* * *
I, Captain Howard NMI Packard, US. Army,507538, age thirty-one, currently residing in Oxon Hill,Maryland, am assigned to Section 27, Department ofTechnological Controls, the Pentagon, Arlington,Virginia. In December of last year, Mr. A. PrestonHalliday, an attorney from San Francisco with whomI had struck u p a friendship as a result of hisnumerous petitions to oursectionon behalf of clients(all successful and above reproach), asked me to havedinner with him at a small restaurant in Clinton,approximately ten miles from my house. He apologized for not asking my wife, explaining that whathe had to say would only disturb her, as, indeed, itwould disturb me, but in this case it was myresponsibility to be disturbed. He added that there wasno conceivable conJqiCt in our meeting, as he had nobusiness pending, only business that should beinvestigated and stopped . . .
I, Lieutenant U G.) William Michael Landis, Us.Navy, a bachelor, age twenty-eight; current address,Somerset Garden Apartments, Vienna, Virginia, am acomputer programmer for the Department of the Navy,Sea-Armament’s Procurements Division, stationed atthe Pentagon, Arlington Virginia. Actually, in all butrank (due within sixty days), I’m in command of mostprogramming for Pentagon-Navy, having received adoctorate in advanced computer technology from theUniversity of Michigan, College of Engineering. . . .I’m probably not saying this right, sir.
Go ahead, young man.
I state this because with the highly sophisticatedequipment at my disposal as well as the classifiedmicro-conversion codes available to me, I’m able totap into a great many restricted computers with atracing capacity that can circumvent or penetrate, ifyou like closures placed on extremely sensitiveinformation.
Last February, Captain Howard Packard, UnitedStates Army, and three other men two from theDepartment of State, Office of Munitions Controls,and the third a Marine Corps officer I knew from theAm phibious Section, Navy Procurements came outto see me on a Sunday morning. They said theywerealarmed opera series of weapons and high-techtransfers that appeared to violate D.O.D. and StateDepartment sanctions. They gave me the data they hadconcerning nine such incidents, impressing upon methe confidentiality of the inquiry.
The next afternoon I went to the maximum-securitycomputers and with the conversion codes inserted thedata for the nine transfers. The initial entries wereconfirmed those numbers never change so as toeliminate the possibilities of duplication but in eachcase, after confirmation, the remaining information waserased, wiped off the computer tapes. Six of those ninetransfers were traced through the initial entries to a firmPalo Alto International, owned by a retired Armygeneral named Delavane. This was myfirst involvement,sir.
Who were the three other men, Lieutenant?
It wouldn’t do any good to give their names, sir. Itcould only hurt their families.
I’m not sure I understand can possibly understand.
They’re dead. They went back and asked questionsand they’re dead, sir. Two supposedly in automobileaccidents involving trucks on back roads they nevertook home and the third indiscriminately shot by aderanged sniper while jagging in Rock Creek Park. Allthose joggers and he was the one who got it….
[Captain Packard]
As an Army captain with full security clearanceandirequently dealing in top-secret procedures, I wasable to set up a sterile telephone (i.e., one that isconstantly scannedfor taps or intercepts) so Mr.Halliday could reach me at any time of day or nightwithoutiear of being overheard. Also in concert with Mr.Stone and LieutenantLandis, we pooled oursources andobtained in-depth intelligence dossiers on thewell-known names Halliday found among GeneralDelavane’s notes. Specifically, Generals Bertholdier,Leifhelm, Abrahms, and Van Headmer. Using fundsprovided by Dr. Edward Beale, we secured the servicesof private firms in Paris, Bonn, Tel Aviv, andJohannesburg to up-date the dossiers with all availablecurrent information about the subjects.
By now we had uncovered ninety-seven additionalcomputer erasures directly related to export licensingand military transfers involving an estimated $45million. A great many were initiated by Palo AltoInternational, but without further data there wasnothing to trace. It was like a series of blipsdisappearing from a radar screen….
* * *.
