The Parsifal Mosaic

by Robert Ludlum

  “Substantially, yes.”

  “How about just plain yes,” said the President.

  “Yes,” said the man from State. “I suppose I could be prosecuted for what I did this afternoon, but I considered it essential. I had to get away from the phones and the interruptions; I had to reread some of this material and provoke whatever imagination I have. I went to the classified files of Cons Op, removed Havelock’s summary of Costa Brava under ‘Chemical Therapy’ and took it home. I’ve been studying it since three o’clock—and remembering MacKenzie’s verbal report after he came back from Barcelona. There are discrepancies.”

  “In what way?” asked Brooks.

  “In what MacKenzie planned and in what Havelock saw.”

  “He saw what we wanted him to see,” said the President “You made a point of it a few minutes ago.”

  “He may have seen more than we think, more than MacKenzie engineered.”

  “MacKenzie was there” protested Halyard. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “He was approximately seventy yards away from Havelock, with only a peripheral view of the beach. He was more concerned with watching Havelock’s reactions than with what was taking place below. He’d rehearsed it a number of times with the two men and the blond woman. According to those practice sessions, everything was to take place near the water, the shots fired into the surf, the woman falling into the wet sand, her body rolling with the waves, the boat close by, within reach. The distance, the darkness-everything was for effect.”

  “Visually convincing,” interrupted Brooks.

  “Very,” agreed Bradford. “But it wasn’t what Havelock described. What he saw was infinitely more convincing. Under chemicals at the clinic in Virginia he literally relived the entire experience, including the emotional trauma that was part of it. He described bullets erupting in the sand, the woman running up to the road, not down by the water, and two men carrying the body away. Two men.”

  “Two men were hired,” said Halyard, perplexed. “What’s the problem?”

  “One had to be in the boat; it was twenty feet offshore, the engine running. The second man was to have fired the shots and pulled the woman into the water, throwing her ‘dead body’ into the boat. The distance, the darkness, the beam of a flashlight-these were part of MacKenzie’s scene, what he’d rehearsed with the people he’d hired. But the flashlight was the only constant between what MacKenzie planned and what Havelock saw. He didn’t witness a performance; he saw a woman actually killed.”

  “Jesus.” The general sat back in his chair.

  “MacKenzie never mentioned any of this?” said Brooks.

  “I don’t think he saw it All he said to me was ‘My employees must have put on a hell of a show.’ He stayed where he was on that hill above the road for several hours watching Havelock. Me left when it began to get light; he couldn’t risk Havelock’s spotting him.”

  Addison Brooks brought his right hand to his chin. “So the man we’re looking for, the man who pulled the trigger at Costa Brava, who was given the Ambiguity code by Stern and put Havelock ‘beyond salvage,’ is a Soviet agent in the State Department.”

  “Yes,” said the undersecretary.

  “And he wants to find Parsifal as desperately as we do,” concluded the President.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Yet, if I follow you,” said Brooks quickly, “there’s an enormous inconsistency. He hasn’t passed on his astonishing information to his normal KGB controls. We’d know it if he had. Good God, we’d know it!”

  “Not only has he held it back, Mr. Ambassador, he’s purposely misled one of the ranking directors of the KGB.” Bradford picked up the top page of his notes and slid it respectfully to the silver-haired statesman on his right. “I’ve saved this for last. Not, incidentally, to startle you or shock you, but only because it didn’t make any sense unless we looked at everything else in relationship to it. Frankly, I’m still not sure I understand. It’s a cable from Pyotr Rostov in Moscow. He’s director of External Strategies, KGB.”

  “A cable from Soviet intelligence?” said Brooks, astonished, picking up the paper.

  “Contrary to what most people believe,” added the undersecretary, “strategists from opposing intelligence services often make contact with one another. They’re practical men in a deadly practical business. They can’t afford wrong signals.… According to Rostov, the KGB had nothing to do with the Costa Brava and he wanted us to know it. Incidentally, Colonel Baylor in his report said that Rostov trapped Havelock in Athens, and although he could have gotten him out of Greece and into Russia by way of the Dardanelles, he chose not to.”

