much had he known?
It is pointless to recount Erich Leifhelm’s ex-
ploits in the early to middle years of the war other
than to say his reputation grew, and what is most
important he was one of the very few superior offi-
cers to come up through Nazi party ranks accepted
by the old-line professional generals. Not only did
they accept him but they sought him out for their
commands. Men like Rundstedt and Von
Falkenhausen, Rommel and von Treskow; at one
time or another each asked Berlin for LeifLelm’s
services. He was unquestionably a brilliant strategist
and a daring of dicer, but there was something else.
These generals were aristocrats, part of the ruling
class of prewar Germany, and by and large loathed
the National Socialists, considering them thugs,
exhibitionists and amateurs. It is not difficult to
imagine LeifLelm, sitting among these men,
modestly expounding on what was clearly noted in
his military record. He was the son of the late
prominent Munich surgeon Dr. Heinrich Leifhelm,
who had left him considerable wealth and property.
We need no conjecture, however, to understand how
much further he went to ingratiate himself, for the
following is extracted from an interview with
General Rolf Winter, Standortkommandant of the
Wehrbereichskommando in the Saar sectors:
We would sit around having coffee after dinner,
the talk quite depressing. We knew the war was lost.
The insane orders from Berlin most we agreed
would never be carried out guaranteed wholesale
152 R08ERT LUD[UM
slaughter of troops and civilians. It was
madness, national suicide. And always, this
young Leifhelm would say things like “Perhaps
the fools will listen to me. They think I’m one
of them, they’ve thought so from the early days
in Munich.” . . . And we would wonder. Could
he bring some sanity to the collapsing front? He
was a fine officer, highly regarded, and the son
of a well-known doctor, as he constantly re-
minded us. After all, young men’s heads were
turned in those early days the cavernous
soul-stirring roars of Sieg hell, the fanatic
crowds; the banners and drums and marching
beside ten thousand torches at night. It was all
so melodramatic, so Wagnerian. But Leifhelm
was different; he wasn’t one of the gangsters;
patriotic, of course, but not a hoodlum…. So we
sent dispatches with him to our closest
comrades in Berlin, dispatches that would have
resulted in our executions had they fallen into
the wrong hands. We were told he tried very
hard, but he could not put sanity in the minds
of men who lived in daily fear of death from
rumor and gossip. But he maintained his own
sanity and loyalty which were constant. We
were informed by one of his adjutants not
him, mind you that he was confronted by an
S.S. colonel who had followed him in the street
and demanded the contents of his briefcase. He
refused, and when threatened with immediate
arrest, he shot the man so as not to betray us.
He was one of us. It was a noble risk and only
a night bombing raid saved his own life.
It is clear what LeifLelm was doing and
equally clear that the dispatches were never
shown to anyone, nor was there an S.S. colonel
shot in the streets during a bombing raid.
According to Winter, those dispatches from the
Saar were so explosive in content
that someone would have remembered them; no
one does. Once again, LeifLelm had seen an
opportunity. The war was lost, and the Nazis
were about to become the ultimate
twentieth-century villains. But not the elite
German general corps there was a distinction.
He wiped another slate clean and joined the
“Prussians.” He was so successful that he was
rumored to have been part of the plot to
assassinate
THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 153
Adolf Hitler at Wolfsschanze, and called upon to be
a member of Donitz’s surrender team.
During the cold war, Allied Central Command
asked him to join other key elements of the Wehr-
macht officer corps in the Bundesgrenzschutz. He
became a privileged military consultant with full se-
curity clearance. A mature killer had survived, and
history, with the Kremlin’s help, took care of the
rest.
In May ’49 the Federal Republic was established,
and the following September the Allied occupation
formally came to an end. As the cold war escalated
and West Germany began its remarkable recovery,
the NATO forces demanded material and personnel
support from their former enemies. The new German
divisions were formed under the command of
ex-Field Marshal Erich Leifhelm.
