Paris, after Col des Moulinets. A VKR officer from Barcelona who came after
me. I was placed 'beyond sa1v4ge7 in Rome, not Paris."
'.rhat was Ambiguity!s decision," said Berquist. "Not mine."
"But for the same reason. Your words-sir.'
"Yes." The President leaned forward. "It was the Costa Brava. That night on
the Costa Brava."
The frustration and the anger returned; it was all Michael could do to
control himself. "The Costa Brava was a shaml A fraudl I was used, and for
that you pinned the label on mel You knew about it. You said you were a
part of id"
"You saw a woman killed on that beach~"
Havelock got up swiftly and gripped the back of the chair. "Is this another
attempt to be funny-Mr. President?"
"I don't remotely feel like being amusing. No one was to be killed that
night on the Costa Brava."
"No one ... Christl You did itl You and Bradford and those bastards in
Langley I spoke with from Madridl Doet tell me about Costa Brava, I was
therel And you were responsible, all of youl*
~We initiated it, we set it in motion, but we di(Wt finish it. And that,
Mr. Havelock, is the truth."
Michael wanted to rush to the screen and smash his hands against the
terrible images. Instead, the words, jennds words, came back to him. Not
one operation, but two. Then his own. Intercepted. Altered.
'Wait a minute," he said.
"Find another expression."
"No, please. You started it, and without your knowing it the scenario was
read, then taken over, the threads altered, going into another weave
456 ROBERT LUDLUM
n7bose phrases aren't in my lexicon.-
~Meyre very clear. You're making a rag and the birds in the pattern are
swans; suddenly they tam into condors.-
"I stand corrected. That's what happened."
"Shitt Excuse me."
"rm from Minnesota. rve shoveled more than yoxfve ever seen, most of it in
Washington." Berquist leaned back in his chair. "Do you understand now?"
"I thU so. It's the flaw that could trap him. Parsifal was at Costa Brava.'
"Or his Soviet connection," amended the President. "When you saw the Karas
woman three months later, you began probing that night. If you exposed it,
you might have alarmed Parsifal. We don't know that you would have, but as
long as the possibility existed, we couldn't risk the consequences.
"Why didn7t anyone tell me? Why didiet anyone reach me and spell it out?"
"You wouldet come in. The strategists at Consular Operations went to
extreme lengths to bring you in. You eluded them"
"Not because of"-Havelock gestured helplessly, angrily at the
screen-"these. You could have told me, not tried to kill mel"
'Ilere was no time, nor could we send couriers with any part of this
information or with the slightest intimations as to Matthias's mental
condition. We didnI know what yoed do at any given moment, what you might
say about that night, or whom you might say it to. In our judgment-in my
judgment-if the man we call Parsifal was at Costa Brava, or was part of the
altered strategy, and he thought he was being identified with that night,
he could well have been provoked into doing the unthinkable. We could not
permit even the possibility of that."
"So many questions . . ." Michael blinked in the harsh glare of light. "So
much I can't fit together."
"You may when and if the decision is made on both our parts to bring you 0
the way in."
ne Apache," said Havelock, avoiding Berquises comment, "the Palatine . .
. Red Ogilvie. Was it an accident? Was that shot meant for me, or was it
really meant for him
THE PARSIFAL MOSAW 457
because he knew about something back here. He mentioned a man who died of a
heart attack on the Chesapeake."
"Ogilvie's death was exactly what it appeared to be. A mistake. The bullet
was meant for you. The others, however, were not accidents."
"What others?"
"The remaining three strategists at Consular Operations were murdered in
Washington."
Havelock stood motionless, absorbing the information in silence.
. Because of me?" he asked finally.
"Indirectly. But then, you7re at the core of everything because of the
single, imponderable question: Why did Matthias do what he did to you?"
"Tell me about the strategists, please."
'Iley knew who Parsifars Soviet connection was," said the President. "Or
they would have known the next night if you had been killed at Col des
Moulinets:'
"Code name Ambiguity. He's hereF'
"Yes. Stem gave him the clearance code. We know where he is, not who he
is~"
"Where?"
You may or may not be given that information."
'For Gods sakel With all due respect, Mr. President, hasn1 it occurred to
you even now to use me? Not kill me, but use mel"
"Why should I? Could you help me? Help us?"
Vve spent sixteen years in the field, hunting and being hunted. I speak
five languages fluently, three marginally, and more dialects than I can
count. I know one side of Anthony Matthias better than anyone else alive;
I know his feelings. More to the immediate point, I've uncovered as many
double entries-agents-as any other man in Europe. Yes, I think I can help."
"Then you must give me your answer. Do you intend to carry out your threat?
These thirteen pages that could-2'
Bum them,- interrupted Havelock; he was watching the President's eyes,
believing him.