[Stone]
My years in the CIA ’sClandestine Operationstaught me that the larger the pattern, the greater thenumbers, and that those areas with the heaviestconcentration of activity invariably held the tightest andmost ruthless security. Nothing terribly original here butthe reverse application is frequently overlooked. SinceWashington was the clearinghouse for illegal ex portstotaling millions u pon millions in A merican mer-chandise and materiel, it stood to reason that therewould be a range of safeguards, scores of Delavane’sinformants both knowing and unknowing, that is,ideologically involved or sim ply hired orthreatened in the government agencies anddepartments related to the activities of Palo AltoInternational. Without going into specifics, CaptainPackard confirmed this judgment by telling me that anincident had recently taken place that cost the lives ofthree men who tried to follow up on a number of competer erasures. We had moved from the realm ofideological extremists into one of fanatics and killers.Therefore it was my contention and I hereby assumefull responsibility for the decision that saferand morera pid progress could be made by sending a man outinto the peripheral sectors of Delavane’s operation withenough information to trace connections back to PaloAlto International. By the very nature of illegalexportlicensingitself thereis more open territory at thereceiving ends. The obvious place to start was withthefourgenerals whose names werefound in Delavane’snotes. I had no candidate with the expertise If elt wasnecks sary for the assignment….
[Captain Packard]
On or aboutJuly 10, Mr. Halliday called me on thesterile phone I’d set u p for him and said he believedhe’d found the proper candidate for the assignment asoutlined by Mr. Stone. An attorney whose field wasinternational law, a man he had known years ago anda former prisoner of war in Vietnam who conceivablyhad the motivation to go after someone like GeneralDelavane. His name was Joel Converse….
I, Alan Bruce Metcalf age forty-eight, am an ofdicer in the United States Air Force, holding the rankof colonel and currently stationed at the NellisAirForceBase, Clark County Nevada, as chief intelligence ofdicer. Thirty-six hours ago, as I dictate this statement,on August 25 at four o’clock in the
afternoon, I received a telephone callfromBrigadierGeneral Samuel Abbott, commanding officer, TacticalOperations Nellis A.F.B. The general said it was urgentthat we meet preferably off base, as soon as possible.He had new and extraordinary information regardingthe recent assassinations of the supreme commander ofNA TO and the American ambassador to Bonn, WestGermany. He insisted that we be in civilian clothes andsuggested the library at the University of Nevada, LasVegas campus. We met at approximately 5:"30 P.M.and talkedforfive hours. I will be as accurate aspossible, and that will be very accurate, as theconversation is stillfresh in my mind, engraved there bythe tragic death of General Abbott, a close friend formany years and a man I admired greatly….
The above, then, are the events as told to GeneralAbbott by the former Mrs. Converse, and as he relatedthem to me, and the subsequent actions I took toconvene an emergency meeting of the highest-levelintelligence personnel in Washington. General Abbottbelieved what he had been told because of hisknowledge and perceptions of the individuals involved.He was a brilliant and stable man, not given to biaswhere judgments were concerned. In my opinion, hewas deliberately murdered because he had “new andextraordinary information” about a fellow prisoner ofwar, one Joel Converse.
Nathan Simon, tall, portly, sithng well back in hischair, removed the tortoiseshell glasses from his tiredface and tugged at the Vandyke beard that coveredthe scars of shrapnel embedded at Anzio years ago.His thick salt-and-pepper eyebrows were archedabove his hazel eyes and sharp, straight nose. Theonly other person in the room was Peter Stone. Thestenographer had been dismissed; Metcalf, exhausted,had retired to his room, and the two other officers,Packard and Landis, had opted t
o return toWashington on separate planes. Simon carefullyplaced the typewritten affidavits on the table besidehis chair.
“There was no one else, Mr. Stone?” he asked, hisdeep voice gentle, far gentler than his eyes.
“No one I knew, Mr. Simon, " replied the formerintelligence officer. “Everyone I’ve used since whatwe call pulling in old debts was lower-level withaccess to upper-level equipment, not decisions. Please remember, threemen were killed when this thing barely started.”
“Yes, I know.”
“Can you do what Converse said? Can you getsomething "under seal’ and move some mountainswe can’t move?”
“He told you that?”
“Yes. It’s why I agreed to all of this.”
“He had his reasons. And I have to think.”
“There’s no time to think. We have to act, wehave to do something! Time’s running out!”
“To be sure, but we cannot do the wrong thing, canwe?”
“Converse said you had access to powerfulpeople in Washington. I could trust you to reachthem.”
“But you’ve just told me I don’t know whom totrust, isn’t that right?”
