was swept for intercepts daily; only he answered it. After five rings the
caller was to hang up, dial the regular telephone number and leave his name
and whatever message he cared to, aware that confldentiahty was far less
secure. Perhaps there was a simple ex-
212 Ro33jmT LjaDLUM
planatbn, an offhand request by Matthias for a friend to the ringing phone
to pick it up.
"Secretary of State Matthias, please?" said Havelock.
'Wh4Ys calling?*
"The faet that I used this number relieves me of the need to answer that.
The Secretary, if you please. This is an emergency atW confidential.*
gift. Matthias is in conference at the moment and has asked that all calls
be held. If you7d give me your name-.!*
'Goddawn it, yodre not listeningl This is an emergencyl"
Ile has one, too, sfr~'
"You break into that conference and say the following words to him Kt*an
... and boufe. Have you got that? just two wordsl Krajan and boufe. Do it
nowl Because if you don't, hell have your head and your job when I talk to
himl Do W"
'Kfufars," said the male voice hesitantly. *BoaFe."
The line w silent, the silence interrupted once by the low undercurrent of
men td&g in the distance. The waiting was agony, and Michael could hear the
echoes of his o
breathing Finally the voice came back
'Tm afraid you!ll have to be clearer, sir
"Whatr
V yot?d gIve me the details of the emergency and a tele. phone number where
you can be reached-2'
"Did you give him the message? Ile wordol Did you say themr
'The Secretary is extremely busy and requests that you clarify the nature
of your call."
*r-oddamn It, did you my them?"
rm repeating what the Secretary said, sk. He cauN be disturbed now, but if
youll outline the details and leave a number, someone will be In contact
with you.'
'SomeotseP What the hell is this? Who are you? Whaes your name?'
There was a pause. "Smith," mid the vok&
'Your namet I want your namel"
"I just gave ft to You.,
"You get Matthias on this phone-I"
There was a click, the line went dead.
Havelock "red at the kstrument in his hand, then closed
THE PARwAL MosAic 213
his eyes. His mentor, his krafan, his phmk had cut him off. What had
happened?
He had to find out., It made no sense, no sense at alll There was another
number in the Blue Ridge Mountains, the home of a man Matthias saw
frequently when he was in the Shenandoah, an older man whose love of chess
and fine old wine took Anton!s mind off his monumental pressures. Michael
had met Leon ZeliensId a number of times, and was always struck by the
camaraderie between the two academics; he was happy for Matthias that such
a person existed whose roots, though not in Prague, were not so far away,
in Warsaw.
Zeliensid had been a highly regarded professor of European history brought
over to America years ago from the University of Warsaw to teach and
lecture at Berkeley. Anton had met Leon during one of his early forays into
the campus lecture chvWt; additional funds were always wel come to
Matthias. A friendship had developed-mostly by way of the mails and over
chess-and upon retirement and the death of Zeftens]Xs wife, Anton had
persuaded the elderly scholar to come to the Shenandoah.
The Antibes operator took far longer with the second call, but finally
Havelock heard the old man~s voice,
Good eveningr
"Lem? h that you, Leonr
wwho is twsr
'Ies. Michael Havelock. Do you remember me, LeonP"
"MikhaiV Do I rememberl No, of course not, and I never touch Idelbasa,
either, you young baraniel How are you? Are you visiting our valley? You
sound so far away~"
"rin very far away, Leon. rm also very concerned
Havelock explained his concern; he was unable to reach their beloved mutual
friend, and was old Zeliensld planning to see Anton while Matthias was in
the Shenandoah?
"If h6 here, Mikhail, I do not know it. Anton, of course, is a busy man.
Sometimes I think the busiest man in this world . . . but he doesn!t find
time for me these days. I leave messages at the lodge, but rm afraid he
ignores them. Naturally, I understand. He moves with great figures ... he
is a great figure, and I am hardly one of them.*
"rm sorry to hear that ... that he hasnt been in touch~"
"Oh, men call me to express his regrets, saying that he
214 ROBERT LuDLurm
rarely comes out to our valley these days, but I tell you, our chess games
suffer. Incidentally, I must settle for another mutual friend of ours,
Mikhail. He was out here frequently several months ago. That fine journalist
Raymond Alexander. Alexander the Great I call him, but as a player he's a
far better writer.-
"Raymond Alexander?" said Havelock, barely listening. "Give him my best.
And thank you, Leon." Havelock replaced the phone and looked over at
Salanne. "He hasn't time for us anymore," he said, bewildered.
14
He had reached Paris by eight o'clock in the morning, made contact with
Gravet by nine and, by a quarter past eleven, was walking south amid the
crowds in the Boulevard St. Cermain. The fastidious art critic and broker of
secrets would approach him somewhere between the Rue de Pontoise and the
Qual St. Bernard. Gravet needed the two hours to seek out as many sources as
possible relative to the information Havelock needed. Michael, on the other
hand, used the time to move slowly, to rest-leaning upright against walls,
never sitting-and to improve his immediate wardrobe.
