The Parsifal Mosaic

by Robert Ludlum

  “He wanted it included,” explained Stern, “so there’d be no misunderstanding on our part. If Havelock opted for immediate withdrawal, we were to permit it.”

  “I know,” continued Dawson, “but I assumed when Matthias made a reference to how much Havelock had suffered in … ‘the early days,’ I think he wrote, he meant simply losing both parents in the war. Nothing like this.”

  “Now you know. We know.” Stern again turned to the psychiatrist. “Any guidance, Paul?”

  “The obvious,” said Miller. “Bring him in. Promise him anything, but bring him in. And we can’t afford any accidents. Get him here alive.”

  “I agree that’s the optimum,” interrupted the red-haired Ogilvie, “but I can’t see it ruling out every option.”

  “You’d better,” said the doctor. “You even said it yourself. Paranoid. Whacko. Costa Brava was intensely personal to Havelock. It could very well have set off those explosives planted thirty years ago. A part of him is back there protecting himself, building a web of defenses against persecution, against attack. He’s running through the woods after having witnessed the executions of Lidice; he’s with the Children’s Brigade, nitroglycerin strapped to his body.”

  “It’s what Baylor mentions in his cable.” Dawson picked it up. “Here it is, ‘Sealed depositions,’ ‘tales out of school.’ He could do it all.”

  “He could do anything,” continued the psychiatrist. “There are no behavioral rules. Once he’s hallucinated, he can slip back and forth between fantasy and reality, each phase serving the dual objectives of convincing himself of the persecution and at the same time ridding himself of it.”

  “What about Rostov in Athens?” asked Stern.

  “We don’t know that there was any Rostov in Athens,” Miller said. “It could be part of the fantasy, retroactively recalling a man in the street who looked like him. We do know the Karas woman was KGB. Why would a man like Rostov suddenly appear and deny it?”

  Ogilvie leaned forward. “Baylor says Havelock called it a blind probe. Rostov could have taken him, gotten him out of Greece.”

  “Then why didn’t he?” asked Miller. “Come on, Red, you were in the field for ten years. Blind probe or no blind probe, if you were Rostov and knowing what you knew was back at the Lubyanka, wouldn’t you have taken Havelock under the circumstances described in that cable?”

  Ogilvie paused, staring at the psychiatrist. “Yes,” he said finally. “Because I could always let him go—if I wanted to—before anyone knew I’d taken him.”

  “Exactly. It’s inconsistent. Was it Rostov in Athens, or anywhere else? Or was our patient fantasizing, building his own case for persecution and subsequent defenses?”

  “From what this Colonel Baylor says, he was damned convincing,” interjected the lawyer, Dawson.

  “A hallucinating schizophrenic—if that’s what he is—can be extraordinarily convincing because he believes totally what he’s saying.”

  “But you can’t be sure, Paul,” insisted Daniel Stern.

  “No, I can’t be. But we’re sure of one thing—two things, actually. The Karas woman was KGB and she was killed on that beach on the Costa Brava. The evidence was irrefutable for the first, and we have two on-site confirmations for the second, including one from Havelock himself.” The psychiatrist looked at the faces of the three men. “That’s all I can base a diagnosis on; that and this new information on one Mikhail Havlíček. I’m in no position to do anything else. You asked for guidance, not absolutes.”

  “ ‘Promise him anything …’ ” repeated Ogilvie. “Like that goddamned commercial.”

  “But bring him in,” completed Miller. “And just as fast as you can. Get him into a clinic, under therapy, but find out what he’s done and where he’s left those defense mechanisms of his. The ‘sealed depositions’ and ‘tales out of school.’ ”

  “I don’t have to remind anyone here,” interrupted Dawson quietly. “Havelock knows a great deal that could be extremely damaging if revealed. The damage would be as extensive to our own credibility—here and abroad—as from anything the Soviets might learn. Frankly, more so. Ciphers, informers, sources—all these can be changed, the networks warned. We can’t go back and rewrite certain incidents where intelligence treaties were violated, the laws of a host country broken by our people.”

  “To say nothing of the domestic restrictions placed on us over here,” added Stern. “I know you included that, I just want to emphasize it. Havelock knows about them; he’s negotiated a number of exchanges as a result of them.”

