terrible truth. His beloved crazy Berlinerin had been
ill for years; it was cancer and it was about to kill
her. In desperation, he had spent nearly all the
money he had, including unpaid second and third
mortgages on the rambling house in Bellefontaine, to
stem the disease. Among the profiteers were clinics
in Mexico; there was nothing else he could say. He
could only weep, and his losses had nothing to do
with his tears. And she could only hold her father
and ask him why he had not told her before.
“It was not your battle, ma cherie. It was ours.
Since Berlin, it was always we two. We fought then
together; we fight now as always as one.”
Her mother died six days later, and six months
after that her father lit a Gauloise on the
screened-in porch and mercifully fell asleep, not to
wake up. Valerie could not cry. It was
262 R08ERT IUDIUM
a shock but not a tragedy. Wherever he was he
wanted to be there.
So Valerie Charpentier looked for a job, a
paying job that did not rely on the sales of an
unknown artist. What astonished her was not that
employment was so easy to find, but that it had very
little to do with the thick portfolio of sketches and
line drawings she presented. The second advertising
agency she applied to seemed more interested in
the fact that she spoke both German and French
fluently. It was the bme of corporate takeovers, of
multinational alliances where profits could be made
on both sides of the Atlantic by the same single
entities. Valerie Charpentier, artist-in-residence
inside, became a company hack on the outside.
Someone who could draw and sketch rapidly and
make presentations and speak the languages and
she hated it. Still, it was a remarkable living for a
woman who had anticipated a period of years
before her name on a canvas would mean
something.
Then a man came into her life who made
whatever affairs she had had totally forgettable. A
nice man, a decent man even an exciting
man who had his own problems but did not talk
about them, would not talk about them, and that
should have given her a clue. Joel, her Joel, effusive
one moment, withdrawn the next, but always with
that shield, that facade of quick humor which was
often as biting as it was amusing. For a while they
had been good for each other. Both were ambitious
for entirely different reasons she for the in-
dependence that came with recognition, he for the
wasted years he could never reclaim and each
acted as a buffer when the other faced
disappointment or delay. But it all began to fall
apart. The reasons were painfully clear to her but
not to him. He became mesmerised by his own
progress by his own determination, to the exclusion
of everything else, starting with her. He never raised
his voice or made demands, but the words were ice
and the demands were increasingly there. If there
was a specific point when she recognised the
downhill slide, it was a Friday night in November.
The agency had wanted her to fly to West Berlin; a
Telefunken account required some fast personal
service and she was elected to calm the churning
waters. She had been packing when Joel came home
from work. He had walked into the bedroom of
their apartment and asked her what she was doing,
where she was going. When she told him, he had
said, ‘ You can’t. We’re expected at Brooks’ house
in Larchmont tomorrow night. Tal
THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 263
hot and Simon’ll be there too. I m sure they’ll talk
international. You’ve got to be there.”
She had looked at him, at the quiet desperation
in his eyes. She did not go to Germany. It was the
turning point; the downhill race had begun, and
within a brief few months she knew it was quickening
to its finish. She quit the agency, giving up authority
for the dog days of free-lancing, hoping the extra
time she had to devote to him might help. It did not;
he seemed to resent any overt act of sacrifice, no
matter how hard she tried to conceal it. His periods
of withdrawal multiplied, and in a way she felt sorry
for him. His furies were driving him and it was
obvious that he disliked what was happening; he
disliked what he was but could not help himself. He
was on his way to a burnout and she could not help
him, either.
If there had been another woman, she could have
fought, staking out her claim and fiercely insisting on
the right to compete, but there was no one else, only
himself and his compulsions. Finally, she realized she
could not penetrate his shield; he had nothing left
for anyone else emotionally. That was what she had
hurled at him: ‘Emotional burn-out!” He had agreed
in that quiet, kind voice and the next day he was
gone.
So she took him. Four years, she demanded, the
exact amount of time he had taken from her. Those
four years of heady generosity were about to come to
an end, Val reflected, as she cleaned her brushes and
scraped the palette. In January they were over, the
last check, as always, posted by the fifteenth. Five
weeks ago, during lunch at the Ritz in Boston, Joel
had offered to continue the payments. He claimed he
was used to them and was making more in salary and
bonuses than he could spend soberly. The money was
no hardship, and besides it gave him a certain stature
among his peers and was a marvelous ploy to avoid
prolonged entanglements. She had declined,
borrowing words from her father or more likely her
mother, saying that things were far better than they
were. He had smiled that half-sad yet still infectious
smile and said, “If they turn out otherwise, I m here.”
Coddamn himl
Poor Joel. Sad Joel. He was a good man caught
in the vortex of his own conflicts. And Val had gone
as far as she could go to go further was to deny her
own identity. She would not do that; she had not
done it.
264 ROBERT LUDLUM
She placed her brushes in the tray and walked
to the glass doors that looked over the dunes and
the ocean. He was out there, far away, still
somewhere in Europe. Valerie wondered if he
had given a thought to the day. It was the
anniversary of their marriage.
To summarize,Chaim Abrahms was molded in the
stress and chaos of fighting for daily survival. They
were years of never-ending violent skirmishes, of
outthinking and outliving enemies bent on killing
not only whole sabre settlements but the desertJews’
aspirations for a homeland as well as political free-
dom and religious expression. It is not difficult to
understand where Abrahms came from and why he
is what he is, but it is frightening to think about
where he is going. He is a fanatic with no sense of
balance or compromise where other peoples with
identical aspirations are concerned. If a man has a
different stripe, whether of the same species or not,
he is the enemy. Armed force takes precedence
over negotiations in all matters, and even those in
Israel who plead for more moderate stands based
on totally secure borders are branded as traitors.
Abrahms is an imperialist who sees an
ever-expanding Israel as the ruling kingdom of the
entire Middle East. An appropriate ending to this
report is a comment he made after the well-known
statement issued by the Prime Minister during the
Lebanon invasion: “We covet not one inch of
Lebanon.” Abrahms’ reply in the field to his
troops the majority by no means sympathetic was
the following.
“Certainly not an inch! The whole damned
country! Then Gaza, the Golan, and the West Bank!
And why not Jordan, then Syria and Iraq! We have
the means and we have the willi We are the mighty
children of Abraham!”
He is Delavane’s key in the volatile Middle East.
It was nearly noon, the overhead sun beating
down on the small balcony beyond the French
doors. The late-breakfast remnants had been
cleared away by room service; only a silver pot
remained on the hunt table. They had been
reading for hours since the first coffee was
brought to
THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 265
the suite at six-thirty. Converse put down the dossier,
and reached for his cigarettes on the table by the
armchair. It is not cliff cult to understand where
Abrahms came from . . . but it is frightening to think
about where he is going. Joel looked over at Connal
Fitzpatrick, who was seated on the couch, leaning
forward over the coffee table and reading a single
page while making notes on the telephone message
pad; the Bertholdier and LeifLelm dossiers were in
two neat piles on his left. The Navy lawyer had said