contents covered by a cloth. It was only then that
Converse's attention was drawn back to the sunlit
doorway. Outside, milling about in anxious contempt
was the pack of Dobermans, their shining black eyes
continually shifting toward the door, their lips curled
teeth bared in unending quiet snarls.
"GutenMorgen, main Herr," said Leifhelm's
chauffeur, then shifting to English, 'Another
beautiful day on the northern Rhine, no?'
"It's bright out there, if that's what you mean,"
replied Joel, his hand still cupping his eyes. "I
suppose I should be grateful to be able to notice
after last night."
THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 313
"Last night?" The German paused, then added
quietly, "It was two nights ago, Amerikaner. You've
been here for the past thirty-three hours."
"Thirty?" Converse pushed himself up and swung
his legs over the side of the cot. Instantly he was
overcome by dizziness too much strength had been
drained. Oh Christ! Don't waste movement. They'll be
back. The bastards! "You bastards," he said out loud
but without any real emotion. Then for the first time
he realized he was shirtless, and noticed the bandage
on his left arm between his elbow and his shoulder.
It covered the gunshot wound. "Did somebody miss
my head?" he asked.
"I'm told you inflicted the injury yourself. You
tried to kill General Leifhelm but shot yourself when
the others were taking your gun away."
"I tried to kill? With my nonexistent gun? The
one you made sure I didn't have?"
"You were too clever for me, mein Herr."
"What happens now?"
"Now? Now you eat. I have instructions from the
doctor. You begin with the Hafergrlitze how do you
say? the porridge."
"Hot mush or cereal," said Joel. "With skimmed
or powdered milk. Then some kind of soft-boiled
eggs taken with pills. And if it all goes down, a little
ground meat, and if that stays down, a few spoonfuls
of crushed turnips or potatoes or squash. Whatever's
available."
"How do you know this?" asked the uniformed
man, genuinely surprised.
"It's a basic diet," said Converse cynically.
"Variations with the territory and the supplies. I once
had some comparatively good meals.... You're
planning to put me under again."
The German shrugged. "I do what I'm told. I
bring you food. Here, let me help you."
Joel looked up as the chauffeur approached the
cot. "Under other circumstances I'd spit in your
goddamned face. But if I did I wouldn't have that
slight, slight possibility of spitting in it some other
time. You may help me. Be careful of my arm."
"You are a very strange man, main Herr."
"And you're all perfectly normal citizens catching
the early train to Larchmont so you can put down
ten martinis before going to the PTA meeting."
314 ROBERT LUDLUM
"Was ist? I know of no such meeting. '
'They're keeping it secret; they don't want you
to know. If I were you, I'd get out of town before
they make you president."
"Mich? President?"
"Just help me to the chair, like a good ale
Aryan boy, will you?'
"Hah, you are being amusing, ja?"
"Probably not," said Converse, easing into the
wooden chair. 'it's a terrible habit I wish I could
break." He looked up at the bewildered German.
"You see, I keep trying," he said in utter
seriousness.
Three more days passed, his only visitor the
chauffeur accompanied by the sullen, high-strung
pack of Dobermans. His well-searched suitcase was
given to him, scissors and a nail file removed from
the traveling kit his electric razor intact. It was
their way of telling him that his presence had been
removed from Bonn, leaving him to painfully
speculate about the life or death of Connal
Fitzpatrick. Yet there was an inconsistency and, as
such, the basis for hope. No allusions were made to
his attache case, either with visual evidence the
page of a dossier, perhaps or through his brief
exchanges with Leifhelm's driver. The generals of
Aquitaine were men of immense egos; if they had
those materials in their possession, they would have
let him know it.
As to his conversations with the chauffeur, they
were lirnited to questions on his part and
disciplined pleasantries on the German's part, no
answers at all at least, none that made any sense:
"How long is this going to go on? When am I
going to see someone other than you?"
"There is no one here, sir, except the staff.
General Leifhelm is away in Essen, I believe. Our
instructions are to feed you well and restore your
health."
Incommunicado. He was in solitary.
