Robert Ludlum - The Parcifal Mosaic.txt

by The Parcifal Mosaic [lit]

  see, his name isn't Havelock, Ws Havlf6ek. Mikhail Havlf6ek. He was born in

  Prague sometime in the middle thirties, the exact date unknown. All the

  records were destroyed by the Gestapo."

  'GestapoP" The attorney, Dawson, leaned back in his chair. 'June, 1942 ...

  came up in e Nu emberg trials."

  "It was a sizable item on the Nt rembrerg agenda," agreed

  Stem. "On May twenty-seventh Reinhard Heydrich, known

  as der Henker-the hangman-of Prague, was killed by Czech

  partisans. They were led by a professor who'd been dismissed

  from Karlova University and who worked with British intellf

  gence. His name was Havlf6ek and he lived with his wife and

  son in a village roughly eight miles outside of Prague where

  he organized the partisan cells. The village was I.Adice."

  "Oh, Christ," said Miller, slowly dropping the cable from Rome on the

  table.

  "He wasn't noticeably in evidence," commented Stem dryly as be shifted the

  pages in his hand. "Afraid that he might have been seen at the site of

  Heydrich's assassination, Havlf6ek stayed away from his house for nearly

  two weeks, living In the cellars at the university. He hadZt been spotted,

  98RoBERT LuoLum

  but someone else from Lidice bad been; the price was set for Heydrich's

  death: execution for all adult males; for the women, conscription-slave

  labor for the factories, the more presentable sent to the officers' barracks

  to be Feldhurem The children . . . they would simply 'disappear.'

  Jugendmftlichkeiten. The adaptable would be adopted, the rest gassed in

  mobile vans."

  "Efficient bastards, wereet they?" said Ogilvie.

  "The orders from Berlin were kept quiet until the morning of June tenth,

  the day of the mass executions," continued Stem, reading. "It was also the

  day Havh6ek was heading home. When the word went out-the proclamations were

  nailed to telephone poles and broadcast over the radio-the partisans

  stopped him from going back. They locked him up, sedated him with drugs;

  they knew there was nothing he could do, and he was too valuable. Finally,

  he was told the worst. His wife had been sent to the whore camps-it was

  later learned that she killed herself the first night, taking a Wehrinacht

  officer with her-and his son was nowhere to be found."

  "But he hadn't, obviously, been taken with the other children," said

  Dawson.

  "No. He'd been chasing rabbits, and he came back in time to see the

  roundups, the executions, the corpses thrown in ditches. He went into

  shock, fled into the woods and, for weeks, lived like an animal. The

  stories began spreading through the countryside: a child was seen running

  in the forest, footprints found near barns, leading back into the woods.

  The father heard them and knew; he had told his son that If the Germans

  ever came for him, he was to escape into the forests. It took over a month,

  but HavIi6ek tracked the boy. He had been hiding in caves and trees,

  terrified to show himself, eating whatever he could steal and scratch from

  the ground, the nightmare of the massacre never leaving him."

  "A lovely childhood," said the psychiatrist, making a note on a pad.

  "It was only the beginning." The director of Cons Op reached for another

  page in the dossier. "Havlf6ek and his son remained in the Prague-Boleslav

  sector and the underground war accelerated, with the father as the partisan

  leader. A few months later the boy became one of the youngest recruits in

  the Mtski BrigAda, the Children's Brigade.

  THE PARSWAL MOSAIC99

  They were used as couriers, as often as not, carrying nitroglycerin and

  plastic explosives as messages. One misstep, one search, one soldier hungry

  for a small boy, and it was over."

  "His father let him?" asked Miller incredulously.

  "He couldn1 stop him. The boy found out what they'd done to his mother. For

  three years he lived that lovely childhood. It was uncanny, macabre. During

  those nights when his father was around, he was taught his lessons like any

  other school kid. Then during the days, in the woods and the fields, others

  taught him how to run and hide, how to lie. How to kill."

  That was the training you mentioned, wasn't it?" said Ogfivie quietly.

  'Yes. He knew what it was like to take lives, see friends' lives taken,

  before be was ten years old. Grisly."

  "Indelible," added the pyschiattist. "Explosives planted almost forty years

  ago."

  "Could the Costa Brava have triggered them forty years later?" asked the

  lawyer, looking at the doctor.

  "It could. Tbere're a couple of dozen blood-red images floating around,

  some pretty grim symbols. I'd have to know a hell of a lot more." Miller

  turned to Stem, pencil poised above his pad. "What happened to him then?"

