The Parsifal Mosaic (18 page)

“Is that an opinion, or are you clairvoyant?”

“Neither. It’s fact. I listened to a man in shock. A man who’d just gone through a mind-blowing experience—his phrase, incidentally. It wasn’t the result of a festering mental aberration; it had just
happened
. When you talk about what he could have done, the deposits he could have made, you’re using the words I gave you because they’re the words he said to me. He was speculating on what he
might
do, not what he did. There’s a hell of difference, Mr. Strategist.”

“And because of it you want him dead?”

“I want a lot of other people to live.”

“So do we. That’s why I’m here.”

“So you can bring him back alive,” said Baylor sardonically. “Just like Frank Buck.”

“That’ll do.”

“No, it won’t. Suppose you miss? Suppose he gets away?”

“It won’t happen.”

“Opinion or clairvoyance?”

“Fact.”

“No way. It’s conjecture, a probability factor I don’t want to count on.”

“You don’t have a choice,
soldier
. The chain of command has spoken.”

“Then let me spell it out for you,
civilian
. Don’t talk to me
about chains of command. I’ve worked my black ass off to this white man’s army—white at the top, black at the bottom—until they had to make me a vital cog in the big white wheel. Now you come along with your secret-agent act, and a code name right out of—”

“The back of a cereal box?” interjected Ogilvie.

“You got it. A cereal box. No name I can point to, no identification I can bargain with to get me off the hook, just a balloon from a comic strip. And if you do miss, and Havelock does get away, I’m on the firing line—as the target Coffee-Face blew it; his network’s compromised. Take him out of the big white wheel.”

“You hypocritical bastard,” said the man from Washington in disgust. “The only thing you’re interested in saving is your own skin.”

“For a lot of reasons too benign for you to understand. There’re going to be more like me, not less.… Wherever you go in this town, I’m not far behind. You take him your way, that’s fine with me. I’ll get you back to Palombara and strap the two of you into a jet myself with a letter of recommendation written in classical Latin. But if you can’t hack it, and he breaks, he goes down my way.”

“That doesn’t sound like the man who believed his story, who pleaded his case.”

“I didn’t plead his case, I reported it. And it doesn’t make any difference whether I believe him or not. He’s an active, dangerous threat to me and my function here in Rome and a large part of the network I’ve cultivated on the orders of my government and at the expense of the American taxpayer.” The colonel stopped; he smiled. “That’s all I have to know to pull a trigger.”

“You could go far.”

“I intend to, I’ve got points to make.”

Ogilvie stepped away from the tree; he looked past the bordering foliage at the dormant gardens beyond. He spoke quietly, his voice flat, noncommittal. “I could lose you, you know. kill you, if I had to.”

“Right on,” agreed the officer. “So I’ll forget about the Excelsior. You take a room in my name and when the call comes from Havelock, you pretend to be me. He expects me to be there, confirm your presence; he knows I’ve got a stake
in this. And by the way, when you talk to him as me, don’t make it too nigger. I’m a Rhodes Scholar. Oxford, ’71.”

The agent turned. “You’re also something else. I can bring you up on charges, a court-martial guaranteed. Direct disobedience of a superior in the field.”

“For a conversation that never took place? Or perhaps it did, and I exercised on-spot military judgment. The subject found the contact unacceptable; I wanted another man in Rome. How does that grab you,
Gunslinger?”

Ogilvie did not answer for the better part of a minute. He threw his cigarette on the ground, crushing it underfoot, grinding his shoe into the dirt “You’re talented, Colonel,” he said finally. “I need you.”

“You really want him, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“I thought so. It was in your voice on the phone. I wanted that confirmation, Mr. Strategist. Just consider me an insurance policy you don’t want to carry, but your accountant says you must. If I have to pay off, nothing’s lost. I can justify the act better than anyone around a D.C. conference table. I’m the only one who’s spoken to him. I know what he’s done and what he hasn’t done.”

“A very short time could prove you wrong.”

“I’ll chance it. That’s how sure I am.”

“You won’t have to. There’ll be no payoff from you because I won’t miss, and he won’t get away.”

“Glad to hear it. Outside of the couple who’ll pick you up when you leave the hotel, what else do you need?”

“Nothing. I brought my equipment with me.”

