Prague. Was Havelock part of Matthias's plans or not? Was he a willing
player following orders, pretending to do what others would call perfectly
understandable, or was he the unknowing victim of a terrible manipulation?
We had to find out."
"We did find out," protested Addison Brooks quietly, indignantly. "At the
clinic in Virginia. He was probed with everytbing doctors and laboratories
can probe with, he knew absolutely nothing. As you said, we were back to
the original scenario, completely in the dark ourselves. Why did Matthias
want him out? les the unanswered, perhaps now unanswerable, question. When
we understood that, we should have told Havelock the truth."
"We coul&1." The undersecretary leaned back in the chair. "Jenna Karas had
disappeared; we had no idea whether she was alive or dead. Under the
circumstances Havelock would have raised questions that cannot be raised
outside the Oval Office-or a room like this."
"Questions," added the President of the United States, 'which, if exposed,
would plunge the world into a global nuclear war in a matter of hours. If
the Soviets or the Peoples Republic of China knew this government is out of
control, ICBM's would be launched from both hemispheres, a thousand
submarines poised in both oceans for secondary tactical
strikes-obliteration. And we are out of oontroL"
Silence.
246 RoBERT LunLum
-Mere~s someone rd like you to meet," said Bradford finally. "I had him
flown in from an Alpine pass called Col. des Moulinets. He's out of
Rome."
"Nuclear war," whispered the President, as he pressed the button on the
huge, curved desk, and the screen went dark.
16
Havelock drew two lines through the seventeenth and eighteenth names on the
list, hung up the telephone on the wall and left the shabby caf6 in
Montmartre. Two calls per phone were all he permitted himself. Sophisticated
electronic scanners could pick up a location in a matter of minutes, and
should any of those he reached be patched into equipment at the American
embassy, it would be no different from his calling the Paris conduit of Cons
Op and setting the time for his own execution. Two calls per phone, each
phone a minimum of six blocks from the previous one, no conversation lasting
more than ninety seconds. He had gone through half the list, but now the
rest of the names would have to wait. It was nearly nine o'clock, the gaudy
lights of Montmartre battered the streets with frenzied emptions of color
that matched the frantic cacophony of the districes nighttime revels. And he
was to meet Gravet in an alley off the Rue Norvins. The art critic bad spent
the afternoon tracking down anyone and everyone in his peculiar world who
might have knowledge of jenna Karas.
In a way, so had Michael, but his initial work had been cerebral. He had
retrieved his clothes from a M6tro locker, purchased basic toiletries, a
note pad and a ball-point pen, and taken a room at a cheap hotel around the
comer from La Couronne Nouvelle. He reasoned that if the wounded 247
248 RoBERT LUDLUM
V3M officer raised help, he would not think to send his VU. ers down the
street for the target. Havelock had shaved and bathed, and now lay on the
decrepit bed, his body resting but not his mind. He had gone back in time,
disciplining his memory, recalling every moment he and Jenna had shared in
Paris. He had approached the exercise academically, as a graduate student
might doggedly follow a single development chronologically through a chaotic
period In history. He and jenna, jenna and he; where they had gone, what
they had seen, whom they had spoken with, all in order of se. quence. Each
place and scene had a location and a reason for their being there; finally,
each face that had any meaning had a name, or if not a specific name, the
identity of someone who knew him or her.
After two hours and forty minutes of probing, he had sat up, reached for
the note pad and pen he had placed on a bedside chair, and had begun his
list. A half hour later It was complete-as complete as his memory
permitted-and he had relaxed, back on the bed, knowing that the much needed
sleep would come. He knew also that the clock in his mind would awaken him
when daylight ended. It did. And minutes later he was out in the streets6
going from one telephone booth to another, one caf6 with a ThAmoNz sign in
the window to the next, each instrument six blocks away from the last.
He began the conversations quickly but casually, and kept his ears primed
to pick up any telltale signs of alarm in the responses. In each case his
approach was the same; he was to have met Jenna that noon at the Meurice
bar, each having flown into Paris from a different city, but his plane had
been hours late. And since jenna had mentioned the person's name
frequently-fondness Implied-Michael wondered If she had called him or her,
perhaps looking for an afternoon companIon In a city she barely knew.
Most were mildly surprised to hear from Havelock, es
pecially so casually, and even more surprised that jenna
Karas would have remtheir names, much less hav
Ing recalled them with affection; they were by and large only
brief acquaintances. However, in no Instance was there the
slightest hesitation other than the normal caution required
when confronted with the unexpected. Eighteen names.
