The Parsifal Mosaic (49 page)

“You have the word of the
President
of the United States that we
are
alone, Madame Broussac. There is no interference on this telephone, no third parties or mechanical devices to record our conversation. will you accept that word?”

“Assuredly. Why would such an august figure deceive a mere functionary of the Quai d’Orsay?”

“For a lot of reasons. But I’m not.”

“
Mais oui
. Then I am convinced.”

“Good. I need your cooperation in a matter of the utmost importance and delicacy. It in no way affects the government of France, but any help you might give us could only be in its ultimate interests. Again, you have my word on it, the word of this office.”

“It is sufficient,
Monsieur le Président.
”

“It’s imperative we reach a retired foreign service officer recently separated from the Department of State. His name is Michael Havelock.”

“
S’il vous plait. Monsieur le—
”

“No, please,” interrupted Berquist. “Let me finish. This office has too many staggering concerns to be involved with the work you do, or with the activities Mr. Havelock was engaged in. I only ask you to help us locate him. A destination, a routing, a name he might be using. Whatever you tell me will be held in the strictest confidence; no detail will be compromised, or ever used against you or your operations. I promise you that.”

“Monsieur—”

“Lastly,” continued the President, overriding her voice, “no matter what he may have told you, his government has never meant him harm. We have too much respect for his service record, too much gratitude for his contributions. The tragedy
he thinks is his alone is all of ours, and that is all I can tell you, but I hope you consider the source—the office from which it comes. Will you help us, help me, Madame Broussac?”

Berquist could hear the breathing over the line from Paris, as well as the pounding tattoo in his own chest. He looked out the window; fine flecks of white were intermingling with the mottled drizzle. The virgin drifts in the fields of Mountain Iron were the most beautiful at sundown; one caressed them with the eyes, touched the colors from a distance, never wanting them to change.

“As you are trying to find him,” began Broussac, “he is looking for someone else.”

“We know that. We’ve been looking for her too. To save her life. To save his.” The President closed his eyes; it was a lie he would remember back in the hills of the Mesabi country. But then, he would remember, too, Churchill and Coventry. Enigma … Costa Brava.

“There is a man in New York.”

“New
York
?” Berquist sat forward, startled. “He’s
here
? She’s—?”

“It surprises you,
Monsieur le Président?
”

“Very much.”

“It was intended to. It was I who sent her. Sent him.”

“This man in New York?”

“He must be approached with a great deal of—as you mentioned—delicacy. He cannot be compromised. You have the same such people in Europe; we all need them,
Monsieur le Président
. Even when we know of those who belong to other—companies, we leave them alone.”

“I understand perfectly.” Berquist did; the warning was clear. “This man can tell us where he is?”

“He can tell you where
she
is. That’s what you need to know. But he must be convinced he is not compromised.”

“I’ll send only one man and only he will know. My word.”

“
Je le respecte
. I must tell you, I do not know him, except through his dossier. He is a great man with much compassion, a survivor, monsieur. In April of 1945, he was taken out of the Bergen-Belsen camp in Germany.”

“He will be accorded all the respect this office can summon, as well as the confidentiality I promised you. His name, please.”

“Jacob Handelman. Columbia University.”

The three men listened intently as Emory Bradford slowly, methodically delivered his findings in the strategy room in the underground complex of the White House. Speaking in a deliberate monotone, he described the confirmed whereabouts of all nineteen State Department personnel from the fifth floor, L Section, who were not in Washington during the week of Costa Brava. When he finished, each man’s expression conveyed both pain and frustration, none more so than the President’s. He leaned forward on the dais, his heavy Scandinavian face worn and lined, his intelligent eyes angry.

“You were so
sure
this morning,” he said. “You told me five were missing, five not accounted for. What happened?”

“I was wrong, Mr. President.”

“Goddamn it, I didn’t want to hear that.”

“Neither did King Richard when news reached him that Richmond had landed,” said Addison Brooks quietly. “He struck down the messenger.”

Berquist turned to his ambassador, studying him before replying, “Richard the Third had already received two messages he considered lies. He could have been testing the latest.”

