The Parsifal Mosaic

by Robert Ludlum

  “I can’t find him!” cried Michael, pounding his hand on the coffee table. “He’s here, the words are here, but I can’t find him!”

  The telephone rang. Rostov? Havelock shot up from the chair, staring at it, motionless. He was drained, and the thought of finding the resources to fence verbally with the Soviet intelligence officer eight thousand miles away drained him further. The abrasive bell sounded again. He went to the phone and picked it up as Jenna watched him.

  “Yes?” he said quietly, marshaling his thoughts for the opening moves on both sides.

  “It is your friend from Kennedy Airport who no longer has his weapon—”

  “Where’s Rostov? I gave you a deadline.”

  “It was met. Listen to me carefully. I’m calling from a phone booth on Eighth Avenue and must keep my eyes on the street. The call came through a half hour ago. Fortunately, I took it, as my superior had an engagement for the evening. He will expect to find me when he returns.”

  “What are you driving at?”

  “Rostov is dead. He was found at nine-thirty in the morning, Moscow time, after repeated calls failed to rouse him.”

  “How did he die?”

  “Four bullets in the head.”

  “Oh, Christ! Have they any idea who killed him?”

  “The rumor is Voennaya Kontra Razvedka, and I, for one, believe it. There have been many such rumors lately, and if a man like Rostov can be taken out, then I am too old, and must call from a phone booth. You are fools here, but it’s better to live with fools than lie among jackals who will rip your throat open if they don’t care for the way you laugh or drink.”

  At the meeting this afternoon … something I didn’t understand … An intelligence officer from the KGB made contact … speculated on the identity … Arthur pierce, while awkwardly smoking a cigarette on a deserted runway.

  Rostov didn’t speculate. He knew. A collection of fanatics in a branch called the VKR, the Voennaya … He’ll break it open … A fellow killer from the Costa Brava.

  Had Pierce’s call encompassed more than the death of a paminyatchik? Had he demanded the execution of a man in Moscow? Four bullets in the head. It had cost Rostov’s life, but It could be the proof he needed. Was it conclusive? Could anything be conclusive?

  “Code name Hammer-zero-two,” said Michael, thinking, reaching. “Does it mean anything to you?”

  “A part of it possibly, not all of it.”

  “What part?”

  “The ‘hammer.’ It was used years ago, and was restricted. Then it was abandoned, I believe. Hammarskjöld, Dag Hammarskjöld. The United Nations.”

  “Jesus! … Zero, zero … two. A zero is a circle … a circle. A council! Two … double, twice, second. The second voice in the delegation! That’s it!”

  “As you gather,” interrupted the Russian, “I must cross over.”

  “Call the New York office of the FBI. Go there. I’ll get word to them.”

  “That is one place I will not go. It is one of the things I can tell you.”

  “Then keep moving and call me back in thirty minutes. I have to move quickly.”

  “Fools or jackals. Where is the choice?”

  Havelock pressed the adjacent button on the phone, disconnecting the line. He looked up at Jenna. “It’s Pierce. Hammer-zero-two. I told him —we all told him—about Rostov dosing in on the Voennaya. He had Rostov killed. It’s him.”

  “He’s trapped,” said Jenna. “You’ve got him.”

  “I’ve got him. I’ve got Ambiguity, the man who called us dead at Col des Moulinets.… And when I get him to a clinic I’ll shoot him into space. Whatever he knows I’ll know.” Michael dialed quickly. “The President, please. Mr Cross calling.”

  “You must be very quiet, Mikhail,” said Jenna, approaching the desk. “Very quiet and precise. Remember, it will be an extraordinary shock to him and, above all, he must believe you.”

  Havelock nodded. “That’s the hardest part. Thanks. I was about to plunge in with conclusions first. You’re right. Take him up slowly.… Mr. President?”

  “What is it?” asked Berquist anxiously. “What’s happened?”

  “I have something to tell you, sir. It will take a few minutes, and I want you to listen very closely to what I’ve got to say.”

  “All right. Let me get on another phone; there are people in the next room.… By the way, did Pierce reach you?”

