The Aquitaine Progression

by Robert Ludlum

  Joel studied the old scholar in the shimmering light. “Did you just say something about not looking at totalities but at threads? You scare the hell out of me.”

  Beale smiled. “I could accuse you of misplaced concretion, but I won’t.”

  “That’s an antiquated phrase. If you mean out-of-context, say it, and I’ll deny it. You’re securely in well-placed contradiction, Professor.”

  “Good heavens, you were chosen carefully. You won’t even let an old man get away with an academic bromide.”

  Converse smiled back. “You’re a likable fellow, General—or Doctor. I’d hate to have met you across a table if you’d taken up law.”

  “That could truly be misplaced confidence,” said Edward Beale, his smile gone. “You’re only about to begin.”

  “But now I know what to look for. One thread at a time—until the threads meet and entwine, and the pattern’s there for everyone to see. I’ll concentrate on export licenses, and whoever’s shuffling the controls, then connect three or four names with each other and trace them back to Delavane in Palo Alto. At which point we blow it apart legally. No martyrs, no causes, no military men of destiny crucified by traitors, just plain bloated, ugly profiteers who’ve professed to be super patriots, when all the while they were lining their unpatriotic pockets. Why else would they have done it? Is there another reason? That’s ridicule, Dr. Beale. Because they can’t answer.”

  The old man shook his head, looking bewildered. “The professor becomes a student,” he said hesitantly. “How can you do this?”

  “The way I’ve done it dozens of times in corporate negotiations. Only, I’ll take it a step further. In those sessions I’m like any other lawyer. I try to figure out what the fellow across the table is going to ask for and then why he wants it. Not just what my side wants, but what he wants. What’s going through his mind? You see, Doctor, I’m trying to think like him; I’m putting myself in his place, never for a second letting him forget that I’m doing just that. It’s very unnerving, like making notes on margins whenever your opponent says anything, whether he’s saying anything or not. But this time it’s going to be different. I’m not looking for opponents. I’m looking for allies. In a cause, their cause. I’ll start in Paris, then on to Bonn, or Tel Aviv, then probably Johannesburg. Only, when I reach these men I won’t try to think like them, I’m going to be one of them.”

  “That’s a very bold strategy. I compliment you.”

  “Talking of options, it’s the only one open. Also, I’ve got a lot of money I can spread around, not lavishly but effectively, as befits my unnamed client. Very unnamed, very much in the background, but always there.” Joel stopped, a thought striking him. “You know, Dr. Beale, I take it back. I don’t want to know who my client is—the one in San Francisco, I mean. I’m going to create my own, and knowing him might distort the portrait I’ve got in mind. Incidentally, tell him he’ll get a full accounting of my expenses: the rest will be returned to him the same way I got it. Through your friend Laskaris at the bank here on Mykonos.”

  “But you’ve accepted the money,” objected Beale. “There’s no reason—”

  “I wanted to know if it was real. If he was real. He is, and he knows exactly what he’s doing. I’ll need a great deal of money because I’m going to have to become someone I’m not, and money is the most convincing way to do it. No, Doctor, I don’t want your friend’s money, I want Delavane. I want the warlord of Saigon. But I’ll use his money, just as I’m using him—the way I want him to be. To get inside that network.”

  “If Paris is your first stop and Bertholdier is going to be your initial contact, there’s a specific munitions transfer we think is directly related to him. It might be worth a try. If we’re right, it’s a microcosm of what they intend doing everywhere.”

  “Is it in here?” asked Converse, tapping the manila envelope containing the dossiers.

  “No, it came to light only this morning—early this morning. I don’t imagine you listened to the news broadcasts.”

  “I don’t speak any language but English. If I heard a news program I wouldn’t know it. What happened?”

  “All Northern Ireland is on fire, the worst riots, the most savage lolling in fifteen years. In Belfast and Ballyclare, Dromore and in the Mourne Mountains, outraged vigilantes—on both sides—are roaming the streets and the hills, firing indiscriminately, slaughtering in their anger everything that moves. It’s utter chaos. The Ulster government is in panic, the parliament tied down, emotionally disrupted, everyone trying to find a solution. That solution will be a massive infusion of troops and their commanders.”