  “When did you get this?” asked the statesman.

  “Twenty-four hours ago,” answered the President. “We’ve been studying it, trying to figure it out. Obviously, no response is called for.”

  “Read it, Addison,” said Halyard.

  “It was sent to D. S. Stern, Director of Consular Operations, United States Department of—” Brooks looked up at Bradford. “Stern was killed three days ago. Wouldn’t Rostov have known that?”

  “He wouldn’t have sent it if he had. He wouldn’t have permitted the slightest speculation that the KGB was involved in Stern’s death. He sent that cable because he didn’t know Stern was dead-or the others.”

  “Only Miiler’s death was released,” said Berquist. “We couldn’t keep it quiet; it was all over Bethesda. We put a blackout on Stern and Dawson, at least for the time being, Until we could learn what was happening. We moved their families to the Cheyenne security compound in Colorado Springs.”

  “Read it,” said the general.

  Brooks held the paper under the glare of the Tensor lamp. He spoke slowly, reading in a monotone. “The betrayal at Costa Brava was not ours. Nor was the bait taken in Athens. The infamous Consular Operations continues its provocative actions and the Soviet Union continues to protest its disregard for human life as well as the crimes and terrorist acts it inflicts upon the innocent—peoples and nations alike. And should this notorious branch of the American Department of State believe it has collaborators within the walls of Dzerzhinsky, be assured such traitors will be rooted out and face the punishments demanded. I repeat, Costa Brava was not ours.” ’ The statesman finished; the cable was over. He let his hand drop to the dais, the page still held between his thumb and forefinger. “Good Lord,” he whispered.

  “I understand the words,” said Halyard, “but not what he’s trying to tell us.”

  “ ‘Better a Satan you know than one you don’t,” ’ replied Brooks, “There are no walls in Dzerzhinsky Square.”

  “That’s it,” said Bradford, turning to the President. “That’s what we didn’t connect with. The walls are in the Kremlin.”

  “Outside and inside,” continued the former ambassador. “He’s telling you that he knows Costa Brava could not have taken place without a collaborator or collaborators in Moscow—”

  “We understood that,” interrupted Berquist. “What about the walls? The Kremlin? How do you read that?”

  “He’s warning us. He’s saying he doesn’t know who they are, and since he doesn’t, they’re not controllable.”

  “Because they’re outside the normal channels of communication?” asked the President.

  “Even abnormal channels,” said Brooks.

  “A power struggle.” Berquist turned to the undersecretary. “Has there been anything of a serious nature about this from any of our intelligence departments?”

  “Only the usual frictions. The old guard dying, the younger commissars anxious, ambitious.”

  “Where do the generals stand?” inquired the general.

  “Half wanting to blow up Omaha, half wanting SALT Three.”

  “And Parsifal could unite them,” said the statesman. “All their hands would be on the nuclear switches.”

  “But Rostov doesn’t know about Parsifal,” protested Bradford. “He has no conception—”

 
“He senses it,” the ambassador broke in. “He knows Costa Brava was a Department of State operation somehow in conjunction with elements in Moscow. He’s tried to trace them down and can’t; that alarms him immensely. There’s an imbalance, a shift from the norm at the highest levels.”

  “Why do you say that?” The President took the cable from Brooks, scrutinizing it as if trying to see what he had not seen before.

  “It’s not in there, sir,” said Bradford, nodding at Brooks as he spoke. “Except for the word ‘bait,’ which refers to Havelock. Remember, he didn’t take Havelock in Athens. Rostov’s aware of the very unusual relationship between Michael Havelock and Anthony Matthias. Czech and Czech, teacher and student, survivors really—in many ways father and son; where does one end and the other begin? Is one or are both of them dealing with someone in Moscow? And for what purpose? Reasonable objectives can be ruled out; avoiding normal channels would indicate that. Not too many months ago we wondered the same thing: What had Matthias done, and where did Havelock stand? We created Costa Brava because of it.”

