The Parsifal Mosaic (21 page)

“Mezzani!”
fumed the editor.

“Addio,”
said Michael, replacing the phone.

*   *   *

Lieutenant Colonel Lawrence Baylor Brown, diplomatic attaché and a prime example of America’s recognition of minorities, was out of a job. The conduit was finished, his network rendered useless; it would take months, possibly a year, to rebuild. And regardless of how seriously he was wounded, Brown would be flown out of Rome within hours to explain the death of the red-haired man on the Palatine.

The first floodgate had been opened. Others would follow.
Every day it takes will cast you
.

He meant it.

“I’m glad you got here,” said Daniel Stern, closing the door of the white, windowless room on the third floor of the State Department building. The two men he addressed were sitting at the conference table: the balding psychiatrist, Dr. Paul Miller, going through his notes; the attorney named Dawson gazing absently at the wall, his hand resting on a yellow legal pad in front of him. “I’ve just come from Walter Reed—the Baylor briefing. It’s all confirmed. I heard it myself, questioned him myself. He’s one torn-apart soldier, physically and emotionally. But he’s reining tight; he’s a good man.”

“No deviations from the original report?” asked the lawyer.

“Nothing substantive; he was thorough the first time. The capsule was secreted in Ogilvie’s cigarettes, a mild diphenylamine compound released through a C-O-Two cartridge triggered by pressure.”

“That’s what Red meant when he told us he could take Havelock if he got him within arm’s reach,” interrupted Miller quietly.

“He nearly did,” said Stern, walking into the room. There was a red telephone on a small table beside his chair; he flipped a switch on the sloping front of the instrument and sat down. “Hearing Baylor tell it is a lot more vivid than reading a dry report,” said the director of Consular Operations, and fell silent; the two strategists waited. Stern continued softly. “He’s quiet, almost passive, but you look at his face and you know how deeply he feels. How responsible.”

Dawson leaned forward. “Did you ask him what tipped Havelock off? It wasn’t in the report.”

“It wasn’t there because he doesn’t know. Until the last second, Havelock didn’t appear to suspect anything. Just as
the report says, the two of them were talking; Ogilvie took the cigarettes out of his pocket and apparently asked for a light. Havelock reached into his pocket for matches, brought them over to Red, and then it happened. He suddenly kicked out, sending Ogilvie reeling off the bench, and the capsule exploded. When the smoke cleared, Red was on the ground and Havelock was standing over him with a gun in his hand.”

“Why didn’t Baylor shoot
then?
At that moment?” The lawyer was disturbed; it was in his voice.

“Because of us,” replied Stern. “Our orders were firm. Havelock was to be brought in alive. Only a ‘last extremity’ judgment could intervene.”

“He could have been,” said Dawson quickly, almost questioningly. “I’ve read Brown’s—Baylor’s—service report. He’s a qualified expert in weapons, special emphasis on side arms. There’s very little he’s not a ‘qualified expert’ in; he’s a walking advertisement for the NAACP
and
the officer corps. Rhodes scholar, Special Forces, tactical guerrilla warfare. You name it, he’s got it in his file.”

“He’s black; he’s had to be good. I told you that before. What’s your point?”

“He could have wounded Havelock. Legs, shoulders, the pelvic area. Between them, he and Ogilvie
could
have taken him.”

“That’s asking for a lot of accuracy from seventy-five to a hundred feet.”

“Twenty-five to thirty yards. Almost the equivalent of a handgun firing range, and Havelock was standing still. He wasn’t a moving target. Did you question Baylor about that?”

“Frankly, I didn’t see any reason to. He’s got enough on his mind, including a shot-up hand that may spell him out of the army. In my opinion, he acted correctly in a hairy situation. He waited until he saw Havelock point his gun at Ogilvie, until he was convinced Red didn’t have a chance. He only fired then, at the precise moment Ogilvie lunged up at Havelock, taking the bullet. Everything corresponds with the autopsy to Rome.”

“The delay cost Red his life,” said Dawson, not satisfied.

“Shortened it,” corrected the doctor. “And not by much.”

“That’s also in the autopsy report,” added Stern.

“This may sound pretty cold under the circumstances,”
said the attorney, “and perhaps it’s related. We overestimated him.”

