Robert Ludlum - The Parcifal Mosaic.txt
Page 34
"I know, I was thorough. III have to think about that."
"Maybe I never showed up, . said Havelock, rubbing his shoulder, grateful
that the pain was receding.
"Merci.w
The vest-pocket park in Denfert Rochereau wag a plot of grass dotted with
stone benches, sculptured trees and a graveled path circling a small pool
with a fountain in its center. Ile only source of light was a streetlamp
thirty feet away, its spill filtered by the branches of the trees. They sat
beside each other on the cold bench. Michael told Broussac what he bad
seen-and what be had not seen-at the Costa Brava. He then had to ask the
question. "Did she tell you what bappenedP"
"She was warned, told to follow fiistrucflons~"
"By whomr
"A high government official from Washington."
"How could she accept him?"
"He was brought to her by a man identified as the senior attach6 from
Madri&s Consular Operations."
262RoBERT LuoLum
"Consular... MadridP Where was IP"
"Madrid."
"Jesus, right down to the hourl"
"What was?"
"The whole goddamned thing. What instructions was she given?-
"To meet a man that night and leave Barcelona with him."
"Did she?"
"No.-
"Why not?"
"She panicked. In her words, everything had collapsed for her. She didn't
feel she could trust anyone. She ran." -
"Thank Cbd. I don't know who was killed on that beach, but it was meant to
be jenna. In a way, it makes the whole thing even more obscene. Who was
she? Someone who didn't know a damn thing? A woman brought there and told
to chase a Frisbee in the moonlight, suddenly shot at, knowing she was
going to die? ChrW, what kind of people are they?"
"Find out through Madrid. The attach6 from Consular Operations."
"I can~t. She was fed another lie. There's no Cons Op unit in Madrid; the
climate's too rotten. It operates an hour away out of Lisbon."
116gine was silent, her eyes on him. "What's happening, Michaelr
Havelock watched the fountain in the dark pool. Its cascading spray was
diminishing, folding, dying; somewhere a hand was turning a dial, shutting
it off for the remainder of the night. "Liars are operating at very high
places in my government. They've penetrated areas I used to think were im-
penetrable. They're controlling, killing-lying. And someone in Moscow is
working with them."
"Mowotv? Are you sure?"
"I'm sure. On the word of a man who wasn't afraid to die, but was afraid of
living the way I promised him he'd be forced to live. Someone in Moscow,
someone the controllers of the KGB know nothing about, is in contact with
the liars."
"For what purpose. Y&uP To destroy your credibility,. then kill you? To
void some recent accomplishment by maligning the record of a dead man?"
"Ies not me; Im only a part of it. I wasn't important before, but I am
now." Havelock turned his head and looked at
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old Broussac, her face now soft and compassionate, yet still ashen in the
dim light. "Because I saw jenna; because I found out she was alive. Now they
have to kill me. They have to kill her, too."
"Why? You were the bestl"
"I don't know. I only know that Costa Brava is where I have to look for
answers. It's where it started for jenna and me . . . where it was supposed
to end. One of us dead, the other dying inside, finished. Out."
"It is she who is dying inside now. It astonishes me that she can function
as she does, move as she does. She's remarkable." R6gine paused. The
fountaires spray had collapsed, and only trickles of water dripped over its
saucerlike basin into the pool. "She loved you, you know."
'Tast tense?"
"Oh, yes. We all learn to accept new realities, don't we? We're better at
it than most people because sudden change is an old acquaintance as well as
our enemy. We constantly seek out betrayal in others; we preach it. And all
the while we're being tested ourselves, our adversaries intent on seducing
our minds and our appetites. Sometimes we succeed, sometimes they do.
That!s the reality."
"The futility," said Havelock.
"You are too much the philosophe for this busfnem"
"Ies why I got out." Michael looked away. "I saw her face in the window of
the plane in Col des Moulinets. Her eyes. Christ, it was awful."
"I'm certain it was. It happens. Hatred replaces love, doesn't it? Ies the
only defense in these cases. Shell kill you if she can."
"Oh, God . . ." Havelock leaned forward on the bench, his elbows on his
knees, bands cupped under his chin, staring at the fountain. "I love her
so. I loved her when I killed her that night, knowing a part of me would
always be at that beach for the rest of my life, my eyes seeing her
running, falling in the sand, my ears hearing her screams ... wanting to
race down and hold her, tell her the whole world was a lie and nothing
mattered but usl just us ... Something inside me was tying to tell me that
terrible things were being done to us, and I wotildn't listen.... I was too
hurt to listen to myself. I, 1, 11 Mel I couldn't get nw out of the way and
hear the truth she was screamingf"
264 RoBLPRT Lumrm
"You were a professional in a professional crisis," said Wgine softly,
touching his arm. "According to everything you'd learned, everything youd
lived with for years, you were doing what you bad to do. A professional."
