The Parsifal Mosaic

by Robert Ludlum

  Their first conference had not been without humor—black humor. Michael and Jenna were to meet the attaché at an out-of-the-way restaurant west of the Palatine. They had waited in the crowded stand-up bar, preferring that the conduit select a table, and were oblivious to the tall black soldier ordering a vodka martini on their right. After several minutes the man smiled and said, “I’m jes’ Rastus in the catasta di legna, Massa Havelock. Do you think we might sit down?”

  His name was Lawrence Brown. Lieutenant Colonel Lawrence B. Brown—the middle initial was for his real name, Baylor.

  “So help me God,” the colonel had told them over after-dinner drinks that night, “the fellows in G-two felt there was more ‘concrete association’—that’s what they called it—by using Brown in the cover. It went under the heading of ‘psy-acceptance,’ can you believe it? Hell, I suppose it’s better than Attaché Coffee-Face.”

  Baylor was a man he could talk to … if Baylor would agree to talk to him. And where? It would not be anywhere near the embassy; the United States government had several terrible things to explain to a retired field agent.

  It took over twenty minutes on the manager’s phone-while the manager repacked Michael’s clothing in an outrageously priced new suitcase—before Havelock reached the embassy switchboard. Senior Attaché Brown was currently attending a reception on the first floor.

  “Tell him it’s urgent,” said Michael. “My name is … Baylor.”

  Lawrence Baylor was reluctant to the point of turning Havelock down. Anything a retired intelligence officer had to say would best be said at the embassy. For any number of reasons.

  “Suppose I told you I just came out of retirement. I may not be on your payroll—or anyone else’s—but I’m very much back in. I’d suggest you don’t blow this, Colonel.”

  “There’s a café on the Via Pancrazio, La Ruota del Pavone. Do you know it?”

  “I’ll find it.”

  “Forty-five minutes.”

  “I’ll be there. Waiting.”

  Havelock watched from a table in the darkest corner of the café as the army officer ordered a carafe of wine from the bar and began walking across the dimly lit room. Baylor’s mahogany face was taut, stern; he was not comfortable, and when he reached the table, he did not offer his hand. He sat down opposite Michael, exhaled slowly, and attempted a grim smile.

  “Nice to see you,” he said with little conviction.

  “Thank you.”

  “And unless you’ve got something to say we want to hear, you’re putting me in a pretty rough spot, buddy. I hope you know that.”

  “I’ve got something that’ll blow your mind,” said Havelock, his voice involuntarily a whisper. The trembling had returned; he gripped his wrist to control it. “It’s blown mine.”

  The colonel studied Michael, his eyes dropping to Havelock’s hands. “You’re stretched, I can see that. What is it?”

  “She’s alive. I saw her!”

  Baylor was silent, immobile. His eyes roamed Michael’s face, noting the marks of recent scrapes and bruises on Havelock’s skin. It was obvious that he had made the connection. “Are you referring to the Costa Brava?” he asked finally.

  “You know damn well I am!” said Michael angrily. “My abrupt retirement and the circumstances thereof have been flashed to every goddamned station and post we’ve got. It’s why you just said what you did. ‘Beware the screwed-up talent,’ Washington tells you. ‘He might do anything, say anything, think he has scores to settle.’ ”

  “It’s happened.”

  “Not to me. I don’t have any scores to think about because I’m not interested in the ballgame. I’m rational. I saw what I saw. And she saw me! She acknowledged me! She ran!”

  “Emotional stress is first cousin to hysteria,” said the colonel quietly. “A man can see a lot of things that aren’t there in that condition. And you had a jolt.”

  “Past tense, not currently applicable. I was out. I accepted the fact and the reasons—”

  “Come on, buddy,” insisted the soldier. “You don’t throw away sixteen years of involvement.”

  “I did.”

  “You were here in Rome with her. Memories get activated, twisted. As I said, it happens.”

  “Again, negative. Nothing was activated, nothing twisted. I saw—”

  “You even called me,” interrupted Baylor sharply. “The three of us spent a couple of evenings together. A few drinks, a few laughs. Association; you reached me.”

