The Aquitaine Progression

by Robert Ludlum

  “I thought so. You have no choice.”

  “Can you?”

  “It’s done. I’ll see you at Taillevent. Eight o’clock?”

  “Wear your black Galanos. I adore it so.”

  “The Great Spike anticipates.”

  “It is ever so, my dearest. Eight o’clock.”

  The secretary hung up the phone, rose from the chair and smoothed her dress. She opened a drawer and took out a purse with long straps; she slipped it over her shoulder and walked to her employer’s closed door. She knocked.

  “Yes?” asked Mattilon inside.

  “It is Suzanne, monsieur.”

  “Come in, come in,” said René, leaning back in his chair as the woman entered. “The last letter is filled with incomprehensible language, no?”

  “Not at all, monsieur. It’s just that I … well, I’m not sure it’s proper to say.”

  “What could be improper? And if it is, at my age I’d be so flattered I’d probably tell my wife.”

  “Oh, monsieur …”

  “No, really, Suzanne, you’ve been here—what now?—a week, ten days? One would think you had been here for months. Your work is excellent and I appreciate your filling in.”

  “Your secretary is a dear friend, monsieur. I could do no less.”

  “Well, I thank you. I hope the good Lord sees His way to pull her through. Young people today, they drive so fast—so terribly fast and so dangerously. I’m sorry, what is it, Suzanne?”

  “I’ve had no lunch, sir. I was wondering—”

  “My God, I’m inconsiderate! I’m afraid it goes with two partners who take August seriously and go on holiday! Please, as long as you like, and I insist you bring the bill to me and let me reimburse you.”

  “That’s not necessary, but thank you for the offer.”

  “Not an offer, Suzanne, an order. Have lots of wine and let’s both of us make messes of my partners’ clients. Now, off you go.”

  “Thank you, monsieur.” Suzanne went to the door, opened it slightly and then stopped. She turned her head and saw that Mattilon was absorbed in reading. She closed the door silently, reached into her purse and withdrew a large pistol with the perforated cylinder of a silencer attached to the barrel. She pivoted slowly and walked toward the desk.

  The lawyer looked up as she approached. “What?”

  Suzanne fired four times in rapid succession. René Mattilon sprang back in his chair, his skull pierced from his right eye to his left forehead. Blood streaked down his face and over his white shirt.

  22

  “Where in God’s name have you been?” cried Valerie into the phone. “I’ve been trying to reach you since early this morning!”

  “Early this morning,” said Lawrence Talbot, “when the news broke, I knew I had to get the first plane to Washington.”

  “You don’t believe what they’re saying? You can’t!”

  “I do, and worse, I feel responsible. I feel as if I’d unwittingly pulled the trigger myself, and in a way that’s exactly what happened.”

  “Goddamn you, Larry, explain that.”

  “Joel called me from a hotel in Bonn—only, he didn’t know which one. He wasn’t rational, Val. He was calm one moment, shouting the next, finally admitting to me that he was confused and frightened. He rambled on—most of the time incoherently—telling some incredible story of having been captured and thrown into a stone house in the woods, and how he escaped, hiding in the river, eluding guards and patrols and killing a man he called a ‘scout.’ He kept screaming that he had to get away, that men were searching for him, in the woods, along the riverbank.… Something’s happened to him. He’s gone back to those terrible days when he was a prisoner of war. Everything he says, everything he describes, is a variation of those experiences—the pain, the stress, the tensions of running for his life through the jungles and down rivers. He’s sick, my dear, and this morning was the horrible proof.”

  Valerie felt the hollowness in her throat, the sudden, awful vacuum below. She was beyond thinking; she could only react to words. “Why did you say you were responsible, that in some way you pulled the trigger?”

  “I told him to go to Peregrine. I tried to convince him that Peregrine would listen to him, that he wasn’t the man Joel thought he was.”

  “ ‘Thought he was’? What did Joel say?”

