The Parsifal Mosaic (25 page)

Had Rome found the man in Civitavecchia? He could only presume that others could do what he had done; no one was that exceptional or that lucky. He had in his anger—no, his outrage—shouted the name of the port city into the phone and Baylor had repeated it. If the wounded intelligence officer was capable of functioning after the Palatine, he would order his people to prowl the Civitavecchia waterfront and find a broker of illegal passage.

Yet there were always gaps, spaces that could not be filled. Would the man in Civitavecchia name the specific ship, knowing that if he did so, he’d never again be trusted on the waterfront? Trusted, hell; he could be killed in any one of a dozen mist-filled back streets. Or might he plead ignorance to that phase of the escape—sold by others unknown to him—but reveal Col des Moulinets so as to curry favor with powerful Americans in Rome, who everyone knew were inordinately generous with those they favored … “One more refugee from the Balkans, where was the sin, signori?”

So many gaps, so little that was concrete … so little time to think, so many inconsistencies. Who would have thought there’d be a tired, aging captain opposed to trafficking in the
profitable world of narcotics and contraband but perfectly willing to smuggle refugees out of Italy—no less a risk, no less a cause for imprisonment?

Or blunt Red Ogilvie, a violent man who never stopped trying to justify violence. There was ambivalence in that strange justification. What had driven John Philip Ogilvie? Why does a man strain all his life to break out of self-imposed chains? Who really was the Apache? The Gunslinger? Whoever and whatever, he had died violently at the very moment he had understood a violent truth. The liars were in control in Washington.

Above all, Jenna. His love who had not betrayed that love but, instead, had been betrayed. How could she have believed the liars? What could they have said to her, what irrefutable proof could they have presented that she would accept? Most important of all,
who
were the liars? What were their names and where had they come from?

He was so close now that he could sense it, feel it with every step he took on the darkening mountain road. Before the disappearing sun came up on the other side of the world, he would have the answers, have his love back. If his enemies had come from Rome, they were not a match for him; he knew that. His belief in himself swelled within him; it was unjustified all too often, but it was necessary. One did not come out of the early days, the terrible days, and survive without it. Each step and he was nearer.

And when he had the answers, and his love, the call would be made to a cabin in another range of mountains thousands of miles away. To the Blue Ridge and the Shenandoah, U.S.A. His mentor, his
přítel
, Anton Matthias, would be presented with a conspiracy that reached into the bowels of clandestine operations, its existence incontrovertible, its purpose unknown.

Suddenly he saw a small circle of light up ahead, shining through the foliage on the left-hand side of the road. He crouched and studied it, trying to define it. It did not move; it was merely there, where no light had been before. He crept forward, mesmerized, frightened; what was it?

Then he stood up, relieved, breathing again. There was a bend in the road, and in its cradle were the outlines of a building; it was the country inn. Someone had just turned on an outside post lamp; other lights would follow shortly. The
darkness had come abruptly, as if the sun had dropped into a chasm; the tall pines and the massive boulders blocked the shafts of orange and yellow that could still be seen in the sky. Light now appeared in windows, three on the nearest side, more in front—how many he could not tell, but at least six, judging from the spill that washed over the grass and graveled entrance of the building.

Michael stepped into the woods to check the underbrush and foliage. Both were manageable, so he made his way toward the three lighted windows. There was no point in staying on the road any longer; if there were surprises in store, he did not care to be on the receiving end.

He reached the border of the woods, where the thick trunk of a pine tree stood between him and a deeply rutted driveway of hard mud. The drive extended along the side of the inn and curved behind it into some kind of parking area next to what appeared to be a delivery entrance. The distance to the window directly across was about twenty-five feet; he stepped out from behind the tree.

Instantly he was blinded by headlights. The truck thundered out of the primitive road thirty yards to his right, careening into the narrow driveway of ridged mud. Havelock spun back into the foliage, behind the trunk of the pine tree, and reached for the Spanish automatic strapped to his chest. The truck bounced past, pitching and rolling over the hardened ruts of the drive like a small barge in choppy water. From inside the van could be heard the angry shouts of men objecting to the discomfort of their ride.

