The Parsifal Mosaic (81 page)

“The Agency will dig all night, cross-checking with Cons Op and G-Two. They’ve located two photographs; six are still missing.”

“I’d think photographs would be the first consideration in these files,” said Jenna, standing by the silver tray and pouring Michael a drink. “You can’t bring over such people if you don’t know what they look like.”

He watched her as he repeated the words he had heard over the phone. “The men you chose were never considered that important,” Havelock said. “They were marginal, to begin with; their value was limited.”

“They were specialists.”

“Psychiatrists, psychologists, and a couple of professors of philosophy. Old men who were permitted the privilege of expressing their views—some vaguely offensive, none earth-shaking to the Kremlin.”

“But they all questioned theories promoted by Soviet strategists. Their questions
were
relevant to everything you’ve learned about Anton Matthias.”

“Yes, I know. We’ll keep looking.”

Jenna carried the short glass of straight whiskey to the desk. “Here, you need this.”

“Thanks.” Havelock took the glass and walked slowly toward the window. “I want to pull in Decker,” he said. “I’ve got to bring him down here. He’ll never tell me over the phone. Not everything.”

“You’re convinced he’s your man, then?”

“No question about it. I just had to understand why.”

“Loring told you. He fawns on superiors, says he agrees with them even when he doesn’t. Such a man would do Mat-thias’s bidding.”

“Strangely enough, that’s only part of it,” said Michael, shaking his head, then sipping his drink. “That description fits most ambitious men everywhere; the exceptions are rare. Too rare.”

“Then what?”

Havelock stared out the window. “He makes a point of justifying everything he does,” began Michael slowly. “He
reads Lessons at services Instituted at his command; he plays at being Solomon. Underneath that tactful, unctuous exterior there has
to
be a zealot. And only a zealot in his position would commit a crime for which—as Berquist says—he’d be summarily executed in most countries, and even here he would spend thirty years in prison.… It wouldn’t surprise me if Lieutenant Commander Thomas Decker did it all. If I had my way, he’d be taken out and shot. For all the good it would do.”

The sun had dropped below the trees, mottled orange rays, filtered by branches, spreading across the lawns and bouncing off the white walls of the Randolph Medical Center. Charles Loring crouched by the trunk of a tall oak at the far end of the parking area, the front entrance and rear emergency ramp in clear view, his radio in his hand. An ambulance had just brought in the victim of a traffic accident and his wife from U.S. 50. The injured man was being examined by Dr. Randolph and the Apache unit was in place in the corridor outside the examining room.

The Cons Op agent looked at his watch. He’d been at his post for nearly three-quarters of an hour—after a hastily arranged flight from the Pentagon helicopter pad to a private field on the outskirts of Denton, eight minutes away, where a car was waiting for him. He understood the Apache team’s concerns. The man they were assigned to protect was making things difficult, but Charley would have handled it differently. He would have sat on this Randolph and told the doctor he didn’t give a good goddamn whether he was chopped down or not, that the primary objective of the stakeout was to take even one of those coming after him, that
that
man’s life was far more important than his. Such an explanation might have made Randolph more cooperative. And Loring might have been having a decent dinner somewhere, instead of waiting for God knew what on a cold, wet lawn in Maryland.

Charley looked up toward the intruding sound. A black-and-white patrol car swerved into the rear parking area, turned abruptly, and came to a sudden stop at the side of the emergency ramp. Two police officers got out quickly and raced up toward the doors; one leaping on the platform, both
awkwardly holding their sides. Loring lifted the radio to his lips.

“Apache, this is Outside. A police car just drove up to the emergency dock in a hurry. Two cops are entering.”

“We see them,” came the reply, accompanied by static. “We’ll let you know.”

Charley looked again at the patrol car, and what he saw struck him as odd. Both doors were left open, something the police rarely did unless they intended to stay dose to their vehicles. There was always the possibility that a radio might be tampered with, or a signal book stolen, or even concealed weapons …

The static erupted, words following. “Interesting, but no sweat,” said an Apache as yet unseen by the Cons Op Agent. “Seems the wreck on Highway Fifty was traced to a prominent member of a Baltimore family. Mafia all the way, wanted on a dozen counts. They’ve fust been admitted for identification and any possible last statements.”

