The Apocalypse Watch (68 page)

“Why not eight-thirty, or nine-thirty, so the
patron
can sleep?” The question was asked innocently; there was no threat whatsoever in the chauffeur’s voice.

“Come on, man, you’re busting my chops! Has it occurred to you that I’d rather be home with my wife and three children?”

The lie was interrupted by a loud whirring sound. Instinctively, the huge man turned as the door swung open farther, exposing the foyer and a long hallway. At the end of the hall was a small brass-webbed door; in seconds a miniature elevator descended into view. “
Hugo!
” cried the frail voice of the white-haired figure inside. “What is it, Hugo? I heard the bell and then people arguing in English.”

“It would be better if you kept your door closed,
patron
. You would not be awakened.”

“Come, come, you overprotect me. Now help me out of this damn thing, I wasn’t really sleeping anyway.”

“But Anna said you didn’t eat well and then spent two hours on your knees in the chapel.”

“All to good purpose, my son,” said the former Father Antoine Lavolette. Helped from the elevator chair, he cautiously stepped into the hallway. He was a reed of a man in his red-checked bathrobe, over six feet in height but thin to the point of emaciation. His face had the chiseled features of a Gothic saint—an aquiline nose, severe eyebrows, and wide-open eyes. “I truly believe God is hearing my prayers. I said to Him that since He created everything, He was responsible for my feelings about my wife. I even scolded Him, pointing out that neither His Son nor the Holy Scriptures ever said anything forbidding a priest to marry.”

“I’m certain He heard you,
patron
.”

“If He didn’t, I shall loudly complain about my constantly painful kneecaps, if I ever greet Him. I wonder if our Lord God has knees that must bend. But, of course, He does, we’re made in His image—that may have been a big mistake.” The old man stopped in front of Latham,
who was now standing in the hallway. “Well, well, whom do we have here? Are you the intruder who breaks into the tent of night?”

“I am, sir. My name is Latham, and I’m with the American Embassy, an officer with the United States Consular Operations. Your chauffeur is still holding my identification in his hand.”

“For heaven’s sake, give it back to him, Hugo, you’re finished with all that nonsense,” instructed the former priest, suddenly shaken, his head trembling.

“Nonsense, sir?” said Drew.

“My friend Hugo was among the Praetorian guards recruited from the Foreign Legion and sent to Command Saigon when he was a young man. You left him behind, but he got himself out.”

“He speaks English very well.”

“He should, he was a special activities officer under the direction of the Americans.”

“I never heard of any Praetorian guard or of French officers in Saigon.”

“
Praetorian
was a euphemism for suicide squads, and there were many things you never heard of in that action. The Americans paid them ten times what they could make in the Legion; they brought back information from behind the lines. You people forget so easily. French was a language far better known than English among the ruling cadres in Southeast Asia.… Now, why are you here?”

“Father Manfried Neuman.”

“I see,” said Lavolette, staring at Latham, their eyes level, for the former priest was as tall as Drew. “Escort us into the library, Hugo, and relieve Monsieur Latham of his weapon, which you will keep in your possession until we’re finished.”

“
Oui, patron
.” The chauffeur held out Latham’s identification while simultaneously signaling with the fingers of his right hand that Drew give him his gun. Noting that Hugo’s stare centered on the slight bulge on the left side of his jacket, Latham reached in slowly and removed his automatic. “
Merci, monsieur
,” said the chauffeur, taking the gun and handing Drew his ID card case. He took his
patron
’s
elbow and led them through an archway into a book-lined room profuse with heavy leather chairs and marble tables.

“Make yourself comfortable, Monsieur Latham,” said Lavolette, sitting in an upright chair, gesturing for Drew to sit across from him. “Would you care for something to drink? I know I would. Conversations at this hour require a touch of the grape, I believe.”

“I’ll have whatever you have.”

“From the same bottle, of course,” said the former priest, smiling. “Two Courvoisiers, Hugo.”

“Good choice,” said Latham, looking around the elegant, high-ceilinged library. “This is a lovely room,” he said.