Michael turned his head and looked at her. "Why wasn't I myselM he asked
simply. "Why didn't I listen to the other screams, the ones I couldn't get
out of my throat?"
'We can~t always trust what we call instinct, Michael. You know that."
"I know that I love her ... loved her when I thought I hated her, when that
professional in me expected to see her die because rd closed the trap on an
enemy. I didn't hate her, I loved her. Do you know why I know that?"
"Why, mon cher?"
"Because there was no satisfaction in winning, not the slightest. Only
revulsion, only sadness . . . only wanting things to be the way they
couldn~t ber
'Maes when you got out, ign~t it? It's what we!d beard, what I found so
difficult to. believe. I understand now. You loved her very much. I am
sorry, Michel."
Havelock shook his head, closing his eyes, the darkness comforting for a
moment. "In Barcelona," he said, opening his eyes again, looking at the
quiet pool in front of them, "what happened to her? Tell me what she told
you."
"She can't understand what happened. Did the Soviets actually buy you or
did Washington order her execution? ies an enigma to ber-a violent enigma.
She got out of Spain and went to Italy, going from city to city, seeking
out those few people she thought she could trust to help her, hide her. But
always there were the questions: Where were you? Why was she alone and not
with you? At flrst, she was afraid to say, and when she did, no one
believed her. Whenever she told the story and it was rejected, she felt she
bad to run again, convinced the
few would reach you, and you would come af-
ter her. She lives with the nightmare that you~re always there,
following-hunting her down. And when she settled briefly into a safe cover,
a Russian appeared, someone you both knew in Prague, a KGB butcher.
Coincidence? Who was to tell? She ran again, this am stealing a large sum
of money from her employer."
"I wondered about that. How she could buy her way out
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of Italy, get across the border, and up into Paris. Compared with some other
routes, she traveled first-class."
Broussac smiled, her blue eyes lively in the shadows, tellIng him that a
brief moment of amusement was to follow. "She laughed about it-quietly, to
be sure-but the laughter was good; that she could laugh was good, Michael.
Do you see what I mean? For a minute or two she was like a little girl
remembering a prank."
"I hear her laughter in my sleep . . . when I doet bear her screams. Her
laugh was always quiet, never loud, but somehow full ... an echo from deep
inside her. She loved to laugh; it was a release for her, something not
usually permitted and therefore enjoyed so much more when it bappened." He
paused, his eyes again on the still fountain. "How did she steal the money?
Where?"
"Milan."
"The Soviets are crawling all over Milan. Wbornever she saw was a migratory
coincidence. Sorry, what happened?"
"She was working in that enormous store in the Piazza del Duomo, the one
that sells books and magazines and newspapers from all over the world. Do
you know itr
"I've seen it."
"Her languages got her the job, and she dyed her bair, wore glasses, all
the usual things. But her figure also got her the undivided attention of
the owner, a pig with a large wife he was terrifled of and eight children.
He was forever asking her into his office and mauling her and promising her
the Galleria Vittorio for her favors. One day at noon the Russian came in;
she recognized him and knew she had to run; she was afraid that he was
connected to you, that you were scouring Europe for her.... At the lunch
hour, she literally assaulted the manager in his'office, claiming that she
could no longer wait for his favors, and that only a small loan stood
between them and absolute ecstasy. By this time she bad her blouse off and
the poor man's billfold under a chair. In a state of near apoplexy, the
idiot opened the safe, where several days'receipts were stored-it was a
Friday, if you recall."
"Why should 7' interrupted Havelock.
'Ve'll get to that," said 116gine, a partial smile on her lips.
'Regardless, when the aging, perspiring Lothario had the
266 RoBERT LUDLUM
safe open and our Jenna was removing her brassiere, he counted out a few
thousand lire in his quivering hands and she struck him in the head with, a
desk clock. She then proceeded to empty the safe, positively stunned by the
amounts of money filling the bank-deposit pouches. That money was her
passport and she knew it."
"It was also an invitation for a police hunt."
"A hunt that could be delayed, the delay permitting her to get out of
Milan."
"How?"
"Fear, confusion, and embarrassment," replied Broussac.
'Jenna closed the safe, stripped the owner naked, and
marked him everywher - e with streaks of lipstick. She then
called his home and, speaking with a maid, said an urgent
matter required the man's wife to come to the store in an
hour, not before and not later."
"Fear, confusion, and embarrassment," agreed Michael, nodding. "She tapped
him again, making sure he'd stay where he was, figuring he'd hardly rush to
the safe in front of his wife, compounding the mess be was already in. . .
