Read The Aquitaine Progression Online
Authors: Robert Ludlum
The Aquitaine Progression (25 page)
“He did,” said the actor. “He pushed an ID in front of my face when I opened the door, but I didn’t have my glasses on. But when he was leaving I made it clear I wanted to know who the hell he was.”
“Who was he?”
“He said his name was Fowler. Avery Fowler.”
“Wait!”
“What?”
“
What
did you say?” Converse reeled under the impact
of the name. He physically had to steady himself, grabbing the nearest solid object, a bedpost, to keep from buckling.
“What’s the matter, Joe? What’s wrong with you?”
“That name! Is this some kind of joke—a bad joke—a bad
line
! Were you
put
on that plane? Did I walk into you? Are you part of it, Mr.
Actor
? You’re damned good at what you do!”
“You’re either juiced or sick. What are you talking about?”
“This
room
, your note!
Everything!
That
name
! Is this whole goddamned night a setup?”
“It’s morning, young man, and if you don’t like this room you can stay wherever you like as far as I’m concerned.”
“Wherever …?” Joel tried to evade the blinding flashes of light from the Quai du Mont Blanc and clear the searing blockage in his throat. “No … I
came
here,” he said hoarsely. “There’s no way you could have known I’d do that. In Copenhagen, on the plane … I got the last ticket in first class; the seat next to me had been sold, an aisle seat.”
“That’s where I always sit. On the aisle.”
“Oh,
Jesus
!”
“Now you’re rambling.” Dowling glanced at the empty glass on the bedside table, then over at the bureau top where there was a silver tray and a bottle of Scotch whisky provided by an accommodating desk clerk. “How much sauce have you had?”
Converse shook his head. “I’m not drunk.… I’m sorry. Christ, I’m sorry! You had nothing to do with it. They’re using you—trying to use you to find me! You
saved my
… my job … and I went after you. Forgive me.”
“And you don’t look like someone who’s that worried about a job,” said the actor, his scowl more one of concern than anger.
“It’s not the employment, it’s … pulling it off.” Joel silently took a deep breath to control himself, postponing the moment when he would have to confront the awesome implications of what he had just heard.
Avery Fowler!
“I want to succeed in what I’m doing; I want to win,” he added limply, hoping to conceal the slip he saw Dowling had spotted. “All lawyers want to win.”
“Sure.”
“I
am
sorry, Cal.”
“Forget it,” said the actor, his voice casual, his look not
casual at all. “Where I’m at these days screeching’s an hourly occurrence—only, they don’t say anything. I think you just did.”
“No, I overreacted, that’s all. I told you I was new at this. Not the law, just this … not talking directly, I guess says it.”
“Does it?”
“Yes. Please believe that.”
“All right, if you want me to.” Dowling again looked at his watch. “I’ve got to go, but there’s something else that might be helpful in saving that”—the actor paused convincingly—“job of yours.”
“What is it?” asked Converse tightly, trying not to leap at the question.
“As this Fowler was leaving I had a couple of thoughts. One was that I’d been pretty hard on a fellow who was simply doing
his
job, and the other was just plain selfish. I hadn’t cooperated, and that could come back and snap me in the ass. Of course if you never showed up here, I’d get my note back and it wouldn’t matter. But if you did, and you wore a black hat, my tail could be in a bucket of boiling lead.”
“That should have been your first concern,” said Joel truthfully.
“Maybe it was, I don’t know. At any rate, I told him that in the course of our conversation I asked you for drinks, to come out on location if you wanted to. He seemed puzzled at the last part, but he understood the first. I asked whether I should call him at the embassy if you took me up on either invitation, and he said no, I shouldn’t do that.”
“What?”
“In short words, he made it very plain that my calling him would only louse up this ‘in-house query.’ He told me to wait for
his
call. He’d phone me around noon.”
“But you’re filming. You’re on location.”
“That’s the beauty part, but the hell with it. There are mobile telephone hookups; the studios insist on them these days. It’s another kind of screeching called budgetary controls. We get our calls.”
“You’re losing me.”
“Then find me. When he calls me, I’ll call
you
. Should I tell him you reached me?”
