The Parsifal Mosaic (59 page)

“There are your words,” he said, handing Jenna the last page and getting up to stretch. His body ached; he had written furiously for nearly two hours. While Jenna read he lit a cigarette and walked to the window overlooking the highway and the ocean beyond. It was dark, the moon intermittently shining through a night sky streaked with clouds. The weather was fair, the seas normal; he hoped both would stay that way.

“They’re strong words, Mikhail,” said Jenna, placing the last carbon on the desk.

“It’s the truth.”

“Forgive me for not approving. You could cost the lives of many people, many friends, with this.”

“Not the last four pages. There’re no friends there … except the Apache, and he’s gone.”

“Then use only the last four pages,” said Jenna.

Havelock turned from the window. “No, I have to go all the way or not at all. There’s no middle ground now; they’ve got to believe I’ll do it. More important, they’ve got to believe
you’ll
do it. If there’s the slightest doubt, I’m dead and you might as well be. The threat’s got to be real, not hollow.”

“You’re assuming you’ll be caught.”

“If I find what I think I’m going to find, I intend to be.”

“That’s insane!” cried Jenna, quickly getting to her feet.

“No, it isn’t. You’re not usually wrong, but you are now. That island’s the shortcut we’ve been looking for.” He walked toward the chair where he had dropped the purchases from the sporting-goods store. “I’ll get dressed and well work out a telephone relay.”

“You mean this, don’t you?”

“I mean it.”

“Booths, then,” she said reluctantly. “No call over twelve seconds.”

“But only one number.” Michael changed direction and went to the desk. He picked up a pencil, wrote on the pad, tore off the page and gave it to Jenna. “Here it is; it’s the Cons Op emergency reception. Dial direct—I’ll show you how—and have a pocketbook full of change.”

“I have no pocketbook.”

“And no money, and no clothes,” added Havelock, taking her by the shoulders, pulling her to him. “Remedy that, will you? It’ll take your mind off things for a while. Go shopping.”

“You’re mad.”

“No, I mean it. You won’t have much time, but most of the stores in that shopping center stay open until ten-thirty. Then there’s a bowling alley, a couple of restaurants, and an all-night supermarket.”

“I don’t
believe
you,” she exclaimed, pulling her face back and looking at him.

“Believe,” he said. “It’s safer than telephone booths on the highway.” He glanced at his watch. “It’s ten of nine now, and Poole’s Island is only a mile and a half offshore. It shouldn’t take me more than twenty minutes to reach it—say, by ten. At eleven I want you to start calling that number and say the words ‘billiards or pool.’ Got it?”

“Certainly. ‘Billiards or pool.’ ”

“Good. If you don’t get an immediate response, hang up and get to another phone. Call every fifteen minutes.”

“You say a response. What will it be?”

Havelock frowned. “ ‘We prefer pool.’ ”

“ ‘We prefer pool.’ Then what?”

“A last call, again fifteen minutes later. Someone else other than the operator will be patched into the emergency line. He won’t use a name but he’ll give the response. The second he does, read him the first two lines on the first page. I’ll take the carbons with me so the words match. Do it fast and hang up.”

“And then the waiting begins,” said Jenna, holding him, her cheek against his. “Now, our immovable prison.”

“Very immovable—stationary, in fact. Pick up food at the supermarket and stay here. Don’t go out. I’ll reach you.”

“How long will it be, do you think?”

Havelock gently pulled his cheek away from hers and
looked at her. “It could be as long as a day, two days. I hope not, but it may be.”

“And if …” Jenna could not finish the sentence, and tears came to her eyes, her face drawn.

“After three days call Alexander in Fox Hollow and tell him I’ve been killed or taken, that Anton Matthias is being held prisoner. Say you’ve got the proof in my own handwriting, plus my voice on the tape I made at Salanne’s house in Cagnes-sur-Mer. Under the circumstances, he can’t walk away from you. He won’t. His beloved republic is being poisoned.” Michael paused. “Just the last four pages,” he said quietly. “Burn the first nine. You’re right, they don’t deserve to die.”

Jenna closed her eyes. “I cannot promise you that,” she said. “I love you so. If I lose you, none of them matters. None.”