“Okay. Out.” Loring lowered the radio and considered a cigarette, deciding against it for fear the light would give him away. His eyes strayed again to the stationary patrol car, his mind wandering. Suddenly, there was something to think about, something immediate.

He had passed a police station on the road to the Medical Center, not five minutes away. He had noticed it at first not from the sign but by the cluster of three or four patrol cars in the side lot—not black-and-whites, but
red
-and-whites, the kind of bright color scheme often adopted by shore resort areas. And if a sought-after, major-league mafioso had been taken minutes ago to a local hospital after a collision, there certainly would be more than one patrol car covering the action.

Open doors, men racing, arms at their sides—concealed weapons
. Oh, my
God
!

“Apache! Apache, come in!”

“What is it, Outsider?”

“Are those police still in there?”

“They just
went
in.”

“Go in after them!
Now!”

“What?”

“Don’t argue, just
do
it! With weapons!”

By the time the radio was in his pocket and the .88 in his
hand, Charley was halfway across the parking lot, racing as fast as he could toward the emergency dock. He reached the platform and sprang up with one hand on it, legs scrambling, and lunged for the wide metal doors. He crashed them open and dashed past a startled nurse behind a glass-partitioned reception counter, his head turning in all directions, his eyes choosing the corridor straight ahead; it conformed to the Apaches’ position, their immediate sighting of the policemen. He ran down to an intersecting hallway, staring first to his left, then his right. There it was, ten feet away! EXAMINING ROOM. The door was shut; it did not make sense.

Loring approached swiftly, silently, taking long cautious steps, his back pressed against the wall. Suddenly he heard two muted spits and the start of a terrible scream from behind the heavy steel door, and he knew his instincts had been as right as he now wished they had been wrong. He spun around the frame so as to give his left hand free access to the metal handle, then jammed the handle down and threw his shoulder against the panel, sending the door open, then turned back for the protection of the frame.

The shots came, exploding into the wall in front of him; they were high, the spits from deep inside the room, not close by. Charley crouched and dived, rolling as he hit the floor, and fired into a blue uniform. He fired low, bullets ricocheting off obstructing steel.
Legs, ankles, feet! Arms, if you have to, but not the chest, not the head! Keep him alive!

The second blue uniform lunged over an examining table—a rushing blur of dark color—and Loring had no choice. He fired directly at the attacking man, who held a pipe-stock repeating weapon in his arms. The killer spun off the padded table, plummeting to the floor, his throat ripped open. Dead.

Keep the other alive, keep the other alive!
The order kept screaming in his head as Charley kicked the door shut and lurched, rolling, firing at the ceiling and blowing out the bright overhead fluorescent tubes, leaving only the harsh glow of a small high-intensity lamp on a faraway table.

Three spits erupted from the shadows, the bullets embedding themselves in the plaster and wood above him. He rolled furiously to his left and collided with two lifeless bodies—were they Apaches? He could not tell; he only knew he could not let the man who was alive escape. And there
were only two alive in that room-blood, shattered flesh, and corpses everywhere.

It had been a massacre.

A spitting burst of gunfire staccatoed across the floor, and he could feel the searing heat of the bullet that had punctured his stomach. But the pain did an odd thing to him, which he had no time to think about. He could only experience the reaction. His mind exploded in anger, but the anger was controlled, the fury directed. He had lost before. He could not lose again. He simply
could not
!

He sprang diagonally to his right, crashing into a stretcher table and sending it rolling toward the shadows where the staccato burst had come from; he heard the impact and rose swiftly, held his gun in both hands and aimed at another hand in the shadows. He fired as the screams swelled in the corridors beyond the closed door.

He had one last thing to do. And then he would not have lost.

