shorter and less full, the bramble bush wilder,
coarser, lower to the ground. Wind, thought
Converse. A valley wind; a wind whipping up from a
trough, a long narrow slice in the earth, the kind of
wind a pilot of a small plane avoided at the first sign
of weather. A river.
It was there. To his left; they were traveling east.
The Rhine was below, perhaps a mile beyond the
lower line of tall trees. He had seen enough. He
began breathing audibly. The exhilaration inside him
was intense; he could have walked for miles. He was
back on the banks of the Huong Khe, the dark
watery lifeline that would take him away from the
Mekong cages and the cells and the chemicals. He
had done it before he was going to do it again!
"Okay, Field Marshal," he said to Leifhelm's
driver, looking at the silver whistle in the German's
pocket. "I'm not in as good shape as I thought I was.
This is a mountain! Don't you have any flat pastures
or grazing fields?"
"I do as I am told, mein Herr, " replied the man,
grinning. "Those are nearer the main house. This is
where you must walk."
"This is where I say thank you and no thank you.
Take me back to my little grass shack and I'll play
you a simple
"I do not understand."
"I'm bushed and I haven't finished the
newspapers. Seriously, I want to thank you. I really
needed the air."
"Sehr gut You are a pleasant fellow."
"You have no idea, good ale Aryan boy."
"Ach, so amusing. Die Juden sind in Israel, rein?
Better than in Cermany."
Nate Simon would love you. He'd take your case
for nothing just to blow it No, he wouldn't. He'd
probably give you the best defense you ever had."
Converse stood on the wooden chair under the
window to the left of the door. All he had to hear
and see was the sound and the sight of the dogs;
after that he had twenty or thirty seconds. The
faucets in the bathroom were turned on, the door
open; there was sufficient time to run across the
room, flush the toilet, close the door and return to
the chair. But he would not be standing on it.
Instead, it would be gripped in his hands, laterally.
The sun was descending rapidly; in an
320 ROBERT IUDIUM
hour it would be dark. Darkness had been his friend
before as the waters of a river had been his friend.
They had to be his friends again. They had to be!
The sounds came first racing paws and nasal
explosions then the sight of gleaming dark coats of
animal fur rushing in circles in front of the
jailhouse. Joel ran to the bathroom, concentrating
on the seconds as he waited for the sliding of the
bolt. It came; he flushed the toilet, then closed the
bathroom door and raced back to the chair. He
raised it and stood in place, his legs and feet locked
to the floor. The door was opened several
inches only seconds now then the German's right
hand pushed it back.
"Herr Converse? Wo sind . . . Bach, die Toilette. "
The chauffeur walked in with the tray, and Joel
swung the chair with all his strength into the
German's head. The driver arched back off his feet,
tray and dishes crashing to the floor. He was
stunned, nothing more. Converse kicked the door
shut and brought the heavy chair repeatedly down
on the chauffeur's skull until the man went limp,
blood and saliva pouring down his eyes and face.
The phalanx of dogs had lurched as one at the
suddenly closed door and began to bark maniacally
while clawing at the wood.
Joel grabbed the silver chain, slipped it over the
unconscious German's head and pulled the silver
whistle out of the pocket. There were four tiny
holes on the tube; each meant something. He pulled
the remaining chair to the window at the right of
the door, climbed up and put the whistle to his lips.
He covered the first hole and blew into the
mouthpiece. There was no sound, but it had an
effect.
The Dobermans went mad! They began to attack
the door in suicidal assaults. He removed his finger,
placed it over the second hole and blew.
The dogs were confused; they circled around
each other snapping, yelping, snarling, but still they
would not take their concentration off the door. He
tried the third tiny hole and blew into the whistle
with all the breath he had.
Suddenly, the dogs stopped all movement, their
tapered close-cropped ears upright, shifting they
were waiting for a second signal. He blew again,
again with all the breath that was in him. It was the
sound they were waiting for, and again, as one, the
pack raced to the right beneath the window,
THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 321
pounding to some other place where they were
meant to be by command.
Converse leaped down from the chair and knelt
by the unconscious German. He went rapidly
through the driver's pockets, taking his billfold and
all the money he had, as well as his wristwatch and
his gun. For an instant Joel looked at the weapon,
loathing the memories it evoked. He shoved it under
his belt and went to the door.
