The Aquitaine Progression (97 page)

The maître d’ nodded, adding, “I’ve had the call put
through to my private office, Herr General. It’s right inside the foyer.”

“That pleases me. Thank you.”

Erich Leifhelm shook his head subtly as he passed table 55 near the entrance. The lone diner acknowledged the dismissal with a nod of his head. In all the years of strategies and tactics, military and political, that dismissal would prove to be one of the field marshal’s gravest errors.

Two men stood in the foyer, one looking at his watch, the other looking annoyed. To judge by their expensive clothes they belonged to the Ambassador’s regular clientele and were obviously waiting for late luncheon companions, probably their wives, as they had not gone to their table. A third man stood outside the glass doors in the corridor; he was dressed in the maintenance uniform of the hotel and watched the two men inside.

Leifhelm thanked the maître d’ as the latter held open the door to his modest office. The restaurateur closed the door and returned to the dining room. The two men—swiftly, as one—raced inside after the old soldier, who was at that moment picking up the telephone.

“
Was geht hier vor? Wer ist …!
”

The first man lunged across the desk and gripped Leifhelm’s head, clamping the general’s mouth with very strong hands. The second man pulled a hypodermic needle from his pocket and removed the rubber shield as he tore at Leifhelm’s jacket and then the collar of his shirt. He plunged the needle into the base of the general’s throat, released the serum, pulled out the syringe and immediately began massaging the flesh as he restored the collar and pulled the jacket back in place.

“He’ll be mobile for about five minutes,” said the doctor in German. “But he can neither speak nor reason. His motor controls are now mechanical and have to be guided.”

“And after five minutes?” asked the first man.

“He collapses, probably vomiting.”

“A nice picture. Hurry! Get him up and
guide
him, for God’s sake! I’ll check outside and knock once.”

Seconds later the knock came, and the doctor, with Leifhelm firmly in his grip, propelled the general out of the office and through the glass doors into the hotel corridor.

“This way!” ordered the third man in the maintenance uniform, heading to the right.

“
Quickly!
” added the doctor.

Among the strollers in the plush hallway and the diners heading for the restaurant, a number recognized the legendary old soldier and stared at his pale face with the lips trembling, trying to speak. Or scream.

“The great man has had terrible news,” said the doctor repeatedly and reverentially. “It’s terrible, simply terrible!”

They reached a service elevator, which was on
HOLD
, and went inside. A stretcher on wheels stood against the padded back wall. The third man took a key from his pocket, inserted it in the
HOLD
lock to release the controls and pressed the nonstop switch for the basement. The other two lifted Leifhelm up on the stretcher and covered his entire body with a sheet.

“They’ll start talking up there,” said the first man. “His bulls will come running. They’re never far away.”

“The ambulance is downstairs now by the elevator door,” said the man in the maintenance uniform. “The plane is waiting at the airfield.”

The once great field marshal of the Third Reich threw up under the sheet.

Jacques-Louis Bertholdier let himself into the apartment on the Boulevard Montaigne and removed his silk jacket. He walked over to the mirrored bar against the wall, poured a vodka, threw in two cubes of ice from a sterling-silver bucket, and strolled to the window beyond the elegantly upholstered couch. The tree-lined boulevard was so peaceful at midafternoon, so spotlessly clean, and somehow so pastoral although very much a part of the city. There were times when he thought it was the essence of the Paris he loved, the Paris of influence and wealth, whose inhabitants never had to soil their hands. It was why he had purchased the extravagant flat and installed his most extravagant and desirable mistress. He needed her now. My
God
, how he needed release!

The Legionnaire shot and garroted in his own automobile! In the parking lot of the Bois de Bologne! And Prudhomme, the filthy bureaucrat, supposedly in Calais! No fingerprints!
Nothing!
The once and foremost general of France needed an hour or so of tranquility.

“
Janine!
Where
are
you? Come out, Egyptian! I trust you’re wearing what I instructed you to wear. If you need reminding,
it’s the short black Givenchy, nothing underneath, you understand! Absolutely
nothing
.”

“Of course, my general,” came the words, strangely hesitant, from behind the bedroom door.

