The Aquitaine Progression (34 page)

“Our? You really must explain yourself!”

“As you—and as I—said, I am what I want people to think I am. This man knew the truth. I’m on leave of absence from my firm, working confidentially for a personal client. He tried to stop me, tried to get the senior partner to cancel my leave and call me back.”

“By giving him
reasons
?”

“No, just veiled threats of corruption and impropriety. He wouldn’t go any further; he’s on the bench and couldn’t back it up; his own conduct would be suspect. My employer is completely ignorant—angry as hell and confused—but I’ve calmed him down. It’s a closed issue; the less it’s explored, the better for us all.” Joel opened the door for Leifhelm. “Till tomorrow—” He paused for a brief moment, loathing the man standing in front of him but showing only respect in his eyes. “Field Marshal,” he added.

“
Gute Nacht
,” said Erich Leifhelm, nodding his head sharply once in military acknowledgment.

Converse persuaded the switchboard operator to send someone into the dining room for the American, Commander Fitzpatrick. The task of finding the naval officer was not easy, for he was not in the dining room or the bar but outside on the
Spanische Terrasse
having a drink with friends, watching the Rhine at twilight.

“What goddamned friends?” demanded Joel over the phone.

“Just a couple I met out there. He’s a nice guy—an executive type, pretty much into his seventies, I think.”

“And she?” asked Converse, his lawyer’s antenna struck by a signal.

“Maybe—thirty, forty years younger,” replied Connal with less elaboration.

“Get up here, sailor!”

Fitzpatrick leaned forward on the couch, his elbows on his knees, his expression a mixture of concern and astonishment as he looked over at Joel, who was smoking a cigarette in front of the open balcony doors. “Let me run this again,” he said warily. “You want me to stop someone from getting your service record?”

“Not all of it, just part of it.”

“Who the hell do you think I am?”

“You did it for Avery—for
Press
. You can do it for me. You
have
to!”

“That’s backwards. I
opened
those files for him, I didn’t keep them closed.”

“Either way it’s control. You’ve got access; you’ve got a key.”

“I’m
here
, not there. I can’t scissor something out you don’t like ten thousand miles away. Be reasonable!”

“Somebody can, somebody
has
to! It’s only a short segment, and it’s got to be at the end. The final interview.”

“An
interview
?” said Connal, startled, getting to his feet. “In a service record? You mean some kind of operational report? Because if you do, it wouldn’t be—”

“Not a report,” interrupted Converse, shaking his head. “The discharge—my
discharge
interview. That stuff Press Halliday quoted to me.”

“Wait a minute,
wait
a minute!” Fitzpatrick held up his hands. “Are you referring to the remarks made at your discharge
hearing
?”

“Yes, that’s it. The hearing!”

“Well, relax. They’re not part of your service record, or anyone else’s.”

“Halliday had them—
Avery
had them! I just told you, he quoted my words verbatim!” Joel walked to a table where there was an ashtray; he crushed out his cigarette. “If they’re not part of the record, how did he get them? How did
you
get them for him?”

“That’s different,” said Connal, obviously remembering as he spoke. “You were a POW, and a lot of those hearings were put under a debriefing classification, and I
do
mean classified. Even after all these years, many of those sessions are still touchy. A lot of things were talked about that no one to this day wants made public—for everyone’s good, not just the military’s.”

“But
you
got them! I heard my own words, goddamn it!”

“Yes, I got them,” admitted the Navy lawyer without enthusiasm. “I got the transcript, and I’d be busted to seaman third class if anyone knew about it. You see, I believed Press. He swore to me he needed it, needed everything. He couldn’t make any mistakes.”

“How did you do it? You weren’t even in San Diego at the time, that’s what you said!”

“By calling the vaults and using my legal-release number to have a photostat made. I said it was a Four Zero emergency and I’d take responsibility. The next morning when the authorization came in by pouch for countersignature, I had the chief legal officer at the base sign it with a lot of other things. It simply got buried in the paper work.”

“But how did you know about it in the first place?”

“Selected POW records have flags on their discharge sheets.”

“Clarification, please?”