But the food was not like that given to
prisoners anywhere else. Roasts of beef and lamb,
chops, poultry and fresh fish; vegetables that
unquestionably had come directly from a nearby
garden. And wine which at first Joel was reluctant
to drink, but when he did, even he knew it was
superior.
On the second day, as much to keep from
thinking as from anything else, he had begun to
perform mild exer
THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 315
cises as he had done so many years ago. By the
third day he had actually worked up a sweat during
a running-in-place session, a healthy sweat, telling
him the drugs had left his body. The wound on his
arm was still there, but he thought about it less and
less. Curiously, it was not serious.
On the fourth day questions and reflections were
no longer good enough. Confinement and the
maddening frustration of having no answers forced
him to turn elsewhere, to the practical, to the most
necessary consideration facing him. Escape.
Regardless of the outcome the attempt had to be
made. Whatever plans Delavane and his disciples in
Aquitaine had for him, they obviously included
parading a drugless man more than likely a dead
man with no narcotics in his system. Otherwise they
would have killed him at once, disposing of his body
in any number of untraceable ways. He had done it
before. Could he do it again?
He was not rotting in a rat-infested cell and there
was no terrible gunfire in the distant darkness, but it
was far more important that he succeed now than it
ever was eighteen years ago. And there was an
extraordinary irony: eighteen years ago he had
wanted to break out and tell whoever would listen to
him about a madman in Saigon who sent countless
children to their deaths or worse, who left those
children to suffer broken minds and hollow feelings
for the rest of their lives. Now he had to tell the
world about that same madman.
He had to get out. He had to tell the world what he
knew.
Converse stood on the wooden chair, the short
curtain pulled back, and peered between the black
metal bars outside. His cabin, or cottage, or
jailhouse, whatever it was, seemed to have been
lowered from above onto a clearing in the forest.
There was a wall of tall trees and thick foliage as far
as he could see in either direction, a dirt path
angling to the right beneath the window. The
clearing itself extended no more than twenty feet in
front of the structure before the dense greenery
began; he presumed it was the same on all sideshow
it was from the other window to the left of the door
except that there was no path below, only a short,
coarse stubble of brown grass. The two front
windows were the only views he had. The rest of this
isolated jailhouse consisted of unbroken walls and a
small ceiling vent in the bathroom but no other
openings.
All he could be certain of, since the chauffeur and
the
316 ROBERT LUDLUM
dogs and the warm meals were proof he was still
within the grounds of Leifhelm's estate, was that the
river could not be far away. He could not see it, but
it was there and it gave him hope more than hope,
a sense of morbid exhilaration rooted in his
memory. Once before the waters of a river had been
his friend, his guide, ultimately the lifeline that had
taken him through the worst of his journey. A
tributary of the Huong Khe south of Duc Tho had
rushed him silently at night under bridges and past
patrols and the encampments of three battalions.
The waters of the Rhine, like the currents of the
Huong Khe years ago, would be his way out.
The multiple sounds of animal feet pounding the
earth preceded the streaking dark coats of the
Dobermans as they raced belong the window,
instantly stopping and crowding angrily in front of
the door. The chauffeur was on his way with a
breakfast no prisoner in isolation should expect.
Joel climbed off the chair and quickly carried it
back to the table, setting it in place and going to his
cot. He sat down, kicked off his shoes, and lay back
on the pillow, his legs stretched out over the
rumpled blanket.
The bolt was slid back, the key inserted and the
heavy knob turned; the door opened. As he did
every time he entered, the German pushed the
center of the door with his right hand as he
supported the tray with his left. However this
morning he was gripping a bulging object in his
right hand, the blinding sunlight obscuring it for
Converse. The man walked in and, more awkwardly
than usual, placed the tray on the table.
' 1 have a pleasant surprise for you, main Herr.
I spoke with General Leifhelm on the telephone last
night and he asked about you. I told him you were
recovering splendidly and that I had changed the
bandage on your unfortunate injury. Then it
occurred to him that you had nothing to read and
he was very upset. So an hour ago I drove into
Bonn and purchased three days of the International
Herald Tribune. " The driver placed the rolled-up
newspapers next to the tray on the table.