Surprised, Converse stared at the aging actor, the risk-taker. “You’re way ahead of me, aren’t you?”
“You’re pretty obvious. So was he, when I put it together—which
I just did. This Fowler wants to reach you, but he wants to do it solo, away from those people you don’t want to meet. You see, when he was at the door and we had our last words, I was bothered by something. He couldn’t sustain the role—any more than you did on the plane—but I couldn’t be certain. He kind of fell apart on his exit, and that you never do even if you’ve got to hold in a sudden attack of diarrhea.… What do I tell him, Joe?”
“Get his telephone number, I guess.”
“Done. You get some sleep. You look like a coked-up starlet who’s just been told she’s going to play Medea.”
“I’ll try.”
Dowling reached into his pocket and took out a scrap of paper. “Here,” he said approaching Converse and handing it to him. “I wasn’t sure I was going to give this to you, but I damn well want you to have it now. It’s the mobile number where you can reach me. Call me after you’ve talked to this Fowler. I’m going to be a nervous wreck until I hear from you.”
“I give you my word.… Cal, what did you mean when you mentioned ‘the beauty part’ and forgetting about it?”
The actor’s head shifted back in perfect precision, at just the right angle for anyone in the audience. “The son of a bitch asked me what I did for a living.… As they say in the Polo Lounge,
Ciao
, baby.”
Converse sat on the edge of the bed, his head pounding, his body tense. Avery Fowler!
Jesus!
Avery Preston Fowler
Halliday
!
Press
Fowler …
Press Halliday!
The names bombarded him, piercing his temples and bouncing off the walls of his mind, screaming echoes everywhere. He could not control the assault; he began to sway back and forth, his arms supporting him, a strange rhythm emerging, the beat accompanying the name—names—of the man who had died in his arms in Geneva. A man he had known as a boy, the adult a stranger who had manipulated him into the world of George Marcus Delavane and a spreading disease called Aquitaine.
This Fowler wants to reach you, but he wants to do it solo, away from those people you don’t want to meet
.… The judgment of a risk-taker.
Converse stopped rocking, his eyes on the Leifhelm dossier on the floor. He had assumed the worst because it was beyond his comprehension, but there was an alternative, an outside
possibility, perhaps under the circumstances even a probability. The geometrics were there; he could not trace them but they
were there
! The name Avery Fowler meant nothing to anyone but him—at least not in Bonn, not as it pertained to a murder in Geneva. Was Dowling right? Joel had asked the actor to get the man’s telephone number, but without conviction. The image of a dark-red limousine driving through the embassy’s gates would not leave him.
That
was the connection that had enveloped the shock of Avery Fowler’s name. The man using it was from the embassy, and at least part of the embassy was part of Aquitaine, therefore the impostor was part of the trap. That was the logic; it was simple arithmetic … but it was not geometry. Suppose there was a break in the line, an insertion from another plane that voided the arithmetic progression? If there was, it was in the form of an explanation he could not possibly perceive unless it was given to him.
The shock was receding; he was finding his equilibrium again. As he had done so many times in courtrooms and boardrooms, he began to accept the totally unexpected, knowing he could do nothing about it until something else happened, something over which he had no control. The most difficult part of the process was forcing himself to function until it
did
happen, whatever it was. Conjecture was futile; all the probabilities were beyond his understanding.
He reached down for the Leifhelm dossier.
Erich Leifhelm’s years with the Bundesgrenzschutz were unique and require a word about the organization itself. In the aftermath of all wars, a subjugated national police force is required in an occupied country for reasons ranging from the simple language problem to the occupying power’s need to understand local customs and traditions. There must be a buffer between the occupation troops and a vanquished people so as to maintain order. There is also a side issue rarely elaborated upon or analyzed in the history books, but no less important for that lack. Defeated armies can still possess talent, and unless that talent is utilized the humiliation of defeat can ferment, at minimum distilling itself into hostilities that are counterproductive to a stabilized political climate, or, at maximum, turning into internal subversion
that can lead to violence and bloodshed at the expense of the victors and whatever new government that is being formed. To put it bluntly, the Allied General Staff recognised that it had on its hands another brilliant and popular military man who would not suffer the anonymity of early retirement or a corporate boardroom. The Bundesgrenzschutz—literally, federal border police—like all police organizations, was and is a paramilitary force, and as such the logical repository for men like Erich Leifhelm. They were the leaders; better to use them than be abused by them. And as always among leaders, there are those few who surge forward, leading the pack. During these years foremost among those few was Erich Leifhelm.
