She awoke to the sight of the early sun firing the
mountains beyond the balcony doors in the distance.
For a moment or two while she emerged through
the layers of vanishing sleep she thought she was
back at Cape Ann, the sunlight streaming into her
bedroom from the balcony outside, and
THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 557
vaguely recalled a distant nightmare. Then the bold
floral drapes came into focus, and then the faraway
mountains and the slightly stale odor of thick hotel
carpeting, and she knew the nightmare was very
much with her.
She got out of the oversized bed, and navigated
to the bathroom, stopping on the way to switch on
the radio. She reached the door and suddenly
stopped, gripping its edge to brace herself, her head
detonating with a thousand explosions, her eyes and
throat on fire.
She could only scream. And scream again and
again as she fell to the floor.
Peter Stone turned up the radio in the New York
apartment, then walked quickly to the table where
there was an open telephone directory, the pages
blue, the book itself having been taken from “Mrs.
DePinna’s” room in the St. Regis Hotel. Stone
listened to the news report as he scanned the op-
posing blue pages of government listings.
“. . . It has now been confirmed that the earlier
reports of the crash of an F-18 jetfighterplane at Nellis
Air Force Base in Nevada are accurate. The accident
took place this morning at seven-forty-two, Pacific time,
during first-light maneuvers over the desert thirty-eight
miles northwest of the Nellisfield. The pilot, Brigadier
General Samuel Abbott, was chief of Tactical
Operations and considered one of the finest pilots in the
Air Force as well as a su perb aerial tactician. The
press of dicer at Nellis said a full inquiry will be
launched, but stated that according to the other pilots
the lead plane of the squadron, }-town by General
Abbott, plunged to the ground afterexecuffng a relatively
low-altitude maneuver. The explosion could be heard as
far away as Las Vegas. The press ofticer’s remarks were
charged with emotion as he described the downed pilot.
‘The death of General Abbott is a tragic loss for the A
ir Force and the nation, ‘he told re porters. A few min-
utes ago the President . . .”
“That’s it,” said Stone, turning to the Army
captain across the room. “That’s where she was
heading…. Shut that damn thing off, will you? I knew
Abbott; I worked with him out of Langley a couple
of years ago.”
The Army officer stared at the civilian as he
turned off the radio. “Do you know what you’re
saying?” he asked.
“Here it is,” replied Stone, pointing to the lower
left-hand corner of a page in the thick telephone
directory.
558 ROBERT LUDLUM
“Blue thirteen, three pages from the end of the
book. ‘United States Government offices.
Department of the ‘ ”
‘There are dozens of other listings, too,
including your former employer. ‘Central
Intelligence New York field Office.’ Why not it?
Them? It fits better.”
‘He can’t go that route and he knows it.”
“He didn’t go,” corrected the captain. “He sent her.,’
“That doesn’t fit with everything we know
about him. She’d be sent to Virginia and come out
a basket case. No, she came back here to find a
particular person, not a faceless department or a
section or an agency. A man they both knew and
trusted. Abbott. She found him, told him everything
Con~eOrdd told h!e,,r and he talked to others the
w h
‘How can you be sure?” pressed the Army man.
“Christ, Gptain, what do you want, a diagram ?
Sam Abbott was shot down over the coast of the
Tonkin Gulf. He was a POW and so was Converse.
I have an idea that if we put it through the
computers, we’d find out they knew each other. I’m
so sure I won’t use up another debt. Puck it./”
“You know,” said the Army officer, “I’ve never
seen you lose your temper. The cold can get hot,
can’t it, Stone. I be
lieve you.”
The former intelligence officer looked hard at
the captain, and when he spoke his voice was
flat and cold. ‘Abbott was a good man even an
exceptional man for someone in uniform but don’t
mistake me, Captain. He was killed and he was
killed because whatever that woman told him was
so conclusive he had to be compromised hours
later.”
“Compromised?”
“Figure it out…. I’m angry at Sam’s death, yes,
you’re damned right. But I’m a lot angrier that we
don’t have the woman. Among other things, with us
she has a chance, without us I judge very little and
I don’t want her on my conscience~what little I’ve
got left. Also to get Converse out we have to find
her, there’s no other way.”
‘ But if you re right she’s somewhere near Nellis,
probably Las Vegas. ‘
Undoubtedly Las Vegas, and by the time we
reached anyone who could check around for us,
she’ll be on her way somewhere else…. You know,
I d hate to be her now. The only avenue she had
was neutralised. Whom can she turn to where can
she go? It’s what Dowling said about Converse yes
THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 559
terday, what he didn’t tell Peregrine’s secretary. Our
man was systematically isolated and more afraid of
U.S. embassy personnel than anyone else. He would
never have agreed to a meeting with Peregrine
because he knew it’d be a trap, therefore he couldn’t
have killed him. He was set up; everywhere he
looked there was another trap to keep him running
and out of sight.” The civilian paused, then added
firmly, “The woman’s finished, Captain. She’s at the
end of a bad road their road. And that may be the
best part of it for us. If she panics, we could find her.
But we’re going to have to take some risks. How’s
that neck of yours? Have you made out a will?”
Valerie wept quietly by the glass doors
overlooking the gaudy strip of Las Vegas. Her tears
were not only for Sam Abbott and his wife and
children, but for herself and Joel. It was permitted
under the circumstances, and she could not lie to
herself. She had no idea what to do next. No matter
whom she went to the answer would be the same.
Tell him to come out of hiding and well listen to him.
And the minute he did, Joel would be dead, fulfilling
his own prophecy. And if through a bureaucratic
miracle she was granted a meeting with someone of
power and influence, how strong would her case be?
What words would she use?
I was married to this man for four years and I
divorced him let’s call it incom patibility but I know
him! I know he couldn’t have done what they say he
did, he didn’t kill those men…. What proof? I just told
you, I know him! . . . What does incom patibility
mean? I’m not SUK, we didn’t get along he was
remote, distant. What difference does it make? What
are you implying? Oh, God! You ‘re so wrong! I have
no interest in him that way. Yes, he’s successful and
he’s paid me alimony, but I don’t need his money. I
don’t want it!. . . You see, he told me about this . . .
this incredible plot to put the military establishments of
the United States and the countries of Western Europe
in virtual control of their governments, that they could
do it by instigating massive rioting in key cities,
terrorism, destabilisation everywhere. He’s met them
and talked with them; there’s a plan already in
progress! They see themselves as a dedicated
international organization, as a strong alternative to the
weak governments of the West who won’t stand up to
the Soviet bloc. But they’re not a reasonable alternative,
they’re fanatics! They’re killers;
560 ROBERT LUDLUM
they want total control of all of us!. . . My former
husband wrote it all up, everything he’s learned, and
sent it to me, but it was stolen, his own father killed
because he read it. IVo, it was not suicide!. . . He calls
it a conspiracy of generals conceived by a general
who’d been labeled a madman. General George
Delavane ‘Mad Marcus’ Delavane… . Yes, I know
what the police in Paris and Bonn and Brussels say,
what Interpol says, what our own embassy has
reported fingerprints and ballistics and seeing him in
this place and that place, and drugs, and meeting with
Peregrine butcan’t you understand, they’re all lies!. .
. Yes, I know what happened when he was a prisoner
of war what he went through the things he said when
he was discharged. IVone of that is
relevant!Hisfeelingsaren ‘t relevant!He told me that!He
told me he looks so terrible . . . he’s been so hurt.