the truth.”
“Without volunteering extraneous and unrelated
material. Yes, that’s my advice, Cal. It’s the way you
can stay clean and you are clean.”
“It sounds like fine advice, Joe Joel, and I
certainly wish I could take it, but I’m afraid I can’t.”
“What? Why?”
“Because bad men like thieves and killers don’t
give advice like that. It’s not in any script I ever
read.”
“That’s nonsense! For Christ’s sake, do as I tell
you!”
“Sorry, pardner, it’s not good dramaturgy. So
you do as I tell you. There’s a big stone building at
the university beautiful place, a restored palace
actually with a layout of gardens you don’t see
very often. They’re on the south side with benches
here and there on the main path. It’s a nice place
on a summer’s night, kind of out of the way and not
too crowded. Be there at ten o’clock.”
“Cal, I won’t involve you in thist”
“I’m already involved. I’ve withheld information
and I’ve aided a fugitive.” Dowling paused again.
“There’s someone I want you to meet,” he said.
“No. ”
There was a click and the line went dead.
10
Converse hung up the phone and braced himself
on the sides of the plastic booth, trying to clear his
head. He had killed a man, not in a war anyone knew
about, and not in the heat of survival in a Southeast
Asian jungle, but in a Paris alleyway because he had
to make an instant decision based on probabilities.
Rightly or wrongly the act had been done and he
could not dwell on it. The German police were
looking for him, which meant that Interpol had
entered the picture, transmitting the information from
Paris somehow supplied by Jacques-Louis Bertholdier,
who remained out of sight, beyond the scope of the
hunt. Joel recalled his own words spoken only
minutes ago. If Press Halliday’s life was not terribly
important compared with what he was going after,
neither was the life of a minion who worked for
Bertholdier, Delavane’s disciple, Aquitaine’s arm in
France. There were no options, thought Converse. He
had to go on; he had to stay free.
“What’s the matter?” asked Fitzpatrick, standing
anxiously near him. “You look like you got kicked by
a mule.”
“I got kicked,” agreed Converse.
“What happened to Dowling? Is he in trouble?”
“He mall be!” exploded Joel. “Because he’s a
misguided idiot who thinks he’s in some kind of
goddamned moviel”
“That wasn’t your opinion a little while ago.”
“We met; it came out all right. This can’t, not for
him.” Converse pushed himself away from the booth
and looked at the Navy lawyer, his mind now trying
desperately to concentrate on the immediate. “I may
tell you and I may not,” he said, glancing around for
an available taxi. “Come on, we’re going to put your
awesome linguistic abilities to work. We need shelter,
expensive but not showy, especially not a place where
the well-heeled tourists go who don’t speak German.
If there’s one thing they’ll spread about me, it’s that
I can’t talk my way through the five boroughs of New
York. I want
197
~g8 ROBERT LUDLUM
a rich hotel that doesn’t need foreigners, doesn’t
cater to them. Do you know the kind of place I
mean?”
Fitzpatrick nodded. “Exclusive, clubby,German
business-oriented. Every large city has hotels like
that, and they’re always twenty times my per diem
for breakfast.”
“That’s okay, I ve got money here in Bonn. I
might as well try to get it out.”
“You’re full of surprises,” said Cormal. “I mean
real surprises.”
“Do you think you can handle it? Find a hotel like
that?”
“I can explain what I want to a cabdriver; he’ll
probably know. Bonn’s small, nothing like New
York or London or Paris…. There’s a taxi letting
people out.” The two men hurried to the curb,
where the cab was discharging a quartet of
passengers balancing camera equipment and
outsized Louis Vuitton handbags.
“How will you do it?” asked Converse as they
nodded to the tourists, two couples in the midst of
an argument, male versus female, Nikon versus
Vuitton.
“A combination of what we both said,” answered
Fitzpatrick. “A quiet, nice hotel away from the
Ausl~nderl~r~n. ”
“What?”
“The clamor of tourists and worse. I’ll tell him
we’re calling on some very important German
businessmen bankers, say and we’d like a place
they’d be most comfortable in for confidential
meetings. He’ll get the drift.”
“He’ll see we don’t have any luggage,” objected Joel.