  “Whatever we’ve done was justified,” said Ogilvie curtly. “If anyone wants proof, there’s a couple of hundred files that show what we’ve accomplished.”

  “And a few thousand that don’t,” objected the attorney. “Besides, there’s also the Constitution. I’m speaking adversarily, of course.”

  “Horseshit!” Ogilvie shot back. “By the time we get court orders and warrants, some poor son of a bitch over here has a wife or a father shipped to one of those gulags over there, when someone like Havelock could have made a deal. If we could have placed a tap on time, assigned surveillance, and found out what was going on.”

  “It’s a gray area, Red,” explained Dawson, not unsympathetically. “When is homicide justified, really justified? On balance, there are those who would say our accomplishments don’t justify our failures.”

  “One man crossing a checkpoint to our side justifies them.” Ogilvie’s eyes were cold. “One family taken out of a camp in Magya-Orszag or Krakow or Dannenwalde or Liberec justifies them. Because that’s where they are, Counselor, and they shouldn’t be there. Who the hell gets hurt, really hurt? A few screaming freaks with political hatchets and outsized egos. They’re not worth it.”

  “The law says they are. The Constitution says they are.”

  “Then fuck the law, and let’s put a couple of holes in the Constitution. I’m sick to death of its being used by loudmouthed, bushy-haired smartasses who mount any cause they can think of just to tie our hands and draw attention to themselves. I’ve seen those rehabilitation camps, Mr. Lawyer. I’ve been there.”

  “Which is why you’re valuable here,” interposed Stern quickly, putting out the fire. “Each of us has a value, even when he renders judgments he’d rather not. I think the point Dawson’s making is that this is no time for a Senate inquiry, or the hanging judges of a congressional oversight committee. They could tie our hands far more effectively than any mob from the aging radical-chic or the wheat-germ-and-granola crowd.”

  “Or,” said Dawson, glancing at Ogilvie, his look conveying a mutuality of understanding, “representatives of a half a dozen governments showing up at our embassies and telling us to shut down certain operations. You’ve been there, too, Red. I don’t think you want that.”

  “Our patient can make it happen,” interjected Miller. “And very probably will unless we reach him in time. The longer his hallucinations are allowed to continue without medical attention, the farther he’ll slip into fantasy, the rate of acceleration growing faster. The persecutions will multiply until they become unbearable to him and he thinks he has to strike out—strike back. With his own attacks. They’re his defense mechanisms.”

  “What form might they take, Paul?” asked the director of Cons Op.

  “Any of several,” replied the psychiatrist. “The extreme would be his making contact with men he’s known—or known of—in foreign intelligence circles, and offering to deliver classified information. That could be the root fantasy of the Rostov ‘encounter.’ Or he could write letters—with copies to us—or send cables—easily intercepted by us—that hint at past activities we can’t afford to have scrutinized. Whatever he does, hell be extremely cautious, secretive, the reality of his own expertise protecting his manipulative fantasies. You said it, Daniel; he could be dangerous. He is dangerous.”

  “‘Offering to deliver,’ ” said the attorney, repeating Miller’s phrase. “Hinting … not deli
vering, not giving outright?”

  “Not at first. He’ll try to force us—blackmail us—into telling him what he wants to hear. That the Karas woman is alive, that there was a conspiracy to retire him.”

  “Neither of which we can do convincingly because there’s not a damn thing we can offer him as proof,” said Ogilvie. “Nothing hell accept. He’s a field man. Whatever we send him he’ll filter, chew it around for accuracy, and spit it back in the horseshit pile. So what do we tell him?”

  “Don’t tell him anything,” answered Miller. “You promise to tell him. Put it any way you like. The information’s too classified to send by courier, too dangerous to be permitted outside these rooms. Play his game, suck him in. Remember, he desperately wants—needs, if you like—his primary hallucination confirmed. He saw a dead woman; he has to believe that. And the confirmation’s over here; it could be irresistible to him.”

  “Sorry, Headman.” The red-haired former field agent raised his hands, palms up. “He won’t buy it, not that way. His—what did you call it? his ‘reality’ part?—would reject it. That’s buying a code in a box of Cracker Jacks. It just doesn’t happen. He’ll want something stronger, much stronger.”

