Come, lees get it over with. We Will dig in the rain and get terribly wet
and return with the weapons of Armageddon. Perhaps Miss Karas might make us
some tea. Also, glasses of vodka . . . with buffalo grass, always buffalo
grass. Then we shall bum the evidence and rekindle the fire."
The door to the kitchen crashed open like a sudden explosion of thunder,
and a tall man with a fringe of gray around his bald bead stood there, a
gun in his hand.
"They lie to you, Alexei. They always lie and you never know it. Don't
move, Havelockl" Arthur Pierce reached out gripped jenna~s elbow and yanked
her to him, lashing his left arm around her neck, the automatic pressed
against her head. "I'm going to count to flve," he said to Michael. "By
which time you will have removed your weapon with two
THE PAmFAL MosAic 679
fingers and thrown it on the floor, or you will see this woman~s skull blown
into the wall. One, two, three-2'
Havelock unbuttoned his coat, spreading it open, and, using two fingers as
pincers, took out the Llama from its bolster. He dropped it on the floor.
"Eck it overl" yelled the traveler.
Michael did so. "I don't know how you got here, but you cadt get out," he
said quietly.
"Really?" Pierce released Jenna, shoving her toward the astonished old
Russian. "Then I should tell you that your Abraham was cut down by an
ungrateful Ishmael. You can't get out."
'Others know where we are."
"I doubt that. There'd be a hidden army out there on that road if they did.
Oh, no, you went in solo-"
'YouP" cried Kalyazinj shaking, then nodding his trembling head. -It is
youl"
"Glad you're with us, Alexei. You're slowing down in your old age. You
don't bear lies when you're told them."
"What lies? How did you find me?"
"By following a persistent man. Lees talk about the lie&"
"What lies?-
"Matthias recovering. That!s the biggest lie of all. TheTe's a metal case
in my car the contents of which will make remarkable reading all over the
world. it shows Anthony Matthias for what he is. A screaming, hollow shell,
a maniac, violent and paranoid, who has no working concept of reality. He
builds delusions out of images, fantasies out of abstractions-he can be
programmed like a deranged robot, reenactIng his crimes and offenses. He's
insane and getting worse."
'That can't be truel" Kalyazin looked at Michael. "The things he told me.
only Anton would know them, recall them."
"Another lie. Your convincing friend failed to mention that he's just
driven down from the village of Fox Hollow, the residence and dateline of
a well-known commentator. One Raymond Alexander- What did Miss Karas just
call him? Your Boswell, I thinIL IT visit him. He can add to our collec-
tion."
"Mikha& Why? Why did you say these things? Why did you lie to me?"
'I had to. I was afraid you woulddt listen to me. And be- 680 RoBERT LUDLUM
cause I believe that the Anton we both knew once would have wanted me to."
"Still another he," said Pierce, lowering himself cautiously, his gun
extended as he picked up the Llama from the floor and shoved it into his
belt. "All they want are those papers so business can go on as usual. So
their nuclear committees can go on designing new ways to blow the godless
out of existence. That's what they call us, Alexel. Godless. Perhaps theyll
make Commander Decker the next Secretary of State. His type is very much in
vogue; ambitious zealots are the order of the day."
"That couldn't happen and you know it, Traveler."
Pierce looked at Havelock, studying him. "Yes, a traveler. How did you do
itP How did you find me?"
"Youll never know that. Or how deeply we've penetrated the paminyatchik
operation. That's right. Penetrated."
The traveler stared at Michael. "I doet believe you."
"That doesn't matter."
"It won't make any difference. We'll have the documents. All the options
will be ours, nothing left to you. Nothing. Except burning cities if you
make a wrong turn, a wrong judgment. The world won't tolerate you any
longer." Pierce stabbed the air,%dth his gun. "Lees go, all of you. You're
going to dig them up for me, Havelock. 'Seventy-three steps to a dogwood
tree.'"
"There are a dozen paths up to the Notch," said Michael quickly. "You don't
know which one."
"Alexel will show me. When it comes down to it, he chooses us, not you.
Never you. Not business as usual, conducted by liars. Hell tell me."
"Don't do it, Kalyazin."
'You lied to me, Mikhail. If there must be ultimate weapons-even on
paper-they can't be yours."
"I told you why I lied, but there's a flnal reason. Him. You come over to
us not because you believed in us but because you couldn't believe in them.
They've come back. He was the man at the Costa Brava-he killed at the Costa
Brava."
"I carried out what you only pretendedl You bad the stomaeb only for
pretense. It bad to be done, not fakedl"
"No, it didn't. But where there's a choice, you MI. You killed the man who
set up the operation, an operation where no one's death was called for."
THE PARsrFAL MosAic681
*1 did exactly what you would have done but with far more finesse and
inventiveness. His death bad to be credible, accepted for what it appeared
to be. MacKenzie was the only one who could retrace the events that night,
who knew his personnel."