  “Very little that made sense. He ranted about generals and field marshals and some obscure historical theory that brought all the commanders from various wars and armies together in a combined effort to take control of governments. He wasn’t lucid. He’d pretend to be, but the minute I questioned a statement he made or a point in his story, he’d blow up and tell me it didn’t matter, or I wasn’t listening, or I was too dense to understand. But at the end he admitted he was terribly tired and confused and how badly he needed sleep. That was when I made my last pitch about Peregrine, but Joel didn’t trust him. He was actually hostile toward him because he said he saw a former German general’s car go through the embassy gates, and as you may or may not know, Peregrine was an outstanding officer during the Second World War. I explained as patiently and as firmly as I could that Peregrine was not one of ‘them,’ that he was no friend of the military.… Obviously, I failed. Joel reached him, set up a rendezvous and killed him. I had no idea how sick he was.”

  “Larry,” began Valerie slowly, her voice weak. “I hear everything you say, but it doesn’t ring true. It isn’t that I don’t believe you—Joel once said you were an embarrassingly honest man—but something’s missing. The Converse I know and lived with for four years never bent the facts to support abstractions he wanted to believe. Even when he was angry as hell, he couldn’t do that. I told him he’d make a lousy painter because he couldn’t bend a shape to fit a concept. It wasn’t in him, and I think he explained it. At five hundred miles an hour, he said, you can mistake a shadow on the ocean for a carrier if your instruments are out.”

  “You’re telling me he doesn’t lie.”

  “I’m sure he does—I’m sure he did—but never about important things. It simply isn’t in him.”

  “That was before he became ill, violently ill. He killed that man in Paris, he admitted it to me.”

  Valerie gasped. “No!”

  “Yes, I’m afraid. Just as he killed Walter Peregrine.”

  “Because of some obscure historical theory? It’s all wrong, Larry!”

  “Two psychiatrists at the State Department explained it, but in phrases I’m sure I’d mangle if I tried to repeat them. ‘Progressive latent retrogression,’ I think, was one of them.”

  “Bullshit!”

  “But you may be right about one thing. Geneva. Remember you said it all had something to do with Geneva?”

  “I remember. What about Geneva?”

  “It’s where it started, everyone in Washington agrees with that. I don’t know if you’ve read the papers—”

  “Only the Globe; it’s delivered. I haven’t left the phone.”

  “It was Jack Halliday’s son—stepson, actually. He was the lawyer who was killed in Geneva. It seems he was a prominent leader of the antiwar movement in the sixties and he was Converse’s opponent in the merger. It was established that they met for breakfast before the conference. The theory is that he baited Joel, and we can assume it was brutal, as he had a reputation for going for the jugular.”

  “Why would he do that?” asked Val, her frayed nerves now suddenly alert.

  “To throw Joel off. To distract him. Remember, they were dealing in millions, and the attorney who came off best could do very well for himself—clients lining up all over Wall Street to retain him. There’s even evidence that Halliday succeeded.”

  “What evidence?”

  “The first part’s technical, so I won’t try to explain it except to say that there was a subtle transfer of voting stock which under certain isolated market conditions might give Halliday’s clients more say in management than the merger intended. Joel accepte
d it; I don’t think he would have normally.”

  “Normally? What’s the other part?”

  “Joel’s behavior at the conference itself. According to the reports—interviews with everyone in that room—he wasn’t himself, he was distracted, some said agitated. Several lawyers on both sides commented on the fact that he kept to himself, standing by a window most of the time, looking out as if he expected something. His concentration was so lax that questions addressed to him had to be repeated, and when they were, he appeared as though he didn’t understand them. His mind was somewhere else, on something that consumed him.”

  “Larry!” shouted Valerie. “What are you saying? That Joel had something to do with this Halliday being killed?”

  “It can’t be ruled out,” said Talbot sadly. “Either psychologically or in light of what people saw in the anteroom when Halliday died.”

  “What they saw?” whispered Valerie. “The paper said he died with Joel holding his head.”

