The Apocalypse Watch

by Robert Ludlum

  Drew pressed the button marked Finis, touched the Parlez, and dialed. The operator at the Gloucester hotel in London, after repeated rings, observed that Mr. Wendell Moss was not in his room. Latham left a simple message. “Call Paris. Keep calling.” And Karin de Vries arrived, practically racing between the tables.

  “Thank God you’re here!” she cried, sitting down quickly, her words whispered, intense. “It’s all over the street and the embassy’s in an uproar. A French government car was attacked by terrorists below us in the Gabriel!” Karin abruptly stopped, aware of the blank look in Drew’s eyes. She frowned in silence, her lips forming the word you. He nodded; she continued. “You’ve got to get out of Paris, out of France! Go back to Washington.”

  “Take my word for it—better yet, take your own—I’m no less a target over there than I am here. Maybe an easier one.

  “But three times they’ve tried to kill you in the space of two days!”

  “Try thirty-five hours, I’ve been counting.”

  “You can’t stay here, they know you.”

  “They know me better in Washington. I might even have a welcoming committee I’d rather not meet. Besides, Harry’s going to call me and I’ve got to see him, talk to him. I have to.”

  “He’s the reason you have the phone?”

  “He and someone else. Someone in D.C. I trust—I have to trust. My boss, in fact.” A waiter arrived and De Vries ordered a Chardonnay. The aproned man nodded and was about to leave, when Latham held up the portable phone for him.

  “Not yet,” interrupted Karin, reaching over and touching Drew’s outstretched arm. The waiter shrugged and left. “Forgive me, but you may have overlooked a problem or two.”

  “That’s entirely possible. As you’ve pointed out, I’ve been shot at three times in less than two days. Discounting strenuous field training, where they used dyed pellets, that’s roughly one half of all the weapons fired at me in my entire career. What did I forget? I still remember my name. Ralph, isn’t it?”

  “Don’t try to be funny.”

  “What the hell’s left? For your edification, my automatic is on my lap, and if my eyes stray now and then, it’s because I’m prepared to use it.”

  “There are police all over the Gabriel; no terrorist would chance a kill under the circumstances.”

  “You’re well versed in the language.”

  “I was married to a man who was both shot at and shot more times than he could remember.”

  “And I forgot. The Stasi. Sorry. What was your point?”

  “Where is Harry calling you?”

  “My office or the Meurice.”

  “I submit that it would be foolish for you to return to either.”

  “You may have half a point.”

  “Grant me a full one. I’m right and you know it.”

  “Granted,” said Latham reluctantly. “There are crowds in the streets, a weapon could be inches from me and I’d never know it. And if the CIA’s been penetrated, the embassy’s child’s play. So?”

  “Your superior in Washington. How did you explain the attack in the Gabriel? What protection did he advise?”

  “He didn’t because I didn’t tell him. It’s one of those things you talk about later.… He’s got a bigger problem, much bigger than any event I survived.”

  “Are you really so charitable, Monsieur Latham?” asked Karin.

  “Not at all, Madame de Vries. Things are coming so fast, and the problem we both face so great, I didn’t want his head overburdened.”

  “Can you tell me about this problem?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you asked.”

  Karin de Vries leaned back against the banquette and raised the wine to her lips. “You still don’t trust me, do you?” she said softly.

  “We’re talking about my life, lady, and a spreading lethal fungus that scares the hell out of me. It should scare the hell out of the whole civilized world.”

  “You’re speaking from a distance, Drew. I’m speaking from the immediate, ‘close up’ as you Americans say.”

  “It’s war!” whispered Latham, the whisper guttural, his eyes on fire. “Don’t give me abstractions!”

  “I gave you my husband in this war!” said Karin, bolting forward. “What more do you want from me? What more for your trust?”

  “Why do you want it so badly?”

