The Apocalypse Watch

by Robert Ludlum

“Which is also why that medical saint is going to be overruled if I have to get Sorenson to blackmail the President.”

  “Really? Is he … blackmailable?”

  “Everybody is, especially presidents. It’s called political genocide, depending upon which party you belong to.”

  “May we get back to another subject, please?”

  “What subject?” Latham walked to the desk and the telephone. “I want to fry a doctor who’d rather prolong the life of a slug than prevent the killing of decent people on our side.”

  “Which could be you, Drew.”

  “I suppose so.” Latham picked up the phone.

  “Stop it and listen to me!” cried De Vries. “Hang up and listen.”

  “Okay, okay.” Drew replaced the phone and slowly turned, facing her. “What is it?”

  “I’m going to be brutally honest with you, my darling—because you’re a man I love.”

  “For the moment? Or can I count on a month or two?”

  “That’s not only gratuitously unfair, it’s also demeaning.”

  “I apologize. Only I’d rather hear the man, not a man.”

  “And I loved another, no matter how misguided I was, and I will not apologize for that.”

  “Two points for the lady. Go on, be brutally honest.”

  “You’re a bright, even brilliant man in your own way. I’ve seen that, watched you, applauded your ability to make quick decisions, as well as your physical prowess—which certainly outstripped my husband’s and Harry’s. But you are not Freddie and you are not Harry, both of whom lived with the specter of death every morning they woke up and every night when they prowled the streets for black rendezvous. It’s a world you don’t know, Drew, a horrid, convoluted world you’ve never been steeped in—exposed to, yes, but you are not a veteran of its nightmares.”

  “Get to the point, I want to make a phone call.”

  “Please, I beg you, give all the information you have, all the conclusions your imagination has produced, to those who have been in that world.… Moreau, Witkowski, your superior, Sorenson. They will avenge your brother’s death; they’re equipped to do it.”

  “And I’m not?”

  “My God, there’s a band of killers coming after you! People with resources and contacts we know nothing about. They’ll be programmed with names, with unlimited funds to corrupt those names, and all it takes is one to betray you. That’s why the Antinayous called me. Frankly, they think your situation is hopeless unless you disappear.”

  “Then we’re back to our original question, aren’t we? Why all this firepower against Harry Latham? Why?”

  “Let others find out, my darling. Let’s you and I take ourselves out of this horrible game.”

  “You and I …?”

  “Does that answer your earlier question?”

  “It’s so tempting, I could cry like a baby, but it can’t work, Karin. I may not have the experience of the others, but I have something they don’t have. It’s called rage, and along with whatever minor talents I do possess, it makes me the leader of the pack. I’m sorry, I’m really sorry, but that’s the way it has to be.”

  “I’m appealing to your sense of survival—our survival—not your courage, which needs no further proof.”

  “Courage hasn’t a damn thing to do with it! I never pretended to be brave, I don’t like bravery, it gets idiots killed. I’m talking about a man who happened to be my brother, a man without whom I would have been a high school or a college dropout, by this time a hockey bum with a swollen face, broken legs, and not a dollar to my name. Jean-Pierre Villier told me he owed as much or more than I did to a father he never knew. I disagree. I owe more to Harry because I did know him.”

  “I see.” Karin was silent as their eyes met, each leveled at the other’s. “Then we’ll see it through together.”

  “Hell, I’m not asking you to do that!”

  “I wouldn’t have it any other way. I ask only one thing, Drew. Don’t let your rage kill you. I don’t think I could stand losing the only other man I ever loved the same way I lost the first.”

  “You can take it to the bank. I have too much to live for.… Now, may I make that phone call? It’s shortly past noon in Washington and I’d like to catch Sorenson before he goes to lunch.”

  “You may spoil it for him.”

  “I’m sure I will. He doesn’t approve of what I’m doing, but he hasn’t blown the whistle on me for a damn good reason.”

  “What’s that?”

  “He’d do the same thing himself.”

