The Parsifal Mosaic (8 page)

“Twenty-one, twenty-seven,” said the army officer, reading. “Twenty-seven past nine. Eight minutes before the train left.”

“All verifiable. Now look at me and tell me I’m lying. And while you’re at it, explain how that setup could have been mounted given the time span
and
the fact that she was on an incoming train!”

“I can’t.
If s
he—”

“She was talking to a conductor seconds before she got off. I’m sure I can find him.”

Baylor was silent again; he stared at Havelock, then spoke softly. “Don’t bother. I’ll send the flag.” He paused, adding, “Along with qualified support. Whatever you saw, you’re not lying. Where can I reach you?”

“Sorry. I’ll reach you.”

“They’ll want to talk to you, probably in a hurry.”

“I’ll be in touch.”

“Why the static?”

“Something Rostov said in Athens.”

“Rostov?
Pyotr Rostov?” The colonel’s eyes widened. “You don’t go much higher in the Dzerzhinsky.”

“There’s higher.”

“He’ll do. What did he say? What did he tell you?”

“That our nostrils never quite adjust. Instead, they develop a kind of sensitivity—to variations of the basic rotten smell. Like animals.”

“I expected something less abstract,” said Baylor, annoyed.

“Really? From where I stand, it sounds concrete as hell. The Costa Brava trap was engineered in Washington, the evidence compiled by the inner shell in one of those white, sterile offices on the top floor of State.”

“I understood you were in control,” interrupted Baylor,

“The last phase. I insisted on it.”

“Then you—”

“I acted on everything that was given to me. And now I want to know
why
it was given to me. Why I saw what I did tonight.”

“If
you saw—”

“She’s
alive
. I want to know why! How!”

“I still don’t understand.”

“Costa Brava was meant for
me
. Someone wanted me out. Not dead, but out. Comfortably removed from those temptations that often afflict men like me.”

“Scores to settle?” asked the colonel. “The Agee syndrome? The Snepp complex? I didn’t know you were infected.”

“I’ve had my quota of shocks, my share of questions. Someone wanted those questions buried and
she
went along. Why?”

“Two assumptions I’m not willing to concede are facts. And if you intend to bare a few shocks not in the national interest, I imagine—and I’m speaking hypothetically in the extreme, of course—there are other methods of … burying them.”

“Dispatch? Call me dead?”

“I didn’t say we’d kill you. We don’t live in that kind of country.” The colonel paused, then added, “On the other hand, why not?”

“For the same reason others haven’t met with odd accidents that prearranged pathologists might label something else. Self-protection is ingrained in our job, brother. It’s another syndrome; it’s called the Nuremberg. Those shocks, instead of being buried, might surface. Sealed depositions to be opened by unnamed attorneys in the event of questionable et ceteras.”

“Jesus
, you said that? You went that far?”

“Strangely enough, I never did Not seriously. I simply got angry. The rest was assumed.”

“What kind of world do you people live in?”

“The same one you do—only, we’ve been around a little longer, a little deeper. And that’s why I won’t tell you where you can reach me. My nostrils have picked up a sickening odor from the Potomac.” Havelock leaned forward, his voice harsh, low, nearly a whisper again. “I know that girl. For her to do what she did, something had to have been done to her, held over her. Something obscene. I want to know what it was and why.”

“Assuming—” Baylor began slowly, “assuming you’re right, and I don’t for an instant concede that you are, what makes you think they’ll tell you?”

“It was all so sudden,” said Michael, leaning back, his body rigid, his voice now floating as if in a painful dream. “It was a Tuesday and we were in Barcelona. We’d been there for a week; something was going to happen in the sector, that’s all Washington told us. Then word came from Madrid: a Four Zero communication had been flown in by courier, contents restricted to the embassy, Eyes Only. Mine only. There’s no Cons Op station in Madrid, no one cleared to relay the information, so I flew in Wednesday morning, signed for that goddamned steel container, and opened it in a room guarded by three marines. Everything was there, everything she’d done, all the information she’d transmitted—information she could have gotten only from me. The trap was there, too, myself in control if I so wished—and I so wished. They knew it was the only way I’d be convinced. On Friday I was back in Barcelona, and by Sunday it was over … and I
was
convinced. Five days and the walls came tumbling down. No trumpets, Just flashlights and screams and loud ugly noises intruding on the surf. Five days … so sudden, so swift, everything at a crescendo. It was the only way it could have been done.”

