The Parsifal Mosaic

by Robert Ludlum

  “He may have spoken to Parsifal but doesn’t know it. Or someone calling for Parsifal. In either case, he was reached at home, which means that somewhere in a couple of hundred thousand long-distance records is a specific call made to a specific number at a specific time.”

  “Why not a couple of million records?”

  “Not if we’ve got a general location.”

  “Do you?”

  “I’ll know more by tomorrow. When you get back—”

  “Mr. Undersecretary! Mr. Undersecretary!” The shouting was accompanied by the roar of the jeep’s motor and the screeching of its tires as it came to a stop only a few feet from them. “Undersecretary Pierce?” said the driver.

  “Who gave you my name?” asked Pierce icily.

  “There’s an urgent telephone call for you, sir. They said it was your office at the United Nations and they have to speak to you.”

  “The Soviets,” said Pierce under his breath to Havelock; his alarm was apparent “Please, wait for me.”

  The undersecretary of State swung himself rapidly into the air force jeep and nodded to the driver; his eyes were on the lights of the maintenance hangar. Michael pulled his coat around him, his attention drawn to the small propjet aircraft several hundred feet away in the opposite direction. The left engine had been started, and the pilot was revving it; the right coughed into operation seconds later. Then Havelock saw another jeep; it had taken the place of the fuel truck next to the plane. The vault specialist had arrived; the departure for Poole’s Island was imminent.

  Arthur Pierce returned six minutes later, climbed out of the open vehicle and dismissed the driver. “It was the Soviets,” he said, approaching Michael. “They wanted an unrecorded, unlogged meeting tomorrow morning; that means an emergency. I reached the senior aide of the delegation and told him I had called my own emergency conference tomorrow on the strength of their reactions late this afternoon. I also suggested I might have information for them that would necessitate a storm of cables—I used your phrase—between New York, their embassy in Washington and Moscow. I hinted that perhaps the pounding shoe was in another hand.” The undersecretary stopped, hearing the preliminary warm—up of the jets from the plane in the distance; the jeep was leaving the area. “That’s my signal; the vault specialist’s here. You know, it’s going to take at least three hours to break into that room. Walk over with me, will you?”

  “Sure. What was the Soviets’ reaction?”

  “Very negative, of course. They know me; they sense a deflection, a diversion—to use your word. We agreed to meet tomorrow evening.” Pierce paused and turned to Havelock. “For God’s sake, give me the green light, then. I’ll need every argument, every weapon I can have. Among them a medical report diagnosing exhaustion for Matthias … God knows, not the psychiatric file I’m bringing back to you.”

  “I forgot. The President was to have gotten it to me yesterday—today.”

  “I’m bringing it up.” Pierce started walking again as Michael kept pace. “I can see how it happens.”

  “What happens?”

  “The days melding into one another. Yesterday, today … tomorrow, if there is a tomorrow. One long, unending, sleepless night.”

  “Yes,” said Havelock, feeling no need to amplify.

  “How many weeks have you been living it?”

  “More than a few.”

  “Jesus.” The roar of the combined engines grew louder as they drew nearer the plane. “I suppose this is actually the safest place to talk,” said Pierce, raising his voice to be heard. “No device could filter that noise.”

  “Is that why you wanted to meet on the runway?” asked Michael.

  “You probably think I’m paranoid, but yes, it is. I wouldn’t care if we were in the control room of a NORAD base, I’d want the walls swept before having a conversation like the one we just had. You probably do think I’m paranoid. After all, this is Andrews—”

  “I don’t think you’re paranoid at all,” interrupted Havelock. “I think I should have thought of it.”

  The door of the small aircraft was open, the metal steps in place. The pilot signaled from his lighted window; Pierce waved back, nodding affirmatively. Michael walked with the undersecretary to within ten feet of the door where the wash of the propellers was strong and growing stronger.

  “You said something about having a general location in mind regarding that call to Decker,” shouted Pierce. “Where is it?”

  “Somewhere in the Shenandoah,” yelled Havelock. “It’s only speculation, but Decker delivered the materials there.”