. And obviously, she took his clothes with her," added Havelock, smiling,
remembering the woman who was Jenna Karas.
"Obviously. She used the next several hours to gather her things together,
and realizing that a police warrant would be issued sooner or later,
removed the dye from her hair. She then joined the crowds at the Milan
railroad station."
"The railroad ... ?" Michael sat back on the bench and looked at 116gine.
"The train. She took the train to Romel That's where I saw herl"
"It's a moment shell never forget. There you were, standing there, staring
at her. The man who bad forced her into hiding, into running, who'd caused
her to alter her appearance and change the sequence of her languages. The
one person on earth she was terrified might find her, kill her-and there
she was, all her disguise gone, recognized by the one she most feared."
"If the shock hadn't been so paralyzing, if only I'd been quicker ... so
much would have been so different." Michael arched his neck back and
brought his hands to his face, covering his eyes. "Oh, Christ, we were so
closel I yelled to her, I screamed and kept screaming, but she disappeared.
I lost her.in the crowds; she didn~t hear me-she didn~t tvant to
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bear me-and I lost her." Havelock lowered his bands and gripped the edge of
the stone bench. "Civitavecchia came next. Did she tell you about that?'
"Yes. It was where she saw a crazed animal try to kill her on a pier-"
"It wagO berl How could she think I thought it was? Jesus, a fucking whore
from the docks!" Michael checked himself; it served no purpose to lose
control.
"She saw what she saw," said old Broussac quietly. "She couldn't know what
you were thinking."
"How did she know I'd go to Civitavecebia? A man there told me she thought
I'd question the taxi drivers. I didn't. There's a strike, although a few
are running, I suppose."
"There are, and you are the best of hunters. You yourself taught her that
the surest way to get out of a country unseen is to go to a busy waterfront
in the early hours of the morning. There is always someone willing to
broker space, if only in a cargo bold. She asked people on the train,
pretending to be a Polish merchant seaman's wife, her husband on a
freighter. People are not stupid; they understood; one more couple leaving
the arms of the Bear. 'Civitavecebia,' they said. 'Try Civitavecohial' She
assumed you might reach the same conclusion-based on what you'd taught
her-and so she made her preparations. She was right; you arrived."
"By a different route," said Havelock. "Because of a conductor on the third
car of the train who remembered a bella tyrgazza..
"Regardless, she assumed the possibility and acted on it, placing herself
in a position to observe. As I said, she's remarkable. The strain, the
pressures. To do what she did without panic, to mount the strategy alone .
. . remarkable. I think you were a splendid teacher, Michael."
"She bad ten years of training before I met her. There was a lot she could
teach me, and did. You gave her a cover and diplomatic clearance. Where did
she go? What arrangements did you make?"
"How did you learn this?"
"Don't make me pay the price, I owe him. Instead, let me send him to you.
Don't tu
rn him in; use him yourself. You won't regret it, but I need the
guarantee."
"Fair enough. Talent should be shared, and I respect the sender. I remember
Bonn."
268 RoBERT LuDLum
'Where did she go?"
"Outside of a few remote islands in the Paciflc, the safest place in the
world for her now. The United States."
Havelock stared in astonishment at the old woman. "How did you figure
that?"
"I went back over the restricted cables from your State Department looking
for any mention of Jenna Karas. Indeed, it was there. A single insertion
dated January tenth, detailing briefly the events at the Costa Brava. She
was described as an infiltrator caught in a reverse trap where she had lost
her life, her death conflnned by two separate sightings and forensic
examination of bloodstained clothing. The Me was closed to the satisfaction
of Consular Operations."
"The rotes have it," said Michael. "Aye, aye, sir. Next case, please."
"The implausibility was glaring, of course. Sigbtings can be erroneous, but
a forensic laboratory has to work with materials. Yet they couldn't have,
not with any legitimacy. Not only was Jenna Karas very much alive and
sitting in my office, but she had never gone to that beach on the Costa
Brava. The forensic confirmation was a lie, and someone bad to know it,
someone who wanted the lie accepted as the truth." Broussac paused. "I
assumed it was you. Termination carried out, execution as scheduled. If you
had been bought by the Soviets, what better proof could they have than from
the Department of State? If you had been carrying out Washington~s
instructions, you could not allow them to think you had failed."
"In light of what she told you, I can understand."
"But I wasn~t satisfied; the acceptance was too simple, so I looked
further. I went to the data-processing computers and placed her name in the
security scanner relevant to the past three months. . . . It was
extraordinary. She appeared no less than twelve times, but never on State
Department communiqu6s. They were all on cables from the Central Intelli-
gence Agency, and couched in very odd language. It was always the same,
cable after cable: the U.S. government had an alert out for a woman
matching her description who might be using the name of Karas-but it was