Robert Ludlum - Aquatain Progression.txt Read online

  no deviation from the accepted norm. The waiter

  folded two red napkins into cones and placed one

  in front of each.

  "What happened?" said Halliday quietly,

  rhetorically, after the waiter left. "The beautiful son

  of a bitch who was my father embezzled four

  hundred thousand from the Chase Manhattan while

  he was a trust officer, and when he was caught,

  went bang. Who was to know a respected, if trans-

  planted, commuter from Greenwich, Connecticut,

  had two women in the city, one on the Upper East

  Side, the other on Bank Street? He was beautiful."

  "He was busy. I still don't understand the Halliday."

  After it happened the suicide was covered

  up Mother raced back to San Francisco with a

  vengeance. We were from California, you know . .

  . but then, why would you? With even more

  vengeance she married my stepfather, John

  THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 9

  Halliday, and all traces of Fowler were assiduously

  removed during the next few months."

  'Even to your first name?"

  'No, I was always 'Press' back in San Francisco.

  We Californians come up with catchy names. Tab,

  Troy, Crotch the 1950's Beverly Hills syndrome. At

  Taft, my student ID read 'Avery Preston Fowler,' so

  you all just started calling me Avery or that awful

  'Ave.' Being a transfer student, I never bothered to

  say anything. When in Connecticut, follow the gospel

  according to Holden Caulfield."

  "That's all well and good," said Converse, "but

  what happens when you run into someone like me?

  It's bound to happen."

  "You'd be surprised how rarely. After all it was

  a long time ago, and the people I grew up with in

  Caiifornia understood. Kids out there have their

  names changed according to matrimonial whim, and

  I was in the East for only a couple of years, just long

  enough for the fourth and fifth forms at school. I

  didn't know anyone in Greenwich to speak of, and I

  was hardly part of the old Taft crowd."

  "You had friends there. We were friends."

  "I didn't have many. Let's face it, I was an

  outsider and you weren't particular. I kept a pretty

  low profile."

  "Not on the mats, you didn't."

  Halliday laughed. "Not very many wrestlers

  become lawyers, something about mat burns on the

  brain. Anyway, to answer your question, only maybe

  five or six times over the past ten years has anyone

  said to me, 'Hey, aren't you so-and-so and not

  whatever you said your name was?' when somebody

  did, I told them the truth. 'My mother remarried

  when I was sixteen.' "

  The coffee and croissants arrived. Joel broke his

  pastry in half. "And you thought I'd ask the question

  at the wrong time, specifically when I saw you at the

  conference. Is that it?"

  "Professional courtesy. I didn't want you dwelling

  on it or me when you should be thinking about

  your client. After all, we tried to lose our virginity

  together that night in New Haven."

  "Speak for yourself." Joel smiled.

  Halliday grinned. "We got pissed and both

  admitted it don't you remember? Incidentally, we

  swore each other to secrecy while throwing up in the

  can."

  10 ROBERT LUIlIUM

  "Just testing you, counselor.I remember. So you

  left the gray-flannel crowd for orange shirts and

  gold medallionsP"

  "All the way. Berkeley, then across the street to

  Stanford."

  "Good school.... How come the international field?"

  "I liked traveling and figured it was the best way

  of paying for it. That's how it started, really. How

  about you? I'd think you would have had all the

  traveling you ever wanted."

  "I had delusions about the foreign service,

  diplomatic corps, legal section. That's how it

  started."

  "After all that traveling you did?"

  Converse levered his pale blue eyes at Halliday,

  conscious of the coldness in his look. It was

  unavoidable, if misplaced as it usually was. "Yes,

  after all that traveling. There were too many lies

  and no one told us about them until it was too late.

  We were conned and it shouldn't have happened."

  Halliday leaned forward, his elbows on the table,

  hands clasped, his gaze returning Joel's. "I couldn't

  figure it," he began softly. "When I read your name

  in the papers, then saw you paraded on television,

  I felt awful. I didn't really know you that well, but

  I liked you."

  "It was a natural reaction. I'd have felt the same

  way if it had been you."

  "I'm not sure you would. You see, I was one of

  the honchos of the protest movement."

  "You burned your draft card while flaunting the

  Yippie label," said Converse gently, the ice gone

  from his eyes. "I wasn't that brave."

  "Neither was 1. It was an out-of-state library card."