“Oh, Chr7st!”
“A lovely and inspired prophet.” Simon lookedat his watch as he gathered up the papers and rosefrom the chair. “It’s two-thirty in the morning, Mr.Stone, and this weary body has come to the end ofits endurance. I’ll be in touch with you later in theday. Don’t try to reach me. I’ll be in touch.
“In touch ? The package from Converse is on itsway here. I m picking it up at Kennedy Airport onthe Geneva flight at two-forty-five this afternoon.He wants you to have it right away. I want you tohave it!”
“You’ll be at the airport?” asked the lawyer.
“Yes, meeting our courier. I’ll be back here byfour or four-thirty, depending on when the planegets in and traffic, of course.”
“No, don’t do that, Mr. Stone, stay at theairport. I’ll want everything Joel has compiled for usin my hands as soon as possible, of course. Just asthere is a courier from Geneva, you may be thecourier from New York.”
“Where are you going? Washington?”
“Perhaps, perhaps not. At this moment I’m goinghome to my apartment and think. Also, I hope tosleep, which is doubtful. Give me a name I can useto have you paged at the airport.”
Johnny Reb sat low in the small boat, the motoridling the waves slapping the sides of the shallowhull in the darkness. He was dressed in blacktrousers, a black turtleneck
sweater and a black knit hat, and he was as close ashe dared drift into the southwest coast of the islandof Scharhorn. He had spotted the bobbing greenglows on the series of buoys the first night; they weretrip lights, beams intersecting one another above thewater, ringing the approach to the old U-boat base.They formed an unseen wall to penetrate it wouldset off alarms. This was the third night, and he wasbeginning to feel vindicated.
Trust the gut, trust the stomach and the bile thatcrept up into the mouth. The bellies of the old-timewhores of the community knew when things weregoing to happen partly out of dread, partly becausea score was near that would enlarge an account inBern. There was no account in the offing now, ofcourse only a succession of outlays to pay back aconsiderable debt, but there was a score to be made.Against the Delavanes and the Washburns, and thoseGerman and French and Jewish catfish who wouldsweep the ponds and make it impossible forgentlemen like Johnny Reb to make a high-hogliving. He didn’t know much about the SouthAfrican, except that those rigger-haters had betterthe hell wise up. The coloreds were coming alongjust fine, and that was fine by Johnny; his currentgirlfriend was a lovely black singer from Tallahassee,who just happened to be in Switzerland for sillyreasons involving a little cocaine and a good-sizedaccount in Bern.
But the other catfish were bad. Real bad. JohnnyReb had it in for men who would make it jailhousefor people to think the way they wanted to. No sir,those people had to go! Johnny Reb was veryseriously committed to that proposition.
It was happening! He focused his infraredbinoculars on the old concrete piers of the sub base.It was also flat-out crazy! The seventy-foot motorlaunch had pulled into a dock, and moving out onthe pier was a long, double line of men forty, sixty,eighty . . . nearly lO"preparing to board. What wascrazy was the way they were dressed. Dark suits andconservative summer jackets and ties; a number worehats and every damned one of them carried luggageand a briefcase. They looked like a convention ofbankers or a parade of lace-pants from thediplomatic corps. Or thought the Rebel as heinched his binoculars backward along the line ofpassengers ordinary businessmen, executives, menseen every day standing on railroad platforms andgetting out of taxis and flying in planes. It was thevery ordinariness of their collective appearance contrasted with the exotically macabredark outlines of the old U-boat refuelingstation thatgnawed at Johnny’s imagination. These men couldgo unnoticed almost anywhere, yet they did notcome from anywhere. They came from Scharhorn,from what was undoubtedly a highly sophisticatedcell of this multinational military collusion thatcould put the goddamned catfish generals in thecatbird seats. Ordinary people going wherever theywere ordered to go_ looking like everyone else,behaving like everyone else, opening their attachecases on planes and trains, reading companyreports, sipping drinks but not too many, skimmingan occasional paperback novel ostensibly to ease thestrain of business going wherever they were orderedto go.