  “What?”

  “Arthur Pierce. Did he call you?”

  “What about Pierce?”

  “He telephoned about an hour ago; he needed a second clearance. I told him about your call to me, that you both wanted to know if I’d brought up the Randolph Medical Center business—lousy goddamned mess—and I said I had, that we all knew about it.”

  “Please, Mr. President! Go back. What, exactly, did you say?”

  “What’s the matter with you?”

  “What did he say to you?”

  “About what?”

  “Just tell me! First, what you said to him!”

  “Now, just a minute, Havelock—”

  “Tell me! You don’t have time, none of us has time! What did you say?”

  The urgency was telegraphed. Berquist paused, then answered calmly, a leader aware of a subordinate’s alarm, not understanding it but willing to respect its source. “I said that you’d phoned me and specifically asked if I had brought up the Randolph Medical Center at the meeting this afternoon. I said that I had, and that you seemed relieved that everyone knew about it.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He seemed confused, frankly. I think he said ‘I see,’ then asked me if you’d given any reason for wanting to know.”

  “Know what?”

  “About the Medical—What is wrong with you?”

  “What did you say?”

  “That I understood you were both concerned, although I wasn’t sure why.”

  “What was his reply?”

  “I don’t think he had one.… Oh, yes. He asked if you’d made any progress with the man you’ve got at Bethesda.”

  “Which wasn’t until tomorrow and he knew it!”

  “What?”

  “Mr. President, I don’t have time to explain and you can’t lose a moment. Has Pierce gotten into that vault, that room?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Stop him! He’s the mole!”

  “You’re insane!”

  “Goddamn it, Berquist, you can have me shot, but right now I’m telling you! He’s got cameras you don’t know about! In rings, watches, cuff links! Stop him! Take him! Strip him and check for capsules, cyanide! I can’t give that order but you can! You have to! Now!”

  “Stay by the phone,” said the President of the United States. “I may have you shot.”

  Havelock got out of the chair, if for no other reason than the need to move, to keep in motion. The dark mists were closing in again; be had to get out from under them. He looked at Jenna, and her eyes told him she understood.

  “Pierce found me. I found him, and he found me.”

  “He’s trapped.”

  “I could have killed him at Costa Brava. I wanted to kill him, but I wouldn’t listen. I wouldn’t listen to myself.”

  “Don’t go back. You’ve got him. You’re within the time span.”

  Michael walked away from the desk, away from the dark mist that pursued him. “I don’t pray,” he whispered. “I don’t believe. I’m praying now, to what I don’t know.”

  The telephone rang and he lunged for it. “Yes?”

  “He’s gone. He ordered the patrol boat to take him back to Savannah.”

  “Did he get into that room?”

  “No.”

  “Thank Christ!”

  “He’s got something else,” said the President in a voice that was barely audible.

  “What?”

  “The complete psychiatric file on Matthias. It says everything.”

  37

  The police swe
pt through the streets of Savannah, patrol cars roaring out to the airport and screeching into bus and train stations. Car-rental agencies were checked throughout the city and roadblocks set up on the major highways and backcountry routes—north to Augusta, south to Saint Marys, west to Macon and Valdosta. The man’s description was radioed to all units—municipal, county, state—and the word spread down through the ranks from the highest levels of authority: Find him. Find the man with the streak of white in his hair. If seen, approach with extreme caution, weapons drawn. If movements are unexpected, shoot. Shoot to kill.

  The manhunt was unparalleled in numbers and intensity, the federal government assuring the state, the cities and townships that all costs would be borne by Washington. Men off duty were called in by precincts and station houses; vehicles in for minor repairs were put back on the streets, and private cars belonging to police personnel were issued magnetic, circling roof lamps and sent out to prowl the dark country roads. Everywhere automobiles and pedestrains were stopped; anyone even vaguely approaching the man’s description was politely requested to remove his hat if he was wearing one, and flashlights roamed over faces and hairlines, searching for a hastily, imperfectly dyed streak of white hair rising above a forehead. Hotels, motels and rural inns were descended upon; registers were checked for late arrivals, desk clerks questioned, the interrogators alert to the possibility of evasion or deception. Farmhouses where lights remained on were entered—courteously, to be sure—but the intruders were aware that the inhabitants could be hostages, that an unseen child or wife might be held captive somewhere on the premises by the man with the streak of white in his hair. Rooms and barns and silos were searched, nothing left to speculation.

