Robert Ludlum - The Parcifal Mosaic.txt

by The Parcifal Mosaic [lit]

  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."