  “And then Parsifal reached us and it didn’t make any difference,” interrupted Berquist. “We were at the wall. We’re still at the wall—only, now it’s grown larger, broken away from itself until there are two walls, our backs to each no matter which way we turn. The search for Parsifal is joined with another search for another man. Someone right here who’s watching every move we make. A Soviet mole capable of pulling a buried code out of Moscow, and deep enough to change the face of Costa Brava.… My God, we’ve got to blow him out of the ground! If he finds Parsifal before we do, he and the madmen he answers to in the Kremlin can dictate whatever terms they like to this country.”

  “You know where he is,” said the general. “Go after him! He’s at State. High up; with access to embassy cables, and obviously goddamned close to Matthias. Because if I follow you now, he nailed the Karas woman. He supplied that code; he had it placed in her suitcase. He nailed her!”

  “I think he supplied everything.” Bradford shook his head slowly, arching his brows, as if recalling the impossible. “Including the suitcase, the Baader-Meinhof informer, our own codes and the instructions from Moscow. Everything just appeared in Barcelona—out of nowhere. And no one really knows how.”

  “I imagine it’s pointless to press Matthias further?” said Brooks, asking the question nevertheless.

  “Pointless,” replied Bradford. “He repeats what he’s Malntained from the beginning. The evidence was there. It was true. It was channeled to me.’ ”

  “The bells are heard by Saint Anthony!” exploded the President.

  “The mole at State” Halyard persisted. “Good Christ, he can’t be that hard to find. How many people would Stern talk to? What kind of time frame was involved? A few minutes? A few hours? Go back and trace every move he made.”

  “The Cons Op strategists operated in total secrecy,” said Bradford. “There were no appointment calendars, no conference schedules. A call would come to a specific person upstairs, or over at the Agency, or the NSC, and the decks would be cleared for whichever strategist it was, but no record of the meeting was ever written down. Internal security again; a great deal could be pieced together by informers with access to such records or memoranda.”

  “Misdirect the flow of accurate information at all costs,” said the President softly.

  “By our estimates, Stern could have spoken to any of sixty to seventy-five people,” continued Bradford. “And we could be underestimating that figure. There are authorities within teams of specialists, specialists among those considered authorities. The lists are endless, and all those people have maximum clearance.”

  “But we’re talking about the State Department,” said Brooks emphatically. “Sometime between Stern’s last conversation with Rome and four hours later when the authorization was given to Col des Moulinets. That narrows down the possibilities considerably.”

  “And whoever it is knows that,” said the undersecretary. “It further obscures his movements. Even the check-ins and check-outs won’t show him to be where he was.”

  “Didn’t anyone see Stern?” persisted Brooks. “Surely, you’ve asked.”

  “As quietly as we could. Not one of those we questioned admitted seeing him within twenty-four hours of the period in question, but then we didn’t expect the one who did to say so.”

  “Nobody saw him?” asked the general, frowning in disbelief.

  “Well, yes, someone did,” said Bradford, nodding. “The outside receptionist on the fifth floor, L Section. Dawson had left a message for Stern; he picked it up on his way to the elevator. He could have been in any of seventy-five offices beyond the reception-room door.”

  “Who was inside at the time?” The ambassador shook his head the instant he asked the question, as if to say, Sorry, never mind.

  “Exactly,” said Bradford, accepting the stateman’s unspoken afterthought. “It wasn’t any help. Twenty-three people were listed as not having checked out. There were conferences, secretaries taking notes, and briefings by division personnel. Everything was substantiated. No one left a meeting long enough to place that call.”

  “But, damn it, you’ve got a floor!” cried the soldier. “Seventy-five offices, seventy-five people. That’s not a hundred and fifty, or a thousand; it’s seventy-five and one of them’s your mole! Start with those closest to Matthias and pull them in. Put every goddamn one of them into a clinic if you have to!”

  “There’d be panic; the entire State Department would be demoralized,” said Brooks. “Unless—Is there a clique, a particular group, closest to Matthias?”