  “What’s it got to do with Bertholdier?”

  “Listen to me carefully,” said the scholar, taking a step forward. “Eight days ago a munitions shipment containing three hundred cases of cluster bombs and two thousand cartons of explosives was air-freighted out of Beloit, Wisconsin. Its destination was Tel Aviv by way of Montreal, Paris, and Marseilles. It never arrived, and an Israeli trace—employing the Mossad—showed that only the cargo’s paperwork reached Marseilles, nothing else. The shipment disappeared in either Montreal or Paris, and we’re convinced it was diverted to provisional extremists—again on both sides—in Northern Ireland.”

  “Why do you think so?”

  “The first casualties—over three hundred men, women, and children—were killed or severely wounded, ripped to shreds by cluster bombs. It’s not a pleasant way to die, but perhaps worse to be hurt—the bombs tear away whole sections of the body. The reactions have been fierce and the hysteria’s spreading. Ulster’s out of control, the government paralyzed. All in the space of one day, one single day, Mr. Converse!”

  “They’re proving to themselves they can do it,” said Joel quietly, the fear in his throat.

  “Precisely,” agreed Beale. “It’s a test case, a microcosm of the full-scale horror they can bring about.”

  Converse frowned. “Outside of the fact that Bertholdier lives in Paris, what ties him to the shipment?”

  “Once the plane crossed into France, the French insurers were a firm in which Bertholdier is a director. Who would be less suspect than a company that had to pay for the loss—a company, incidentally, that has access to the merchandise it covers? The loss was upward of four million francs, not so immense as to create headlines, but entirely sufficient to throw off suspicion. And one more lethal delivery is made—mutilation, death, and chaos to follow.”

  “What’s the name of the insurance company?”

  “Compagnie Solidaire. It would be one of the operative words, I’d think. Solidaire, and perhaps Beloit and Belfast.”

  “Let’s hope I get to confront Bertholdier with them. But if I do, I’ve got to say them at the right time. I’ll catch the plane from Athens in the morning.”

  “Take the urgent good wishes of an old man with you, Mr. Converse. And urgent is the appropriate word. Three to five weeks, that’s all you’ve got before everything blows apart. Whatever it is, wherever it is, it will be Northern Ireland ten thousand times more violent. It’s real and it’s coming.”

  Valerie Charpentier woke up suddenly, her eyes wide, her face rigid, listening intently for sounds that might break the dark silence around her and the slap of the waves in the distance. Any second she expected to hear the shattering bell of the alarm system that was wired into every window and door of the house.

  It did not come, yet there had been other sounds, intrusions on her sleep, penetrating enough to wake her. She pulled the covers back and got out of bed, walking slowly, apprehensively, to the glass doors that opened onto her balcony, which overlooked the rocky beach, the jetty, and the Atlantic Ocean beyond.

  There it was again. The bobbing, dim lights were unmistakably the same, washing over the boat that was moored exactly where it had been moored before. It was the sloop that for two days had cruised up and down the coastline, always in sight, with no apparent destination other than this particular stretch of the Massachu
setts shore. At twilight on the second evening it had dropped anchor no more than a quarter of a mile out in the water in front of her house. It was back. After three days it had returned.

  Three nights ago she had called the police, who in turn reached the Cape Ann Coast Guard patrols, who came back with an explanation that was no more lucid than it was satisfactory. The sloop was a Maryland registry, the owner an officer in the United States Army, and there were no provocative or suspicious movements that warranted any official action.

  “I’d call it damned provocative and suspicious,” Val had said firmly. “When a strange boat sails up and down the same stretch of beach for two days in a row, then parks in front of my house within shouting distance—shouting distance being swimming distance.”

  “The water rights of the property you leased don’t extend beyond two hundred feet, ma’am” had been the official reply. “There’s nothing we can do.”

