summoned for the critical post. Was that
ultimate
THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 71
summons the signal he had been waiting for seven
years before at Dienbienphu? It is a question for
which we have no answer here, but we believe it’s
vital to pursue it.
With De Gaulle’s dramatic resignation after the
rejection of his demands for constitutional reform in
1969, Bertholdier’s career went into an eclipse. His
assignments were far from the canters of power and
remained so until his resignation. Research into
bank and credit-card references as well as passenger
manifests shows that during the past eighteen
months our subject made trips to the following:
London, 3; New York, 2; San Francisco, 2; Bonn, 3;
Johannesburg, 1; Tel Aviv, 1 (combined with
Johannesburg). The pattern is clear. It is compatible
with the rising geographical pressure points of
General Delavane’s operation.
Converse rubbed his eyes and rang for a drink.
While waiting for the Scotch he scanned the next
few paragraphs, his memory of the man now jogged;
the information was familiar history and not terribly
relevant. Bertholdier’s name had been put forward
by several ultraconservative factions, hoping to pull
him out of the military into the political wars but
nothing had come of the attempts. The ultimate
summons had passed him by; it never came.
Currently, as a director of a large firm on the Paris
stock exchange, he is basically a figurehead capable
of impressing the wealthy and keeping the
socialistically inclined at bay by the sheer weight of
his own legend.
He travels everywhere in a company limousine
(read: staff car), and wherever he goes his arrival is
expected, the proper welcome arranged. The vehicle
is a dark-blue American Lincoln Continental, Li-
cense Plate 100-1. The restaurants he frequents are:
Taillevent, the Ritz, Julien, and Lucas-Carton. For
lunches, however, he consistently goes to a private
club called L’Etalon Blanc three to four times a
week. It is a very-off-the-track establishment whose
membership is restricted to the highest-ranking mili-
tary, what’s left of the rich nobility, and wealthy
72 ROBERT LUDLUM
fawners who, if they can’t be either, put their
money on both so as to be in with the crowd.
Joel smiled; the editor of the report was not
without humor. Still, something was missing. His
lawyer’s mind looked for the lapse that was not
explained. What was the signal Bertholdier had not
been given at Dienbienphu? What had the
imperious De Gaulle said to the rebellious officer,
and what had the rebel said to the great man? Why
was he consistently accommodated but only
accommodated never summoned to power? An
Alexander had been primed, forgiven elevated, then
dropped? There was a message buried in these
pages, but Joel could not find it.
Converse reached what the writer of the report
considered relevant only in that it completed the
portrait, adding little, however, to previous
information.
Bertholdier’s private life appears barely perti-
nent to the activities that concern us. His marriage
was one of convenience in the purest La Rochefou-
cauld sense: it was socially, professionally and finan-
cially beneficial for both parties. Moreover, it ap-
pears to have been solely a business arrangement.
There have been no children, and although Mme.
Bertholdier appears frequently at her husband’s
side for state and social occasions, they have rarely
been observed in close conversation. Also, as with
his mother, Bertholdier has never been known to
discuss his wife. There might be a psychological
connection here, but we find no evidence to support
it. Especially since Bertholdier is a notorious
womaniser, supporting at times as many as three
separate mistresses as well as numerous peripheral
assignations. Among his peers there is a sobriquet
that has never found its way into print: La Grand
Machin, and if the reader here needs a translation,
we recommend drinks in Montparnasse.
On that compelling note the report was finished.
It was a dossier that raised more questions than it
answered. In broad strokes it described the whets
and the bows but few of the whys; these were
buried, and only imaginative speculation could
unearth even the probabilities. But there were
THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 73
enough concrete facts to operate on. Joel glanced at
his watch; an hour had passed. He had two more to
reread, think, and absorb as much as possible. He
had already made up his mind about whom he would
contact in Paris.
