Robert Ludlum - Aquatain Progression.txt

by The Aquitaine Progression [lit]

  spoke of a large sum of money promised in Geneva

  and delivered on Mykonos."

  "And where is it?" asked Leifhelm. "In this desk,

  that's where it is. Nearly seventy thousand American

  dollars. He hasn't got a deutsche mark in his pocket,

  or a watch or a piece of jewelry. A man in filthy,

  soaked clothing, with no idenhfication, no money, no

  coherent use of the language, and telling

  332 ROBERT LUDLUM

  an outlandish tale of imprisonment involving der

  Ceneral LeifLelm, would undoubtedly be put in jail

  as a vagrant or a psychopath or both. In which case,

  we shall be informed instantly and our people will

  bring him to us. And bear in mind, sabre, by ten

  o'clock tomorrow morning it won't make any

  difference. That was your contribution, the Mossad's

  ingenuity. We simply had the resources to make it

  come to pass as is said in the Old Testament."

  Abrahms stood in front of the enormous desk,

  arms akimbo above the pockets of his safari jacket.

  ' So the Jew and the {elect marshal set it all in

  motion. Ironical, isn't it, Nazi?"

  "Not as much as you think,Jude. Impurity, as

  with beauty, is in the eye of the frightened beholder.

  You are not my enemy; you never were. If more of

  us in the old days had your commitment, your

  audacity, we never would have lost the war."

  '1 know that,' said the sabre. 'I watched and

  listened when you reached the English Ch-annel.

  You lost it then. You were weak."

  "It was not us! It was the frightened Debutanten in

  Ber

  "Then keep them away when we create a truly

  new orde,, Cerman. We can't afford weakness.''

  "You do try me, Chaim."

  "I mean to."

  The chauffeur felt the bandages on his face, the

  swelling around his eyes and his lips painful to the

  touch. He was in his own room, where the doctor

  had turned on the television probably as an insult,

  as he could barely see it.

  He was disgraced. The prisoner had escaped in

  spite of his own formidable talents and the

  supposedly impassable pack of Dobermans. The

  American had used the silver whistle, that much the

  other guards had told him, and the fact that it had

  been removed from his neck was a further

  embarrassment.

  He would not add to his disgrace. With blurred

  vision he had gone through his pockets which no

  one in the panic of the chase had thought to

  do and found that his billfold, his expensive Swiss

  watch, and all his money had been taken. He would

  say nothing about them. He was embarrassed

  enough, and any such revelations might be cause for

  dismissal or conceivably his death.

  * A: *

  THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 333

  Joel headed for the shoreline as fast as he could,

  submerging his head underwater whenever the beam

  of the searchlight swept toward him. The boat was a

  large motor launch, its bass-toned engines signifying

  power, its sudden turns and circles evidence of rapid

  maneuverability. It hugged the overgrown banks,

  then would sweep out toward the open water at the

  slightest sign of an object in the river.

  Converse felt the soft mud below; he half swam,

  half trudged toward the darkest spot on the shore,

  the chauffeur's gun securely in his belt. The boat

  approached, its penetrating beam studying every

  foot, every moving branch or limb or cluster of river

  weeds. Joel took a deep breath and slowly lows ered

  himself under the water, his face angled up toward

  the surface, his eyes open, his vision a muddy dark

  blur. The searchlight grew brighter and seemed to

  hover above him for an eternity; he inched his way

  to the left and the beam moved away. He rose to the

  surface, his lungs bursting, but suddenly realized he

  could make no sound, he could not fill his chest with

  gasps of air. For directly above him, less than five

  feet away loomed the broad stern of the motor

  launch, bobbing in the water as if idling. The dark

  figure of a man was peering through very large

  binoculars at the riverbank.

  Converse was bewildered; it was too dark now to

  see anything even with magnification. Then he

  remembered, and the memory accounted for the size

  of the binoculars. The man was focusing through

  infrared lenses; they had been used by patrols in

  Southeast Asia and were often the difference, he had

  been told, between search-and-destroy and

  search-andbe-destroyed. They revealed objects in the

  darkness, soldiers in the darkness.

  The boat moved forward, but the idle increased

  only slightly, entering the slowest of trawling speeds.

  Again Joel was confused. What had brought

  Leifhelm's searching party to this particular spot on

  the riverfront? There were several other boats

  behind and out in the distance, their searchlights

  sweeping the water, but they kept moving, circling.

  Why did the huge motor launch concentrate on this

  stretch of the shore? Could they have spotted him

  through infrared binoculars? If they had, they were

  proceeding very strangely; the North Vietnamese had

  been far swifter more aggressive, more effective.

