Robert Ludlum - The Parcifal Mosaic.txt

by The Parcifal Mosaic [lit]

  be sent to Moscow and Peking.

  And chemicals could not be used to force Zelienski to reveal the number

  that he was calling; there was too great a risk with a man of his age. One

  cubic centimeter of excess dosage and his heart could blow apart, and the

  number would be lost with the internal explosion. There were only words.

  What were the words one found for a man who would save the world with a

  blueprint for its annihilation? There was no reason in such a mind, nothing

  but its own distorted vision.

  The small house came into view above them on the right, It was hardly

  larger than a cabin, square in design and made of heavy stone. A sloping

  dirt driveway ended in a carport, where a nondescript automobile stood

  motionless, protected from the downpour. A single light shone through a bay

  window, which was oddly out of place in the small dwelling.

  Havelock switched off the headlights and turned to jenna. "It all began

  here," be said. "In the mind of the man up there. All of it. From the Costa

  Brava to Poole's Island, from Col de Moulinets to Sterile Five; it started

  here."

  "Can we end it here, Mikhail?"

  "Lees try. Let's go."

  They got out of the car and walked through the rain up the wet, soft mud of

  the driveway, rivulets of water racing down around their feet. They reached

  the carport; there was a door centered under the attached roof with a

  concrete step below. Havelock walked to the door; he looked briefly at

  jenna and then knocked.

  Moments later the door opened, and a slight, stooped old man with only a

  few strands of hair and a small white beard peppered with gray stood in the

  open space. As he stared at Havelock his eyes grew wide and his mouth

  parted, lips trembling.

  "Mikhdl," he whispered.

  "Hello, Leon. I bring you Anton's affection."

  The blond man bad seen the sign. The only part meaningful to him were the

  words Dead End. It was all be bad to know. With his headlights still

  extinguished, he maneuvered the brown sedan several hundred feet down the

  smooth wet road and stopped on the far right, motor idling. He turned the

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  headlights back on and reached under his coat to remove a large automatic

  with a silencer attached. He understood Mr. No-Name's instructions; they

  were in sequence. The Lincoln would be along any moment now.

  There it wasl Two hundred yards away at the mouth of the road that branched

  off the highway. The blond man released the brake and began.coasting,

  spinning the wheel back and forth, weaving-the unmistakable sign of a

  drunken, reckless driver. Cautiously the limousine slowed down, pulling as

  far to the right as possible. The blond man accelerated, and the weaving

  became more violent as the Lincoln's born roared through the torrents of

  rain. When he was within thirty feet, the blond man suddenly pressed the

  accelerator to the floor and swung to the right before making a sharp turn

  to the left.

  The impact came, the sedan's grille ramming the left rear door of the

  Lincoln. The sedan skidded and crashed into the entire side of the other

  car, pinning the driver's door.

  "Goddamn you sons of bitchesl" screamed the blond man through the open

  window, slurring his words, his bead swayfng back and forth. "Holy Christ,

  I'm bleedingl My whole stomach's bleedingl"

  The two men lurched out of the limousine from the other side. As they came

  running around the bood in the blinding glare of the headlights the blond

  man leaned out the window and fired twice. Accurately.

  "Do I call you Leon or Alexei?"

  "I can't believe youl" cried the old Russian, sitting in front of the fire,

  his eyes rheumy and b1hiking, riveted on Havelock. "It was degenerative,

  irreversible. There was no hope."

  17here are very few minds, very few wills like Anton~s. Whether he'll ever

  regain his full capacities no one can tell, but be~s come back a long way.

  Drugs helped, electrotherapy as well; he's cognizant now. And appalled at

  what be did." Havelock sat down in the straight-backed chair opposite

  Zelienski-Kalyazin. jenna remained standing by the door that led to the

  small kitchen.

  "It's never happenedl"

  "There's never been a man like Matthias, either. He asked for me; they sent

  me to PooWs Island and he told me everything. Only me."

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  'Poole's Island?"

  'Ies where he's being treated. Is it Leon or Alexei, old friend?"

  Kalyazin shook his bead. "Not Leon, it's never been Leon. Always Alexei."

  "You had good years as Leon Zelienski."

  "Enforced sanctuary, Mikhail. I am a Russian, nothing else. Sanctuary."

  Havelock and jenna exchanged glances, her eyes telling him that she

  approved-approved with enormous admixation-tbe course he bad suddenly

  chosen.

  "You came over to us ... Alexei."

  "I did not come over to you. I fled others. Men who would corrupt the soul

  of my homeland, who went beyond the bounds of our convictions, who killed

  needlessly, wantonly, seeking only power for its own sake. I believe in our

  system, Mikhail, not yours. But these men did not; they would have changed

  words into weapons and then no one would have been proven right. We'd all

  be gone."

  "Jackals," said Havelock, repeating the word be bad beard only hours ago,

  "fanatics who in their beads marebed with the Third Reich. Who didn't

  believe time was on your side, only bombs."

