The Apocalypse Watch Read online

  “You’ll do more than that, Mr. Director,” said Adam Bollinger. “You’ll put everyone on Harry Latham’s list under surveillance. My God, we could have a global conspiracy on our hands.”

  “Please, Mr. Secretary, we’re nowhere near that. Not yet. But I have to ask you, Knox, who deleted Claude Moreau’s name from the list that was sent to me?”

  His astonishment apparent, Talbot winced, then rapidly composed himself. “I’m sorry, Wes,” he said quietly, “it came from a reliable source, a senior case officer who worked with you both in Istanbul. He said you two were close, that Moreau saved your life in the Dardanelles while on assignment in Marmara. Our man wasn’t sure you could be objective, it’s as simple as that. How did you find out?”

  “Somebody cleared a list for Ambassador Courtland—”

  “We had to,” interrupted Talbot. “The Germans leaked it and Courtland was put on a diplomatic spit.… Moreau’s name was on it?”

  “So much for the Agency’s oversight.”

  “An error, human error, what more can I say? There are too goddamned many machines that spew out data too fast.… The justification in your case, however, was understandable. A man saves your life, you’re damned quick to come to his defense. Perhaps unwittingly, just by sympathetically probing, you could even tip him off that he’s under a microscope.”

  “Not if you’re a professional, Knox,” said the head of Consular Operations curtly, “and I believe I’ve attained that status.”

  “Christ, you certainly have,” agreed Talbot, nodding his head. “You’d be sitting in my chair if you’d been willing to accept it.”

  “I never wanted it.”

  “Again, I apologize. But while we’re on the subject, what do you think about Moreau’s inclusion?”

  “I think it’s crazy.”

  “So are about twenty or twenty-five others in this country alone, and when you consider their staffs and associates, well over a couple of hundred in high places. There’s another seventy or so in the U.K. and France and they could be multiplied tenfold. Among them are men and women we regard as true patriots, and regardless of political affiliations we may not like, people we honor. Is Harry Latham, one of the best and the brightest, a cuckoo bird, a deep cover who lost his marbles?”

  “That’s hard to imagine—”

  “Which is why every man and woman on his list will be backgrounded from the moment they could walk and talk,” announced the Secretary of State emphatically, his thin lips now a straight line. “Turn over every rock, bring me dossiers that make the Federal Bureau’s checks look like a hungry salesman’s credit search.”

  “Adam,” protested Knox Talbot, “it’s the Bureau’s territory, not ours. That’s clearly spelled out in the ’forty-seven charter.”

  “To hell with the charter. If there are Nazis roaming the corridors of government, industry, and the so-called arts, we have to find them, expose them!”

  “With what authority?” asked Sorenson, studying the face of the Secretary of State.

  “With my authority, if you like. I’ll be responsible.”

  “Congress might object,” pressed the director of Cons-Op.

  “Screw the Congress, just keep it quiet. Good God, you can at least do that, can’t you? You’re both part of the administration, aren’t you? It’s called the Executive Branch, gentlemen, and if the Executive, the presidency itself, can root out the Nazi influence in this country, the nation will forever be thankful. Now, go to work, coordinate, and bring me results. Our conference is over. I have an appointment with one of those Sunday morning talk-show producers. I’m going to announce the President’s new policy on the Caribbean.”

  Outside in the State Department corridor, Knox Talbot turned to Wesley Sorenson. “Beyond finding out who’s compromising our AA-Zero computers, I have no stomach for any of this.”

  “I’ll resign first,” said the Cons-Op head.

  “That’s not the way, Wes,” countered the DCI. “If you go and I go, he’ll find a couple of others he can really control. I say we both stay and ‘coordinate’ quietly with the Bureau.”

  “Bollinger ruled that out.”

  “No, he specifically objected to and overrode the charter of ‘forty-seven that prohibits you and me from operating domestically. We filtered his words and came to the conclusion that he didn’t actually want us to act unconstitutionally. He’ll probably thank us later. Hell, the acolytes around Reagan did this all the time.”

