Robert Ludlum - The Parcifal Mosaic.txt
Page 81
disappeared into a wall of giant maples and oaks. The man gestured at the
fence, laughing and nodding his bead. The woman at first feigned surprise
and maidenly reluctance, then suddenly whipped her mount to the right and
raced ahead of her companion, high in the saddle as she approached the
fence. She soared over it, followed by the man only yards behind and to her
left; they rode swiftly toward the edge of the woods, where both reined in
their horses. The woman grimaced as she came to a stop.
"Damn!" she shouted. "I pulled the muscle in my calfl It's screamingl"
"Get off and walk around. Don't sit on it."
The woman dismounted as the man reached over for the reins of her borse.
His companion walked in circles, her limp pronounced, swearing under her
breath.
"Good God, where are we?" she asked, half sbouting.
"I think it's the Heffemans' place. How's the leg?"
"Murder, absolute murderl Chlistl"
"You can't ride on it."
"I can hardly walk on it, you damn fool."
"Temper, temper. Come on, let's find a phone." The man and woman started
through the edge of trees, the man leading both horses, threading them
around several thick trunks. 'Here," be said, reaching for a low branch on
a thick bush. "I can tie them up here and come back for them; they won't go
anywhere."
"Then you can help me. This really is excruciating."
The horses tied and grazing, the couple began to walk. Through the trees
they could see the outlines of the wide semicircular drive at the front
entrance of the large house. They also saw the figure of a man who seemed
to emerge out of nowhere. He was in a gabardine topcoat, with both bands in
his pockets. They met and the man in the topcoat spoke. "May I help you?
This is private property."
"I trust we aU have private pioperty, old man," replied the
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sportsman supporting the woman. "My wife pulled a muscle over our last jump.
She can't ride."
'What?"
"Horses, sport. Our horses are tied up back there. We were doing a little
pre-hunt work over the course before Saturday's meet, and I'm afraid we
came a cropper, as they say. Take us to a phone, please."
Well, I ... I . . ."
"This is the Heffernans' house, isn't it?" demanded the husband.
"Yes, but Mr. and Mrs. Heffernan are not here, sir. Our orders are to allow
no one inside."
11014 SM. exploded the wife. "How tacky can you be? My leg hurts, you assl
I need a ride back to the club."
"One of the men will be happy to drive you, ma'am."
"And my chauffeur can bloody well come and pick me upl Really, just who are
these Heffemans? Are they members, darling?"
"I don't think so, Buff. Look, the man has his orders, and tacky as they
are, it's not his fault. You go along and I'll take the horses back."
..,They'd better not try to become members," said the wife as the two men
helped her across the drive to an automobile.
The man walked back through the woods to the horses, untied them, and led
them across the field, where he lowered the rails and prodded them through
into the tall grass. He replaced the rails, mounted his hunter and, with
the woman's horse in tow, trotted south over the course of Saturday's
hunt-as he understood the course to be from his first and only study of the
charts as a guest of the club.
He reached under his saddle and pulled out a powerful hand-held radio; he
pressed a switch and raised the instrument to his lips.
"There are two cars," he said into the radio. "A black Lincoln, license
plate seven-four-zero, MRL; and a dark green Buick, license
one-three-seven, GMJ. The place is ringed with guards, and there are no
rear exit roads. The windows are thick; you'd need a cannon to blow through
them, and we were picked up by density infrareds."
"Got it!' was the reply, amplified over the tiny speaker. 'We~re mainly
interested in the vehicles.... By the way, I can see the Buick now."
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The man with the various saws clipped to and dangling from his wide leather
belt was high up in the tall pine tree bordering the road, his safety strap
around it and clamped to his harness. He shoved the hand-held radio into its
holster and adjusted the binoculars to his eyes, looking diagonally down
through the branches, focusing on the automobile coming out of the
tree-lined drive.
The view was clean, all angles covered. No cars could enter or leave the
premises of Sterile Five without being seeneven at night; the capabilities
of infrared applied to lenses as well as trip lights.
The man whistled; the door of the truck far below opened, and on its panel
were the words MCH TOP TREE SURGEONs. A second man stepped out and looked
up.
"Take off," said the man above, loud enough to be heard. "Relieve me in two
hours."
The driver of the truck headed north for a mile and a half to the first
intersection. There was a gas station on the right; the doors of its repair
shop were open, and an automobile was inside, off the ground on a hydraulic
lift, facing front. The driver reached for the switch and snapped his
headlights on and off. Instantly, within the garage's shop the headlights of
the car on the lift flashed on and off-the signal bad been acknowledged, the
vehicle was in position. The station's owner believed he was
cooperating-confidentially~with the narcotics division of the state police.