  "That will suffice."

  "The Voennaya."

  Kalyazin's head snapped up. "I never told Matthias tbatl"

  "I never told him, either. I've been in the field for sixteen years. Do you

  think I don't know the VKR?"

  Mey do not speak for Russia, not our Russial ... Anton and I would argue

  until the early hours of the morning. He couldn't understand; be came from

  a background of brilliance and respectability, money and a full table. Over

  here none of you will ever understand, except the black people, perhaps.

  We bad nothing and were told to expect nothing, not in this world. Books,

  schools, simple reading-these were not for us, the millions of us. We were

  placed on this earth as the earth's cattle, worked and disposed of by our

  'bet. ters'-decreed by God.... My grandfather was banged by a Voroshin

  prince for stealing game. Stealing gamel ... All that was ebanged-by the

  millions of us, led by prophets who had no use for a God who decreed human

  cattle." An odd smile appeared on KalyazWs thin white lips. "They call us

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  atheistic Communists. What would they have us be? We knew what it was like

  under the Holy Churchl A God who threatens enternal fires if one rises up

  against a living hen is no God for nine-tenths of mankind. He can and should

  be replaced, dismissed for incompetence and unwarranted partiality."

  "That argument is hardly restricted to prerevolutionary Russia," said

  Michael.

  "Certainly not, but it's symptomatic . . . and we were therel It's why

  you'll lose one day. Not in this decade or the next-perhaps not for many,

  many years, but youll lose. Too many
tables are bare, too many stomachs

  swollen, and you care too little."

  "If that proves to be true, then we deserve to lose. I don't think it is."

  Havelock leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and looked into the old

  Russian7s eyes. "Are you telling me you were given sanctuary but you gave

  nothing in return?"

  "Not of my country's secrets, nor did Anton ever ask me a second time. I

  think be considered the work I did-the work you did before you resigned-to

  be in the main quite pointless. Our decisions counted for very little; our

  accomplishments were not important at the summits. I did, however, give you

  a gift that served us both, served the world as well. I gave you Anthony

  Matthias. I saved him from the Cuban trap; it would have driven him from

  office. I did so because I believed in him, and not in the madmen who

  temporarily had far too much control of my government."

  "Yes, he told me. He would have been destroyed, his influence finished....

  It's on that basis-your belief in bim-that he asked me to come and see you.

  Ies got to stop, Leon-excuse me-Alexei. He knows why you did what you did,

  but ies got to stop."

  Kalyazin's gaze strayed to Jenna. "Where is the hatred fil your eyes, young

  lady? Surely, it must be there."

  "I won~t lie to you, ies close to my thoughts. Im trying to understand."

  "It had to be done; there was no other way. Anton had to be rid of the

  specter of Mikhail. He bad to know be was far away from the government,

  with other interests, other pursuits. He was so afraid his ... his son ...

  would learn of his work and come to stop him." Kalyazin turned to Havelock.

  "He couldn't get you out of his mind."

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  "He approved of what you did?" asked Michael.

  "He looked away, I think, a part of him revolted by himself, another part

  crying to survive. He was failing rapidly by then, his sanity pleading to

  be left intact whatever the cost. Miss Karas became the price."

  "He never asked you how you did it? How you reached men in Moscow to

  provide what you needed?"

  "Never. That, too, was part of the price. Remember, the world you and I

  lived in was very unimportant to him. Then, of course, everything became

  chaos .

  "Out of control?" suggested jenna.

  'Yes, young lady. The things we heard were so unbelievable, so horrible. A

  woman killed on a beach. . ."

  "What did you expect?" asked Havelock, controlling himself and not finding

  it easy. Two . . . three demented old men.

  !Not that. We weren't killers. Anton bad given orders that she was to be

  sent back to Prague and watched, her contacts observed, and eventually her

  innocence was to be established."

  'Ilose orders were intercepted, changed."

  "By then he could do nothing. You bad disappeared and he finally went

  completely, totally mad."

  "Disappeared? I disappeared?"

  "That's what be was told. And when they told him be collapsed, his mind

  went. He thought he'd killed you, too. It was the final pressure he could

  not withstand."

  "How do you know this?" pressed Michael.

  Kalyazin balked, his rheumy eyes blinking. "There was someone else. He bad

  sources, a doctor. He found out."

  "Raymond Alexander," said Havelock.

  "Anton told you, then?"

  "Boswell."

  "Yes, our Boswell."

  'You mentioned him when I called you from Europe."

  "I was frightened. I thought you might speak to someone who had seen him at

  Anton's house; be was there so often. I wanted to give you a perfectly

  acceptable reason for his visits, to keep you away from him."

  "Because Alexander the Great has become Alexander the Diseased. You've been

  away, you don't know. He rarely

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  writes anymore. He drinks all day and most of the night; he can't stand the

  strain. Fortunately, for his public, there's the death of his wife to blame

  it on."