  Morning came, and weary thousands reported back to points of dispatch, angry, frustrated, bewildered by the government’s ineffectual methods. For no photographs or sketches were issued; the only name given was “Mr. Smith.” The alarm was still out, but the blitzkrieg search was essentially over, and the professionals knew it. The man with the streak of white in his hair had slipped through the net. He could be blond or bald or gray by now, limping with a cane or a crutch, and dressed in tattered clothes, or in the uniform of the police or the military, without a vestige of his former appearance.

  The newspapers carrying early-morning stories of the strange, massive hunt abruptly called off their reporters. Owners and editors had been reached by respected, men in government who claimed no special knowledge of the situation but had profound trust in those higher up who had appealed to them, Play it down, let the story die. In second editions the search was relegated to a few lines near the back pages, and those papers with third editions carried no mention of it at all.

  And an odd thing happened at a telephone exchange beginning with the digits 0-7742. Since midnight it had not functioned, and by 8:00 A.M., when service was suddenly, inexplicably, resumed, telephone “repairmen” were in the building of the Voyagers Emporium annex, where orders were received, and every incoming call was monitored and taped, all tapes under fifteen seconds in length played instantly over the phone to Sterile Five. The brevity reduced the number to a very few.

  International airports were infiltrated by federal agents with sophisticated X-ray equipment that scanned briefcases and hand luggage; they were looking for a two-inch-thick metal case with a combination lock on the side. There were two assumptions: one, the devastating file would not be entrusted to a cargo hold; and, two, it would remain in its original government container for authenticity. If container and file were separated, either shape was sufficient cause for examination. By 11:30 A.M. over twenty-seven hundred attaché cases had been opened and searched, from Kennedy to Atlanta to Miami International.

  “Thanks very much,” said Havelock into the phone, forcing energy into his voice, feeling the effects of the sleepless night He hung up and looked over at Jenna, who was pouring coffee. “They can’t understand and I can’t tell them. Pierce wouldn’t call Orphan-ninety-six unless he thought he could get his message across with a very few words, spoken quickly. He knows I’ve got the place wired and maimed by now.”

  “You’ve done everything you can,” said Jenna, carrying the coffee to the desk. “All the airports are covered—”

  “Not for him,” Michael broke in. “He wouldn’t risk it, and besides, he doesn’t want to leave. He wants what I want. Parsifal.… It’s that file! One small single-engine plane crossing the Mexican border, or a fishing boat meeting another between here and Cuba, or out of Galveston toward Matamores, and that file’s on its way to Moscow, into the hand of the overkill specialists in the Voennaya. And there’s not a damn thing I can do about it.”

  “The Mexican border is being patrolled, the agents doubled. The piers and marinas are watched both here and in the Gulf, all boats tracked, stopped if directions are in question. You insisted on these things and the President issued the orders.”

  “It’s a long border, and those are large bodies of water.”

  “Get some rest, Mikhail. You can’t function if you’re exhausted—it’s one of your rules, remember.”

  “One of the rules …?” Havelock brought both hands to the sides of his head, massaging his temples with his fingers. “Yes, that’s one of the rules, part of the rules.”

  “Lie down on the couch and close your eyes. I can take the calls, let you know what they are. I slept for a while, you didn’t.”

  “When did you sleep?” asked Michael, looking up, doubting.

  “I rested before the sun was up. You were talking to your Coast Guard.”

  “It doesn’t belong to me,” said Havelock wearily, pushing himself up. “Maybe I will lie down … just for a few minutes. It’s part of the rules.” He walked around the desk, then stopped; his eyes roamed the elegant study strewn with papers, notebooks and file folders. “God, I hate this room!” he said, heading for the couch. “Thanks for the coffee, but no thanks.”