  "To all of them," said Stern. "Peace finally came-I should say the formal

  war was over-but there was no peace in Prague. The Soviets had their own

  plans, and another kind of madness took over. IMe elder Havlf6ek was

  visibly pohtical, jealous of the freedom he and the partisans had fought

  for. He found himself in another war, as covert as before and just as

  brutal. With the Russians." The director tamed to another page. "For him It

  ended on March tenth, 1948, with the assassination of Jan Masaryk and the

  collapse of the Sochil Democrats."

  "In what sense?"

  "He disappeared. Shipped to a gulag in Siberia or to a nearer grave. His

  political friends were quick; the Czechs share a proverb with the Russians:

  *Me playful cub is tornorrov/s wolf.' They bid young Havlf6ek and reached

  British M.I.6. Someone~s conscience was stirred; the boy was smuggled out

  of the country, and taken to England."

  "I'liat proverb about the cub turning into tomorrov/s wolf," interjected

  Ogilvie. "Proved out didn't it?"

  100 RoBERT Lurmum

  "In ways the Soviets could never envisiom'

  "How did the Websters flt in?" asked Miller. "They were his sponsors over

  here, obviously, but the boy was in England."

  "It was chance, actually. Webster had been a reserve colonel in the war,

  attached to Supreme Command Central. In '48 he was in London on business,

  his wife with him, and one night at dinner with wartime friends they heard

  about the young Czech brought out of Prague, living at an orphanage in

  Kent. One thing led to another-the Websters had no children, and God knows

  the boys story was intriguing, if not incredible-so the two of them drove

  down to Kent and interviewed him. That's the word here. 'Interviewed! Cold,

  isn't it?"

  "They obviously weren't."

  "No, they weren't. Webster went to work. Papers were mocked up, laws bent,

  and a very disturbed child flown over here with a new identity. Havlf6ek

  was fortunate; he went from an English orphanage to a comfortable home in

  a wellto-do American suburb, including one of the better prep schools and

  Princeton University."

  "And a new name," said Dawson.

  Daniel Stem smiled. "As long as a cover was deemed necessary, our reserve

  colonel and his lady apparently felt Anglicization was called for in

  Greenwich. We all have ou
r foibles."

  "Why not their name?'

  "The boy wouldn't go that far. As I said before, the memories had to be

  there. indelibly, as Paul put it."

  "Are the Websters still alive?"

  "No. They'd be almost a hundred if they were. They both died in the early

  sMes when Havelock was at Princeton."

  "Where be met Matthias?" asked Ogilvie.

  "Yes," answered the director of Cons Op. "That softened

  the blow. Matthias took an interest in him, not only because

  of HavelocYs work but, perhaps more important, because his

  family had known the Havli6eks in Prague. They were all

  par' of ecommunity until the Germans blew it

  apart 4s-for all intents and purposes-buried

  the survvo

  "Did Matthias know the full story?"

  All of it," replied Stern.

  THE PATtsrFAL MosAic101

  "That letter in the Costa Brava Me makes more sense now," said the lawyer.

  "The note Matthias sent to Havelock."

  "He wanted it included," explained Stem, "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 bow much Havelock bad 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." Stem 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."

  "Ies 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 AthensP" asked Stem.

  "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 dWt he?" asked Miller. "Come on, Red, you

  102 ROBERT LuDLum

  were in the fleld 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," be said finally.

  "Because I could always let him go-if I wanted tobefore 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 be believes totally what be's saying."

  "But you can't be sure, Paul," insisted Daniel Stem.

  "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. "Thaes all I can base a

  diagnosis on; that and this new information on one Mikhail Havlf6ek. rm in

  no position to do anything else. You asked for guidance, not absolutes."

  " Tromise 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 aver here," added

  Stem. "I know you included tha% I just

  Tim PARsiFAL Mosmc103

  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 adversarfly, of course."

  "Horsesbiti" 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 bell gets hurt, -really

  hurt? A few screaming freaks with political hatchets and outsized egos.

  ThWre not worth it."

  "The law says they are. The Constitution says they are."

  'Men fuck the law, and lees put a couple of holes in the Constitution. I'm

  sick to death of its being used by loudmouthed, busby-haired smartasses who

  mount any cause they can think of ju
st to tie our bands and draw attention

  to themselves. I've seen those rehabilitation camps, Mr. Lawyer. rve been

  there."

  "Which is why yoere valuable here," interposed Stem 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 bands 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

  104 RommT LunLum

  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,0 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 win multiply

  until they become unbearable to him and he thinks be has to strike

  out-strike back. With his own attacks. Theyre 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 hiA 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 MilleA phrase.

  "Hinting ... not delivering, 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."