  “Is Bollinger worth it, Knox?”

  “No, he’s not, but our organizations are. I’ve worked with the Bureau’s chief. He’s not obsessed with his turf—he’s no Hoover. He’s a decent guy, a former judge who was considered fair, and he has plenty of street smarts. I’ll convince him it’s all got to be silent and deep but conclusive. And, let’s face it, Harry Latham can’t be ignored.”

  “I still think Moreau’s a mistake, a terrible error.”

  “There may be others too, but there could also be other others who aren’t. I hate to say it, but Bollinger’s right about that. I’ll make contact with the Bureau, you keep Harry Latham alive.”

  “I see another problem, Knox,” said Sorenson, frowning. “Remember the garbage of the fifties, the McCarthy bullshit?”

  “Please,” answered the black DCI. “I was a freshman in college and my father was a civil rights lawyer. They called him a Communist, and we had to move from Wilmington to Chicago so my two sisters and I could walk to school. Hell, yes, I remember.”

  “Make sure the FBI understands the conceivable similarity. We don’t want reputations, even careers, ruined by irresponsible charges—or worse, rumors that won’t die. We don’t want federal gunslingers; we have to have discreet professionals.”

  “I lived through the gunslingers, Wes. It’s a priority that they be cut off at the pass. Strictly professional, strictly quiet, that’s the mantra.”

  “I wish us all good luck,” said the director of Consular Operations, “but half of my brain, if I have one, tells me we’re in dangerous waters.”

  The Antinayous’ sterile house in Paris’s Marais district was staffed by two women and a man ensconced in a comfortable flat above a fashionable dress shop on the rue Delacort. The introductions were quick, Karin de Vries doing most of the talking, making the case for Drew Latham not only immediate but emphatic. The gray-haired woman in charge conferred briefly with her colleagues.

  “We’ll send him to the Maison Rouge in Carrefour. You’ll have everything you need, monsieur. Karin and her departed husband were always with us. Godspeed, Mr. Latham. The Brüderschaft must be destroyed.”

  The old stone edifice referred to as the Maison Rouge was initially a small economy-class hotel converted into a small economy-class office building. According to the shabby tenant directory, it housed such businesses as an employment agency for manual labor, a plumbing firm, a printer, a private detective agency specializing in “divorce procedures,” as well as a smattering of bookkeepers, typists, janitorial services, and offices for rent, of which there were none. In reality, only the employment agency and the printer were legitimate; the rest were not in the Paris telephone book, ostensibly either out of business or closed for specific dates (altered successively on door signs). In their places were single and double rooms and a number of mini-suites, all complete with unlisted telephones, fax machines, typewriters, television sets, and desktop computers. The building was unattached, and two narrow alleyways led to the rear, where there was a concealed sliding door disguised as a tall, rectangular panoply of basement windowpanes. It was never to be used during daylight hours.

  Each guest of the Antinayous was given a concise briefing as to what was expected of him or her, including clothing (wardrobe provided, if necessary), behavior (not haut Parisien), communication between residents (absolutely verboten unless cleared by the “management”), and the precise scheduling of entries and departures (again cleared by management). Failure to adhere to the regulations would resu
lt in immediate expulsion, no appeal possible. The rules were admittedly harsh, but they were for everyone’s benefit.

  Latham was assigned to a mini-suite on the third floor; he was as impressed by the technical appointments as he was by what Karin had described as “German efficiency.” After having been thoroughly tutored in the workings of the equipment by a member of the management, he went into the bedroom and lay down, glanced at his watch, and estimated that he could call Karin de Vries at the embassy in a little over an hour. He wished it were sooner; the waiting to find out whether or not her strategy was successful was nerve-racking, although the lie she had concocted was exotic, even humorous considering the circumstances. Her tactic was simple: She had been with him at the bombed-out brasserie; he had disappeared and she was frantic. Why? Because she found him delightful and they were “heading toward an affair.” It was an appealing prospect and equally out of the question—on second thought, perhaps not terribly appealing, thought Drew. She was a strange woman, justifiably filled with anger and painful memories, her attractiveness diminished by both. She was a child of European angst, the national and racial upheavals that were poisoning the entire continent, and Latham was not prepared to join her crowd. He was uncomfortable when he observed her sharp yet oddly soft, lovely features turn glacial, her wide, stunning eyes become two orbs of ice, when her past consumed her. No, he had enough problems of his own.

