The Parsifal Mosaic (43 page)

“Why?” asked the general.

“Because if we went back and examined every aspect of the operation we might find he was there.”

The President and the general reacted as though each had been told of an unexpected death; only Brooks remained impassive,
watching Bradford carefully, a first-rate mind acknowledging the presence of another.

“That’s a hell of a jump, son,” said Halyard.

“I can’t think of any other explanation,” said Bradford. “Havelock’s execution had been sanctioned, the sanction was understood even by those who respected his record. He’d turned; he was a ‘psycho,’ a killer, dangerous to every man in the field. But why was the woman at Col des Moulinets to be sent across the border? Why was the point made that she was a ‘needle,’ a plant? Why was her escape supposed to be a lesson to the Soviets, when all the while a bomb timed to explode minutes later would have blown her away beyond recognition?”

“To Maintain the illusion that she had died at Costa Brava,” said Brooks. “It she remained alive, she’d ask for asylum and tell her story; she’d have nothing to lose.”

“Forcing the events of that night on the beach to be reexamined,” the President said, completing the thought. “She had to be killed away from that bridge while still preserving the lie that she had died at Costa Brava.”

“And the person who made the call authorizing Havelock’s execution,” said Halyard, frowning, with uncertainty in his voice, “who used the Ambiguity code and put this Ricci and the two nitro men in Col des Moulinets by way of Rome … you say he was on the beach that night?”

“Everything points to it, yes, General.”

“For Christ’s sake,
why
?”

“Because he knows Jenna Karas is alive,” replied Brooks, still watching Bradford. “At least, he knows she wasn’t killed at Costa Brava. No one else does.”

“That’s speculation. It may have been kept quiet, but we’ve been looking for her for nearly four months.”

“Without ever acknowledging it
was
her,” explained the undersecretary, “without ever admitting she was alive. The alert was for a person, not a name. A woman whose expertise as a deep-cover agent could lead her to people she’d worked with previously under multiple identities. The emphasis was on physical appearance and languages.”

“What I can’t accept is your Jump.” Halyard shook his head, the gesture of a military strategist who sees a practical gap in a plan for a field maneuver. “MacKenzie put Costa Brava together in pieces, reporting only to you. The CIA in
Langley didn’t know about Madrid, and Barcelona was kept away from both. Under those conditions, how could someone penetrate what wasn’t there? Unless you figure MacKenzie sold you out or loused it up.”

“I don’t think either.” The undersecretary paused. “I think the man who took over the Ambiguity code was already involved with Parsifal months ago. He knew what to concentrate on and became alarmed when Havelock was ordered to Madrid under a Four Zero security.”

“Someone with maximum clearance right here in the State Department,” the ambassador broke in. “Someone with access to confidential memoranda.”

“Yes. He kept tabs on Havelock’s activities and saw that something was happening. He flew to Spain, picked him up in Madrid, and followed him back to Barcelona.
I
was there; so was MacKenzie. He almost certainly would have recognized me, and as I met with MacKenzie twice, it’s reasonable to assume we were seen together.”

“And presuming you were, it’s also reasonable to assume that Moscow had a file on MacKenzie thick enough to alarm Soviet intelligence.” Brooks leaned forward, once again locking his eyes with Bradford’s. “A photograph wired to the KGB, and the man we’re looking for, who saw you together in Barcelona, knew a black operation was in progress.”

“It could have happened that way, yes.”

“With a lot of conjecture on your part,” said Halyard.

“I don’t think the undersecretary of State is finished, Mal.” The ambassador nodded his head at the papers Bradford had just separated and was scanning. “I don’t believe he’d permit his imagination to wander into such exotic regions unless something triggered it. Am I right?”

“Substantially, yes.”

“How about just plain yes,” said the President.

“Yes,” said the man from State. “I suppose I could be prosecuted for what I did this afternoon, but I considered it essential. I had to get away from the phones and the interruptions; I had to reread some of this material and provoke whatever imagination I have. I went to the classified files of Cons Op, removed Havelock’s summary of Costa Brava under ‘Chemical Therapy’ and took it home. I’ve been studying it since three o’clock—and remembering MacKenzie’s verbal
report after he came back from Barcelona. There are discrepancies.”