There had been no time for Salanne!s wife to buy him clothes in the
morning, no thought but to get to Paris as quickly as he could, for every
moment lost widened the distance between Jenna and himself. She had never
been to Paris except with him, and there were only so many options open to
her; he had to be there when she narrowed them down.
The doctor had driven for three and a half ham at very high speed to
Avignon, where there had been a one o'clock produce train bound for Paris.
Michael had caught it, dressed in what could be salvaged from his own
clothes, in addition to a sweater and an ill-fitting gabardine topcoat fur-
nished by Salanne. Now he looked at his reflection In a storefront window;
the jacket, trousers, open shirt and bat he had
215
216 RoBLrRT LunLum
purchased off the rack in the Raspail forty-flve minutes ago suited his
purpose. They were loose and nondescript. A man weazing such clothes would
not be singled out, and the brim of the soft bat fell just law enough over
his forehead to cast a shadow across his face.
Beyond the window was a narrow pillar of clear glass, part of the
merchandise display, a mirror. He was drawn to it, to the face in the
shadow of the hat brim. His face. It was haggard, with black circles under
the eyes and the stubble of a dark beard. He had not thought of shaving
even when he had been shopping in the Raspail. There bad been m
irrors in
the store, but be had looked only at the clothes while concentrating his
thoughts on the Paris he and Jerma Karas bad known together: one or two
embassy contacts; several colleagues-in-cover, as they were; a few French
friends-government mainly, whose trdnIst&es brought them into his orbit,
and three or four acquaintances they had made at late-night caf6s having
nothing whatsoever to do with the world in which he, made his living.
Now in the St. Germain the ashen face he saw reminded him of how tired and
racked with pain he was, how much he Just wanted to lie down and let his
strength come back to him. As Salanne bad said, he needed rest badly. He
had tried to sleep on the train from Avignon, but the frequent stops at
rural depots that were farmers' points of delivery had jolted him awake
whenever he dozed. And when awake, his head had throbbed, his mind filled
with a profound sense of loss, confusion, and anger. The one man on earth
to whom he had given his trust and love, the giant who had replaced his
father and had shaped his life, bad cut him loose and he had no idea why.
Throughout the years, during the most harrowing and isolated times, be was
somehow never alone because the presence of Anton Matthias was always with
him. Anton was the spur that drove him to be better than he was, his
protection against the memories of the early terrible days, because his
phtel bad given them meaning, perspective. Certainly no justification, but
a reason for doing what he was doing, for spending his life in an abnormal
world until something inside him told him he could join the normal one. He
had fought against the gtms of Lidice and the arbiters of gulag termination
in whatever form be had found them.
TIOse guns will always be with you, my pffteli. I wish to
THE pARWAL Mosmc 217
Almighty God you could walk away from them, but I doWt think you can, So do
what lessens the pain, what gives you purpose, what removes the guilt of
having survived. Absolution is not here among the books and argumentative
theoremclans, you have no patience with their conceptualism. You have to see
practical results.... One day you will be free, your anger spent, and you
will return. I hope I am alive to witness it. I intend to be.
He had come so close to being free, his angers reduced to an abstract sense
of futility, his return to a normal world within his grasp and
understanding. It had happened twice. Once with the woman 6 loved, who had
given another breadth of meaning to his life . . . and then without her,
loving neither her nor the memory of her, believing the hes of liars,
betraying his innermost feelings-and her. Oh, God!
And now the one man who could fulfill the prophecy he had made year.; ago
to his krafanu, his student, his son, had thrown him out of his life. The
giant was a mortal, after all. And now his enemy.
"Mon Dieu, you look like a graduate of Auschwitzl" whispered the tall
Frenchman m the velvet-collared overcoat and gleaming black shoes standing
several feet to the right of Havelock in front of the window. -What
happened to you?
. No, don1 tell mel Not here.*
"Where?"
"On the Qual Bernard, past the university, is a small park, a playground
for children maffly," continued Gravet, admiring his own figure in the
glass. "If the benches are occupied, find a place by the fence and IT join
you. On your way, purchase a bag of sweets and try to look like a father,
not a sexual devfant."
'Manks for the confidence. Did you bring me anythhlg?-
"Lees say you are heavily in my debt. Far more than your impecunious
appearance would suggest you could pay."
"About her?'
dTm still working on that. On her."
~Ilen what?"
"The Quai Bernard," said Gravet, adjusting his scarlet tfe and tilting his
gray homburg as he regarded his reflection in the window. He turned with
the grace of a ballet master and walked away.
The small park was chilled by the winds off the Seine, but
218 ROBLmT LuDLum
they did not deter the nurses, nannies and young mothers from bringing their
boisterous charges to the playground.
