The Apocalypse Watch (73 page)

Drew leapt out of the chair and raced to the phone. Barely sitting down, he began pressing the numbered buttons. “Wes, it’s me. Why the voodoo?”

“Has Ambassador Daniel Rutherford Courtland in Paris left the room?”

“Yeah, sure, what is it?”

“In the event this conversation is compromised, I, Wesley Theodore Sorenson, director of Consular Operations, take full responsibility for this action under Article Seventy-three of the Clandestine Activities Statutes as they apply to unilateral, individual decisions in the field—”

“
Hey
, goddammit, that’s
my
line!”

“Shut up!”

“What
is
it, Wes?”

“Mount a team, fly to Nuremberg, and take Dr. Hans Traupman. Kidnap the bastard and bring him to Paris.”

R
obert Durbane sat at the desk in his office next to the sealed-off Communications Center, a troubled man. It was more than a feeling, for feelings were abstract, based on anything from an upset stomach to an early morning argument with one’s wife. His stomach was perfectly normal and his wife of twenty-four years was still his best friend; the last time they had argued was when their daughter married a rock musician. She was for it; he was not. He lost. The marriage was not only successful, but his long-haired son-in-law “hit” something called “the charts,” and made more money performing for a month in Las Vegas than Bobby Durbane would make in half a century. And what really rankled the father-in-law was that his daughter’s husband was a nice young man who drank nothing stronger than white wine, didn’t do drugs, had a master’s degree in medieval literature, and completed crossword puzzles faster than Bobby. It was not a logical world.

So why was he so uncomfortable? he mused. It probably started with Colonel Witkowski’s requisition for a computer printout of all telephone and radio calls made from the comm center during the past seven days. It was then compounded by the subtle yet still fairly obvious behavior of Drew Latham, a man he considered to be a friend. Drew was avoiding him, and it was not like the Cons-Op officer. Durbane had left two messages for Latham, one at his rue du Bac apartment, which was still in the process of being restored, and one at the embassy message center. Neither had been returned, and Bobby knew that Drew was in the embassy,
had
been there all day, sequestered in the ambassador’s upstairs quarters.
Durbane understood that calamitous events had taken place, that Courtland’s wife was so severely wounded during the terrorist attack the night before last that she was not expected to live, but withal, it was not Latham’s way to ignore messages from his friend “the egghead” who filled in those “detestable crossword puzzles.” Especially considering Bobby had saved his life several nights before.

Something was wrong; something had happened that Durbane could not understand, and there was only one way to find out what it was. He picked up his telephone, a phone that could access any other in the embassy regardless of restrictions, and pressed the numbers for Courtland’s living quarters.

“Yes?”

“Mr. Ambassador, it’s Robert Durbane in the comm center.”

“Hello … Bobby,” said Courtland hesitantly. “How are you?”

“I think it’s my place to ask you that, sir.”
Something was wrong. The usually unflappable State Department man was uncomfortable
. “I refer to your wife, of course. I hear she was taken to a hospital.”

“They’re doing everything possible, and that’s all I can ask. Other than your well-known courtesy, which I appreciate, is there anything else?”

“Yes, sir. I know no one’s supposed to know Drew Latham is alive, but I work closely with Colonel Witkowski. Therefore, I also know that Drew is up there, and I’d like very much to talk to him.”

“Oh … you rather startle me, Mr. Durbane. Hold on, please.”

The line went on Hold, the silence unnerving, as if a decision was being made. Finally, Drew’s voice came on the phone. “Hello, Bobby?”

“I left a couple of messages for you. You didn’t call me back.”

“I didn’t write either. Besides having been shot and gone on to a far better world, I’ve been up to my ass in confusion, plus a few other less attractive things.”

“I can imagine. However, I think we should talk.”

“Really? About what?”

“That’s what I’d like to find out.”

“Is this double crostics? I’m no good at those, you know that.”

“I know I want to talk to you, and not on the phone. May I?”

“Wait a minute.” Again the silence was pervasive, but shorter than the previous one. “All right,” said Latham, back on the line. “There’s an elevator I never knew about that stops on your floor. I’ll be on it, escorted by three armed marines, and you’re to clear the corridor. We’ll be there in five minutes.”

