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 person
254 ROBERT LUDLUM
ally 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 obstrucbons and
one was being explained to him now by an admiral
in the Fifth Naval District.
“The status of the Hag 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.
THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 255
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.
256 R08ERT LUDLUM
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
sabres 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 sabre 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
THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 257
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 1, 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 proselytiser 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