  “There was no one else. My cover was D-squared: you were my only contact here in Rome! I can walk into the embassy now, I couldn’t then.”

  “Then let’s go,” said the colonel quickly.

  “No way! Besides, that’s not the point. You are. You fielded orders to me from Washington seven months ago, and now you’re going to send an emergency flag back to those same people. Tell them what I’ve told you, what I saw. You haven’t got a choice.”

  “I’ve got an opinion. I’m relaying what a former talent said while in a state of extreme anxiety.”

  “Fine! Good! Then try this. Five days ago in Athens I nearly killed a man we both know from the Dzerzhinsky files for telling me Costa Brava wasn’t a Soviet exercise. That she wasn’t any part of the KGB, much less the VKR. I didn’t kill him because I thought it was a probe, a blind probe—that man was telling the truth, as he knew the truth. I sent a message back to Moscow. The bait was too obvious, the smell too rotten.”

  “I suppose that was charitable of you, considering your record.”

  “Oh, no, the charity started with him. You see, he could have taken me. I could have found myself in Sevastopol on my way to Dzerzhinsky Square without even knowing I’d left Athens.”

  “He was that good? That well connected?”

  “So much so, he was self-effacing. But he didn’t take me. I wasn’t booked on the Dardanelles airlift. He didn’t want me.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because he was convinced I was the bait. Pretty fair irony, isn’t it? There was no room at the Lubyanka. I was turned out. Instead, he gave me his own message for Washington: Dzerzhinsky wouldn’t touch me.” Havelock paused. “And now this.”

  The colonel narrowed his eyes pensively, and, with both hands, turned his glass on the table. “I don’t have your expertise, but say you actually did see what you say you saw.”

  “I did. Accept it.”

  “No concessions, but say it’s possible. It could still be a lure. They’ve got you under a glass, know your plans, your itinerary. Their computers pick up a woman reasonably similar in appearance, and with a little cosmetic surgery they’ve got a double sufficient for short distances, ‘Beware the screwed-up talent.’ You never know when he thinks he has ‘scores to settle.’ Especially if he’s given some time to stew, to get worked up.”

  “What I saw was in her eyes! But even if you won’t accept that, there’s something else; it voids the strategy, and every point can be checked. Two hours ago I didn’t know I’d be inside that station; ten minutes before I saw her I didn’t know I’d be on that platform, and neither could anyone else. I came here yesterday and took a room in a pensione on the Due Macelli for a week, paid in advance. At eight-thirty tonight I saw a poster in a window and decided to go to Venice. I didn’t speak to anyone.” Michael reached into his pocket, took out his ticket for the Freccia delta Laguna and placed it in front of Lawrence Baylor. “The Freccia was scheduled to leave at nine-thirty-five. The time of purchase is stamped across the top of this. Read it!”

  “Twenty-one, twenty-seven,” said the army officer, reading. “Twenty-seven past nine. Eight minutes before the train left.”

  “All verifiable. Now look at me and tell me I’m lying. And while you’re at it, explain how that setup could have been mounted given the time span and the fact that she was on an incoming train!”

  “I can’t. If she—”

  “She was talking to a conductor seconds before she got off. I’m sure I can find
him.”

  Baylor was silent again; he stared at Havelock, then spoke softly. “Don’t bother. I’ll send the flag.” He paused, adding, “Along with qualified support. Whatever you saw, you’re not lying. Where can I reach you?”

  “Sorry. I’ll reach you.”

  “They’ll want to talk to you, probably in a hurry.”

  “I’ll be in touch.”

  “Why the static?”

  “Something Rostov said in Athens.”

  “Rostov? Pyotr Rostov?” The colonel’s eyes widened. “You don’t go much higher in the Dzerzhinsky.”

  “There’s higher.”

  “He’ll do. What did he say? What did he tell you?”

  “That our nostrils never quite adjust. Instead, they develop a kind of sensitivity—to variations of the basic rotten smell. Like animals.”