But it was not the issues of the Herald Tribune
that Joel stared at. It was the German s neck and
the upper outside pocket of his uniform jacket. For
looped around that neck and angled over to that
pocket was a thin silver chain, with the protruding
top of a tubular silver whistle clearly visible against
the dark fabric. Converse shifted his eyes to the
door;
THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 317
the Dobermans were sitting on their haunches, each
breathing noisily and salivating, but, to all intents and
purposes, immobile. Converse remembered his
arrival at the general s monumental lair and the
strange Englishman who had controlled the dogs with
a silver whistle.
'Tell Leifhelm I appreciate the reading material,
but I'd be even more grateful if I could get out of
this place for a few minutes. "
':la, with a plane ticket to the beaches in the
south of France, rein?"
"For Christ's sake, just to take a walk and stretch
my legs What's the matter? Can't you and that
drooling band of mas tiffs handle one unarmed man
getting a little air? . . . No you're probably too
frightened to try." Joel paused, then added in an
insulting mock-Cerman accent. '''I do vot I am tort.
The driver's smile faded. "The other evening you
said you would not apologise but instead break my
neck. That was a joke. Do you understand? A joke
I find so amusing I can laugh at it."
"Hey, come on,' said Converse, changing his tone
as he swung his legs off the cot and sat up. "You're
ten years younger than I am and twenty times
stronger. I felt insulted and reacted stupidly, but if
you think I'd raise a hand against you you're out of
your mind. I m sorry. You've been decent to me and
I was stupid again."
"la, you were stupid," said the German without
rancor "But also you were right. I do as I am told.
And why not? It is a privilege to take orders from
General Leifhelm. He has Been gut to me."
"Have you been with him long?"
"Since Brussels. I was a sergeant in the Federal
Republic's border patrols. He heard about my
problem and took an interest in my case. I was
transferred to the Brabant garrison and made his
chauffeur."
"What was your problem? I'm a lawyer, you know."
Dhde charge was that I strangled a man With my "
'ha. He was trying to put a knife in my
stomach and lower. He said I took advantage of his
daughter. I took no advantage; it was not necessary.
She was a whore it was in the clothes she wore, the
way she walked es ist klar! The father was a pig!"
318 ROBERT LUDLUM
Joel looked at the man, at the clouded
malevolence in his eyes. "I can understand General
Leifhelm's sympathies," he said.
"Now you know why I do as I am told."
"Clearly."
He is calling for his messages at noon. I shall
ask him about your walking. You understand that
one word from me and the Dobermans will rip your
body from its bones."
"Nice puppies," said Converse, addressing the
pack of dogs outside.
Noon came and the privilege was granted. The
walk was to take place after lunch when the driver
returned to remove the tray. He returned, and after
several severe warnings Joel ventured outside, the
Dobermans crowding around him black nostrils
flared, white teeth glistening, bluish-red tongues
flattened out in anticipation. Converse looked
around; for the first time he saw that the small
house wa
s made of thick, solid stone. The unique
squad began its constitutional up the path, Joel
growing bolder as the dogs lost a degree of interest
in him under the harsh admonitions of the German
s commands. They began racing ahead and regroup-
ing in circles, snapping at one another but always
whipping their heads back or across at their master
and his prisoner. Converse walked faster.
"I used to jog a lot back home," he lied.
"Was ist? 'Jog'?"
"Run. It's good for the circulation."
"You run now, main Herr, you will have no
circulation. The Dobermans will see to it."
"I've heard of people getting coronaries from
jogging too," said Joel, slowing down, but not
reducing the speed with which his eyes darted in all
directions. The sun was directly overhead; it was no
help in determining direction.
The dirt path was like a marked single line in an
intricate network of hidden trails. It was bordered
by thick foliage, more often than not roofed by
low-hanging branches, then breaking open into short
stretches of wild grass that might or might not lead
to other paths. They reached a fork, the leg to the
right curving sharply into a tunnel of greenery. The
dogs instinctively raced into it but were stopped by
the chauffeur, who shouted commands in German.
The Dobermans spun around, bouncing off each
other, and returned to the fork, then raced into the
wider path on the left. It was an in
THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 319
cline and they started up a steep hill, the trees
Robert Ludlum - Aquatain Progression.txt Page 49