  At the first light of the next morning, however, Valerie knew that something had to be done. She had focused her binoculars on the boat, only to gasp and move back away from the glass doors. Two men had been standing on the deck of the sloop, their own binoculars—far more powerful than hers—directed at the house, at the bedroom upstairs. At her.

  A neighbor down the beachside cul-de-sac had recently installed an alarm system. She was a divorced woman too, but with a hostile ex-husband and three children; she needed the alarm. Two phone calls and Val was speaking to the owner of Watchguard Security. A temporary system had been hooked up that day while a permanent installation was being designed.

  A bell—not shatteringly loud but soft and gentle. It was the quiet clanging of a ship’s bell out on the dark water, its clapper swinging with the waves. It was the sound that had awakened her, and she felt relieved yet strangely disturbed. Men out on the water at night who intended harm did not announce their presence. On the other hand, those same men had come back to her house, the boat being only several hundred yards offshore. They had returned in the darkness, the moon blocked by a sky thick with clouds, no moonlight to guide them. It was as if they wanted her to know they were there and they were watching. They were waiting.

  For what? What was happening to her? A week ago her phone had gone dead for seven hours, and when she had called the telephone company from her friend’s house, a supervisor in the service department told her he could find no malfunctions. The line was operative.

  “Maybe for you, but not for me, and you’re not paying the bills.”

  She had returned home; the line was still dead. A second, far angrier phone call brought the same response. No malfunctions. Then two hours later the dial tone was inexplicably there, the phone working. She had put the episode down to the rural telephone complex having less than the best equipment. She did not know what explanation there could be for the sloop now eerily bobbing in the water in front of her house.

  Suddenly, in the boat’s dim light, she could see a figure crawl out of the cabin. For a moment or two it was hidden in the shadows, then there was a brief flare of intense light. A match. A cigarette. A man was standing motionless on the deck smoking a cigarette. He was facing her house, as if studying it. Waiting.

  Val shivered as she dragged a heavy chair in front of the balcony door—but not too close, away from the glass. She pulled the light blanket off the bed and sat down, wrapping it around her, staring out at the water, at the boat, at the man. She knew that if that man or that boat made the slightest move toward shore she would press the buttons she had been instructed to press in the event of an emergency. When activated, the huge circular alarm bells—both inside and outside—would be ear-piercing, erupting in concert, drowning out the sound of the surf and the waves crashing on the jetty. They could be heard thousands of feet away—the only sound on the beach, frightening, overwhelming. She wondered if she would cause them to be heard tonight—this morning.

  She would not panic. Joel had taught her not to panic, even when she thought a well-timed scream was called for on the dark streets of Manhattan. Every now and then the inevitable had happened. They had been confronted by drug addicts or punks and Joel would remain calm—icily calm—moving them both back against a wall and offering a cheap, spare wallet he kept in his hip pocket with a few bills in it. God, he was ice! Maybe that was why no one had ever actually assaulted them, not knowing what was behind that cold, brooding look.

  “I should have screamed!” she once had cried.

  “No,” he had said. “Then you would have frightened him, panicked him. That’s when those bastards can be lethal.”

  Was the man on the boat lethal—were the men on the boat deadly? Or were they simply novice sailors hugging the coastline, practicing tacks, anchoring near the shore for their own protection—curious, perhaps concerned, that the property owners might object? An Army officer was not likely to be able to afford a captain for his sloop, and there were marinas only miles away north and south—marinas without available berths but with men who could handle repairs.

  Was the man out on the boat smoking a cigarette merely a landlocked young officer getting his sailing legs, comfortable with a familiar anchor away from deep water? It was possible, of course—anything was possible—and summer nights held a special kind of loneliness that gave rise to strange imaginings. One walked the beach alone and thought too much.

  Joel would laugh at her and say it was all those demons racing around her artist’s head in search of logic. And he would undoubtedly be right. The men out on the boat were probably more up-tight than she was. In a way they were trespassers who had found a haven in sight of hostile natives; one inquiry of the Coast Guard proved it. And that clearance, as it were, was another reason why they had returned to the place where, if not welcome, at least they were not harassed. If Joel were with her, she knew exactly what he would do. He would go down to the beach and shout across the water to their temporary neighbors and ask them to come in for a drink.

