THE RHINEMANN EXCHANGE BY ROBERT LUDLUM
MARCH 20,1944
WASHINGTON, D.C.
‘David?’
The girl came into the room and stood silently for a moment, watching the
tall army officer as he stared out the hotel window. The March rain fell
through a March chill, creating pockets of wind and mist over the
Washington skyline.
Spaulding turned, aware of her presence, not of her voice. ‘I’m sorry. Did
you say something?’ He saw that she held his raincoat. He saw, too, the
concern in her eyes – and the fear she tried to conceal.
‘It’s over,’ she said softly.
‘It’s over,’ he replied. ‘Or will be in an hour from now.’
‘Will they all be there?’ she asked as, she approached him, holding the
coat in front of her as though it were a shield.
‘Yes. They have no choice…. I have no choice.’ Spaulding’s left shoulder
was encased in bandages under his tunic, the arm in a wide, black sling.
‘Help me on with that, will you? The rain’s not going to let up.’
Jean Cameron unfolded the coat reluctantly and opened it.
She stopped, her eyes fixed on the collar of his army shirt. Then on the
lapels of his uniform.
All the insignia had been removed.
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There were only slight discolorations in the cloth where the emblems had
been.
There was no rank, no identifying brass or silver. Not even the gold
initials of the country he served.
Had served.
He saw that she had seen.
res the way I began,’ he said quietly. ‘No name, no rank, no history. Only
a number. Followed by a letter. I want them to remember that.’
The girl stood motionless, gripping the coat. ‘They’ll kill you, David.’
Her words were barely audible.
‘That’s the one thing they won’t do,’ he said calmly. ‘There’ll be no
assassins, no accidents, no sudden orders flying me out to
Burma or Dar es Salaam. That’s finished They can’t know
what I’ve done.’
He smiled gently and touched her face. Her lovely face. She breathed deeply
and imposed a control on herself he knew she did not feel. She slipped the
raincoat carefully over his left shoulder as he reached around for the
right sleeve. She pressed her face briefly against his back; he could feel
the slight trembling as she spoke.
‘I won’t be afraid. I promised you that.’
He walked out the glass entrance of the Shoreham Hotel and shook his head
at the doorman under the canopy. He did not want a taxi; he wanted to walk.
To let the dying fires of rage finally subside and bum themselves out. A
long walk.
It would be the last hour of his life that he would wear the uniform.
The uniform now with no insignia, no identification.
He would walk through the second set of doors at the War Department and
give his name to the military police.
David Spaulding.
That’s all he would say. It would be enough; no one would stop him, none
would interfere.
Orders would be left by unnamed commanders – divisional recognition only –
that would allow him to proceed down the grey corridors to an unmarked
room.
Those orders would be at that security desk because another order had been
given. An order no one could trace. No one comprehended….
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They claimed. In outrage.
But none with an outrage matching his.
They knew that, too, the unknown commanders.
Names meaning nothing to him only months ago would be in the unmarked room.
Names that now were symbols of an abyss of deceit that so revolted him, he
honestly believed he had lost his mind.
Howard Oliver.
Jonathan Craft.
Walter Kendall.
The names were innocuous-sounding in themselves. They could belong to
untold hundreds of thousands. There was something so…. American about
them.
Yet these names, these men, had brought him to the brink of insanity.
They would be there in the unmarked room, and he would remind them of those
who were absent.
Erich Rhinemann. Buenos Aires.
Alan Swanson. Washington.
Franz Altmoller. Berlin.
Other symbols. Other threads….
The abyss of deceit into which he had been plunged by … enemies.
How in God’s name had it happened?
How could it have happened?
But it did happen. And he had written down the facts as he knew them.
Written them down and placed … the docum ‘ ent in an archive
case inside a deposit box within a bank vault in Colorado.
Untraceable. Locked in the earth for a millennium … for it was better
that way.
Unless the men in the unmarked room forced him to do otherwise.
If they did . . . if they forced him … the sanities of millions would be
tested. The revulsion would not acknowledge national boundaries or the
cause of any global tribe.
