The Apocalypse Watch (38 page)

“Then you haven’t heard?” asked the man in Geneva, astonished.

“About the attacks on the American Latham and his subsequent murder at the country restaurant, no doubt engineered by your psychopathic K Unit here in the city? It was a stupid act.”

“
No!
Zero One, Paris, has disappeared, and early this morning the police reported an assault on the rue Diane—”

“Witkowski’s place?” Moreau interrupted. “I haven’t seen the information.”

“They don’t have what I know either. The entire K Unit has also disappeared.”

“I never knew where they were posted—”

“None of us did, but they’re
gone
!”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Don’t say, get on top of things and find out what happened!” demanded Geneva.

“I’m afraid I have more bad news for you and Bonn,” said the Deuxième chief haltingly.

“What could it possibly be?”

“My agents in Germany have come up with names, men who meet every Tuesday night in houses along the Rhine.”

“Oh, my God! What names?”

Claude Moreau gave them to him, slowly spelling out each. “Tell them to be very, very careful,” he said. “They’re all under intelligence microscopes.”

“Outside of certain reputations, I don’t know
any
of them!” exclaimed the professor in Geneva. “I had no idea—”

“You weren’t meant to have any ideas,
Herr Professor
. You follow orders, as I do.”

“Yes, but … but …”

“Academicians aren’t very competent when it comes to practical matters. Just make sure our associates in Bonn get the information.”

“Yes … yes, of course, Paris. Oh, my
God
!”

Moreau hung up the phone and leaned back in his chair. Things—
things
—were going his way. They might not be the best, but they were better than anyone else’s. If he lost, he and his wife could always retire comfortably somewhere outside of France. On the other hand, he could also be executed by a firing squad.
C’est la vie
.

It was early evening, the setting sun filtered through the windows of Karin de Vries’s apartment on the rue Madeleine. “I went to my flat this afternoon,” said Drew, sitting in the armchair, talking to Karin, across on the couch. “Of course, I had a marine on either side of me—sworn to secrecy by Witkowski, who could send them back to boot
camp—and they kept their hands on their holstered weapons, but still it felt good to be able to walk in the street, you know what I mean?”

“I do, indeed, but I worry about misplaced confidence. Suppose there are others we don’t know about?”

“Hell, we know about one, Reynolds, in Communications. I’m told he fled like a rat into the sewers, probably living on a Nazi pension in the Mediterranean, if they didn’t decide to shoot him first.”

“If he’s in the Mediterranean, I suspect his body is several hundred feet below on the ocean’s bottom.”

“Actually, it’s a sea.”

“I don’t think the definition would matter to him.”

Silence. Finally, Drew spoke. “Where are we, lady?”

“What do you mean?”

“What do I have to do, go by the numbers?”

“What numbers?”

“Like ‘One, two, three, four, what the hell am I marching for?’ You’ve been hiding me all night and all day, but I can’t get near you.”

“What are you talking about, Drew?”

“Christ, I’m not even sure how to put it.… I never thought I’d think it, not really, and certainly not say it to someone who may be keeping me from being killed, a subordinate who has an apartment I could never afford.”

“Please be clearer.”

“How can I? I always thought I’d march to my brother’s drum; he was so right, so perfect. Then I heard him in that booth before he was killed—you know what I mean—crying out how much he loved you, adored you—”

“
Stop
it, Drew,” said De Vries sharply. “Are you saying you’re imitating your brother in his
delusions
?”

“No, I’m not,” said Latham calmly, quietly, his eyes locked with hers. “His delusions are not my feelings, Karin. I’ve grown out of that syndrome; it never did me much good anyway. You came into his life first, mine years later, and the equation, no matter how similar, is worlds apart. I’m not Harry, I could never be him, but I’m me, and I’ve never known anyone like you.… How’s that for some kind of declaration?”

“Extremely touching, my dear.”

“There’s that ‘my dear’ again. Meaning nothing.”

“Don’t belittle it, Drew. I have to get rid of my ghosts, and when I do, it would be nice to think that you might be there for me. Perhaps I could become attached to you, for you have qualities I so admire, but a relationship is a remote and distant thing to me now. The past has to be put to rest. Can you understand that?”

“Whether I do or I don’t, I’ll do my goddamnedest to make it happen.”