Brooks shook his head, admiration in his eyes. “You constantly amaze me, Mr. President.”

“I shouldn’t. You worked for Truman. He knew more about history than all the Commagers and Schlesingers put together. I’ve done some reading myself, and this is a waste of time.” Berquist turned back to the undersecretary of State. “Who were the five?”

“The woman who was having surgery. It was an abortion. Her husband’s a lawyer and has been in protracted litigation at The Hague for several months. They’ve been apart. The picture was pretty clear.”

“How could you even consider a woman?” demanded Halyard. “No double standard implied, but a woman would leave her mark somewhere.”

“Not If she—through Moscow—controlled men. Actually, I was quite excited when her name surfaced. I thought, Good God, it’s perfect. It wasn’t.”

“Keep it surgery, and tell that to whomever you spoke with. Who were the others?”

“The two attachés at our embassy in Mexico. They’d been recalled for change-of-policy briefings, then didn’t return to Mexico City until January fifth.”

“Explanation?” asked the President.

“Furlough time. They went their separate wavs and their families joined them. One to a ski lodge in Vermont, the other to the Caribbean. Credit-card charges confirmed everything.”

“Who else?” pressed Berquist.

“Arthur Pierce.”

“Pierce?” interrupted the general, startled. “The fellow at the U.N. now?”

“Yes, General.”

“I could have straightened you out there. So could have Addison here.”

“So would Matthias,” agreed Bradford. “If there was anyone at State who maintained clear access to Matthias for a longer period of time, I don’t know who it is. He appointed Pierce to the U.N. with the obvious intention of submitting him for the ambassadorship.”

“If you’ll permit me the correction,” said Berquist, “
I
appointed him after Matthias gave him to us and then took him away. He worked over here with the NSC for a couple of months last year before the great man said he was needed in New York.”

“And he was one fellow
I
told the Pentagon to bribe the hell out of,” exclaimed the general. “I wanted to keep him in the army; he was too good to lose. He didn’t like that mess in Southeast Asia any more than I did, but his record was as good as mine.… Let’s face it; it was a damn sight better.”

The ambassador leaned back in his chair. “I know Pierce. He was brought to my attention by an old-line career foreign officer. I suppose I was as responsible as anyone for bringing him into the State Department. Knowing what I do, Iowa farm boy, rather humble beginnings, I believe, and then a brilliant academic record, everything on scholarship. He was one of the few in this day and age who really went from rags to riches. Well, influential if not literally rich, but he could have been. A dozen or so of the country’s largest corporations were after him, not to mention Rand and the Brookings
Institution. I was persuasive and quite practical. Patriotism aside, I pointed out that a tour of duty with the Department of State could only enhance his value in the marketplace. Of course, he’s still a relatively young man; with his accomplishments, if he leaves government, he’ll be able to name his own price anywhere. He’s cornstalk American success story—how could you possibly conceive of a Moscow connection?”

“I didn’t
preconceive
anything, especially not in this case,” said Bradford. “Arthur Pierce is a friend—and I don’t have many. I consider him one of the best men we have at State. But in spite of our friendship, I went by the reports given me. Only me, incidentally. Not to my secretary or any assistant. Only to me.”

“What did you get that made you think Pierce could possibly have anything to do with Soviet intelligence? Christ, he’s mother, God, apple pie and the flag.”

“An error in the U.N. message logs. The initial report showed that during the last days of December and the first three days of January—the week of Costa Brava—Pierce hadn’t responded to four separate queries from the Middle East Section. Then, of course, they showed up—four replies that could he entered in a diplomatic analyst’s handbook. They were as penetrating as anything I’ve read on that area and dovetailed with the specific proceedings in the Security Council. As a matter of fact, they were used to block a particularly aggressive Soviet proposal.”

“The error in the logs was the explanation?” said Brooks.

“That’s the maddening thing. There’s always an explanation, then a confirmation of an explanation. Message traffic’s so heavy, twenty percent of it gets misplaced. Pierce’s responses had been there all along.”

