The Parsifal Mosaic

by Robert Ludlum

  “I suppose I did.” Jenna glanced at the fire. “I was so frightened, hoping so much that she would help me, thinking she might not. I think I was holding on to a memory that amused me, that might calm me down. I don’t know, but it’s happened before.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Michael.

  Jenna turned back to him, her wide eyes inches from his but not looking at him—instead, looking beyond, seeing images from the past. “When I ran away from Ostrava, when my brothers were killed, and I was marked by the anti-Dubčeks—when my life there was finished—I came into the world of Prague. It was a world filled with hatred, a world so violent that I thought at times I couldn’t stand it anymore. But I knew what I had to do, I couldn’t turn back to a life that wasn’t mine any longer.… So I would remember things, relive the memories as if I were actually there, not in Prague, not in that world of fear. I was back in Ostrava, my adoring brothers taking me for rides, telling their sister outrageous stories to make me laugh. During those moments I was free, I wasn’t afraid.” She looked at him. “Those memories were hardly like Milan, were they? But I could laugh, I did laugh.… Enough! I’m not making sense.”

  “You’re making sense,” said Michael, pulling her to him again, his face against hers. “Thank you for that. Not much sense is being made these days. Anywhere.”

  “You’re tired, my darling. More than tired, you’re exhausted. Come on, let’s go to bed.”

  “I always obey my doctors.”

  “You need rest, Mikhail.”

  “I always obey my doctors up to a point.”

  “Zlomený,” said Jenna, laughing softly against his ear.

  Strands of her blond hair were layered over his face, her arm across his chest, but neither was asleep. The splendid, warm comfort of their lovemaking did not bring sleep; the unthinkable was too much with them. A soft shaft of light came from the partially closed bathroom door.

  “You didn’t tell me everything that happened to you on Poole’s Island, did you?” said Jenna, her head next to his on the pillow. “You told Bradford that you did, but you didn’t.”

  “Almost everything,” replied Havelock, staring at the ceiling. “I’m still trying to figure it out.”

  Jenna took her arm away and, supporting herself on her elbow, faced him. “Can I help you?” she asked.

  “I don’t think anybody can. It’s the bomb in my head.”

  “What is, my darling?”

  “I know Parsifal.”

  “You what …?”

  “That’s what Matthias said. He said I saw them all coming and going, the ‘negotiators of the world,’ he called them. But there was only one and I must have seen him. I must know him.”

  “That was the reason he did what he did to you? To us? Why he wanted you out?”

  “He said I could never understand … the deadliest treaties were the only solution.”

  “And I was the sacrifice.”

  “Yes. What can I say? He’s not sane; he wasn’t when he ordered up the case against you. You were to the and I was to live, live and be watched.” Michael shook his head in frustration. “That’s what I can’t understand.”

  “My death?”

  “No, my living.”

  “Even in his insanity, he loved you.”

  “Not him. Parsifal. If I was a threat, why didn’t Parsifal kill me? Why was it left to the mole to put out the order three months later?”

  “Bradford explained that,” said Jenna. “You’d seen me; you were reopening Costa Brava, and it could have led you back to the mole.”

  “It still doesn’t explain Parsifal. He could have had me taken out twenty times over. He didn’t. That’s the gap. What kind of a man are we dealing with?”

  “Certainly not rational. That’s what so terrifying.”

  Havelock turned his head and looked at her. “I wonder,” he said.

  The ringing was harsh, unexpected, reverberating throughout the room. He bolted up from a deep sleep, his hand reached for a nonexistent weapon. It was the telephone, and Michael stared at it before picking it up from the bedside table. He glanced at his watch as he spoke. It was four-forty-five in the morning.

  “Yes?”

  “Havelock, it’s Bradford.”

  “What’s the matter? Where are you?”

  “In my office. I’ve been here since eleven. Incidentally, I’ve had people working through the night. Everything you wanted will be at Sterile Five by ten o’clock, except the records at Poole’s Island. There’ll be a few hours’ delay with those.”