The leaders would become pariahs.
As he was a pariah now.
A number followed by a letter.
He reached the steps of the War Department; the tan stone
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pillars did not signify strength to him now. Only the appearance of light
brown paste.
No longer substance.
He walked through the sets of double doors up to the security desk, manned
by a middle-aged lieutenant colonel flanked by two sergeants.
‘Spaulding, David,’he said quietly.
‘Your I.D. . . .’ the lieutenant colonel looked at the shoulders Of the
raincoat, then at the collar, ‘Spaulding. . . .’
‘My name is David Spaulding. My source is Fairfax,’ repeated David softly.
‘Check your papers, soldier.’
The lieutenant colonel’s head snapped up in anger, gradually replaced by
bewilderment as he looked at Spaulding. For David had not spoken harshly,
or even impolitely. Just factually.
The sergeant to the left of the lieutenant colonel shoved a page of paper
in front of the officer without interrupting. The lieutenant colonel looked
at it.
He glanced back up at David – briefly – and waved him through.
As he walked down the grey corridor, his raincoat over his arm, Spaulding
could feel the eyes on him, scanning the uniform devoid of rank or
identification. Several salutes were rendered hesitantly.
None was acknowledged.
Men turned; others stared from doorways.
This was the … officer, their looks were telling him. They’d heard the
rumors, spoken in whispers, in hushed voices in out-ofthe-way comers. This
was the man.
An order had been given….
The man.
10
PROLOGUE
One
SEPTEMBER 8,1939
NEW YORK CITY
The two army officers, their uniforms creased into steel, their hats
removed, watched the group of informally dressed men and women through the
glass partition. The room in which the officers sat was dark.
A red light flashed; the sounds of an organ thundered out of the two webbed
boxes at each comer of the glass-fronted, lightless cubicle. There followed
the distant howling of dogs – large, rapacious dogs – and then a voice –
deep, clear, forbidding -spoke over the interweaving sounds of the organ
and the animals.
Wherever madness exists, wherever the cries of the helpless can be heard,
there you willfind the tallfigure ofJonathan Tyne – waiting, watching in
shadows, prepared to do battle with the forces of hell. The seen and the
unseen….
Suddently there was a piercing, mind-splitting scream. ‘Eeaagh V Inside the
lighted, inner room an obese woman winked at the short man in thick glasses
who had been reading
from a tyWA script and walked away from the microphone, chewing her gum
rapidly.
The deep voice continued. Tonight wefind Jonathan Tyne coming to the aid of
the terror-stricken Lady Ashcroft, whose husband disappeared into the misty
Scottish moors at precisely midnight three weeks ago. And each night at
precisely midnight, the howls of unknown dogs bay across the darkened
fields. They seem to be challenging the very man who now walks stealthily
into the enveloping mist. Jonathan Tyne. The seeker of evil; the nemesis of
Lucifer. The champion of the helpless victims of darkness….
The organ music swelled once more to a crescendo; the sound of the baying
dogs grew more vicious.
The older officer, a colonel, glanced at his companion, a first lieutenant.
The younger man, his eyes betraying his concern, was staring at the group
of nonchalant actors inside the lighted studio.
The colonel winced.
‘Interesting, isn’t it?’ he said.
‘What?’… Oh,yes, sir. Yes, sir; very interesting. Whichoneishe?’
‘The tall fellow over in the comer. The one reading a newspaper.’
‘Does he play Tyne?’
‘Who? Oh, no, lieutenant. He has a small role, I think. In a Spanish
dialect.’
‘A small role … in a Spanish dialect.’ The lieutenant repeated the
colonel’s words, his voice hesitant, his look bewildered. ‘Forgive me, sir,
I’m confused. I’m not sure what we’re doing here; what he’s doing here. I
thought he was a construction engineer.’
‘He is.’
The organ music subsided to pianissimo; the sound of the howling dogs faded
away. Now another voice – this one lighter, friendlier, with no
undercurrent of impending drama – came out of the two webbed boxes.
Pilgrim. The soap with the scent offlowers in May; the Mayflower soap.