  “I expected something less abstract,” said Baylor, annoyed.

  “Really? From where I stand, it sounds concrete as hell. The Costa Brava trap was engineered in Washington, the evidence compiled by the inner shell in one of those white, sterile offices on the top floor of State.”

  “I understood you were in control,” interrupted Baylor,

  “The last phase. I insisted on it.”

  “Then you—”

  “I acted on everything that was given to me. And now I want to know why it was given to me. Why I saw what I did tonight.”

  “If you saw—”

  “She’s alive. I want to know why! How!”

  “I still don’t understand.”

  “Costa Brava was meant for me. Someone wanted me out. Not dead, but out. Comfortably removed from those temptations that often afflict men like me.”

  “Scores to settle?” asked the colonel. “The Agee syndrome? The Snepp complex? I didn’t know you were infected.”

  “I’ve had my quota of shocks, my share of questions. Someone wanted those questions buried and she went along. Why?”

  “Two assumptions I’m not willing to concede are facts. And if you intend to bare a few shocks not in the national interest, I imagine—and I’m speaking hypothetically in the extreme, of course—there are other methods of … burying them.”

  “Dispatch? Call me dead?”

  “I didn’t say we’d kill you. We don’t live in that kind of country.” The colonel paused, then added, “On the other hand, why not?”

  “For the same reason others haven’t met with odd accidents that prearranged pathologists might label something else. Self-protection is ingrained in our job, brother. It’s another syndrome; it’s called the Nuremberg. Those shocks, instead of being buried, might surface. Sealed depositions to be opened by unnamed attorneys in the event of questionable et ceteras.”

  “Jesus, you said that? You went that far?”

  “Strangely enough, I never did Not seriously. I simply got angry. The rest was assumed.”

  “What kind of world do you people live in?”

  “The same one you do—only, we’ve been around a little longer, a little deeper. And that’s why I won’t tell you where you can reach me. My nostrils have picked up a sickening odor from the Potomac.” Havelock leaned forward, his voice harsh, low, nearly a whisper again. “I know that girl. For her to do what she did, something had to have been done to her, held over her. Something obscene. I want to know what it was and why.”

  “Assuming—” Baylor began slowly, “assuming you’re right, and I don’t for an instant concede that you are, what makes you think they’ll tell you?”

  “It was all so sudden,” said Michael, leaning back, his body rigid, his voice now floating as if in a painful dream. “It was a Tuesday and we were in Barcelona. We’d been there for a week; something was going to happen in the sector, that’s all Washington told us. Then word came from Madrid: a Four Zero communication had been flown in by courier, contents restricted to the embassy, Eyes Only. Mine only. There’s no Cons Op station in Madrid, no one cleared to relay the information, so I flew in Wednesday morning, signed for that goddamned steel container, and opened it in a room guarded by three marines. Everything was there, everything she’d done, all the information she’d transmitted—information she could have gotten only from me. The trap was there, too, myself in control if I so wished—and I so wished. They knew it was the only way I’d be convinced. On Friday I was back in Barcelona, and by Sunday it was over … and I was convinced. Five days and the walls came tumbling down. No trumpets, Just flashlights and screams and loud ugly noises intruding on the surf. Five days … so sudden, so swift, everything at a crescendo. It was the only way it could have been done.”

  “You haven’t answered my question,” Baylor interrupted quietly. “If you’re right, what makes you think they’ll tell you?”

  Havelock leveled his eyes at the soldier. “Because they’re afraid. It comes down to the why. The questions, the shocks; which one was it?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The decision to remove me wasn’t made gradually, Colonel. Something triggered it. They don’t force a man out the way I was forced out because of accumulated differences. Talent’s expensive; proven field talent too difficult to replace. Accommodations can be made, explanations offered, agreements reached. All these are tried before they let the talent go. But no one tried with me.”

  “Can you be more specific?” the officer pressed, again an-noyed.

  “I wish I could be. It’s something I know, or they think I know. Something I could have written down. And it’s a bomb.”

  “Do you?” Baylor asked coldly, professionally. “Have such a piece of information?”