  Then why was he thinking so about her? She had saved his life, of course … but then, she had saved her own as well. His life … what was the phrase she had used? “Perhaps it was meant to appear that way.” No! He was sick of the circles within circles, where none broke off in tangents that led to the irrefutable truth. Where was the truth? Harry’s list? Karin’s concern? Moreau? Sorenson?… He had nearly been killed four times and that was enough! He had to rest, then think, but rest first. Rest was a weapon, often more potent than firepower, an old trainer had once told him. So with the exhaustion born of fear and anxiety, Drew closed his eyes. Sleep, fitful as it was, came quickly.

  The harsh bell of the Paris phone awakened him; bolting upright, he grabbed it. “Yes?”

  “It is I,” said Karin. “I’m speaking on the colonel’s telephone.”

  “It’s swept,” interrupted Latham, rubbing the sleep from his eyes with his left hand. “Is Witkowski there?”

  “I thought you might ask that. Here he is.”

  “Hello, Drew.”

  “The attempts on my life are multiplying, Stosh.”

  “So it would appear,” agreed the G-2 veteran. “You stay deep until things are clearer.”

  “How clear do they have to be? They want me out, Stanley!”

  “Then we have to convince them that temporarily it would not be to their advantage. You have to buy time.”

  “How the hell do we do that?”

  “I’d have to know more than I do to give you an answer, but basically to make them believe you’re more valuable alive than dead.”

  “What do you need to know?”

  “Everything. Sorenson’s your boss, your ultimate control. I know Wesley, not well, but we’re acquainted, so reach him, clear me, and bring me up to speed.”

  “I don’t have to reach him. It’s my life and I’m making an on-scene decision. Take notes, then burn them, Colonel.” Latham started from the beginning, with Harry’s disappearance in the Hausruck Alps, his capture and escape from the Brotherhood, then the missing files in Washington that dealt with an unknown French general, followed by the Jodelle connection, his suicide at the theater, and his son, Jean-Pierre Villier. At this juncture Stanley Witkowski sharply interrupted.

  “The actor?”

  “That’s the one. He was enough of a jackass to go out on his own playing a street bum, and come up with information that could be valuable.”

  “Then the old man really was his father?”

  “Confirmed and reconfirmed. He was a member of the Résistance, captured by the Germans, and sent to the camps, where he was driven insane—damn near completely.”

  “ ‘Damn near’? What’s that mean? Either you are or you’re not.”

  “A small part of him wasn’t. He knew who he was … what he was … and for nearly fifty years he never tried to make contact with his son.”

  “Didn’t anyone try to make contact with him?”

  “Like thousands of others who never returned, he was presumed dead.”

  “But he wasn’t,” said Witkowski thoughtfully, “just mentally crippled and no doubt physically a wreck.”

  “Barely recognizable, I’m told. Still, he couldn’t stop going after a turncoat general who had ordered his family executed and whose name disappeared with the files. Villier confirmed that; he learned it was someone in the Loire Valley, in and around which some forty or fifty retired generals live, usually in modest country houses or larger places owned by others. That was his information, that and a license plate number of a capo who rousted him for asking questions.”

  “About the general?”

  “One of four or even five dozen down there. A soldier with the rank of general fifty years ago would have to be somewhere in his middle to late nineties if he’s still alive.”

  “Actuarially, that’s pretty remote,” agreed the colonel. “Old soldiers, especially those who’ve weathered combat, rarely last beyond their early eighties—something to do with past traumas catching up with them. The Pentagon did a study a few years ago relative to secure consultancies.”