Nothing. Where had she gone? Mlhat was she &Ing? She
7'RE PARSWAL MOSATC249
could not go underground in Paris, not without his finding her; she bad to
know that. Christ, where are youP
He reached the Rue Ravignan and began the steep ascent up the Montmartre
bill, passing the dark old houses that were once the homes of legends, and
emerging on the small square that was the Place C16ment, be started down
the Rue Norvins. The street was crowded, the revels of would-be Bobemians
fueled by the genuine residents who dressed their roles and later went home
to count their profits. The alley Gravet had described was just before the
narrow Rue des Saules; he could see the break in the row of ancient build-
ings up ahead and walked faster.
'Me old brick alleyway was dark and empty. The ersatz Bohemians knew there
were limits to their pretense that they belonged in Montmartre; a mugging
on the sacred bill of martyrs was little different from a taped iron pipe
in Sobo or the East Village. Havelock went inside, his right hand in-
stinctively edging toward the break in his jacket and belt where the magnum
was awkwardly in place. Gravet was late, a discourtesy the critic himself
found abhorrent. What had happened?
Michael found a shadowed doorway in the dimly lit thoroughfare; he leaned
against the brick frame, took out a cigarette and struck a match. As he
cupped the flame his mind leaped back to the Palatine" to a book of matches
and a man who had tried to save.his life, not take it. A dying man who had
died only moments later, knowing there was betrayal at the highest levels
of his government.
There was a sudden commotion out on the Rue Norvins, a brief flare-up o
f
tempers as two men collided. Then a tall, slender man stood momentarily
erect, and let forth a stream of invective in French. His much younger,
stockier adversary made a sullen comment about the man's ancestry and moved
along. The injured party smoothed his lapels, turned to his left and
entered the alley. Gravet had arrived, not without his customary &n.
"Merdel" the critic spat out, seeing Havelock walk out of the shadows into
the dim light. "It's those filthy, ragged field jackets they wearl You just
know they dribble when they eat and their teeth are yellow. God knows when
they last bathed or spoke civilly. Sorry to be late."
fesonly a few minutes. I just got hem- 250 ROBERT LunLum
"I'm late. I intended to be in the Rue Norvins a half hour ago to make sure
you weren't followed."
"I wasn't."
"Yes, you'd know that, wouldn't you?"
"I'd know. What kept you?"
"A young man I've cultivated who works in the catacombs of the Quai d'Ors
ly'
"You're honest.
"And you misinterpret." Gravet moved to the wall, turning his bead back and
forth, looking at both entrances of the alley; he was satisfied. "Since you
called after your business at the Couronne Nouvelle-a call, incidentally,
I wasn't sure you~d ever make-I've been in touch with every conceivable
contact who might know something about a lone woman in Paris looking for
sanctuary, or papers, or secret transportation, and no one could help. It
was really quite illogical; after all, there are only so many sources of
illegal machinations, and precious few I'm not aware of. I even checked the
Italian districts, thinking her escorts from Col des Moulinets might have
provided her with a name or two. Nothing. . . . Then it occurred to me.
Illegal efforts? Perhaps I was searching in the wrong areas. Perhaps,
instead, such a woman might seek more legitimate assistance, without
necessarily detailing her illegitimate reasons. After all, she was an
experienced field operative. She bad to know-or know of-certain personnel
in allied governments if only through you."
"The Quai d~Orsay."
"Naturellenient. But the undersides, the catacombs, where distinctly
unpublicized conveniences had to exist for you."
"If they did, Im not aware of them. I crossed paths with a number of people
in the ministries but I never heard of the catacombs."
"London's Foreign Office calls them Clearing Centres. Your own State
Department refers to them less subtly. Division of Diplomatic Transfers."
"Immunity," said Havelock. "Did you find something?"
"My young friend spent the last several hours tracing it down. I told him
the timing was advantageously narrow. If anything happened, it could only
have happened today. So he returned to his little cave after the dinner
hour on some pretext or other and riffled through the days security
dupli-
THE PARsiFAL MosAic251
cates. He thinks he may have found it, but he caet be certain and neither
can 1. However, you might be able to make the connection.*
"What is it?"
"At ten-forty-five this morning there was a memorandum from the Minist6re
des Affaires Etrang6res ordering up an open identity. Subject: white
female, early thirties, languages: Slavic, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, cover
name and statistics requested immediately. Now, I realize there are
dozens--"
'"What section at the ministry?" interrupted Havelock.
"Four. Section Four."
"R6gine Broussac," said Havelock. "Madame R6gine Broussac. First Assistant
Deputy, Section Four."
"That's the connection. It's the name and signature on the request."
"Shes twenty-ninth on my list, twenty-ninth out of thirtyone. We saw her-I
saw her-for less than a minute on the street almost a year ago. I barely
introduced Jenna. It doeset make sense; she hardly knows her, doe8n~t know
her."
"Were the circumstances of your seeing her a year ago notable?"
"I suppose so. One of their people was a double agent at the French embassy
in Bonn; he made periodic flights to the East by way of Luckenwalde. We
found him on the wrong side of Berlin. At a meeting of the Geheimdienst."