It was the least a citizen could do.
The driver swung to his right, then immediately to the left, making a
U-turn between the converging roads; he headed south. Three minutes later
he passed the pine tree that concealed his companion beyond the branches
near the top. Under different circumstances he might have touched his horn;
he couldn't now. There could be no sound, no sight that marked in any way
that area of the road. Instead, he aocelerated and in fifty seconds came to
another intersection, the first south of Sterile Five.
Diagonally across on the left was a small country inn, miniature antebellum
in design-a large dollhouse built to bring back memories of an old
plantation. In the back was a black asphalt parking lot, where perhaps a
dozen cars were lined
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up, like large brightly colored toys. Except one, the fourth from the end,
with a clear view of the intersection and swift access to the exit. Facing
front, it was layered with dirt, a poor relation in the company of its
shiny, expensive cousins.
Again the driver leaned forward and flicked his headlights on and off. The
dirty automobfle-with an engine more powerful than any other in the lot-did
the same. Another signal was acknowledged. Whatever emerged from Sterile
Five could be picked up in either direction.
Arthur Pierce studied his face in the mirror of the rim-down motel on the
outskirts of Falls Church, Virginia; he was satisfied with what he saw. The
fringe of gray circling his shaved head was in concert with the rin-dess
glasses and the shabby brown cardigan sweater
worn over the soiled white
shirt with the frayed collar. He was the image of the loser, whose minor
talents and lack of illusion kept him securely, if barely, above the poverty
level. Nothing was ventured because it was useless. Why bother? No one
stopped such men on the street, they walked too slowly; they were
inconsequential.
Pierce turned from the mirror and walked across the room to the road map
spread out under the light of a plastic lamp on the cheap, stained desk
against the wall. On the right, holding the map in place, was a gray metal
container with the emblem of the United States Navy stamped on the top, the
medical insignia below it, and a brass, built-in combination lock on the
side. In it was a document as lethal as any in history. The psychiatric
diagnosis of a statesman the world revered, a diagnosis labeling that man
as insane-as having been insane while functioning as the international
voice of one of the two most powerful nations on earth. And the nation that
permitted this intolerable condition to exist could no longer serve as the
leader of the cause it espoused. A madman had betrayed not only his own
government but the world-lying, deceiving, misleading, forging alliances
with enemies, scheming against supposed allies. No matter that he was
insane, it had happened. It was all there.
The steel container contained an incredible weapon, but for it to be used
with devastating effect it bad to reach the proper hands in Moscow. Not the
tired old compromisers, but the visionaries with the strength and the will
to move swiftly to bring the corrupt, incompetent. giant to its knees.
642 Ro,3iEmT LuDLum
The possibility that the Matthias file might fall into soft, wrinkled bands
in Moscow was insufferable; it would be bartered, negotiated, finally thrown
away by weak men frightened of the very people they controlled. No, thought
Arthur Pierce, this metal container belonged to the VKR. Only to the
Voennaya.
He could afford no risks, and several phone calls had convinced him that
there was risk in channeling it out with the few be could trust. As
expected, embassy and consulate personnel were under heavy surveillance;
all international flights were monitored, and hand and cargo luggage
X-rayed. Too much risk.
He would bring it out himself, along with the ultimate weapon, the terminal
weapon, documents that called for successive nuclear strikes against Soviet
Russia and the People's Republic of China-agreements signed by the great
American Secretary of State. They were nuclear fantasies conceived by an
insane genius, working with one of the most brilliant minds ever produced
by the Soviet Union. Fantasies so real that the tired old men in the
Kremlin would run for their dachas and their vodka, leaving decisions to
those who could cope, to the men of the Voermaya.
Where was the brilliant mind that had made it all possible? The man who had
turned on his homeland only to learn the truth-that he had been wrong. So
wrongl Where was Parsifal? Where was Alexei Kalyazin?
With these thoughts Pierce turned to the map again. The inept-and not so
inept-Havelock had mentioned the Shenandoah-that the man they called
Parsifal was somewhere in the Shenandoah area, by implication within a rea-
sonable distance of Matthias's country home. The implied reasonable
distance, however, was the variable quotient. The Shenandoah Valley was
more than a hundred miles long, over twenty miles wide, from the Allegheny
to the Blue Ridge Mountains. What might be considered reasonable? There was
no reasonable answer, so the solution was to be found in the opposite
direction. In the plodding mind of Michael Havelock-Mikhail Havli6ek, son
of VAclav, named for a Russian grandfather from Rovno-a man whose talents
lay in persistence and a degree of imagination, not brilliance. Havelock
would reduce the are, put in use a hundred computers to trace a single
telephone call made at a specific time
THE PARsiFAL MosAic643
to a speciflc place to a man he called a zealot. Havelock would do the work
and a paminyatchik would reap the benefits. IAeutenant Commander Decker
would be left alone, he was a key that might well unlock a door.