  In Washington, Wesley Sorenson was both annoyed and frustrated. Vice President Howard Keller had faxed him a background list of a hundred eleven senators and congressmen of both parties who would react in outrage over their former colleague’s inclusion as a Nazi, and were perfectly willing to testify. Added to these was another list of potential adversaries, ranging from rejected but still-powerful fundamentalist leaders to fanatical members of the lunatic fringe, both of which would reject the Second Coming of Christ as a political manipulation if it served them. At the bottom of the fax, in his own handwriting, was the Vice President’s summation.

  The above clowns are in place, ready, willing, and personallyeager to destroy anyone who even vaguely disagrees with them. I’ve got the lawyers. Along with our good guys, we’ll make muleshit out of the whole passel of assholes! Let’s bring it to the Senate and expose these crap-artist witch-hunters for what they are.

  However, Sorenson wasn’t ready to go that flagrantly public. Much might be gained, but a great deal could be lost. The Sonnenkinder did exist, where they were and how high they were still undetermined. The easiest thing for the hunted to do was to become one of the “good guys.” He would call Howard Keller and try to make his position clear. And then his telephone rang, the red line that came directly into his office.

  “Yes?”

  “It’s your rogue agent, boss.”

  “I wish I weren’t—your boss, I mean.”

  “Stay with me, we’re making progress.”

  “How?”

  “Bonn and Berlin are sending out a couple of semi-brigades to find me—find Harry, that is—and eliminate me.”

  “That’s progress?”

  “One step always leads to another, doesn’t it?”

  “If I were you, and I speak from experience, I’d get the hell out of Paris.”

  “Would you have done that, Wes?”

  “Probably not, but it doesn’t matter what I’d have done. The times are different, Latham, ours were easier. We knew who our enemies were, you don’t.”

  “Then help me find out. Tell that humanitarian doctor at the embassy to plug all the Amytals we’ve got into Kroeger so we might learn something.”

  “He said it could kill him.”

  “So kill the son of a bitch. Give us a break! Why are they going to the max to kill Harry?”

  “We have certain codes of medical ethics—”

  “To hell with them, I’ve got my life too! I’m no advocate of capital punishment because, among other things, it can’t be administered fairly—when was the last time a rich white guy with a high-priced law firm behind him was sent to the electric chair?—but if there ever was an exception to my stand, it’s Kroeger. I saw that bastard blow apart two innocent hotel clerks with Black Talon bullets simply because they were there! And, furthermore, our benevolent physician at the embassy didn’t say the injections would kill him, only that they could. Those are better odds than Kroeger gave those two men in the hotel.”

  “You’re developing a rather good sense of advocacy debate.… Say I went along with you, got State to go along, what do you think you might learn from Kroeger?”

  “For God’s sake, I don’t know. But maybe something, anything that could explain the neos’ obsession with taking out Harry.”

  “I grant you it’s an enigma.”

  “It’s more than that, Wes, it’s the key to a lot more than we can understand.”
<
br />   “Including Harry’s list perhaps?”

  “Possibly. I read the transcript from his debriefing in London. There’s no question that he believed it was authentic, but he allowed for outside disinformation—more in the area of misinformation, I grant you, but he considered it.”

  “Human error, mistaken names, not dirt,” said Sorenson quietly. “Yes, I remember reading that. If I recall correctly, he was angry at the implication that he was duped, and insisted it was up to the spiders in counterintelligence to ultimately evaluate the material.”

  “He wasn’t that precise, but that’s what he was saying.”

  “And you think Kroeger might fill in some gaps?”

  “Let’s put it this way, I can’t think of anybody else. Kroeger was Harry’s doctor, and strangely enough—probably because Kroeger treated him decently—he had some kind of hold over my brother. At least Harry didn’t hate him.”

  “Your brother was too professional to let hatred surface, much less interfere.”

  “I realize that, and I admit it’s a fine, very thin line, but I have an idea Harry respected him—maybe respect is the wrong word—but there was a definite attachment. I can’t explain it because I can’t understand it.”

  “Perhaps you just said it. The doctor treated him decently, the captor giving attention to the captive.”