“No,” disagreed the director of Cons Op. “We underestimated Havelock. What more do you need? It’s been three days since the Palatine, and in those three days he’s destroyed a conduit, frightened off the locals in Rome—no one wants to work for us now—and collapsed a network. Added to this he routed a cable through Switzerland to the chairman of Congressional Oversight, alluding to CIA incompetence and corruption in Amsterdam. And this morning we get a call from the chief of White House security, who doesn’t know whether to be panicked or outraged. He, too, received a cable, this one in sixteen-hundred cipher, implying that there was a Soviet mole close to the President.”

“That comes from Havelock’s so-called confrontation with Rostov in Athens,” said Dawson, glancing at the yellow legal pad. “Baylor reported it”.

“And Paul here doubts that it ever took place,” said Stern, looking at Miller.

“Fantasy and reality,” interjected the psychiatrist. “If all the information we’ve gathered is accurate, he slips back and forth, unable to distinguish which.
If
our data is accurate. In all likelihood, there’s a degree of incompetence, perhaps minor corruption, in Amsterdam. However, I’d think it’s just as unlikely that a Soviet mole could break into the presidential circle.”

“We can and do make mistakes
here,”
offered Stern, “as well as at the Pentagon, and, God knows, in Langley. But over there the chances of that type of error are minuscule. I don’t say it can’t happen or hasn’t happened, but anyone close to the Oval Office has had every year, every month, every week of his life put under the microscope, even the President’s closest friends. The bright recruits are researched as if they might be Stalin’s heirs; it’s been standard procedure since ’47.” The director paused again, again not finished. His eyes strayed to the sheaf of loose notes in front of the doctor. He continued slowly, pensively. “Havelock knows which buttons to press, which people to reach, the right ciphers to use; even old ciphers have impact. He can create panic because he gives his information authenticity…. How far will he go, Paul?”

“No absolutes, Daniel,” said the psychiatrist, shaking his head. “Whatever I say is barely above guesswork.”

“Trained guesswork,” interrupted the lawyer.

“How would you like to try a case without the benefit of pretrial examination?” asked Miller.

“You’ve got depositions, statistics, a current on-site briefing, and a detailed dossier. It’s fair background.”

“Bad analogy. Sorry I brought it up.”

“If we can’t find him, how far will he go?” pressed the director of Cons Op. “How long have we got before he starts costing lives?”

“He already has,” broke in Dawson.

“Not in a controlled sense,” contradicted Miller. “It was a direct reaction to a violent attack on his own life. There’s a difference.”

“Spell out the difference, Paul”.

“As I see it,” said the psychiatrist, picking up his notes and adjusting his glasses. “And to use a favorite phrase of Ogilvie’s, I don’t claim it’s Holy Writ. But there are a couple of things that shed a little light, and I’ll be honest with you, they disturb me. The key, of course, is in whatever was said between Havelock and Ogilvie, but since we can’t know what it was, we can only go by Baylor’s detailed description of the scene, the physical movements, the general tone. I’ve read it over and over again, and until the final moments—the eruption of violence—I was struck by a note I didn’t expect to find. The absence of sustained hostility.”

“Sustained hostility?” asked Stern. “I don’t know what that Implies in behavioral terms, but I hope it doesn’t mean they didn’t argue, because they did. Baylor makes that clear.”

“Of course they argued; it was a confrontation. There was a prolonged outburst on Havelock’s part, restating the threats he’s made before, but then the shouting stopped; it had to. Some kind of accommodation was reached. It couldn’t have been otherwise in light of what followed.”

“In light of what followed?” questioned Stern, bewildered. “What followed was Ogilvie’s trap, the diphenylamine gas, the explosion.”

“I’m sorry, you’re wrong, Daniel. There was a retreat before then. Remember, from the moment Havelock showed himself until that instant at the bench when he kicked out, aborting the trap, there was no show of physical violence, no
display of weapons. There was talk,
conversation
. Then the cigarettes, the matches. It’s too damned reasonable.”

“What do you mean?”

“Put yourself in Havelock’s place. Your grievance is enormous, your anger at fever pitch, and a man you consider your enemy asks you for a light. What do you do?”

“It’s only a match.”

