the surface like a shark. He was then thrown into
solitary confinement, a pit in the ground twelve feet
deep with barbed wire anchored across the top. It
was from there, during a heavy rainstorm at night,
that he clawed his way up, bent the wire back.and
escaped alone. He made his way south through the
jungles and in the river streams for over a hundred
miles until he reached the American lines. It was no
easy feat. They created a savagely obsessed man who
won his own personal war.”
“Why didn’t they simply kill him before that?”
“I wondered myself,” said the specialist, “so I
phoned my source in Hanoi, the one who provided
the information. He said a strange thing, something
quite profound in its way. He said he wasn’t there, of
course, but he thought it was probably respect.”
“For an ugly troublemaker?”
“Captivity in war does odd things, Chaim, to both
the captured and the captors. There are so many
factors at work in a vicious game. Aggression,
resistance, bravery, fear, and not the
least curiosity, especially when the players
228 ROBERT LUDLUM
come from such diverse cultures as the Occident
and the Orient. An abnormal bond is often formed,
as much from the weariness of the testing game as
from anything else, perhaps. It doesn’t lessen the
national animosities, but a subtle recognition sets in
that tells these men, these players, that they are not
really in the game by their own choosing. In-depth
analyses further show us that it is the captors, not
the captured, who first perceive this commonality.
The latter are obsessed with freedom and survival,
while the former begin to question their absolute
authority over the lives and conditions of other
men. They start to wonder what it would be like to
be in the other player’s shoes. It’s all part of what
the psychiatrists call the Stockholm syndrome.”
“What in the name of God are you trying to say?
You sound like one of those bores in the Knesset
reading a position paper. A little of this, a little of
that and a lot of windI”
“You are definitely not delicate, Chaim. I’m
trying to explain to you that while this Converse
nurtured his hatreds and his obsessions, his captors
wearied of the game, and as our source in Hanoi
suggests, they grudgingly spared his life out of
respect, before he made his final and successful
escape.”
To Abrahm’s bewilderment the specialist had
apparently finished. “And?” said the sabre.
“Well, there it is. There is the motive and the
enemy, but they are also your motive and your
enemy arrived at from different routes, of course.
Ultimately, you wish to smash insurgence wherever
it erupts, curb the spread of Third World
revolutions, especially Islamic, because you know
they’re being fostered by the Marxists read
Soviets and are a direct threat to Israel. One way
or another it’s the global threat that’s brought you
all together, and in my judgment rightfully so. There
is a time and a place for a military-industrial com-
plex, and it is now. It must run the governments of
the free world before that world is buried by its
enemies.”
Chaim Abrahms squinted and tried not to shout.
“And?”
“Can’t you see? This Converse is one of you.
Everything supports it. He has the motive and an
enemy he’s seen in the harshest light. He is a highly
regarded attorney who makes a great deal of money
with a very conservative firm, and his clients are
among the wealthiest corporations and conglomer-
ates. Everything he’s been and everything he stands
for can only benefit from your efforts. The
confusion lies in his unorthodox methods, and I
can’t explain them except to say that
THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 229
perhaps they are not unorthodox in the specialised
work he does. Markets can plummet on rumors;
concealment and diversion are surely respected.
Regardless, he doesn’t want to destroy you, he wants
to join you.”
The sabre put his glass down on the floor and
struggled out of the chair. With his chin tucked into
his breastbone and his hands clasped behind his
back, Abrahms paced back and forth in silence. He
stopped and looked down at the specialist.
“Suppose, just suppose,” he said, ‘ the almighty
Mossad has made a mistake, that there’s something
you didn’t find.”
“I would find that hard to accept.”
“But it’s a possibility!”
“In light of the information we’ve gathered, I
doubt it. Why?”
“Because I have a sense of smell, that’s why!”
The man from the Mossad kept his eyes on
Abrahms, as if studying the soldier’s face or
thinking from a different viewpoint. “There is only
one other possibility, Chaim. If this Converse is not
who and what I’ve described, which would be
contrary to all the data we’ve compiled, then he is an
agent of his government.”
“That’s what I smell,” said the sabre softly.
It was the specialist’s turn to be silent. He
breathed deeply, then responded. “I respect your
nostrils, old friend. Not always your conduct but
certainly your sense of smell. What do the others
think?”
“Only that he’s Iying, that he’s covering for others
he may or may not know, who are using him as a
scout an ‘infantry point’ was the term used by Palo
Alto.”
The Mossad officer continued to stare at the
sabre, but his eyes were no longer focused; he was
seeing abstract, twisted patterns, convolutions few
men would comprehend. They came from a lifetime
of analysing seen and unseen, legitimate and racial
enemies, parrying dagger thrusts with counterthrusts
in the blackest darkness. “It’s possible,” he whis-
pered, as if replying to an unspoken question heard
only by himself. “Almost inconceivable, but possible.”
“What is? That Washington is behind him?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“As an outrageous alternative I do not subscribe
to, but the only one left that has the slightest
plausibility. Simply put, he has too much
information.”
230 ROBERT LUDLUM
“And?”
“Not Washington in the usual sense, not the
government in the broader sense, but within a
branch of the government a section that has heard
whispers about an organisation cannot be sure.
They believe that if there is such an organization,
they must invade it to expose it. So they choose a
man with the right history, the right memories, even
the right profession to do the job. He might even
believe everything he says.”
The sabre was transfixed but impatient. “That
has too many complications for me,” he said bluntly.
‘Try it my way first. Try to accept him; he may
be genuine. He’ll have to give you something
concrete; you can force that. Then again he may not
because he cannot.”
“Andy”
“And if he can’t, you’ll know you’re right. Then
put as much distance between him and his sponsors
as is humanly and brutally possible. He must
become a pariah, a man hunted for crimes so insane
his madness is unquestioned.”
“Why not just kill him?”
“By all means, but not before he’s been labeled
so mad that no one will step forward to claim him.
It will buy you the time you need. The final phase
of Aquitaine is when? Three, four weeks away?”
“That’s when it begins, yes.”
The specialist got up from the chair and stood
pensively in front of the soldier. “I repeat, first try
to accept him, see if what I said before is true. But
if that sense of smell of yours is provoked further,
if there’s the slightest possibility he has been
willingly or unwillingly, wittingly or unwittingly,
made a provocateur by men in Washington, then
build your case against him and throw him to the
wolves. Create that pariah as the North Vietnamese
created a hellhound. Then kill him quickly, before
anyone else reaches him.”
“A sabre of the Mossad speaks?”
“As clearly as I can.”
The young Army captain and the older civilian
came out of the Pentagon from adjacent glass doors
and glanced briefly at each other with no
recognition. They walked separately down the short
bank of steps and turned left on the cement path
that led to the enormous parking lot; the Army
officer was perhaps ten feet ahead of the civilian.
Upon reaching the
THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 231
huge asphalt area, each veered in a different
direction toward his car. If these two men had been
the subjects of photographic surveillance during the
past fifty seconds, there was no indication
whatsoever that they knew each other.
The green Buick coupe turned right in the
middle of the block, going through the open chasm
that was the entrance to the hotel’s underground
parking lot. At the bottom of the ramp the driver
showed his room key to the attendant, who raised
the yellow barrier and waved him along. There was
an empty space in the third column of stationary
automobiles. The Buick eased into it and the Army
captain got out.
He circled through the revolving door and walked