The Apocalypse Watch

by Robert Ludlum

  “I recognize you, sir,” said the blurred figure beyond the dark glass, “but you’re not on the morning’s roster.”

  “If you’ll check the Permanent Entries log, you’ll find my name.”

  “One moment, sir.… Driver, release the vehicle’s trunk.” There was an internal snap, followed by the glare of a roving searchlight at the rear of the limousine. “Sorry, Mr. Director,” continued the disembodied voice, “I should have checked, but the Permanents usually come later in the day.”

  “No need to apologize,” said Sorenson. “I probably should have called the DCI, but it’s a little early for him too.”

  “Yes, sir.… Driver, you may leave the vehicle and close the trunk now.” The driver did so, returned to his seat behind the wheel, and the heavy steel gate opened. A quarter of a mile beyond, they entered the circular drive that fronted the marble steps of the former Argentinean ambassador’s estate. The limousine came to a stop as the large entrance door swung back and a heavyset, middle-aged army major emerged in the early morning light, the shoulder patch on his beribboned uniform proclaiming a Ranger battalion. He walked rapidly down the steps and opened the door for Sorenson.

  “Major James Duncan, Officer of the Watch, Mr. Director,” he announced pleasantly. “Good morning, sir.”

  “Good morning, Major,” said the chief of Cons-Op, climbing out of the backseat. “Sorry I didn’t make it a point to call and tell you I’d be arriving so early.”

  “We’re used to it, Mr. Sorenson.”

  “The front gate wasn’t.”

  “I don’t know why not. They had a bigger surprise at three o’clock this morning.”

  “Oh?” The veteran intelligence officer’s antenna picked up a negative signal. “An unannounced visitor?” he asked as they walked up the steps to the open door.

  “No, not really. His name was added to the Perm-Ent log around midnight. That list is pretty long and he didn’t like the delay; the deep-c Agency types can be touchy. Hell, I suppose I would be, too, if I worked all day and was called out here during a night’s sleep. I mean, this isn’t exactly ’Nam with an impending firefight.”

  “No, but there are always emergencies, aren’t there?” observed Sorenson, knowing better than to probe further.

  “Not many at that hour, sir,” said Major Duncan, leading the Cons-Op director to the security counter, behind which sat a tired-looking female officer. “How may we assist you, sir? If you’ll give the information to Lieutenant Russell, she’ll call for an escort.”

  “I wish to see the two prisoners housed in E Section, Isolated.” The lieutenant and the major looked at each other, as if startled. “Did I say something wrong?”

  “No, Director Sorenson,” replied Lieutenant Russell, her dark-circled eyes roaming over the keys of a computer as she typed. “Merely coincidence, sir.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That’s who Deputy Director Connally had to meet with at three o’clock this morning,” answered Major James Duncan.

  “Did he say why?”

  “Pretty much the same words you used at the gate, sir. The conference was so maximum-classified that our own guard had to remain outside Section E after opening the cell.”

  The signal was complete. “Major, take me there at once. No one had clearance to interrogate those men but me!”

  “I beg your pardon, sir,” interrupted the lieutenant. “Deputy Director Connally had full clearance. It was spelled out in an inter-Agency order signed by Director Talbot.”

  “Get Talbot on the phone for me! If you don’t have his private number, I’ll get it for you.”

  “Hello?” said the guttural, sleepy voice of Knox Talbot over the line.

  “Knox, it’s Wesley—”

  “Who the hell bombed whom? Do you know what time it is?”

  “Do you know who a Deputy Director Connally is?”

  “No, I don’t, because there isn’t one.”

  “What about an inter-Agency order, signed by you, that cleared him to meet with the neos?”

  “There was no such order, so I couldn’t have signed it. Where are you?”

  “Where the goddamned hell do you think?”

  “Here in Virginia?”

  “I only hope my next call is less unsettling, because if it isn’t, you’ve got some serious housecleaning to do.”

  “The AA computers?”

  “Try something less sophisticated, try something very human.” Sorenson slammed down the phone. “Let’s go, Major!”