  “The Stockholm syndrome again? Please spare me, there are too many flaws in that theory, especially where Harry’s concerned.”

  “Heaven knows you knew him better than anyone else.… Very well, Drew, I’ll give the order and I won’t even bother Adam Bollinger over at State. He’s already given us carte blanche, although for all the wrong motives.”

  “Motives? Not reasons?”

  “Reasoning is secondary to Bollinger. Motives come first. Stay well, stay alive, and be terribly careful.”

  In the embassy’s infirmary, actually a modern clinic of six rooms with state-of-the-art medical equipment, Gerhardt Kroeger was strapped to the table. A single transparent tube combining the flows from two plastic pouches above his head was inserted into his left arm, the needle penetrating the antecubital vein. He had been tranquilized prior to the procedure, a passive patient who had no idea what was in store for him.

  “If he dies,” said the embassy doctor, his eyes on the electrocardiogram screen, “you pricks take the fall. I’m here to save lives, not execute them.”

  “Tell that to the families of the men he shot to death without knowing who they were,” replied Drew.

  Stanley Witkowski elbowed Latham aside. “Let me know when he’s reaching comatose,” he ordered the physician.

  Drew stepped back, standing beside Karin as they all watched, both fascinated and repulsed by what was taking place.

  “He’s entering the mode of least resistance,” said the doctor. “Now,” he added severely. “And orders or no orders, I’m shutting the IV off in two minutes! Christ, a minute after that, and he’s dead!… I don’t need this job, fellas. I can pay off the government for medical school in three or four years, but I can’t erase this for all the bread in the Treasury Department.”

  “Then stand aside, youngster, and let me go to work.” Witkowski bent over Kroeger’s body, speaking at first softly into his left ear, asking the usual questions about his identity and his position in the neo-Nazi movement. They were answered briefly, succinctly, in a monotone, and then the colonel raised his voice; it became gradually threatening until it began to echo off the walls. “Now we’ve reached the nucleus, Doktor! Why do you want Harry Latham killed?”

  Kroeger writhed on the table, straining to break the straps as he coughed and spat out gray phlegm. The embassy physician grabbed Witkowski’s arm; the colonel shook it off violently. “You’ve got thirty seconds,” said the doctor.

  “Tell me, you tenth-rate Hitler, or you die now! I have no use for you, you son of a bitch! Tell me or go join your Oberführer in hell. It’s now or you’re gone! Oblivion, Herr Doktor!”

  “Now you must stop,” said the embassy’s physician, again grabbing the colonel’s arm.

  “Get the fuck away from me, pissant!… Did you hear that, Kroeger? I don’t give a goddamn if you live or die! Tell me! Why do you have to kill Harry Latham? Tell me!”

  “It’s his brain!” shrieked Gerhardt Kroeger, thrashing on the table with such force he broke one of the leather straps. “His brain!” the Nazi repeated, then fell into unconsciousness.

  “That’s all you get, Witkowski,” said the doctor firmly, shutting off the valves of the combined intravenous injections. “His heart rate is up to a hundred and forty. Another five points, he’s finished.”

  “Let me tell you something, medicine man,” said the veteran G-2 colonel, “do you know what the heart rate is of the two hotel employees this scuzball blew across the lobby? It’s zero, Doctor, and I don’t think that’s very nice.”

  * * *

  The three of them sat at a table in an outdoor café on the rue de Varenne, Drew still in civilian clothes, Karin holding his hand underneath. Witkowski kept shaking his head, his bewilderment obvious. “What the hell did the son of a bitch mean when he kept saying ‘his brain’?”

  “The first thought that comes to mind,” said Latham reluctantly, “is brainwashing, which I find hard to believe.”

  “I agree,” said De Vries. “I knew that side of Harry, his obsession with control, if you like, and I can’t imagine his being mentally warped. He had too many defenses.”

  “So where are we?” asked the colonel.

  “An autopsy?” suggested Karin.

