The Parsifal Mosaic (89 page)

Scholars. Soldiers. Lawyers. Doctors. Attachés. Diplomats.… Defectors. All Soviets who at one time or another had direct contact with Anthony Matthias. Havelock pictured each man, each face, his inner ear hearing dozens of voices speaking in English, matching the voices with the faces, listening for phrases that were spoken rapidly, words that were clipped, consonants harsh. It was maddening, faces and voices intermingling, lips moving, suddenly no sound followed by shouts.
You will be mentioned prominently and frequently
. Did
he
say that,
would
he say that?
You will be summoned
 … how many times had that phrase been used? So many. But who used it?
Who?

An hour passed, then most of another and a second pack of cigarettes with it. The expired deadline for Moscow was approaching the final deadline for Poole’s Island. A decision—
the
decision—would have to be made. Nothing was forgotten, only submerged, eyes straying to watches as the inner search for Parsifal reached a frightening level of intensity.

“I can’t find him!” cried Michael, pounding his hand on
the coffee table. “He’s here, the
words
are here, but I can’t find him!”

The telephone rang.
Rostov?
Havelock shot up from the chair, staring at it, motionless. He was drained, and the thought of finding the resources to fence verbally with the Soviet intelligence officer eight thousand miles away drained him further. The abrasive bell sounded again. He went to the phone and picked it up as Jenna watched him.

“Yes?” he said quietly, marshaling his thoughts for the opening moves on both sides.

“It is your friend from Kennedy Airport who no longer has his weapon—”

“Where’s Rostov? I gave you a deadline.”

“It was met. Listen to me carefully. I’m calling from a phone booth on Eighth Avenue and must keep my eyes on the street. The call came through a half hour ago. Fortunately, I took it, as my superior had an engagement for the evening. He will expect to find me when he returns.”

“What are you driving at?”

“Rostov is dead. He was found at nine-thirty in the morning, Moscow time, after repeated calls failed to rouse him.”

“How did he
die
?”

“Four bullets in the head.”

“Oh,
Christ
! Have they any idea who killed him?”

“The rumor is Voennaya Kontra Razvedka, and I, for one, believe it. There have been many such rumors lately, and if a man like Rostov can be taken out, then I am too old, and must call from a phone booth. You are fools here, but it’s better to live with fools than lie among jackals who will rip your throat open if they don’t care for the way you laugh or drink.”

At the meeting this afternoon
 … 
something I didn’t understand
 … An
intelligence officer from the KGB made contact
 … 
speculated on the identity
 … Arthur pierce, while awkwardly smoking a cigarette on a deserted runway.

Rostov didn’t speculate. He knew. A collection of fanatics in a branch called the VKR, the Voennaya
 … 
He’ll break it open
 … A fellow killer from the Costa Brava.

Had Pierce’s call encompassed more than the death of a
paminyatchik
? Had he demanded the execution of a man in Moscow? Four bullets in the head. It had cost Rostov’s life,
but It could be the proof he needed. Was it conclusive? Could anything be conclusive?

“Code name Hammer-zero-two,” said Michael, thinking, reaching. “Does it mean anything to you?”

“A part of it possibly, not all of it.”

“What
part
?”

“The ‘hammer.’ It was used years ago, and was restricted. Then it was abandoned, I believe. Hammarskjöld, Dag Hammarskjöld. The United Nations.”

“Jesus!
 … Zero, zero … two. A zero is a circle … a circle. A council! Two … double, twice,
second
. The second voice in the delegation! That’s it!”

“As you gather,” interrupted the Russian, “I must cross over.”

“Call the New York office of the FBI. Go there. I’ll get word to them.”

“That is one place I will
not
go. It is one of the things I can tell you.”

“Then keep moving and call me back in thirty minutes. I have to move quickly.”

“Fools or jackals. Where is the choice?”

Havelock pressed the adjacent button on the phone, disconnecting the line. He looked up at Jenna. “It’s Pierce. Hammer-zero-two. I told him —we all told him—about Rostov dosing in on the Voennaya. He had Rostov killed. It’s
him
.”