  “You called at this hour to tell me that?”

  “Of course not” Bradford paused, an intake of breath filling the moment “I may have found him,” he said rapidly. “I did as you suggested. I looked for someone who might not have been where he was supposed to be. I won’t know for certain until late this morning; that’s the delay with Poole’s Island. If it’s true, it’s incredible; his record is as clean as they come, his military service—”

  “Don’t say any more,” ordered Michael.

  “Your phone is as sterile as that house.”

  “Mine may be. Yours may not be. Or your office. Just listen to me.”

  “What is it?”

  “Look for a puppet. He could be alive or dead.”

  “A what?”

  “Someone filling in, the strings leading back to your man. Do you understand that?”

  “Yes, I think so. As a matter of fact, I do. It’s part of what I’ve found already.”

  “Call me when you know. From the street, from a booth. But don’t close in, don’t do anything.” Havelock hung up and looked at Jenna. “Bradford may have found Ambiguity. If he has, you were right.”

  “Paminyatchik?”

  “A traveler.”

  29

  It was a morning Sterile Five had never experienced before and would probably never see again. A persuasive inmate had taken over the somber asylum. Despite the tension, despite the anticipated call from Bradford, by eight-thirty Jenna had commandeered the kitchen, the gun-bearing Es-coffier relegated to the position of assistant Ingredients were measured and mixed to the accompaniment of glances of approval and the gradual breaking down of culinary barriers; the armed cook began to smile. Pans were selected and the outsized oven was turned on; then two additional guards emerged on the scene as if their nostrils belonged to hounds and the kitchen had become a meat market.

  “Please call me Jenna,” said Jenna to the others, as Havelock was demoted to a comer table and dismissed with a newspaper.

  First names were exchanged, wide grins appeared, and before long there was conversation interspersed with laughter. Hometowns were compared—bakeries the basis of comparison—and a kind of frivolity took over the kitchen at Sterile Five. It was as though no one had ever before dared lighten the oppressive atmosphere of the security-conscious compound. It was lightened now and Jenna was the bearer of that light. To say that the men—these professionals familiar with the deadly arts—were taken with her was too modest an observation. They were actually having fun, and fun was not normal at Sterile Five. The world was going to hell in a galactic basket and Jenna Karas was baking koláče.

  At nine-flfty-five, however, after quantities of sweet rolls had been eaten in the kitchen and dispensed throughout the grounds, the serious air of the sterile house returned. Static on a dozen radios erupted, as inside bells and television monitors became operational. An armored van from the Department of State had entered the long, guarded drive from the highway. It was expected.

  By ten-thirty Havelock and Jenna were back in the ornate study to examine the papers and photographs, which were separated by classification. There were six stacks, some thicker than others: four on the desk in front of Michael; two on the coffee table, where Jenna sat reading on the couch. Bradford had been thorough, and if more was more, his only error was in duplication. An hour and twenty minutes passed, the near-noon sun filling the windows; refracted in the bulletproof glass
, the rays scattered across the walls. There was silence except for the turning of pages.

  The approach they used was standard when dealing with such a mass of diverse information. They read everything rapidly, concentrating on the totality and not on specifics, trying first to get a feel for the landscape; they would get to the details later and relentlessly scrutinize them. Despite the concentration on reading, a comment was inevitable now and then.

  “Ambassador Addison Brooks and General Malcolm Halyard,” said Michael, reading a page that contained the names of all those involved—however remotely, with or without knowledge—with the Parsifal mosaic. “They’re the President’s backups if he’s forced to expose Matthias.”

  “In what sense?” asked Jenna.

  “After Anton, they’re among the most respected men in the country. Berquist will need them.”

  Several minutes later Jenna spoke. “You’re listed here.”

  “Where?”

  “An entry in an early Matthias calendar.”

  “How early?”

