Robert Ludlum - The Parcifal Mosaic.txt
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other. It linked unseen men in Moscow with powerful men in the United States
government.
"Do you know him?" asked jenna, still staring out the window.
"Not personally. I've never met him. But you're right, he was
controversial, and most everyone knows him. The last I heard he was an
undersecretary of State with a low profile but a pretty high
reputation-buried but valuable, you could say. He told you he was with Cons
Op out of Madrid?"
"He said he was on special assignment with Consular Operations, an
emergency involving internal security."
"Me?"
'-fes. He showed me copies of documents found in a bank vault on the
Ramblas." jenna turned from the window. "Do you recall telling me you had
to go to the Ramblas on several occasions?"
"It was a drop for Lisbon, I also told you that. Never mind, it was
orchestrated."
"But you can understand. The Ramblas stayed in my mind."
"They made sure of it. What were the documents?"
"Instructions from Moscow that could only have been meant for you. There
were dates, itineraries; everything corresponded to where we'd been, where
we were going. And there were codes; if they weren't authentic, then I'd
never seen a Russian cipher."
"The same materials I was given," said Havelock, his anger surfacing.
TaE PARsrFAL MosAic381
"Yes, I knew it when you told me what they gave you in Madrid. Not all, of
course, but many of the same documents and much of the same information
they showed you they showed me. Even down to the radio in the hotel room."
"The maritime frequency? I thought you~d been careless; we never listened
to the radio."
"When I saw it, a great part of me died," said Jenna.
"When I found the key in your purse and it matched the one the evidence in
Madrid said you would have-a key to an airport locker-I couldn't stay in
the same room with you."
"That was it, wasn't it? The final confirmation for both of us. I had,
changed, I couldn't help it. And when you came back from Madrid, you were
different. It was as if you were being pulled violently in several
directions, but with only one true commitment, and it was not to me, not to
us. You bad sold yourself to the Soviets for reasons I couldn't understand.
. . . I even tried to rationalize; perhaps after thirty years there was
news of your father-stranger things have happened. Or you were going into
deep cover without me; a defector in the process of becoming a double
agent. I simply knew that the transition-wbatever it was-did not include
me." Jenna turned back to the window. She continued, her voice barely
audible, "Then Bradford reached me again; this time he was panicked, nearly
out of control. He said the word had just been intercepted-Moscow bad
ordered my execution. You were to lead me into a trap, and you were going
to do it that night."
"At the Costa Brava?"
'No, he never mentioned theCosta Brava. He said a man would call around six
o'clock while you were out, using a phrase or description I'd recognize as
coming only from you. He would say that you could not get to a telephone,
but I was to take the car and drive down the coast to Villanueva, that you
would meet me by the fountains in the plaza. But you wouldn~t, because rd
never get there. rd be taken on the road."
"I told you I was going to Villanueva," said Michael. "It was part of the
Cons Op strategy. With me supposedly twenty miles south on business, you
had time to get up to the Montebello beach on the Costa Brava. It was the
final proof against you. I was to witness it-1 demanded that, hoping to
Christ you'd never show up."
M ROBERT LUDLUM
"It all fit, it was made to fitl" cried jenna. "Bradford said if that call
came, I was to run. Another American would be in the lobby with him,
watching for the KCB. Theyd take me to the consulate."
"But you didn't leave with them. The woman I saw die wasn't you."
"I couldn't. I suddenly couldn't trust anyone.... Do you remember the
incident that night at the caf6 in the Paseo Isabel just before you went to
Madrid?"
"The drunk," said Havelock, remembering all too well. "He bumped into
you-fell into you, actually-then insisted on shaking your hand and kissing
it. He was all over you."
"We laughed about it. You more than V
"I didn't a couple of days later. I was convinced that was when you were
given the key to the airport locker."
"Which I never knew about."
"And which I found in your purse because Bradford put it there while he was
in the hotel room and I was in Madrid. I assume you excused yourself for a
moment or two."
"I was in shock, I was ill. I'm sure I did."
"It explains the radio, the maritime frequency.... What about the drunk?"
"He was the other American in the lobby of the hotel. Why was he there? Who
tws be? I went back up as fast as I could.-
"He didn't see youP"
"No, I used the staircase. His face frightened me, I can!t tell you why.
Perhaps because he had pretended to be someone else before, someone so
different, I don't know. I do know his eyes disturbed me; they were angry,
but they did not look around. He wa&Wt watching the lobby for the KGB; he
only kept glancing at his watch. By then I was in a panic myself-confused,
and hurt more than I'd ever been hurt in my life. You were going to let me
die, and suddenly I oouldift trust them."
