The Aquitaine Progression: A Novel by Robert Ludlum
“I give you my word.… Cal, what did you mean when you mentioned ‘the beauty part’ and forgetting about it?”
The actor’s head shifted back in perfect precision, at just the right angle for anyone in the audience. “The son of a bitch asked me what I did for a living.… As they say in the Polo Lounge, Ciao, baby.”
Converse sat on the edge of the bed, his head pounding, his body tense. Avery Fowler! Jesus! Avery Preston Fowler Halliday! Press Fowler … Press Halliday! The names bombarded him, piercing his temples and bouncing off the walls of his mind, screaming echoes everywhere. He could not control the assault; he began to sway back and forth, his arms supporting him, a strange rhythm emerging, the beat accompanying the name—names—of the man who had died in his arms in Geneva. A man he had known as a boy, the adult a stranger who had manipulated him into the world of George Marcus Delavane and a spreading disease called Aquitaine.
This Fowler wants to reach you, but he wants to do it solo, away from those people you don’t want to meet.… The judgment of a risk-taker.
Converse stopped rocking, his eyes on the Leifhelm dossier on the floor. He had assumed the worst because it was beyond his comprehension, but there was an alternative, an outside possibility, perhaps under the circumstances even a probability. The geometrics were there; he could not trace them but they were there! The name Avery Fowler meant nothing to anyone but him—at least not in Bonn, not as it pertained to a murder in Geneva. Was Dowling right? Joel had asked the actor to get the man’s telephone number, but without conviction. The image of a dark-red limousine driving through the embassy’s gates would not leave him. That was the connection that had enveloped the shock of Avery Fowler’s name. The man using it was from the embassy, and at least part of the embassy was part of Aquitaine, therefore the impostor was part of the trap. That was the logic; it was simple arithmetic … but it was not geometry. Suppose there was a break in the line, an insertion from another plane that voided the arithmetic progression? If there was, it was in the form of an explanation he could not possibly perceive unless it was given to him.
The shock was receding; he was finding his equilibrium again. As he had done so many times in courtrooms and boardrooms, he began to accept the totally unexpected, knowing he could do nothing about it until something else happened, something over which he had no control. The most difficult part of the process was forcing himself to function until it did happen, whatever it was. Conjecture was futile; all the probabilities were beyond his understanding.
He reached down for the Leifhelm dossier.
Erich Leifhelm’s years with the Bundesgrenzschutz were unique and require a word about the organization itself. In the aftermath of all wars, a subjugated national police force is required in an occupied country for reasons ranging from the simple language problem to the occupying power’s need to understand local customs and traditions. There must be a buffer between the occupation troops and a vanquished people so as to maintain order. There is also a side issue rarely elaborated upon or analyzed in the history books, but no less important for that lack. Defeated armies can still possess talent, and unless that talent is utilized the humiliation of defeat can ferment, at minimum distilling itself into hostilities that are counterproductive to a stabilized political climate, or, at maximum, turning into internal subversion that can lead to violence and bloodshed at the expense of the victors and whatever new government that is being formed. To put it bluntly, the Allied General Staff recognised that it had on its hands another brilliant and popular military man who would not suffer the anonymity of early retirement or a corporate boardroom. The Bundesgrenzschutz—literally, federal border police—like all police organizations, was and is a paramilitary force, and as such the logical repository for men like Erich Leifhelm. They were the leaders; better to use them than be abused by them. And as always among leaders, there are those few who surge forward, leading the pack. During these years foremost among those few was Erich Leifhelm.
His early work with the Grenzschutz was that of a military consultant during the massive German demobilization, then afterward the chief liaison between the police garrisons and the Allied occupation forces. Following demobilization, his duties were mainly concentrated in the trouble spots of Vienna and Berlin where he was in constant touch with the commanders of the American, British and French sectors. His zealous anti-Soviet feelings were rapidly made known by Leifhelm throughout the command centers and duly noted by the senior officers. More and more he was taken into their confidence until—as it had happened before with the Prussians—he was literally considered one of them.
