The Apocalypse Watch (40 page)

“
Monsieur le docteur?
” asked the chief of the Deuxième, unsure that he had the right connection. “It is I, from the Pont Neuf. Is it you?”

“Of course it is. What have you brought me?”

“I have reached deep, Doctor, far deeper than is healthy for me. I’ve provoked the American CIA into telling me that it is, indeed, hiding Harry Latham.”

“
Where?
”

“Perhaps not here in Paris, perhaps in Marseilles.”

“Perhaps,
perhaps
? That does me no good! Can you be sure?”

“No, but possibly you can.”

“
Me?
”

“You have people in Marseilles, no?”

“Of course. A great deal of finance comes through there.”

“Look for the ‘Consulars,’ that’s what they’re called.”

“We know about them,” said Gerhardt, breathless. “The bastard intelligence group, Consular Operations. One can spot them at every corner, every café.”

“Take one of them, see what you can learn.”

“Within the hour. Where can I reach you?”

“I’ll call you back an hour from now.”

The hour passed, and Moreau called the Lutetia. “Anything?” he asked a hyper Gerhardt.

“It’s insane!” said the doctor. “The man we spoke with is someone we’ve paid thousands to so we could collect millions through the network. He said we were crazy; no such man as Harry Latham is on their list or in Marseilles!”

“Then he’s still in Paris,” said Moreau, frustration in his voice. “I’ll go back to work.”

“As fast as you can!”

“Ever so,” said the Deuxième chief, hanging up the phone and smiling an enigmatic smile. He waited exactly fourteen minutes and then called back the Lutetia. It was the moment to propel anxiety into high gear.

“Yes?”

“It is I again. Something just came in.”

“For God’s sake, what
is
it?”

“Harry Latham.”

“
What?
”

“He called one of my people, a man he had worked with in East Berlin who rightfully believed he should inform me. Apparently Latham is quite intense—isolation can do that, you know—even to the point that he thinks his own embassy is compromised—”

“It’s Latham!” interrupted the German. “The symptoms are predictable.”

“What symptoms? What do you mean?”

“Nothing, nothing at all. As you say, isolation can do strange things to people.… What did he want?”

“Possibly French protection, is what we gather. My man’s to meet him at the Metro station, the Georges Cinq stop at two o’clock this afternoon, toward the rear of the platform.”

“I must be there!” shouted Gerhardt.

“It’s not advisable, nor is it the policy of the Bureau to involve the hunted with the hunter, monsieur, when they are not part of our organization.”

“You don’t understand, I
must
be with you!”

“Why is that? It could be dangerous.”

“Not to me,
never
to me.”

“Now I don’t understand you.”

“You don’t have to! Remember the Brotherhood,
it
is what you must obey, and I’m giving you your orders.”

“Then, of course, I must obey,
Herr Doktor
. We meet on the platform at ten minutes to two o’clock. Not before or after, is that understood?”

“I understand.”

Moreau did not hang up the phone; instead, he pressed the disconnect button and touched the digits that connected him to his most trusted subordinate officer. “Jacques,” he said calmly, “we have a very important confrontation at two o’clock, just you and me. Meet me downstairs at one-thirty and I’ll fill you in. Incidentally, carry your automatic, but fill the magazine with blanks.”

“That’s a very strange request, Claude.”

“It’s a very strange confrontation,” said Moreau, hanging up the phone.

Drew looked into the mirror, his eyes wide in shock. “For Christ’s sake, I look like a Disney cartoon!” he roared.

“Not really,” said Karin, standing above him over the kitchen sink and taking the mirror from him. “You’re just not used to it, that’s all.”

“It’s preposterous! I look like the leader of a gay rights parade.”

“Does that bother you?”

“Hell, no, I’ve got a lot of friends in that crowd, but I’m not one of them.”

“It can be washed out in a shower, so stop complaining. Now, put oh the uniform and I’ll take some photographs for Colonel Witkowski, then adjust the trousers.”

“What has that son of a bitch got me
into
?”

“Basically, saving your life, can you accept that?”

“Are you always so logical?”

“Logic and the illogically logical saved Freddie’s life more times than I can tell you. Please put on the uniform.”