  “That’s pretty ghoulish.”

  “And necessary where confidential information is imparted and mental stability’s on a collision course with declining health. Those old gaffers usually stay by themselves, fading quietly away, as the Big Mac put it. If they don’t want to be found, you won’t find them.”

  “Now you’re overdoing it, Stosh.”

  “I’m thinking, goddammit.… Jodelle found out something, then killed himself in front of the son he had never acknowledged while screaming that he was his son. Why?”

  “I figure it’s because whatever he learned was too big for him to fight. Just before he shoved the barrel in his mouth and blew his head off, he also screamed that he had failed—both his son and his wife. His defeat was total.”

  “I read in the papers that Villier closed Coriolanus, no specific reason except how affected he was by the old man’s suicide. The article wasn’t clear at all; actually it sounded as though he knew things he didn’t care to talk about. Naturally, like me, everyone’s wondering if Jodelle was telling the truth. Nobody wants to believe it, because Villier’s mother was a great star and his father one of the most respected members of the Comédie Française, and they’re both still alive. Of course, they can’t be reached by the press; they’re supposedly on a private island in the Mediterranean. The gossip columns are the Super Bowls of Paris.”

  “All of which makes Villier as big a target as I am, a fact I made clear to our employee, Mrs. de Vries.”

  “It’s crazy, Villier should have been controlled, stopped.”

  “I’ve been thinking about that, Stanley. I called Villier a jackass, and to do what he did, he was, but he’s not a blind jackass. I have no doubt he’d risk his own life, confident of his actor’s disguises and techniques. However, I don’t believe for a minute he’d risk the lives of his wife or parents by making himself so public a mark for the neos—to repeat, a target.”

  “Are you saying he was programmed?”

  “I don’t want to even think it because the Deuxième’s Moreau was the last knowledgeable official to confront Villier before it was announced that the play was closing.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Witkowski hesitantly. “Claude Moreau’s the best there is. I really don’t follow you, Drew.”

  “Fasten your seat belt, Colonel. Harry brought out a list of names.” Latham proceeded to describe the profoundly disturbing information his brother had learned while being held captive by the regenerated Nazis. How alarming and bew
ildering were the identities of so many powerful people, who were apparently not only sympathetic to the aims of the neo master race, but who were actively working for them.

  “It wouldn’t be the first time since the pharaohs’ legions that nations have been infested by lice in the upper ranks,” Witkowski broke in. “If Harry Latham brought it out, you can take it to the bank. He’s on that rare plateau with Claude Moreau: brains, instinct, talent, and tenacity all coming together. There’s nobody in this business better than those two.”

  “Moreau’s on Harry’s list, Stanley,” said Drew quietly. The silence from the swept embassy phone was as electric as it had been with Sorenson when Latham delivered the same information. “I trust you’re still there, Colonel.”

  “I wish I weren’t,” mumbled Witkowski. “I can’t think of anything to say.”

  “How about bullshit?”

  “That’s my first reaction, but there’s a secondary one and it’s just as strong. His name is Harry Latham.”

  “I know that—for all the reasons you mentioned and several dozen you didn’t. But even my brother can make a mistake, or accept disinformation until he analyzes it. That’s why I have to talk to him.”

  “Mrs. de Vries explained that he’s due here in Paris within a day or two, that you left word for him to keep calling you, which now he obviously won’t be able to do.”

  “I can’t even give him a number, it’s not on the phone here. But you have it.”

  “That number is buried in the underground telephone lines, at least the address is, and it’s undoubtedly a false one.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “It’s a leap of faith neither Sorenson nor I would normally approve of, but tell Mrs. de Vries where Harry is in London. We’ll take it from there and arrange your getting together. Here she is.”

  “Drew?” said Karin, now on the phone. “Is everything at the Maison Rouge all right?”

  “Only outstanding, lady—excuse me, how about ‘my benevolent female friend’?”

  “Stop trying to be clever, it doesn’t help. The Antinayous can be quite hostile, even with their proven allies.”