Bertholdier laughed silently to himself as he turned and walked back to the couch. Le Grand Machin was still an event to be reckoned with, even by highly sexual twenty-five-year-olds who loved money and fast cars and elegant apartments as much as they adored having their bodies penetrated. Well, he was too upset to disrobe, his nerves too frayed to go through any prolonged preliminary nonsense. He had something else in mind—release without effort.

The sound of the turning knob broke off his thoughts. The door opened and a raven-haired girl emerged, her elongated, perfectly proportioned face set in anticipation, her brown eyes wide in a distant wonder. Perhaps she had been smoking marijuana, thought Bertholdier. She was dressed in a short negligée of black lace, her breasts wreathed in gray, her hips revolving in sexual provocation as she approached the couch.

“Exquisite, you whore of the Nile. Sit down. It’s been a dreadful day, a
horrible
day, and it is not over. My driver will return in two hours, and until then I need rest—and release. Give it to me,
Egyptian
.” Bertholdier zipped down the fly of his trousers and reached for the girl. “Fondle it, as I will fondle you, and then do what you can do.” He grabbed her breasts and pulled her head down into his groin. “Now.
Now. Do
it!”

A blinding flash filled the room, and two men walked out of the bedroom. The girl sprang back onto the couch as Bertholdier looked up in shock. The man in front put the camera in his pocket; his companion, a short, middle-aged heavy-set man with a gun in his hand, walked slowly toward the legend of France.

“I admire your taste, General,” he said in a gruff voice. “But then, I suppose I’ve always admired you, even when I disagreed with you. You don’t remember me, but you court-martialed me in Algiers, sending me to the stockade for thirty-six months because I struck an officer. I was a sergeant major and he had brutally abused my men with excessive penalties for minor offenses. Three years for hitting a Paris-tailored pig. Three years in those filthy barracks for taking care of my men.”

“Sergeant Major Lefèvre,” said Bertholdier with authority, calmly zipping up his fly. “I remember. I never forget. You
were guilty of treasonous conduct: assaulting an officer. I should have had you shot.”

“There were moments during those three years when I would have welcomed the execution. But I’m not here to discuss Algiers—it’s when I knew you were all crazy. I’m here to tell you you’re coming with me. You’ll be returned unharmed to Paris in several days.”

“Preposterous!” spat out the general. “You think your weapon frightens me?”

“No, it’s merely to protect myself from you, from the last gesture of a brave and famous soldier. I know you too well to think that threats of bodily harm, or even death, could move you. I have another persuasion, however, one you’ve just made quite irresistible.” The ex-sergeant major withdrew a second, oddly shaped gun from his pocket. “This weapon does not hold bullets. Instead it fires darts containing a chemical that accelerates the heart to the bursting point. My thoughts were to threaten you with fielding the photograph after your death, showing that the great general died ignominiously at what he did best. Now, perhaps, there is another approach. The angle was advantageous for certain expert brushwork—your position and the expression on your face would not be touched, of course—but your companion might easily become a
he
rather than a she, a little boy rather than a girl. There were rumors of your excesses once, and a hastily arranged marriage few could understand. Was this the secret Le Grand Machin ran from all his life? Was it the threat the great De Gaulle held over the head of his popular but all too ambitious and rebellious colonel? That the appetites of this pretender, this would-be successor, were so extensive they included anything he could get his hands on, his body on, the gender making no difference. Small boys when there were no women. The whispers of corrupted young lieutenants and captains, of rapes, conveniently called interrogations in your quarters—”

“
Enough!
” cried Bertholdier, shooting up from the couch. “Further conversation is pointless. Regardless of how absurd and unfounded your accusations are, I will not permit my name to be dragged through filth! I want that film!”

“My God, it’s true,” said the ex-infantry sergeant. “All of it.”

“The
film
!” shouted the general. “Give it to me!”

“You shall have it,” replied Lefèvre. “On the plane.”