That was it, thought the Rebel, as he loweredthe binoculars. That was it! These were the hitteams! The stomach never lied; the bile was sent upfor a reason, its acrid, sickening taste an ugly alarmthat came to those privileged enough to havesurvived. Johnny Reb turned and fingered themotor, cautiously pushing the rudder to the rightand inching the throttle forward. The small boatspun around in the water, and the rogue intelligenceofficer_former intelligence officer_headed back tohis berth in Cuxhaven, accelerating the engine witheach fifty feet of distance.
Twenty-five minutes later he pulled into the slip,lashed the lines to the cleats, grabbed his smallwaterproof case, and with effort climbed up ontothe pier. He had to move quickly, but very, verycautiously. He knew vaguely the area of theCuxhaven waterfront where the motor launch wouldreturn, for he had watched the lights of the vessel asit bobbed its way out of the harbor toward theisland. Once in the vicinity he could determine thespecific dock as the boat headed into port, and thenhe would have only minutes to scout the area andget into position. Carrying his waterproof case, hehurried to the base of the pier and turned left,walking rapidly through the shadows toward thearea where he judged the launch had departed. Hepassed a huge warehouse and reached an openspace beyond; there were five short piers, one afterthe other, extending no more than two hundred feetout into the water. It was dockage for small andmedium-sized craft; several trawlers and a fewantiquated pleasure boats were lashed to the pilingson each of the piers except one. The fourth pier wasempty. The Rebel knew it belonged to the
launch; he could taste the bitterness in his mouth.He started out across the space; he would find aplace to conceal himself.
“Halt stehenbleiben!” shot out the gutturalcommand as a man walked out of the darkness fromaround the hull of a trawler at the third pier. “Wasmachen Sie trier? Wer sind Sie?”
Johnny Reb knew when to use his age; hestooped his shoulders and hung his head slightlyforward. “Passer Sie auf diese alien Kdsten auf?” heasked, and continued in German, “I’m a fishermanon one of these relics and I lost my billfold thisafternoon. Is it a crime to look for it?”
“Come back later, old man. You can’t look for itnow.”
“Ah? What?” The Rebel raised his right hand tohis ear twisting the ring on his middle finger as hedid so and pressing a catch on the band. “Myhearing’s not what it was, Mr. Watchman. What didyou say?”
The man stepped forward, first looking out at thewater, as the sound of a powerful engine was heardin the distance. “Get out of herel” he shouted, hislips close to Johnny’s ear. “Now!”
“Good heavens, you’re Hans!”
“Who?”
“Hans! It’s so good to see you!” The Rebelslapped his hand around the German’sneck prelude to an affectionate embrace andplunged the surface of his ring into the man’s flesh,deeply embedding the needle.
“Get your hands off me, you stinking old man!My name’s not Hans and I never saw you before.Get out of here or I’ll put a . . . a bullet . . . in your. . . head!” The German’s hand plunged inside hisjacket but there it remained as he collapsed.
“You younger catfish really ought to have morerespect for your elders,” mumbled Johnny as hedragged the unconscious body into the shadows tothe left of the trawler on the third pier. “"Cause youdon’t know the flies we use. Your daddies do, butyou little pricks don’t. And I want your daddies,those mind-suckers!”
The Rebel climbed aboard the trawler anddashed across the deck to the gunwale. The motorlaunch was heading directly into the fourth pier. Heopened his waterproof case into which he hadsnapped the binoculars in place, and adjusted hiseyes to the dim light, studying the tools of his trade.He unlatched a camera and then a lens, a Zeiss-lkontelescopic,
developed by conscientious Germans during WorldWar II for photographing Allied installations atnight) it was the best. He inserted it into the lensmount, locked it into position and switched on thecamera’s motor, noting with satisfaction that thebattery was at full capacity, but then he knew itwould be. He had been too long in the deadly gameto make amateurish mistakes.
The huge motor launch slid into the pier like amammoth black whale, a killer whale. The lineswere secured, and as the passengers disembarked,Johnny Reb began taking pictures.
“Honeychile, this is Tatiana. I’ve got to reach myboy.”
“The Algonquin Hotel in New York City,” saidthe calm female voice. “The number is Area Codetwo-one-two, eight-four-zero, six-eight-zero-zero.Ask for Peter Marcus.”
“ Subtle son of a bitch, isn’t he?” saidJohnnyReb. ” Pardon my language, ma’am.”
“I’ve heard it before, Rebel. This is Anne.”
The Aquaintaine Progession Page 73