  Dear Joel, foolish Joel, ice-cold Joel. There were times you were comforting—when you were comfortable. And amusing, so terribly amusing—even when you weren’t comfortable. In some ways I miss you, darling. But not enough, thank you.

  And yet why did the feeling—the instinct, perhaps—persist? The small boat out on the water was like a magnet, pulling her toward it, drawing her into its field, taking her where she knew she did not want to go.

  Nonsense! Demons in search of logic! She was being foolish—foolish Joel, ice-cold Joel—stop it, for God’s sake! Be reasonable!

  Then the shiver passed through her again. Novice sailors did not navigate around strange coastlines at night.

  The magnet held her until her eyes grew heavy and troubled sleep came.

  She woke up again, startled by the intense sunlight streaming through the glass doors, its warmth enveloping her. She looked out at the water. The boat was gone—and she wondered for a moment whether it had really been there.

  Yes, it had. But it was gone.

  3

  The 747 lifted off the runway at Athens’ Helikon Airport, soaring to the left in its rapid ascent. Below in clear view, adjacent to the huge field, was the U.S. Naval Air Station, permitted by treaty although reduced in size and in the number of aircraft during the past several years. Nevertheless, far-reaching, jet-streamed American craft still roamed the Mediterranean, Ionian and Aegean seas, courtesy of a resentful yet nervous government all too aware of other eyes to the north. Staring out the window, Converse recognized the shapes of familiar equipment on the ground. There were two rows of Phantom F-4T’s and A-6E’s on opposite sides of the dual strip—updated versions of the F-4G’s and A-6A’s he had flown years ago.

  It was so easy to slip back, thought Joel, as he watched three Phantoms break away from the ground formation; they would head for the top of the runway, and another patrol would be in the skies. Converse could feel his hands tense, in his mind he was manipulating the thick, perforated shaft, reaching for switches, his eyes roaming the dials, lookin
g for right and wrong signals. Then the power would come, the surging force of pressurized tons beside him, behind him, himself encased in the center of a sleek, shining beast straining to break away and soar into its natural habitat. Final check, all in order; cleared for takeoff. Release the power of the beast, let it free. Roll! Faster, faster; the ground is a blur, the carrier deck a mass of passing gray, blue sea beyond, blue sky above. Let it free! Let me free!

  He wondered if he could still do it, if the lessons and the training of boy and man still held. After the Navy, during the academic years in Massachusetts and North Carolina, he had frequently gone to small airfields and taken up single-engined aircraft just to get away from the pressures, to find a few minutes of blue freedom, but there were no challenges, no taming of all-powerful beasts. Later still, it had all stopped—for a long, long time. There were no airfields to visit on weekends, no playing around with trim company planes; he had given his promise. His wife had been terrified of his flying. Valerie could not reconcile the hours he had flown—civilian and in combat—with her own evaluation of the averages. And in one of the few gestures of understanding in his marriage, he had given his word not to climb into a cockpit. It had not bothered him until he knew—they knew—the marriage had gone sour, at which point he had begun driving out to a field called Teterboro in New Jersey every chance he could find and flown whatever was available, anytime, any hour. Still, even then—especially then—there had been no challenges, no beasts—other than himself.

  The ground below disappeared as the 747 stabilized and began the climb to its assigned altitude. Converse turned away from the window and settled back in his seat. The lights were abruptly extinguished on the NO SMOKING sign, and Joel took out a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket. Extracting one, he snapped his lighter, and the smoke diffused instantly in the rush of air from the vents above. He looked at his watch; it was 12:20. They were due at Orly Airport at 3:35, French time. Allowing for the zones, it was a three-hour flight, and during those three hours he would commit to memory everything he could about General Jacques-Louis Bertholdier—if Beale and the dead Halliday were right, the arm of Aquitaine in Paris.