"Also killedl"
"Inevitable."
"And Bradford? Inevitable, toor
"Of course. He'd found me."
'You see the pattem, Alexei?" shouted Havelock, his eyes on Pierce. "Kill,
kill, killf . . . Do you remember Rostov, Alexei?"
'Yes, I remember him."
'He was my enemy, but be was a decent man. They killed him, too. Only hours
ago. Theyve come back and they're marching.
"WhoP" asked the old Russian haltingly, memories sffi-red.
"The Voennaya. The maniacs of the VKRI"
"Not maniacs," said Pierce firmly, quietly. "Dedicated men who understand
the nature of your hatred, your mendacity. Men who will not compromise the
principles of the Soviet Union only to watch you spread your sanctimonious
lies, turning the world against us. . . . Our time has come, Alexei. Youll
be with us."
Kalyazin blinked, his watery eyes staring at Arthur Pierce. Slowly he shook
his head and whispered, "No ... no, I will never be a part of you."
"What?"
"You do not speak for Russia," said the old man, his voice growing until it
filled the room. "You kill too easily-you killed someone very dear to me.
Your words are measured and there's truth in what you say, but not in what
you do or the tLwy you do itl You are animalsi" Without the slightest
warning, Kalyazin lunged at Pierce, hurling his frail body at the traveler,
his gaunt hands gripping the weapon. "Mikhail, runi Run, Mikbaill" There
was a muffled roar as the gun exploded into the old man's stomach. Still be
would not let go. "Run... I" The whisper was a final command.
Havelock spun around and p
ropelled jenna toward the open kitchen door. He
turned, prepared to throw himself on
682 ROBERT LuDLum
Pierce, but stopped, holding himself in check for what he saw caused him to
make an instantaneous decision. The dy~ ing Kalyazin held on fiercely, but
the bloody gun was coming free; in an instant it would be aimed at him~
fired into his head.
He lurched for the kitchen door and slammed it shut as he raced inside,
colliding with jenna. She held two kitchen knives in her hand; Michael
grabbed the shorter blade, and they ran for the outside door.
"The woodsl" he shouted, in the carport. "Kalyazin canI hold him. Hurry upI
You go to the right, 1711 head leftl" he cried as they ran across the grass
in the downpour. "We'll converge a couple of hundred yards insidel"
"Where is the path? Which is it?"
"I don~t knowl"
"HeIl be looking for itl"
"I know."
Five gunshots exploded, but not from a single gun; there were two. They
separated, Michael zigzagging toward the darkness of the trees on his left,
spinning quickly to look behind him. Three men. Pierce was shouting orders
to two others who had raced up the muddy drive. They ran from the carport,
fanning out, flashlights on, weapons ready.
He reached the edge of the tall grass and plunged into the protective cover
of the woods; he removed his coat and scrambled to his right, diving for
the thickest underbrush. He crawled forward, his eyes on the field, on the
beam of the middle flashlight, and worked his way back toward the edge. His
body was soaked, mud and wet foliage were everywhere. The border of the
grass was his battle line; the downpour was loud enough to drown out the
pound of quick movements. The man would come swiftly, then be stopped both
by the overgrowth and by his own caution.
As the beam approached, Havelock inched toward the last bank of tangled
bush, he waited, crouching. The man slowed down, sweeping the area with
light. Then he entered the woods quickly, the beam moving up and down as he
used his arm to open a path through the thick brush.
Now. Michael rolled out on the grass and rushed ahead, he was directly
behind the traveler. He sprang, the knife
THE PARsiFAL MosAicM
gripped in his band. As he plunged the blade into the killer's back, his
left hand yanked back the man's neck and clamped his mouth. Both fell into
mud and brush, and Michael worked the blade brutally until there was no
movement beneath him. He yanked the head up as he ripped the gun from the
lifeless hand; it was not Arthur Pierce. He lunged for the flashlight and
snapped it off.
jenna raced into the dark, narrow alleyway cut through the trees and the
foliage. Was this it? she wondered. Was it the path to Seneca's Notch:
"seventy-three steps to a dogwood tree'? If it was, it was her
responsibility. No one could be allowed to pass through, and the surest way
of preventing it was as distasteful as it was frightening.
Yet she bad done it before, always terrffied by the prospect, sickened with
the results, but there was no time to think of such things. She looked
behind her; the flashlight beam was veering to its left, toward the pathl
She let out a short cry loud enough to be heard through the pounding rain.
The flashlight halted, and was briefly immobile before shifting, now
focusing directly on the entrance of the path. The man rushed into it.
Jenna lurched into the tangled branches on the border and crouched, holding
the long blade of the kitchen knife rigid, diagonally up from her knees.
The oscillating beam of the flashlight drew nearer, the figure behind it
running hard, slipping on the mud, his concentration up ahead on the path,
a killer racing after the remembered cry of an unarmed woman.