“Being an avid reader, it suits my purpose,” agreed Lavolette. “Guests are frequently astonished when they ask me if I’ve read every volume, and I answer, ‘Usually two or three times.’ ”

“That’s a lot of reading.”

“When you reach my age, Monsieur Latham, you’ll find that words are far more permanent than the fleeting images on television.”

“Some people say one picture is worth a thousand words.”

“One photograph out of ten thousand, perhaps, I will not deny that. However, one exhausts the familiar, doesn’t one, even a painting.”

“I wouldn’t know. I haven’t thought that much about it.”

“No, you probably haven’t had time. At your age I never did.” Their snifters of brandy arrived, the liqueur in each precisely an inch from the bottom. “Thank you, Hugo,” continued the retired cryptanalyst and former priest, “and if you’d close the doors and wait in the foyer, I’d be most pleased.”

“
Oui, patron
,” said the chauffeur, leaving the room and pulling shut the heavy double doors.

“All right, Drew Latham, how much do you know about me?” asked Lavolette sharply.

“That you left the priesthood for marriage, and when
you were quite young you were a cryptanalyst for French intelligence. Other than that, virtually nothing. Except, of course, Manfried Neuman. He told me you’re helping him with his problem.”

“No one can help him but a trained behavioral psychiatrist, which I’ve implored him to seek.”

“He says you’re giving him religious counseling because you had the same problem.”

“That is the
merde
of the bull, as you Americans say. I fell in love with one woman and stayed faithful to her for forty years. Neuman has the impulse to fornicate with many women, selectivity being merely a result of time and place and maximum opportunity. I’ve begged him repeatedly to seek help before he destroys himself.… You came here at this hour to tell me
that
?”

“You know I didn’t. You know why I’m here because I saw your expression when I said who I was. You tried to hide your reaction, but it was as if you’d been punched in the stomach. Neuman told you about me and you told somebody else.
Who?
”

“You don’t understand, none of you can ever understand,” choked Lavolette, breathing deeply.

“Understand
what
?”

“They have us all with ropes around our necks, not just
our
necks—that would be easy to dispense with—but
others
, so many others!”

“Neuman told you who a Colonel Webster was, didn’t he? That he was a man named Latham!”

“Not willingly. I extracted it from him, for I knew the situation. I
had
to.”

“
Why?
”

“Please, I’m an old man and have very little time. Do not make my life any more complicated than it is.”

“Let me tell you, Father, your gorilla out there may have my weapon, but my hands are as good as any gun. What the hell did you
do
?”

“Listen to me, my son.” Lavolette drank his brandy in two swallows, the tremble in his head returning. “My wife was German. I met her when the Holy See posted me to the Church of the Blessed Sacrament in Mannheim after
the war. She was married with two children and an abusive husband, a former Wehrmacht officer who ran an insurance company. We fell in love, desperately in love, and I left the Church so we could be together for the rest of our lives. She divorced her husband in a Swiss court, but by German law he kept the children.… They grew up and had children of their own, and then their children began to have children. There are sixteen in the two families that are my dear wife’s bloodline, and she was devoted to them all, as I was to be.”

“She kept in touch with them, then?”

“Oh, yes. We had moved to France, where I started my businesses, aided in no small measure by my former colleagues in the services, and as the years went by, the children frequently came to visit us, both here in Paris and during the summers at our house in Nice. I came to love them as my own.”

“I’m surprised their father even let them see their mother,” said Drew.

“I don’t think he cared one way or the other, except for the expenses, which I was happy to provide. He remarried and had three more children with his second wife. The first two children, my wife’s, were more an impediment, I believe, reminding him of a meddling priest who had broken his vows and upset a German businessman’s life. A Wehrmacht officer’s life.… Now do you begin to understand?”

“My
God
,” whispered Latham, his eyes once again locked with those of Lavolette. “It’s a trade-off. He’s still a Nazi.”

“Exactly, except that he is no longer a factor, he passed away several years ago. However, he left survivors, tokens readily accepted by the movement.”

“His own children and their children, perfect inroads to a former priest, once highly regarded and still in the confidence of French intelligence. A trade-off, and I’m the chess piece.”