  The two Blitzkrieger were in their beds, lying on their sides. When the cell doors clanked open, neither moved. The director of Consular Operations crossed to each and threw back the blankets. Both men were dead, their eyes shocked open at the moment of death, blood still trickling from their closed mouths, the back of their heads blown away, soiling the wall.

  The syncopated sound of the jazz combo below floated up to the private dining room; it meshed with the vibrant noise outside on Bourbon Street in New Orleans’s French Quarter.

  Around the large table sat six men and three women, all but one dressed with relative formality—conservative suits and ties, and severe business apparel for the women. Again, except for one, they were white, clean-cut, and looked as though they had been plucked, much younger, from Ivy League yearbooks of decades ago, when quotas meant something. They ranged in age from their forties to their early seventies, and to an individual, each possessed an aura of wary superiority, as if constantly in the presence of annoying inferiors.

  Among this group were the mayors of two major East Coast cities, three frontline congressmen, one prominent senator, one president of an octopuslike computer corporation, and a most fashionably dressed woman, who was the leading spokesperson of the Christians for a Moral Government. They sat properly upright in their chairs, their skeptical eyes on the man at the head of the table, a large heavyset figure with swarthy skin, wearing a white safari jacket, unbuttoned to mid-chest, and large tinted glasses that blocked out his eyes. His baptismal name was Mario Marchetti; his sobriquet in the FBI files was the Don of Pontchartrain. He spoke.

  “Let us understand each other,” he began, his voice deep and soft, the words measured. “We have what historians might call a concordat, an agreement between entities that do not necessarily concur on all things but find a common agenda that allows them to coexist. Do you follow me?”

  There were affirmative murmurs and the slight nodding of heads, until the senator interrupted. “That’s a mighty fancy way of putting it, Mr. Marchetti. Wouldn’t it be simpler to say we both want something, and each can help the other?”

  “Your record in the Senate, sir, hardly reflects such straightforward talk. But yes, you’re quite correct. Each entity can give assistance to the other.”

  “Since I’ve never met you before,” said the expensively dressed woman from the Christian far right, “how exactly can you help us? Even as I speak, I find the question somewhat demeaning.”

  “Get off your fucking high horse,” said the Don of Pontchartrain quietly.

  “What?” The reaction around the table was more one of stunned silence than of anger or shock.

  “You heard me,” continued Marchetti. “You came to me, I didn’t go looking for you, lady. Do you want to bring her highness here up to speed, Mr. Computer Factory?”

  All eyes glanced at the CEO of one of America’s preeminent computer companies—most briefly.

  “It was a meticulously researched decision,” replied the slender man in the conservative gray suit. “It was mandatory that we stop the progress being made by an inquisitive executive of mine, a black man we hired—obviously—for cosmetic purposes. He began to question our duplicate shipments to Munich—destination the Hausruck—and even went so far as to trace the receivership, which, naturally, was convoluted. We couldn’t fire him, of course, so I flew thousands of miles and met with Mr. Marchetti.”

  “Who did his own research,” broke in the Don of Pontchart
rain gently with a friendly smile. “I mean, why whack a highly intelligent black guy with a lot of letters after his name? It didn’t make sense. So before the gentleman went into the arms of Jesus, I had my associates do a little investigating—like in breaking-and-entering his office at home.… Good heavens, Mr. Computer Factory, he was on to you, or close to it. His notes, which he kept locked in his desk, spelled everything out. You were shipping very sophisticated equipment, at virtual cost, to people no one ever heard of and which was picked up by people nobody knew. That was extremely sloppy, sir, if not downright unprofessional. The gentleman we speak of was about to alert the authorities in Washington.… However, we took care of your problem and you found a partner of sorts—‘of sorts’ being the operative phrase.”

  “I fail to see the connection,” pressed the fashionably dressed Christian woman as if addressing a warted frog.

  “You fail once, lady, it’s your fault. Twice, it’s mine. Don’t fail again.”

  “Really!”