It was in Berlin where Leifhelm first came in contact with General Jacques-Louis Bertholdier. A strong friendship developed, but it was not an association either one cared to parade because of the age-old animosities between the German and French militaries. We were able to trace only three former officers from Bertholdier’s command post who remembered—or would speak of—seeing the two men frequently at dinner together in out-of-the-way restaurants and cafés, deep in conversation, obviously comfortable with each other. Yet during those occasions when Leifhelm was summoned to French headquarters in Berlin, the formalities were icily proper, with names rarely used and certainly never first names, only ranks and titles. In recent years, as noted above, both men have denied knowing each other personally, albeit admitting their paths may have crossed.
Where previously acknowledgment of their friendship was discouraged because of traditional prejudices, the current reasons are far more understandable. Both are spearheads in the Delavane organization. The names on the primary list are there with good reason. They are influential men who sit on the boards of multinational corporations that deal in products and technology ranging from the building of dams to the construction of nuclear plants; in between are a hundred likely subsidiaries throughout Europe and Africa which could easily expedite sales of armaments. As detailed in the following pages, it can be assumed that Leifhelm and Bertholdier communicate through a woman named Ilse Fishbein in Bonn. Fishbein is her married name, the marriage itself questionable in terms of motive insofar as it was dissolved years ago when Yakov Fishbein, a survivor of the camps, emigrated to Israel. Frau Fishbein, born in 1942, is the youngest illegitimate daughter of Hermann Göring.
Converse put down the dossier and reached for a memo pad next to the telephone on the bedside table. He then unclipped from his shirt pocket the gold Cartier ball-point pen Val had given him years ago and wrote down the name Ilse Fishbein. He studied both the pen and the name. The Cartier status symbol was a remembrance of better days—no, not really better, but at least more complete. Valerie, at his insistence, had finally quit the New York advertising agency, with its insane hours, and gone free-lance. On her last day of formal work, she had walked across town to Cartier and spent a considerable portion of her last paycheck for his gift. When he asked her what he had done outside of his meteoric rise in Talbot, Brooks and Simon to deserve a gift of such impractical opulence, she had replied: “For making me do what I should have done a long time ago. On the other hand, if free-lancing doesn’t pay off, I’ll steal it back and pawn it.… What the hell, you’ll probably lose it.”
Free-lancing had paid off very well, indeed, and he had never lost the pen.
Ilse Fishbein gave rise to another kind of thought. As much as he would like to confront her, it was out of the question. Whatever Erich Leifhelm knew had been provided by Bertholdier in Paris and relayed by Frau Fishbein here in Bonn. And the communication obviously contained a detailed description as well as a warning; the American was dangerous. Ilse Fishbein, as a trusted confidante in Aquitaine, could undoubtedly lead him to others in Germany who were part of Delavane’s network, but to approach her was to ask for his own … whatever it was they intended for him at the moment, and he was not ready for that. Still, it was a name, a piece of information, a fact he was not expected to have, and experience had taught him to keep such details up front and reveal them, spring t
Yet the temptation was so damned inviting. The bloodline of Hermann Göring involved with the contemplated resurrection of the generals! In Germany. Ilse Fishbein could be an immediate means of unlocking a floodgate of unwanted memories. He held in his hand a spiked club; the moment would come when he would swing it.
Leifhelm’s commanding duties in the field with the West German NATO divisions lasted seventeen years, whereupon he was elevated to SHAPE headquarters, near Brussels, as military spokesman for Bonn’s interests.
Again his tenure was marked by extreme anti-Soviet postures, frequently at odds with his own government’s pragmatic approach to coexistence with the Kremlin, and throughout his final months at SHAPE he was more often appreciated by the Anglo-American right-wing factions than by the political leadership in Bonn.