“Your life, Mr. Latham, for the lives of sixteen innocent men, women, and children, pawns, indeed, in a
deadly game they know nothing about. What would you have done in my place?”

“Probably what you did,” acknowledged Drew. “Now, what
did
you do? Whom did you reach?”

“They could all be killed, you understand that?”

“Not if it’s done right, and I’ll do my best to do it right. Nobody knows I came here, that’s on your side.
Tell
me!”

“There’s a man. I loathe to say it, another clergyman, but not of my Church. A Lutheran minister and rather young, late thirties or early forties, I’d say. He is their leader here in Paris, the main contact to the Nazi hierarchy both in Bonn and Berlin. His name is Reverend Wilhelm Koenig, his place of worship is Neuilly-sur-Seine, it’s the only Lutheran church in the district.”

“You’ve met him?”

“Never. When there are papers to be delivered to him, I send a parishioner in the interest of our Christian Alliance Association, either someone very old or very young whose only concern is the francs they make. Naturally, I questioned a few and learned his approximate age and description.”

“What does he look like?”

“He’s quite short and very athletic, very muscular. He has a gymnasium, where there are various machines and weights to lift, in the basement of his parish hall. He meets messengers there, without his collar, and always sitting on one of those stationary bicycles, or a torso vehicle, apparently to conceal his lack of height.”

“You are assuming that, of course.”

“I worked for French intelligence, monsieur, but I didn’t need its training to learn that. I sent a devout twelve-year-old to deliver a packet to him, and Koenig was so excited, he got off whatever machine he was on, and the boy said to me, ‘I don’t think he’s as big as me, Father, but, my God, he’s all muscle.’ ”

“He shouldn’t be hard to spot, then,” said Latham, finishing his brandy and getting up from the chair. “Does Koenig have a code name?”

“Yes, known to no more than five people in all France. It is Heracles, a son of Zeus in Greek mythology.”

“Thank you, Monsieur Lavolette, and I’ll try to protect your wife’s people in Germany. But as I told someone else tonight, that’s all I can promise. There’s another who comes first.”

“Go with God, my son. Many think I’ve lost my privilege to say that, but I’m convinced He hasn’t lost faith in me. Sometimes this is a terrible world, and we must all act with the free will He decreed for us.”

“I’ve got a few problems with that scenario,
Father
Lavolette, but I won’t burden you with them.”

“Thank you for not doing so. Hugo will return your weapon and see you out.”

“I have a last request, if I may?”

“That depends on what it is, doesn’t it?”

“A length of cord or wire, ten feet long should be enough.”

“What for?”

“I’m not sure yet. I just think I should have it.”

“You field people were always so esoteric.”

“It goes with the territory,” said Drew quietly. “When we don’t know what’s ahead, we try to imagine the possibilities. There aren’t so many.”

“Hugo will find you what you need. Tell him to look in the pantry.”

It was ten past three in the morning when Drew reached the Lutheran parish in Neuilly-sur-Seine. He dismissed the taxi and approached the church, which was attached to a rectory by a short, closed-in colonnade. All was dark, but the clear night sky, illuminated by a bright Paris moon, sharply defined the two separate structures. Latham spent nearly twenty minutes walking around the area, studying each ground floor window and door, focusing on the private quarters of the rectory where the neo leader lived. The church could be broken into easily, but not the private quarters; they were wired to the hilt, metallic alarm strips showing everywhere.

To trigger the alarm might shock the Nazi, but it would also be the most negative sort of warning. Drew had the address and number of the parish. He pulled the portable
phone issued by Witkowski from a jacket pocket, and then his slim notebook from another. He considered his words, read the number, then dialed.

“
Allô, allô!
” said the high-pitched male voice on the second ring.

“I’ll speak English, for I’m a Sonnenkind born and brought up in America—”

“
What?
”

“I flew over for a conference in Berlin and was instructed to contact Heracles before I returned to New York. My plane was delayed by weather or else I would have reached you hours ago, and my flight to the States is in three hours. We must meet.
Now
.”