upper latch, snapped it open, pulling the upper
section back; the rush of air was deafening. He
spotted the handle of the lower release and gripped
it, prepared to yank it up as soon as the ground
beyond slowed down. It would be in only seconds.
The sounds below grew louder and the sunlight
outside created a racing
THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 405
silhouette of the train. Then the abrasive words
broke through the dissonance and he froze.
“Very well thought out, Herr Converse! Some win,
some lose. You lost”
Joel spun around. The man yelling at him in the
metal chamber was the passenger who had gotten on
the train at Dusseldorf, the apologetic commuter
who had sat next to him until the obese salesman
had asked him to exchange seats. In his left hand was
a gun held far below his waist, in his right the
ever-respectable attache case.
“You’re a surprise,” said Converse.
“I would hope so. I barely made the train in
Dusseldorf. Ach, three cars I walked through like a
madman but not the madman you are, ja?”
“What happens now? You fire that gun and save
the world from a madman?’
“Nothing so simplistic, pilot.”
“Pilot.”
“Names are immaterial, but I am a colonel in the
West German Luftwaffe. Pilots only kill one another
in the air. It is embarrassing on the ground.”
“You’re comforting.”
“I also exaggerate. One disconcerting move on
your part and I shall be a hero of the Fatherland,
having cornered a crazed assassin and killed him
before he killed me.”
“‘Fatherland’? You still call it that?”
“Natiirlich. Most of us do. From the father comes
the strength; the female is the vessel.”
“They’d love you in a Vassar biology class.”
“Is that meant to be amusing?”
“No, just disconcerting in a very minor way,
nothing serious.” Joel had moved imperceptibly until
his back was against the bulkhead, his whole mind,
his entire thinking process, on pre-set. He had no
choice except to die, now or in a matter of hours
from now. “I suppose you have an itinerary for me,”
he asked as he swung his left arm forward with the
question.
“Quite definitely, pilot. We will get off the train
at Wesel, and you and I will share a telephone, my
gun firmly against your chest. Within a short time a
car will meet us and you will be taken ”
Converse slammed his concealed right elbow into the
406 ROBERT LUDLUM
bulkhead, his left arm in plain sight. The German
glanced at the door of the forward car. Alow!
Joel lunged for the gun, both hands surging for
the black barrel as he crashed his right knee with all
the force he could command into the man’s
testicles. As the German fell back he grabbed his
hair and smashed the man’s head down onto a
protruding hinge of the opposite door.
It was over. The German’s eyes were wide,
alarmed, glassy. Another scout was dead, but this
man was no ignorant conscript from an impersonal
government, this was a soldier of Aquitaine.
A stout woman screamed in the window, her
mouth opened wide with her screams, her face
hysterical.
“Wesel. . . !”
The train had slowed down and other excited
faces appeared at the window, the frenzied crowd
now blocking those who tried to open the door.
Converse lunged across the vibrating metal
enclosure to the exit panel. He grasped the latch
and pulled it open, crashing the door into the
bulkhead. The steps were below, gravel and tar
beyond. He took a deep breath and plunged outside
curling his body to lessen the impact of the hard
ground, and when he made contact he rolled over,
and over, and over.
23
He careened off a rock and into a cluster of
bushes. Nettles and coarse tendrils enveloped him,
scraping his face and hands. His body was a mass of
bruises, the wound in his left arm moist and
stinging, but there was no time even to acknowledge
pain. He had to get away; in minutes the whole area
would be swarming with men searching for him,
hunting for the murderer of an officer in the
Federal Republic’s air arm. It took no imagination
to foresee what would happen next. The passengers
would be questioned including the salesman and
suddenly a newspaper would be in someone’s hand,
a photograph studied, the connection made. A
crazed killer last seen in a back street in Brussels
was not on his way
THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 407
to Paris or London or Moscow. He was on a train
out of Bonn, passing through Cologne, Essen and
Dusseldorf and he killed again in a town called
Wesel.
Suddenly he heard the high-pitched wail of a
horn. He looked up the small hill toward the tracks;
a south-bound train was gathering speed out of the
station several thousand feet away. Then he saw his
hat; it was on the hill, halfway down. Joel crept out
of the tangling brush, staggered to his feet, and ran
to it, refusing to listen to that part of his mind which
told him he could barely walk. He grabbed the hat
and began running to his right. The south-bound
train passed; he raced up the hill and across the
tracks, heading for an old building, apparently
deserted. More of its windows were shattered than
intact. He might rest there for a few moments but no
longer; it was too obvious a hiding place. In ten or
fifteen minutes it would be surrounded by men with
guns aimed at every exit, every window.
He tried desperately to remember. How had he
done it before? How had he eluded the patrols in the
jungles north of Phu Loc? . . . Vantage points! Get
where you can see them but they can’t see you! But
there were tall trees then and he was younger and
stronger and could climb them, concealing himself
behind green screens of full branches on firm limbs.
There was nothing like that here on the outskirts of
a railroad yard . . . or maybe there wasl To the right
of the building was a landfill dump, tons of earth and
debris piled high in several pyramids; it was his only
choice.
Gasping, his arms and legs aching, his wound
inflamed, he ran toward the last of the pyramids. He
reached it, propelled his way around the mass, and
started climbing the rear side, his feet slipping into
soft earth, and wood and cardboard and patches of
garbage, where it had been layered. The sickening
smells took his mind off the pain. He kept crawling,
clawing with each slipping foot. If he had to, he
could burrow himself into the stinking mess. There
were no rules for survival, and if sinking himself into
the putrid hill kept a spray of bullets from ending his
life, so be it.
He reached the top and lay prone below the
ridge, dirt and protruding debris all around him.
Sweat rolled down his face, stinging the scrapes on
his face; his legs and arms were heavy with pain, and
his breathing was erratic from the trembling caused
not only by unused muscles but by fear. He looked
down at the outskirts of the railroad yard, then up
408 R08ERT LUDIUM
ahead at the station. The train had stopped, and the
platform was filled with people milling around,
bewildered. Several uniformed men were shouting
orders, trying to separate passengers apparently
those in the two cars flanking the scene of the
killing or anyone else who knew anything. In the
parking lot surrounding the station a
blue-and-whitestriped police car, its red roof light
spinning, the signal of emergency. There was a rapid
clanging in the distance, and seconds later a long
white ambulance streaked into the lot whipped into
a horseshoe turn and plunged back, stopping close
to the platform. As the rear doors opened, two
attendants jumped out carrying a stretcher; a police
officer above them on the steps shouted at them,
gesturing with his arm. They ran up the metal
staircase and followed him.
A second patrol car swerved into the lot, tires
screeching as it stopped next to the ambulance. Two
police officers got out and walked up the steps; the
officer who had directed the ambulance attendants
joined them, with two civilians, a man and a woman,
beside him. The five talked, and moments later the
two patrolmen returned to their vehicle. The driver
backed up and spun to his left, gunning the engine,
heading for the south end of the parking lot,
directly toward Converse. Again they stopped and
got out, now with weapons drawn they raced across
the tracks and down the slope of gravel and tar into
the wild grass. They would be coming back in min-
utes, thought Joel, absently clawing the ragged
surface by his shoulders. They would stop and check
out the deserted building, perhaps call for
assistance, but sooner or later they would examine