor

  his body could do anything about it.

  There was a sound across the room! Then

  another and another after that! The grating sound

  of sliding metal told him that a bolt was being

  released; the sharp sound of a key followed by the

  twisting of a knob meant that the door in the far

  distant wall was about to be opened. It was, and a

  blinding burst of sunlight filled the cell. Converse

  shielded his eyes peering between his fingers. The

  blurred, frazzled silhouette of a man stood in the

  doorframe carrying a flat object. The figure walked

  in and Joel, blinking, saw it was the chauffeur who

  had electronically searched him in the driveway.

  The uniformed driver crossed to the.table and

  deftly lowered the flat object; it was a tray, its