The Apocalypse Watch

by Robert Ludlum

  “That’s good. I’ll use it.”

  “Claude, I’ll be honest, I want to clear you over here! It’s insufferable that you’re under suspicion.”

  “Not yet, my old friend. Remember Istanbul. We’ve played these games before.”

  In Paris, Moreau hung up the phone, once more leaning back in his chair, his eyes on the ceiling, his thoughts bouncing from one fragment of information to another. He was now in the race to the finish. The risks he was taking were gargantuan, but he could not stop. Revenge, it was all that mattered.

  18

  Since Drew Latham had supposedly departed this world, his Deuxième car had been withdrawn. In its place, Witkowski had ordered embassy Transport to supply security measures: three personnel on eight-hour shifts, and an unmarked vehicle kept available for an unnamed army officer and his lady, at the moment in the rue Madeleine. The colonel made it clear to the marines, who would be on rotation duty, that should they recognize the officer, his identity was to remain secret. If it did not, certain “gyrenes” would be sent back to Parris Island along with the lowest recruits, their accomplishments stricken from their records.

  “You don’t have to say that, Colonel,” said a marine sergeant. “If you’ll forgive me, sir, it’s goddamned demeaning.”

  “Then I apologize.”

  “You should, sir,” added a corporal. “We’ve been on embassy duty from Beijing to Kuala Lumpur, where real security mattered.”

  “Hog damn right!” whispered a second corporal, then louder. “We’re not army—sir. We’re marines.”

  “Then I really apologize, fellas. Forgive this old G.I. issue. I’m just a fossil.”

  “We know who you are, Colonel,” said the sergeant. “You have nothing to worry about, sir.”

  “I thank you.”

  As the three departed for the bowels of Transport, Witkowski was struck by a comment from one of the corporals. “He shoulda been a marine. Hell, I’d follow that son of a bitch down the barrel of a cannon.”

  Stanley Witkowski considered for a moment that it was the highest praise he had ever received during his entire career. But now there were other things to think about, not the least of which were Drew Latham and Karin de Vries. The confluence of hours and exhaustion dictated that Latham stay in De Vries’s apartment rather than drive out to the Antinayous’ sterile house—actually, the Antinayous’ insisted upon it in the event the target was still being followed. After several days without any untoward occurrence, they would reconsider, but only reconsider. “He has involved himself in things too public for our purposes,” had said an abrupt woman at the Maison Rouge. “We admire him, but we cannot tolerate the remotest possibility of being discovered.”

  As to Karin staying at the embassy, there simply was no point. As a member of classified D and R who resided outside the embassy, her address was filed only in Security, and anyone requesting it had to be cleared by the colonel himself. Several male attachés had; they were refused. Added to which, the widow De Vries had once shared a piece of information that greatly relieved him.

  “I’m not a poor woman, Colonel. I have three automobiles here in Paris in different garages. I change appearances with each change of vehicle.”

  “That takes a load off my mind,” said Witkowski. “Considering the information in your head, it’s damned smart thinking.”

  “It wasn’t mine, sir. General Raichert, the supreme commander of NATO, ordered it in The Hague. There the Americans paid for it, but the circumstances were different. I don’t expect it here.”

  “You must not be poor.”

  “I’m committed to what I do, Colonel. The money’s not important.”

  That conversation had taken place over four months before, and Witkowski then had no idea how “committed” the new arrival was. He had no doubts now. The telephone on his private line rang, interrupting the colonel’s reverie. “Yes?”

  “It’s your wandering angel, Stanley,” said Drew. “Any word from House Red?”

  “There’s no room at the inn, at least not for a while. The fact that you’re a mark has them worried.”

  “I’m wearing a uniform, your uniform, for Christ’s sake! By the way, you’re a tad bigger in the waist and the ass than I am. The tunic’s fine, however.”

  “I’m greatly relieved; it’ll cover the imperfections when the fashion photographers take your picture.… You could be disguised by that actor, Villier, and they’d still want you to stay away.”