  “I’m afraid there’s more, my dear. I’ve read the reports. According to a receptionist and two other attorneys, there was a violent exchange between them just before Halliday died. No one’s sure what was said, but they all agree it seemed vicious, with Halliday clutching Joel’s lapels, as though accusing him. Later, when questioned by the Geneva police, Joel claimed there was no coherent conversation, only the hysterical words of a dying man. The police report added that he was not a cooperative witness.”

  “My God, he was probably in shock! You know what he went through—the sight of that man dying literally in his arms must have been traumatic for him!”

  “Admittedly, this is hindsight, Valerie, but everything must be examined—above all, his behavior.”

  “What do they think he did? What’s the theory now? That Joel went out into the street, saw someone who fit the bill and hired him to kill a man? Really, Larry, this is ludicrous.”

  “There are more questions, than there are answers, certainly, but what’s happened—what we know has happened—isn’t ludicrous at all. It’s tragic.”

  “All right, all right,” said Valerie, her words rushed. “But why would he do it? Why would he want Halliday killed? Why?”

  “I think that’s obvious. How he must have despised someone like Halliday. A man who stayed safely at home, who condemned and ridiculed everything men like Joel went through, calling them goons and murderers and lackeys—and unnecessary sacrifices. Along with his hated ‘commanders,’ the Hallidays of this world must have stood for everything else he loathed. One group ordering men into battle, to be maimed, killed, captured … tortured, the other making a mockery of everything they endured. Whatever Halliday said at that breakfast table must have made something snap in Joel’s head.”

  “And you think,” said Valerie quietly, the words echoing in her throat, “that’s why he wanted Halliday dead?”

  “Latent vengeance. It’s the prevalent theory, the consensus, if you will.”

  “I don’t will.’ Because it’s not true, it couldn’t be true.”

  “These are highly qualified experts, Val, doctors in the behavioral sciences. They’ve analyzed everything in the records and they feel the pattern is there. Shock-induced, instant pathological schizophrenia.”

  “That’s very impressive. They should embroider it on their Snoopy baseball caps because that’s where it belongs.”

  “I don’t think you’re in a position to dispute—”

  “I’m in a hell of a position,” interrupted the ex-Mrs. Converse. “But nobody bothered to ask me, or Joel’s father, or his sister—who just happened to have been one of those wild-eyed protesters you all speak of. There’s no way Halliday could have provoked Joel the way they say he did—at breakfast, lunch or dinner.”

  “You can’t make such a statement, my dear. You simply don’t know that.”

  “I do know, Larry. Because Joel thought the Hallidays of this world, as you put it, were right. He wasn’t always crazy about the way they did things, but he thought they were right!”

  “I don’t believe that. Not after what he went through.”

  “Then go to another source—if that’s what you call it. To some of those records your high priests of the behavioral sciences conveniently overlooked. When Joel came back, there was a parade for him at Travis Air Force Base in California, where he was given everything but the keys to every starlet’s apartment in Los Angeles. Am I right?”

  “I recall there was a military welcome for a man who had escaped under extraordinary circumstances. The Secretary of State greeted him at the plane, in fact.”

  “In absolute fact, Larry. Then what? Where else was he paraded?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Look at the records. Nowhere. He wouldn’t do it. How many invitations did he get? From how many towns and cities and companies and organizations—all pushed like hell by the White House? A hundred, five hundred, five thousand? At least that many, Larry. And do you know how many he accepted? Tell me, Larry, do you know? Did those high priests talk about this?”

  “It wasn’t an issue.”

  “Of course it wasn’t. It warped the pattern; it bent the shapes Joel Converse wouldn’t bend! The answer is zero, Larry. He wouldn’t do it, any of it! He thought one day more of that war was one more day in hell too long. He refused to lend his name.”

  “What are you trying to say?” said Talbot sternly.

  “Halliday wasn’t his enemy, not the way you’re trying to paint him. The brushstrokes aren’t there. They’re not on the canvas.”

  “Your metaphors are more than I can handle, Val. What are you trying to tell me?”