Lieutenant Commander Thomas Decker walked into the study of Sterile Five, escorted by two men from the White House Secret Service. His angular face was set, and he looked both purposeful and anxious. The broad-shouldered frame under the well-tailored blue uniform was that of a man who kept in shape not from enjoyment but from compulsion; the body was too rigid, with too little fluidity in its movement. But it was the face that fascinated Havelock. It was a hard-shelled mask about to crack, and once that process started, it would shatter. Strength, purpose, and anxiety aside, Decker was petrified, and try as he might, he could not conceal his inner terror.

Michael spoke, addressing the Secret Service detail. “Thanks very much, gentlemen. The kitchen is outside to the right, at the end of the hallway. The cook will find you something to eat—beer, coffee, whatever you want. I’m sure I’ve interrupted your dinner break and I don’t know when we’ll be finished here. Make any phone calls you like, of course.”

“Thank you, sir,” said the man on Decker’s left, nodding to his companion, as they both turned and started for the door.

“You’ve also interrupted
my
dinner, and I expect—”

“Shut up, Commander,” broke in Havelock quietly.

The door closed, and Decker took several angry steps toward the desk, but the anger was too contrived, too forced. It had been summoned to replace the fear. “I have an engagement this evening with Admiral James at the Fifth Naval District!”

“He’s been informed that pressing naval business precludes your being there.”

“This is outrageous! I
demand
an explanation!”

“You’re entitled to a firing squad.” Havelock rose as Decker gasped. “I think you know why.”

“
you!
“The officer’s eyes grew wide; he swallowed as the color left his mask of a face. “You’re the one who’s been calling me, asking me those questions! Telling me … a very
great man
 … doesn’t remember! It’s a
lie
!”

“It’s the truth,” said Michael simply. “But you can’t understand, and it’s been driving you up the wall. It’s all you’ve been thinking about since I told you—because you know what you’ve done.”

Decker became rigid again, brows arched, eyes clouded, a military man having given his serial number but refusing any subsequent interrogation despite impending torture. “I have nothing to say to you, Mr. Cross. It is Cross, isn’t it?”

“It’ll do,” said Havelock, nodding once. “But you’ve got a great deal to say, and you
are
going to say it. Because if you don’t, a presidential order will send you to the deepest cell in Leavenworth and the key will be thrown away. To put you on trial would be far too dangerous to the security of this country.”

“No! … You
can’t!
I did nothing wrong! I was right,
we
were right!”

“The Joint Chiefs and key members of the House and Senate will agree,” continued Michael. “It’ll be one of the few times when the umbrella of national security will be completely valid.”

The mask cracked; the face shattered. Fear turned to desperation as Decker whispered, “What do they say I’ve done?”

“In violation of your oath as an officer and the codes of secrecy you’ve sworn to uphold, you reproduced dozens of the most sensitive documents in this country’s military history and removed them from the Pentagon.”

“And to
whom
did I deliver them? Answer me that.”

“
It doesn’t matter.”

“It
does
! It’s everything!”

“You had no authorization.”

“That
man has all the authority he needs!” Decker’s voice trembled as he tried to regain control. “I demand that you get Secretary of State Matthias on the phone.”

Havelock walked away from the desk, away from the telephone. The movement was not lost on the naval officer. It was the moment to retreat slightly. “I’ve been given
my
orders, Commander,” said Michael, permitting a degree of uncertainty in his own voice. “By the President and several of his closest advisers. The Secretary of State is not to be consulted in this matter under any circumstances whatsoever. He’s not to be informed. I don’t know why, but those are my orders.”

Decker took a halting step, then another, zeal joining the desperation in his wide, frantic eyes. He began barely above a whisper, the words growing louder with a zealot’s conviction. “The
President
? His
advisers
…? For God’s sake, can’t you
see
? Of course they don’t want him informed because he’s right and they’re
wrong
. They’re afraid and he isn’t! Do you think for a moment if I disappeared he wouldn’t know what had happened? Do you think he wouldn’t confront the President and his advisers and force a showdown? You talk about the Joint Chiefs, members of the House and the Senate. My God, do you think he couldn’t call them together and show what a weak, ineffectual,
immoral
administration this really
is?
There’d
be
no administration! It would be repudiated, crippled, thrown out!”