*  *  *

Chaim Yakov Abrahms walked with a bowed head out of the Ihud Shivat Zion synagogue on the Ben Yehuda in Tel Aviv. The solemn crowds outside formed two deep flanks of devoted followers, men and women who wept openly at the terrible suffering this great man, this patriot-soldier of Israel, had been forced to endure at the hands of his wife. “
Hitabdut
,” they said in hushed voices. “
Ebude atzmo
,” they whispered to one another, cupping mouths to ears, out of Chaim’s hearing. The rabbis would not relent; the sins of a despicable woman were visited upon this son of sabras, this fierce child of Abraham, this Biblical warrior who loved the land and the Talmud with equal fervor. The woman had been refused burial in a holy place; she was to remain outside the gates of the
beht hakvahroht
, her soul left to struggle with the wrath of Almighty God, the pain of that knowledge an unbearable burden for the one left behind.

It was said she did it but of vengeance and a diseased mind. She had her daughters. It was the father’s son—always the
father’s
son—who had been slain on the father’s battlefield. Who would weep more, who
could
weep more, or be in greater anguish than the father? And now this, the further agony of knowing that the woman he had given his life to had most heinously violated God’s Talmud. The shame of it, the
shame
! Oh, Chaim, our brother, father, son and leader, we weep with you. For you! Tell us what to do and we will do it. You are our
king
! King of Eretz Yisrael, of Judea and Samaria, and all the lands you seek for our protection! Show us the way and we shall follow, O
King
!

“She’s done more for him in death than she could ever have done alive,” said a man on the outskirts of the crowd and not part of it.

“What do you think really happened?” asked the man’s companion.

“An accident. Or worse, far worse. She came to our temple frequently, and I can tell you this. She never would have considered
hitabdut
.… We must watch him carefully before these fools and thousands like them crown him emperor of the Mediterranean and he marches us to oblivion.”

An Army staff car, two flags of blue and white on either side of the hood, made its way up the street to the curb in front of the synagogue. Abrahms, wearing his bereavement like a heavy mantle of sorrow only his extraordinary strength could endure, kept bowing his lowered head to the crowds,
his eyes opening and closing, his hands reaching out to touch and be touched. At his side a young soldier said, “Your car, General.”

“Thank you, my son,” said the legend of Israel as he climbed inside and sank back in the seat, his eyes shut in anguish while weeping faces pressed against the windows. The door closed, and when he spoke, his eyes still closed, there was anything but anguish in his harsh voice. “Get me
out
of here! Take me to my house in the country. We’ll all have whisky and forget this
crap
. Holy rabbinical bastards! They had the temerity to
lecture
me! The next war, I’ll call up the rabbis and put those Talmudic chicken-shits in the front lines! Let them lecture while the shrapnel flies up their asses!”

No one spoke as the car gathered speed and left the crowds behind. Moments later Chaim opened his eyes and pulled his thick back from the seat; he stretched his barrel-chested frame and reclined again in a more comfortable position. Then slowly, as if aware of the stares of the two soldiers beside him, he looked at both men, his head whipping back and forth.

“Who
are
you?” he shouted. “You’re not my men, not my
aides
!”

“They’ll wake up in an hour or so,” said the man in the front seat beside the driver. He turned to face Abrahms. “Good afternoon, General.”

“
You!
”

“Yes, it is I, Chaim. Your goons couldn’t stop me from testifying before the Lebanon tribunal, and nothing on earth could stop me from what I’m doing today. I told you about the slaughter of women and children and quivering old men as they pleaded for their lives and watched you laugh. You call yourself a Jew? You can’t begin to understand. You’re just a man filled with hate, and I don’t care for you to claim to be any part of what I am or what I believe. You’re shit, Abrahms. But you’ll be brought back to Tel Aviv in several days.”

One by one the planes landed, the propeller-driven aircraft from Bonn and Paris having flown at low altitudes, the jet from Israel, a Dassault-Breguet Mystère 10/100, dropping swiftly from twenty-eight thousand feet to the private airfield at Saint-Gervais. And as each taxied to a stop at the end of the runway, there was the same dark-blue sedan waiting to drive the “guest” and his escort to an Alpine chateau fifteen
miles east in the mountains. It had been rented for two weeks from a real estate firm in Chamonix.