"They're carbons," said Berquist.
"rll reach her. Shids a couple of miles away in Savannah:'
"Very well. Code name Ambiguity is on the fifth floor of
458 RoBLrRT LuDLum
the State Department. One of sixty-five, maybe seventy men and women. The
word, I believe, is 'mole."' ,
"YoiiNe narrowed it down that far?" asked Michael, sittmg down.
"Emory Bradford did. He's a better man than you think. He never wanted to
harm the Karas woman."
"Then he was incompetent."
"He'd be the first to agree with that. Still, if she'd followed his
instructions, sVd eventually have been told the truth-, the two of you
would have been bmught in."
"Instead, I was putbeyond salvage.'"
'Tell me something, Mr. Havelock" said the President, once again leaning
forward in the chair. "If you were I, knowing what you know now, what would
you have done?"
Michael looked at the screen, the astonishing words burning into his mind.
-The same thing you did. I was expendable."
'01hank Yom" The President rose. "Incidentally, no one here on Poole!s
Island knows anything about these. Neither the doctors, nor the
technicians, nor the military. Only five other men are aware of them. Or of
Parsifal. One of them is a psychiatrist from Bethesda, a specialist in
hallucinatory disorders, who ffies down once a week to work with Matthias
only in this room."
"I understand."
"Now, lees get out of here while we!re still, sane," said Berquist as he
walked to the projector; he snapped it off, then turned on the overhead
lights. "Arrange
ments will be made to fly the two of you to Andrews Air
Force Base this afternoon. Well find you a place somewhere in the -country,
not in Washington. We can1 risk your being seen."
"If Im going to be effective, I'll. have to have access to records, logs,
files. They can't be moved to the country, Mr. President."
"If they can7t be, well bring you in under very controlled chvmnstances. .
. . ThereT be two more chain placed at the table. You'll be given clearance
for everything under another name. And Bradford will brief you as soon as
possible."
Before I leave here, I want to talk to the doctors. I'd also like to see
Anton, but I understand; iell be brief, only a few minutes."
"rm not sure theyll permit ie
THE PARsxFAL MosAic459
'Men oven-ale them. I want to talk to him in Czech, his own language. rve
got to dig around something he said to me. He said, 'You doiA understand.
You can never understand.' les deep inside of him, something between
himself and me. Maybe rm the only one who can get it out. It could be
everything, why he did what he did, not only to me but to himself.
Somewhere in my head there~s a bomb, rve fmown it from the beginning.-
I "The doctors are overruled. But I remind you, you spent twelve days at a
clinic, a total of eighty-five hours in chemical therapy, and you couldrA
help us."
"You didnI know where to look. God help me, neither do V
The three doctors were not able to tell him anything he could not have
guessed from Berquist's descriptions, and in fact, the psychiatric
terminology tended to obscure the picture for him. The Presidenes
characterization of a delicate, remarkable instrument exploding under the
inhuman pressures of responsibilities was far more graphic than the dry
explanation of the limits of stress tolerance. Then one of the analysts
interrupted-the youngest, as it happened: "There is no reality for him in
the accepted sense of the word. He filters his impressions, permitting only
those that support what he wants to see and hear. These are his reality-more
real to him, perhaps, than anything was before-because they're his fantasies
and they've got to protect him now. He has nothing else, only fragmented
memories."
Not only was President Charles Berquist adept at description, thought
Michael, but he also listened.
"The deterioration can't be reversed?' asked Havelock.
"No," said another psychiatrist. "The cellular structure has degenerated.
It's irreversible."
"He's too old," said the younger man.
"I want to see him. rU be brief."
'We've registered our objections," said the third doctor, 'but the
President feels differently. Please understand, we're working here under
virtually impossible conditions, with a patient who's failing-how rapidly
Ws difficult to tell. He has to be both artificially repressed and
stimulated in order for us to achieve any results at all. It's extremely
delicate, and a
460 RoBF:aT LuDLum
prolonged trauma could set us back days. We haven7t the time, Mr. Havelock."
"I'll be quick. Ten minutes."
"Make it five. Please."
All right. Five minutes."
"I'll take you over," said the younger psychiatrist. -He!s where you saw
him last night. In his garden."
Outside on the street, the white-jacketed doctor directed Michael to an
army jeep behind the red-brick building. "You were getting pissed off in
there," he said. "You shouldn't have. Theyre two of the best men in the
country and nobody was exaggerating. Sometimes this place seems like Fu-
tilityville."
"Futility what?"
'Ile results don7t come fast enough. Well never catch UP. .
"With what?"
"With what he's done."
"I see. You can~t be too much of a slouch yourself," said Havelock, as they
drove down the tree-lined street toward the dirt road that approached
Matthias's mocked-up house.