  “For the simplest reason of all, the one I explained to you last night. I watched a beautiful man destroyed by a hatred he could not control. It consumed him and for months, even years, I couldn’t understand, and then I did. He was right! A putrid cloud of horror was rising over Germany, the East more than the West actually—‘one evil monolith for another; they thirst for screeching leaders for they’ll never change’ was the way Freddie expressed it. And he was right!” Emotionally spent, her closed eyes forming tears, De Vries lowered her whisper. “He was tortured and killed because he had found the truth,” she finished in a monotone.

  Found the truth. Drew studied the woman across the table, remembering how elated he had been when he had found the truth about Villier’s father, old Jodelle. And then how frightened he was because it was the truth. The parallel lines of his and Karin’s response to revealed facts could not be falsified. They were beyond lying to themselves, certainly beyond concealing the anger each felt, for it was too genuine.

  “Okay, okay,” Latham said, briefly covering her clenched hands with his free left one. “I’ll tell you what I can without specific names, which may come later … depending on the circumstances.”

  “I accept that. It’s part of the drill, isn’t it? Beware the chemicals.”

  “Yes.” Drew’s eyes wandered rapidly, widely, toward the entrance and the surrounding tables, his right hand out of sight. “The key is Villier’s father, his natural father—”

  “Villier the actor? The newspaper stories … the old man who killed himself in the theater?”

  “I’ll fill you in later, but for now assume the worst. The old man was Villier’s father, a Résistance fighter found out by the Germans and driven insane in the camps years ago.”

  “There was a notice in the early afternoon papers!” said De Vries, unclenching her hands and grabbing his left. “He’s closing the play, the revival of Coriolanus.”

  “That’s stupid!” spat out Latham. “Did they say why?”

  “Something about that old man and how disturbed Villier was—”

  “More than stupid,” broke in Latham. “It’s goddamned grotesque! He’s as big a target as I am now!”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “There’s no way you could, and in a crazy way it’s all tied in with my brother.”

  “With Harry?”

  “Intelligence files about Jodelle—that’s Villier’s father—were removed from the Agency’s archives—”

  “As in the AA-Zero computers?” asked Karin, interrupting.

  “Every bit as secure, believe me. In those files was the name of a French general who wasn’t simply turned by the Nazis, he became one of them, a fanatically devoted convert consumed by the cause of the master race.”

  “What can he matter now? A general so many years ago—he’s undoubtedly dead.”

  “He may be, or he may not be, it’s irrelevant. It’s what he set in motion, what’s going on now. An organization here in France that’s brokering millions from all over the world into the neos in Germany. The same thing that brought you to Paris, Karin.”

  De Vries again leaned back in the booth, removing her hand from his, her eyes wide, staring at him in bewilderment. “What has any of this to do with Harry?” she asked.

  “My brother brought out a list of names, how many I don’t know, of neo sympathizers here in France, the U.K., and in my own country. I gather it’s explosive, men and women of influence, even political power, that no one would ever suspect of such leanings.”

  “How did Harry get these
names?”

  “I haven’t a clue, that’s why I’ve got to see him, talk to him!”

  “Why? You sound so disturbed.”

  “Because one of those names is a man I’m working with, a man in whose hands I’d put my life without thinking twice. How do you like them apples?”

  “Disregarding the grammar, I don’t understand you.”

  “It’s idiosyncratic, Madame Linguist. I’m told it stems from an old trick apple growers used, placing their best specimens on top of a barrel they were selling, while underneath there were rotten ones.”

  “It still eludes me.”

  “Why not? It’s probably apocryphal.”

  “You sound like your brother, without his clarity.”

  “Clarity is what I need from him now.”

  “Regarding this man you’re working with, of course.”

  “Yes. I can’t believe it, but if Harry’s right and I meet with him later this afternoon, which I’m to do, it could be the dumbest decision I could make. Fatally dumb.”

  “Put him off. Tell him something important has come up.”