No one had dredged up the questionable deci-
sions of the Munich courts from nearly two decades
past; there were no other survivors and his services
were desired by the victors. During the postwar re-
construction when countless settlements and laby-
rinthine legal resolutions were being sought
throughout Germany, he was quietly awarded all as-
sets and property previously decreed, including some
of the most valuable real estate in Munich. So ends
the third phase of Erich Leifhelm’s story. The fourth
phase which concerns us most is the one we know
least about. The only certainty is that he has become
as deeply entrenched in General Delavane’s
operation as any other man on the primary list.
There was a rapping on the door. Joel lunged
off the bed, the Leifhelm dossier cascading to the
Qoor. He looked at his watch in fear and
confusion. It was nearly four o’clock. Who wanted
him at this hour? Had they found him? Oh, Christ]
The dossier! The briefcase! “Joe . . . ?Joe, you up?”
The voice was both a whisper and a shout an
actor’s sotto voce. “It’s me, Cal Dowling.” Converse
ran to the door and opened it, his breath coming
in gasps. Dowling was fully dressed, holding up
both his hands for silence as he glanced up and
down the corridor. Sat
154 ROBERT LUDLUM
isfied, he walked rapidly inside, pushing Joel back
and closing the door.
“I’m sorry, Cal,” said Converse. “I was asleep. I
guess the sound startled me.”
“You always sleep in your trousers with the
lights on?” asked the actor quietly. “Keep your voice
down. I checked the hallways, but you can never be
clear about what you didn’t see.”
“Clear about what?”
“One of the first things we reamed on Kwajalein
in ’44. A patrol doesn’t mean shit unless you’ve got
something to report. All it means is that they were
better than you were.”
“I was going to call you, to thank you ”
“Cut it, good buddy,” Dowling broke in, his
expression serious. “I’m hming this down to the last
couple of minutes, which is about all we’ve got.
There’s a limo downstairs waiting to take me out to
the cameras over an hour away. I didn’t want to
come out of my room before in case anyone was
hanging around, and I didn’t want to call you
because a switchboard can be watched or
bribed ask anyone in Cuckooburg. I don’t worry
about the desk; they’re not too fond of our crowd
over here.” The actor sighed. “When I got to my
room, all I wanted was sleep, and all I got was a
visitor. I’m down the hall and I was hoping to
Christ if you came here he wouldn’t see
you.”
“A visitor?”
“From the embassy. The US. embassy. Tell me,
Joe ”
“Joel,” interrupted Converse. “Not that it matters.”
“Sorry, I’ve an obstruction in my left ear and
that doesn’t matter, either. He spent damn near
twenty-five minutes with me asking questions about
you. He said we were seen talking together on the
plane. Now, you tell me, counselor, are you okay, or
are my instincts all bucked up?”
Joel returned Dowling’s steady gaze. “Your
instincts are perfectly fine,” he said without
emphasis. “Did the man from the embassy say
otherwise?”
“Not exactly. As a matter of fact, he didn’t say
a hell of a lot. Just that they wanted to talk to you,
wanted to know why you’d come to Bonn, where
you were.”
“But they knew I was on the plane?”
“Yep, said you’d flown out of Paris.”
“Then they knew I was on that plane.”
“That’s what I just said what he said.”
THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 155
“Then why didn’t they meet me at the gate and
ask me themselves?”
Dowling’sface creased further, his eyes narrowing
within the wrinkles of bronzed flesh. “Yeah, why
didn’t they?” he asked himself.
“Did he say?”
“No, but then, Paris didn’t come up until he was
about to leave.”
“What do you mean?”
“It was like he figured I was holding back some-
thing which I certainly was but he couldn’t be
sure. I’m pretty good at what I do, Joe Joel.”
“You also took a risk,” said Converse,
remembering that he was talking to a risk-taker.
“No, I covered myself. I specifically asked if there
were charges against you or anything like that. He
said there weren’t. ”
“Still, he was “