“Of course not,” agreed the man from the SCrete
with quiet emphasis.
“Your superior, what’s his name? The one
assigned to the incident.”
“Prudhomme. Inspector First Grade Prudhomme.”
“Is he frank with you?”
“Yes. He thinks I’m something of a mechanical
ex-soldier whose instincts may outdistance his
intellect, but he sees that I’m willing. He talks to
me.”
“You’ll be kept with him for a while. Should he
decide to go back and see Mattilon, let me know
immediately. Paris may lose a respected attorney. My
name must not surface.”
“He would go back to Mattilon only if Converse
was found. And if word came to the Surete as to his
whereabouts, I’d reach you instantly.”
“There could be another reason, Colonel. One
that might provoke a persistent man into
reexamining his progress or lack of it in spite of
orders to the contrary.”
116 ROBERT LUDLUM
‘ Orders to the contrary, sir?”
“They will be issued. This Converse is solely our
concern now. All we needed was a name. We know
where he’s heading. We’ll find him.”
“I don’t understand, General.”
“News has come from the hospital. Our
chauffeur has taken a turn for the better.”
“Good news, indeed.”
“I wish it were. The sacrifice of a single soldier
is abhorrent to any field commander, but the
broader tactics must be kept in view, they must be
served. Do you agree?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Our chauffeur must not recover. The larger
strategy Colonel.”
“If he dies, the efforts to find Converse will be
intensified. And you’re right, Prudhomme will
reexamine everything, including the lawyer,
Mattilon.”
“Orders to the contrary will be issued. But watch
him.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And now we need your expertise, Colonel. The
talents you developed so proficiently while in the
service of the Legion before we brought you back to
a more civilized life.”
“My gratitude isn’t shallow. Whatever I can do.”
“Can you get inside the Hospital of Saint Jerome
with as little notice as possible?”
“With no notice. There are fire escapes on all
sides of the building and it’s a dark night, heavy
with rain. Even the police stay in doorways. It’s
child’s play.”
“But man’s work. It has to be done.”
“I don’t question such decisions.”
“A blockage in the windpipe, a convulsion in the
throat.”
“Pressure applied through cloth, sir. Gradually
and with no marks, a patient’s self-induced
trauma…. But I would be derelict if I didn’t repeat
what I said, General. There’ll be a search of Paris,
then a large-scale manhunt. The killer will be
presumed to be a rich American, an inviting target
for the Surete.”
“There’ll be no search, no manhunt. Not yet. If
it is to be it will come later, and if it does, a
convicted corpse will be trapped in the net…. Go
into the field, my young friend. The chauffeur,
Colonel; the broader strategy must be served.”
“He’s dead,” said the man in the telephone
booth, and hung up.
5
Erich Leifhelm . . . born March 15,1912, in Mu-
nich to Dr. Heinrich Leifhelm and his mistress,
Marta Stoessel. Although the stigma of his illegiti-
macy precluded a normal childhood in the
upper-middle-class, morality-conscious Cermany of
those years, it was the single most important factor in
his later preeminence in the National Socialist
movement. At birth he was denied the name of Leif-
helm; until 1931 he was known as Erich Stoessel.
Joel sat at a table in the open cafe in
Copenhagen’s Kastrup Airport, trying to concentrate.
It was his second attempt within the past twenty
minutes, the first he abandoned when he realised he
was absorbing nothing, seeing only black letters
forming an unending string of vaguely recog~uzable
words relating to a figure in the outer reaches of his
mind. He could not focus on that man; there were
too many interferences, real and imagined. Nor had
he been able to read on the two-hour flight from
Paris, having opted for economy class, hoping to melt
in with the greater number of people in the larger
section of the aircraft. The concept at least was valid;
the seats were so narrow and the plane so fully
occupied that elbows and forearms were virtually
immobile. The conditions prohibited his taking out
the report, both for reasons of space and for fear of
the proximity to straying eyes.