  “Please don’t insult the both of us,” continued Marchetti calmly. “Our compares in Germany didn’t learn where the shipments were going—a plus for your side—but they discovered who picked them up.”

  “I think enough has been said,” interrupted the mayor of a large northeastern city. “You have no idea how crime and the minorities are constantly intermingled. Drastic measures are called for.”

  “Basta!” For the first time the Don raised his voice. “Try education, real education! I’m a ‘Wop,’ a ‘Guinea,’ a dirty ‘Greaseball,’ and not too long ago we couldn’t even apply for jobs, except for laying bricks and making gardens grow. Then came the smart ones, the Gianninis and the Fermis—the heritage of the Da Vincis, the Galileos, yes, even the Machiavellis. But you wouldn’t accept us.… Don’t tell me about the minorities, Mr. Mayor-of-Quick-Solutions, like in blowing up the ghettos. I know history, you don’t.”

  “Where is this getting us?” asked another frustrated mayor from a large city in Pennsylvania.

  “I’ll tell you where right now,” said Marchetti. “I don’t like you and you don’t like me. You consider me dirt, and I think you’re assholes, but we can work together.”

  “Considering your objectionable outburst,” said another woman, prim, and with her streaked hair pulled back into a stern bun, “I don’t believe that is conceivable.”

  “Let me explain, dear lady.” The Don of Pontchartrain leaned forward over the table, the separation of his jacket further revealing his hairy chest, his deep voice again quiet and soft. “You want a country and its government—that’s okay with me, I couldn’t care less. What I want are the profits that come from controlling the country, the government. Quid pro quo. I leave you alone, you leave me alone. I do some dirty work for you—which I’ve done before and am prepared to do in the future—and you throw massive government contracts to those I tell you. It’s as simple as that. Is it a problem?”

  “Not that I can see,” said the senator. “I’m sure such precedents exist. One accommodates for the good of all.”

  “Naturally,” agreed the Mafioso. “Take Mussolini and Hitler, II Duce and the Führer, they were worlds apart, but they fueled the global profits of war. Unfortunately, they were both paranoid, filled with delusions of invincibility. We are not, for war is not on our agenda. We seek something else.”

  “How would you describe that, Mr. Marchetti?” asked the youngest man at the table, a crew-cut blond wearing the blazer of a prominent Massachusetts university. “I’m a political science major, completing my doctorate—a little late, I’m afraid.”

  “Very simple, Mr. Alphabet, and not what you learn in school,” answered the Don. “Politics is influence and successful politics is power, and political power is fundamentally money—what goes where and to whom. The so-called people, who pick up the tab, don’t give a pig’s fart where it goes, because they’d rather watch a game show on television or read a supermarket tabloid. If you want to know the truth, we’re a nation of idiots.… That’s why you assholes may take over after all.”

  “Your language is offensive in the extreme,” added the young doctoral candidate. “May I remind you that there are ladies present?”

  “Funny, I can’t see any. Also, let me remind you that this isn’t a finishing school and I’m not an etiquette consultant.… What I am is a supplier of last resorts. Should you need something accomplished—and the circumstances are such that you feel you can’t use your own extensive resources—you come to me. The deed is done, I take the risk, and nothing can be traced to you—as it might have been in the case of our Mr. Computer Factory and his overly curious black executive. Capisce?”

  “However, as you’ve just pointed out,” said the third woman, an elderly, gaunt lady with dark, glaring eyes, magnified by thick-lensed glasses, “we have our own extensive resources. Why use yours?”

  “Va bene!” exclaimed Marchetti, spreading his hands expansively. “Then don’t, and I wish you well. I simply want you to know I’m here for you if the necessity arises. That’s why I invited our computer gigante—and his friend in the Congress—to bring you here, so to clarify our concordat. On my private jets, of course.”

  “His friend …?” asked the Pennsylvania mayor.

  “I,” replied a slightly embarrassed but unapologetic member of the House Subcommittee on Intelligence. “Orders relayed from the Berlin cell. There may be a very loose cannon at the CIA who must be put under total surveillance and dealt with, if required. To use one of our people is too great a risk. Mr. Marchetti has undertaken the task.”