  “Matthias?” asked Dawson quietly.

  “Optimum,” agreed the psychiatrist.

  “Not yet,” said Stern. “Not until we have no other choice. The quiet word is that he’s aware of his failing condition; he’s conserving his strength for SALT Three. We can’t lay this on him now.”

  “We may have to,” insisted Dawson.

  “We may then again we may not.” The director turned to Ogilvie. “Why does Havelock have to buy anything concrete, Red?”

  “So we can get close enough to grab him.”

  “Couldn’t a sequence be designed—say, one piece of information leading to another, each more vital than the last-so as to draw him in, suck him in, as Paul says? He can’t get the last unless he shows up?”

  “A treasure hunt?” asked Ogilvie, laughing.

  “That’s what he’s on,” said Miller quietly.

  “The answer’s no.” The red-haired man leaned forward, his elbows on the table. “A sequence operation depends on credibility; the better the field man, the firmer the credibility. It’s also a very delicate exercise. The subject, if he’s someone like Havelock, will use decoys, blind intermediaries. He’ll reverse the process by programming his decoys with information of their own, give his intermediaries questions they want answered on the spot; he’ll suck you in. He won’t expect perfect answers; he’d be suspicious as hell if he got them, but he’ll want what we used to call a ‘stomach consensus.’ It’s not something you can write down on paper and analyze; it’s a gut feeling for believability. There aren’t that many good men who could fool Havelock in sequence. One substantial misstep and he closes the book and walks away.”

  “And sets off the explosions,” said Miller.

  “I see,” said Stern.

  And it was clear that the men around that table did see. It was one of those moments when the unkempt, irascible Ogilvie confirmed his value, as he did so frequently. He had been out in that labyrinth called the “field,” and his summations had a peculiar eloquence and sagacity.

  “There is a way, however,” continued the former agent. “I’m not sure there’s any other.”

  “What is it?” asked the director of Cons Op.

  “Me.”

  “Out of the question.”

  “Think about it,” said Ogilvie quickly. “I’m the credibility. Havelock knows me—more important, he knows I sit at this table. To him I’m one of them, a half-assed strategist who may not know what he’s asking for, but sure as hell knows why. And with me there’s a difference; a few of them out there might even count on it. I’ve been where they’ve been. None of the rest of you have. Outside of Matthias, if there’s anyone he’ll listen to, anyone he’ll meet with, it’s me.”

  “I’m sorry, Red. Even if I agreed with you, and I think I do, I can’t permit it. You know the rules. Once you step inside this room, you never go out in the field again.”

  “That rule was made in this room. It’s not Holy Writ.”

  “It was made for a very good reason,” said the attorney. “The same reason our houses are watched around the clock, our cars followed, our regular telephones tapped with our consent. If any of us was taken by interested parties, from Moscow to Peking to the Persian Gulf, the consequences would be beyond recall.”

  “No disrespect, Counselor, but those safeguards were designed for people like you and the Headman here. Even Daniel. I’m a little different. They wouldn’t try to take me because they know they’d wind up with nothing.”

  “No one doubts your capabilities,” countered Dawson. “But I submit—”

  “It hasn’t anything to do with capabilities,” interrupted Ogilvie, raising his hand to the lapel of his worn tweed jacket; he turned up the flap toward the lawyer next to him. “Look closely, Counselor. There’s a slight bulge an inch from the tip here.”

  Dawson’s eyes dropped to the fabric, his expression noncommittal. “Cyanide?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Sometimes, Red, I find you hard to believe.”

  “Don’t mistake me,” said Ogilvie simply. “I don’t ever want to use this—or the others I’ve got conveniently placed. I’m no macho freak trying to shock you. I don’t hold my arm over a fire to show how brave I am any more than I want to kill someone or have him try to kill me. I’ve got these pills because I’m a coward, Mr. Lawyer. You say we’re being watched, guarded twenty-four hours a day. That’s terrific, but I think you’re overreacting to something that doesn’t exist I don’t think there is a file on you in Dzerzhinsky Square; at least not on you or the doctor here. I’m sure there’s one on Stern, but grabbing him is like codes in Cracker Jacks, or us going in and grabbing someone like Rostov. It doesn’t hapnen. But there’s a file on me—you can bet your legal ass on that—and I’m not retired. What I know is still very operative, more so ever since I stepped inside this room. That’s why I’ve got these little bastards. I know how I’d go in and how I’d come out, and they know I know. Strangely enough, these pills are my protection. They know I’ve got them and they know I’d use them. Because I’m a coward.”