The water was choppy, as it often was when coastal currents were interrupted by sudden offshore land masses. He was about a quarter of a mile from the island’s rocky coastline, approaching from the leeward side, the wind carrying the minimal sound of the engine out to sea. He would cut if off soon and use the oars, rowing forward toward the darkest section of the surrounding pines, guided by the soft glow of light beyond the treetops.

He had made his own separate arrangements with the marina’s night watchman, tenuous arrangements any experienced field man would attempt to make if he hired a boat with the possibility that he might have to abandon it. One never gave up means of escape unless it was absolutely necessary, but one obscured those means as best one could, if only to buy time; five minutes of confusion was often the difference between capture and escape. So far, however, the trip had been clean. He would propel the skiff into the blackest inlet and beach it.

Now was the moment. He pushed in the throttle; the engine coughed quietly and died. He jumped to the mid-seat, body forward, and lifted the oars into their locks. The outgoing current was stronger than he had expected; he pressed against the seaward tide, hoping it would alter before his arms and shoulders weakened. The wound from Col des
Moulinets was beginning to hurt; he had to be careful and use the weight of his body.…

Sound
. Not his, not the abrasive creaking of oarlocks or the lapping of waves against the bow. A muffled sound … an engine.

A light, a searchlight, sweeping the water about half a mile to his right. It was a patrol boat rounding the far point of the island, veering starboard, directly at him. Did the island’s security system include sonar? Sonic beams shooting over the water, rising and falling with the tides, capable of picking up small craft approaching the shore? Or was the boat on a routine patrol? It was not the moment to speculate. Keeping his body low, Havelock swiftly lifted the oars out of their locks, shoving both under the slatted seats so they rested on the floor of the hull. He reached toward for the mooring line, throwing it over the bow, and then slipped over the side into the ocean, breathing deeply and tensing his muscles to ward off the cold. He slid back and held on to the propeller shaft, splashing water over the outboard motor, cooling the top surface. He had traveled at very low throttle; in minutes only a sensitive hand would be able to determine whether the engine had been running—if anyone thought to check.

The searchlight suddenly blinded him; the skiff had been spotted. The faraway engine roared through the wind, joined by the wobbling wail of a siren. The patrol boat accelerated, bearing down on him. He dived under the water, swimming out, away from the island, the current propelling him. The skiff was still nearly a quarter-mile from the shoreline, too far for a swimmer to attempt comfortably in these waters; it was a fact that might weigh in his favor when the boat was found.

By the time the large patrol boat had sidep-slipped into the skiff and cut its motors, Michael was twenty yards behind its stern, breaking the surface, pulling the wet wool knit hat down over his head. The searchlight was crisscrossing the water everywhere; he went under twice, his eyes open, re-emerging when the beam had passed. It continued scanning the area, but no longer behind, only in the front and the sides. Two men with grappling hooks had the skiff in tow; the one at the bow shouted.

“Leo’s Marina, Lieutenant! Out of Savannah! Marker number GA zero-eight-two!”

“Tell base to raise Leo’s Marina in Savannah and cut us in!” yelled the officer to an unseen radio operator in the open cabin. “The number’s GA zero-eight-two! Get a reading!”

“Yes, sir!” came the reply.

“And inform base of our location. Have a security check run on sector four.”

“This thing couldn’t have gotten in there, Lieutenant,” said the man with the stern hook. “It’d be tripped by the flat nets. Everywhere there ain’t no rocks we got flat nets.”

“Then what the hell’s it doing here? Are there any clothes, any equipment? Anything?”

“Nothin’, sir!” yelled the first man, climbing down into the skiff. “Stinks of fish, that’s all.”

Havelock watched while treading and bobbing in the water. He was struck by an odd thing: the men on the patrol boat were in khaki fatigues, the officer in a field jacket. They were army, not navy. Yet the boat had a naval registration.

“Lieutenant!” The voice came from within the cabin as a face with a headset framing it appeared in the open archway. “The watchman at Leo’s said a couple of drunks had that skiff out and brought it in late. He figured they didn’t tie it up proper and it went out with the tide. He’d appreciate it if we towed it in; it’d be his ass. The boat’s shit, but the outboard’s worth money.”

“I don’t like it,” said the officer.