  “Eight—no, nine months ago. You were a house guest of his. It was when you were flown over for the Cons Op personnel evaluation, I think. We hadn’t known each other very long.”

  “Long enough for me to want to get back to Prague as fast as I could. Those sessions were usually a monumental waste of time.”

  “You told me once they serve a purpose, that the field often has strange effects on certain men and they should be periodically checked.”

  “I wasn’t one of them. Anyway, I said usually, not always. On occasion they’d pick out a … a gunslinger.”

  Jenna put the page down on her lap. “Mikhail, could it have been then? That visit with Matthias? Could you have seen Parsifal then?”

  “Anton was himself nine months ago. There was no Parsifal.”

  “You said he was tired—‘terribly tired’ were the words you used. You were worried about him.”

  “His health, not his sanity. He was sane.”

  “Still—”

  “You think I haven’t gone over every minute in my mind?” interrupted Havelock. “It was in Georgetown, and I was there two days, two nights, the length of the evaluation. We had dinner twice, both times alone. I didn’t see anybody.”

  “Certainly people came to the house.”

  “They certainly did; they never gave him a moment’s peace, day or night.”

  “Then you saw them.”

  “I’m afraid I didn’t. You’d have to know that old place; it’s a maze of small rooms in the front. There’s a parlor to the right of the hallway, a library on the left that one goes through to get to his office. I think Anton liked it; he could keep people waiting who probably wouldn’t see each other. Petitioners in stages, moved from one area to the next. He’d greet them in the parlor, then they’d be taken to the library and, finally, the sanctum sanctorum, his office.”

  “And you were never in those rooms.”

  “Not with anybody else. When he was interrupted at dinner, I remained in the dining room in the back. I even used a separate side entrance when coming or going from the house, never the front door. We had an understanding.”

  “Yes, I remember. You didn’t care to be seen with him.”

  “I’d put it differently. I’d have been honored—I mean that, honored—to have been seen with him. It just wasn’t a very good idea, for either of us.”

  “But if it wasn’t during those two days, when was it? When could you have seen Parsifal?”

  Michael looked at her, feeling helpless. “I’d have to go back over half a lifetime, that’s part of the madness. In his fantasy, he sees me leaving a conference; that could be anything from a classroom to a seminar to a lecture hall. How many were there? Fifty, a hundred, a thousand? Post-graduate degrees take time. How many have I forgotten? Was it there, in one of those? Was Parsifal somewhere in that past?”

  “If he was, you could hardly be considered a threat to him now.” Jenna sat forward, recognition suddenly in her eyes. “ ‘He could have taken me out twenty times over but he didn’t,’ ” she repeated. “Parsifal didn’t try to kill you.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Then he could be someone you knew years ago.”

  “Or there’s another possibility. I said he could have taken me out and he could have, but regardless of how careful or how removed a person is, there’s always a risk in killing someone or contracting for a gun, no matter how slight Maybe he can’t tolerate even the hint of a risk. Maybe he’s in a crowd of faces right in front of me and I can’t pick him out But if I knew who he is or what he looks like, I’d know where to find him. I’d know, but not necessarily too many others, probably no one in our line of work.”

  “The mole could supply you with both an identity and a description.”

  “Good hunting, Mr. Undersecretary,” said Havelock. “And I wish to hell he’d call!.… Anything else in there?” he added, going back to the material on the Maryland physician.

  “I haven’t gotten that for with the calendars. But there’s something in the itineraries and it’s repeated frequently. I’m not sure I understand. Why is the Shenandoah mentioned so often, Mikhail?”

  Havelock looked up from the page as a dissonant chord echoed in the recesses of his brain.

  Emory Bradford struggled to keep his eyes open. Except for brief catnaps, taken when he could no longer function, he had not slept in nearly thirty-six hours. Yet he had to stay awake; it was past noon. The newsreel tapes and photographs from New York would be arriving any minute, flown down by an accommodating network television station that had accepted an innocuous explanation in exchange for a new and confidential source at the Department of State. The undersecretary had ordered up the proper equipment; he could run the tapes within minutes after receiving them. And then he would know.