The post-noonday crowds filled the street, the office buildings severely depleted as hordes of employees rushed to their favorite cafés and restaurants for luncheon engagements. The Parisian lunch was more than a meal; as often as not, it was a minor event, and God help the employer who expected his hired hands, particularly his manicured executives, to return on time, most especially during the summer weeks.

Which is why Dr. Gerhardt Kroeger was becoming more and more agitated, continuously jostled as he was by the departing crowds while he stood holding the folded newspaper in front of his face, his eyes on the entrance of the Deuxième Bureau’s building on his left. He could not afford to miss the figure of Claude Moreau. Time was of the essence, not an hour to be wasted. His creation, Harry Latham, had entered the countdown; he had, at maximum, two days, forty-eight hours, and even this was imprecise. And what added to the surgeon’s near-unbearable stress was a detail he had not described to his superiors in the Brüderschaft: Prior to a subject’s brain finally rejecting the implant, virtually exploding, the area around the surgery became horribly discolored; an inflamed skin rash the size of a demitasse saucer appeared, directing whoever performed an autopsy to investigate the unusual manifestation. Contrary to general belief, the data stored in an ROM for a solitary purpose and environs could be extracted by equipment foreign to its original controls.

In the wrong hands, the Brotherhood of the Watch could be destroyed, its secrets exposed, its global objectives
all too clear.
Mein Gott!
reflected Kroeger.
We are the victims of our own progress!
Then he thought of the proliferation of nuclear weapons and realized the truth of his unoriginal conclusion.

There was Moreau! The broad-shouldered chief of the Deuxième walked out of the building’s entrance and turned to his right, hastening his steps on the pavement. He was in a hurry, which meant Kroeger had to practically run to catch up, for the Frenchman was heading in the opposite direction. Parting the bodies in front of him, his apologies half in German, half in French, he closed the distance between himself and Moreau, leaving angry strollers in his wake. Finally, he was within arm’s reach. “Monsieur,
monsieur
! he cried out. “You dropped something!”

“
Pardon?
” The Deuxième chief stopped and turned around. “You must be mistaken, I dropped nothing.”

“I was sure it was you,” continued the surgeon in French. “A billfold or a notebook. A man picked it up and ran!”

Moreau quickly felt his pockets, his face changing from concern to relief. “You
are
mistaken,” he said, “I’m missing nothing, but I’m grateful nevertheless. Pickpockets are numerous in Paris.”

“As they are in Munich, monsieur. I apologize, but the brotherhood I belong to insists we follow the Christian precepts of helping others.”

“I see, a Christian brotherhood, how admirable.” Moreau stared at the man as pedestrians rushed by on both sides. “The Pont Neuf at nine o’clock tonight,” he added, lowering his voice. “The north trespass.”

The Paris mist diffused the moon’s reflection on the waters of the Seine; a summer rain was imminent. In contrast to the majority of strollers on the bridge who were hurrying to escape the inclement weather, the two figures walked slowly toward each other on the north pedestrian walk. They met at midpoint; Moreau spoke first.

“You made reference to something that might be familiar to me. Would you care to clarify?”

“There’s no time for games, monsieur. We both know who we are and what we are. Terrible things have happened.”

“So I understand—things I knew nothing about until this morning. The alarming aspect is that my office was not kept up-to-date. I can’t help but wonder why. Have any of your couriers been indiscreet?”

“Certainly not! Our mission now, our
paramount
mission, is to find the American Harry Latham. It’s more vital than you can imagine. We know that the embassy, with the aid of the Antinayous, is hiding him somewhere here in Paris. We must find him! Surely American intelligence keeps you informed. Where
is
he?”

“You’ve just made several leaps beyond my knowledge, monsieur … what is your name? I do not talk to unidentified men.”

“
Kroeger
, Dr. Gerhardt Kroeger, and a call to Bonn will confirm my high station!”

“How impressive. And what ‘high station’ do you occupy, Doctor?”

“I was the surgeon who … who saved Harry Latham’s life. And now I must find him.”

“Yes, you said that. You’re aware, are you not, that his brother Drew was killed by your idiot K Unit?”

“It was the wrong brother.”

“Again, I see. It
was
the K Unit, killers barely out of school, if they ever went to one.”