Not only was Rene Mattilon an astute lawyer
frequently called upon by Talbot, Brooks and Simon
when they needed representation in the French
courts, but he was also a friend. Although he was
older than Joel by a decade, their friendship was
rooted in a common experience, common in the
sense of global geography, futility and waste. Thirty
years ago Mattilon was a young attorney in his
twenties conscripted by his government and sent to
French Indochina as a legal officer. He witnessed the
inevitable and could never understand why it cost so
much for his proud, intractable-nation to perceive it.
Too, he could be scathing in his comments about the
subsequent American involvement.
“Mon Dieu! You thought you could do with arms
what we could not do with arms and brains?
Deraisonnable!”
It had become standard that whenever Mattilon
flew to New York or Joel to Paris they found time
for dinner and drinks. Also, the Frenchman was
amazingly tolerant of Converse’s linguistic
limitations; Joel simply could not learn another
language. Even Val’s patient tutoring had fallen on
deaf and dead ears and an unreceptive brain. For
four years his ex-wife, whose father was French and
whose mother was German, tried to teach him the
simplest phrases but found him hopeless.
“How the hell can you call yourself an
international lawyer when you can’t be understood
beyond Sandy Hook?” she had asked.
“Hire interpreters trained by Swiss banks and put
them on a point system,” he had replied. “They won’t
miss a trick.”
Whenever he came to Paris, he stayed in a suite
of two rooms at the opulent George V Hotel, an
indulgence permitted by Talbot, Brooks and Simon,
he had assumed, more to impress clients than to
satisfy a balance sheet. The assumption was only half
right, as Nathan Simon had made clear.
“You have a fancy sitting room,” Nate had told
him in his sepulchral voice. ‘Use it for conferences
and you can avoid those ridiculously expensive
French lunches and God forbid the dinners.”
74 ROBERT LUDLUM
“Suppose they want to eat?”
“You have another appointment. Wink and say
it’s personal; no one in Paris will argue.”
The impressive address could serve him now,
mused Converse, as the taxi weaved maniacally
through the midafternoon traffic on the
Champs-Elysees toward the Avenue George V. If
he made any progress and he intended to make
progress with men around Bertholdier or
Bertholdier himself, the expensive hotel would fit
the image of an unknown client who had sent his
personal attorney on a very confidential search. Of
course, he had no reservation, an oversight to be
blamed on a substituting secretary.
He was greeted warmly by the assistant
manager, albeit with surprise and finally apologies.
No telexed request for reservations had come from
Talbot, Brooks and Simon in New York, but
naturally, accommodations would be found for an
old friend. They were; the standard two-room suite
on the second floor, and before Joel could unpack,
a steward brought a bottle of the Scotch whisky he
preferred, substituting it for the existing brand on
the dry bar. He had forgotten the accuracy of the
copious notes such hotels kept on repeating guests.
Second floor, the right whisky, and no doubt during
the evening he would be reminded that he usually
requested a wake-up call for seven o’clock in the
morning. It would be the same.
But it was close to five o’clock in the afternoon
now. If he was going to reach Mattilon before the
lawyer left his of lice for the day, he had to do so
quickly. If Rene could have drinks with him, it
would be a start. Either Mattilon was his man or he
was not, and the thought of losing even an hour of
any kind of progress was disturbing. He reached for
the Paris directory on a shelf beneath the phone on
the bedside table, he looked up the firm’s number
and dialed.
“Good Christ, Joel!” exclaimed the Frenchman.
“I read about that terrible business in Geneva! It
was in the morning papers and I tried to call
you Le Richemond, of course but they said you’d
checked out. Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. I was just there, that’s all.”
“He was American. Did you know him?”
“Only across a table. By the way, that crap about
his having something to do with narcotics was just
that. Crap. He was cornered, robbed, shot and set
up for postmortem confusion.”
THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 75
“And an overzealous official leaped at the
obvious, trying to protect his city’s image. I know; it
was made clear…. It’s all so horrible. Crime, killing,