The Parsifal Mosaic

by Robert Ludlum

  It had to; events had taken place that could not have taken place without complicity in Moscow. A VKR officer had been trapped and wounded in Paris by the central figure at Costa Brava, and it took litttle imagination to know that the orders the officer followed were obfuscated so as to be untraceable within the complex machinery of Russian intelligence. Of course Rostov was alarmed; the specter of the fanatical VKR was enough to frighten the most dedicated Marxist, just as it frightened Havelock. For the unknown Ambiguity obviously sent routine dispatches to his controls in the KGB but reserved his most explosive information for his masters in the Voennaya.

  Rostov sensed it, but he could not pin it down, much less expose it. It was the reason for his offer to a former counterpart in Consular Operations. He says he’s not your enemy any longer, but others are who may be his as well.

  If Rostov had any idea how valid his instincts were, he would risk a firing squad to make contact, thought Michael. But Rostov was wrong; the Russian was his enemy. Essentially neither could trust the other because neither Washington nor Moscow would permit such trust, and not even the horror of Parsifal could change that.

  Futility in a world gone mad—as mad as its former savior, Anthony Matthias.

  “How long do you think it will take?” asked Jenna, sitting across from Havelock in the small, sunlit alcove off the kitchen where they had their morning coffee.

  “It’s difficult to tell. It’ll depend on how convincing Randolph is and how quickly Shippers suspects that an insurance company may be something else, something that alarms him. It could be today, tonight, tomorrow … the day after.”

  “I’d think you’d want Randolph to force him to react immediately. Can you afford the time?”

  “I can’t afford to lose him; he’s the only link we’ve got. His name didn’t appear in the laboratory report—which was easy for him to insist on in light of Randolph’s decision to cover up what he thought was a suicide. Shippers knows the only way he could surface would be for Randolph to incriminate himself, which he’d never do. Beyond practical considerations, his ego wouldn’t permit it.”

  “But swiftness is everything, Mikhail,” objected Jenna. “I’m not sure I understand your strategy.”

  Havelock looked into her eyes, his own eyes questioning. “I’m not sure I do, either. I’ve always known that to make things work in this business—this so-called profession of ours—was to think as your enemy thinks, to be him, then do what you’re convinced he doesn’t expect. Now I’m asked to think like someone I can’t possibly relate to, a man who literally has to be two people.” Michael sipped his coffee, staring now at the rim of the cup. “Think about it. An American childhood, adolescence—the Yankees, the Knicks, the Denver Broncos, the Lakers—friends at school and college; going out with girls, talking about yourself, confiding in people you really like. These are the years when secrets are for telling; it’s against human nature to keep them to yourself—part of growing up is revealing yourself. So explain it to me. How does a man like this, a paminyatchik, keep the one secret he can never reveal so deep inside him.”

  “I don’t know, but you’ve just described someone I do know very well.”

  “Who?”

  “You, my darling.”

  “That’s crazy.” Havelock put his cup down. He was anxious to leave the table; that, too, was in his eyes.

  “Is it?” Jenna reached over, putting her hand briefly over his. “How many friends at school and in college, how many girls and people you really liked did you tell about Mikhail Havlíček, and Lidice? How many knew about the agonies of Prague and a child who hid in the forests and carried secret messages and explosives strapped to his person? Tell me, how many?”

  “It was pointless. It was history.”

  “I would never have known—we would never have known—except that our leaders insisted on a thorough background check. Your intelligence services have not always sent the best people into our part of Europe and we paid for the mistakes. But when the dossier of Havlíček and the Havlíček family was brought to us—all easily verified—it came sealed with a man from the highest office of your State Department, who took it away with him. It was apparent that your immediate superiors—our normal contacts—were not aware of your early days. For some reason they were concealed; for some reason—you were two people. Why, Mikhail?”

  “I just told you. Matthias and I agreed; it was history.”

  “You didn’t care to live with it, then. You wanted that part of your life to remain hidden, out of sight.”

  “That’ll do.”

  “I was with you so many times when older people spoke of those days and you never said anything, never let on that you were there. Because if you had, it could have led to your secret, the years you didn’t care to talk about.”

  “That’s consistent.”

  “Like this Shippers, you’d been there and you were staying out of sight. You were there but your signature didn’t appear anywhere.”

  “It’s a farfetched parallel.”

  “Different, perhaps; not farfetched,” insisted Jenna. “You can’t make even the usual inquiries about Shippers because informants might alert him and he’d disappear, protecting his secret. You’re waiting for him to consider Randolph’s call; finally, perhaps—you hope—he’ll decide that he should find out whether or not this insurance company is really—How do you say it?”

  “Balking,” offered Michael. “Asking last questions before agreeing to the final settlement on MacKenzie’s policy. It’s standard; they hate like hell paying money.”

  “Yes, you believe he’ll do this. And when he discovers there are no questions, he’ll be alarmed, then make his move to contact his control, again you hope, Ambiguity.”

  “I think that’s the way he will behave. It’s the best and the safest way I can come up with. Anything else would send him underground.”