Havelock could not tell whether he had been seen or not; again he crouched for protective cover and watched. The truck lurched to a stop at the entrance of the wide, flat parking area; the driver opened his door and jumped to the ground. Prepared to race into the woods, Michael crept back several feet. It was not necessary; the driver stretched while swearing in Italian, his figure suddenly caught in the spill of a floodlight someone had switched on from inside the building. What the light revealed was bewildering: the driver was in the uniform of the Italian army, the insignia that of a border guard. He walked to the back of the truck and opened the large double doors.

“Get out, you bastards!” he shouted in Italian. “You’ve got
about an hour to fill your kidneys before you go on duty. I’ll walk up to the bridge and tell the others we’re here.”

“The way you drive, Sergeant,” said a soldier, grimacing as he stepped out, “they heard you halfway back to Monesi.”

“Up yours!”

Three other men got out, stamping their feet and stretching; all were guards.

The sergeant continued, “Paolo, you take the new man. Teach him the rules.” As the noncommissioned officer lumbered up the driveway past Havelock, he scratched his groin and pulled down the underwear beneath his trousers—signs of a long, uncomfortable trip.

“You, Ricci!” shouted a soldier at the rear of the truck, looking up into the van. “Your name’s Ricci, right?”

“Yes,” said the voice from inside, and a fifth figure emerged from the shadows.

“You’ve got the best duty you’ll find in the army,
paesano
! The quarters are up at the bridge, but we have an arrangement: we damn near live
here
. We don’t go up there until we go on. Once you walk in, you sign in, understand?”

“I understand,” said the soldier named Ricci.

But his name was not Ricci, thought Michael, staring at the blond man slapping his barracks hat against his left hand. Havelock’s mind raced back over a dozen photographs; his mind’s eye selected one. The man was not a soldier in the Italian army—certainly no border guard. He was a Corsican, a very proficient drone with a rifle or a handgun, a string of wire or a knife. His real name was irrelevant; he used too many to count. He was a “specialist” used only in “extreme prejudice” situations, a reliable executioner who knew his way around the western Mediterranean better than most such men, as much at home in the Balearic Islands as he was in the forests of Sicily. His photograph and a file of his known accomplishments had been provided Michael several years ago by a CIA agent in a sealed-off room at Palombara. Havelock had tracked a Brigate Rosse unit and was moving in for a nonattributable kill; he had rejected the blond man now standing thirty feet away from him in the floodlit driveway. He had not cared to trust him then, but Rome did now.

Rome
did
know. The embassy had found a man in Civitavecchia, and Rome had sent an executioner—for a nonattributable kill. Something or someone had convinced the liars
in Washington that a former field officer was now a threat only if he lived, so they had put out the word that he was “beyond salvage,” his immediate dispatch the highest priority. Nonattributable, of course.

The liars could not let him reach Jenna Karas, for she was part of their lie, her mock death on the Spanish coast intrinsic to it. Yet Jenna was running too; somehow, some way after Costa Brava she had escaped. Was she now included in the execution order? It was inevitable; the bait could not be permitted to live, and therefore the blond assassin was not the only killer on the bridge at Col des Moulinets. On, or near it.

The four soldiers and the new recruit started toward the rear entrance of the country inn. The door beneath the floodlight was opened, and a heavyset man spoke in a loud voice. “If you pigs spent all your money in Monesi, stay the hell out of here!”

“Ah, Gianni, then we’d have to close you up for selling French girls higher than ours!”

“You pay!”

“Ricci,” one of the soldiers said, “this is Gianni the thief. He owns this dung heap. Be careful what you eat.”

“I have to use the bathroom,” said the new recruit. He had just looked at his watch; it was an odd thing to do.

“Who doesn’t?” shouted another soldier as all five went inside.