  “And you’ve just spelled out the reasons why you can’t go into the field,” said the director of Consular Operations.

  “Have I? Then either you didn’t listen or you should be fired for incompetence. For not taking into account what I didn’t spell out. What do you want, Teacher? A note from my doctor? Excusing me from all activity?”

  The strategists glanced briefly at each other, looking uncomfortable. “Come on, Red, cut it out,” said Stern. “That’s not called for.”

  “Yes, it is, Dan. It’s the sort of thing you consider when making a decision. We all know about it; we just don’t talk about it, and I suppose that’s another kind of consideration. How long have I got? Three months, maybe four? It’s why I’m here, and that was an intelligent decision.”

  “It was hardly the sole reason,” offered Dawson softly.

  “If it didn’t weigh heavily in my favor, it should have, Counselor. You should always pick someone from the field whose longevity—or lack of it—can be counted on.” Ogilvie turned to the balding Miller. “Our doctor knows, don’t you, Paul?”

  “I’m not your doctor, Red,” said the psychiatrist quietly.

  “You don’t have to be; you’ve read the reports. In five weeks or so the pain will start getting worse … then worse after that. I won’t feel it, of course, because by then I’ll be moved to a hospital room where injections will keep it under control, and all those phony cheerful voices will tell me I’m actually getting better. Until I can’t focus, or hear them, and then they don’t have to say anything.” The former field man leaned back in his chair, looking now at Stern. “We’ve got here what our learned attorney might call a confluence of beneficial prerogatives. Chances ar
e that the Soviets won’t touch me, but if they tried, nothing’s lost for me, you can be goddamned sure of that. And I’m the only one around who can pull Havelock out in the open, far enough so we can take him.”

  Stern’s gaze was steady on the red-haired man who was dying. “You’re persuasive,” he said.

  “I’m not only persuasive, I’m right.” Suddenly Ogilvie pushed his chair back and stood up. “I’m so right I’m going home to pack and grab a cab to Andrews. Get me on a military transport to Italy; there’s no point in advertising the trip on a commercial flight. Those KGB turkeys know every passport, every cover I’ve ever used, and there’s no time to be inventive. Route me through Brussels into the base at Palombara. Then cable Baylor to expect me.… Call me Apache.”

  “Apache?” asked Dawson.

  “Damn good trackers.”

  “Assuming Havelock will meet with you,” said the psychiatrist, “what’ll you say to him?”

  “Not a hell of a lot. Once he’s an arm’s length away he’s mine.”

  “He’s experienced, Red,” said Stern, studying Ogilvie’s face. “He may not be all there, but he’s tough.”

  “I’ll have equipment,” replied the dying man, heading for the door. “And I’m experienced, too, which is why I’m a coward. I don’t go near anything I can’t walk away from. Mostly.” Ogilvie opened the door and left without another word. The exit was clean, swift, the sound of the closing door final.

  “We won’t see him again,” said Miller.

  “I know,” said Stern. “So does he.”

  “Do you think he’ll reach Havelock?” asked Dawson.

  “I’m sure of it,” replied the director of Cons Op. “He’ll take him, turn him over to Baylor and a couple of resident physicians we’ve got in Rome, then he’ll disappear. He told us. He’s not going into that hospital room and all those lying voices. He’ll go his own way.”

  “He’s entitled to that,” said the psychiatrist.

  “I suppose so,” agreed the lawyer without conviction, turning to Stern. “As Red might say, ‘No disrespect,’ but I wish to God we could be certain about Havelock. He’s got to be immobilized. We could be hauled in by authorities all over Europe, fuel for the fanatics of every persuasion. Embassies could be burned to the ground, networks scattered, time lost, hostages taken, and-don’t fool yourself—a great many people killed. All because one man fell off balance. We’ve seen it happen with far less provocation than Havelock could provide.”