it.”
“No, that’s okay. I don’t like to talk about
it rarely do but friendly seatmates on airplanes
are for telling things. You’ll never see them again,
so why not slice off a bit and feel better.” The actor
tried haltingly to smile; he failed. “My wife’s name
was Oppenfeld. She’s Jewish. Her story’s not much
different from a few million others, but for her it’s
. . . well, it’s hers. She was separated from her
parents and her three younger brothers in
Auschwitz. She watched them being taken
away away from her while she screamed, not
understanding. She was lucky; they put her in a
barracks, a fourteen-year-old sewing uniforms until
she showed other endowments that could lead to
other work. A couple of days later, hearing the
rumors, she got hysterical and broke out racing all
over the place trying to find her family. She ran into
a section of the camp they called the A/ofall, the
garbage, corpses hauled out of the gas chambers.
And there they were, the bodies of her mother and
her father and her three brothers, the sight and the
stench so sickening it’s never left her. It never will.
She won’t set foot in Germany and I wouldn’t ask
her to.”
No alarms, just surprises . . . and another Iron
Cross for the Erich Leilhelms of the past, retroactively
presented.
“Christ, I’m sorry,” murmured Converse. “I
didn’t mean to ,,
“You didn’t. I did…. You see, she knows it
doesn’t make sense.”
“Doesn’t make sense? Maybe you didn’t hear
what you just described.”
“I heard, I know, but I didn’t finish. When she
was sixteen, she was loaded into a truck with five
other girls, all on their way to that different type of
work, when they did it. Those kids took their last
chance and beat the hell out of a Wehrmacht
corporal who was guarding them in the van. Then
with his gun they got control of the truck from the
driver and escaped.” Dowling stopped, his eyes on
Joel.
Converse, silent, returned the look, unsure of its
meaning, but moved by what he had heard. “That’s
a marvelous story ” he said quietly “It really is.”
‘And,” continued the actor, “for the next two years
they
THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 129
were hidden by a succession of German families, who
surely knew what they were doing and what would
happen to them if they got caught. There was a
pretty frantic search for those girls a lot of threats
made, more because of what they could tell than
anything else. Still, those Germans kept moving them
around, hiding them, until one by one they were
taken across the border into occupied France, where
things were easier. They were smuggled across by the
underground, the German underground. ‘Dowling
paused, then added. “As Pa Ratchet would say, ‘Do
you get my drift, son?’ ‘
“I’d have to say it’s obvious.”
“There’s a lot of pain and a lot of hate in her and
God knows I understand it. But there should be
some gratitude, too. Couple of times clothing was
found, and some of those people those German
people were tortured, a few shot for what they did.
I don’t push it, but she could level off with a little
gratitude. It might give her a bit more perspective.”
The actor snapped on his seat belt.
Joel pressed the locks on his attache case,
wondering if he should reply. Valerie’s mother had
been part of the German underground. His ex-wife
would tell him amusing stories her mother had told
her about a stern, inhibited French intelligence
officer forced to work with a high-spirited, opinion-
ated German girl, a member of the Untergmud How
the more they disagreed, and the more they railed
against each other’s nationality, the more they
noticed each other. The Frenchman was Val’s father;
she was proud of him, but in some ways prouder of
her mother. There had been pain in that woman,
too. And hate. But there had been a reason, and it
was unequivocal. As there had been for one Joel
Converse years later.
“I said it before and J mean it,” began Joel
slowly, not sure he should say anything at all. “It’s
none of my business, but I wouldn’t ever push it, if
I were you.”
“Is this a lawyer talkin’to ole Pa?” asked Dowling
in his television dialect, his smile false, his eyes far
away. “Do I pay a fee?”
“Sorry, 111 shut up.” Converse adjusted his seat
belt and pushed the buckle in place.
“No, I’m sorry. I laid it on you. Say it. Please.”
“All right. The horror came first, then the hate.
In sidewinder language that’s called prima facie the
obvious, the first sighting . . . the real, if you like.
Without these, there’d
130 ROBERT LUDLUM
be no reason for the gratitude, no call for it. So, in
a way, the gratitude is just as painful because it
never should have been necessary. ”
The actor once again studied Joel’s face, as he
had done before their first exchange of words.
“You’re a smart son of a bitch, aren’t you?”
“Professionally adequate. But I’ve been there . .
. that is, I know people who’ve been where your wife
has been. It starts with the horror.”
Dowling looked up at the ceiling light, and
when. he spoke his words floated in the air, his
harsh voice quietly strained. “If we go to the movies,
I have to check them out; if we’re watching
television together, I read the TV section . . .
sometimes on the news with some of those tucking
nuts I tense up, wondering what she’s going to do.
She can’t see a swastika’ or hear someone screaming
in German, or watch soldiers marching in a goose
step; she can’t stand it. She runs and throws up and
shakes all over . . . and I try to hold her . . . and
sometimes she thinks I’m one of them and she
screams. After all these years . . . Chnst!”
“Have you tried professional help not my
kind but the sort she might need?”
“Oh, hell, she recovers pretty quick,” said the
actor defensively, as if slipping into a role, his
teacher’s grammar displaced for effect. “Also, until
a few years ago we didn’t have the money for that
kind of thing,” he added somberly in his natural
voice.
“What about now? That can’t be a problem now.”
Dowling dropped his eyes to the flight bag at his
feet. “If I’d found her sooner . . . maybe. But we
were both late bloomers; we got married in our
forges two oddballs looking for something. It’s too
late now.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I never should have made this goddamn picture.
Never. ”
“Why did you?”
“She said I should. To show people I could play
something more than a driveling, south-forty
dispenser of fifth-rate bromides. I told her it didn’t
matter…. I was in the war, in the Marine Corps. I
saw some crap in the South Pacific but nothing to
compare with what she went through, not a spit in
the proverbial bucket. Jesus! Can you imagine what
it must have been like?”
“Yes, I can.”
THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 131
The actor looked up from the flight bag, a
half-drawn smile on his lined, suntanned face. “You,
good buddy? Not unless you were caught in
Korea ”
‘1 wasn t in Korea.”
‘.Then you’d be hard put to imagine it any more
than 1. You were too young and I was too lucky.”
“Well, there was . . .” Converse fell silent, it was
pointless. It had happened so often he did not
bother to think about it anymore. ‘Nam had been
erased from the national conversational psyche. He
knew that if he reminded a man like Dowling, a
decent man, the air would be filled with apologies,
but nothing was served by a jarring remembrance.
Not as it pertained to Mrs. Dowling, born
Oppenfeld. “There’s the ‘no smoking’ sign,” said Joel.
“We’ll be in Hamburg in a couple of minutes.”
“I’ve taken this flight a half-dozen times over the
past two months,” said Caleb Dowling, “and let me
tell you, Hamburg’s a bitch. Not German customs,
that’s a snap, especially this late. Those rubber
stamps fly and they push you through in ten minutes
tops. But then you wait. Twice, maybe three times,
it was over an hour before the plane to Bonn even
got here. By the way, care to join me for a drink in
the lounge?” The actor suddenly switched to his
Southern dialect. “Between you and me, they make
it mighty pleasant for al’ Pa Ratchet. They telex
ahead and Ah got me my own gaggle of cowpokes,
all ridin’ hard to git me to the waterin’ hole.”
“Well . . . ?”Joel felt flattered. Not only did he
like Dowling, but being the guest of a celebrity was