It was only when the chancellor of the Federal Republic concluded that American foreign policy in the early eighties had been taken out of the hands of professionals and usurped by bellicose ideologues that he ordered Leifhelm home and created an innocuous post for the soldier to keep him at bay.
Leifhelm, however, had never been a gullible fool, nor was he one now in his new, improvised status. He understood why the politicians had created it—it showed recognition of his own subtle strengths. People everywhere were looking to the past, to men who spoke clearly, with candor, and did not obfuscate the problems facing their countries and the world, especially the Western world.
So he began to speak. At first to veterans’ groups and splinter organizations where military pasts and long-established partisan politics guaranteed him a favorable reception. Spurred by the enthusiastic responses he evoked, Leifhelm began to expand, seeking larger audiences, his positions becoming more strident, his statements more provocative.
One man listened and was furious. The chancellor learned that Leifhelm had carried his quasi-politicking into the Bundestag itself, implying a constituency far beyond what he really had, but by the sheer force of his personality swaying members who should not have been swayed. Leifhelm’s message came back to the chancellor: an enlarged army in far greater numbers than the NATO commitments; an intelligence service patterned after the once extraordinary Abwehr; a general revamping of textbooks, deleting injurious and slanderous materials; rehabilitation camps for political troublemakers and subversives pretending to be “liberal thinkers.” It was all there.
The chancellor had had enough. He summoned Leifhelm to his office, where he demanded his resignation in the presence of three witnesses. Further, he ordered Leifhelm to remove himself from all aspects of German politics, to accept no further speaking engagements, and to lend neither his name nor his presence to any cause whatsoever. He was to retire totally from public life. We have reached one of those witnesses whose name is not pertinent to this report. The following is his recollection:
The chancellor was furious. He said to Leifhelm: “Herr General, you have two choices, and, if you’ll forgive me, a final solution. Number one, you may do as I say. Or you can be stripped of your rank and all pensions and financial accruals afforded therein, as well as the income from some rather valuable real estate in Munich, which in the opinion of any enlightened court would be taken from you instantly. That is your second choice.”
I tell you, the field marshal was apoplectic! He demanded his rights, as he called them, and the chancellor shouted, “You’ve had your rights, and they were wrong! They’re still wrong!” Then Leifhelm asked what the final solution was, and I swear to you, as crazy as it sounds, the chancellor opened a drawer of his desk, took out a pistol, and aimed it at Leifhelm. “I, myself, will kill you right now,” he said. “You will not, I repeat, not take us back.”
I thought for a moment that the old soldier was going to rush forward and accept the bullet, but he didn’t. He stood there staring at the chancellor, such hatred in his eyes, matched by the statesman’s cold appraisal. Then Leifhelm did a stupid thing. He shot his arm forward—not at the chancellor, but away from him—and cried “Heil Hitler.” Then he turned in military fashion and walked out the door.
We were all silent for a moment or two, until the chancellor broke the silence. “I should have killed him,” he said. “I may regret it. We may all regret it.”
Five days after this confrontation, Jacques-Louis Bertholdier made the first of his two trips to Bonn following his retirement. On his initial visit he stayed at the Schlosspark Hotel, and as hotel records are kept for a period of three years, we were able to obtain copies of his billing charges. There were numerous calls to various firms doing business with Juneau et Cie, too numerous to examine individually, but one number kept being repeated, the name having no apparent business connections with Bertholdier or his company. It was Ilse Fishbein. However, upon checking Erich Leifhelm’s telephone bills for the dates in question, it was found that he, too, had placed calls to Ilse Fishbein, identical in number with those placed by Bertholdier. Inquiries and brief surveillance further established that Frau Fishbein and Leifhelm have known each other for a number of years. The conclusion is apparent: She is the conduit between Paris and Bonn in Delavane’s apparatus.