  Silently, Converse lowered himself beneath the

  surface and breaststroked out beyond the boat.

  Seconds later he

  334 ROBERT LUDLUM

  raised his head above the water, his vision clear,

  and he began to understand the odd maneuverings

  of LeifLelm's patrol. Beyond the darkest part of the

  riverbank into which he had lurched for

  concealment were the lights he had seen eight or

  nine minutes ago, before the launch and its

  searchlight monopolized all his attention. He had

  thought they were the lights of a small village, but

  he was in the wrong part of the world. Instead they

  were the inside lights of four or five small houses,

  a river colony with a common dock, summer homes

  perhaps of those fortunate enough to own

  waterfront property.

  If there were houses and a dock, there had to be

  a drive an open passage up to the road or roads

  leading into Bonn and the surrounding towns.

  Leifhelm's men were combing every inch of the

  riverbank, cautiously, quietly, the searchlights angled

  down so as not to alarm the inhabitants or forewarn

  the fugitive if he had reached the cluster of cottages

  and was on his way up to the unseen road or roads.

  A ship's radio would be activated, its frequency

  aligned to those in cars roaming above, ready to

  spring the trap. In some ways it was the Huong Khe

  again for Joel, the obstacles far less primitive but no

  less lethal. And then as now there was a bme to

  wait, to wait in the black silence and let the hunters

  make their moves.

  They made them quickly. The launch slid into

  the dock, the power
ful twin screws quietly churning

  in reverse, as a man jumped off the bow with a

  heavy line and looped it around a piling. Three

  others followed, instantly racing off the short pier

  up onto the sloping lawn, one heading diagonally to

  the right, the other two toward the first house.

  What they were doing was obvious: one man would

  position himself in the bordering woods of the

  downhill entrance drive while his colleagues checked

  the houses, looking for signs of entry.

  Converse's arms and legs began to feel like

  weights, each an anvil he could barely support,

  much less keep moving, but there was no choice.

  The beam of the searchlight kept moving up and

  down the base of the riverbank, its spill illuminating

  everything in its vicinity. A head surfacing at the

  wrong moment would be blown out of the water.

  Huong Khe. Tread water in the reeds. Do it! Don 't

  die!

  He knew the waiting was no longer than thirty

  minutes, but it seemed more like thirty hours or

  thirty days suspended in a floabng torture rack. His

  arms and legs were now in

  THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 335

  agony; sharp pains shot through his body

  everywhere; muscles formed cramps that he

  dispersed by holding his breath and Hoating in a

  fetal position, his thumbs pressing relentlessly into

  the cores of the knotted muscles. Twice while

  gasping for air he swallowed water, coughing it out

  below the surface, his nostrils drowning, and twice

  found the air again. There were moments when it

  crossed his inner consciousness that it would be so

  simple just to drift away. Huang Khe. Don't do it!

  Don 't die!

  Finally through waterlogged eyes he saw the men

  returning. One, two . . . three? . . . They ran down to

  the dock, to the man with the rope. No! The man

  with the rope had rushed forward! His eyes were

  playing tricks! Only two men had run onto the dock,

  the first man joining them, asking questions. The line

  man returned to the piling and released the rope;

  the other two jumped on board. The first man once

  again joined his companions, now on the bow of the

  launch leaving another on shore, a lone observer

  somewhere unseen between the riverbank and the

  road above. Huong Khe. An infantry scout separated

  from his patrol.

  The motor launch swung away from the dock and

  sped within a few feet past Joel, who was buffeted

  underwater by its wake. Once more the boat veered

  toward the shoreline and slowed down, its searchlight

  peering into the dense foliage of the bank, heading

  west, back toward LeifLelm's estate. Converse held

  his head above the surface, his mouth wide open,

  swallowing all the air he could as he made his way

  slowly very slowly into the mud. He pulled

  himself up through the wet reeds and branches until

  he felt dry ground. Huong Khe. He pulled the

  underbrush over him as best he could, finally

  covering his upturned face. He would rest until he

  felt the blood flowing steadily if painfully through his

  limbs, until the muscles of his neck lost their

  tension it was always the neck; the neck was the

  warning signal and then he would consider the man

  on the dark hill above him.

  He dozed, until a slapping wave below woke him.