Outside, he pulled the heavy door shut, heard
the click of the lock and slid the bolt in place. He
ran up the dirt path estimating the distance to the
fork where the right leg was verboten and the left led
to the steep hill and the sight of the Rhine below. It
was actually no more than two hundred yards away,
but the winding curves and the thick bordering
foliage made it seem longer. If he remembered
accurately and on the walk back he was like a pilot
without instruments relying on sightings there was
a flat stretch of about eighty feet below the fork.
He reached it, the same flat area, the same
diverging paths up ahead. He ran faster.
Voices! Angry, questioning? Not far away and
coming nearer! He dove into the brush to his right,
rolling over the needle-like bushes until he could
barely see through the foliage. Two men walked
rapidly into his limited view, talking loudly, as if
arguing but somehow not with each other.
"Was haben die Hunde?"
"Die sollten bat Heinrich sein!"
Joel had no idea what they were saying; he only
knew as they passed him that they were heading for
the isolated cabin. He also knew that they would pot
spend much time trying to raise anyone inside before
they took more direct methods. And once they did,
all the alarms in LeifLelm's fortress would be
activated. Time was measured for him in minutes
and he had a great deal of ground to cover. He crept
cautiously out of the brush on his hands and feet.
The Germans were out of sight, beyond a rounding
curve. He got up and rac
ed for the fork and the
steep hill to the left.
The three guards at the immense iron gate that
was the entrance to Leifhelm's estate were
bewildered. The pack of Dobermans were circling
around impatiently in the out grass, obviously
confused.
"Why are they here?" asked one man.
322 ROBERT LUDLUM
"It makes no sense!" replied a second.
"Heinrich has let them loose, but why?" said the third.
"Nobody tells us anything," muttered the first guard,
shrugging. "If we don't hear something in the next few
minutes, we should call."
"I don't like this!" shouted the second guard. "I'm
calling right now!"
The first guard walked into the gatehouse and picked
up the telephone.
Converse ran up the steep hill, his breath short, his
lips dry, his heartbeat thundering in his chest. There it
was! The river! He started running down, gathering
speed, the wind whipping his face, stinging him. It was
exhilarahng. He was back! He was racing through the
sudden, open clearings of another jungle, no fellow
prisoners to worry about, only the outrage within himself
to prod him, to make him break through the barriers
and somehow, somewhere, strike back at those who had
stripped him naked and raped an innocence
and goddamn it turned him into an animal! A
reasonably pleasant human being had been turned into
a half-man with more hatreds than a person should live
with. He would get back at them all, all enemies, all
animals!
He reached the bottom of the open slope of gnarled
grass
and bush, the trees and intertwining underbrush
once more
a wall to be penetrated. But he had his bearings; no
matter
how dense the woods, he simply had to keep the last
rays of
the sun on his left, heading due north, and he would
reach
the river.
Rapid explosions made him spin around. Five
gunshots followed one upon the other in the distance. It
was easy to imagine the target: a circle of wood around
the cylinder of a lock in the door of an isolated cabin in
the forest. His jailhouse was being assaulted, entrance
gained. The minutes were growing shorter.
And then two distinctly different sounds pierced the
twilight, interwoven in dissonance. The first was a series
of short, staccato bursts of a high-pitched siren. The
second, between and under the repeated blasts, was the
hysterical yelping of running dogs. The alarms had been
set off; scraps of discarded clothing and slept-on sheets
would be pressed onto inflamed nostrils and the
Dobermans would come after him, no quarter
THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 323
considered no cornered prey only animal teeth
ripping human flesh a satisfactory reward.
Converse plunged into the wall of green and ran
as fast as he could, dodging, crouching, lurching
from one side to the other, his arms outstretched, his
hands working furiously against the strong, supple
impediment of the woods. His face and body were
repeatedly whipped by slashing branches and
obstinate limbs, his feet continually tripped by fallen
debris and exposed roots. He stumbled more times
than he could count, each time bringing an instant of
silence that emphasized the sound of the dogs
somewhere between the fork and the hill and the
lower forest. They were no farther away, perhaps
nearer. They were nearer, they had entered the
woods. All around him were the echoes of their
hysteria, punctuated by howling yelps of frustration
as one or another or several were caught in the
tangled ground cover, straining and roaring to be
free to join the pursuit.
