Robert Ludlum - The Parcifal Mosaic.txt

by The Parcifal Mosaic [lit]

  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."

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  *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."