  “And each hour he …” Jenna shook her head, searching for words.

  “Thinks about it,” said Havelock. “Concentrates.”

  “Yes, concentrates. Every moment is a lost moment, giving him time to spot his surveillance, the men who worry you because you don’t know them and you can’t give them the true background material on their subject.”

  “I don’t like it, but it’s been done before.”

  “Hardly under these conditions, never with such terrible consequences for error. Swiftness is everything, Mikhail.”

  “You’re trying to tell me something and I don’t know what it is.”

  “You’re afraid of alarming Shippers, afraid he might disappear.”

  “Terrified’ is a better word.”

  “Then don’t go after him. Go after the man who was silent, who was at the Medical Center when MacKenzie died, but whose signature did not appear. As you were two men in Prague, he is two men here. Go after the one you see because you have no reason to believe he is two men, or has a secret to conceal.”

  Havelock touched his cup, his eyes fixed on Jenna’s eyes. “Go after a laboratory pathologist,” he said quietly. “On the assumption that someone had to be there with Randolph.… Corroboration. The insurance company insists on a corroborating physician.”

  “In my country five signatures are barely adequate for any one document.”

  “He’ll refuse, of course.”

  “Can he? He was there.”

  “He’ll tell Randolph he can’t support him, can’t agree openly to the diagnosis of aneurysm leading to aortal hemorrhage.”

  “Then I think the doctor should be quite firm. If that’s Shippers’s medical position, why didn’t he take it before?”

  Michael smiled. “That’s very good. Blackmail an extortionist with his own material.”

  “Why not? Randolph has—how do you say it?—the leverage. Age, reputation, wealth; who is this Shippers to oppose him?”

  “And none of it makes a damn bit of difference, anyway. We’re simply forcing him to move quickly. For his own protection—not
as a traveler, but as a doctor—he’ll have to determine how serious the insurance people are. Whether it’s a routine measure or whether they mean it. Then he finds out there’s nothing; he’s got to move again.”

  “What’s today’s schedule?” asked Jenna.

  “Initial surveillance will pick up Shippers when he leaves his apartment this morning. Secondary will take over inside the Regency buildings.”

  “How?… I’m sorry, I wasn’t listening last night when you were on the phone.”

  “I know you weren’t, I was watching you. Are you going to have something for me?”

  “Later, perhaps. How did your men get inside the buildings?”

  “The Regency Foundation’s a private firm with its share of classified government contracts. That’s obviously the reason Shippers went there; a lot of those contracts are defense-oriented. Regency was the company that first projected the radius burn-level of napalm. It’s common for government technocrats and GAO personnel to be around there, shuffling papers and looking official. Starting this morning, there are two more.”

  “I hope no one asks them questions.”

  “They wouldn’t answer if anyone did; that’s standard. Also they’ve got briefcases and plastic ID’s on their lapels that identify them. They’re covered if anyone checks.” Havelock looked at his watch as he got up from the table. “Randolph’s making his call between ten and ten-thirty. Let’s go. I’ll reach him and give him the new word.”

  “If Shippers reacts,” said Jenna, following Michael down the hall toward the paneled study, “he won’t use his office phone.”

  “There are three mobile units in the streets, separated by blocks, everyone in radio contact, wrist cameras activated by arm movements. They can move out on foot or by car—cars alternating in traffic. If they’re any good, they won’t lose him.”

  “They do worry you, don’t they?”

  “They worry me.” Havelock opened the door of the study, holding it for Jenna. “They’d worry me more if it wasn’t for a fellow named Charley who wanted to put a bullet in my head down on Poole’s Island.”

  “The one from Consular Operations?”

  Michael nodded, going to the desk. “He flew up last night—my personal request, which didn’t exactly thrill him. But he’s good, he’s thorough, and he knows that Shippers is involved with the Matthias crisis. That’s enough to make him better than he ever was. He’s in charge, and if he doesn’t choke on the mobile phone he’ll keep me posted, let me know if anything breaks.”

  Jenna had gone to her own desk—the couch; on the coffee table in front of it there were neat, narrow stacks of papers and several pages of handwritten notes. She sat down and picked up a bound typewritten report from the pile on the left. She spoke while reading, her voice indefinite, her concentration split. “Have you gotten in touch with the insurance company?”

  “No, that’s a risk I don’t want to take,” replied Havelock, sitting down at the desk and watching Jenna, but his interest was diverted. “MacKenzie’s policy might be flagged.”

  “You’re probably right.”

  “What have you got there? It’s the same thing you were looking at last night.”

  “It’s the report from your Central Intelligence Agency. The list of potential Soviet defectors over the past ten years, none of whom materialized.”

  “Look for a nuclear scientist or an armaments strategist who disappeared.”

  “Others disappeared too, Mikhail,” said Jenna, reading and reaching for a pencil.

  Havelock kept his eyes on her for several moments, then looked down at a sheet of paper on which were scribbled various telephone numbers. He checked one, picked up the phone, and dialed.

