The Aquitaine Progression (39 page)

“What else? National security.”

“I’d have to spell out the reasons, you know that.”

“I
don’t
know that. Extensions are granted for all sorts of contingencies. You need more time to prepare. A source or a witness has been postponed—illness or an injury. Or personal
matters—goddamn it, your brother-in-law’s funeral, your sister’s grief—they’ve delayed your progress!”

“Forget it, Joel. If I tried that, they’d tie you in with Press and good-bye Charlie. They killed him, remember?”

“No,” said Converse firmly. “It’s the other way around. It separates us further.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’ve thought about this, tried to put myself in Avery’s shoes. He knew his every move was being watched, his telephone probably tapped. He said the geography, the Comm Tech-Bern merger, the breakfast, Geneva itself, everything had to be logical; it couldn’t be any other way. At the end of that breakfast he said if I agreed we’d talk later.”

“So?”

“He knew we’d be seen together—it was unavoidable—and I think he was going to give me the words to say if someone in Aquitaine asked me about him. He was going to turn everything around and give me the push I needed to reach these men.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Avery was going to stamp me with the label I had to wear to get inside Delavane’s network. We’ll never know, but I have an idea he was going to tell me to say that he, A. Preston Halliday, suspected me of being one of
them
, that he had inserted himself in the Comm Tech-Bern merger to threaten me with exposure, to
stop
me.”

“Wait a minute.” Connal shook his head. “Press didn’t know what you were going to do or how you were going to do it.”

“There was only one way
to
do it, he knew that! He also knew I’d reach the same conclusion once I understood the particulars. The only way to stop Delavane and his field marshals is to infiltrate Aquitaine. Why do you think all that money was put up front? I don’t need it and he knew he couldn’t buy me. But he knew it could be used—would
have
to be used to get inside and start talking, start gathering evidence.… Call Remington again. Tell him to prepare an extension.”

“It’s not Remington, it’s the commander of SAND PAC, an admiral named Hickman. David said I could expect a call from him tomorrow. I’ll have to figure that one out and phone Meagen back. Hickman’s uptight; he wants to know who you are and why all the interest.”

“How well do you know this Hickman?”

“Fairly well. I was with him in New London and Galveston. He requested me as his CLO in San Diego; that’s what gave me the stripe.”

Converse studied Fitzpatrick’s face, then without saying anything he turned and walked to the open balcony doors. Connal did not interrupt; he understood. He had seen too many attorneys, himself included, struck by a thought they had to define for themselves, an idea upon which a case might hinge. Joel turned around slowly, haltingly, the dim, abstract shadows of a possibility coming into focus.

“Do it,” he began. “Do what I think your brother-in-law might have done. Finish what he might have said but never got a chance to say it. Assume he and I had that meeting after the merger conference. Give me the springboard I need.”

“As you would say, clarification, please, counselor.”

“Present Hickman with a scenario as it might have been written by A. Preston Halliday. Tell him that flag’s got to remain in place because you have reason to believe I was connected with your brother-in-law’s murder. Explain that before Halliday flew to Geneva he came to see you—as he did—and told you he was meeting me, an opposing attorney he suspected of being involved with corrupt export licensing, a legal front for some boardroom profiteers. Say he said he was going to confront me. Preston Halliday had a history of causes.”

“Not for the past ten or twelve years, he didn’t,” corrected Fitzpatrick. “He joined the establishment with a vengeance and with a healthy respect for the dollar.”

“It’s the history that counts. He knew that; it was one of the reasons he came to me. Say you’re convinced he did confront me, and since millions are made out of that business, you think I methodically had him removed, covering myself by being there when he died. I have a certain reputation for being methodical.”

Connal lowered his head and ran his hand through his hair, then walked in thought toward the hunt table. He stopped, raised his gaze to one of the racehorse prints and turned back to Converse. “Do you know what you’re asking me to do?”

“Yes. Give me the springboard that’ll catapult me right in the middle of those would-be Genghis Khans. To do it you’ll have to go further with Hickman. Because you’re so personally
involved and so goddamned angry—which again is the truth—tell him to explain your position to whoever wants the flag released. It’s a nonmilitary matter, so you’re taking what you know to the civilian authorities.”