  “I see.”

  The engines roared a sudden crescendo, and the wind from the propeller blades reached gale force, whipping the hat from Arthur Pierce’s head. Michael crouched, scrambling after it through the powerful wash. He stopped it with his foot and carried it back to the undersecretary of State.

  “Thanks very much!” shouted Pierce.

  Havelock stared at the face in front of him, at the streak of white that sprang up from the forehead and shot through the mass of wavy dark hair.

  36

  It was an hour and forty-five minutes before he saw the floodlights that marked the entrance to the drive at Sterile Five. The flight from Andrews to Quantico and the trip by car to Fairfax had been oddly disturbing, and he did not know why. It was as though a part of his mind were refusing to function; he was conscious of a gap in his own thought process but was blocked by a compulsion not to probe. It was like a drunk’s refusal to face the gross embarrassments of the night before: something not remembered did not exist. And he was incapable of doing anything about it; he did not know what it was, only that it was not, and therefore, it was.

  One long, unending, sleepless night. Perhaps that was it. He needed sleep … he needed Jenna. But there was no time for sleep, no time for them to be together in the way they wanted to be together. No time for anything or anyone but Parsifal.

  What was it? Why had a part of him suddenly died?

  The marine sedan pulled up in front of the ornate entrance of the estate. He got out, thanked the driver and the armed guard, and walked up to the door. He thought as he stood there, with a finger on the bell, that like so many other doors in so many other houses he had entered, he had no key with which to open it. Would he ever have a key to a house that was his—theirs—and be able to open it as so many millions opened theirs every day? It was a silly thought, foolishly pondered. Where was the significance of a house and a key? Still, the thought—the need, perhaps—persisted.

  The door abruptly opened and Jenna brought him back to the urgent present, her striking, lovely face taut, her eyes burning into his.

  “Thank God!” she cried, clutching him and pulling him inside. “You’re back! I was going out of my mind!”

  “What is it?”

  “Mikhail, come with me. Quickly!” She gripped his hand as they walked rapidly down the foyer past the staircase to the study, which she had left open. Going to the desk, she picked up a note and said, “You must call the Bethesda hospital. Extension six-seven-one. But first you have to know what happened!”

  “What—?”

  “The paminyatchik is dead.”

  “Oh, Christ!” Michael grabbed the phone that Jenna held out for him. He dialed, his hand trembling. “When?” he shouted. “How?”

  “An execution,” she replied as he waited for Bethesda to answer. “Less than an hour ago. Two men. They took out the guard with a knife, got in the room and killed the traveler while he was sedated. Four shots in the head. The doctor’s beside himself.”

  “Six-seven-one! Hurry, please!”

  “I couldn’t stand it,” whispered Jenna, staring at him, touching his face. “I thought you were there … outside somewhere … seen, perhaps. They said you weren’t, but I didn’t know whether to believe them or not.”

  “Taylor? How did it happen?”

  As Havelock listened to the doctor a numbing pain spread through him, stealin
g his breath. Taylor was still in shock and spoke disjointedly; Jenna’s brief description had been clearer, and there was nothing further to learn. Two killers in the uniforms of naval officers had come to the sixth floor, found Taylor’s patient, and proceeded professionally with the execution, killing a marine guard in the process.

  “We’ve lost Ambiguity,” said Michael, hanging up, his hand so heavy the phone fell into the cradle, clapping into place. “How? That’s what I can’t understand! We had maximum security, military transport, every precaution!” He looked helplessly at Jenna.

  “Was it all highly visible?” she asked. “Could the precautions and the transport have drawn attention?”

  Havelock nodded wearily. “Yes. Yes, of course. We commandeered an airfield, flew in and out of there like a commando unit, diverting the other traffic.”

  “And not that far from the Medical Center,” said Jenna. “Someone alerted to the disturbance would be drawn to the scene. He would see what you didn’t want him to see. In this case, a stretcher would be enough.”