“He’s trapped,” said Jenna. “You’ve got him.”

“I’ve got him. I’ve got Ambiguity, the man who called us dead at Col des Moulinets.… And when I get him to a clinic I’ll shoot him into space. Whatever he knows I’ll know.” Michael dialed quickly. “The President, please. Mr Cross calling.”

“You must be very quiet, Mikhail,” said Jenna, approaching the desk. “Very quiet and precise. Remember, it will be an extraordinary shock to him and, above all, he must believe you.”

Havelock nodded. “That’s the hardest part. Thanks. I was about to plunge in with conclusions first. You’re right. Take him up slowly.… Mr. President?”

“What is it?” asked Berquist anxiously. “What’s happened?”

“I have something to tell you, sir. It will take a few
minutes, and I want you to listen very closely to what I’ve got to say.”

“All right. Let me get on another phone; there are people in the next room.… By the way, did Pierce reach you?”

“What?”

“Arthur Pierce. Did he call you?”

“What
about
Pierce?”

“He telephoned about an hour ago; he needed a second clearance. I told him about your call to me, that you both wanted to know if I’d brought up the Randolph Medical Center business—lousy goddamned mess—and I said I had, that we all knew about it.”

“Please
, Mr. President! Go back. What,
exactly
, did you say?”

“What’s the matter with you?”

“What did he say to you?”

“About what?”

“Just
tell
me! First, what you said to him!”

“Now, just a minute, Havelock—”

“Tell
me! You don’t have time,
none
of us has time! What did you
say
?”

The urgency was telegraphed. Berquist paused, then answered calmly, a leader aware of a subordinate’s alarm, not understanding it but willing to respect its source. “I said that you’d phoned me and specifically asked if I had brought up the Randolph Medical Center at the meeting this afternoon. I said that I had, and that you seemed relieved that everyone knew about it.”

“What did
he
say?”

“He seemed confused, frankly. I think he said ‘I see,’ then asked me if you’d given any reason for wanting to know.”

“Know
what
?”

“About the Medical—What is wrong with you?”

“What did you
say
?”

“That I understood you were both concerned, although I wasn’t sure why.”

“What was his reply?”

“I don’t think he had one.… Oh, yes. He asked if you’d made any progress with the man you’ve got at Bethesda.”

“Which wasn’t until tomorrow and he knew it!”

“What?”

“Mr. President, I don’t have time to explain and you can’t lose a moment. Has Pierce gotten into that vault, that room?”

“I don’t know.”

“Stop him! He’s the mole!”

“You’re
insane
!”

“Goddamn it, Berquist, you can have me shot, but right now I’m
telling
you! He’s got cameras you don’t know about! In rings, watches, cuff links! Stop him! Take him! Strip him and check for capsules,
cyanide
! I can’t give that order but you can! You
have
to!
Now!”

“Stay by the phone,” said the President of the United States. “I
may
have you shot.”

Havelock got out of the chair, if for no other reason than the need to move, to keep in motion. The dark mists were closing in again; be had to get out from under them. He looked at Jenna, and her eyes told him she understood.

“Pierce found me. I found him, and he found me.”

“He’s trapped.”

“I could have killed him at Costa Brava. I wanted to kill him, but I wouldn’t listen. I wouldn’t listen to myself.”

“Don’t go back. You’ve got him. You’re within the time span.”

Michael walked away from the desk, away from the dark mist that pursued him. “I don’t pray,” he whispered. “I don’t believe. I’m praying now, to what I don’t know.”

The telephone rang and he lunged for it. “Yes?”

“He’s gone. He ordered the patrol boat to take him back to Savannah.”

“Did he get into that
room
?”

“No.”

“Thank Christ!”

“He’s got something else,” said the President in a voice that was barely audible.

“What?”

“The complete psychiatric file on Matthias. It says everything.”

The police swept through the streets of Savannah, patrol cars roaring out to the airport and screeching into bus and train stations. Car-rental agencies were checked throughout the city and roadblocks set up on the major highways and backcountry routes—north to Augusta, south to Saint Marys, west to Macon and Valdosta. The man’s description was radioed to all units—municipal, county, state—and the word spread down through the ranks from the highest levels of authority:
Find him. Find the man with the streak of white in his hair. If seen, approach with extreme caution, weapons drawn. If movements are unexpected, shoot. Shoot to kill
.