“I understand all that,” said Fitzpatrick. “Everything I say
is
the truth, as I saw it when I flew over here to find you. Except that I reverse the targets. Instead of being the one who can help me, you’re now the one I want nailed.”

“Right on, counselor. And I’m met by a welcoming committee at Leifhelm’s estate.”

“Then I guess you don’t see.”

“What?”

“You’re asking me to go on record implicating you in first-degree murder. I’ll be branding you as a killer. Once I say it, I can’t take the words back.”

“I know that. Do it.”

George Marcus Delavane twisted his torso in his chair behind the desk in front of the strangely colored fragmented map on the wall. It was not a controlled movement; it was an action in search of control. Delavane did not care for obstructions and one was being explained to him now by an admiral in the Fifth Naval District.

“The status of the flag is Four Zero,” said Scanlon. “To get it released we’d have to go through Pentagon procedures, and I don’t have to tell you what that means. Two senior officers, one from naval intelligence, plus a supporting signature from the National Security Agency; all would have to appear on the request sheet, the level of the inquiry stated, thus escalating the request to a sector demand. Now, General, we can do all this, but we run the risk—”

“I know the risk,” interrupted Delavane. “The signatures are the risk, the identities a risk. Why the Four Zero? Who placed it and
why
?”

“The chief legal officer of SAND PAC. I checked him out. He’s a lieutenant commander named Fitzpatrick, and there’s nothing in his record to give us any indication as to why he did it.”

“I’ll tell you why,” said the warlord of Saigon. “He’s hiding something. He’s protecting this Converse.”

“Why would a chief legal officer in the Navy protect a civilian under these circumstances? There’s no connection.
Furthermore, why would he exercise a Four Zero condition? It only calls attention to his action.”

“It also clamps a lid down on that flag.” Delavane paused, then continued before the admiral could interrupt. “This Fitzpatrick,” he said. “You’ve checked the master list?”

“He’s not one of us.”

“Has he ever been considered? Or approached?”

“I haven’t had time to find out.” There was the sound of a buzzer, not part of the line over which the two men spoke. Scanlon could be heard punching a button, his voice clear, officious. “Yes?” Silence followed, and seconds later the admiral returned to Palo Alto. “It’s Hickman again.”

“Maybe he has something for us. Call me back.”

“Hickman wouldn’t give us anything if he had the slightest idea we existed,” said Scanlon. “In a few weeks, he’ll be one of the first to go. If it were up to me he’d be shot.”

“Call me back,” said George Marcus Delavane, looking at the map of the new Aquitaine on the wall.

Chaim Abrahms sat at the kitchen table in his small stone Mediterranean villa in Tzahala, a suburb of Tel Aviv favored by the retired military and those with sufficient income or influence to live there. The windows were open and the breezes from the garden stirred the oppressive summer’s night air. There was air conditioning in two other rooms and ceiling fans in three more, but Chaim liked the kitchen. In the old days he and his men would sit in primitive kitchens and plan raids; in the Negev, ammunition was often passed about while desert chicken boiled on a wood stove. The kitchen was the soul of the house. It gave warmth and sustenance to the body, clearing the mind for tactics—as long as the women left after performing their chores and did not interrupt the men with their incessant trivialities. His wife was asleep upstairs; so be it. He had little to say to her anymore, or she to him; she could not help him now. And if she could, she would not. They had lost a son in Lebanon,
her
son she said, a teacher, a scholar, not a soldier, not a killer by choice. Too many sons were lost on both sides, she said. Old men, she said, old men infected the young with their hatreds and used Biblical legends to justify death in the pursuit of questionable real estate. Death, she cried. Death before talk that might avert it! She had forgotten the early days; too many forgot too quickly. Chaim Abrahms did not forget, nor would he ever.

And his sense of smell was as acute as ever. This lawyer, this Converse, this talk! It was all too clever; it had the stench of cold, analytical minds, not the heat of believers. The Mossad specialist was the best, but even the Mossad made mistakes. The specialist looked for a motive, as if one could dissect the human brain and say this action caused that reaction; this punishment that commitment to vengeance. Too damned
clever
! A believer was fueled by the heat of his convictions. They were his only motive, and they did not call for clever manipulations.