  “He’ll ask what it is, and at the moment he has every right to know. Among other not-so-incidentals, an alert employee of his saved my life barely a half hour ago on the Gabriel.”

  “Perhaps it was meant to appear that way.”

  “Yes, that’s another possible equation. I can see you’ve been around, lady.”

  “I’ve been around,” conceded Karin de Vries. “It’s Moreau, Claude Moreau of the Deuxième Bureau, isn’t it?”

  “Why do you suggest that?”

  “D and R gets the logs of entry and departure for every twenty-four hours. Moreau’s name was listed twice, the night before last, when the first attack was made on you, and then the next morning, when the German ambassador arrived. The pattern was obvious. Several colleagues remarked that they could not remember when any member, much less the head, of the Deuxième had ever come to the embassy.”

  “I won’t confirm your suggestion, naturally.”

  “You don’t have to, and I agree with you completely. To associate Moreau in any way with the neos strikes me as ludicrous.”

  “The exact word I heard from Washington less than ten minutes ago. Still, Harry brought it out. You know my brother. Could he have been fooled?”

  “The word ludicrous again comes to mind.”

  “Turned?”

  “Never!”

  “So, as my extremely experienced boss, who worked with Moreau in the bad days, and who also agrees with us, said, ‘Where the hell are we?’ ”

  “There has to be an explanation.”

  “That’s why I have to talk to Harry.… Whoa, hold it. You’re pretty opinionated about Moreau. Do you know him?”

  “I know that East German intelligence was frightened to death of him, as subsequently were the neos, for he recognized the links between the Stasi and the Nazis before anyone else, except possibly your brother. Freddie met him once, a debriefing in Munich, and came back exuberant, claiming Moreau was a genius.”

  “So to recap, where are we really?”

  “You have an expression in the United States that’s uniquely American,” said Karin. “ ‘Between a rock and a hard place.’ I think it fits, at least until you can talk to Harry, which, for your own safety, you cannot do from either the Meurice or the embassy.”

  “They’re the only numbers he has,” protested Drew.

  “I should like to ask for your trust once more. I have friends here in Paris from the old days in Amsterdam, friends you can trust. If you wish, I’ll go further and give their names to the colonel.”

  “What for? Why?”

  “They can hide you, yet you can still operate here in Paris; they’re less than forty-five minutes from the city. And I myself can reach Moreau with the most plausible explanation there is—the truth, Drew.”

  “Then you do know Moreau.”

  “Not personally, no, but two Deuxième staff interviewed me before I came to the embassy. The name De Vries will accord me the courtesy of speaking to him personally, believe that.”

  “I do. But what’s the truth, that he himself is under suspicion?”

  “Another truth. Three attempts have been made on your life, and your natural concern aside—”

  “Call it by its rightful name,” Latham broke in. “The word is fear. I was almost killed each time and my nerves are a lot frayed—like in afraid.”

  “Very well, that’s honest; he’ll accept it.… Your fear for your own life aside, you must meet with your brother who’s flying over from London—day and time unknown—and you can’t risk his life, either, by being in the open. You’re going under for a few days and will contact him when you come out. Naturally, I have no idea where you are.”

  “There’s a large gap. Namely, why are you my conduit?”

  “Yet another truth that overrides the lie and will be substantiated by Colonel Witkowski, an intelligence rock whom everyone respects. He’ll confirm that my husband worked with your brother. Moreau assumes you knew that, and therefore easily understands why you came to me to act as your intermediary.”

  “Two more gaps,” Drew pressed quietly, once again nervously glancing around the now-crowded brasserie. “One, I didn’t know—Witkowski had to tell me; and two, why didn’t I use him?”

  “Old-timers like Stanley Witkowski, smart, even brilliant veterans of the ‘bad days,’ as you called them, know the pecking order better than any of us. To get things done, really accomplished, he has to operate from his niche. He’s in a position now to confirm things, not to initiate them. Can you understand that?”