  “So it seems we have a La Rochefoucauld marriage—of sorts,” said the seventy-plus old woman with the magnified glaring eyes. “Minor though it may be, it is one of convenience.”

  “In my own inadequate way, that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you, dear lady.”

  “Yes, well, you’ve told it very well, and, as always, actions speak volumes more than words.… You have your concordat, Mr. Marchetti, and I believe my associates will agree with me when I say that I’d like to leave here as soon as possible.”

  “The limousines are downstairs waiting for you, as are the Lears at the private airport.”

  “The congressmen and I will leave by the delivery entrance and drive in separate cars,” said the senator.

  “As you arrived, sir,” agreed the Don of Pontchartrain, rising with the others. “I thank you all from the depths of my Sicilian heart. The conference has been a success, our concordat in place.”

  One by one, in varying degrees of discomfort, the American Nazis left the ornate dining room in New Orleans. The don reached under the table, snapping off a hidden switch. It stopped the operation of the roving video cameras concealed in the velour-covered walls. His name, voice, and image would be excised from the tapes, the name of another, perhaps an enemy, inserted.

  “Assholes,” said Marchetti softly to himself. “Our family will either be the richest in America or heroes of the Republic.”

  28

  The artifacts of ancient Egypt, spectacularly large and delicately small, are among the Louvre’s most fascinating exhibitions. The concealed shafts of illumination provide highlights and unearthly shadows, as if centuries past were given life for the present observer. Yet within that life there is the constant reminder of mortality; these men and women lived, they breathed, they made love and bore children for which they had to provide, usually from the generosity of the Nile. And then they died, rulers and slaves, their legacy both majestic and dreary; neither particularly good nor evil, they simply were.

  It was within this ethereal scene that the two Deuxième agents held the tools of their profession, waiting for the meeting between Louis, Count of Strasbourg, and Janine Courtland, wife of the American ambassador. These tools consisted of a miniaturized 8mm camcorder with a voice beam capable of picking up quiet conversations twenty feet away, and a breast pocket voice-activated recorder for close encounters. The agent with the camcorder, his earplu
g in place, positioned himself between two huge sarcophagi, the video recorder held level, the Deuxième officer leaning over it, concealing it, as though he were a scholar deciphering an ancient inscription. His colleague wandered about the room among the sparse crowds, sparse because it was summer lunchtime in Paris; both men kept in contact with small lapel radios.

  Janine Courtland arrived first. She looked nervously about the exhibition room, squinting into the dimly lit areas. Finding no one, she walked aimlessly around the exhibits, at one point standing next to the bent-over “scholar” studying a sarcophagus inscription, then ambling over to a glass-encased display of ancient Egyptian gold. Finally, André—Louis, the Count of Strasbourg—strode through the main archway, resplendent in the most up-to-date gentleman’s afternoon attire, completed by a blue silk paisley ascot. He spotted the ambassador’s wife, studied the room slowly, cautiously, and, satisfied, approached her. The first Deuxième agent angled his camcorder, activated the voice beam, and started the all-but-silent shooting mechanism. He listened as he watched through the lens, his left arm covering the instrument.

  “You are entirely mistaken, Monsieur André,” began Janine Clunitz Courtland softly. “I spoke quite casually and convincingly to the embassy’s head of security. He was shocked when I suggested that he had had me followed.”

  “What else would he say?” asked Strasbourg coolly.

  “I’ve lied too long and too often—all my life in fact—not to know a liar. I told him I stopped at a shop and that one of the clerks came up to me and said my two or three escorts were waiting on the pavement for me, and should he ask them inside to get out of the noonday sun.”

  “A well-phrased story, madame, I grant you that,” said the man called André more warmly. “You people are, indeed, superbly trained.”

  “You’ll grant me? I’ll grant myself, thank you. We’ve all spent our lives honing our skills for one purpose only.”

  “Admirable,” conceded Strasbourg. “Did your embassy security suggest who your ‘escorts’ were?”