“Hey, come on, sir. Who’s gonna swim a half—mile in these waters? The fishermen’ve seen sharks around here.”

“Suppose it’s
been
in?”

“With the flat nets?” asked the man with the stern hook. “No place else to park, Lieutenant.”

“Fuck it! Throw up the line and let’s circle around nearer the nets and rocks. This Leo owes us.”

And Havelock knew he owed a night watchman far more than the hundred dollars he had given him. The patrol boat’s engines roared as the first man climbed aboard and another tied the skiff’s mooring line to a stern cleat. In seconds the surface prowler was heading toward the shoreline, crisscrossing the waters as its powerful searchlight roamed the darkness.

Flat nets
. Fields of lightweight fabric, stretched and held
afloat just below the surface by buoyant cork or Styrofoam, woven together with strands of piano wire. Fish could not break the wires, but propellers could, and if they did, the alarms went off.
Rocks
. Stretches of the island’s coastline that were prohibitive to vessels of any size. He had to keep the patrol boat in sight; it was approaching the rocks.

Sharks
. He did not care to think about them; there simply was no point.

What he had to concentrate on was reaching land. The current was almost intolerable, but by breaststroking between the waves and the undertow beneath he made slow progress, and when he could see the beams of a dozen flashlights shining through the pines, he knew he was getting closer. Time was irrelevant, its passage reflected only in the straining pain in his arms and legs, but his concentration was complete. He had to reach a net or a rock, or some other obstruction beneath him that told him he could stand.

A net came first. He worked himself to the right, hand over hand, slipping on the thick nylon cord, until he felt a huge floating Styrofoam barrel shaped like an ocean buoy. He rounded it and pulled himself in on the border of cord until his knees struck two sharp objects that told him he had reached the rocks. He held on to the net, his body battered by the incoming surf, and waited, gasping for air. The flashlight beams were receding into the pines; the security check in sector four had proven fruitless. When the last beam disappeared between the trunks, he inched his way toward the shore, holding on to the wired net with all his strength as the waves crashed over him. He had to stay away from the rocks! They loomed above him—white, jagged points of stone made razor-sharp by millennia of rushing waters. One enormous wave and he would be impaled.

He lurched to his left, spreading himself over the net, when suddenly it was gone. It was gone! He could feel the sand under him. He had crossed the man-made barrier reef and was on land.

He crawled out of the water, barely able to lift his arms; his legs were drained, weightless appendages that kept collapsing into the wet softness beneath him. The moon made one of its sporadic appearances, illuminating a dune of wild grass twenty yards ahead; he crept forward, each foot bringing him nearer a resting place. He reached the dune and
climbed up onto its dry sand; he rolled over on his back and stared at the dark sky.

He remained motionless for the better part of a half hour, until he could feel the blood filling his arms again, the weight returning to his legs. Ten years ago, even five, he reflected, the gauntlet he had struggled through would have taken him fifteen minutes, at most, from which to recover. Now, he would appreciate several hours’, if not a night’s, sleep and a hot bath.

He lifted his hand and looked at the dial of his watch. It was ten-forty-three. In seventeen minutes Jenna would place her first call to Cons Op emergency reception. He had wanted an hour on the island—to explore, to make decisions—before that first call, but it was not to be. He was forty-three minutes behind schedule. On the other hand, there would have been no schedule at all to adhere to if he had failed to cross the island’s barrier reef.

He got to his feet, tested his legs, shook his arms and twisted his torso back and forth, barely noticing the discomfort of his soaked clothing and the abrasive scraping of sand over his entire body. It was enough that he could function, that signals from brain to muscle still filtered through the proper motor controls. He could move—swiftly if he had to—and his mind was clear; he needed nothing else.

He checked his gear. The waterproof flashlight was hooked into a strap around his waist next to the oilcloth packet on his left; the hunting knife in its scabbard was on the right. He removed the packet, unzipped the waterproof flap and felt the contents. The thirteen folded pages were dry. So was the small Spanish automatic. He took out the weapon, shoved it under his belt, and replaced the packet on the strap. He then checked his trouser pockets; the rawhide shoelaces were soaked but intact—each lace separate, rolled into a ball—five in his right-hand pocket, five in the left. If more than ten were needed, then none would be needed. They would all be worthless. He was ready.