  “I’ll find it,” replied Havelock, suddenly pushing back his chair, prepared to leave. “You tell them that. Just as I’ll find her, tell them that, too. It won’t be easy because she’s not with them anymore. She got away; she’s gone under. I also saw that in her eyes. But I’ll find her.”

  “Maybe—” Baylor said urgently, “maybe if everything you say proves out, they’d be willing to help.”

  “They’d better be,” said Michael getting to his feet, and looking down at the soldier-conduit. “I’ll need all the help I can get. In the meantime I want this whole goddamned thing spelled out—chapter and verse, to quote an old source of mine. Because if it isn’t, I’m going to start telling tales out of school. When and from where none of you will know, but the words will be there loud and clear. And somewhere among them will be that bomb.”

  “Don’t do anything stupid!”

  “Don’t mistake me, I don’t want to. But what was done to her, to me—to us—just wasn’t fair, Colonel. I’m back in. Solo. I’ll be in touch.”

  Havelock turned and walked swiftly out of the café into the Via Pancrazio.

  He reached the Via Galvani on his way back to the railroad station, where he had deposited his newly acquired suitcase in a coin locker. Suddenly the painful irony struck him. It had been a suitcase in a coin locker at an airport in Barcelona that had condemned Jenna Karas. The defector from the Baader-Meinhof—in exchange for the quiet cancellation of a death sentence pronounced in absentia—had led them to it. The German terrorist had told Madrid that das Fräulein Karas kept secret, updated field records within her reach at all times. It was a Voennaya custom dictated by the strange relationship the violent and clandestine branch of Soviet intelligence had with the rest of the KGB. Certain field personnel on long-range deep-cover operations had access to their own files in the event that their superiors in Moscow suddenly were not accessible. Self-protection sometimes assumed odd forms; no one had questioned it.

  No one had questioned. Not even he.

  Someone makes contact with her and gives her a key, stating a location. A room or a locker, even a bank. The material is there, including new objectives as they are developed.

  A man had stopped her one afternoon two days before Michael left for Madrid. In a café on the Paseo Isabel. A drunk. He had shaken her hand, then kissed it. Four days later Michael had found a key
in Jenna’s purse. On Sunday, two days later, she was dead.

  There had been a key, but whose key was it? He had seen photocopies verified by Langley of every item in that suitcase. But whose suitcase was it? If not hers, how did three sets of fingerprints confirmed to be hers get inside? And if the prints were hers, why did she permit it?

  What had they done to her? What had they done to a blond woman on the Costa Brava who had screamed in Czech and whose spine and neck and head had been pierced with bullets? What kind of people were they who could put human beings on strings and blow them up as calmly as one might explode mannequins in a horror show? That woman had died; he had seen too much death to be mistaken. It was no charade, as the elegant Gravet might have put it.

  Yet it was all a charade. They were all puppets. But on what stage and for whose benefit were they performing?

  He hurried faster on the Via Galvani; the Via della Mamorata was in sight. He was only blocks now from the massive railroad station; he would begin there. At least, he had an idea; whether it made sense or not the next half hour would tell.

  He passed a garishly lighted newsstand where tabloids competed with glossy magazines. Capped teeth and out-sized breasts battled for attention with mutilated bodies and graphic descriptions of rape and mayhem. And then he saw the famous face staring up at him from the cover of the international edition of Time. The clear eyes behind the hornrimmed glasses shone as they always did, full of high intelligence—cold at first glance, yet somehow warmer the longer one looked at them, softened, perhaps by an understanding few on this earth possessed. There he was, the high cheekbones and the aquiline nose, the generous lips from which such extraordinary words poured forth.

  “A man for all seasons, all peoples.” That was the simple caption beneath the photograph. No name, no title; none was necessary. The world knew the American Secretary of State, heard his reasoned, deliberate voice and understood. This was a man for all; he transcended borders and languages and national insanities. There were those who believed—and Michael was one of them—that either the world would listen to Anthony Matthias or it would be blown to hell in a mushroom cloud.