  “I guess I can’t really blame them.”

  “I don’t,” agreed the colonel. “Will Karin put up with you another day or two until I can find proper lodgings?”

  “I don’t know, ask her.” Latham’s voice became fainter as he held the phone away from his face. “It’s Witkowski. He wants to know if my lease is up.”

  “Hello, Colonel,” said Karin. “I gather the Antinayous are balking.”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “It’s understandable.”

  “Yes, it is, but I haven’t come up with a suitable alternative. Can you stand him for another day, perhaps two? I’ll arrange something by then.”

  “It’s not a problem. He tells me he made his bed this morning.”

  “Hell, yes,” Drew’s voice was heard in the background. “I’m back in Boy Scout camp with lots of cold showers!”

  “Pay no attention to him, Colonel. I believe I mentioned he can be quite childish.”

  “He wasn’t at the Trocadéro or the Meurice or the Bois de Boulogne, Karin. Even I’ll give him that.”

  “Agreed,” said De Vries, “but if you have difficulties, there’s a possible solution, at least it worked several times in Amsterdam. Freddie would put on one of several uniforms—American, Dutch, English, it didn’t matter—and register at the Amstel for confidential meetings.”

  “One of his well-known tricks, then?” asked a wary Witkowski.

  “A benign one, Colonel. As Drew told you, your uniform fits him quite well, and I can easily sew tucks in the waist and other places—”

  “I’m painfully aware of that other place.… What then; he’s still Latham?”

  “With a slight altering of appearance, certainly less so.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “A change of hair color,” she replied, speaking softly, “especially around the temples, where it’s obvious below his officer’s cap, and a pair of thick-rimmed glasses, plain lenses of course, and a false military ID. I can do the hair and supply the glasses if you’ll furnish an identification card. He could then register at any crowded hotel, which I’m sure you can arrange.”

  “This is hardly in the embassy’s purview, Karin.”

  “From what I understand of Consular Operations, I submit it’s within its range of operations.”

  “You’ve got me there, I guess. You must really want him out.”

  “It’s not the person, Colonel, it’s the fact that he’s a man, seen here only as an American army officer. I doubt that anyone in the building knows that I work for the embassy, but if anyone does or suspects that I do, it compromises Drew, myself, and our objectives.”

  “In simple words, your residence could become another target.”

  “Far-fetched, perhaps, but not implausible.”

  “Nothing’s implausible in this war. I’ll need a photograph.”

  “I still have Freddie’s camera. You’ll have a dozen in the morning.”

  “I wish I was there to see you dye his hair. That’d be a real hoot.”

  De Vries hung up the telephone, walked to a closet in the foyer, opened it, and took out a small suitcase with two combination locks. Latham watched her from the armchair, a drink in his hand. “I trust that’s not holding a quickly assembled automatic weapon,” he said as Karin placed the luggage on the coffee table in front of the couch and sat down.

  “Good heavens, no,” she replied, manipulating the combination locks and opening the suitcase. “In truth, I hope it can help you avoid the
necessity of facing such a gun.”

  “Hold it. What’s in there? I couldn’t hear you most of the time when you were talking to Stanley. What’s boiling in that awesomely attractive head of yours?”

  “This is what Freddie called his ‘emergency traveling case.’ ”

  “Already I’d rather not know. Freddie was violent with you and that makes him unfriendly.”

  “There were the other years too, Drew.”

  “Thanks for nothing. What’s in there?”

  “Simple methods of disguise, nothing dramatic or mind-boggling. Various pre-glued mustaches, also a couple of chin beards, and numerous eyeglasses … and some basic washable dyes.” She described the last far more quietly.

  “What was that?”

  “You can’t stay here, my friend,” said Karin, looking at him over the top of the suitcase. “Now, don’t become defensive and take it personally, but the houses and flats here in the Madeleine are like a small upscale neighborhood in America. People talk, and gossip abounds in the cafés and the bakeries. To use your word, it could reach ‘unfriendly’ ears.”