“It’s gone this far?” asked Durbane quietly. “
Me?
I’m suddenly a danger zone?”

“We’ll talk, Bobby.”

Seven minutes and twenty-eight seconds later, Drew sat in the single chair in front of Durbane’s desk, his office having been swept by the marine contingent, and no weapons found.

“What the hell
is
this?” said the comm center’s chief of operations. “What in God’s name have I
done
to warrant these Gestapo tactics?”

“You may have used the right word, Bobby.
Gestapo
, as in the Nazi lexicon.”

“What are you
saying?
”

“Do you know a woman named Phyllis Cranston?”

“Certainly. She’s the secretary to what’s-his-name, the third or fourth attaché below the ambassador’s chargé d’affaires. So what?”

“Did she tell you who a Colonel Webster was and where he was staying?”

“As a matter of fact she did, but she didn’t have to.”

“What do you mean?”

“Who do you think set up the communications between the embassy and the wandering Colonel Webster? Two, or was it three changes of hotels. Between your movements and Mrs. de Vries’s, even Witkowski couldn’t keep it all straight.”

“Then everything was kept under wraps?”

“I believe the overused phrase, ‘maximum classified,’
was affixed to the equally abused ‘order of the day.’ Why do you think I was so harsh with Cranston?”

“I didn’t know you were.”

“I demanded to know how
she
knew. I even threatened her with exposure, which wasn’t easy for me because my mother was an alcoholic. It’s a rotten disease.”

“What did she tell you?”

“She fell apart, crying and mumbling some religious claptrap. She’d been on a binge the night before and her defenses were nowhere.”

“You must know her pretty well.”

“You want it straight, Drew?”

“That’s why I’m here, Bobby.”

“My wife and I went to one of those embassy receptions, and Martha—she’s my wife—saw Phyllis hanging around the bar and lapping up the booze.
I
figured, how else could a normal person get through one of those functions without an edge on, hell, I’ve done it myself. But Martha knew better; she’d lived through my mother’s last years with us. She told me to try to help her, that she needed help due to ‘low self-esteem’ and phrases like that. So I tried and obviously failed.”

“Then you never mentioned to anyone else who I was or what hotel I was at?”

“Good God, no. Even when that prick Cranston works for came sniffing around about your staff and resources, I told him I hadn’t the vaguest idea who was taking over for you. I was grateful that Phyllis had gotten my message about keeping her mouth shut.”

“Why was he sniffing around?”

“That part sounded legitimate,” replied Durbane. “Hell, everyone knows Consular Operations doesn’t oversee the embassy’s kitchen menus. He said he’d been approached by a French developer and asked to invest in some hot real estate. He thought your staff might check out the guy’s legitimacy. It’s par for his course, Drew. Cranston says he spends more time lunching with Paris businessmen than with those who could do us some good over here.”

“Why didn’t he go to Witkowski?”

“I didn’t have to ask him to know why. This isn’t a security matter; he can’t use an arm of the embassy for a personal financial transaction.”

“What am I, a little toe?”

“No, you’re more like a roving outer eye, overlooking the inner operations of a major consular post, which could be interpreted as advising personnel regarding their behavior, financial and otherwise. At least that’s what your official curriculum vitae suggests.”

“Someone should rewrite it,” said Latham.

“Why? It’s deliciously obscure.”

Drew leaned back in his chair, arching his neck, his eyes briefly on the white ceiling, and sighing audibly. “I owe you an apology, Bobby, and I truly mean that. When I learned from Phyllis Cranston that you were one of the two people she told about who and where I was, I jumped—no, slid—into the wrong conclusion. I thought it was bolstered by what happened the other night when the neos damn near killed me in the embassy car with that son of a bitch … what did he call himself?… C-
Zwölf
. The timing seemed—well, it seemed off center.”

“It was,” agreed Durbane, “and there was a good reason why the Nazis got there before we did—”

“That was it. How come?”

“C-
Zwölf
. We discovered it the next morning and included it in the report. Your German driver gave the high frequency calibrations of our backup interior radio to his friends miles away and left the switch on
transmit
. They heard everything you said from the time you left the embassy. When you called me for two backups, they moved quickly.”

