hurried but orderly progress. Morning was a time for
benign energy in Geneva. Even the newspapers
above the tables in the sidewalk cafes were snapped
with precision, not crushed or mutilated into legible
positio~And vehicles and pedestrians were not at
war; combat was supplanted by looks and nods, stops
and gestures of acknowledgment. As Joel walked
through the open brass gate of Le Chat Botte he
wondered briefly if Geneva could export its mornings
to New York. But then the City Council would vote
the import down, he concluded the citizens of New
York could not stand the civility.
A newspaper was snapped directly below him on
his left, and when it was lowered Converse saw a
face he knew. It was a coordinated face, not unlike
his own, the features compatible and in place. The
hair was straight and dark, neatly parted and
brushed, the nose sharp, above well-defined lips. The
face belonged to his past, thought Joel, but the name
he remembered did not belong to the face.
The familiar-looking man raised his head; their
eyes met and A. Preston Halliday rose, his short
compact body obviously muscular under the
expensive suit.
“Joel, how are you?” said the now familiar voice,
a hand outstretched above the table.
“Hello . . . Avery,” replied Converse, staring,
awkwardly shifting his attache case to grip the hand.
“It is Avery, isn’t it? Avery Fowler. Taft, early
sixties.. You never came back For the senior year,
and no one knew why; we all talked about it. You
were a wrestler.”
“Twice All New England,” said the attorney,
laughing, gesturing at the chair across from his own.
“Sit down and we’ll catch up. I guess it’s sort of a
surprise for you. That’s why I wanted us to meet
before the conference this morning. ~ mean, it’d be
a hell of a note for you to get up and scream
‘Impostort’ when I walked in, wouldn’t it?”
“I’m still not sure I won’t.” Converse sat down,
attache case at his feet, studying his legal opponent.
“What’s this Halliday routine? Why didn’t you say
something on the phone?”
“Oh, come on, what was I going to say? ‘By the way,
old
8 ROBERT LUDLUM
sport, you used to know me as Tinkerbell Jones.’
You never would have showed up.”
“Is Fowler in jail somewhere?”
“He would have been if he hadn’t blown his
head off,” answered Halliday, not laughing.
“You’re full of surprises. Are you a clone?”
“No, the son.”
Converse paused. ‘ Maybe I should apologize.”
“No need to, you couldn’t have known. It’s why
I never came back for the senior year . . . and,
goddamn it, I wanted that trophy. I would have
been the only mat jock to win it three years in a
row.”
“I’m sorry. What happened . . . or is it privileged
information, counselor? I’ll accept that.”
“Not for you, counselor. Remember when you
and I broke out to New Haven and picked up those
pigs at the bus station?”
‘We said we were Yalies ”
“And only got taken, never got laid.”
“Our eyebrows were working overtime.”
“Preppies,” said Halliday. “They wrote a book
about us. Are we really that emasculated?”
“Reduced in stature, but we’ll come back. We’re
the last minority, so we’ll end up getting sympathy….
What happened, Avery?”
A waiter approached; the moment was broken.
Both men ordered American coffee and croissants,
no deviation from the accepted norm. The waiter
folded two red napkins into cones and placed one
in front of each.
“What happened?” said Halliday quietly,
rhetorically, after the waiter left. “The beautiful son
of a bitch who was my father embezzled four
hundred thousand from the Chase Manhattan while
he was a trust officer, and when he was caught,
went bang. Who was to know a respected, if trans-
planted, commuter from Greenwich, Connecticut,
had two women in the city, one on the Upper East
Side, the other on Bank Street? He was beautiful.”
“He was busy. I still don’t understand the Halliday.”
After it happened the suicide was covered
up Mother raced back to San Francisco with a
vengeance. We were from California, you know . .
. but then, why would you? With even more
vengeance she married my stepfather, John
THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 9
Halliday, and all traces of Fowler were assiduously
removed during the next few months.”
‘Even to your first name?”
‘No, I was always ‘Press’ back in San Francisco.