  “He’s a cold son of a bitch, I can tell you,” snapped Dr. Matthew Randolph. “Once I laid it out for him, he clammed up, asked a couple of questions like a mortician settling with a family lawyer, and said he’d get back to me.”

  “How did you lay it out, and what were his questions?” asked Michael, putting down the page of Pentagon stationery on which were written the identities of the senior officers on the Nuclear Contingency Committees. He had circled a name. “Try to be as accurate as possible.”

  “I’ll be completely accurate,” objected the surgeon testily.

  “I only meant in terms of the words, the phrases he used.”

  “It won’t be hard; they were damned few and damned short … Like you figured, he said I had no right to involve him, that was our understanding. He simply brought me his findings and how I altered them was my responsibility, not his. So I said I wasn’t a goddamned lawyer, but if my memory for trivia served me, he was an accessory and there was no way around it and I was going to be fried in hell before Midge MacKenzie and those kids got screwed out of what was coming to them.”

  “So far very good. What was his response?”

  “He didn’t have any, so I blasted along. I told him he was a damned fool if he thought he was invisible around here four months ago and a bigger fool if he thought anyone of the staff would believe I’d spend hours in a pathology laboratory over the body of a friend all by myself.”

  “Very good.”

  “He had an answer to that. Like a talking piece of dry ice, he asked who specifically knew.”

  Havelock felt a sudden spasm in his chest, the specter of unnecessary executions rising. “What did you say? Did you mention anybody?”

  “Hell, I said probably everybody!”

  Michael relaxed. “You can get on the payroll, Doctor.”

  “You couldn’t afford me, son.”

  “Please, go on.”

  “I backed down a bit, told him he was getting all worked up over nothing. I said the fella who came to see me from the insurance company said it was fust a formality, that they required a second signature on the path report before sending the check. I even suggested he call Ben Jackson over at Talbot Insurance if he was worried, that Ben was an old friend—”

  “You gave him a name?”

  “Sure. Ben is an old friend; he set up Mac’s policy. I figured if anyone phoned Ben, he’d call me and ask what the hell was going on.”

  “And what were you going to say?”

  “That whoever it was got it backwards. I was the one who wanted the second signature for our own records.”

  “What did Shippers say?”

  “Just a few words, spoken like a frozen computer. He asked whether I had told either Ben or the man from the insurance company who he was.”

  “And?”

  “I said “No, I didn’t.’ Fair was fair, and I guessed the best way was to handle it quietly. For him to get over here and sign the damned report without any fanfare.”

  “His response here?”

  “Again, damned short and bloodless.” Randolph paused, and spacing his words apart in a monotone, he continued, “ ’Have you told me everything,’ he wanted to know. I tell you he was a zombie.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I said of course I had, what else was there? That’s when he told me he’d call me back. Just like that, ‘I’ll call you back,’ in that God-awful voice.”

  Havelock breathed deeply, his eyes dropping to the names on the Pentagon stationery, to one name in particular. “Doctor, either you’ve done a remarkable job or I’m going to have your inflated head.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “If you’d done it my way, just using the insurance company alone, without any other name, Shippers would have assumed MacKenzie’s death was being reexamined by a third party without telling you. Now, if he calls this Jackson he’ll know you’re lying.”

  “So what? Same result, isn’t it?”

  “Not for you, Doctor, and we can’t bring in your friend; we can’t take the risk. For your sake I hope he’s gone fishing. And I mean it—if you’ve given me another complication, I’ll see your head rolling down the street.”

  “Well, now, young fella, I’ve been doing some thinkin
g about that. There could be a couple of heads rolling down a two-way street, couldn’t there? Here you are, a muckamuck from the White House telling me the executive branch of our government is trying to cover up the brutal killing of a heroic veteran, an employee of the CIA, and I’m just a country doctor trying to protect the interests of his bereaved widow and fatherless orphans because they’ve suffered more than anyone had a right to ask them to suffer. You want to tangle with me, you bastard?”

  “Please call me if you hear anything further, Dr. Randolph.”

  Special Detachment Officer Charles Loring, Consular Operations, late of Poole’s Island, rubbed his eyes and raised the thermos of black coffee to his lips as he sat in the front seat of the gray sedan. The driver was for all intents and purposes a stranger; that is to say, Loring had not seen him before ten o’clock last night, when he had met the entire unit selected by Havelock from thirty-odd service records submitted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation at the Justice Department’s request. The unit was now his responsibility, the assignment of continuity surveillance understood, the reasons behind it withheld—which was not the smartest thing to do when dealing with superior talent.

  And regardless of Havelock’s minor—very minor—attempt to stroke him, Charley Loring knew that the former Cons Op field man was getting some of his own back by claiming “reluctant privilege.” The only clue Havelock gave him was that this Shippers was tied in with Poole’s Island, and it was—with reluctance—enough for Charley. Havelock was a low—blow—dealing prick and he had made fools of Savannah, but if he was running some part of the Matthias show in Washington, he had more problems than they did. Loring would do what he could to help. There were times when likes and dislikes just did not mean very much; the catastrophe—the tragedy—of Poole’s Island was such a time.