  “That something smells, Larry. It’s so rotten I can hardly breathe, but the stench isn’t coming from my former husband. It’s coming from all of you.”

  “I have to take exception to that. All I want to do is help, I thought you knew that.”

  “I do, really I do. It’s not your fault. Good-bye, Larry.”

  “I’ll call you the minute I learn anything.”

  “Do that. Good-bye.” Valerie hung up the phone and looked at her watch. It was time to get down to Logan Airport in Boston to pick up Roger Converse.

  “Köln in zehn Minuten!” shouted the voice over the loudspeaker.

  Converse sat by the window, his face next to the glass, as the towns sped by on the way to Cologne—Bornheim, Wesel, Brühl. The train was perhaps three-quarters full, which was to say that each double seat had at least one occupant. When they pulled out of the station a woman had been sitting where he sat now, a fashionably dressed suburbanite. Several seats behind them another woman—a friend—spotted her. His seatmate spoke to Joel. The brief attention she had called to both of them when he could not reply unnerved him. He shrugged and shook his head; she exhaled impatiently, got up in irritation and joined her friend.

  She had left a newspaper behind, the same newspaper with his photograph on the front page, which remained flat out on the seat. He stared at it until he realized what he was doing and instantly shifted seats, picking up the paper and folding it so that the picture would be out of sight. He glanced around cautiously, holding his hand casually above his lips, frowning, pensive, trying to seem like a man in thought whose eyes saw nothing. But he had seen another pair of eyes and they were studying him—staring at him while the owner was engaged in what appeared to be a lively conversation with an elderly woman next to him. The man had looked away, and Converse had a brief half-second to observe the face before he turned to the window. He knew that face; he had talked to that man, but he could not remember where it was or when it was, only that they had spoken. The realization was as maddening as it was frightening. Where was it? When was it? Did the man know him, know his name?

  If the man did, he had done nothing about it. He had returned his concentration to the woman, the conversation still lively. Joel tried to picture the whole man; perhaps it would help. He was large, not so much in height as in girth, and on the surface
jovial, but Converse sensed a meanness in him. Was that now or before? When was before? Where? Ten minutes or so had passed since the exchange of looks, and Joel was no further ahead in peeling away the layers of memory. He was stymied and afraid.

  “Wir kommen in zwei Minuten in Köln an. Bitte achten Sie auf Ihr Gepäck!”

  A number of passengers got up from their seats, tugging at their jackets and skirts, reaching for luggage. As the train began to slow down, Converse pressed his forehead against the cool glass of the window. He let his mind go slack, unfocused, expecting the next few minutes to tell him what to do.

  The minutes passed, the suspension on hold, his mind blank as passengers got off and others got in, many carrying attaché cases, several very much like his own, which he had left in a trash can in Bonn. He had wanted to keep it but he could not. It had been a gift from Valerie, as his gold pen was a gift, both initialed in those better days.… No, not better, he told himself, simply different. Nothing was better or worse; there were no comparisons where commitments were concerned. They either stuck or they did not. Theirs came unstuck.

  Then why, he asked himself, as the train ground to a stop at Cologne, had he sent the contents of his briefcase to Val? His answer was the essence of logic, he thought. She would know what to do; the others would not. Talbot, Brooks and Simon were out. His sister, Virginia, was even further out. His father? The fly-boy with a sense of responsibility that went as far as his last wing dip? It could not be the pilot. He loved old Roger, more than he suspected Roger loved him, but the pilot could never come to grips with the ground. Hard earth meant relationships, and old Roger never knew how to handle them, even with a wife he claimed to have loved dearly. The doctors said she had died of a coronary occlusion; her son thought it was from neglect. Roger was not on the scene, had not been for several weeks. So that left Valerie … his once and former Valerie.

  “Entschuldigen Sie. Ist dieser Platz frei?” The intruding voice came from a man about his own age, carrying an attaché case.

  Joel nodded, assuming the words referred to the empty seat beside him.