His early work with the Grenzschutz was that of a military consultant during the massive German demobilization, then afterward the chief liaison between the police garrisons and the Allied occupation forces. Following demobilization, his duties were mainly concentrated in the trouble spots of Vienna and Berlin where he was in constant touch with the commanders of the American, British and French sectors. His zealous anti-Soviet feelings were rapidly made known by Leifhelm throughout the command centers and duly noted by the senior officers. More and more he was taken into their confidence until—as it had happened before with the Prussians—he was literally considered one of them.
It was in Berlin where Leifhelm first came in contact with General Jacques-Louis Bertholdier. A strong friendship developed, but it was not an association either one cared to parade because of the age-old animosities between the German and French militaries. We were able to trace only three former officers from Bertholdier’s command post who remembered—or would speak of—seeing the two men frequently at dinner together in out-of-the-way restaurants and cafés, deep in conversation, obviously comfortable with each other. Yet during those occasions when Leifhelm was summoned to French headquarters in Berlin, the formalities were icily proper, with names rarely used and
certainly never first names, only ranks and titles. In recent years, as noted above, both men have denied knowing each other personally, albeit admitting their paths may have crossed.
Where previously acknowledgment of their friendship was discouraged because of traditional prejudices, the current reasons are far more understandable. Both are spearheads in the Delavane organization. The names on the primary list are there with good reason. They are influential men who sit on the boards of multinational corporations that deal in products and technology ranging from the building of dams to the construction of nuclear plants; in between are a hundred likely subsidiaries throughout Europe and Africa which could easily expedite sales of armaments. As detailed in the following pages, it can be assumed that Leifhelm and Bertholdier communicate through a woman named Ilse Fishbein in Bonn. Fishbein is her married name, the marriage itself questionable in terms of motive insofar as it was dissolved years ago when Yakov Fishbein, a survivor of the camps, emigrated to Israel. Frau Fishbein, born in 1942, is the youngest illegitimate daughter of Hermann Göring.
Converse put down the dossier and reached for a memo pad next to the telephone on the bedside table. He then unclipped from his shirt pocket the gold Cartier ball-point pen Val had given him years ago and wrote down the name Ilse Fishbein. He studied both the pen and the name. The Cartier status symbol was a remembrance of better days—no, not really better, but at least more complete. Valerie, at his insistence, had finally quit the New York advertising agency, with its insane hours, and gone free-lance. On her last day of formal work, she had walked across town to Cartier and spent a considerable portion of her last paycheck for his gift. When he asked her what he had done outside of his meteoric rise in Talbot, Brooks and Simon to deserve a gift of such impractical opulence, she had replied: “For making me do what I should have done a long time ago. On the other hand, if free-lancing doesn’t pay off, I’ll steal it back and pawn it.… What the hell, you’ll probably lose it.”
Free-lancing had paid off very well, indeed, and he had never lost the pen.
Ilse Fishbein gave rise to another kind of thought. As much as he would like to confront her, it was out of the question. Whatever Erich Leifhelm knew had been provided by Bertholdier in Paris and relayed by Frau Fishbein here in Bonn. And the communication obviously contained a detailed description as well as a warning; the American was dangerous. Ilse Fishbein, as a trusted confidante in Aquitaine, could undoubtedly lead him to others in Germany who were part of Delavane’s network, but to approach her was to ask for his own … whatever it was they intended for him at the moment, and he was not ready for that. Still, it was a name, a piece of information, a fact he was not expected to have, and experience had taught him to keep such details up front and reveal them, spring them quietly when the moment was right. Or use them himself when no one was looking. He was a lawyer, and the ways of adversary law were labyrinthine; whatever was withheld was no-man’s-land. On either side; to the more patient, the spoils.
