known, too that nothing would be accomplished if
they remained where they were.
Contrary to what he had told Peter Stone,
Nathan knew precisely whom he had to see not one
man, but three. The President, the Speaker of the
House, and the Attorney General. The apex of the
executive branch, the leader of the legislative, and
the nahon’s chief law-enforcement officer. He would
see no one of lesser stature, and it was far more
advantageous to see them all together rather than
individually. He had to see them, whether separately
or as a group, and there was his dilemma; it was the
trap. One did not simply pick up a telephone and
make appointments with such men. There were
procedures, formalities, and screening processes to
ensure the validity of the requests; men with their
responsibilities could not waste time. The trap. The
minute his name was mentioned, the word would go
out. Delavane himself would know within a matter of
hours, if not minutes.
Despite Joel’s gratuitous and highly dubious
statements to Peter Stone, it was not easy to reach
powerful government
638 ROBERT LUDIUM
figures any more than it was logical to have a judge
issue a court order under seal that somehow
miraculously, legally, guaranteed extraordinary
protection for those same people without informing
the entire security apparatus as to why the
protection was deemed vital. Ridiculous! Such court
orders were reasonable where intimidated witnesses
were concerned before a criminal trial and even
afterward in terms of fabricated rehabilitation, but
that process hardly applied to the White House, the
Congress, or the Justice Department. Joel had taken
a legal maneuver, ballooned it way out of prob-
ability, and scaled it up into orbit for a reason, of
course. Stone and his colleagues had provided
depositions.
And yet, thought Simon, there was an odd logic
in Converse’s misapplied exaggerations. Not in any
way Joel had considered but as a means to reach
these men. “A court, a single judge . . .” Converse
had said to Stone. That was the logic, the rest was
nonsense. The so preme Court, a justice of that
court. Not a request from one Nathan Simon who
would have to be screened, if only in terms of
content, not character, but an urgent message to the
President from a venerated justice of the Supreme
Court! No one would dare question such a man if
he pronounced his business to be between the
President and himself. Presidents were far more
solicitous of the Court than of Congress, and with
good reason. The latter was a political battleground,
the former an arena of moral judgment. Nathan
Simon knew the man he could call and see, a justice
in his late seventies. The Court was not in session;
October was a month away. The justice was
somewhere in New England; his private number was
at the office.
Nathan blinked, then brought his hand up to
shield his eyes. For a brief moment the fireball of
the early sun had careened a blinding ray through a
geometric maze of glass and steel across the park
and entered his window before being blocked by a
distant building. And suddenly, at that instant of
blindness, he was given the answer to the terrifying
quesbon of where and when the unrest that had to
be the prelude for the eruption of violence. There
was scheduled throughout Free Europe, Great
Britain, Canada, and the United States an
internationally coordinated week-long series of
antinuclear protests. Millions of concerned people
joining hands and snarling traffic in the streets of
the major cibes and capitals, making their voices
heard at the expense of normalcy. Rallies to be held
in the parks and in the squares and in
THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 639
rout government buildings. Politicians and statesmen,
pereiving as always the power of ground swells, had
promised o address huge crowds everywhere in
Paris and Bonn, tome and Madrid, Brussels and
London, Toronto, Ottawa, lew York, and
Washington. And again, as always, both the incere
advocates and the posturing sycophants of the bodies
olitic would blame the lack of arms-control progress
on the ntransigence of evil adversaries, not on their
own deficien~ies. The genuine and the phony would
walk hand in hand cross the many podiums, none
sure of the other’s stripes.
Crowds everywhere would espouse deeply felt,
deeply divisive issues: the believers of universal
restraint would be gifted against those who intensely
believe in the effectiveness -Jf raw power, and the
latter would surely be heard. No one thought the
massive demonstrations would be without incidents,
yet how far might these minor confrontations
escalate if the incidents themselves were massive?
Units of terrorist fanatics financed anonymously,
convinced of their mission to infiltrate and savagely
disrupt so as to get their messages across, messages
of real and or imagined grievances that had nothing
to do with the protests, creating chaos primarily be-
cause the crowds were not of their world or their
fevers. Crowds- everywhere. These were the hordes
of people who could be galvanised by sudden
violence and worked into a state of madness. It
would be the prelude. Everywhere.
The demonstrations were scheduled to begin in
three days.
Peter Stone walked down the wide dirt path
toward the lake behind the A-frame house
somewhere in lower New Hampshire he did not
know precisely where, only that it was twenty minutes
from the airport. It was close to dusk, the end of a
day filled with surprises, and apparently more were
to come. Ten hours ago, in his room at the
Algonquin, he had called Swissair to see if the flight
from Geneva was on schedule; he had been told it
was thirty-four minutes ahead of schedule and,
barring landing delays, was expected a half-hour
early. It was the first surprise and an inconsequential
one. The second was not. He had arrived at Kennedy
shortly before two o’clock, and within a few minutes
he heard the page over the public address system for
a ‘Mr. Lackland,” the name he had given Nathan
Simon.
“Take Pilgrim Airlines to Manchester, New
Hampshire,’
640 ROBERT LUDIUM
the lawyer had said. “There’s a reservation for Mr.
Lacklanc on the three-fifteen plane. Can you make
it?”
“Easily. The flight from Geneva’s early. I assume
that’s La Guardi a? ”
“Yes. You’ll be met in Manchester by a man
with red hair. I’ve described you to him. See you
around five-thirty.”
Manchester, New Hampshire? Stone had been
so sure Simon would ask him to fly to Washington
that he had not even bothered to put a toothbrush
in his pocket.
Surprise number three was the courier from
Geneva. A prim, gaunt Englishwoman with a face of
pale granite and the most uncommunicative pair of
eyes he had seen outside of Dzerzhinsky Square. As
arranged, she had met him in front of the Swissair
lounge, a copy of the Economist in her left hand.
After studying the wrong side of his out-of-date
government identification, she had given him the
attache case and made the following statement in
high dudgeon. “I don’t like New York, I never have.
I don’t like flying either, but everyone’s been so
lovely and it’s better to get the whole whack-a-doo
over all at once, righto? They’ve arranged for me to
take the next plane back to Geneva. I miss my
mountains. They need me and I do try to give them
my very all, righto?”
With that abstruse bit of information she had
smiled wanly and started back somewhat uncertainly
toward the escalator. It was then that Stone had
begun to understand. The woman’s eyes did not
reveal her condition but the whole person did. She
was drunk or, perhaps, “pickled” having over-
come her fear of flying with liquid courage.
Converse had made a strange choice of a courier,
Stone had thought, but had instantly changed his
mind. Who could be less suspect?
The fourth surprise came at the Manchester
airport. An ebullient, middle-aged redheaded man
had greeted him as though they were long-lost
fraternity brothers from some Midwestern university
in the late thirties, when such fraternal ties were
deemed far deeper than blood. He was effusive to
the point where Stone was not only embarrassed by
the display of camaraderie but seriously concerned
that unwarranted attention would be drawn to them.
But once in the parking lot, the redhead had
suddenly slammed him into the doorframe of the
car and shoved the barrel of a gun into the back of
his neck while the man’s free hand stabbed his
clothes for a weapon.
THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 641
“I wouldn’t take the risk of going through metal
detectors with a gun, damn it!” protested the ex-CIA
agent.
“Just making sure, spook. I’ve dealt with you
assholes, you think you’re something else. Me, I was
Federal.”
“Which explains a great deal, ‘ said Stone, meaning
it.
“You drive.
“Is that a question or an order?”
“An order. All spooks drive,” replied the redhead.
Surprise number five came in the car as Stone