house was silent, the large casement windows,
through which only hours ago the voices of
demented old women had helped muffle gunshots,
were closed, many of the panes
566 ROBERT IUDIUM
cracked. And through all the madness, the insanity
of violent events, he still wore the clerical collar,
still had his priestly passport and the letter of
pilgrimage. The next few hours would tell him
whether or not they were of any value.
The roar of an engine came first and then the
sight of a black Mercedes swerving off the country
road into the drive. It sped up to the porch, jolting
to a stop; two men climbed out and the driver raced
around the trunk to join his companion. They stood
for a moment looking up at the porch and the
windows of the house, then turned and scanned the
grounds, walking over to Hermione Geyner’s car
and peering inside. The driver nodded and reached
under his jacket to pull out a gun; they went back to
the steps, taking them rapidly, heading across the
porch to the door. Finding no bell, the man without
a gun in his hand knocked harshly, repeatedly,
finally pounding with a closed fist while twisting the
knob to no avail.
Guttural shouts came from inside as the door
swung back, revealing an angry Frau Geyner dressed
in a tattered bathrobe. Her voice was that of a
shrewish teacher lambasting two students for
cheating when in fact they had not. Each time one
of the men tried to speak her voice became even
more shrill. Cowed, the man with the gun put it
away, but his companion suddenly grabbed Valerie’s
aunt by the shoulders and spoke harshly, directly,
forcing her to listen.
Hermione Geyner did listen, but when she
replied her answers were equally harsh and
delivered with authority. She pointed down at the
overgrown drive and described what she had
apparently witnessed in the dark, early-morning
hours what she herself had accomplished. The men
looked at each other, their eyes questioning and
afraid, but not questioning what the old woman had
told them, only what she could not tell them. They
raced across the porch and down the steps to their
car. The driver started the engine with a vengeance
so pronounced the ignition mechanism flew into a
high-pitched, grinding scream. The Mercedes
plunged forward, skirting past Frau Geyner’s car,
and in a sudden attempt to avoid a hole in the
overgrown pavement, the driver swung to his left,
then to his right, skidding on the surface, the tires
sliding on the crawling vine weeds until the side of
the car careened into the disintegrating stone gate.
Roars of abuse from both men filled the morning
air as the Mercedes straightened itself out and raced
through the exit. It swung
THE AQUlTAINE PROGRESSION 569
tee in the red lacquered bowl on the wall table, the
old *Roman had dropped them there last night the
keys to her car. The bathroom door pulled out it
was the solution. Once she was inside, Joel dragged
over a heavy chair from against the wall and jammed
the thick rim under the knob, kicking the legs in
place, wedging them into the floor. She heard the
commotion and tried to open the door; it held. The
harder she pressed, the more firmly the legs became
embedded.
“We convene again tonight!” she roared. “We will
send out our best people! The best!”
“God help Eisenhower when you meet,” muttered
Converse, inwardly relieved. If Aquitaine did not
have the phone covered, the old woman would be
found in a few hours. The envelope under his arm,
he took the keys from the lacquered bowl and pulled
the gun from his belt. He ran to the front door and
opened it cautiously. There was no one, nothing only
Hermione Geyner’s car parked on the weed-ridden
drive. He went outside and pulled the door shut,
leaving it unlocked, and raced down the steps to the
automobile. He started the engine; there was half a
tank of gas, enough to get him far away from
Osnabruck before refilling. Until he could get a map,
he would go by the sun heading south.
Valerie made arrangements at the travel office in
Caesars Palace, paying cash and using her mother’s
maiden name, perhaps hoping some of that
resourceful woman’s wartime expertise might find its
way to the daughter. There was a 6:00 P.M. Air
France flight to Paris from Los Angeles. She would
be on it, the hour’s trip to LAX made on a chartered
plane to which she would be chauffeured, thus
avoiding the terminal at McCarran Airport. Such
courtesies were always available, usually for
celebrities and casino winners. There was no basic
problem with a false name on the Air France
passenger manifest at worst, only embarrassment,
in her case easily explained: her former husband,
now a stranger, was an infamous man, a hunted man;
she preferred anonymity. She would not legally be
required to produce her passport until she arrived at
immigration in Paris, and once through, she could
travel anywhere she wished, under any name she
gave, for she would not be leaving the borders of
France. It was why she had thought of Chamonix.
She sat in the chair, looking out the window,
thinking of those days in Chamonix. She had flown
over with Joel to Ge
570 ROBERT LUDLUM
neva,where he had three days of conferences with
the promise of five days off to go skiing at Mont
Blanc, a bonus from John Brooks, the brilliant
international negotiator of Talbot, Brooks and
Simon, who flatly refused to give up some reunion
dinner for what he termed “lizard-shit meetings
between idiots our boy can do it. He’ll charm their
asses off while emptying their corporate pockets.” It
was the first time Joel really knew that he was on his
way, yet oddly enough he was almost as excited
about the skiing. They both enjoyed it so much. To-
gether. Perhaps because they were both good.
ButJoel had not enjoyed the skiing at Chamonix
that trip. On the second day he had taken a terrible
fall and sprained his ankle. The swelling was
enormous, the pain as acute in his head as in his
foot. She had knighted him “Sir Grump”, he
demanded his Herald Tribune in the morning,
childishly refusing to have his breakfast before the
paper arrived, and even more childishly planing the
martyr as his wife went off to the slopes. When she
had suggested that she really did not care to go
without him, it was worse. He had charged her with
trying to be some kind of saint. He would be
perfectly fine he had things to read, which artists
would not understand. Reading, that was.
Oh, what a little boy he had been, thought Val.
But during the nights it was so different, he was so
different. He became the man again, loving and
tender, at once the generous lion and the sensitive
lamb. They made love, it seemed, for hours on end,
the moonlight on the snow outside, finally the hint
of the sun’s earliest rays on the mountains until they
fell together into exhausted sleep.
On their last day before heading back to Geneva
for the night flight to New York, she had surprised
him. Instead of going out for a few final hours of
skiing, she had gone downstairs at the hotel and
bought him a sweater, to which she sewed a large
patch on the sleeve. It read: DOWNHILL
RACER CHAMONIX. She had presented it to
him while a porter waited outside the door with a
wheelchair she had made arrangements through
the influential manager of the hotel. They were
taken to the confer of Chamonix, to the cable car
that scaled thirteen thousand feet to the top of
Mont Blanc through the clouds to the top of the
world, it seemed. When they reached the final apex,
where the view was breathtaking, Joel had turned to
her, with that silly, oblique look in his eyes that
belied everything he was and everything
THE AQUITAINE
PROGRESSION 571
..ehad been through again, as always, his way of
thanking
‘Enough of this foolish scenery,” he had said.
“Take off our clothes. It’s not really that cold.”
They had hot coffee, sitting on a bench outside,
the magificence of nature all around them. They held
hands, and ,hrist! She had felt such love that she had
to hold back the ears.
She felt the love now and got out of the chair,
rejecting he intrusion of emotion. It was the wrong
time. Whatever .larity of mind she could summon was
needed now. She had o travel halfway across the
world avoiding God knew how nany people who were
looking for her.
He had said he loved her “so much.” Was it love
or was t need . . . support? She had replied with the
words “my daring” no, she had said more than that;