We Californians come up with catchy names. Tab,
Troy, Crotch the 1950’s Beverly Hills syndrome. At
Taft, my student ID read ‘Avery Preston Fowler,’ so
you all just started calling me Avery or that awful
‘Ave.’ Being a transfer student, I never bothered to
say anything. When in Connecticut, follow the gospel
according to Holden Caulfield.”
“That’s all well and good,” said Converse, “but
what happens when you run into someone like me?
It’s bound to happen.”
“You’d be surprised how rarely. After all it was
a long time ago, and the people I grew up with in
Caiifornia understood. Kids out there have their
names changed according to matrimonial whim, and
I was in the East for only a couple of years, just long
enough for the fourth and fifth forms at school. I
didn’t know anyone in Greenwich to speak of, and I
was hardly part of the old Taft crowd.”
“You had friends there. We were friends.”
“I didn’t have many. Let’s face it, I was an
outsider and you weren’t particular. I kept a pretty
low profile.”
“Not on the mats, you didn’t.”
Halliday laughed. “Not very many wrestlers
become lawyers, something about mat burns on the
brain. Anyway, to answer your question, only maybe
five or six times over the past ten years has anyone
said to me, ‘Hey, aren’t you so-and-so and not
whatever you said your name was?’ when somebody
did, I told them the truth. ‘My mother remarried
when I was sixteen.’ ”
The coffee and croissants arrived. Joel broke his
pastry in half. “And you thought I’d ask the question
at the wrong time, specifically when I saw you at the
conference. Is that it?”
“Professional courtesy. I didn’t want you dwelling
on it or me when you should be thinking about
your client. After all, we tried to lose our virginity
together that night in New Haven.”
“Speak for yourself.” Joel smiled.
Halliday grinned. “We got pissed and both
admitted it don’t you remember? Incidentally, we
swore each other to secrecy while throwing up in the
can.”
10 ROBERT LUIlIUM
“Just testing you, counselor.I remember. So you
left the gray-flannel crowd for orange shirts and
gold medallionsP”
“All the way. Berkeley, then across the street to
Stanford.”
“Good school…. How come the international field?”
“I liked traveling and figured it was the best way
of paying for it. That’s how it started, really. How
about you? I’d think you would have had all the
traveling you ever wanted.”
“I had delusions about the foreign service,
diplomatic corps, legal section. That’s how it
started.”
“After all that traveling you did?”
Converse levered his pale blue eyes at Halliday,
conscious of the coldness in his look. It was
unavoidable, if misplaced as it usually was. “Yes,
after all that traveling. There were too many lies
and no one told us about them until it was too late.
We were conned and it shouldn’t have happened.”
Halliday leaned forward, his elbows on the table,
hands clasped, his gaze returning Joel’s. “I couldn’t
figure it,” he began softly. “When I read your name
in the papers, then saw you paraded on television,
I felt awful. I didn’t really know you that well, but
I liked you.”
“It was a natural reaction. I’d have felt the same
way if it had been you.”
“I’m not sure you would. You see, I was one of
the honchos of the protest movement.”
“You burned your draft card while flaunting the
Yippie label,” said Converse gently, the ice gone
from his eyes. “I wasn’t that brave.”
“Neither was 1. It was an out-of-state library card.”
“I’m disappointed.”
“So was I in myself. But I was visible.” Halliday
leaned back in his chair and reached for his coffee.
“How did you get so visible, Joel? I didn’t think you
were the type.”
“I wasn’t. I was squeezed.”
“I thought you said ‘conned.'”
“That came later.” Converse raised his cup and
sipped his black coffee, uncomfortable with the
direction the conversation had taken. He did not
like discussing those years, and all too frequently he
was called upon to do so. They had made him out
to be someone he was not. “I was a sophomore at
Amherst and not much of a student…. Not much,
hell, I was borderline-negative, and whatever
deferment I had was
THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 11
about to go down the tube. But I’d been Hying since
I was fourteen.”
“I didn’t know that,” interrupted Halliday.
‘My father wasn’t beautiful and he didn’t have