"rve written a couple of papers, and rm good with stats, but rm happy to be
a go-fer for these guys."
"Where'd they find you?"
"I worked with Dr. Schramm at Menninger~s-hes the one who insisted on the
five minutes, and the finest neuropsychiatrist in the business. I operated
machines for hiin-brain scanners, electrospectographs, that sort of thing.
I still do."
"There's a lot of machinery around here, isnI there?"
"No expense spared."
"I can!t get over it," exclaimed Michael, glancing around at the receding
scenery, at the macabre facades and the alabaster models, the miniature
streets and streetlamps and odd-shaped blowups placed on manicured lawns.
"Ies incredible. It's something out of a movie-a weird movie. Who the hell
built it, and how were they convinced not to say anything? The rumors must
be flying all over south Georgia."
"Not because of them-the people who built it, I mean."
"How could you stop them?"
"They're nowhere near here. Theyre hundreds of miles away working on a
half-down other projects."
"Whatr
THE PATWFAL MOSAIC461
'You just said it," explained the young doctor, grinning. "A movie. This
whole complex was built by a Canadian film company that thinks it was hired
by a cost-conscious producer on the West Coast. They started the scenic
construotion twenty-four hours after the Corps of Engineers threw up the
stockade and converted the existing buildings for our use.
K 'What about the helicopters that fly in from Savannah?"
. "They're routed on a path and into a threshold beyond the stockade; they
caet see anything. And anyway, except for the President and one or two
others, they're all from Quartermaster, bringing in supplies. They've been
told ifs an oceanic research center and have no reason to think otherwise."
'Vbat about the personnel?"
"We doctors, the technicians who can handle just about everything, a few
aides, the guards, and a platoon of enlisted men and five officers. The
last is all army, even the ones who man the patrol boat."
"What have they been told?"
"As little as possible. Outside of us, the technicians and the aides know
more than anyone else, but they were screened as if they were being sent to
Moscow. Also the guards, but I guess you know that. I gather yoere
acquainted.-
'With one, anyway." The jeep entered the rutted dirt road, the island dust
billowing behind them. . I caet figure the army. How do they keep it
quiet?'
"To begin with, they doet go anywhere. None of us do, that's the official
word. And even if they did, they wouldnI worry about the officers. They're
all from the Pentagon Rolodex and each one sees himself as a future
chairman of the joint Chiefs. They woul(Wt say anything; ies their
guarantee of quick rank."
"And the enlisted men? They've got to be a boiling pot."
"That's stereotypical thinking, iset it? Young guys like that took a lot of
beaches once, fought in a lot of jungles."
"I only meant theres got to be gossip, wild tales all over the place. How
are they contained?"
/>
"For starters, they don't see that much, not of anything that counts.
They're told Pooles Island is a simulated exercise in survival, everything
top secret~ ten years in a stockade
462 RoBzRT LuDLum
if the secrecy's broken. They're also screened, all regular army; they've
got a home here. Why louse it up?"
"It still sounds loose.*
"Well, there's always the bottom line. I mean, before too long it's not
going to make a hell of a lot of difference, is it?"
Havelock whipped his head around and stared at the psychiatrist.
Incidentally, no one here on Fooles Island knotm anything about these.
Neither the doctors, the techniciant ... Berquist's words. Had that vault,
that very odd room, been entered? "What do you mean?*
"One of these days Matthias will quietly slip away. When he's gone, the
rumors won1 make any difference. All great men and women have postmortem
stories told about them; Xs part of the ballgame."
It there is a ballgame, Doctor.
"DoW odpoledne, pfiteli," said Michael softly, as he walked out of the house
into the sun-drenched garden. Matthias was sitting in the same chair at the
end of the winding slate path where he had been seated the night before,
protected from the sun by the shade of a traveler's palm that fanned out in
front of the wall. Havelock continued speaking, quickly and gently, in
Czech. "I know yoifre upset with me, my dear friend, and I wish only to put
to rest the difficulty between us. After all, you are my beloved teacher,
the only father I have left, and it isn!t right for fathers and sons to be
estranged."
At first Matthias recoiled in the chair, pulling himself farther into the
shadows of the palm, the intermittent streaks of light crossing his
frightened, contorted face. But a mist began to cover the wide eyes behind
the tortoiseshell glasses, a film of uncertainty; perhaps he was
remembering words from long ago-a father's words in Prague, or a chfld7s
plea. It did not matter. The language, the soft, deliberate cadence-they
were having their effect. It was crucial now to touch. The touch was vital,
a symbol of so much that was of another language, of another country-of
remembered trust. Michael approached, the words flowing softly, the cadence
rhythmic, evoking another time, another land.
Robert Ludlum - The Parcifal Mosaic.txt Page 58