  "I'm disappointed."

  "So was I in myself. But I was visible." Halliday

  leaned back in his chair and reached for his coffee.

  "How did you get so visible, Joel? I didn't think you

  were the type."

  "I wasn't. I was squeezed."

  "I thought you said 'conned.'"

  "That came later." Converse raised his cup and

  sipped his black coffee, uncomfortable with the

  direction the conversation had taken. He did not

  like discussing those years, and all too frequently he

  was called upon to do so. They had made him out

  to be someone he was not. "I was a sophomore at

  Amherst and not much of a student.... Not much,

  hell, I was borderline-negative, and whatever

  deferment I had was

  THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 11

  about to go down the tube. But I'd been Hying since

  I was fourteen."

  "I didn't know that," interrupted Halliday.

  'My father wasn't beautiful and he didn't have

  the benefit of concubines, but he was an airline

  pilot, later an executive for Pan Am. It was standard

  in the Converse household to By before you got your

  driver's license."

  "Brothers and sisters?'

  "A younger sister. She soloed before I did and

  she's never let me forget it."

  "I remember. She was interviewed on television."

  "Only twice," Joel broke in, smiling. "She was on

  your turf and didn't give a damn who knew it. The

  White House bunker put the word out to stay away

  from her. 'Don't tarnish the cause, and check her

  mail while you're at it.'"

  "That's why I remember her," said Halliday. "So

  a lousy student left college and the Navy gained a

  hot pilot."

  "Not very hot, none of us was. There wasn't that

  much to be hot against. Mostly we burned."

  "Still, you must have hated people like me back

  in the States. Not your sister, of course."

  'Her, too," corrected Converse. "Hated, loathed,

  despised furious. But only when someon
e was

  killed, or went crazy in the camps. Not for what you

  were saying we all knew Saigon but because you

  said it without any real fear. You were safe, and you

  made us feel like assholes. Dumb, frightened

  assholes."

  "I can understand that."

  "So nice of you."

  "I'm sorry, I didn't mean it the way it sounded."

  "How did it sound, counselor?"

  Halliday frowned. "Condescending, I guess."

  "No guess," said Joel. "Right on."

  "You're still angry."

  "Not at you, only the dredging. I hate the subject

  and it keeps coming back up.''

  "Blame the Pentagon PR. For a while you were

  a bona fide hero on the nightly news. What was it,

  three escapes? On the first two you got caught and

  put on the racks, but on the last one you made it all

  by yourself, didn't you? You crawled through a

  couple of hundred miles of enemy jungle before you

  reached the lines."

  "It was barely a hundred and I was goddamned

  lucky.

  12 ROBERT LUDLUM

  With the first two tries I was responsible for killing

  eight men. I'm not very proud of that. Can we get to

  the Comm Tech-Bern business?"

  "Give me a few minutes," said Halliday, shoving

  the croissant aside. "Please. I'm not trying to dredge.

  There's a point in the back of my mind, if you'll

  grant I've got a mind."

  "Preston Halliday has one, his rep confirms it.

  You're a shark, if my colleagues are accurate. But

  I knew someone named Avery, not Press."

  "Then it's Fowler talking, you re more

  comfortable with him."

  "What's the point?"

  "A couple of questions first. You see, I want to

  be accurate because you ve got a reputation too.

  They say you're one of the best on the international

  scene, but the people I've talked to can't understand

  why Joel Converse stays with a relatively small if

  entrenched firm when he's good enough to get

  flashier. Or even go out on his own."

  "Are you hiring?"

  "Not me, I don't take partners. Courtesy of John

  Halliday attorney-at-law, San Francisco."

  Converse looked at the second half of the

  croissant and decided against it. "What was the

  question, counselor?"

  "Why are you where you're at?"

  "I'm paid well and literally run the department;

  no one sits on my shoulder. Also I don't care to

  take chances. There's a little matter of alimony,

  amiable but demanding."

  "Child support, too?"

  "None, thank heavens."

  "What happened when you got out of the Navy?

  How did you feel?" Halliday again leaned forward,

  his elbow on the table, chin cupped in his hand the

  inquisitive student. Or something else.

  "Who are the people you've talked to?" asked

  Converse.

  "Privileged information, for the moment,

  counselor. Will you accept that?"