“That’s right, only a match. But you’re consumed, your head throbbing with anxiety, your state of mind actually vicious. The man in front of you represents betrayal at its worst, at its most personal, most deeply felt. These are the things a paranoid schizophrenic feels at a time like this, with a man like this. And that man, that enemy—even if he’s promised to tell you everything you want to hear—asks you for a light How do you react?”

“I’d give it to him.”

“How?”

“Well, I’d—” The section chief stopped, his eyes locked with Miller’s. Then he completed the answer, speaking quietly. “I’d throw it to him.”

“Or tell him to forget about it, or shove it, or just to keep on talking. But I don’t think you’d take a pack of matches from your pocket and walk over, handing them to that man as though it were a momentary pause in an argument rather than an interruption of a highly charged moment of extreme personal anxiety. No, I don’t think you’d do that. I don’t think any of us would.”

“We don’t know what Ogilvie said to him,” objected Stern. “He could have—”

“It almost doesn’t matter, don’t you see?” interrupted the psychiatrist. “It’s the pattern, the goddamned
pattern.”

“Discerned from a pack of
matches
?”

“Yes, because it’s symptomatic. Throughout the entire confrontation, with the exception of a single outburst, there was a remarkable absence of aggressiveness on Havelock’s part. If Baylor is as accurate as you say—and I suspect he is, because under the circumstances he’d be prone to exaggerate any threatening movements or gestures—Havelock exercised extraordinary control … rational behavior.”

“What does that tell you?” asked Dawson, breaking his silence, watching Miller closely.

“I’m not sure,” said the doctor, returning the lawyer’s
stare. “But I know it doesn’t fit the portrait of the man we’ve convinced ourselves we’re dealing with. To twist a phrase, there’s too much reason afoot, not enough madness.”

“Even with his slipping in and out of reality?” continued Dawson.

“It’s not relevant here. His reality is the product of his whole experience, his everyday living. Not his convictions; they’re based largely on his emotions. Under the conditions of the rendezvous, they should have surfaced more, distorting his reality, forcing him into listening less, into a more aggressive posture.… He listened too much.”

“You know what you’re saying, don’t you, Paul?” said the attorney.

“I know what I’m
implying
, based on the data we’ve all accepted as being totally accurate … from the beginning.”

“That the man on the Palatine three days ago doesn’t fit the portrait?” suggested Dawson.

“Might
not fit it. No absolutes, only ‘trained’ guesswork. We don’t know what was said, but there was too much rationality in what was described to suit me. Or the portrait.”

“Which was predicated on information we’ve considered infallible,” concluded the lawyer. “In your words, ‘from the beginning.’ Prom Costa Brava.”

“Exactly. But suppose it wasn’t? Suppose it
isn’t
?”

“Impossible!” said the director of Consular Operations. “That information was filtered through a dozen sieves, then filtered again through twenty more. There was
no
margin for error. The Karas woman
was
KGB; she
died
at Costa Brava.”

“That’s what we’ve accepted,” agreed the psychiatrist. “And I hope to God it’s accurate, and that my guesswork observations are worthless reactions to an inaccurately described scene. But if It’s not and they’re not, if there’s the remotest possibility that we’re not dealing with a psychopath but with a man who’s telling the truth because it
is
the truth, then we’re faced with something I don’t even want to think about.”

The three men fell silent, each grappling with the enormity of the implication. Finally Dawson spoke. “We have to think about It.”

“It’s appalling even to consider it,” said Stern. “There was MacKenzie’s confirmation, and it
was
a confirmation. The torn
clothing, parts of a blouse, a skirt, they
belonged
to her, it was established. And the blood type, A-negative.
Hers.”

“And Steven MacKenzie died of a coronary three weeks later,” interrupted Miller. “We looked into it, but it just faded away.”

“Come on, Paul,” objected Stern. “That doctor in Maryland is one of the most respected on the Eastern Shore. What’s his name?… Randolph. Matthew Randolph. Johns Hopkins, Mayo Clinic, on the boards of Massachusetts General, New York’s Mount Sinai, and with his own medical center. He was thoroughly interviewed.”

“I’d like to talk to him again,” the doctor said.

“And I remind you,” pressed the director of Cons Op. “MacKenzie had just about the finest record that ever came out of the Central Intelligence Agency. What you’re suggesting is inconceivable.”