“You haven’t answered my question,” Baylor interrupted quietly. “If you’re right, what makes you think they’ll tell you?”

Havelock leveled his eyes at the soldier. “Because they’re afraid. It comes down to the why. The questions, the shocks; which one was it?”

“What are you talking about?”

“The decision to remove me wasn’t made gradually, Colonel. Something triggered it. They don’t force a man out the way I was forced out because of accumulated differences. Talent’s expensive; proven field talent too difficult to replace. Accommodations can be made, explanations offered, agreements reached. All these are tried before they let the talent go. But no one tried with me.”

“Can you be more specific?” the officer pressed, again an-noyed.

“I wish I could be. It’s something I know, or they
think
I know. Something I could have written down. And it’s a bomb.”

“Do you?” Baylor asked coldly, professionally. “Have such a piece of information?”

“I’ll find it,” replied Havelock, suddenly pushing back his chair, prepared to leave. “You tell them that. Just as I’ll find her, tell them that, too. It won’t be easy because she’s not with them anymore. She got away; she’s gone under. I also saw that in her eyes. But I’ll find her.”

“Maybe—” Baylor said urgently, “maybe if everything you say proves out, they’d be willing to help.”

“They’d better be,” said Michael getting to his feet, and looking down at the soldier-conduit. “I’ll need all the help I can get. In the meantime I want this whole goddamned thing spelled out—chapter and verse, to quote an old source of mine. Because if it isn’t, I’m going to start telling tales out of school. When and from where none of you will know, but the words will be there loud and clear. And somewhere among them will be that bomb.”

“Don’t do anything stupid!”

“Don’t mistake me, I don’t want to. But what was done to her, to me—to us—just wasn’t fair, Colonel. I’m back in. Solo. I’ll be in touch.”

Havelock turned and walked swiftly out of the café into the Via Pancrazio.

He reached the Via Galvani on his way back to the railroad station, where he had deposited his newly acquired suitcase in a coin locker. Suddenly the painful irony struck him. It had been a suitcase in a coin locker at an airport in Barcelona
that had condemned Jenna Karas. The defector from the Baader-Meinhof—in exchange for the quiet cancellation of a death sentence pronounced in absentia—had led them to it. The German terrorist had told Madrid that
das Fräulein Karas
kept secret, updated field records within her reach at all times. It was a Voennaya custom dictated by the strange relationship the violent and clandestine branch of Soviet intelligence had with the rest of the KGB. Certain field personnel on long-range deep-cover operations had access to their own files in the event that their superiors in Moscow suddenly were not accessible. Self-protection sometimes assumed odd forms; no one had questioned it.

No one had questioned. Not even he.

Someone makes contact with her and gives her a key, stating a location. A room or a locker, even a bank. The material is there, including new objectives as they are developed
.

A man had stopped her one afternoon two days before Michael left for Madrid. In a café on the Paseo Isabel. A drunk. He had shaken her hand, then kissed it. Four days later Michael had found a key in Jenna’s purse. On Sunday, two days later, she was dead.

There had been a key, but whose key was it? He had seen photocopies verified by Langley of every item in that suitcase. But whose suitcase was it? If not hers, how did three sets of fingerprints confirmed to be hers get inside? And if the prints were hers, why did she permit it?

What had they done to her? What had they done to a blond woman on the Costa Brava who had screamed in Czech and whose spine and neck and head had been pierced with bullets? What kind of people were they who could put human beings on strings and blow them up as calmly as one might explode mannequins in a horror show? That woman had died; he had seen too much death to be mistaken. It was no charade, as the elegant Gravet might have put it.

