The Apocalypse Watch (7 page)

“What the
hell
is going on?” demanded Bressard, walking into the ambassador’s office, instantly surprised yet accepting Moreau’s presence. “
Allô
, Claude,” he said, reverting to French. “I’m not entirely stunned to see you here.”

“
En anglais
, Henri.… Monsieur Latham understands us but the ambassador is still with his Berlitz.”

“Ah, American diplomatic tact!”

“I
did
understand that, Bressard,” said Ambassador Daniel Courtland, behind his desk in a bathrobe and slippers,
“and I’m working on your language. Frankly, I wanted the post in Stockholm—I speak fluent Swedish—but others thought differently. So you’re stuck with me as I’m stuck with you.”

“I apologize, Mr. Ambassador. It’s been a difficult night.… I tried calling you, Drew, and when all I got was your machine, I assumed you were still here.”

“I should have been home an hour ago. Why
are
you here? Why did you have to see me?”

“Everything’s in the Sûreté report. I insisted the police call them in—”

“What happened?” interrupted Moreau. He raised an eyebrow. “Your former wife is not becoming hostile, surely. Your divorce was ultimately amicable.”

“I’m not sure I’d want it to be she. Lucille may be a devious bitch, but she’s not stupid. These people were.”

“What people?”

“After I dropped off Drew here, I drove to my apartment on the Montaigne. As you know, one of the few privileges of my office is my diplomatic parking space in front of the building. To my surprise, it was occupied and, adding to my irritation, there were several other nearby open spaces. Then I saw that there were two men seated in front and the driver was on his car phone, not exactly a normal sight at two o’clock in the morning, especially when the driver was subject to a five-hundred-franc fine for parking where he did without a government plate or the Quai d’Orsay emblem on the front window.”

“As always,” said Moreau, nodding his head appreciatively, “your diplomat’s penchant for introducing an event with perception and suspense is evident, but
please
, Henri, the personal insult to you aside, what happened?”

“The bastards started shooting at me!”

“
What?
” Latham leapt out of his chair.

“You heard me! My vehicle is naturally protected against such assaults, so I backed up quickly, then smashed into them, pinning their car to the curb.”

“
Then
what?” cried Ambassador Courtland, now standing up.

“The two men got out the other side and raced away.
My heart pounding, I called the police on my car phone, demanding that they alert the Sûreté.”

“You’re something else,” said an astonished Drew softly. “You rammed them while they were firing at you?”

“The bullets could not penetrate, even the glass.”

“Believe me, some can—like full jackets.”

“Really?” Bressard’s face grew pale.

“You were quite right, Henri,” said Moreau, once more nodding his head, “your former wife would have been much more efficient. Now, shall we all calm down a bit and look at what our brave hero has achieved for us? We have the vehicle, a license plate, and no doubt several dozen fingerprints which we will immediately deliver to Interpol. I salute you, Henri Bressard.”

“There are bullets that can penetrate
bulletproof
automobiles …?”

The connection to Jodelle’s suicide and the subsequent meeting at the Villier house on Parc Monceau was all too obvious. Coupled with the attack on Latham, the situation demanded several decisions: Both Bressard and Drew would be protected around the clock by Deuxième personnel—the Frenchman conspicuously, Latham less obviously, at his own instructions. Which was why the unmarked Deuxième car would remain across the street from Drew’s building until relief came to replace it or the American emerged in the morning, whichever happened first. Finally, under no conditions could Jean-Pierre Villier, who would also be guarded, be permitted to prowl the seamier sections of Paris in search of anyone.

“I myself will make that absolutely clear to him,” said Claude Moreau, chief of the Deuxième Bureau. “Villier is a treasure of France!… In addition, my wife would either kill me or have numerous affairs in our own bed if I permitted anything to happen to him.”

The disturbing doubts about the embassy’s transport pool were resolved quickly. The dispatcher was a substitute no one knew, but he had been accepted for the night shift because of his credentials. He had disappeared minutes after Latham’s car drove off down the avenue Gabriel.
A French-speaking American in Paris was part of the Nazi movement.