  “I accept that, I understand it, but that’s not what I asked you.”

  “You’ll be registering at a hotel under a different name, which the colonel will supply, and with a slightly different appearance.”

  “What?”

  “I’m going to dye your hair and your eyebrows with a washable solution. Reddish-blond, I think.”

  “What are you talking about? I’m no Jean-Pierre Villier!”

  “You don’t have to be. Just be yourself; no one will recognize you unless he’s standing a few feet in front of you and staring straight at you. Now, if you’ll please put on the colonel’s trousers, I’ll pin them and adjust the size.”

  “You know, you’re crazier than a pissed loon!”

  “Can you think of a better solution?”

  “Goddammit!” roared Latham, swallowing the remainder of his Scotch. “No, actually, I can’t.”

  “On second thought, we’ll do the hair first. Please remove your shirt.”

  “How about my trousers? I’d feel more natural, more at home that way.”

  “You’re not at home, Drew.”

  “Gotcha, lady!”

  Moreau picked up his console phone, pressing a button that would record his conversation, and spoke to the Lutetia switchboard. “Room eight hundred, if you please.”

  “Certainly, sir.”

  “Yes?” said the muffled, guttural voice on the line.

  “Monsieur le docteur?” asked the chief of the Deuxième, unsure that he had the right connection. “It is I, from the Pont Neuf. Is it you?”

  “Of course it is. What have you brought me?”

  “I have reached deep, Doctor, far deeper than is healthy for me. I’ve provoked the American CIA into telling me that it is, indeed, hiding Harry Latham.”

  “Where?”

  “Perhaps not here in Paris, perhaps in Marseilles.”

  “Perhaps, perhaps? That does me no good! Can you be sure?”

  “No, but possibly you can.”

  “Me?”

  “You have people in Marseilles, no?”

  “Of course. A great deal of finance comes through there.”

  “Look for the ‘Consulars,’ that’s what they’re called.”

  “We know about them,” said Gerhardt, breathless. “The bastard intelligence group, Consular Operations. One can spot them at every corner, every café.”

  “Take one of them, see what you can learn.”

  “Within the hour. Where can I reach you?”

  “I’ll call you back an hour from now.”

  The hour passed, and Moreau called the Lutetia. “Anything?” he asked a hyper Gerhardt.

  “It’s insane!” said the doctor. “The man we spoke with is someone we’ve paid thousands to so we could collect millions through the network. He said we were crazy; no such man as Harry Latham is on their list or in Marseilles!”

  “Then he’s still in Paris,” said Moreau, frustration in his voice. “I’ll go back to work.”

  “As fast as you can!”

  “Ever so,” said the Deuxième chief, hanging up the phone and smiling an enigmatic smile. He waited exactly fourteen minutes and then called back the Lutetia. It was the moment to propel anxiety into high gear.

  “Yes?”

  “It is I again. Something just came in.”

  “For God’s sake, what is it?”

  “Harry Latham.”

  “What?”

  “He called one of my people, a man he had worked with in East Berlin who rightfully believed he should inform me. Apparently Latham is quite intense—isolation can do that, you know—even to the point that he thinks his own embassy is compromised—”

  “It’s Latham!” interrupted the German. “The symptoms are predictable.”

  “What symptoms? What do you mean?”

  “Nothing, nothing at all. As you say, isolation can do strange things to people.… What did he want?”

  “Possibly French protection, is what we gather. My man’s to meet him at the Metro station, the Georges Cinq stop at two o’clock this afternoon, toward the rear of the platform.”

  “I must be there!” shouted Gerhardt.

  “It’s not advisable, nor is it the policy of the Bureau to involve the hunted with the hunter, monsieur, when they are not part of our organization.”

  “You don’t understand, I must be with you!”

  “Why is that? It could be dangerous.”

  “Not to me, never to me.”

  “Now I don’t understand you.”

  “You don’t have to! Remember the Brotherhood, it is what you must obey, and I’m giving you your orders.”