  "Matthias told me you had a wife," said Michael, his ear picking up

  something in Kalyazin's voice. "In California. She died and he persuaded

  you to come here to the Shenandoah."

  I had a wife, Mikhail. In Moscow. And she was killed by the soldiers of

  Stalin. A man I helped destroy, a man who came from the Voennaya."

  I'm sorry.

  A brief rattling somewhere in the small house was louder than the pounding

  rain outside. jerma looked at Havelock.

  "Ies nothing," said Kalyazin. "There's a piece of wood, a wedge, I place in

  that old door on windy nights. The sight of you made me forget." The old

  man leaned back in his chair and brought his thin, veined hands to his

  chin. "You must.be very clear with me, Mikhail, and you must give me time

  to think. It's why I did not answer you a few moments ago."

  "About Anton?"

  "Yes. Does he really know why I did what I did? Why I took him through

  those terrible nights? Auto and external suggestion, swelling him up until

  he performed like the genius be was, debating with men who weren't there.

  Does he reaUy understand?"

  "Yes, he does,", replied Havelock, feeling a thousand pounds on the back of

  his neck. He was so close, but a wrong response would send this Parsifal

  back into self-imposed, unbreakable silence. Alexander was right, after

  all; Kalyazin bad a Christ complex. Beneath the old Russian's mild speech

  was a commitment forged in steel. He knew he was right. "No single man,"

  said Michael, "should be given such power and the strains of that power

  ever again. He begs you, pleads with you on the strength of all the talks

  you and be bad before his illness, to give me those incredible agreements

  you both created and whatever copies exist. Let me burn them."

  "He understands, then, but is it enough? Do the others? Have they learned?"

  'Who?"

  "Tbe men who allocate such power, who permit the canonization of would-be

  saints only to find that their heroes

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  are only mortals, broken by swollen egos, and by the demands made on them."

  'They're terrified. What more do you want?"

  "I want them to know what they've done, how this world can be set on fire

  by a single brilliant mind caught in the vortex of unbearable pressures.

  The madness is contagious; it does not stop with a broken saint."

  "They understand. Above all, the one man most people consider the most

  powerful on earth, he understands. He told me they had created an emperor,

  a god, and they had no right to do either. They took him up too high; he

  was blinded."

  "And Icarus fell to the sea," said Kalyazin. "Berquist is a d6cent man,

  hard but decent. Hes also in an impossible job, but he handles it better

  than most."

  'There's no one Id rather see there now."

  "Irm inclined to agree."

  'You're killing him," said Havelock. "Let him go. Free him. The lesson~s

  been taught, and it won't be forgotten. Let him get back to that impossible

  job and do the best he can."

  Kalyazin looked at the glowing embers of the fire. OTWenty-seven pages,

  each document, each agreement. I typed them myself, using the
form employed

  by Bismarck in the treaties of Schleswig-Holstein. It so appealed to

  Anton.... I was never interested in the money, they know that, doet

  they?-

  "They know that. He knows it."

  "Only the lesson."

  'Yes."

  The old man turned back to Michael. "There are no copies except the one I

  sent to President Berquist in an envelope from the State Department, from

  Matthias's office, with the word RestWeed stamped across the front It was

  marked, of course, for his eyes only."

  Havelock tensed, recalling so clearly Raymond Alexandees statement that

  Kalyazin had "caged" him, that if a telephone call was not made, the

  documents would be sent to Moscow and Peking. The numbers added up to four,

  not two. "No other copies at all, Alexeir

  "None."

  "I would think," remarked Jenna unexpectedly, taking hesitant steps toward

  the frail old Russian, "that Raymond

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  Alexander, your Boswell, would have insisted on one. les the core of his

  writing."

  'Ies the core of his fear, young lady. I control him by telling him that if

  he divulges anything to anyone, copies will be sent to your enemies. That

  was never my intention-on the contrary, the furthest thought from my mind.

  It would bring about the very cataclysm I pray will be avoideI"

  "Pray, Alexei?"

  "Not to any god you know, Mikhail. Only to a collective conscience. Not to

  a Holy Church with a biased Almighty."

  "May I have the documents?"

  Kalyazin nodded. "Yes," he said, drawing out the word. "But not in the

  sense of possession. We will burn them together."

  Why?-

  'You know the reason; we were both In the same profession. The men who

  allow the Matthiases of this world to soar so high they're blinded by the

  sun, those men will never know. Did an old man he? I deceived them before.

  Am I deceiving.them again? Are there copies?"

  "Are there?"

  "No, but they won't know that." Kalyazin struggled out of the chair, he

  stood up and breathed deeply, planting his feet firnily on the floor. "Come

  with me, Mikhail. They're buried in the woods along the path to the Notch.

  I pass them every afternoon, seventy-three steps to a dogwood tree, the

  only one in Seneca's burial ground. I often wonder how it got there....