The hours before dawn had been taken up with endless analyses of the situation—the question of who and who not to include being a priority—as well as lengthy conversations on open scrambler between Moreau and Wesley Sorenson in Washington. The two specialists in deep-cover intelligence sounded like dual practitioners of the darkest arts, creating a scenario of deep-cover pursuits. Drew approved of what he heard. He was good, not as coldly intellectual as his brother Harry, but surely superior when it came to quick decisions and physicality. Moreau and Sorenson, however, were the masters in deception and penetration; they had survived the unpublicized slaughter of spies during the bloody depths of the Cold War. He could learn from such men, even as they programmed him.

Latham walked sleepily out of the elevator and down the hall to his flat. As he started to insert his key, his eyes were suddenly riveted on the lock. It wasn’t there! Instead, there was a hollow circle. The entire lock had been surgically removed, either by a laser or a high-powered miniature hand saw. He touched the door; it swung open, revealing the shambles within. Drew yanked his automatic out of its shoulder holster and cautiously slipped inside. His apartment was ravaged; upholstery was knifed everywhere, cushions torn apart, their stuffings scattered; drawers were pulled out, their contents dumped on the floor. It was the same in the two bedrooms, the closets, the kitchen, the bathrooms, and especially his study, where even the rugs were sliced. His large desk had been literally hacked to pieces, the assault team looking for hidden caches where secret papers might be concealed. The destruction was overwhelming; nothing was as it had been. And in his exhaustion Latham simply did not want to think about it; he needed rest; he needed sleep. He briefly considered the waste and how illogical it was; confidential materials were kept in his office safe on the second floor of the embassy. Old Jodelle’s enemies—now
his
enemies—should have guessed that.

He rummaged in one of his closets, sardonically
amused to find an object that intruders would have taken or smashed had they recognized what it was. The twenty-six-inch steel bar had large rubber caps at either end, each cap holding an alarm mechanism. When he traveled and stayed in hotel rooms, he invariably braced it against the door and the floor, activating the alarms by twisting the caps. If whatever door he shoved it against was opened from the outside, a series of ear-shattering whistles went off that would shock the interloper into racing away. Drew carried it to the lockless door of his flat, activated the alarms, and, anchoring it to the floor, braced it against a lower panel. He walked into his destroyed bedroom, threw a sheet over the ripped mattress, removed his shoes, and lay down.

Within minutes he was asleep, and within minutes after that his telephone rang. Disoriented, Latham lurched off the unbalanced surface of the bed, grabbing the phone from the bedside table. “Yes?… Hello?”

“It’s Courtland, Drew. I’m sorry to call at this hour, but it’s necessary.”

“What happened?”

“The German ambassador—”

“He
knew
about tonight?”

“Nothing at all. Sorenson called him from Washington and apparently raised hell. Shortly thereafter Claude Moreau did the same.”

“They’re pros. What’s going down?”

“Ambassador Heinrich Kreitz will be here at nine o’clock this morning. Sorenson and Moreau want you here too. Not only to corroborate the reports, but obviously to protest vigorously the personal attack on you.”

“Those two old veteran spooks are mounting a pincer assault, aren’t they?”

“I haven’t the vaguest idea what you’re talking about.”

“In the Second World War it was a German strategy. Close in on both sides, squeeze the enemy so he has to run north or south or east or west. If he chooses wrong, he’s finished, which he will be because the points are covered.”

“I’m not military, Drew, but I really don’t think Kreitz is an enemy.”

“No, he’s not. In fact, he’s a man with a historical conscience. But even he doesn’t know who’s in his ranks here in Paris. He’ll damn well stir up the waters, and that’s what Sorenson and Moreau want him to do.”

“Sometimes I think you people speak a different language.”

“Oh, we do, Mr. Ambassador. It’s called obfuscation in the interests of deniability. You might say it’s our lingua franca.”

“You’re babbling.”

“I’m dead tired.”

“How long does it take you to get from your place to the embassy?”

“First I have to go to the garage where I keep my car—”

“You’re in a Deuxième vehicle now,” Courtland interrupted.

“Sorry, I forgot.… Depending on the traffic, about fifteen minutes.”

“It’s ten past six. I’ll have my secretary wake you at eight-thirty and I’ll see you at nine. Get some rest.”