“In what way?” asked Brooks.

“In what MacKenzie planned and in what Havelock saw.”

“He saw what we wanted him to see,” said the President “You made a point of it a few minutes ago.”

“He may have seen more than we think, more than MacKenzie engineered.”

“MacKenzie was
there
” protested Halyard. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“He was approximately seventy yards away from Havelock, with only a peripheral view of the beach. He was more concerned with watching Havelock’s reactions than with what was taking place below. He’d rehearsed it a number of times with the two men and the blond woman. According to those practice sessions, everything was to take place near the water, the shots fired into the surf, the woman falling into the wet sand, her body rolling with the waves, the boat close by, within reach. The distance, the darkness-everything was for effect.”

“Visually convincing,” interrupted Brooks.

“Very,” agreed Bradford. “But it wasn’t what Havelock described. What he saw was infinitely
more
convincing. Under chemicals at the clinic in Virginia he literally relived the entire experience, including the emotional trauma that was part of it. He described bullets erupting in the sand, the woman running up to the road, not down by the water, and two men carrying the body away.
Two
men.”

“Two men were hired,” said Halyard, perplexed. “What’s the problem?”

“
One
had to be in the boat; it was twenty feet offshore, the engine running. The
second
man was to have fired the shots and pulled the woman into the water, throwing her ‘dead body’
into
the boat. The distance, the darkness, the beam of a flashlight-these were part of MacKenzie’s scene, what he’d rehearsed with the people he’d hired. But the flashlight was the only constant between what MacKenzie planned and what Havelock saw. He didn’t witness a performance; he saw a woman actually killed.”

“
Jesus
.” The general sat back in his chair.

“MacKenzie never mentioned any of this?” said Brooks.

“I don’t think he saw it All he said to me was ‘My employees
must have put on a hell of a show.’ He stayed where he was on that hill above the road for several hours watching Havelock. Me left when it began to get light; he couldn’t risk Havelock’s spotting him.”

Addison Brooks brought his right hand to his chin. “So the man we’re looking for, the man who pulled the trigger at Costa Brava, who was given the Ambiguity code by Stern and put Havelock ‘beyond salvage,’ is a Soviet agent in the State Department.”

“Yes,” said the undersecretary.

“And he wants to find Parsifal as desperately as we do,” concluded the President.

“Yes, sir.”

“Yet, if I follow you,” said Brooks quickly, “there’s an enormous inconsistency. He hasn’t passed on his astonishing information to his normal KGB controls. We’d know it if he had. Good
God
, we’d know it!”

“Not only has he held it back, Mr. Ambassador, he’s purposely misled one of the ranking directors of the KGB.” Bradford picked up the top page of his notes and slid it respectfully to the silver-haired statesman on his right. “I’ve saved this for last. Not, incidentally, to startle you or shock you, but only because it didn’t make any sense unless we looked at everything else in relationship to it. Frankly, I’m still not sure I understand. It’s a cable from Pyotr Rostov in Moscow. He’s director of External Strategies, KGB.”

“A cable from
Soviet intelligence
?” said Brooks, astonished, picking up the paper.

“Contrary to what most people believe,” added the undersecretary, “strategists from opposing intelligence services often make contact with one another. They’re practical men in a deadly practical business. They can’t afford wrong signals.… According to Rostov, the KGB had nothing to do with the Costa Brava and he wanted us to know it. Incidentally, Colonel Baylor in his report said that Rostov trapped Havelock in Athens, and although he could have gotten him out of Greece and into Russia by way of the Dardanelles, he chose not to.”

“When did you get this?” asked the statesman.

“Twenty-four hours ago,” answered the President. “We’ve been studying it, trying to figure it out. Obviously, no response is called for.”

“Read it, Addison,” said Halyard.

“It was sent to D. S. Stern, Director of Consular Operations, United States Department of—” Brooks looked up at Bradford. “Stern was killed
three days
ago. Wouldn’t Rostov have
known
that?”

“He wouldn’t have sent it if he had. He wouldn’t have permitted the slightest speculation that the KGB was involved in Stern’s death. He sent that cable because he
didn’t
know Stern was dead-or the others.”