Latham did as he was told, returning two minutes later as a full colonel in the United States Army. “A uniform becomes you,” said De Vries, observing him, “especially when you stand up straight.”

“One doesn’t have any choice in this coat—excuse me, tunic. It’s so damn tight, if you don’t arch your spine, you’re punctured somewhere and can’t breathe. I’d make a lousy soldier. I’d insist on wearing fatigues.”

“Regulations wouldn’t permit it.”

“Another reason why I’d make a lousy soldier.”

“Actually, you’d probably be a good one, as long as you were a general.”

“Hardly likely.”

“Hardly.” Karin gestured toward the foyer. “Come into the hallway, I’m set up. Here are your glasses.” She handed him a pair of heavy tortoiseshells.

“Set up? Glasses?” Drew looked over at the short hall that greeted a visitor from the front door. There was a camera on a tripod aimed at a blank off-white wall. “You’re a photographer too?”

“Not at all. Frequently, however, Freddie needed a new photograph for a different passport. He instructed me how to use this, not that I needed any instructions. It’s an instant-picture camera, sized down to passport dimensions.… Put on the glasses and stand against the wall. Take off the hat; I want the full glory of your blond hair evident.”

A few minutes later De Vries had fifteen small Polaroid photographs, of a light-haired, bespectacled colonel, looking as grim and uncomfortable as any passport picture. “Splendid,” she decreed. “Now let’s go back to the couch, where I’ve got my equipment.”

“Equipment?”

“The trousers, remember?”

“Oh, this is the good part. Should I take them off?”

“Not if you want them to fit. Come along.”

Fifteen minutes later, having suffered only two painful punctures of a straight pin, Latham was ordered back into the guest room to resume his normal appearance. Again he returned, now to find Karin at the alcove table, on which was placed a sewing machine. “The trousers, please.”

“You know, you’re blowing my mind, lady,” said Drew, handing her the army issue. “Are you some kind of
female deep-cover factotum who works behind the scenes?”

“Let’s say I’ve been there, Monsieur Latham.”

“Yes, it’s not the first time you’ve said that.”

“Accept it, Drew. Besides, it’s none of your business.”

“You’re right there. It’s just, as the layers peel away, I’m not sure whom I’m talking to. I have to accept Freddie, and NATO, and Harry, and the subterranean way you got to Paris, but why do I have the feeling that there’s something else that’s driving you?”

“It’s your imagination because you live in a world of probables and improbables, possibles and impossibles, what’s real and what isn’t. I’ve told you everything you have to know about me, isn’t that enough?”

“For the moment it has to be,” said Latham, his eyes locked with hers. “But my instinct says there’s something else you won’t tell me.… Why don’t you laugh more? You’re goddamned radiant when you laugh.”

“There hasn’t been that much to laugh about, has there?”

“Come on, you know what I mean. A little laughter now and then relieves the tension. Harry once told me that, and we both believed Harry. Years from now, if we run into each other, we’ll probably laugh at the Bois de Boulogne. It had its funny moments.”

“A life was taken, Drew. Whether it was the life of a good man or a bad man, I killed him, I cut short the life of a very young person. I’ve never killed anyone before.”

“If you hadn’t, he would have killed me.”

“I know that, I keep telling myself that. But why does the killing have to go on? That was Freddie’s life, not
mine
.”

“And it shouldn’t have to be yours. But to answer your question logically—logic being a part of your lexicon—if we don’t kill when it’s necessary, if we don’t stop the neos, ten thousand times the killings will take place. Ten thousand, hell, let’s start with six million. Yesterday they were Jews and Gypsies and other ‘undesirables.’ Tomorrow they could be Republicans and Democrats in my country who can’t stomach their bilge. Don’t kid yourself, Karin,
they get a foothold in Europe, the rest of this discontented world goes down like a row of dominoes, because they’re constantly, incessantly, appealing to every zealot who wants ‘the good old days.’ No crime in the streets because even the onlookers are shot on sight; executions rampant because there are no appeals; no habeas corpus because it’s not necessary; the presumed innocent and the guilty are lumped together, so let’s get rid of them both, prison being more expensive than bullets.
That’s
the future we’re fighting against.”