* dren were everywhere--on the swings, jungle gyms, seesaws-it was bedlam.
Fortunately for Michael's waning strength, there was a vacant bench against
the far back wall, away from the more chaotic center of the riverside park.
He sat down, absently picking tiny colored mints out of a white paper bag
while looking at a particularly obno3dous child kicking a tricycle; he
hoped that whoever might be observing him would think the youngster was
his, reasoning that the small boy's real guardian would stay as far away as
possible. The child stopped punishing the three wheels long enough to
return his stare with an astonishing malevolence.
The elegant Gravet walked through the red-striped entrance and levitated
his way around the rim of the playground, nodding pleasantly, benignly to
the screaming children in his path, an elder fall of kindness toward the
young. It was quite a performance, thought Havelock, knowIng that the
epicene critic loathed the surroundings. Finally he reached the bench and
sat down, snapping a newspaper out in front of him.
"Should you see a doctor?" asked the critic, his eyes on the paper.
"I left one only hours ago," replied Michael, his lips by the edge of the
white paper bag. "I'm all right, just tired."
Tm relieved, but I suggest you clean yourself up, includIng a shave. The
two of us in this particular park could bring on the gendamws. The opposite
poles of an obscene spec. trum, would be the conclusion."
"I donI feel like being funny, Gravet. What have you got?"
The critic folded the paper, snapping it again, as he spoke. ~A
contradiction, if my sources are accurate, and I have every reason to
believe they are. A somewhat incredible contradiction, in fact.-
I'Mat is it?"
~Ile KGB has no interest in you whatsoever. I could de. liver you, a
willing, garrulous defector snapped from the jaws of imperialists, to their
Paris headquarters-an importing firm on the Beaumarchais, but I suspect you
know that-.and 1, wouldn't get a sou."
THE PARmFAL MosAic 219
'Why is that a contradiction? I said the same thing to you several weeks
ago on the Pont Royal."
"That isn't the contradiction.
"What is?"
"Someone else Is looking for you. He Hew in last night because he thinks
yoere either in Paris now or on your way here. ne word is heM pay a fortune
for your corpse. He's not KGB in the usual sense, but make no mistake about
it, he's SovieL"
"Not . . . in the usual sense?" asked Havelock, bewildered, yet sensing the
approach of an ominous memory, a recent memory.
"I braced him through a source in the Militaire Etranger. He's from a
special branch of Soviet intelligence, an elite corps of---"
"Voennaya Kontra Razvedka," Michael broke in harshlY.
If the shortened form is VKR, thaes ft~-
"it is."
"He wants you. Hell pay dearly."
"Maniacs."
~Mfkhail, I should tell you. He flew in from Barcelone
"Costa Braval"
*Don!t look at mel Move to the edge of the benchl*
"Do you know what you just told mer
"You~re upset. I must leave."
Nol ... All right, all tightl- Havelock lifted the white paper bag to his
face; both his hands were trembling and he could hardly breathe as the pain
in his chest surged up to his temples. "You know what yoxeve got to deliver
now, donI you? Yoteve got it, so give it to me."
"You're in no condition."
"rll be the judge of that. TeU mef*
wi wonder if i should. Quite apart from the payment I may never see, theres
a moral dilemma. You see, I like you, Mikhail. Yoxere a civilized man,
perhaps even a good man, in a very unsavory business. You took yourself
out; have I the right to put you back in?"
"I on back inl"
"I'he Costa Brava?"
"Yesi"
"Go to your embassy~"
"I caWtI Don7t you understand that?"
220 RoBERT LUDLUM
Gravet broke his own sacrosanct rule: he lowered the newspaper and looked
at HavelocL "My C.4 they coul(&47 he said quietly.
"Just tell me."
~You leave me no choice.'
~Tell met Where is he?"
The critic rose from the bench, folding the paper, as be spoke. "rhere's a
run-down hotel on the Rue Etienne. La Couronne Nouvelle. He!s on the second
floor, Room Twentythree. iesinthe front, he observes everyone who
enters.-
The bent-over figure of the tramp was like that of a derelict in any large
city. His clothes were ragged but thick enough to ward off the cold in
deserted alleyways at night, his shoes cast-off heavy-soled boots, the laces
broken and tied in large, awkward knots. On his head was a wool knit cap set
low on his brow; his eyes focused downward, avoiding the world in which he
could not compete, and which in turn found his Presence unnerving. But over
the tramp's shoulder was his soiled canvas satchel, the oily straps held in
a firm grip, as if he were proclaiming the dignity of possession: 71ils is
my all, what Is left of me, and it is mine. The man approaching La Couronne
Nouvelle had no age; he measured time only by what he had lost. He stopped
at a wire trash basket and dug through the contents with methodical
Robert Ludlum - The Parcifal Mosaic.txt Page 28
