The Apocalypse Watch Read Online Free PDF Page A

there is.”
    “Will you both stop talking in circles!” cried the actor’s wife. “What is this truth?”
    “Be calm, Giselle. We are on the same wavelength, as the Americans say.”
    “Shall we stop here?” asked the Consular Operations officer. “Would you rather we speak privately?”
    “No, of course not. My wife is entitled to know everything, and Henri here is one of our closest friends, as well as a man trained to keep his own counsel.”
    “May we sit down,” said Giselle firmly. “This is too confusing to absorb standing up.” When they had taken their seats, hers next to her husband’s, she added, “Please continue, Monsieur Latham, and I beg you to be clearer.”
    “I should like to know,” broke in Bressard, every inch the government official, “who is this Jodelle person, and why should Jean-Pierre know anything at all about him?”
    “Forgive me, Henri,” interrupted the actor. “Not that I mind, but I’d like to know why Monsieur Latham saw fit to use you as a means to reach me.”
    “I knew you were friends.” The American answered for himself. “In fact, several weeks ago, when I mentioned to Henri that I was unable to get tickets to your play, you were kind enough to leave a pair at the box office for me.”
    “Ah, yes, I remember.… Your name seemed somehow familiar, but with everything that’s happened, I didn’t make the connection. ‘Two in the name of Latham …’ I
do
recall.”
    “You were wonderful, sir—”
    “You’re very kind,” interrupted Jean-Pierre, dismissing the compliment and studying the U.S. intelligence officer, then looking at Bressard. “Therefore,” he continued, “I may assume that you and Henri are acquainted.”
    “More officially than socially,” said Bressard. “I believe we’ve dined only once together; actually it was an extension of a conference that was largely unresolved.”
    “Between your two governments,” Giselle observed aloud.
    “Yes,” agreed Bressard.
    “And what do you and Monsieur Latham confer about, Henri?” pressed the wife. “If I may ask.”
    “Of course you may, my dear,” replied Bressard. “Generally speaking, sensitive situations, events that are taking place or have taken place in the past that might harm or embarrass our respective governments.”
    “Tonight falls into that category?”
    “Drew must answer that, Giselle, I cannot, and I’m as eager as you are to learn. He roused me out of bed over an hour ago insisting that for both our sakes I bring him to you immediately. When I asked him why, he made it clear that only Jean-Pierre could permit me to have the information—information that pertained to the events of tonight.”
    “Which is why you suggested we speak privately, is that correct, Monsieur Latham?” asked Villier.
    “It is, sir.”
    “Then your arrival here tonight, this
terrible
night, falls under the blanket of official business,
n’est-ce pas
?”
    “I’m afraid it does,” said the American.
    “Even considering the lateness of the hour and the tragedy we alluded to?”
    “Again, yes,” said Latham. “Every hour is vital to us. Especially to me, if you want to be specific.”
    “I do care to be specific, monsieur.”
    “All right, I’ll speak plainly. My brother’s a case officer with the Central Intelligence Agency. He was sent out under cover into the Hausruck mountains in Austria. It was a survey operation involving a spreading neo-Nazi organization, and he hasn’t been heard from in six weeks.”
    “I can understand your concern, Drew,” interrupted Henri Bressard, “but what has it to do with this evening—this terrible night, as Jean-Pierre called it?”
    The American looked at Villier in silence; the actor spoke. “The deranged old man who killed himself in the theater was my father,” he said quietly, “my natural father. Years ago, in the war, he was a Résistance fighter. The Nazis found him and broke him, drove him mad.”
    Giselle gasped; her hand