  The telephone rang, and Michael steeled himself, wondering if the bell would stop before a second ring or whether it would remain unbroken, the signal of an emergency. It stopped, then resumed ringing.

  Havelock lowered himself down on the couch as Jenna answered, speaking calmly. “This is Sterile Five.… Who’s calling?” She listened, then covered the phone and looked over at Michael. “It’s the State Department, New York City, Division of Security. Your man’s come in from the Soviet consulate.”

  Havelock rose unsteadily, briefly finding it necessary to center his balance. “I’ve got to talk to him,” he said, walking toward the desk. “I thought he’d be there hours ago.” Michael took the phone from Jenna and, after peremptory identifications, made his request. “Let me have the candidate, please.” The Russian got on the line. “Where the hell have you been?”

  “Apparently, it is considered in poor taste over here to defect except during business hours,” began the Russian in a weary, singsong voice. “I arrived down here at the Federal Plaza at four o’clock this morning, after having survived an attempted mugging on the subway, only to be told by one of the night guards that there was nothing he could do until the office opened! I explained my somewhat precarious position, and the kind, vacuous idiot offered to buy me a cup of coffee—in a public diner. Finally getting into the building myself—your security is ludicrous—I waited in a dark, drafty hallway until nine o’clock, when your militia arrived. I then presented myself and the imbeciles wanted to call the police! They wanted to have me arrested for breaking and entering and the possible destruction of government property!”

  “All right, you’re there now—”

  “I’m not fin-nished!” yelled the Russian. “Since that auspicious beginning I have been filling out uncountable forms—with Russian nursery rhymes, incidentally—and repeatedly giving your number, asking to be put in touch with you. What is it with you people? Do you limit toll calls?”

  “We’re in touch now—”

  “Not fin-nished! This past hour I have been sitting alone in
a room so poorly wired I was tempted to lower my trousers and fart into the microphones. And I have just been given additional forms to fill out, including one inquiring about my hobbies and favorite recreational pastimes! Are you sending me to camp, perhaps?”

  Michael smiled, grateful beyond words for a momentary break in the tension. “Only where you’ll be safe,” he said. “Consider the source. We’re fools, remember, not jackals. You made the right choice.”

  The Russian sighed audibly. “Why do I work myself up? The fruktovyje golovy are no better in the Dzerzhinsky—why not admit it? They’re worse. Your Albert Einstein would be on his way to Siberia, assigned to pull mules in a gulag. Where is the sense in it all?”

  “There’s very little,” said Havelock softly. “Except to survive. All of us.”

  “A premise I subscribe to.”

  “So did Rostov.”

  “I remember the words he sent you. He’s not my enemy any longer, but others are who may be mine as well.’ They are ominous words, Havelock.”

  “The Voennaya.”

  “Maniacs!” was the guttural reply. “In their heads they march with the Third Reich.”

  “How operational are they here?”

  “Who knows? They have their own councils, their own methods of recruitment. They touch too many you can’t see.”

  “The paminyatchiki? You can’t see them.”

  “Believe me when I tell you I was trusted but never that trusted. However, one can speculate—on rumors. There are always rumors, aren’t there? You might say the speculation has convinced me that I should take the action I’ve taken.” The Russian paused. “I will be treated as a valuable asset, will I not?”

  “Guarded and housed as a treasure. What’s the speculation?”

  “In recent months certain men have left our ranks—unexpected retirements to well-earned dachas, untimely illnesses—disappearances. None so crudely as Rostov, but perhaps there was no time to be clever. Nevertheless, it seems there is a disturbing sameness about the departed. They were generally categorized as quiet realists, men who sought solutions and knew when to pull back from confrontation. Pyotr Rostov exemplified this group; he was in fact their spokesman in a way. Make no mistake, you were his enemy, he despised your system—too much for the few, too little for the many—but he understood there was a point where enemies could no longer push forward. Or there was nothing. He knew time was on our side, not bombs.”