The water! He could see the water through the
trees. Sweat was now rolling down his face, the salt
blinding his eyes and stinging the scrapes on his neck
and chin. His hands were bleeding from the sharp
nettles and the coarse bark everywhere.
He fell, his foot plunging into a hole burrowed by
some riverbank animal, his ankle twisted and in pain.
He got up, pulling at his leg, freeing his foot,
and, limping badly, tried to resume running. The
Dobermans were gaining, the yelping and the harsh
barking louder and more furious; they had picked up
his direct scent, the trail of undried sweat maddening
them, preparing them for the kill.
The riverbank! It was filled with soft mud and
floating debris, a webbing of nature's garbage caught
in a cavity, whirling slowly, waiting for a strong
current to pull it all away. Joel grabbed the handle
of the chauffeur's gun, not to pull it out but to
secure it as he limped down the bank to look for the
quickest way into the water.
He heard nothing until the instant when a
massive roar came out of the shadows and the huge
body of an animal flew through the air over the
riverbank directly at him. The monstrous face of the
dog was contorted with fury, the eyes on fire, the
enormous jaw widest all teeth and a gaping, shining
black mouth. Converse fell to his knees as the
Doberman whipped past his right shoulder, ripping
his shirt with its upper eye teeth and flipping over on
its back in the mud. The
324 ROBERT LUDLUM
momentary defeat was more than the animal could
stand. It writhed furiously, rolling over, snarling,
then rising on its hind legs, lunged up from the mud
for Joel's groin.
The gun was in his hand. Converse fired,
blowing off the top of the attack dog's head; blood
and tissue sprayed the shadows, and the slack,
shining jaws fell into his crotch.
The rest of the pack was now racing toward the
bank, accompanied by ear-shattering crescendos of
animal cries. Joel threw himself into the water and
swam as rapidly as he could away from the
shoreline; the weapon was an impediment but he
knew he could not let it go.
Years ago centuries ago he had desperately
needed a weapon, knowing it could be the difference
between survival and death, and forgive days none
could be had. But on that fifth day he had found one
on the banks of the Huong Khe. He had }boated half
underwater past a squad on patrol, and found the
point ten minutes later downriver too far from the
scout's unit to be logical a man perha ps thinking
angry thoughts that made him walk faster, or bored
with his job and wanting a few moments to be by
himself and out of it all. Whichever, it made no
difference to that soldier. Converse had killed him with
a rock from the river and had taken his gun. He had
fired that gun twice, twice saving his life before he
reached an advance unit south of Phu Loc.
As he pushed against the shoreline currents of
the Rhine, J
oel suddenly remembered. This was the
fifth day of his imprisonment in Leifhelm's
compound no jungle cell, to be sure, but no less a
prison camp. He had done it! And on the fifth day
a weapon was his! There were omens wherever one
wished to find them; he did not believe in omens,
but for the moment he accepted the possibility.
He was in the shadows of the river now, the
surrounding mountains blocking the dying sun. He
paddled in place and turned. Back on shore, at the
cavity in the bank that had been his plank to the
water, the dogs were circling in confused anger,
snarling, yelping, as several ventured down to sniff
their slain leader, each urinating as it did
so territory and status were being established. The
beams of powerful flashlights suddenly broke
through the trees. Converse swam farther out; he
had survived searchlights in the Mekong. He had no
fear of them now; he had been there here and he
knew when he had won.
He let the outer currents carry him east along the
river.
THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 325
Somewhere there would be other lights, lights that
would lead him to shelter and a telephone. He had to
get everything in place and build his brief quickly, but
he could do it. Yet the attorney in him told him that
a man with a bandaged gunshot wound in soaked
clothing and speaking a foreign language in the
streets was no match for the disciples of George
Marcus Delavane; they would find him. So it would
have to be done another way with whatever artifices
he could muster. He had to get to a telephone. He
had to place an overseas call. He could do it; he
would do it! The Huong Khe faded; the Rhine was
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