  “It’s one of the things I’ve always objected to, but, yes, I can. We put some of our best minds into a pasture-hold mode because either their retirements are coming up or they never quite made enough of a name for themselves to go for the next level of retirement. It’s so goddamned dumb, especially in our business, because the quiet ones invariably make it possible for the ‘names’ to succeed. How many deep-cover legends became legends because they were guided by the quiet ones.… Sorry, again I’m rambling; it takes my mind off the possibility that someone in this very Parisian brasserie may get up and take a shot at me.”

  “It’s quite unlikely,” said De Vries. “We’re close to the embassy, and you’ve no idea how sensitive the French are to their lack of control over terrorism.”

  “So are the British, but people get killed outside of Harrods.”

  “Not often, and the English have isolated their primary enemy, the I.R.A., may they rot in hell. The French are targets for so many others. Whole arrondissements are populated with warring factions from abroad. In the Scandinavian countries, too, the protests grow more violent, say nothing of the Netherlands—the most peaceful of people, where the Right and the Left clash incessantly.”

  “Add Italy, the Mafia corruption of Rome tearing people apart, men fighting in Parliament, bombs going off. And take Spain, where the Catalonians and the Basques bear more than arms, they bear generations of resentment. And there’s the Middle East, where Palestinians kill Jews and Jews kill Palestinians, each blaming the other, while in Bosnia-Herzegovina full-fledged massacres take place between people who used to live together, and nobody appears to want to do anything. It’s everywhere. Discontent, suspicion, name-calling … violence. It’s as though some terrible grand design is being shaped.”

  “What are you saying?” asked De Vries, staring at him.

  “They’re all meat for the new Nazi grinders, can’t you see that?”

  “I hadn’t considered things on such a large scale. It’s rather melodramatically far-reaching, isn’t it?”

  “Think about it. If Harry’s list is right, even half right, how long have the discontents everywhere been approached and told that their grievances can be addressed, the grievers crushed once the great new order is in place?”

  “That’s not the ‘new order’ you Americans have talked about, Drew. Yours
is a far more benevolent agenda.”

  “Suppose again. Suppose it’s all a code for something else, a ‘new order’ going back fifty years. The New Order of the Reich to last a thousand years.”

  “That’s preposterous!”

  “Yes, it is,” agreed Latham, leaning back in the booth and breathing hard. “I took it to its zenith, because you’re right, it couldn’t happen. But a large part of it could happen, right here in Europe, the Balkans, and the Middle East. Then what’s the next step? After the multiple uprisings of people against people, religion against religion, new nations breaking away from the old?”

  “I’m trying to follow you, and I’m not stupid. As Harry might say, where is the clarity?”

  “Nuclear weapons! Bought and sold on the international markets, and perhaps, with their millions, too many in the hands of the Brotherhood, the new religion, the cure, and maybe, eventually, the refuge for all the discontents the world over, drawn to them, convinced of their invincibility. It happened in the thirties, and not a hell of a lot has changed in terms of those circumstances.”

  “You’re way beyond me,” said Karin, drinking her wine. “I fight a spreading disease, as you called it, that killed Freddie. You see an imminent apocalypse I cannot accept. We’ve passed that stage in civilization.”

  “I hope we have, and I hope I’m wrong, and I wish to God I could stop thinking the way I do.”

  “You have an extraordinary imagination, very much like Harry’s, except his was—is—sang-froid. Nothing is until analyzed without emotion.”

  “It’s funny you say that; it’s the difference between us. My brother was always so cold, so without feeling, I thought, until a young cousin of ours, a girl of sixteen, died of some kind of cancer. We were kids, and I found him bawling his eyes out behind the garage. When I tried to help him as best I could, he yelled at me and said, ‘Don’t you ever tell anybody I cried or I’ll put a double hex on you!’ Kid stuff, of course.”

  “Did you?”

  “Of course not, he was my brother.”

  “There’s something you’re not telling me.”