The Parsifal Mosaic (95 page)

“We don’t like the distance,” said the escort.

“Sorry to offend, but it’s an order. Stay out of sight. You know the destination; just take the mountain road as I described it. Seneca something or other. Go up about half a mile. We’ll be there.”

“Would you mind repeating the order, sir?”

Michael did so. “Is that clear?”

“Yes, Sterile Five. It’s also on tape.”

The dirt-layered car met the blanket of rain, dust and mud dissolving under the downpour. The driver swung into a long curve as the red signal tight on the powerful radio amplifier suddenly glowed.

“We’re on a different frequency,” said the man in the passenger seat as he reached for the microphone. He pressed the scanner for contact. “Yes?” he said.

“South?”

“We’re here.”

“It’s Victor. I’m approaching Warrenton on Sixty-six. Where are you?”

The man with the microphone studied the map on his lap with a pencil light. “North on Seventeen, heading into Marshall. You can pick it up in Warrenton.”

“Status?”

“Normal. We figure once they reach Marshall, they’ll either continue north on Seventeen or head west on the Front Royal Road. The turns are getting hairy; we’re going into the mountains.”

“We’ve got men covering both routes up there. I want to know which road they take and the distance between Sterile Five and his escort. Use this channel. I should catch up with you in ten to fifteen minutes.”

“What flight plan?”

“My own.”

The blond man sitting in the brown sedan in front of the Blue Ridge Diner slumped back in the seat, the microphone in his hand, his eyes on the road. He depressed the button. “It’s the Front Royal Road,” he said as the Buick coupe rushed by in the rain. “Right on time and in a hurry.”

“How far behind is the Lincoln?” asked the voice from the speaker.

“No sign of it yet.”

“You’re surer?”

“No headlights, and anyone damn fool enough to drive up here in this mess isn’t going to roll in the dark.”

“
It’s not normal. I’ll be right back.”

“It’s your equipment.”

The blond man lowered the microphone and reached for the cigarettes on the seat beside him. He jerked one out of the pack, put it to his lips, and snapped his butane lighter. Thirty seconds went by and still the Lincoln Continental had not come into view; nothing was in view but sheets of rain. Forty-five seconds. Nothing. A minute, and the voice, accompanied by static, burst out of the speaker. “Front Royal, where are you?”

“Here and waiting. You said you’d be right back, remember?”

“The escort. Has it gone by?”

“Nope. If it had, I would have rung you up, pal.… Wait. Stay there. We may have it.” A stream of light came out of the curve, and seconds later the long, dark car roared by in the downpour. “He just went by, old buddy. I’ll roll now.” The blond man sat up and eased the sedan out into the road.

“I’ll be right back,” said the voice.

“You keep repeating yourself, pal,” said the blond man, stopping on the accelerator. Gathering speed while watching the rain-soaked road closely, he saw the red taillights of the Lincoln flickering in the distance through the downpour. He breathed easier.

“Front Royal,” erupted the voice from the speaker.

“Right here, li’l darlin’.”

“Scan to seventeen-twenty megahertz for separate instructions.”

“Scanning now.” The blond man reached down and pressed the metal button; the digital readouts appeared on the narrow horizontal strip above the radio’s dials. “Front Royal in position,” he said.

“This is the man you don’t know, Front Royal.”

“Nice not to know you, old buddy.”

“How much are you being paid for tonight?” asked the new voice.

“Since you’re the man I don’t know, I figure you ought to know how much.”

“How good are you?”

“Very. How good’s your money?”

“You’ve been paid.”

“Not for what you want now.”

“You’re perceptive.”

“You’re kind of obvious.”

“That big fellow up ahead. He knows where the little fellow’s going, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Sure would. There’s a lot of space between them, ’specially for a night like this.”

“Do you think you could get between them?”

“Can do. Then what?”

“A bonus.”

“For what?”