Heinrich Leifhelm moved his-mistress and their
son to the town of Eichstatt, fifty odd miles north of
Munich, visiting them now and then, and providing
an adequate but not overly comfortable standard of
living. The doctor was apparently torn between
maintaining a successful practice with no social
blemishes_in Munich and a disinclination to aban
117
118 ROBERT LUDLUM
don the stigmatised and child. According to close
acquaintances of Erich Stoessel-Leifhelm, these
early years had a profound effect on him. Although
he was too young to grasp the full impact of World
War I, he was later haunted by the memory of the
small households subsistence level falling as the
elder Leifhelm’s ability to contribute lessened with
the burden of wartime taxes. Too, his father’s visits
served to heighten the fact that he could not be ac-
knowledged as a son and was not entitled to the
privileges accorded two half brothers and a half
sister, strangers he was never to know and whose
home he could not enter. Through the absence of
proper lineage, certified by hypocritical documents
and more hypocritical church blessings, he felt he
was denied what was rightfully his, and so there was
instilled in him a furious sense of resentment,
competitiveness, and a deep-seated anger at existing
social conditions. By his own admission, his first
conscious longings were to get as much as he could
for himself both materially and in the form of
recognition through the strength of his own
abilities, and, by doing so, strike out at the status
quo which had tried to emasculate him. By his
mid-teens, Stoessel-Leifhelm was consumed with
anger.
Converse stopped reading, suddenly aware of
the woman across the half-deserted cafe; she was
seated alone at a table, looking at him. Their eyes
met and she turned away, placing her arm on the
low white railing that enclosed the restaurant
studying the thinning, late-night crowds in the
terminal, as if waiting for someone. Startled, Joel
tried-to analyze the look she had given him. Was it
recogrution? Did she know him? Know his face? Or
was it appraisal? A well-dressed whore cruising the
airport in search of a mark, seeking out a lonely
businessman far away from home? She turned her
head slowly and looked at him again, now obviously
upset that his eyes were still on her. Then abruptly,
in two swiftly defined motions, she glanced at her
watch, tugged at her wide-brimmed hat, and opened
her purse. She took out a Krone note, placed it on
the table, got up, and walked rapidly toward the en-
trance of the cafe. Beyond the open gate she
walked faster her strides longer, heading for the
arch that led to the bag
THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 119
gage-claim area. Converse watched her in the dull
white neon light of the terminal, shaking his head,
annoyed at his alarm. With his attache case and
leather-bound report, the woman had probably
thought he was some kind of airport official. Who
was the mark, then?
He was seeing too many shadows, he thought, as
he followed the graceful figure nearing the arch. Too
many shadows that held no surprises, no alarms.
There had been a man on the plane from Paris
sitting several rows in front of him. Twice the man
had gotten up and gone to the toilet, and each time
he came back to his seat he had looked hard at
Joel studied him, actually. Those looks had been
enough to prime his adrenaline. Had he been spotted
at the De Gaulle Airport? Was the man an employee
of Jacques-Louis Bertholdier? . . . As a man in an
alley had been Don’t think about that! He had
flicked off an oval of dried blood on his shirt as he
had given himself the command.
“I can always tell a good ale Yank! Never missl”
That had been the antiquated salutation in
Copenhagen as both Americans waited for their
luggage.
“Well, I missed once. Some son of a bitch on a
plane in Geneva. Sat right next to me. A real guinea
in a three-piece suit, that’s what he west He spoke
English to the stewardess so I figured he was one of
those rich Cuban spicks from Florida, you know what
I mean?”
An emissary in salesman’s clothes. One of the
diplomats.
Geneva. It had started in Geneva.
Too many shadows. No surprises, no alarms. The
woman went through the arch and Joel pulled his
eyes away, forcing his attention back to the report on
Erich Leifhelm. Then a slight, sudden movement
caught the corner of his eye; he looked back at the
woman. A man had stepped out of an unseen recess;