Ten feet, five ... nowl
jenna lunged up through the brush with her eyes and blade centered on the
body directly behind the light. The contact was sickening: a rush of blood
erupted as the long blade sank into the flesh, impaling the body that had
raced into it.
The man screamed, the terrible scream filling the woods and for a long
moment drowning out the downpour.
jenna lay gasping for air beside the dead man, rubbing her blood-soaked
hand in the soft mud. She grabbed the flashlight and switched it off. Then
she rolled to the border of the path and vomited.
684 RoBERT LuDLum
Havelock heard the sudden scream, and closed his eyes-then opened them,
grateful beyond life itself to realize it was a man's scream. jenna had done
it; she had taken out the man whose orders were to kill her. And that man
was not Pierce. He knew it. He had seen the positions in the carport. Pierce
had been on the left, closest to the door, the angles consistent when the
chase had begun.
Arthur Pierce was somewhere between the middle ground and the road beyond
Kalyazin's house, an acre of forest drenched by the rain surging downward,
dripping every.where from the imperfect roof of the treetops.
Where was the last beam of light? It was not there---of course it was not
therel Light was a target and Pierce was no fool. They were two animals
now, two predators stalking each other in the waterlogged darkness. But one
had the advantage, and Michael knew it instinctively, felt it strongly: the
forests had been good to Mikhail Havli6ek; they were his friend and
sanctuary. He did not fear the webbed darkness, for it had saved him too
often, protected him from uniformed hunters who would shoot a child because
of his father.
He crawled swiftly through underbrush, eyes straining, ears alert, trying
to pick up sounds that were not part of the rain and the creaking weight of
drenched limbs above. He semicircled the area, noting among a thousand
other intuitively gathered bits of information that there were no paths, no
breaks in the forest leading to Seneca's Notch. Inside the house he had
said there were a dozen such paths to confuse Pierce, not knowing whether
there were any, never having been beyond Zelienski-Kalyazin's front door.
He swept the are again, closing it, snaking through the overgrowth; the
trunks of trees were his intermittent fortress walls-he used them like
parapets as he peered around them.
Movemend The sound of suction, not weight. A foot or a knee pressing into
and rising from the mud.
Light was a target ... light was a target.
He crawled out of the are, fifteen, twenty, thirty, forty feet beyond the
perimeter, knowing what he was looking for, feeling for-a branch. He found
it.
A sapling-strong, supple, no more than four feet high, its roots deep,
clawing the earth beneath.
Havelock reached into his bek and pulled out the flash- THE PAIISIFAL MOSAIC685
light he had taken from the dead traveler. He placed it on the ground and
removed his shirt, spreading it in front of him and moving the flashlight to
the center of the cloth.
Thirty seconds later the flashlight was securely tied and wrapped in the
shirt, the sleeves wound around it, with sufficient cloth remaining for the
&
nbsp; final attachment. He knelt next to the small tree and lashed the flashlight
laterally against the thin shaft of the trunk; he crisscrossed what
remained of the sleeves so it was held firmly in place. He pulled the trunk
back and let it go, testing it.
He snapped on the light and pulled the trunk back for the last time, then
raced into the woods to his right. He spun around a thick tree and waited,
watching the beam of light as it eerily swept back and forth over the
ground. He leveled the traveleis gun, steadying it against the bark.
His ears picked up the sound of suction again, footsteps coming through the
rain. Then the figure emerged, looming grotesquely through the webbed
branches.
Pierce crouched, trying to avoid the light, and fired his automatic; the
ear-shattering explosions echoed throughout the dripping forest.
"You lose," said Michael as he pulled the trigger and watched the killer of
Costa Brava reeling backwards, screaming. He fired again, and the man from
the Voennaya fell to the ground motionless, silent. Dead. "You didn't know
the woods," said Michael. "I learned them from people like you."
"Jennal lennal" be yelled, lurching through the trees toward the open grass.
"It's overl The field, the fieldl"
"Mikhail? Mikhaill"
He saw her walking slowly, unsteadily in the distance through the sheets of
the downpour. Seeing him, she quickened her pace and broke into a run. He,
too, raced over the wet grass, wanting-needing-the distance between them to
vanish.
They held each other; the world for a few brief moments was no part of
them. The cold rain on his bare skin was only cool water, warmed by her
embrace, her face against his face.
"Were there other paths?" she asked, breathless.
"None."
"Then I found it. Come, Mikhail. Hurryl"
680 RoBERT LuDLum
They stood in Kalyazin's house, where the old Russian's body was covered
with a blanket, his tortured face mercifully hidden. Havelock walked to the
telephone. "It!s time," he said, dialing.
"What's happened?" asked the President of the United States, his voice
tense. "rve been hying to reach you all nightl"
"It!s over," said Michael. "Parsifars dead. We've got the documents. I'll
write a report telling you what I think youIl have to know."
Robert Ludlum - The Parcifal Mosaic.txt Page 86