“He’ll see the money in my hand first,” said the
naval olficer, holding the door for Converse.
Lieutenant Commander Connal Fitzpatrick,
USN, member of the military bar and limited
thereby, impressed Joel Converse, vaunted
international attorney, to the point where the latter
felt foolish. Effortlessly the Navy lawyer got them in
a two-bedroom suite at an inn on the banks of the
Rhine called Das Rektorat. It was one of those
converted prewar estates where most of the guests
seemed to have at least a nodding acquaintance with
several others and the clerks rarely looked anyone
in the eye, as if tacitly confirming their subser-
vience or the fact that they would certainly not
acknowledge having seen Herr So-and-So should
someone ask them.
Fitzpatrick had begun his campaign with the taxi
driver by leaning forward in the seat and speaking
rapidly and quiet
THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 199
ly.Their exchanges seemed to grow more confidential
as the cab sped toward the heart of the city; then it
abruptly veered away, crossing the railroad tracks
that intersected the capital, and entered a smooth
road paralleling the river north. Joel had started to
speak, to ask what was happening, but the Navy
lawyer had held up his hand, telling Converse to be
quiet.
Once they had stopped at the entrance of an inn,
reached by an interminably long, manicured drive,
Fitzpatrick got out.
“Stay here,” he said toJoel. “I’ll see if I can get us
a couple of rooms. And don’t say anything.”
Twelve minutes later Connal returned, his
demeanor stern, his eyes, however, lively. “Come on,
Chairman of the Board, we’re going straight up.” He
paid the driver handsomely and once again held the
door for Converse now a touch more deferentially,
thought Joel.
The lobby of Das Rektorat was unmistakably
German, with oddly delicate Victorian overtones;
thick heavy wood and sturdy leather chairs were
beside and below filigrees of brass ornamentation
forming arches over doorways, elegant borders for
large mirrors, and valances above thick bay windows
where none were required. One’s first impression was
of a quiet, expensive spa from decades ago, its
solemnity lightened by flashes of reflecting metal and
glass. It was a strange mixture of the old and the very
old. It smelled of money.
Fitzpatrick led Converse to a paneled elevator
recessed in the paneled corridor; no bellboy or
manservant was in attendance. It was a small
enclosure, room for no more than four people, the
walls of tinted, marbled glass, which vibrated as the
elevator ascended two stories.
“I think you’ll approve of the accommodations,”
said Connal. “I checked them out; that’s why it took
me so long.”
“We’re back in the nineteenth century, you know,”
countered Joel. “I trust they have telephones and not
just the Hessian express.”
“All the most modern communications, I made
sure of that, too.” The elevator door opened. “This
way,” said Fitzpatrick, gesturing to the right. “The
suite’s at the end of the hall.”
“The suited”
“You said you had money in Bonn.”
Two bedrooms flanked a tastefully furnished
sitting room, with French doors that opened onto a
small balcony overlook
200 ROBERT LUDLUM
ingthe Rhine. The rooms were sunlit and airy, the
decor of the walls again an odd mixture: a
reproduction of an Impressionist floral arrangement
was beside dramatic prints of past champion horses
from the leading German tracks and breeding farms.
“All right, wonder boy,” said Converse, looking
out the open French doors, then turning back to
Connal Fitzpatrick, who stood in the middle of the
room, the key skill in his hand. “How did you do it?”
“It wasn’t hard,” replied the Navy lawyer, smiling.
“You’d be surprised what a set of military papers
will do for a person in this country. The older guys
sort of stiffen up and look like boxer puppies
smelling a pot roast, and there aren’t that many
people here much under sixty.”
“That doesn’t tell me anything unless you’re
enlisting us.”
“It does when I combine it with the fact that I’m
an aide assigned by the U.S. Navy to accompany an
important American financier over here to hold
confidential meetings with his German counterparts.
While in Bonn, naturally, incognito is the best
means for my eccentric financier to travel. Every-
thing’s in my name.”
“What about reservations?”
“I told the manager that you’d rejected the hotel
reserved for us as having too many people you
might know. I also hinted that those countrymen of
his you’re going to meet might be most appreciative