  Joel smiled. "You are a shark.... Okay, the gospel

  according to Converse. I came back from that

  disruption of my life wanting it all. Angry, to be

  sure, but wanting everything. The nonstudent

  became a scholar of sorts, and I'd be a liar if I

  didn't admit to a fair amount of preferential

  treatment. I went back to Amberst and raced

  through two and a half years in three semesters and

  a summer. Then Duke offered me an ac

  THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 13

  celerated program and I went there, followed by

  some specializations at Georgetown while I

  interned."

  "You interned in Washington?"

  Converse nodded. "Yes."

  "For whom?"

  "Clifford's firm. '

  Halliday whistled softly, sitting back. "That's

  golden territory, a passport to Blackstone's heaven as

  well as the multinationals."

  '1 told you I had preferential treatment."

  "Was that when you thought about the foreign

  service? While you were at Ceorgetown? In

  WashingtonP"

  Again Joel nodded, squinting as a passing flash of

  sunlight bounced off a grille somewhere on the

  lakefront boulevard. "Yes," he replied quietly.

  "You could have had it," said Halliday.

  'They wanted me for the wrong reasons, all the

  wrong reasons. When they realized I had a different

  set of rules in mind, I couldn't get a twenty-cent tour

  of the State Department. "

  "What about the Clifford firm? You were a hell

  of an image, even for them." The Californian raised

  his hands above the table, palms forward. 1 know, I

  know. The wrong reasons."

  "Wrong numbers," insisted Converse. ' There

  were forty-plus lawyers on the masthead and another

  two hundred on the payroll. I'd have spent ten years

  trying to find the men's room and another ten

  getting the key. That wasn't what I was looking for.'

  What were you looking for?"

  "Pretty much what I've got. I told you, the

  money's good and I run the international division.

  The latter's just as important to me."

  'You couldn t have known that when you joined,"

  objected Halliday.

  But I did. At least I had a fair indication. When

  Talbot, Brooks and Simon as you put it, that small

  but entrenched firm I'm with came to me, we

  reached understanding. If after four or five years I

  proved out, I'd take over for Brooks. He was the

  overseas man and was getting tired of adjusting to all

  those time zones." Again Converse paused.

  'Apparently I proved out."

  14 ROBERT LUDLUM

  ' And just as apparently somewhere along the

  line you got married.

  Joel leaned back in the chair. 'Is this necessary?"

  "It's not even pertinent, but I'm intensely

  interested."

  "Why?"

  "It's a natural reaction," said Halliday, his eyes

  amused. "I think you'd feel the same way if you

  were me and I were you, and I'd gone through what

  you went through."

  "Shark dead ahead," mumbled Converse.

  "You don't have to respond, of course, counselor."

  "I know, but oddly enough I don't mind. She's

  taken her share of abuse because of that

  what-l've-been-through business." Joel broke the

  croissant but made no effort to remove it from the

  plate. "Comfort, convenience, and a vague image of

  stability," he said.

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "Her words," continued Joel. "She said that I got

  married so I'd have a place to go and someone to

  fix the meals-and do the laundry, and eliminate the

  irritating, time-consuming foolishness that goes with

  finding someone to sleep with. Also by legitimising

  her, I projected the. proper image.... 'And, Christ,

  did I have to play the part' also her words."

  "Were they true?"

  "I told you, when I came back I wanted it all and

  she was part of it. Yes, they were true. Cook, maid,

  laundress, bedmate, and an acceptable
, attractive

  appendage. She told me she could never figure out

  the pecking order."

  "She sounds like quite a girl."

  "She was. She is."

  "Do I discern a note of possible reconciliation?"

  "No way." Converse shook his head, a partial

  smile on his lips but only a trace of humor in his

  eyes. "She was also conned and it shouldn t have

  happened. Anyway, I like my current status, I really

  do. Some of us just weren't meant for a hearth and

  roast turkey, even if we sometimes wish we were."

  "It's not a bad life."

  "Are you into it?" asked Joel quickly so as to

  shift the emphasis.

  "Right up with orthodontists and SAT scores.

  Five kids and one wife. I wouldn t have it any other

  way."

  "But you travel a lot, don't your"

  "We have great homecomings." Halliday again

  leaned

  THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 15

  forward, as if studying a witness. '~So you have no

  real attachments now, no one to run back to.'

  ' Talbot, Brooks and Simon might find that