  “You don’t understand him.” Bradford brought his folded hands to his chin, searching for words. “He’s first, last and always Dr. Matthias, teacher, enlightener, provoker of thought. He’s a hustling Socrates on the Potomac, gathering his worshipers wherever he can find them, extolling those who see the light, striking down the disbelievers with the cruelest humor I’ve ever heard. Cruel but always couched in brilliantly humble phrases. And like most self-appointed arbiters of an elite, his arrogance makes him fickle as hell. A section will catch his eye and they’re his fair-haired boys and girls for a while, until another group comes along and flatters him at the right moment, and there’s suddenly a new court of supplicants he can lecture. Naturally, during the past year it’s gotten worse—but it was always there.” Bradford permitted himself the start of a strained smile. “Then, of course, I could be biased. I was never allowed in one of those charmed circles.”

  “Why do you think you were excluded?” asked the ambassador.

  “I’m not sure. I had a certain reputation of my own once; perhaps he was uncomfortable with it. But I think it was because I used to watch him very closely, very hard. I was fascinated, and I know he was uncomfortable with that.… You see, the ‘best and the brightest’ were led down a lot of strange paths by men like him. Some of us grew up, and I don’t think Matthias approved of that growth. Skepticism comes with it. The Thomistic leap isn’t good enough anymore; blind faith can ruin the eyesight—and the perspective.” Bradford leaned forward, his eyes on Halyard. “I’m sorry, General. My answer to both you and Ambassador Brooks is that there is no one group I’d zero in on, no guarantee that our mole would be caught before he panicked and ran. And we can’t let that happen. I know I’m right. If we can find him, he can lead us to the man we call Parsifal. He may have lost him temporarily, but he knows who Parsifal is.”

  The older men were silent; they looked at each other, then turned back to Bradford. The general frowned, a questioning look in his clear eyes. The President nodded his head slowly, bringing his right hand to his cheek and staring at the man from State.

  The ambassador spoke, his slender figure rigid in his chair. “I commend you, Mr. Undersecretary. May I try to reconstruct the new scenario?… For reasons unknown, Matthias needed an incontrovertible case against the Karas woman, which would lead to Havelock’s retirement. By now, be
cause of what he’s done. Matthias is Parsifal’s puppet—his prisoner, really—but Parsifal knows it’s in his interest to carry out Matthias’s obsession. He goes to a well—entrenched Soviet agent in the upper regions of the State Department and the incriminating evidence against the Karas woman is provided, studied and accepted. Except that two source controls from the CIA come to you and tell you it can’t be true—any of it—and you, Emory Bradford, enter the picture. In fact, the President, alarmed by what appears to be a conspiracy at State brings us all into the picture—and we in turn recruit a black-operations officer to mount the Costa Brava exercise. That exercise—that scene—is turned into murder, and at this juncture, it’s your thesis that the mole lost sight of Parsifal.”

  “Yes. Parsifal, whoever he is, got what he wanted from the mole, then dropped him. The mole is stunned, possibly frantic. He’s undoubtedly made promises to Moscow—based on assurances from Parsifal—that projected a major setback for American foreign policy, conceivably its collapse.”

  “Either,” interjected the President in a quiet monotone, “would be a benevolent alternative.”

  “And whoever has the information contained in Parsifal’s documents will assume control of the Kremlin.” Brooks remained rigid, his aristocratic face pale, drawn. “We’re at war,” he added softly.

  “I repeat,” said Halyard. “Go after those seventy-five offices at State. Mount a sweep, call it a medical quarantine; it’s simple but effective, even acceptable. Do it in the early evening after they’ve left work. Round them up in their homes, restaurants; pull them in and get them down to your laboratories. Find your mole!” The general’s forceful rendering of the tatic impressed the civilians, who remained silent. Halyard lowered his voice. “I know it smells, but I don’t think you’ve got a choice.”

  “We’d need two hundred men posing as medical techniclans and drivers,” said Bradford. “Between thirty and forty government vehicles. No one knowing anything.”