  “Then, of course, I must obey, Herr Doktor. We meet on the platform at ten minutes to two o’clock. Not before or after, is that understood?”

  “I understand.”

  Moreau did not hang up the phone; instead, he pressed the disconnect button and touched the digits that connected him to his most trusted subordinate officer. “Jacques,” he said calmly, “we have a very important confrontation at two o’clock, just you and me. Meet me downstairs at one-thirty and I’ll fill you in. Incidentally, carry your automatic, but fill the magazine with blanks.”

  “That’s a very strange request, Claude.”

  “It’s a very strange confrontation,” said Moreau, hanging up the phone.

  Drew looked into the mirror, his eyes wide in shock. “For Christ’s sake, I look like a Disney cartoon!” he roared.

  “Not really,” said Karin, standing above him over the kitchen sink and taking the mirror from him. “You’re just not used to it, that’s all.”

  “It’s preposterous! I look like the leader of a gay rights parade.”

  “Does that bother you?”

  “Hell, no, I’ve got a lot of friends in that crowd, but I’m not one of them.”

  “It can be washed out in a shower, so stop complaining. Now, put oh the uniform and I’ll take some photographs for Colonel Witkowski, then adjust the trousers.”

  “What has that son of a bitch got me into?”

  “Basically, saving your life, can you accept that?”

  “Are you always so logical?”

  “Logic and the illogically logical saved Freddie’s life more times than I can tell you. Please put on the uniform.”

  Latham did as he was told, returning two minutes later as a full colonel in the United States Army. “A uniform becomes you,” said De Vries, observing him, “especially when you stand up straight.”

  “One doesn’t have any choice in this coat—excuse me, tunic. It’s so damn tight, if you don’t arch your spine, you’re punctured somewhere and can’t breathe. I’d make a lousy soldier. I’d insist on wearing fatigues.”

  “Regulations wouldn’t permit it.”

  “Another reason why I’d make a lousy soldier.”

  “Actually, you’d probably be a good
one, as long as you were a general.”

  “Hardly likely.”

  “Hardly.” Karin gestured toward the foyer. “Come into the hallway, I’m set up. Here are your glasses.” She handed him a pair of heavy tortoiseshells.

  “Set up? Glasses?” Drew looked over at the short hall that greeted a visitor from the front door. There was a camera on a tripod aimed at a blank off-white wall. “You’re a photographer too?”

  “Not at all. Frequently, however, Freddie needed a new photograph for a different passport. He instructed me how to use this, not that I needed any instructions. It’s an instant-picture camera, sized down to passport dimensions.… Put on the glasses and stand against the wall. Take off the hat; I want the full glory of your blond hair evident.”

  A few minutes later De Vries had fifteen small Polaroid photographs, of a light-haired, bespectacled colonel, looking as grim and uncomfortable as any passport picture. “Splendid,” she decreed. “Now let’s go back to the couch, where I’ve got my equipment.”

  “Equipment?”

  “The trousers, remember?”

  “Oh, this is the good part. Should I take them off?”

  “Not if you want them to fit. Come along.”

  Fifteen minutes later, having suffered only two painful punctures of a straight pin, Latham was ordered back into the guest room to resume his normal appearance. Again he returned, now to find Karin at the alcove table, on which was placed a sewing machine. “The trousers, please.”

  “You know, you’re blowing my mind, lady,” said Drew, handing her the army issue. “Are you some kind of female deep-cover factotum who works behind the scenes?”

  “Let’s say I’ve been there, Monsieur Latham.”

  “Yes, it’s not the first time you’ve said that.”

  “Accept it, Drew. Besides, it’s none of your business.”

  “You’re right there. It’s just, as the layers peel away, I’m not sure whom I’m talking to. I have to accept Freddie, and NATO, and Harry, and the subterranean way you got to Paris, but why do I have the feeling that there’s something else that’s driving you?”

  “It’s your imagination because you live in a world of probables and improbables, possibles and impossibles, what’s real and what isn’t. I’ve told you everything you have to know about me, isn’t that enough?”