“Who’s the last man?” Berquist was not going to let up. From his eyes it was apparent he could not readily accept the altered findings.

“One I was so convinced might he the mole that I nearly had a White House Secret Service detail pick him up. Thank God I didn’t; he’s volatile, a screamer.”

“Who?”

“Nikolai Sitmarin. Born and raised in Leningrad, parents dissident immigrants over a dozen years ago. He’s the State Department’s most accomplished analyst of Soviet internal affairs, proven accurate about seventy percent. He’s a prize,
and in his case I thought, What better way for Moscow to put a mole into the ground? An eighteen-year-old son of immigrants, dissidents permitted a family visa when they were damned hard to come by.”

“Is Sitmarin Jewish?” asked the general.

“No, but I expect most people think he is; in my view it added to his cover. Soviet dissidence isn’t the exclusive province of Russian Jews, although that seems to be the general impression. Also, he’s received a fair amount of media exposure—the thirty-year-old
Wunderkind
carrying out a personal vendetta. It all seemed so logically convoluted, so right.”

“What were the circumstances?” The President’s words were clipped.

“Again, an unexplained absence. He was gone from his office from mid—Christmas week until January eighth. He just wasn’t in Washington and no assignment was listed for his not being here. I had a time-stat man call the section head; the explanation was given.”

“Which was?” pressed Berquist.

“A personal leave was granted. Sitmarin’s mother was gravely ill in Chicago.”

“Pretty damned convenient illness, wasn’t it?”

“So much so she nearly died. The Cook County General Hospital confirmed it.”

“But she didn’t die,” interrupted Brooks.

“I spoke personally to the physician of record and he had a very clear idea of the gravity of my inquiry. He quoted from his files.”

“Have them sent to you,” ordered the President. “There are too damned many explanations; one of them’s a lie.”

“I agree, but which one?” added Bradford. “Not just these five, but the entire nineteen. Someone who thinks he’s—or she’s—doing a superior a harmless favor is concealing Ambiguity from us, hiding the mole. What’s going down as a few extra days’ skiing or going to the Caribbean or shacking up—excuse me.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake. Go back and tear into every explanation given you. Find one that won’t hold up.”

“One that has a discrepancy in it,” added the ambassador. “Meetings that didn’t take place, a conference that was postponed, credit-card charges where the signatures are questionable—
a gravely ill woman who just may have been given an assumed name.”

“It’ll take time,” said the undersecretary.

“You’ve accomplished a great deal in something over twelve hours,” continued Books sympathetically. “Again, I commend you.”

“And you have the authority of this office to get you what you need, anything you need. Use it! Find the mole!” Ber-quist shook his head in exasperation. “He and we are in a race after a madman we call Parsifal. If the Soviets reach him first, this country has no viable foreign policy. And if Parsifal panics, it won’t make a damn bit of difference.” The President put his hands on the dais. “Is there anything else? I’m keeping two curious senators waiting and it’s no time to do it. They’re on the Foreign Relations Committee and I’ve a gut feeling they’ve got wind of Matthias.” Berquist stopped; he got up and looked at Bradford. “Reassure me again—that
every man
at Poole’s Island is secure.”

“Yes. sir. Each was screened down to his fingernails, and no one leaves that island for the duration.”

“That, too, will run its course,” said Brooks. “What
is
the duration? It’s an unnatural condition.”

“These are unnatural circumstances,” broke in General Halyard. “The patrols are armed, the plaice a fortress.”

“Armed?” The President spoke softly, in his own personal anguish. “Of course, they’re armed. Insane!”

“What about Havelock?” asked the statesman. “Has there been anything?”

“No,” replied the commander in chief, leaving the dais and heading for the door. “Call me later, Mr. Undersecretary,” he said without explanation. “Call me at three o’clock.”

The snow, though not heavy, was a whipping snow. It careened off the windshield, tiny white flakes targeting into the glass and bouncing silently away like thousands of miniature asteroids passing through galactic space. Havelock, in his rented car, had driven past the sign several minutes before, the letters reflected in the headlights:
MASON FALLS
3
MILES