Yet it was all a charade. They were all puppets. But on what stage and for whose benefit were they performing?

He hurried faster on the Via Galvani; the Via della Mamorata was in sight. He was only blocks now from the massive railroad station; he would begin there. At least, he had an idea; whether it made sense or not the next half hour would tell.

He passed a garishly lighted newsstand where tabloids
competed with glossy magazines. Capped teeth and out-sized breasts battled for attention with mutilated bodies and graphic descriptions of rape and mayhem. And then he saw the famous face staring up at him from the cover of the international edition of
Time
. The clear eyes behind the hornrimmed glasses shone as they always did, full of high intelligence—cold at first glance, yet somehow warmer the longer one looked at them, softened, perhaps by an understanding few on this earth possessed. There he was, the high cheekbones and the aquiline nose, the generous lips from which such extraordinary words poured forth.

“A man for all seasons, all peoples.” That was the simple caption beneath the photograph. No name, no title; none was necessary. The world knew the American Secretary of State, heard his reasoned, deliberate voice and understood. This
was
a man for all; he transcended borders and languages and national insanities. There were those who believed—and Michael was one of them—that either the world would listen to Anthony Matthias or it would be blown to hell in a mushroom cloud.

Anton Matthias. Friend, mentor, surrogate father. Where Costa Brava was concerned, he, too, had been a puppet.
Who would dare?

As Havelock put several lira notes down on the counter and picked up the magazine, he remembered vividly the handwritten note Anton had insisted the strategists in Washington include with the Four Zero file flown to Madrid. From their few brief conversations in Georgetown, Matthias had grasped the depth of his feelings for the woman assigned to him for the past eight months. At last, perhaps, he was ready to get out and find the peace that had eluded him all these years. The statesman had made gentle fun of the situation; when a fellow Czech past forty and in Michael’s line of work decided to concentrate on one woman, Slavic tradition and contemporary fiction suffered irreparable blows.

But there had been no such levity in Matthias’s note.

Havelock forced the note from his mind; it served only to aggravate the incomprehensible. Verification:
Positive
. He opened the magazine to the article on Matthias. There was nothing new, merely a recap of his more recent accomplishments in the area of arms negotiations. It ended with the observation that the Secretary of State was off for a well-deserved vacation at an unnamed location. Michael smiled; he knew where it was. A cabin in the Shenandoah Valley. It was entirely possible that before the night was over he would use a dozen codes to reach that mountain cabin. But not Until he found out what had happened. For Anton Matthias had been touched by it too.

The crowds inside the giant dome of the Ostia had thinned out, the last of the trains leaving Rome having departed or being about to depart. Havelock pulled his suitcase from the locker and looked around for a sign; it had to be somewhere. It could well be a waste of time, but he did not think so; at least it was a place to start. He had told the intelligence officer-attaché in the café on the Via Pancrazio: “She was talking to a conductor seconds before she got off. I’m sure I can find him.”

Michael reasoned that someone running did not casually strike up a conversation with a conductor for the sake of conviviality; too much was on that someone’s mind. And in every city there were those sections where men and women who wished to disappear could do so, where cash was the only currency, mouths were kept shut, and hotel registries rarely reflected accurate identities. Jenna Karas might know the names of districts, even streets, but she did not—had not known—Rome itself. A city on strike might just possibly convince someone running that it was urgent to ask a question or a direction of someone who might have the answer.

There was the sign on the wall, an arrow pointing to the office complex:
AMMINISTRATORE DELLA STAZIONE
.

Thirty-five minutes later, having convinced a night manager that it was imperative and in both his and the conductor’s financial interest that the conductor be found, he had the address of the man assigned to cars
tre, quattro
, and
cinque
for the incoming train on
binario trentasei
at eight-thirty that evening. As the rail system was government service, a photograph was attached to the employment sheet. It was the same man he had seen talking to Jenna Karas. Among his qualifications was a proficiency in English.
Livello primario
.