  Incredible. Arthur Pierce! Was it Pierce, after all? The senior State Department official at the United Nations delegation, chief aide to the ambassador, a career officer with a service record to be envied by just about anyone working in the upper regions of the government, a record that fairly screamed “advancement.” And prior to his arrival in Washington there was a superb military record. Had he stayed in the army he would have been on his way to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Pierce had arrived in Southeast Asia as a second lieutenant out of the University of Michigan, summa cum laude, master’s program, and Benning’s OCS. Thereafter, for five voluntarily uninterrupted tours of duty he had risen to the rank of major, replete with decorations for bravery, citations for leadership and recommendations for further strategic studies. And before that, before Vietnam, there was a dossier that exemplified the young American achievement of a farm boy: church acolyte, Eagle Scout, high school valedictorian, college scholarship with academic honors—even membership in a 4-H club. As General Halyard had said, Arthur Pierce was flag, mother, apple pie and God. Where was the connection to Moscow?

  Yet there was one if there was validity in Havelock’s use of the term “smoke screen,” and especially in his warning “Look for a puppet. He could be alive or dead.” It was the initial suggestion, however, that had first caught Bradford’s attention: Look for a man who wasn’t there, who wasn’t where he was supposed to be.

  He had been studying routinely—too routinely, for the thought seemed too farfetched—the recommendations and positions taken by the American delegation at the Security Council’s meetings during the week of Costa Brava. These included the confidential discussions within the delegation, as summarized by an attaché named Carpenter. His superior, Pierce, the man second only to the ambassador, was mentioned frequently; his suggestions were concise, astute, very much in character. Then Bradford came upon a parenthetical abbreviated phrase deep in the text of that Thursday’s meetings: “(Del./F.C.).”

  It followed a strong and lengthy recommendation presented to the ambassador by Pierce. Bradford had not picked it up before, probably because of the unnecessarily complicated diplomatic verbiage, but
seven hours ago he had looked hard at it “(Del./F.C.) Delivered by Franklyn Car-penter.” Translation: Not offered by the ambassador’s senior aide, Arthur Pierce, whose words they were, but relayed by a subordinate. Meaning: Pierce was not there, not where he was supposed to be.

  Bradford had then studied every subsequent line in the delegation report. He’d found two additional bracketed F.C.’s for Thursday and three more for Friday. Friday. Then he had remembered the obvious and gone back to the beginning of the week. It had been the end of the year; the operation at Costa Brava had taken place on the night of January 4. Sunday. A weekend.

  There had been no Security Council meeting that Wednesday because the majority of the delegations who were still on speaking terms were holding diplomatic receptions for New Year’s Eve. On Thursday, the first day of the new year, as if to show the world the U.N. meant to greet it seriously, the council had resumed work, then again on Friday—but not Saturday or Sunday.

  Therefore, if Arthur Pierce was not where he was supposed to be, and had instructed a subordinate to deliver his words, he could have left the country Tuesday evening, allowing five days for the Costa Brava. If, if … if. Am-bigutty?

  He had called Havelock, who told him what to look for next. The puppet.

  The lateness of the hour was irrelevant Bradford had raised an operator on the all-night tracing switchboard, and told him to reach one Franklyn Carpenter wherever he might be. Eight minutes later the operator had called back; Franklyn Carpenter had resigned from the Department of State almost four months ago. The number on file was useless; the telephone had been disconnected. Bradford had then given the name of the only other person listed at the American desk during that Thursday meeting of the Security Council, a lower-level attaché no doubt still in New York.

  The tracing operator had called back at 5:15 A.M., the U.N. attaché on the line.

  “This is Undersecretary of State Bradford.…”

  The man’s initial response had been one of astonishment mixed with the fuzziness of sleep, and more than a touch of fear. Bradford had spent several minutes reassuring him, trying to bring him back to those few days nearly four months ago.