'You went back to the room?"
"cod, no, rd have been comered. I went up to the floor, stayed in the
stairwell, and tried to think things through. I thought perhaps I was being
hysterical, too frightened to act reasonably. Why didn't I trust the
Americans? I'd about made up my mind to go back down when I heard noises
THE PAMIFAL MOUIC 383
from the corridor inside. I opened the door a bit . . . and knew that I was
right to do what I did."
"They came after you?"
"The elevator. Bradford knocked on the door several times, and while he was
knocking, the other man-the drunk from the caf6-took out a gun. When there
was no answer, they waited until they were sure there was no one in the
hallway. Then, with one kick, the man with the gun broke down the door and
rushed inside. It was not the action of men who'd come to save someone. I
ran."
Havelock, watching her, tried to think. There were so many ambiguities . .
. ambiguity. Where were the outlines of the man who had used the code
Ambiguity?
"How did they get your suitcase?" he asked.
"As you described it, it was an old one of mine. The last I recall I simply
left it in the basement of the flat I leased in Prague. You may have
carried it down, in fact."
"The KGB would find it."
"The KGB?"
"Someone in the KGB."
"Yes, you said that, didn't you? ... There has to be someone.
"What was the phrase or description the man gave you over the phone? The
words you were to think came from me.
"Again Prague. He said there was 'a cobblestone courtyard in the center of
the city."'
"Vefoind mistnost," said Michael, nodding. "Prague's Soviet police. They'd
know about that. In a report I sent to Washington I described how you got
out of that place, how great you were. And how I damn near died watching
you from a window three stories above."
"Thank you for the commendation."
"We were putting all our points together, remember? We were going to break
out of our movable prison."
"And you were going to teach."
"History."
"And we were going to have children-2'
"And send them off to school-"
"And love them and scold them."
"And go to hockey-ball games."
"You said there were no such things---"
384 ROBLPRT Lumum
"I love you. .
"Mikhail?"
The first steps were tentative, but the pavane was suddenly finished. They
ran to each other, and held each other, pushing time away, and hurt, and a
thousand moments of anguish. Her tears came, washing away the final
barricades mounted by liars and men who served the liars. Their arms grew
stronger around each other, the straining of their bodies an exertion each
understood; their lips met, swollen, probing, searching for the release
they held for each other. They were trapped as never before in their
movable prison-they understood that, too-but for the moment they were also
free.
The dream had come fully to life, the reality no longer fragfle. She was
beside him, her face touching his shoulder, her lips parted, the breath of
her deep, steady breathing warming his skin. As so often in the past,
strands of her hair fen across his chest, somehow a reminder that even in
sleep she was a part of him. He turned carefully, so as not to waken her,
and looked down at her. The dark shadows under her eyes were still there,
but they were fading as a hint of color returned to her pale flesh. It would
take days, perhaps weeks, for the fear in her eyes to disappear. Yet in
spite of it, her strength was there; it had carried her through unbearable
tensions.
She moved, stretching, and her face was bathed in the sunlight that
streamed through tbe.wfndows. As he watched her he thought of what she bad
been through, what resources she must have had to summon in order to
survive. Where had she been? Who were the people who had helped her, hurt
her? There were so many questions, so many things he wanted to know. A part
of him was a callow adolescent, jealous of the images he did not wish to
imagine, while another part of him was a survivor who knew only too well
the prices one had to pay to remain alive in their disorderly, so fre-
quently violent world. The answers would come with time, revealed slowly or
in eruptions of memory or resentment, but they would not be provoked by
him. The healing process could not be forced; it would be too easy for
Jenna to sink back and relive the terrors and, by reliving them, prolong
them.
She moved again, her face returning to him, her breath
THE PARSWAL MOSAJC385
warm. And then the absurdity of his thoughts struck him. Where did be think
he was . . . they were? What did he think would be permitted them? How could
he dare to think in terms of any time at all?
Jacob Handelman was dead, his killer as good as identified-certainly known
by now to the liars in Washington. The manhunt would be given
respectability; he could see the story in the newspapers: a beloved scholar
brutally slaughtered by a deranged former foreign service officer wanted by
his government for all manner of crimes. Who would possibly believe the
truth? That a kindly old Jew who had suffered the horrors of the camps was
in reality a strutting man-monster who had ordered up the guns of Lidice?
Insanel
Broussac would turn; anyone he might have counted on would not touch him
now, touch them now. There was no time for healing, they needed every hour;
the swiftness of their strikes-his strikes-was essential . He looked at his
watch, it was two-forty-five, the day three-quarters gone. There were
strategies to consider-liars to reach at night.