“You think I don’t know that?” said Karin. “Of course I do, you sermonizing fool! Why do you think I’ve lived as I have my entire adult life?”

“But the exalted Freddie notwithstanding, there’s something else, isn’t there?”

“You have no right to probe. May we stop this conversation?”

“For now, sure. But I think I’ve made clear my feelings for you, returned or not, so it may come up again.”

“
Stop
it!” said De Vries, tears slowly falling from her blinking eyes. “Do not
do
this to me.”

Latham ran to her, kneeling by her chair. “I’m sorry, I’m really
sorry
. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I wouldn’t do that.”

“I know you wouldn’t,” said Karin, composing herself and cupping his face with her hands. “You are a good person, Drew Latham, but don’t ask any more questions—they
do
hurt too much. Instead … make love to me, make
love
to me! I so need someone like you.”

“I wish you’d eliminate the ‘someone,’ and just say ‘you.’ ”

“Then I say it. You, Drew Latham, make love to me.”

Gently, Drew helped her from the chair, then lifted her up in his arms and carried her into the bedroom.

The rest of the morning was one of sexual excess. Karin de Vries had been too long without a man; she was insatiable. At the last, she threw her right arm over his chest. “My God,” she cried, “was that
me
?”

“You’re laughing,” said Latham, exhausted. “Do you know how wonderful you sound when you laugh?”

“It feels wonderful
to
laugh.”

“We can’t go back, you know,” said Drew. “We have something now, we are something now, that we weren’t before. And I don’t think it’s the bed alone.”

“Yes, my darling, and I’m not sure it’s wise.”

“Why isn’t it?”

“Because I must operate coldly at the embassy, and if you’re involved, I don’t think I can act coldly.”

“Am I hearing what I want to hear?”

“Yes, you are, you American
naïf
.”

“What does that mean?”

“I believe, in your parlance, that it means I think I’m in love with you.”

“Well, as a good old boy from Mississippi once said, ‘if that don’t beat hens a-wrastlin’!’ ”

“What?”

“Come here and I’ll explain it to you.”

It was twelve minutes to two in the afternoon when Claude Moreau and his most-trusted field officer, Jacques Bergeron, arrived at the Georges Cinq station of the Paris Metro. They walked, separately, to the rear of the platform, each carrying a handheld radio, the frequencies calibrated to each other.

“He’s a tall man, quite slender,” said the Deuxième chief into his instrument. “With a propensity for bending over due to his usually addressing shorter people—”

“I’ve
got
him!” exclaimed the agent. “He’s leaning against the wall, waiting for the next train to come in.”

“When it does, do as I told you.”

The underground train arrived and came to a halt; the doors opened, disgorging several dozen passengers.

“Now,” said Moreau into his radio. “
Fire
.”

As ordered, Bergeron’s blank gunshots reverberated along the platform as the Metro riders raced en masse to the exit. Moreau ran to the panicked Gerhardt Kroeger, grabbing his arm and shouting. “They’re trying to
kill
you! Come with me!”

“
Who’s
trying to kill me?” screamed the surgeon, running with Moreau into a prearranged open storage room.

“What’s left of your idiotic K Unit, you fool.”

“They’ve disappeared!”

“To your ears from their mouths. They must have bribed a maid or a maintenance man and placed a tap in your room.”

“
Impossible!
”

“You heard the gunfire. Shall we bring back the train and see where the bullets came from? You were lucky it was crowded.”

“
Ach, mein Gott!
”

“We have to talk,
Herr Doktor
, or we both may be within their gun sights.”

“But what about Harry
Latham
? Where was he?”

“I saw him,” lied Jacques Bergeron, walking behind them, his pistol filled with spent blank shells in his pocket. “When he heard the gunfire, he got back on the train.”

“We must talk,” said Moreau, staring at Kroeger, and heading for a large steel door that was partially open, “otherwise, we all lose.” They walked inside.

The Deuxième chief found the light switch and flipped it on. They were in a medium-size enclosure of dull white cinder block, housing huge antiquated switches and track lights along with unopened crates of new equipment. “Wait outside, Jacques,” said Moreau to his agent. “When the police arrive, as they surely will, identify yourself and tell them you were on the train and got off when you heard the gunshots. Close the door, please.”