“What are you going to tell him?”

“Whatever he wants to hear.”

“What are you going to use?”

“Experience. Have you made arrangements for the room?”

“Forty-five minutes ago,” said Baylor. “Only, it’s not a room, it’s a suite. That way there’re two phones. Just in case you’re tempted to give me a wrong rendezvous, I’ll be listening to everything he says.”

“You’re boxing me in, boy.”

“I’ll let that pass. Look at it this way. When today’s over, you’ll be heading back to Washington either with him or without him, but with no hooks in you. If you’ve got him, fine. If not, I’ll take the heat My judgment’s respected at the
Pentagon; under the circumstances the solution will be last extremity,’ and acceptable.”

“You know that book, don’t you?”

“Right down to a hundred-odd contradictions. Go back to the good life, Mr. Strategist. Be well and happy in the Georgetown circuit. Make your pronouncements from a distance and leave the field to us. You’ll live better that way.”

Ogilvie controlled the wince that was about to crease his face. He could feel the sharp pain shooting up through his rib cage, clawing at the base of his throat. It was spreading; every day it went a little further, hurt a little more. Signals of the irreversible. “Thanks for the advice,” he said.

The Palatine, one of the seven hills of Rome, rises beyond the Arch of Constantine, its sloping fields dotted with the alabaster ruins of antiquity. It was the rendezvous.

A quarter of a mile northwest of the Gregorio gate was an ancient arbor, with a bust of the emperor Domitian resting upon a fluted pedestal at the end of a stone path, bordered on both sides by the marble remnants of a jagged wall. Branches of wild olive cascaded over the chiseled rock while vines of brown and green crept underneath, filling crevices and spreading a spidery latticework across the cracked yet ageless marble. At the end of the path, behind the blotched, stern face of Domitian, were the remains of a fountain built into the hill. The arbor abruptly stopped; there was no exit.

The peaceful setting gave rise to images: stately men in togas strolling in the sunlight filtering through the overhanging branches, meditating on the great affairs of Rome, and on the ever-expanding boundaries of the empire, uneasy over the increasing abuses that came with unchallenged might and undiluted power—wondering, perhaps, when the beginning of the end would commence.

This sylvan fragment of another time was the contact ground. Time span: thirty minutes—between three o’clock and half past the hour, when the sun was at midpoint in the western sky. Here two men would meet, each with different
objectives, both aware that the differences might cause the death of one or the other, neither wanting that finality. Wariness was the order of the afternoon.

It was twenty minutes before three, the start of the span. Havelock had positioned himself behind a cluster of bushes on the next hill overlooking the arbor, several hundred feet above the bust of Domitian. He was concerned, angry, as his eyes roamed over the stone path and the untamed fields beyond the walls below. A half hour ago, from a sidewalk café across the Via Veneto from the Excelsior, he had seen what he was afraid he might see. Within seconds after the red-haired Ogilvie had walked through the glass doors onto the pavement he had been picked up by a man and a woman who had emerged casually—too casually, a bit too swiftly—from a jewelry shop next door. The store had a wide-angled display-case entrance, affording observers inside a decent range of vision. The man from Washington had veered briefly to his right and stopped before entering the stream of pedestrians heading left. It was a sighting backup, the unobtrusive movement of a hand or a fleeting glance at the pavement, gestures that marked him in the crowds. There would be no taking the Apache unawares before he reached the Palatine. Ogilvie had anticipated that the attempt might be made; he had no intention of losing control, and so he had protected himself. On the phone, the former field man, now a vaunted strategist, had offered only accommodation. He had reasonable—if highly classified—data to deliver; in them would be found the answers Michael sought.

Not to worry, Navajo. We’ll talk
.

But if the Apache had reasonable explanations to offer, he did not require protection. And why had Ogilvie agreed so readily to the out-of-the-way rendezvous? Why hadn’t he simply suggested meeting on the street, or at a café? A man confident of the news he bore did not set up defenses, yet the strategist had done just that.

Instead of an explanation, had Washington sent another message?

Dispatch? Call me dead?

I didn’t say we’d kill you. We don’t live in that kind of country
.…
On the other hand, why not?
Lieutenant Colonel Lawrence Baylor Brown, intelligence conduit, U.S. embassy, Rome.