  Michael slipped off his topcoat and listlessly dropped it on a chair. “But that doesn’t explain what happened at the Medical Center itself. An execution team was sent in to abort a trap, to kill their own people, so there’d be no chance that anyone would be taken alive.”

  “Paminyatchiki,” said Jenna. “It’s happened before.”

  “But how did their controls know it was a trap? I spoke only to the Apache unit and to Loring. No one else! How could they? How could they have been so sure that they would risk sending in sanctioned killers? The risk was enormous!” Havelock walked around the desk, looking at the scattered papers, hating them, hating the terror they evoked. “Loring told me that he was probably spotted, that it was his fault, but I don’t believe it. That mocked-up patrol car didn’t just emerge from around the block; it was sent from somewhere by someone in authority who had made the most dangerous decision he could make. He wouldn’t have made it on the strength of one man seen in a parking lot—that man, incidentally, was too damned experienced to show himself so obviously.”

  “It doesn’t seem logical,” agreed Jenna. “Unless the others were spotted earlier.”

  “Even if the cardiologist cover was blown, at best they’d be considered protection. No, the control knew it was a trap, knew that the primary objective—let’s face it, the sole objective—was to take even one of them alive, … Goddamn it, how?” Michael leaned over the desk, his hands gripping the edge, his head pounding. He pushed himself away and walked toward the wide, dark windows with the thick, beveled glass. And then he heard the words, spoken softly by Jenna: “Mikhail, you did speak to someone else. You spoke to the President.”

  “Of course, but …” He stopped, staring at the distorted image of bis face in the window, but slowly not seeing his face … seeing, instead, the formless outline of another. Then the night mist that had rolled in through the trees and over the lawns outside became another mist, from another time. The crashing of waves suddenly filled his ears, thundering, deafening, unbearable. Lightning shattered across the luminous, unseen screen in his mind, and then the sharp cracks came, one after another until they grew into ear-splitting explosions, blowing him into a frenzied galaxy of flashing lights … and dread.

  Costa Brava. He was back at the Costa Brava!

  And the face in the mirror took on form … distant form … unmistakable form. And the shock of white hair sprang up from that face, surrounded by waves of black, framed, isolated … an image unto itself.

  “No … no!” He heard himself screaming; he could feel Jenna’s hands on his arms, then his face … but not his face! The face in the window! The face with the sharp path of white in the hair … his hair, but not his hair, his face but not his face! Yet both were the faces of killers, his and the one he had seen that night on the Costa Brava!

  A fisherman’s cap had suddenly been blown away in the ocean wind; a hat had been whipped off the head of a man by the sudden wash of propellers. On a runway … in a shadowed light … two hours ago!

  The same man? Was it possible? Even conceivable?

  “Mikhail!” Jenna held his face in her hands. “Mikhail, what is it? What’s wrong?”

  “It’s not possible!” he screamed. “It can’t be!”

  “What, my darling? What can’t be?”

  “Jesus. I’m losing my mind!”

  “Darling, stop it!” shouted Jenna, shaking him, holding him.

  “No … no, I’ll be all right. Let me alone. Let me alone!” He spun away from her and raced to the desk. “Where is it? Where the hell is it?”

  “Where is what?” asked Jenna calmly, now beside him.

  “The file.”

  “What file?”

  “My file!” He yanked the top right-band drawer open, rummaging furiously among the papers until he found the black-bordered folder. He pulled it out, slammed it on the desk and opened it; breathing with difficulty, he leafed through the pages, eyes and fingers working maniacally.

  “What’s troubling you, Mikhail? Tell me. Let me help you. What started this? What’s making you go back?… We agreed not to punish each other!”

  “Not me! Him!”

  “Who?”