'Me Moscow puppees offspring of the S.S. I'd say quite notable." Gravet
paused, unfolding his hands. "This Broussac. Shes an older woman, isn't
she? Years ago a heroine of the R6sistance?"
"She and her husband, yes. He was taken by the Gestapo; what they found of
him wasn7t pleasant~"
"But she carried on."
"Yes."
"Did you, perhaps, tell any of this to your friendr
Havelock thought back as he drew on the cigarette, then dropped it,
crushing it underfoot. "Probably. B.6gines not always easy to take; she can
be abrupt, caustic, some call her a bitch, but sVs not. She had to be
tough."
"Then let me ask you another question, the answer to which rm vaguely
familiar with, but it's based merely on rumor; nothing rve read that
pretended to be official." The
252 RoBERT LuDLum
critic folded his hands again. "What prompted your friend to do what she
did, to live the sort of life she led with you, and obviously before you?"
"1968," replied Havelock flatly.
"The Warsaw-bloc invasion?"
"The ct;rh# den of August. The black days. Her parents had died, and she
was living in Ostrava with her two older brothers, one married. Both were
Dub6ek activists, the younger a student, the older an engineer who was
forbidden any meaningful work by the Novotn~ regime. When the tanks rolled
in, the younger brother was killed in the streets, the older one rounded up
by advance Soviet troops for 'interrogation.' He was crippled for life-arms
and legs-totally helpless. He blew his brains out and his wife disappeared.
Jenna traveled to Prague, where no one knew her, and went underground. She
knew whom to reach, what she wanted to do."
Gravet nodded; his face looked drawn even in the dim light. "The people who
do what you do, quietly, so efficiently, you all have different stories,
yet common themes run through them. Violence, pain . . . loss. And genuine
revenge.
"What did you expect? Only ideologues can afford to shout; we've generally
got other things on our minds. It's why we're sent in first. It doesn't
take much to make us efficient."
"Or to recognize one another, I imagine."
"Under certain circumstances, yes. We don't make too much of it. What's
your point?"
"Me Broussac woman. Your friend from the Costa Brava would remember her. A
husband, brothers, pain, loss ... a woman alone. Such a woman would
remember another woman who carried on."
"She obviously did, I just wouldn't have thought so." Havelock nodded
silently. "You're right," he said quietly. "nanks for giving it
perspective. Of course she wouU"
"Be careful, Michael."
"Of what?"
"Genuine revenge. There has to be a sympathie between them. She could turn
you over to your own, trap you."
"I'll be careful; so will she. What else can you tell me about the
&nb
sp; memorandiun? Was a destination mentionedr
DIE PARSrFAL MOSAIC253
"No, she could be going anywhere. That will be set at Affaires Etrang6res
and kept quiet."
"What about her cover? A name?"
"That was processed and beyond my young fiiend's eyes,
at least this evening. Perhaps tomorrow he can pry into ffies
that are locked tonight." I
"Too late. You said the memorandum asked for an immediate response. That
passpores been mocked up and issued. She's on her way out of France. I have
to move quickly."
"What's one day? Twelve hours from now perhaps we can find a name. You call
the airlines on an emergency basis and they check their manifests. Youll
know where sVs gone."
"But not how."
"Je ne comprends pas."
"Broussac. If she's done this much for Jenna, shell do more. She wouldn't
leave her on her own at an airport somewhere. Arrangements were made. I
have to know what they are."
"And you think shell tell you?"
"She has to." Havelock buttoned his loose-f1tting jacket and pulled the
lapels up around his neck. The alley was a tunnel for the damp breezes from
below, and there was a chill. "One way or the other, she has to tell me.
Thanks, Gravet, I owe you."
'Yes, you do."
"III see Broussac tonight and leave in the morning . . . one way or the
other. But before I go, there's a bank here in Paris where Ive got a safety
deposit box; III clean it out and leave an envelope for you at the vault
cage. Call it part payment. Ies the Banque Germaine on the Avenue George
Cinq.-
"You~re most considerate, but is it wise? In all modesty, rm something of
a public f1gure and must be careful in my associations. Someone there might
know you."
"Not by any name you've ever beard of."
"Then what name shall I use?"
"None. just say the 'gentleman from Texas; he's left an envelope for you.
If it makes you feel any better, say you've never met me. I'm negotiating
a painting for an anonymous buyer in Houston."
"And if there are complications?"
254 RoBEiRT LuDLum
"There won't be. You know where rm going tonight, and, by extension,
tomorrow."
"At the last, we're professionals, aren't we, Michael?"
"I wouldn~t have it any other way. It's cleaner." Havelock extended his
Robert Ludlum - The Parcifal Mosaic.txt Page 32