“Only Miiler’s death was released,” said Berquist. “We couldn’t keep it quiet; it was all over Bethesda. We put a blackout on Stern and Dawson, at least for the time being, Until we could learn what was happening. We moved their families to the Cheyenne security compound in Colorado Springs.”

“Read it,” said the general.

Brooks held the paper under the glare of the Tensor lamp. He spoke slowly, reading in a monotone. “The betrayal at Costa Brava was not ours. Nor was the bait taken in Athens. The infamous Consular Operations continues its provocative actions and the Soviet Union continues to protest its disregard for human life as well as the crimes and terrorist acts it inflicts upon the innocent—peoples and nations alike. And should this notorious branch of the American Department of State believe it has collaborators within the walls of Dzerzhinsky, be assured such traitors will be rooted out and face the punishments demanded. I repeat, Costa Brava was not ours.” ’ The statesman finished; the cable was over. He let his hand drop to the dais, the page still held between his thumb and forefinger. “Good
Lord
,” he whispered.

“I understand the words,” said Halyard, “but not what he’s trying to tell us.”

“ ‘Better a Satan you know than one you don’t,” ’ replied Brooks, “There are no walls in Dzerzhinsky Square.”

“That’s
it
,” said Bradford, turning to the President. “That’s what we didn’t connect with. The walls are in the
Kremlin
.”

“Outside and inside,” continued the former ambassador. “He’s telling you that he knows Costa Brava could not have taken place without a collaborator or collaborators in Moscow—”

“We understood that,” interrupted Berquist. “What about the walls? The Kremlin? How do you read that?”

“He’s warning us. He’s saying he doesn’t know who they are, and since he doesn’t, they’re not controllable.”

“Because they’re outside the normal channels of communication?” asked the President.

“Even abnormal channels,” said Brooks.

“A power struggle.” Berquist turned to the undersecretary. “Has there been anything of a serious nature about this from any of our intelligence departments?”

“Only the usual frictions. The old guard dying, the younger commissars anxious, ambitious.”

“Where do the generals stand?” inquired the general.

“Half wanting to blow up Omaha, half wanting SALT Three.”

“And Parsifal could unite them,” said the statesman. “All their hands would be on the nuclear switches.”

“But Rostov doesn’t
know
about Parsifal,” protested Bradford. “He has no
conception
—”

“He senses it,” the ambassador broke in. “He knows Costa Brava was a Department of State operation somehow in conjunction with elements in Moscow. He’s tried to trace them down and can’t; that alarms him immensely. There’s an imbalance, a shift from the norm at the highest levels.”

“Why do you say that?” The President took the cable from Brooks, scrutinizing it as if trying to see what he had not seen before.

“It’s not in there, sir,” said Bradford, nodding at Brooks as he spoke. “Except for the word ‘bait,’ which refers to Havelock. Remember, he didn’t take Havelock in Athens. Rostov’s aware of the very unusual relationship between Michael Havelock and Anthony Matthias. Czech and Czech, teacher and student, survivors really—in many ways father and son; where does one end and the other begin? Is one or are both of them dealing with someone in Moscow? And for what purpose? Reasonable objectives can be ruled out; avoiding normal channels would indicate that. Not too many months ago we wondered the same thing: What had Matthias done, and where did Havelock stand? We created Costa Brava because of it.”

“And then Parsifal reached us and it didn’t make any difference,” interrupted Berquist. “We were at the wall. We’re still at the wall—only, now it’s grown larger, broken away from itself until there are two walls, our backs to each no
matter which way we turn. The search for Parsifal is joined with another search for another man. Someone right here who’s watching every move we make. A Soviet mole capable of pulling a buried code out of Moscow, and deep enough to change the face of Costa Brava.… My God, we’ve got to blow him out of the ground! If he finds Parsifal before we do, he and the madmen he answers to in the Kremlin can dictate whatever terms they like to this country.”

“You know where he is,” said the general. “Go after him! He’s at State. High up; with access to embassy cables, and obviously goddamned close to Matthias. Because if
I
follow you now, he nailed the Karas woman. He supplied that code; he had it placed in her suitcase. He
nailed
her!”