  “I can’t make a mistake! I can’t!” Havelock found the page he was looking for. He scanned the lines, using his index finger, his eyes riveted on the page. He read in a flat voice: “ ‘They’re killing her. Oh, my God, he’s killed her and I can’t bear the screams. Go to her, stop them … stop them. No, not me, never me. Oh, Christ, they’re pulling her away … she’s bleeding so, but not in pain now. She’s gone. Oh, my God, she’s gone, my love is gone.… The wind is strong, it’s blown his cap away.…The face? Do I know the face? A photograph somewhere? A dossier? The dossier of a killer.… No, it’s the hair. The streak of white in the hair.’ ” Michael stood up and looked at Jenna; he was perspiring. “A streak … of … white,” he said slowly, desperately trying to enunciate the words clearly. “It could be him!”

  Jenna leaned into him and held his shoulders. “You must take hold of yourself, my darling. You’re not being rational; you’re in some kind of shock. Can you understand me?”

  “No time,” he said, removing her hands and reaching for the phone. “I’m okay, and you’re right. I am in shock, but only because it’s so incredible. Incredible!” He dialed, breathed deeply, and spoke: “I want to be connected to the main switchboard of Andrews Air Force Base, and I want you to give instructions to the duty officer to comply with any requests I make with regard to information.”

  Jenna watched him, then backed away to the table with the decanters. She poured him some brandy and handed it to him. “You’re pale,” she said. “I’ve never seen you so pale.”

  Havelock waited, listening as the head of the White House Secret Service gave his instructions to Andrews and, conversely, the electronic verification check made by the colonel in charge of field communications. The incredible was always rooted in the credible, he thought. For the most credible reasons on earth he had been on that beach at the Costa Brava that night, observing the extraordinary, and a mere gust of wind had blown a man’s cap away. Now he had to know if there was substance in the observation. Both observations.

  “There are calls from New York constantly,” said the colonel in answer to his question.

  “I’m talking about those five to ten minutes,” countered Michael. “Transferred to a maintenance hangar on the south perimeter. It was less than two hours ago; someone has to remember. Check every operator on the boards. Now!”

  “Christ, take it easy.”

  “You take it fast!”

  No operator at Andrews Air Force Base had transferred a call to a maintenance hangar on the south perimeter.

  “There was a sergeant driving a jeep, ordered to pick up cargo labeled Sterile Five, marine equipment. Are you with me?”

  “I’m aware of the Sterile classification and of the flight. Helicopter, north pad.”
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br />   “What’s his name?”

  “The driver?”

  “Yes.”

  The colonel paused, obviously concerned as he answered, “We understand the original driver was replaced. Another relieved him on verbal orders.”

  “Whose?”

  “We haven’t traced it.”

  “What was the second driver’s name?”

  “We don’t know.”

  “Thank you, Colonel.”

  Paminyatchik!

  “Find me the dossier on Fierce,” said Havelock, looking up a Jenna, his hand on the telephone button.

  “Arthur Pierce?” asked Jenna, astonished.

  “As quickly as you can.” Michael dialed again, and said, “I can’t make a mistake, I can’t make a mistake. Not here, not now.” Then: “Mr. President? It’s Havelock. I’ve been with Pierce and tried to help him.… Yes, sir, he’s bright, very bright and very good. We’d like a point clarified; it’s minor but it would clear something up for both of us. He had a lot on his mind, a lot to absorb. At the meeting this afternoon, after I called you, did you bring up the Apache operation at the Randolph Medical Center? .. Then everyone’s current. Thank you, Mr. President.” Michael replaced the phone as Jenna handed him a dark-brown file folder.

  “Here’s Pierce’s dossier.”

  Havelock opened it and immediately turned to the synopsis of personal characteristics.

  The subject drinks moderately at social occasions, and has never been known to abuse alcohol. He does not use any form of tobacco.

  The match, the open flame unprotected, extinguished by the wind … A second flame, the flare of light prolonged, unmistakable. The sequence as odd and unmistakable as the cigarette smoke emerging solely from the mouth and mingling with the curling vapor of breath, a nonsmoker’s exhalation. A signal. Followed moments later by an unknown driver delivering an urgent message, using a name he was not supposed to know, angering the man he was addressing. Every sequence had been detailed, timed, reactions considered. Arthur Pierce had not been called to the phone, he had been making a call.