to the camps, where he was driven insane-damn near completely."
"Damn near'? What's that mean? Either you are or you're not."
"A small part of him wasn't. He knew who he was .. what he was .. . and for nearly fifty years he never tried to make contact with his son."
"Didn't anyone try to make contact with him?"
"Like thousands of others who never returned, he was presumed dead."
"But he wasn't," said Witkowski'thoughtfully, "just mentally crippled and no doubt physically a wreck."
"Barely recognizable, I'm told. Still, he couldn't stop going after a turncoat general who had ordered his family executed and whose name disappeared with-the files. Villier confirmed that; he learned it was someone in the Loire Valley, in and around which some forty or fifty retired generals live, usually in modest country houses or larger places owned by others. That was his information, that and a license plate' number of a capo who rousted him for asking questions."
"About the general?"
"One of four or even five dozen down there. A soldier with the rank of general fifty years ago would have to be somewhere in his middle to late nineties if he's still alive."
"Actuarially, that's pretty remote," agreed the colonel.
"Old soldiers, especially those who've weathered combat, rarely last beyond their early eighties-something to do with past traumas catching up with them. The Pentagon did a study a few years ago relative to secure consultancies."
"That's pretty ghoulish."
"And necessary where confidential information is imparted and mental stability's on a collision course with declining health. Those old gaffers usually stay by themselves, fading quietly away, as the Big Mac put it. If they don't want to be found, you won't find them."
"Now you're overdoing it, Stosh."
"I'm thinking, goddammit.. .. Jodelle found out something, then killed himself in front of the son he had never acknowledged while screaming that he was his son. Why?"
"I figure it's because whatever he learned was too big for him to fight. just before he shoved the barrel in his mouth and blew his head off, he also screamed that he had failed-both his son and his wife. His defeat was total."
"I read in the papers that Villier closed Coriolanus, no specific reason except how affected he was by the old man's suicide. The article wasn't clear at all; actually it sounded as though he knew things he didn't care to talk about. Naturally, like me, everyone's wondering if Jodelle was telling the truth. Nobody wants to believe it, because Villier's mother was a great star and his father one of the most respected members of the [email protected] [email protected], and they're both still alive. Of course, they can't be reached by the press; they're supposedly on a private island in the Mediterranean. The gossip columns are the Super Bowls of Paris."
"All of which makes Villier as big a target as I am, a fact I made clear to our employee, Mrs. de Vries."
"It's crazy, Villier should have been controlled, stopped."
"I've been thinking about that, Stanley. I called Villier a jackass, and to do what he did, he was, but he's not a blind jackass. I have no doubt he'd risk his own life, confident of his actor's disguises and techniques. However, I don't believe for a minute he'd risk the lives of his wife or parents by making himself so public a mark for the neosto repeat, a target." "Are you saying he was programmed?"
"I don't want to even think it because the Deuxi&me's Moreau was the last knowledgeable official to confront Villier before it was announced that the play was closing."
"I don't understand," said Witkowski hesitantly.
"Claude Moreau's the best there is. I really don't follow you, Drew."
"Fasten your seat belt, Colonel. Harry brought out a list of names." Latham proceeded to describe the profoundly disturbing information his brother had learned while being held captive by the regenerated Nazis. How alarming and bewildering were the identities of so many powerful people, who were apparently not only sympathetic to the aims of the neo master race, but who were actively working for them.
"It wouldn't be the first time since the pharaohs' legions that nations have been infested by lice in the upper ranks," Witkowski broke "If Harry Latham brought it out, you can take it to the bank. He's on that rare plateau with Claude Moreau: brains, instinct, talent, and tenacity all coming together. There's nobody in this business better than those two."
"Moreau's on Harry's list, Stanley," said Drew quietly. The silence from the swept embassy phone was as electric as it