The manhunt was unparalleled in numbers and intensity, the federal government assuring the state, the cities and townships that all costs would be borne by Washington. Men off duty were called in by precincts and station houses; vehicles in for minor repairs were put back on the streets, and private cars belonging to police personnel were issued magnetic, circling roof lamps and sent out to prowl the dark country roads. Everywhere automobiles and pedestrains were stopped; anyone even vaguely approaching the man’s description was politely requested to remove his hat if he was wearing one, and flashlights roamed over faces and hairlines, searching for a hastily, imperfectly dyed streak of white hair rising above a forehead. Hotels, motels and rural inns were
descended upon; registers were checked for late arrivals, desk clerks questioned, the interrogators alert to the possibility of evasion or deception. Farmhouses where lights remained on were entered—courteously, to be sure—but the intruders were aware that the inhabitants could be hostages, that an unseen child or wife might be held captive somewhere on the premises by the man with the streak of white in his hair. Rooms and barns and silos were searched, nothing left to speculation.

Morning came, and weary thousands reported back to points of dispatch, angry, frustrated, bewildered by the government’s ineffectual methods. For no photographs or sketches were issued; the only name given was “Mr. Smith.” The alarm was still out, but the blitzkrieg search was essentially over, and the professionals knew it. The man with the streak of white in his hair had slipped through the net. He could be blond or bald or gray by now, limping with a cane or a crutch, and dressed in tattered clothes, or in the uniform of the police or the military, without a vestige of his former appearance.

The newspapers carrying early-morning stories of the strange, massive hunt abruptly called off their reporters. Owners and editors had been reached by respected, men in government who claimed no special knowledge of the situation but had profound trust in those higher up who had appealed to them,
Play it down, let the story die
. In second editions the search was relegated to a few lines near the back pages, and those papers with third editions carried no mention of it at all.

And an odd thing happened at a telephone exchange beginning with the digits 0-7742. Since midnight it had not functioned, and by 8:00
A.M.
, when service was suddenly, inexplicably, resumed, telephone “repairmen” were in the building of the Voyagers Emporium annex, where orders were received, and every incoming call was monitored and taped, all tapes
under
fifteen seconds in length played instantly over the phone to Sterile Five. The brevity reduced the number to a very few.

International airports were infiltrated by federal agents with sophisticated X-ray equipment that scanned briefcases and hand luggage; they were looking for a two-inch-thick metal case with a combination lock on the side. There were
two assumptions: one, the devastating file would not be entrusted to a cargo hold; and, two, it would remain in its original government container for authenticity. If container and file were separated, either shape was sufficient cause for examination. By 11:30
A.M.
over twenty-seven hundred attaché cases had been opened and searched, from Kennedy to Atlanta to Miami International.

“Thanks very much,” said Havelock into the phone, forcing energy into his voice, feeling the effects of the sleepless night He hung up and looked over at Jenna, who was pouring coffee. “They can’t understand and I can’t tell them. Pierce wouldn’t call Orphan-ninety-six unless he thought he could get his message across with a very few words, spoken quickly. He knows I’ve got the place wired and maimed by now.”

“You’ve done everything you can,” said Jenna, carrying the coffee to the desk. “All the airports are covered—”

“Not for him,” Michael broke in. “He wouldn’t risk it, and besides, he doesn’t want to leave. He wants what I want. Parsifal.… It’s that
file
! One small single-engine plane crossing the Mexican border, or a fishing boat meeting another between here and Cuba, or out of Galveston toward Matamores, and that file’s on its way to Moscow, into the hand of the overkill specialists in the Voennaya. And there’s not a damn thing I can do about it.”

“The Mexican border is being patrolled, the agents doubled. The piers and marinas are watched both here and in the Gulf, all boats tracked, stopped if directions are in question. You insisted on these things and the President issued the orders.”