The instant the door closed, Havelock ran across the drive to the first window. It looked in on a dining room. The tables were covered with red-checked cloths, with cheap silver and glassware in place, but there were no diners; either it was too early for the kitchen or there were no takers that afternoon. Beyond, separated only by a wide archway that extended the length of the wall, was the larger central barroom. From what he could see, there were a number of people seated at small round tables—between ten and fifteen would be his estimate, nearly all men. The two women in his sight lines were in their sixties, one fat, one gaunt, sitting at adjacent tables with mustachioed men; they were both talking and drinking beer. Teatime in the Ligurian Alps. He wondered if there were any other women in that room; he wondered—his chest aching—if Jenna was huddled at a corner table he could not see. If that was the case, he had to be
able to watch a door from the rear quarters—from the kitchen, perhaps—from which the five soldiers had to emerge into the barroom. He
had
to be able to see. The next few minutes could tell him what he needed to know: who among the clientele in that barroom would the blond killer recognize, if only with a glance, a twitch of his lips, or an almost imperceptible nod?

Michael crouched and ran to the second window along the drive; the angle of vision was still too restricting. He raced to the third, appraised the view and rejected it, then rounded the corner of the building to the first window in front. He could see the door now—CUCINA, the lettering said; the five soldiers would walk out of that door any second, but he could not see all the tables. There were two windows remaining that faced the stone path leading to the entrance. The second window was too close to the door for reasonable cover, but he held his breath and crawled swiftly to it, then stood up in the shadow of a spreading pine. He inched his face to the glass, and what he saw allowed him to let out the breath he had held. Jenna karas was not an ambushed target sitting in a corner. The window was beyond the inside archway; he could see not only the kitchen entrance but every table, every person in the room. Jenna was not there. And then his eyes strayed to the far-right wall; there was another door, a narrow door with two separate lines of letters.
Uomini
and
Hommes
, the men’s room.

The door labeled CUCINA swung open and the five soldiers straggled in; Gianni the thief had his hand on the shoulder of the blond man whose name was not Ricci. Havelock stared at the killer, stared at the eyes with all his concentration. The owner of the inn gestured to his left—Michael’s right—and the assassin started across the room toward the men’s room. The eyes. Watch the eyes!

It came! Barely a flicker of the lids, but it was there, the glance was there. Recognition. Havelock followed the blond man’s line of sight
Confirmed
. Two men were at a table in the center of the room; one had lowered his eyes to his drink while talking, the other—bad form—had actually shifted his legs so as to turn his head away from the path of the killer’s movement. Two more members of the unit—but only one of them was active. The other was an observer. The man who had shifted his legs was the agent of record who would confirm
the dispatch but in no way participate. He was an American; his mistakes bore it out. His jacket was an expensive Swiss windbreaker, wrong for the scene and out of season; his shoes were soft black leather, and he wore a shiny digital chronometer on his wrist—all so impressive, so irresistible to a swollen paycheck overseas, so in contrast to the shabby mountain garments of his companion. So American. The agent of record-but it was a file no more than six men alive would ever see.

Something else was inconsistent; it was in the numbers. A unit of three with only two active weapons was understaffed, considering the priority of the kill and the background of the foreign service officer who was the primary target. Michael began studying every face in the room, isolating each, watching eyes, seeing if any strayed to the oddly matched pair at the center table. After the faces came the clothes, especially those belonging to the few faces angled away from him. Shoes, trousers and belts where they could be seen; shirts, jackets, hats and whatever jewelry was visible. He kept trying to spot another chronometer or an Alpine wind-breaker or soft leather shoes. Inconsistencies. If they were there, he could not find them. With the exception of the two men at the center table, the drinkers at the inn were a ramshackle collection of mountain people. Farmers, guides, storekeepers—apparently French from across the bridge—and, of course, the border guards.

“
Ehi! Che avete
?” The words were hurled at him, a soldier’s challenge. The sergeant from the truck stood, with his hand on his holster, in the semidarkness of the path that led to the entrance of the inn.

“
Mia sposa
,” said Havelock quickly, his voice low, urgent, properly respectful.
“Noi siamo molto disturbati, Signor Maggiore. lo vado ad aiutare una ragazza francese. Là mia sposa mi seguirà
”