Pierce bent over the map, his index finger shifting from one line to
another. The are, the semicircle that blanketed the Shenandoah from Sterile
Five, was covered, with men and vehicles in position. From Harpers Ferry to
the Valley Pike, Highways 11 and 66, Routes 7, 50, 15, 17, 29, and 33, all
were manned, waiting for word that a specific car was approaching-at a
specific time heading for a specific place. That place was to be determined
and reported; nothing else was required of the men in those vehicles. They
were hirelings, not participants, their time paid for in money, not purpose
or destiny.
Arthur Pierce, born Nikolai Petrovich Malyekov in the village of
Ramenskoye, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, suddenly thought about
that destiny, and the years that had led to his own electrifying part in
it. He had never wavered, never forgotten who he was or why he had been
given the supreme opportunity to serve the ultimate cause, a cause so
meaningful and so necessary for a world where the relative few tyrannized
the many, where millions upon millions lived on the edge of despair or in
hopeless poverty so that the capihAist manipulators could laugh over global
balance sheets while their annies: burned pajama-clad children in faraway
lands. This was fact, not provocative propaganda. He had seen it all for
himself-from the burning villages in Southeast Asia to the corporate dining
rooms where offers of employment were accompanied by grins and winks and
promises of stock options that were the first steps toward wealth, to the
inner corridors of government power where hypocrites and incompetents
encouraged more hypocrisy and incompetence. God, be bated it alll Hated the
corruption and the greed and the sanctimonious liars who deceived the
masses to whom they were responsible, abusing the powers given them, lining
their pockets and the pockets of their own.... There was a better way.
There was commitment. There was the Voennaya.
He had been thirteen years old when be was told by the loving couple be
called Mother and Father. They explained while holding him and gazing into
his eyes to let him see
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their love. He was theirs' they said, but he was also not theirs. He had
been born to a chosen couple thousands of miles away who loved him so much
they gave him to the State, to a cause that would make a better world for
generations to come. And as his "mother' and "father" spoke, so many things
in Arthur Pierce's young memory began to fall into place. All the
discussions-not only with his "mother" and "father," but with the scores of
visitors who came so frequently to the farmbouse-discussions that told of
suffering and oppression and of a despotic form of government that would be
replaced by a government dedicated to the people --all the people.
He was to be a part of that change. Over the e
arly years certain other
visitors bad come and bad given him games to play, puzzles to work,
exercises to read-tests that graded his capabilities. And one day when be
was thirteen be was pronounced extraordinary; on that same day be was told
his real name. He was ready to join the cause.
It would not be easy, his "mother" and "father" bad said but he was to
remember when pressures seemed overwhe -Ing that they were there, always
there. And should anything happen to them, others would take their place to
help him, encourage him, guide him, knowing that still others were
watching. He was to be the b6st in all things; he was to be American-kind,
generous and, above all, seemingly fair; be was to use his gifts to rise as
far as be was capable of nising. But be was never to forget who and what he
was or the cause that gave him the gift of life and the opportunity to help
make the world better than it was.
Things after that auspicious day were not as diffIcult as his 'mother" and
"father" had predicted. Through his high school years and college, his
secret served to prod him-because it was his secret and he was
extraordinary. They were years of exhilaration: each new prize and award
was proof of his superiority. He found it easy to be liked; as though in a
never-ending popularity contest, the crown was always his. Yet there was
self-denial, too, and it served to remind him of his commitment. He had
many friends but no deep friendships, no relationships. Men liked him but
accepted his basic distance, ascribing it usually to his having to find
jobs to pay his waY through schooL Women he used only for sexual re-
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lease and formed no attachments whatsoever, generally meeting them miles
away from wherever he was living.
During his postgraduate studies at Michigan he was contacted by Moscow and
told his new life was about to begin. The meeting was not without
amusement, the contact a remiiihnent executive from a large conservative
corporation who had supposedly read the graduate student files and wanted
to meet one Arthur Pierce. But there was nothing amusing in his news; it
was deadly serious-and exhilarating.
He was to join the army, where certain opportunities would be found leading