“Just what I said, flags. Small blue seals that denote additional information still held under tight security. No flags, everything’s clean; but if there is one, that means there’s something else. I told Press, and he said he had to have whatever it was, so I went after it.”

“Then anyone else could, too.”

“No, not anyone. You need an officer with a legal-release number, and there aren’t that many of us. Also there’s a minimum forty-eight-hour delay so the material can be vetted. That’s almost always in the area of weapons and technology data that still might be classified.”

“
Forty-eight?
” Converse swallowed as he tried to count the hours since Paris, since the first moment his name had surfaced. “There’s still time!” he said, his voice taut, his words clipped. “If you can do it there’s still
time
. And if you can, I’ll tell you everything I know because you’ll deserve it. No one will deserve it more.”

“Spell it out.”

Joel turned aimlessly, shaking his head. “That’s funny. I said the same thing to Avery. I said ‘Spell it out, Avery.’ … Sorry, his name was Press.” Converse turned back to the Navy lawyer, a military lawyer with a mystifying military privilege called a legal-release number. “Listen to me and hear me clearly. A few minutes ago something happened that I wasn’t sure would or
could
happen—something your brother-in-law was killed to prevent. Tomorrow at four o’clock in the afternoon I’m going to walk into the midst of that group of men who’ve come together to promote a kind of violence that’ll stun this world, toppling governments, allowing these same men to step in and fill the voids. They’ll run things their way, shape the
laws
their way. One big Supreme Court, each chair owned by a fanatic with specific convictions as to who and what has value and who and what doesn’t, and those who don’t can go to hell, no appeals on the agenda.… I’m going to meet them face-to-face! I’m going to
talk
with them,
hear
their
words
! I admit I’m the most amateurish fox you’ve ever heard of in a chicken coop—only, in this case it’s a vultures’ nest, and I mean the type that swoops down and tears the flesh off your back with one pass. But I’ve got something going for me: I’m one hell of a good lawyer, and I’ll learn things they won’t know I’ve learned. Maybe enough to piece together a couple of cases that will blow it all apart—blow
them
apart. I told you before that I rejected your deadline. I still reject it, but
now
it doesn’t seem so out of the question. Certainly not two days, but perhaps not ten! You see, I thought I was going to have to fly to Tel Aviv, then Johannesburg. Prime everyone, frighten them. Now I don’t have to! We’ve already done it! They’re coming to me because they’re the ones who are frightened
now
! They don’t know what to think, and that means they’ve panicked.” Converse paused, sweat forming on his hairline; then he added, “I don’t have to tell you what a good lawyer can do with panicked hostile witnesses. The materials he can collect for evidence.”

“Your plea’s accepted, counselor,” said Fitzpatrick, not without awe. “You’re convincing. Now, tell me why my intercession can help? What does it accomplish?”

“I want those men to think I’m
one
of them! I can live with everything they can put together about me—I’m not proud of it all; I’ve made my compromises—but I
can’t
live with that transcript of my discharge! Don’t you
see
? It’s what Avery—Press—understood! I understand now. He knew me
nearly twenty-five years ago, and when I think back we were actually pretty damned good friends. And no matter what happened to us individually, he was banking on the fact that I hadn’t really changed that much, not in the deeper things. By the time we reach the voting age we’re pretty well set, all of us. The real changes come later, much later, dictated by such things as acceptance or rejection and the state of our wallets—the prices we pay for our convictions, or to support our talents, defending success or explaining failure. That transcript confirmed what Halliday believed, at least enough to make him want to meet me, talk with me, and finally to recruit me. Only, he did it—finally—by dying as I held his head. I couldn’t walk away after that.”

Connal Fitzpatrick was silent as he walked out on the balcony. He leaned over and gripped the railing as Converse watched him. Then he stood up, raised both his hands, and pulled back the sleeve of his left wrist. “It’s twelve-fifteen in San Diego. No one in legal goes to lunch before one o’clock; the Coronado’s bar doesn’t begin to jump until then.”

“Can you
do
it?”

“I can try,” said the naval officer, crossing through the French doors toward the telephone. “No, damn it, if you’ve got your times straight, I can do better than try, I can issue an order. That’s what rank’s all about.”