  He pushed the branches and the leaves away from

  his face and looked at the chauffeur's watch on his

  wrist, squinting at the weak radium dial. He had

  slept for nearly an hour fitfully, to be sure, the

  slightest sounds forcing his eyelids briefly open, but

  he had rested. He rolled his neck back and forth,

  then moved his arms and legs. Everything still hurt,

  but the excruciating pain was gone. And now he

  faced a man on a hill above

  336 ROBERT LUDLUM

  him. He tried to examine his thoughts. He was

  frightened, of course, but his anger would control

  that terrible fear, it had done so before, it would do

  so now. The objective was all that mattered some

  kind of sanctuary, a place where he could think and

  put things together and somehow make the most

  important telephone call in his life. To Larry Talbot

  and Nathan Simon in New York. Unless he could

  do these things he was dead as Connal Fitzpatrick

  was undoubtedly dead. esus! What had they done to

  him? A man with the purity of vengeance purely

  sought caught in a diseased web called Aquitainel It

  was an unfair world.... But he could not think about

  it; he had to concentrate on a man on the hill.

  He crept on his hands and knees. Stretch by

  stretch he crawled through the woods bordering the

  dirt road that wound up the hill from the lawn and

  the riverbank. Whenever a twig crunched or a rock

  was displaced he stopped, waiting for the moment to

  dissolve back into the sounds of the forest. He kept

  telling himself he had the advantage; he was the

  unexpected. It helped counteract the fear of the

  darkness and the knowledge that a physical

  confrontation was before him. Like the patrol scout

  years ago in the Huang Khe, that man above him

  now had things he needed. The combat could not be

  avoided, so it was best not to think about it but to

  simply force himself into a mind-set empty of any

  feeling, and do it. But do it well, his mind had to

  understand that, too. There could be no hesitation,

  no intrusions of conscience and no sound of a gun,

  only the use of the steel.

  He saw him, oddly enough, silhouetted in the

  distant glare of a single streetlamp far above on a

  road. The man was leaning against the trunk of a

  tree and facing down, his sweep of vision taking in

  everything below. As Joel crept up the slope the

  space between his hands and knees became inches,

  the stops more frequent, silence more vital. He

  made his way in an arc above the tree and the man

  and then started down like a large cat descending on

  its prey. He was the predator he had once been long

  ago, everything blocked out but the requirement of

  the lifeline.

  He was within six feet; he could hear the man's

  breathing. There was a snap beneath him. A branch

  The scout turned his eyes alive in the glare of light.

  Converse lunged, the barrel of the gun gripped in

  his hand. He crashed the steel handle into the

  German's temple and then into his throat. The man

  fell backward, dazed but not unconscious; he started

  to

  THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 337

  screarn..loel sprang for his enemy's neck and half

  choked him before bringing the steel handle down

  with all his strength on the C;erman's forehead,

  instantly there was an eruption of blood and crushed

  tissue.

  Silence. No movement. Anotile'; SC'C'llt

  separated from his patrol had been taken out. And

  as be h
ac] years ago, Converse permitted himself no

  feeling. it was done, and he had to go on.

  The man's dry clothes, including the dark leather

  jacket, fit reasonably well. Like most small or

  medium-sized commanders, LeiFhelm surrounded

  himself with tall men, as much to protect himself as

  to proclaim his superiority over his larger

  compatriots.

  There was also another gull; Joel struggled with

  the clip, removed it, and threw it along with the

  weapon into the woods. The bonus came with the

  Cerman s billfold; it contained ti sizable sum of

  money as well as a frayed, much stamped passport.

  Apparently, this trusted employee of Leifhelm

  traveled widely for 4quitaine probably knowing

  nothing and being very expendable, but always

  available at the moment of decision. The ma!1 s

  shoes did not tat; they were too small. So Converse

  used his drenched clothing to wipe his OWI1, and the

  Cerman's dry socks Iqelped to absorb some of the

  moisture of the leather inside. He covered the man

  with branches and walked up the hit' to the road.

  He stayed out of sight between the trees as five

  cars passed by, all sedans, all possibly belonging to

  Erich Leifhelm. Then he saw a bright-yellow

  Volkswagen come into view, weaving slightly. He

  stepped out and held up his hands, the gesture of a

  man in trouble.

  The small car stopped a blond girl in the

  passenger seat, the driver no more than eighteen or

  twenty, another young man in back, also blond, who

  looked as though he might be the girl's brother.

  "Was ist los, Opa?" asked the driver.

  "I'm afraid I don't speak German. Can you speak

  any English?"

  "I speak some English," said the boy in back,

  slurring his words. "Better than these two! All they

  want to do is get to our place and make love. See! I

  do speak English?"