“Christ, it was so simple, and I never thought to look down at the radio casing!”

“If you had, you would have seen a small red dot in the center of the panel, signifying transmission.”

“Goddammit!”

“For heaven’s sake, don’t blame yourself. You’d been through a terrible evening; it was the wee hours of the morning and you were exhausted.”

“I hate to tell you, Bobby, but that’s never an excuse.
When you get to that point, you punch in all the adrenaline you’ve got, because that’s when you’re vulnerable.… It’s strange though, isn’t it? The neos centered in on Phyllis Cranston.”

“Why is it strange? She’s unstable, and instability is milk and honey to those wanting to penetrate.”

“And her boss?”

“I don’t see the connection.”

“It’s there, my friend, oh, Lord, it’s there.”

“If it is,” said Durbane, staring at Latham’s unfocused eyes, “it’s made with a pair of pliers. Concentrate on the two of them; hit the alcoholic and squeeze the greedy, ambitious superior. One or the other will break without your spreading yourself around.”

“Thanks to you, Bobby, the first didn’t. Now let’s go after the second. Reach Phyllis’s boss and tell him you’ve talked to one of my people who’s covering for me. Say my assistant agreed to check with a few bankers if he’ll give you the name of this developer.”

“I don’t understand—”

“If he doesn’t give you a name, we’ll know he can’t. If he does, we’ll know who’s behind him, who’s programming him.”

“I can do that right now,” said Durbane, picking up his phone and dialing the attaché’s office. “Phyllis, it’s me, Bobby. Let me speak to the pinstriped idiot—and, Phyl, it has
nothing
to do with you.… Hello, Bancroft, it’s Durbane in the comm center. I just spoke to Latham’s head investigator, and although he’s busy as hell, he figures he can make a couple of calls for you to some banking types. What’s the name of this real estate broker who wants you to invest?… I see, yes, I see. Yes, I’ll tell him that. I’ll get back to you.” Durbane hung up while writing on a notepad. “The name’s Vaultherin, Picon Vaultherin, with a company of the same name. Bancroft said to tell your office that his consortium has exclusive rights to roughly twenty square miles of choice property in the Loire Valley.”

“Isn’t that interesting,” said Drew, turning his head and gazing at the wall.

“There’s been talk for years that a lot of those old châteaus are falling apart and nobody can afford to put them back together. Also, that developers are foaming at the mouth to buy up land and build dozens of mini estates at enormous profit. I might put in a few dollars myself, or at least steer my son-in-law to look into it.”

“Your son-in-law?” asked Latham, turning back to the comm center chief.

“Never mind, it’s too embarrassing. You wouldn’t know who he is any more than I would if he weren’t married to my daughter.”

“I’ll leave it alone.”

“Please do. How do you want to move on this Vaultherin?”

“I’ll take it to Witkowski, who’ll give it to Moreau at the Deuxième. We need a background check on Vaultherin … and also a sweep of those exclusive rights in the Loire Valley.”

“What’s one got to do with the other?”

“I don’t know, I’d just like to explore it. Someone may have made a mistake.… And remember, Bobby, I never came down here. I couldn’t, I’m dead.”

It was nine-thirty in the evening, the embassy kitchen having delivered an excellent dinner for Karin and Drew to the ambassador’s living quarters. The stewards had set the dining room table, complete with candles and two bottles of outstanding wine—one red at room temperature (for Latham’s thick, rare
bifteck
)—and the other a chilled Chardonnay (De Vries’s filet of sole almondine). Daniel Courtland, however, had not joined them, on orders of his government, for it was understood that Colonel Stanley Witkowski would appear and projected strategies be discussed that the ambassador could not be privy to. Deniability was again the order of the day.

“Why do I get the idea that this is my final meal before being executed?” said Drew, finishing his last slice of blood-rare beef and drinking from his third glass of Pommard wine.

“It will be if you continue to eat like that,” replied
Karin. “You’ve just consumed enough cholesterol to clog the arteries of a dinosaur.”

“Who can tell anymore? They keep switching. Margarine’s good, butter is terrible … butter is better, margarine’s worse. I’m waiting for a new medical analysis that says nicotine is a cure for cancer.”