The first five minutes were excruciating for Joel. There were delays on all overseas calls, but somehow the bi-, tri-, or quadri-lingual Fitzpatrick, speaking urgently, unctuously, in German, managed to get through, the word
dringend
repeated frequently.

“Lieutenant Senior Grade Remington, David. Legal Division, SAND PAC. This is an emergency, sailor, Commander Fitzpatrick calling. Break in if the lines are occupied.” Connal covered the mouthpiece and turned to Converse. “If you’ll open my suitcase, there’s a bottle of bourbon in the middle.”

“I’ll open your suitcase, Commander.”

“
Remington?
… Hello, David, it’s Connal.… Yes, thanks very much, I’ll tell Meagen.… No, I’m not in San Francisco, don’t call me there. But something’s come up I want you to handle, something on my calendar that I didn’t get to. For openers, it’s a Four Zero emergency. I’ll fill you in when I get back, but until I do you have to take care of it. Got a pencil?… There’s a POW service record under the name of Converse, Joel, Lieutenant, one and a half stripes, Air Arm,
pilot—carrier-based, Vietnam duty. He was discharged in the sixties”—Fitzpatrick looked down at Converse, who held up his right hand and three fingers of his left—“nineteen sixty-eight, to be exact.” Joel stepped forward, his spread right hand still raised, his left now showing only the index finger. “June of ’68,” added the Navy lawyer, nodding. “Point of separation our old hometown, San Diego. Have you got all that? Read it back to me, please, David.”

Connal nodded sporadically, as he listened. “C-O-N-V-E-R-S-E, that’s right.… June, ’68, Air Arm, pilot, Vietnam, POW section, San Diego separation; that’s it, you’ve got it. Now here’s the wicket, David. This Converse’s SR is flag status; the flag pertains to his discharge hearing, no weapons or high tech involved.… Listen carefully, David. It’s my understanding that there may be a request pending accompanied by a legal-release code for the discharge transcript. Under
no
circumstances is that transcript to be released. The flag stays fixed and can’t be removed by anyone without my authorization. And if the release
has
been processed it’ll still be within the forty-eight-hour vet-delay.
Kill
it. Understood?”

Again Fitzpatrick listened, but instead of nodding, he shook his head. “No, not under any circumstances. I don’t care if the secretaries of State, Defense, and the Navy all sign a joint petition on White House stationery, the answer is no. If anyone questions the decision, tell him I’m exercising my authority as Chief Legal Officer of SAND PAC. There’s some goddamned article in the ‘shoals’ that says a station CLO can impound materials on the basis of conceivably privileged information relative to the security of the sector, et cetera, et cetera. I don’t recall the time element—seventy-two hours or five days or something like that—but find that statute. You may need it.”

Connal listened further, his brows creasing, his eyes straying to Joel. He spoke slowly as Converse felt the sickening ache again in his chest. “Where can you reach me …?” said the naval officer, perplexed. Then suddenly he was no longer bewildered. “I take back what I said before; call Meagen in San Francisco. If I’m not with her and the kids, she’ll know where to reach me.… Thanks again, David. Sweep your decks and get right on this, okay? Thanks … I’ll tell Meg.” Fitzpatrick hung up the phone and exhaled audibly. “There,” he said, slouched in relief, pushing his hand through his loose light-brown hair. “I’ll phone Meagen and give her this number,
tell her to say I’ve gone up to the Sonoma hills, if Remington calls—Press had some property there.”

“Give her the telephone number,” said Joel, “but don’t tell her anything else.”

“Don’t worry, she’s got enough on her mind.” The naval officer looked at Converse, frowning. “If your hourly count is right, you’ve got your time now.”

“My count’s all right. Is Lieutenant Remington? I mean that only in the sense that he wouldn’t let anyone override your order, would he?”

“Don’t mistake my officiousness where he’s concerned,” replied Connal. “David isn’t easily pushed around. The reason I chose him and not one of the four other senior lawyers in the department is that he’s got a reputation for being a stickler prick. He’ll find that statute and nail it to the forehead of any four-striper who tries to countermand that order. I like Remington; he’s very useful. He scares the hell out of people.”

“We all have case partners like that. It’s called the good guy-bad guy routine.”