“I will not tolerate your insults!” cried a frustrated Kroeger. “Frankly, you’re not considered entirely reliable, so I advise you to be direct with me. You know the consequences if you’re not.”

“If what you say is true, I’m a rich man for it.”

“Find us Harry Latham!”

“I’ll certainly try—”

“Stay up all night, reach every source you have—French, American, British,
everyone
. Find out where they’ve hidden Harry Latham! I’m at the Lutetia, room eight hundred.”

“The top floor. You must be important.”

“I will not sleep until I hear from you.”

“That’s foolish, Doctor. As a physician, you should know that a lack of sleep makes for unstable thinking. But since you’re so persuasive, your threats also, be assured I’ll do my best to satisfy you.”

“
Sehr gut!
” said Kroeger, reverting to German. “I will leave now. Do not disappoint me; do not disappoint the Brüderschaft, for you know what will happen.”

“I understand.”

Kroeger walked rapidly away, his figure quickly obscured by the settling mists. And Claude Moreau strolled slowly to find a taxi on the Rive Gauche. He had some thinking to do, among those thoughts the secure communications equipment at the Deuxième Bureau. Too many things had become elliptical.

It was 7:42
A.M
. Washington time when Wesley Sorenson walked into his office at Consular Operations; the only other person there was his secretary. “All the overnight reports are on your desk, sir,” she said.

“Thanks, Ginny. As I’ve said repeatedly, I really hope you put in for overtime. No one else gets here before eight-thirty.”

“You’re very understanding when the kids are sick, so why push it, Mr. Director. Also, it’s easier for me; I can collate everything before the troops come in.”

They have come in, in more ways than you know
, thought Sorenson. He had been at Andrews Air Force Base at four o’clock in the morning and personally escorted the two neo-Nazis off the jet from Paris, seeing them into a marine van to a safe house in Virginia. Despite his exhaustion, the Cons-Op director would be driven there shortly past noon to, again, personally interrogate the prisoners; it was a craft he knew well.

“Anything urgent?” he asked his secretary.

“Only everything.”

“Nothing changes.”

Sorenson walked into his inner office, crossed to his desk, and sat down. The file folders were labeled:
THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA, TAIWAN, THE PHILIPPINES, THE MIDDLE
EAST, GREECE, THE BALKANS
 … and finally,
GERMANY
and
FRANCE
.

Shoving aside the rest, he opened the file from Paris. It was explosive. Using the police reports, it described the assault on Colonel Witkowski’s apartment with no mention of the colonel’s sending two captives on a military jet to Washington. It spoke of the burned-out headquarters of a neo-Nazi unit in the Avignon warehouse complex. They were reputed to be killers who had disappeared. The final news from Paris was a coded message from Witkowski, decoded in Consular Operations; this was the explosion.
Gerhardt Kroeger in Paris. He’s hunting Harry Latham. The target has been alerted
.

Gerhardt Kroeger, surgeon, mystery man, and the key to many things. No one outside of American intelligence knew about him. In a way, thought Sorenson, it was wrong. The French and the British should be included, but the CIA—Knox Talbot agreeing—could not trust them.

And then at eight in the morning his telephone rang. “Paris calling,” said his secretary. “A Mr. Moreau from the Deuxième Bureau.”

Sorenson quietly gasped, his face suddenly pale. Moreau had been cut off; he was suspect. The Cons-Op director breathed deeply, picked up the phone, then spoke, his words controlled.

“Hello, Claude, it’s good to hear from you, old friend.”

“Apparently, Wesley, it’s not proper for me to hear from you, if I may speak plainly.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Oh, come, within the last thirty-six hours a great many things have happened that concern us both, but not a word of them has been processed to my office. What kind of cooperation is
that
?”

“I … I don’t know, Claude.”

“Of course you do. I’ve been systematically excluded from the operation.
Why?
”

“I can’t answer that. I don’t control the operation, you know that. I had no idea—”

“
Please
, Wesley. In the field you were an accomplished liar, but not with someone who told lies
with
you. We
both know how these things work, don’t we? Someone heard something from someone else and the diseased oyster grows, producing a false pearl. But there’s time for that later. Assuming that you’re still functioning, I may have a chess piece for you.”