  “What could it tell us, that he was poisoned?” answered Witkowski. “We can assume that, or something like it. Besides, all autopsies are assigned by the courts and must be registered with the Ministry of Health with accompanying medical records. We can’t take the chance. Remember, Harry’s not Harry now.”

  “Then it’s back to the beginning,” said Drew. “And I don’t even know where that is.”

  In the morgue on the rue Fontenay, the attendant whose duty it was to check on the corpses in their refrigerated, temporary tombs, went down the line, sliding out each body to ascertain that the bloodless corpses were properly identified, and not moved due to overcrowding. He reached number one hundred one, a special case as determined by a red check mark signifying no removal, and opened it.

  He gasped, not certain that what he saw made any sense at all. The skull of the near faceless corpse had a huge, gaping hole, as if a postmortem explosion had taken place, the fragments of skin and tissue spread out like an opening strawberry, the fluid gray and diseased-looking. Quickly, the attendant closed the vault, not caring even to breathe the gaseous residue. Let someone else find it.

  27

  Claude Moreau issued an irreversible order at eight-thirty in the morning. Latham and De Vries were again under the protection of the Deuxième. American security might offer suggestions as to their safety, but the Deuxième alone would make all final decisions. Unless, of course, the two decided to remain confined to their embassy, which under international law was American territory and therefore beyond the Deuxième’s jurisdiction. When Drew roared his objections, Moreau’s answer was succinct.

  “I cannot permit the citizens of Paris to risk their lives being caught in the crossfire of those trying to kill you,” said the Frenchman, sitting across from Drew and Karin in the suite at the Hotel Normandie.

  “That’s bullshit!” yelled Latham, putting his morning coffee down with such force that half of it spilled onto the rug. “Nobody’s going to start a war in the streets. It’s the last thing they’d do!”

  “Perhaps, perhaps not. So why don’t you both move into the embassy, and the question becomes irrelevant? I’d have no objections whatsoever, and the citizens of Paris would be free of harm.”

  “You know I’ve got to move around!” Drew rose from the couch angrily, his undersize hotel bathrobe constricting him.

  “Then move with my people or stay off th
e streets. That’s final, mon ami.… Oh, and one other thing. Wherever you go, whatever you do, will be cleared by me.”

  “You not only talk too much, you’re impossible!”

  “Speaking of the impossible,” continued the Deuxième chief, “Ambassador Courtland is arriving on the Concorde at five o’clock this afternoon. His wife will be meeting him at the airport. I don’t know that any amount of training prepares a man for the charade he will have to perform.”

  “If Courtland can’t handle it, he should take himself out,” said Drew, pouring coffee for himself and returning to the couch with his cup.

  Moreau raised his eyebrows at Latham’s curt tone. “Perhaps you’re right, mon ami. One way or the other we’ll have our answer before nightfall, n’est-ce pas?… Now, as to the rest of the day, I want you to familiarize yourselves with the Bureau’s protection procedures. They’re quite different from my friend Witkowski’s operation, but then, the colonel does not have the resources we have.”

  “Incidentally,” Drew broke in, “have you run all this by Witkowski? Does he agree with your off-the-wall ‘orders’?”

  “He not only agrees, he’s filled with relief. I think you should know that he’s extremely fond of both of you—perhaps the edge goes to the lovely Karin—and he’s aware that my resources are far greater than his. Also, he and Wesley Sorenson have their hands full orchestrating the reunion of the ambassador and his wife, a most delicate situation that calls for constant monitoring. What more can I say?”

  “You’ve said it,” said Latham without enthusiasm. “What do you want us to do?”

  “To begin with, meet and familiarize yourselves with our escorts. They all speak fluent English, and the leader, in fact, is your aid-in-survival in the Gabriel—”

  “François, the driver?”

  “Who else? The others will be around you night and day. There will always be two in the hotel corridor when you are here. Then, perhaps, I thought you might be interested in our various surveillances on Le Pare de Joie and Madame Courtland. Everything’s in place.”

  “I’ll get dressed,” said Drew, again rising and taking his coffee with him as he headed for the bedroom door.