Chaim knew he was a plainspoken man, a direct man, but it was not because he was unintelligent or lacked subtle perceptions; his prowess on the battlefield proved otherwise. He was direct because he knew what he wanted, and it was a waste of time to pretend and be clever. In all the years he had lived with his convictions he had never met a fellow believer who allowed himself to waste time.

This Converse knew enough to reach Bertholdier in Paris. He showed how much more he knew when he mentioned Leifhelm in Bonn and specifically named the cities of Tel Aviv and Johannesburg. What more did he have to prove?
Why
should he prove it if his belief was there? Why did he not plead his case with his first connection and not waste time?… No, this lawyer, this Converse, was from somewhere else. The Mossad specialist said the motive was there for affiliation. He was wrong. The red-hot heat of the believer was
not
there. Only cleverness, only talk.

And the specialist had not dismissed Chaim’s sense of smell. As well he should not, as the two sabras had fought together for years, as often as not against the Europeans and their conniving ways—those immigrants who held up the Old Testament as if they had written it, calling the true inhabitants of Israel uneducated ruffians or clowns. The Mossad specialist respected his sabra brother; it was in his look, that respect. No one could dismiss the instincts of Chaim Abrahms, son of Abraham, archangel of darkness to the enemies of Abraham’s children. Thank God his wife was asleep.

It was time to call Palo Alto.

“My general, my friend.”

“
Shalom
, Chaim,” said the warlord of Saigon. “Are you on your way to Bonn?”

“I’m leaving in the morning—we’re leaving. Van Headmer is in the air now. He’ll arrive at Ben Gurion at
eight-thirty, and together we’ll take the ten o’clock flight to Frankfurt, where Leifhelm’s pilot will meet us with the Cessna.”

“Good. You can talk.”

“
We
must talk now,” said the Israeli. “What more have you learned about this Converse?”

“He becomes more of an enigma, Chaim.”

“I smell a fraud.”

“So do I, but perhaps not the fraud I thought. You know what my assessment was. I thought he was no more than an infantry point, someone being used by more knowledgeable men—Lucas Anstett among them—to learn far more than they knew or heard rumors about. I don’t discount a degree of minor leaks; they’re to be anticipated and managed, scoffed at as paranoia.”

“Get to the point, Marcus,” said the impatient Abrahms, who always called Delavane by his middle name. He considered it a Hebrew name, in spite of the fact that Delavane’s father had insisted on it for his first son in honor of the Roman Caesar—the philosopher Marcus Aurelius, a proselytizer of moderation.

“Three things happened today,” continued the former general in Palo Alto. “The first infuriated me because I could not understand it, and frankly disturbed me because it portended a far greater penetration than I thought possible from a sector I thought
impossible
.”

“What was it?” the Israeli broke in.

“A firm prohibition was placed on getting part of Converse’s service record.”

“Yes!” cried Abrahms, in his voice the sound of triumph.

“What?”

“Go on, Marcus! I’ll tell you when you’re finished. What was the second calamity?”

“Not a calamity, Chaim. An explanation so blatantly offered it can’t be turned aside. Leifhelm called me and said Converse himself brought up Anstett’s death, claiming to be relieved, but saying little else except that Anstett was his enemy—that was the word he used.”

“So instructed!” Abrahm’s voice reverberated around the kitchen. “What was the third gift, my general?”

“The most bewildering as well as enlightening—and, Chaim, do not shout into the phone. You are not at one of your stadium rallies or provoking the Knesset.”

“I am in the field, Marcus. Right
now
! Please continue, my friend.”

“The man who clamped the lid down on Converse’s military record is a naval officer who was the brother-in-law of Preston Halliday.”

“Geneva! Yes!”

“Stop that!”

“My apologies, my dear friend. It’s just all so perfect!”

“Whatever you have in mind,” said Delavane “may be negated by the man’s reason. This naval officer, this brother-in-law, believes Converse engineered Halliday’s murder.”