Yet there had to be something. For them, only themselves; to ease the ache,
erase the vestiges of fragility. If there was not, there was nothing.
He did what he had dreamt of, waking up in sweat whenever the dream had
recurred, knowing it could never be. It could be now. He whispered her
name, calling out to her across the chasms of sleep.
And as if the moments away from each other had never been, her hand reached
for his. She awoke, and her eyes roamed his face; then without speaking,
she raised the covers and came to him. She pressed her naked body against
his, her arms enveloping him, her lips against his.
They were silent as their excitement grew; only the throated cries of need
and anxiety were heard in the room. The need was each for the other, and
the anxiety was not to be feared.
They made love twice more, but the third time was more successful in the
attempt than in the completion. The rays of the sun no longer streaked
through the window; instead there was an orange glow that was the
reflection of a country sundown. They sat up in bed, Michael lighting her
cigarette,
386 ROBERT LUDLUM,
both laughing softly at their misguided energies, their temporary
exhaustion.
Oy F
ou re going to throw me out for a hot-blooded stag from Ankara."
. You have nothing at all to apologize for, my darling ... my Mikhail.
Besides, I really don~t like their coffee."
"I'm relieved."
"You're a love," she said, touching the bandage on his shoulder.
"I'm in love. There's so much to make up for."
"Both of us, not you alone. You must not think that way. I accepted the
Les, just as you did. Incredible fies, incredibly presented. And we don't
know why."
"But we know the purpose, which gives us part of the why. To get me out but
keep me under control, under a microscope."
'With my defection, my death? There are other ways of terminating a man you
no longer want."
"Killing him?" said Havelock, nodding; then he paused and shook his head.
"It's one way, yes. But then there's no way to control whatever damaging
evidence he may have left behind. The possibility that such a man has left
that information often keeps him alive."
"But they want to kill you now. Yoiire 'beyond salvage.""
'Someone changed his mind."
"This person called Ambiguity," said Jenna.
"Yes. Whatever I know-or they think I know-has been supplanted by a larger
threat much more dangerous to them. Again, me. What I found, what I
learned."
"I don't understand."
"You," said Havelock. "The Costa Brava. It has to be buried."
"The Soviet connection?"
"I don't know. Who was the woman on the beach? What did she think she was
doing there? Why wasn't it you-thank Christ it wasn't-but why wasn~t it?
Where were they taking you?"
:'To my grave, I think."
'If that was the case, why weren't you sent to t
hat beach? Why weren't you
killed there?"
"Perhaps they felt I wouldn't go. I didn't leave the hotel with them."
THE PArtsmAL MosAic387
"They couldn't have known that then. They thought they bad you-frightened,
in shock, wanting protection. The point is, they never mentioned the Costa
Brava; they didn~t even try to prime you."
"I would have driven there that nigbt-all you bad to do was call me. I
would have come. They could have bad their execution; you would have seen
what they wanted you to 'see."
"It doesn't make sense." Michael struck a match and lit a cigarette for
himself. "And that's the basic inconsistency, because whoever put Costa
Brava together was a hell of a techniciaft, an expert in black operations.
It was brilliantly structured, down to split-second timing.... It doesn't
make sensel"
jenna broke the long silence. "Mikhail," she said quietly, sitting forward,
her eyes clouded, focused inward. "Two operations," she whispered.
"What?"
"Suppose there were two operations, not one?" She turned to him, her eyes
alive now. "The first set in motion in Madrid-the evidence against me-then
carried forward to Barcelona-tbe evidence against you."
"Still one blanket," said Havelock.
"But then it was torn," insisted jenna. "It became two.*
"HowF'
"The original operation is intercepted," she said. "By someone not part of
it."
"Then altered," he said, beginning to understand. "The cloth is the same
but the sticbes are twisted, ending up being something else. A different
blanket."
"Still, for what purposeF' she asked.
"Control," he answered. "Then you got away and the control was lost.
Broussac told me there's been a coded alert out for you ever since Costa
Brava."
"Very coded," agreed jenna, crushing out her cigarette. "Which could mean
whoever intercepted the operation and altered it might not have known that
I had gotten out of Barcelona alive."
"Until I saw you and let everyone know-everyone who counted. At which point
we both bad to die; one by the black-operations book-that was me. The other
out of
388 ROBERT LuDLum
strategy-no one in sanction aware-a bomb blowing up a car outside of Col des
Moulinets. You. Everything buried."