it. How many invitations did he get? From how
many towns and cities and companies and
organisations all pushed like hell by the White
House? A hundred, five hundred, five thousand? At
least that many, Larry. And do you know how many
he accepted? Tell me, Larry, do you know? Did
those high priests talk about this?”
“It wasn’t an issue.”
“Of course it wasn’t. It warped the pattern, it
bent the shapes Joel Converse wouldn’t bend! The
answer is zero Larry. He wouldn’t do it, any of it!
He thought one day more of that war was one more
day in hell too long. He refused to lend his name.”
“What are you trying to say?” said Talbot sternly.
“Halliday wasn’t his enemy, not the way you’re
trying to paint him. The brushstrokes aren’t there.
They’re not on the canvas.”
“Your metaphors are more than I can handle,
Val. What are you trying to tell meP”
“That something smells, Larry. It’s so rotten I
can hardly breathe, but the stench isn’t coming from
my former husband. It’s coming from all of you.”
“I have to take exception to that. All I want to
do is help I thought you knew that.”
“I do, really I do. It’s not your fault. Good-bye,
Larry.”
“111 call you the minute I learn anything.”
“Do that. Good-bye.” Valerie hung up the phone
and looked at her watch. It was time to get down to
Logan Airport in Boston to pick up Roger
Converse.
“Koln in zehn Minuten!” shouted the voice over
the loudspeaker.
Converse sat by the window, his face next to the
glass as the towns sped by on the way to
Cologne Bornheim, Wesel, Bruhl. The train was
perhaps three-quarters full which was to say that
each double seat had at least one occupant. When
they pulled out of the station a woman had been
sitting where he sat now, a fashionably dressed
suburbanite. Several seats behind them another
woman a friend spotted her. His seatmate spoke
to Joel. The brief attention she had called to both of
them when he could not reply unnerved him. He
shrugged and shook his head; she exhaled im-
patient}y, got up in irritation and joined her friend.
THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 395
She had left a newspaper behind, the same
newspaper with his photograph on the front page,
which remained flat out on the seat. He stared at it
until he realized what he was doing and instantly
shifted seats, picking up the paper and folding it so
that the picture would be out of sight. He glanced
around cautiously, holding his hand casually above
his lips, frowning, pensive, trying to seem like a man
in thought whose eyes saw nothing. But he had seen
another pair of eyes and they were studying
him staring at him while the owner was engaged in
what appeared to be a lively conversation with an
elderly woman next to him. The man had looked
away, and Converse had a brief half-second to
observe the face before he turned to the window. He
knew that face; he had talked to that man, but he
could not remember where it was or when it was,
only that they had spoken. The realisation was as
maddening as it was frightening. Where was it? When
was it? Did the man know him, know his name?
If the man did, he had done nothing about it. He
had returned his concentration to the woman, the
conversation still lively. Joel tried to picture the
whole man, perhaps it would help. He was large, not
so much in height as in girth, and on the surface
jovial, but Converse sensed a meanness in him. Was
that now or before? When was before? Wherek Ten
minutes or so had passed since the exchange of
looks, end Joel was no further ahead in peeling away
the layers of memory. He was stymied and afraid.
“Wir kommen in zwei Minuten in Koln an. Bitte
achten Sie auf Ihr Gepa’ck!”
A number of passengers got up from their seats,
tugging at their jackets and skirts, reaching for
luggage. As the train began to slow down, Converse
pressed his forehead against the cool glass of the
window. He let his mind go slack, unfocused,
expecting the next few minutes to tell him what to
do.
The minutes passed, the suspension on hold, his
mind blank as passengers got off and others got in,
many carrying attache cases, several very much like
his own, which he had left in a trash can in Bonn. He
had wanted to keep it but he could not. It had been
a gift from Valerie, as his gold pen was a gift, both
initiated in those better days…. No, not better, he
told himself, simply different. Nothing was better or
worse; there were no comparisons where
commitments were con
396 ROBERT LUDLUM
corned. They either stuck or they did not. Theirs
came unstuck.
Then why, he asked himself, as the train ground
to a stop at Cologne, had he sent the contents of his
briefcase to Val? His answer was the essence of
logic, he thought. She would know what to do; the
others would not. Talbot, Brooks and Simon were
out. His sister, Virginia, was even further out. His
father? The fly-boy with a sense of responsibility
that went as far as his last wing dip? It could not be
the pilot. He loved old Roger, more than he
suspected Roger loved him, but the pilot could
never come to grips with the ground. Hard earth
meant relationships, and old Roger never knew how
to handle them even with a wife he claimed to have
loved dearly. The doctors said she had died of a
coronary occlusion; her son thought it was from
neglect. Roger was not on the scene, had not been
for several weeks. So that left Valerie . . . his once
and former Valerie.
“Entschuldigen Sie. Ist dieser Platz fret?” The
intruding voice came from a man about his own age,
carrying an attache case.
Joel nodded, assuming the words referred to the
empty seat beside him.
“Danke, ” said the man, sitting down, the attache
case at his feet. He withdrew a newspaper from
under his left arm and snapped it open. Converse
tensed as he saw his photograph, his own serious
face staring at him. He turned again to the window,
pulling the soft brim of the hat lower, his face
down, hoping he looked like an exhausted traveller
wishing only to catch a few minuses’ sleep.
Moments later, as the train started forward, he had
an inkling that he had succeeded.
“Verru’ckt, nicht wahr.P” said the man with the
attache case reading the newspaper.
Joel stirred and blinked open his eyes beneath
the brim of the hat. “Umm?”
“Schade, ” added the man, his right hand
separated from the paper in a gesture of apology.
Converse settled back against the window, the
coolness of the glass an anchor, his eyes closed, the
darkness more welcome than he could ever
remember…. No, that was not true he remembered
to the contrary. In the camps there were momenh
when he was not sure he could keep up the facade
of strength and revolt, when everything in him
wanted to capitulate, to hear even a few kind words,
to see a smile that had
THE AQUlTAlNE PROGRESSION 397
meaning. Then the darkness would come and he
would cry, the tears drenching his face. And when
they stopped, the anger would be inexplicably
restored. Somehow the tears had cleansed him,
purged the doubts and the fears and made him whole
again. And angry again.
“Wir kommen in fief Minuten in Dusseldorf an!’
Joel bolted forward, his neck painfully stiff, his
head cold. He had dozed for a considerable length of
time, judging from the stiffness above his shoulder
blades. The man beside him was reading and
marking a report of some kind, the attache case on
his lap, the newspaper folded neatly between himself
and Converse, folded maddeningly with his
photograph in clear view. The man opened his case,
put the report inside, and snapped it shut. He turned
to Converse.
“Der Zug ist punklich, ” he said, nodding his head.
Joel nodded back, suddenly aware that the
passenger across the aisle had gotten up with the
elderly woman, shaking her hand and replying to
something she had said. But he was not looking at
her; his eyes had strayed over to Converse. Joel
slumped back into the seat and the window, resuming
the appearance of a weary traveler, the soft brim of
his hat pulled down to the rims of his glasses. Who
was that man? If they knew each other, how could he
be silent under the circum. stances? How could he
simply look over now and then and casually return to
his conversation with the woman? At the very least,
he would have to betray some sense of alarm or fear,