Converse lit a cigarette. There was the name again, the temptation again. Ilse Fishbein could be the shortcut. Threatened with exposure, this daughter of Hermann Göring could reveal a great deal. She could confirm that she was not only the liaison between Leifhelm and Bertholdier but conceivably much more, for the two ex-generals had to transmit information to each other. The names of companies, of buried subsidiaries, and of firms doing business related to Delavane in Palo Alto might surface, names he could pursue legally, looking for the illegalities that had to be there. If there only was a way to make his presence felt but not seen.
An intermediary. He had used intermediaries in the past, often enough to know the value of the procedure. It was relatively simple. He would approach a third party to make contact with an adversary carrying information that could be of value to him insofar as it might be deemed damaging to his interests, and if the facts presented were strong enough, an equitable solution was usually forthcoming. The ethics was questionable, but contrary to accepted belief, ethics was in three dimensions, if not four. The end did not justify the means, but justifiable means that brought about a fair and necessary conclusion were not to be dismissed.
And nothing could be fairer or more necessary than the dismantling of Aquitaine. Old Beale was right that night on the moonlit beach on Mykonos. His client was not an unknown man in San Francisco but instead a large part of this so-called civilized world. Aquitaine had to be stopped, aborted.
An intermediary? It was another question he would put off until the morning. He picked up the dossier, his eyes heavy.
Leifhelm has few intimate friends that appear to be constant, probably because of his awareness that he is under watch by the government. He sits on the boards of several prominent corporations, which have stated frankly that his name justifies his stipend.…
Joel’s head fell forward. He snapped it back, widened his eyes, and scanned the final pages rapidly, absorbing only the general impressions; his concentration was waning. There was mention of several restaurants, the names meaningless; a marriage during the war that ended when Leifhelm’s wife disappeared in November of ’43, presumed killed in a Berlin bombing raid; no subsequent wife or wives. His private life was extraordinarily private, if not austere; the exception here was his proclivity for small dinner parties, the guest lists always varied, again names, again meaningless. The address of his residence on the outskirts of Bad Godesberg.… Suddenly Converse’s neck stiffened, his eyes fully alert.
The house is in the remote countryside, on the Rhine River and far from any shopping areas or suburban concentration. The grounds are fenced and guarded by attack dogs
A dark-red Mercedes! It was Leifhelm himself who had been at the airport! Leifhelm who had driven directly to the embassy! How could it happen? How?
It was too much to absorb, too far beyond his understanding. The darkness was closing in, Joel’s brain telling him it could no longer accept further input; it simply could not function. The dossier fell to his side; he closed his eyes and slept.
He was plunging headlong down through a cavernous hole in the earth, jagged black rocks on all sides, infinite darkness below. The walls of irregular stone kept screaming in frenzy, screeching at him like descending layers of misshapen gargoyles with sharp beaks and raised claws lunging at his flesh. The hysterical clamor was unbearable. Where had the silence gone? Why was he falling into black nothingness?
He flashed his eyes open; his forehead was drenched with sweat, his breath coming in gasps. The telephone by his head was ringing, the erratic bell jarringly dissonant. He tried to shake the sleep and the fear from his semiconsciousness; he reached for the blaring instrument, glancing at his watch as he did so. It was twelve-fifteen, a quarter past noon, the sun streaking through the hotel window. Blinding.
“Yes? Hello …?”
“Joe? Joel?”
“Yes.”
“It’s Cal Dowling. Our boy called.”
“What? Who?”
“This Fowler. Avery Fowler.”
“Oh, Jesus!” It was coming back, it was all coming back. He was seated at a table in the Chat Botté on the Quai du Mont Blanc, flashes of sunlight bouncing off the grillwork on the lakeside boulevard. No … he was not in Geneva. He was in a hotel room in Bonn, and only hours ago he had been plunged into madness by that name. “Yes,” he choked, catching his breath. “Did you get a telephone number?”
“He said there wasn’t time for games, and besides, he doesn’t have one. You’re to meet him at the east wall of the Alter Zoll as fast as you can get there. Just walk around; he’ll find you.”