The Aquitaine Progression by Robert Ludlum Page B

begin?”
    “Where do you think you should begin? You’re the attorney; everything must be done legally.”
    “That’s just it. I’m an attorney, not the police, not a detective.”
    “No police in any of the countries where those four men live could do what you can do, even if they agreed to try, which, frankly, I doubt. More to the point, they would alert the Delavane network.”
    “All right, I’ll try,” said Converse, folding the sheet with the list of names and putting it in his inside jacket pocket. “I’ll start at the top. In Paris. With this Bertholdier.”
    “Jacques-Louis Bertholdier,” added the old man, reaching down into his canvas bag and taking out a thick manila envelope. “This is the last thing we can give you. It’s everything we could learn about those four men; perhaps it canhelp you. Their addresses, the cars they drive, business associates, cafes and restaurants they frequent, sexual preferences where they constitute vulnerability … anything that could give you an edge. Use it, use everything you can. Just bring us back briefs against men who have compromised themselves, broken laws—above all, evidence that shows they are not the solid, respectable citizens their life-styles would indicate. Embarrassment, Mr. Converse,
embarrassment
. It leads to ridicule, and Preston Halliday was profoundly right about that. Ridicule is the first step.”
    Joel started to reply, to agree, then stopped, his eyes riveted on Beale. “I never told you Halliday said anything about ridicule.”
    “Oh?” The scholar blinked several times in the dim light, momentarily unsure of himself, caught by surprise. “But, naturally, we discussed—”
    “You never met, you never
talked!
” Converse broke in.
    “—through our mutual friend the strategies we might employ,” said the old man, his eyes now steady. “The aspect of ridicule is a keystone. Of course we discussed it.”
    “You just hesitated.”
    “You startled me with a meaningless statement. My reactions are not what they once were.”
    “They were pretty good in a boat beyond the Stephanos,” corrected Joel.
    “An entirely different situation, Mr. Converse. Only one of us could leave that boat. Both of us will leave this beach tonight.”
    “All right, I may be reaching. You would be, too, if you were me.” Converse withdrew a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket, shook one up nervously to his lips and took out his lighter. “A man I knew as a kid under one name approaches me years later calling himself something else.” Joel snapped his lighter and held the flame under the cigarette, inhaling. “He tells a wild story that’s just credible enough so I can’t dismiss it. The believable aspect is a maniac named Delavane. He says I can help stop him—stop
them
—and there’s a great deal of money for nodding my head—provided by a man in San Francisco who won’t say who he is, expedited by a former general on a fashionably remote island in the Aegean. And for his efforts, this man I knew under two names is murdered in daylight, shot a dozen times in an elevator, dying in my arms whispering the name ‘Aquitaine.’ And then thisother man, this ex-soldier, this doctor, this
scholar
, tells me another story that ends with. a ‘recruiter’ from Delavane killed with a scaling knife, his body thrown overboard into a school of sharks beyond the Stephanos—whatever that is.”
    “The Aghios Stephanos,” said the old man. “A lovely beach, far more popular than this one.”
    “Goddamn it, I
am
reaching, Mr. Beale, or Professor Beale, or
General
Beale! It’s too much to absorb in two lousy days! Suddenly I don’t have much confidence. I feel way beyond my depth—let’s face it, overwhelmed and underqualified … and damned frightened.”
    “Then don’t overcomplicate things,” said Beale. “I used to say that to students of mine more often than I can remember. I would suggest they not look at the totality that faced