If Washington had reached that conclusion, the planners had sent a qualified assassin. Havelock respected Ogilvie’s talents, but he did not admire the man. The former operative was one of those men who justify their violence too glibly with self-serving scraps of philosophy that imply personal revulsion for committing even necessary acts of violence. Associates in the field knew better. Ogilvie was a killer, driven by some inner compulsion to avenge himself against his own personal furies, which he concealed from all but those who worked closely with him under maximum stress; and those who knew him tried their level best never to work with him again.

After Istanbul, Michael had done something he had never thought he would do. He had reached Anthony Matthias and advised him to take Red Ogilvie out of the field. The man was dangerous. Michael had volunteered to appear before a closed hearing with the strategists, but, as always, Matthias had the better, less divisive method. Ogilvie was an expert; few men had his background in covert activities. The Secretary of State had ordered him up the ladder, making Ogilvie a strategist himself.

Matthias was out of Washington these days. It was not a comforting thought. Decisions were often arrived at without accountability for the simple reason that those who should be apprised in depth were not accessible. The urgency of a given crisis was frequently a green light for movement.

That was it, thought Havelock, as his eyes settled on a figure in the distance, in the sloping field beyond the right wall. It was the man who had accompanied the woman out of the jewelry store next to the Excelsior, the one who had picked up Ogilvie. Michael looked to his left; there was the woman. She was standing by the steps of an ancient bath, a sketch pad in her left hand. But there was no sketching pencil in her right, which she held under the lapel of her gabardine coat. Havelock returned to the man in the field on the right. He was sitting on the ground now, legs stretched, a book open on his lap—a Roman finding an hour’s peace, reading. And by no coincidence his hand, too, was held in place at the upper regions of his coarse tweed jacket. The two were in communication and Michael knew the language. Italian.

Italians. No subordinates from the embassy, no CIA stringers, no Baylor—no Americans in sight. When Ogilvie arrived,
he’d be the only one. It fit; remove all U.S. personnel, all avenues of record. Use only local backups, men or women themselves beyond salvage. Dispatch.

Why? Why was he a crisis? What had he done or what did he know that made men in Washington want him dead? First they wanted him out by way of Jenna Karas. Now dead. Christ in heaven, what was it?

Besides the couple, were there others? He strained his eyes against the sun, studying every patch of ground, separating the terrain into blocks—an awkward puzzle. The arbor of Domitian was not a prominent site on the Palatine; it was a minor scrap of antiquity left to decay. The dismal month of March had further reduced the number of trespassers. In the distance, on a hill to the east, a group of children played under the watchful glances of two adults. Teachers, perhaps. Below, to the south, there was an uncut green lawn with marble columns of the early empire standing like upright, bloodless corpses of widely differing heights. Several tourists laden with camera equipment—straps over straps, and bulging cases—were taking photographs, posing one another in front of the fluted remains. But other than the couple covering both sides of the arbor’s entrance, there was no one in the immediate vicinity of Domitian’s retreat. If they were competent marksmen, no additional backups were necessary. There was only one entrance, and a man climbing a wall was an easy target; it was a gauntlet with a single exit. That, too, fit the policy of dispatch. Use as few locals as possible, remembering always that they can snap back with extortion.

The irony had come about unconsciously. Michael had roamed the Palatine that morning, selecting the site for the very advantages that now could be used against him. He looked at his watch: fourteen minutes to three. He had to move quickly, but not until he saw Ogilvie. The Apache was smart; he knew the odds favored his remaining out of sight as long as possible, riveting his adversary’s concentration on his anticipated appearance. Michael understood, so he concentrated on his options: on the woman with a sketch pad in her hand, and the man reclining on the grass.

Suddenly, he was there. At one minute to three the red-haired agent came into view, his head and shoulders seen first as he walked up the path from the Gregorio gate, passing the man in the field without acknowledgment. Something
was odd, thought Havelock, something about Ogilvie himself. Perhaps it was his clothes, as usual rumpled, ill-fitting … but too large (or his stocky frame. Whatever, he seemed different; not the face—he was too far away for his face to be seen clearly. It was in his walk, the way he held his shoulders, as if the gentle slope of the hill were far steeper than it was. The Apache had changed since Istanbul; the seven years had not been kind.