‘ Because whoever it was was trusted by the
hangingest judges in the world.”
“Who might that be?”
“The enemy, Rebel.”
“If that’s a parable, Yankee, you lost me.”
“Someday, Johnny, not now. What have you got?”
“Well, let me tell you, I saw the damnedest little
island over here you ever did see. It’s not twenty
miles off the coast near the mouth of the Elbe, right
where it’s supposed to be. In the Heligoland Bight,
they call it, which is a section of the North Sea.”
“Scharhorn,” said Stone, making a statement.
“You found it.”
“It wasn’t tough to find everybody seems to
know about it but nobody goes near a certain
southwest shoreline. It used to be a U-boat
refueling station in World War Two. The security
was so tight most of the German High Command
didn’t know about it, and the Allies never got a
clue. The old concrete-and-steel structures are still
there, and it’s supposed to be deserted except for a
couple of caretakers, who, I’m told wouldn’t pick
you out of the water if your boat crashed into one
of the old submarine winches.” Johnny Reb paused,
then continued softly, “I went out there last night
and saw lights, too many lights in too many places.
There are people out there on that old base, not
just a couple of watchmen, and you can bet a
Yankee pot roast your lieutenant commander is one
of them. Also around two o’clock in the morning
after the lights went out, the tallest mother-lovin’
antenna this side of Houston slid up like a bionic
cornstalk, but there was no corn on the top. Instead,
it bloomed like a regular sunflower. It was a disk,
the kind they use for satellite transmissions…. You
want me to mount a team? I can do it; there’s a lot
of unemployment these days. Also the cost will be
minimal, because the more I think about it, the
more I appreciate your swinging
THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 575
Valerie controlled herself, keeping her voice cool
and distant despite her anxiety. ‘Now,” she said,
“what about Mattilon? My friend, Mattilon. ‘
“Fingerprints,” replied the Frenchman wearily.
“They suddenly are discovered twelve hours after the
arrondissement police who are very good have
examined that office. And yet there was a death in
Wesel, West Germany, within the rising and the
setting of the same sun. Your former husband’s
countenance was described, his identity all but con-
firmed. And an old woman on a train to
Amsterdam the same routing who is found with a
gun in her hand again a description given. Has this
Converse wings? Does he fly unobserved over
borders by himself? Again it is not possible.”
“What are you trying to tell me, Monsieur
Prudhomme?”
The man from the Surete inhaled on his cigarette
as he tore off a page from his note pad and wrote
something on it. “I’m not certain, madame, since I
am no longer officially leged in these matters. But if
your former husband did not cause the man in Paris
to die and could not have shot your old friend
Monsieur Mattilon, how many others did he not kill,
including the American ambassador in Bonn and the
supreme commander of NATO? And who are these
people who can tell government sources to confirm
this and confirm that, to change assignments of
senior police personnel at will, to alter medical
reports removing suppressing evidence? There are
things I do not understand, madame, but I am cer-
tain those are the very things I am not meant to
understand. And that is why I’m giving you this
telephone number. It is not my office; it is my flat in
Paris my wife will know where to reach me. Simply
remember, in an emergency say that you are from
the Tatiana family.”
Stone sat at the desk, the ever-present telephone
in his hand. He was alone had been alone when the
call came from Charlotte, North Carolina, from a
woman he had once loved very dearly years ago in
the field. She had left the “terrible game,” as she
called it; he had stayed, their love not strong enough.
The connection was completed to Cuxhaven,
West Germany, to a telephone he was sure would be
sterile. That certainty was one of the pleasures in
dealing with Johnny Reb.
“Bobbie-Jo’s Chicken FryI” was the greeting over
the line. “We deliver.”
THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 577
me out of the Dardanelles before those guns got
there. That was really more important than getting
me off the hook with those contingency funds in
Bahrain.”
“Thanks, but not yet. If you go in for him now,
we show cards we can’t show.”
“How long can you wait? Remember I taped that
prick Washburn.”
“How much did you put together?”
“More than this old brain can absorb, if you want
the truth. But not more than I can accept. It’s been
a long time coming, hasn’t it? The eagles think
they’re gonna catch the goddamned sparrows after
all, don’t they? ‘Cause they’re gonna turn everyone
into sparrows…. You know, Stone, I shouldn’t say
this because in your old age you became a bit softer
than I did in mine, but if they get it off the ground,
a lot of people everywhere may just lie back in their
hammocks or go fishin’, and say the hell with it let
the big, uniformed daddies do it. Let’em straighten
things out get the potheads with their guns and
switchblades off the streets and out of the parks.
Show the Russkies and the oil boys in bathrobes we
don’t take their crap anymore. Let’s show Jesus
we’re the good guys with a lot of clout. Those
soldiers, they got the guts and the guns, the
corporations and the conglomerates, so what does it
mean to me? Where do I change, says the Joe in the
hammock, except maybe for the better?”
“Not better,” said Stone icily. “Those same people
become robots. We all become robots, if we live.
Don’t you understand that?”
“Yeah, I do,” answered Johnny Reb. “I guess I
always have. I live on a hog-high in Bern while you
scratch in D.C Yes, old buddy, I understand. Maybe
better than you do. . . . Forget it, I’m enlisted. But
what in all-fire hell are you going to do about this
Converse? I don’t think he’s going to get out.”
“He has to. We think he has the answers the
firsthand answers that give us the proof.”
“In my opinion he’s dead,” said the Southerner.
“Maybe not now but soon soon’s they find him.”
“We have to find him first. Can you help?”
“I started the night I needled Major Norman
Anthony Washburn the Fourth, Fifth, or Sixth I
keep rosin’ track of the numerals. You got the
computers the ones you have ac
578 ROBERT LUDLUM
cess to and I’ve got the streets where they sell
things you’re not supposed to buy. So far, nothing.”
‘.Try to find something, because you were right
before we don’t have much time. And, Johnny, do
you have the same feeling I have about that island,
about Scharhorn?”
“Like Appomattox, way down deep in the
stomach. I can taste the bile, Brer Rabbit, which is
why I’m going to possum down here for a few days.
We found ourselves a beehive, boy and the drones
are restless, I can sense it.”
34
Joel put the map and the thick envelope on the
grass and began pulling branches down from a small
tree in the orchard to cover Hermione Geyner’s car.
Each yanking of a limb filled him with pain, as
much from fatigue as from the strain on his arms.
Finally, he bunched together reeds of tall grass and
threw them everywhere over the frame The effect in
the moonlight was that of an immense mound of
hay. He picked up the map and the envelope and
started walking toward the road two hundred yards
away. According to the map, he was on the outskirts
of a city or town called Appenweier, ten miles from
the border at Kehl, directly across the Rhine from
Strasbourg.
He walked along the road, running into the grass
whenever he saw the headlights of a car in either
direction. He had traveled perhaps five or six
miles there was no way to tell and knew that he
could go no farther.
In the jungles he had rested, knowing that rest was
as much a wee pon as a gun, the eyes and the mind
far more lethal when alert than a dozen steel weapons
strapped to his bady.
He found a short ravine that bordered a brook,
the rocks would be his fortress he fell asleep.
Valerie walked out of the Charles De Gaulle
Airport on the arm of the man from the Surete,
Prudhomme, having accepted the scrap of paper
with his telephone number but vol
THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 579
tmteering nothing. They approached the cabstand on