“Maybe I should tell you what happened—” It was too late, the ambassador had hung up the phone. It was just as well, thought Latham. Courtland would want details, prolonging the conversation. Drew crawled up on the bed, managing at the last to replace his telephone. The only good thing to come out of the night was the fact that he’d be spending a week, or however long it took to restore his flat, at a very fine hotel, and Washington would pick up the bill.

The white glider swept down in the late afternoon cross-currents into the valley of the Brotherhood. Upon landing, it was immediately hauled under a covering of green screening. The Plexiglas canopies of both the forward and aft cockpits sprang open; the pilot in pure white coveralls emerged from the former, his very much older passenger from the latter.

“
Komm
,” said the flyer, nodding toward a motorcycle with a sidecar attached. “
Zum Krankenhaus
.”

“Yes, of course,” replied the civilian in German, turning and lifting a black leather medical bag out of the aircraft. “I presume Dr. Kroeger is here,” he added, climbing into the sidecar as the pilot mounted the seat and started the engine.

“I would not know, sir. I’m only to bring you to the medical clinic. I do not know any names.”

“Then forget I mentioned one.”

“I heard nothing, sir.” The motorcycle raced into one of the screened corridors and, making several turns, sped across the valley to the north end of the flatland. There, again covered by the screening, was the usual one-story structure, but somehow different. Where the other structures were basically solidly built of wood, this was heavier, sturdier—cinder block layered with concrete—with an enormous generator complex on the south side, the continuous hum low, powerful. “I’m not permitted inside, Doctor,” said the pilot, stopping the motorcycle in front of the gray steel door.

“I’m aware of that, young man, and I’ve been told how to proceed. Incidentally, I’m to leave in the morning, at the earliest light. I trust you know that.”

“Yes, I do, sir. The winds then are the best.”

“They couldn’t be any worse.” The doctor got out of the sidecar; the flyer sped off as his passenger walked to the door, looked up at the camera lens above, and pressed the round black button to the right of the frame. “Dr. Hans Traupman by orders of General von Schnabe.”

Thirty seconds later the door was opened by a man in his forties dressed in white hospital attire. “Herr Doktor Traupman, how good to see you again,” he said enthusiastically. “It’s been several years since the lectures in Nuremberg. Welcome!”

“
Danke
, but I wish there were a less arduous way of getting here.”

“You would dislike the mountain approach even more, I assure you. One walks for miles, and the snow gets heavier with every few hundred meters. Secrecy has its price.… Come, have some schnapps and relax for a
few minutes while we chat. Then you’ll see our progress. I tell you, it’s remarkable!”

“Drinks later, and we’ll chat as we observe,” countered the visiting physician. “I have a lengthy meeting with von Schnabe—not a pleasant prospect—and I want to learn as much as I can as quickly as I can. He’ll ask for judgments and hold me accountable.”

“Why am I excluded from this meeting?” asked the younger doctor resentfully as both sat down in the clinic’s anteroom.

“He thinks you’re too enthusiastic, Gerhardt. He admires your enthusiasm but he doesn’t trust it.”

“My God, who knows more about the process than I do? I
developed
it! With all respect, Traupman, this is my field of expertise, not yours.”

“I know that and you know that, but our nonmedical general can’t understand it. I am a neurosurgeon and have a certain reputation in cranial operations, therefore he turns to that reputation, not to the real expertise. So convince me.… As I gather, according to you it’s theoretically possible to alter the thought process without drugs or hypnosis—that theory somewhere in the ozones of parapsychological science fiction, but then so were heart and liver transplants not too many years ago. How is it actually done?”

“You practically answered that yourself.” Gerhardt Kroeger laughed, his eyes bright. “Take the ‘trans’ out of ‘transplant’ and insert the letters
i
and
m
.”

“Implant?”

“You implant steel plates, don’t you?”

“Of course. For protection.”

“So have I.… You’ve performed lobotomies, not so?”

“Naturally. To relieve electrical pressures.”

“You’ve just said another magic word, Hans. ‘Electrical,’ as in electrical impulses, the
brain
’s electrical impulses. I simply microcalibrate and tap into them with an object so infinitesimal compared to a plate that it would be a mere shadow on an X ray.”