several hundred yards offshore. They had returned
in the darkness, the moon blocked by a sky thick
with clouds, no moonlight to guide them. It was as
if they wanted her to know they were there and they
were watching. They were waiting.
For what? What was happening to her? A week
ago her phone had gone dead for seven hours, and
when she had called the telephone company from
her friend’s house, supervisor in the service
department told her he could find no malfunctions.
The line was operative.
“Maybe for you, but not for me, and you’re not
paying the bills.”
She had returned home; the line was still dead.
A second, far angrier phone call brought the same
response. No malfunctions. Then two hours later the
dial tone was inexplicably there, the phone working.
She had put the episode down to the rural telephone
complex having less than the best equipment. She
did not know what explanation there could be for
the sloop now eerily bobbing in the water in front of
her house.
Suddenly, in the boat’s dim light, she could see a
figure crawl out of the cabin. For a moment or two
it was hidden in the shadows, then there was a brief
flare of intense light. A match. A cigarette. A man
was standing motionless on the deck smoking a
cigarette. He was facing her house, as if studying it.
Waiting.
Val shivered as she dragged a heavy chair in
front of the balcony door but not too close, away
from the glass. She pulled the light blanket off the
bed and sat down, wrapping it around her, staring
out at the water, at the boat, at the man. She knew
that if that man or that boat made the slightest move
toward shore she would press the buttons she had
been instructed to press in the event of an
emergency. When activated, the huge circular alarm
bells both inside and outside would be
ear-piercing, erupting in concert, drowning
64 ROBERT LUDLUM
out the sound of the surf and the waves crashing on
the jetty. They could be heard thousands of feet
away the only sound on the beach, frightening,
overwhelming. She wondered if she would cause
them to be heard tonight this morning.
She would not panic. Joel had taught her not to
panic, even when she thought a well-timed scream
was called for on the dark streets of Manhattan.
Every now and then the inevitable had happened.
They had been confronted by drug addicts or punks
and Joel would remain calm icily calm moving
them both back against a wall and offering a cheap,
spare wallet he kept in his hip pocket with a few
bills in it. God, he was icelMaybe that was why no
one had ever actually assaulted them, not knowing
what was behind that cold, brooding look.
“I should have screamed!” she once had cried.
“No,” he had said. “Then you would have
frightened him, panicked him. That’s when those
bastards can be lethal.”
Was the man on the boat lethal were the men
on the boat deadly? Or were they simply novice
sailors hugging the coastline, practicing tacks,
anchoring near the shore for their own
protection curious, perhaps concerned, that the
property owners might object? An Army officer was
not likely to be able to afford a captain for his
sloop, and there were marinas only miles away north
and south marinas without available berths but
with men who could handle repairs.
Was the man out on the boat smoking a
cigarette merely a landlocked young officer getting
his sailing legs, comfortable with a familiar anchor
away from deep water? It was possible, of
course anything was possible_and summer nights
held a special kind of loneliness that gave rise to
strange imaginings. One walked the beach alone and
thought too much.
Joel would laugh at her and say it was all those
demons racing around her artist’s head in search of
logic. And he would undoubtedly be right. The men
out on the boat were probably more up-tight than
she was. In a way they were trespassers who had
found a haven in sight of hostile natives; one inquiry
of the Coast Guard proved it. And that clearance,
as it were, was another reason why they had
returned to the place where, if not welcome, at least
they were not harassed. If Joel were with her, she
knew exactly what he would do. He would go down
to the beach and shout across the water to their
temporary neighbors and ask them to come in for a
drink.
THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 65
DearJoel, foolish Joel, ice-coldJoeL There were
times you were comforting when you were
comfortable. And amusing, so terribly amusing even
when you weren’t comfortable. In some ways I miss
you, darling. But not enough, thank you.
And yet why did the feeling the instinct, per-
haps persist? The small boat out on the water was
like a magnet, pulling her toward it, drawing her into
its field, taking her where she knew she did not want
to go.
Nonsense! Demons in search of logic! She was
being foolish foolish Joel, ice-coldJoel stop it, for
Cod’s sake! Be reasonable!
Then the shiver passed through her again. Novice
sailors did not navigate around strange coastlines at
night.
The magnet held her until her eyes grew heavy
and troubled sleep came.
She woke up again, startled by the intense
sunlight streaming through the glass doors, its
warmth enveloping her. She looked out at the water.
The boat was gone and she wondered for a
moment whether it had really been there.
Yes, it had. But it was gone.
The 747 lifted off the runway at Athens’ Helikon
Airport, soaring to the left in its rapid ascent. Below
in clear view, adjacent to the huge field, was the U.S.
Naval Air Station, permitted by treaty although
reduced in size and in the number of aircraft during
the past several years. Nevertheless, far-reaching,
jet-streamed American craft still roamed the
Mediterranean, lonian and Aegean seas, courtesy of
a resentful yet nervous government all too aware of
other eyes to the north. Staring out the window,
Converse recognized the shapes of familiar
equipment on the ground. There were two rows of
Phantom F-4T’s and A-6E’s on opposite sides of the
dual strip updated versions of the F-4G’s and
A-6A’s he had flown years ago.
It was so easy to slip back, thought Joel, as he
watched three Phantoms break away from the
ground formation; they
66 ROBERT IUDLUM
would head for the top of the runway, and another
patrol would be in the skies. Converse could feel his
hands tense, in his mind he was manipulating the
thick, perforated shaft, reaching for switches, his
eyes roaming the dials, looking for right and wrong
signals. Then the power would come, the surging
force of pressurised tons beside him, behind him,
himself encased in the center of a sleek, shining
beast straining to break away and soar into its
natural habitat. Final check all in order; cleared for
takeout: Release the power of the beast, let it free.
RolU Faster, faster; the ground is a blur, the carrier
deck a mass of passing “ray, blue sea beyond, blue sky
above. Let it free! Let me free!
He wondered if he could still do it, if the lessons
and the training of boy and man skill held. After the
Navy during the academic years in Massachusetts
and North Caroiina, he had frequently gone to small
airfields and taken up single-engined aircraft just to
get away from the pressures, to find a few minutes
of blue freedom, but there were no challenges, no
taming of all-powerful beasts. Later still, it had all
stopped for a long, long time. There were no
airfields to visit on weekends, no playing around
with trim company planes; he had given his promise.
His wife had been terrified of his flying. Valerie
could not reconcile the hours he had flown civilian
and in combat with her own evaluation of the
averages. And in one of the few gestures of
understanding in his marriage, he had given his
word not to climb into a cockpit. It had not
bothered him until he knew they knew the
marriage had gone sour at which point he had
begun driving out to a field called Teterboro in New
Jersey every chance he could find and flown
whatever was available, anytime, any hour. Still,
even then especially then there had been no
challenges, no beasts other than himself.
The ground below disappeared as the 747
stabilized and began the climb to its assigned
altitude. Converse turned away from the window
and settled back in his seat. The lights were abruptly
extinguished on the NO SMOKING sign, and Joel
took out a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket.
Extracting one, he snapped his lighter, and the
smoke diffused instantly in the rush of air from the
vents above. He looked at his watch it was 12:20.