“The little fellow’s going to stop somewhere. After he does, I don’t want the big fellow around him any longer.”

“You’re talking about a pretty big bonus, Mr. No-Name. That car’s an Abraham.”

“Six figures,” said the voice. “A reckless driver. Very feckless and very accurate.”

“You’re on, li’l darlin’.”

*   *   *

Arthur Pierce nodded through the window and the rain as he passed the old car four miles down the Front Royal Road. He lifted the microphone and spoke on the 1720 frequency.

“All right, South, here’s the manual. You stay with me, everyone else is dismissed. Thank them all for their time and say we’ll be in touch.”

“What about North? They travel.”

“I want them back with the naval contingent. It’s theirs now; they can alternate. Sooner or later—tonight, tomorrow, the next day—they’ll let him out. When they do, terminate. We don’t want to hear his voice.”

Havelock stopped the car and lowered the window; he peered through the rain at the sign nailed to the tree, feeling certain it was the one. It was:

He had driven Leon Zelienski home twice, once in the afternoon when the old man’s car would not start, and then several years later on a night like tonight when Matthias was worried that Leon might get stuck in the mud. Zelienski had not gotten stuck, but Michael had; it had been a long, wet walk back to Anton’s house. He remembered the roads.

He had taken Leon Zelienski home; he was coming after Alexei Kalyazin. Parsifal.

“Here we go,” said Havelock, turning up into the rock-hewn road with only remnants of long-eroded tarring on its surface. “If we stay in the center we should make it.”

“Stay in the center,” said Jenna.

They lurched and skidded up the narrow road, drenched darkness all around them, tires spinning, hurling loose rock behind and up into the metal fenders. The jarring ride did nothing to steady their nerves or set the tone for awesome negotiations. Michael had been brutal with Raymond Alexander, knowing he was right, but only partly right. He began to understand the other aspect of the journalist’s profound fear, fear that was driving him to the edge of hysteria. Zelienski’s threat was clear and terrifying! should Alexander betray the Russian or interfere in any way, the daily telephone call that Zelienski placed from various booths would
not be made. The silence would be the signal for the nuclear agreements to be sent to Moscow and Peking.

And chemicals could not be used to force Zelienski to reveal the number that he was calling; there was too great a risk with a man of his age. One cubic centimeter of excess dosage and his heart could blow apart, and the number would be lost with the internal explosion. There were only words. What
were
the words one found for a man who would save the world with a blueprint for its annihilation? There was no reason in such a mind, nothing but its own distorted vision.

The small house came into view above them on the right; it was hardly larger than a cabin, square in design and made of heavy stone. A sloping dirt driveway ended in a carport, where a nondescript automobile stood motionless, protected from the downpour. A single light shone through a bay window, which was oddly out of place in the small dwelling.

Havelock switched off the headlights and turned to Jenna. “It all began here,” he said. “In the mind of the man up there. All of it. From the Costa Brava to Poole’s Island, from Col de Moulinets to Sterile Five; it started here.”

“Can we end it here, Mikhail?”

“Let’s try. Let’s go.”

They got out of the car and walked through the rain up the wet, soft mud of the driveway, rivulets of water racing down around their feet. They reached the carport; there was a door centered under the attached roof with a concrete step below. Havelock walked to the door; he looked briefly at Jenna and then knocked.

Moments later the door opened, and a slight, stooped old man with only a few strands of hair and a small white beard peppered with gray stood in the open space. As he stared at Havelock his eyes grew wide and his mouth parted, lips trembling.

“Mikhail,”
he whispered.

“Hello, Leon. I bring you Anton’s affection.”

The blond man had seen the sign. The only part meaningful to him were the words
Dead End
. It was all he had to know. With his headlights still extinguished, he maneuvered the brown sedan several hundred feet down the smooth wet road and stopped on the far right, motor idling. He turned the
headlights back on and reached under his coat to remove a large automatic with a silencer attached. He understood Mr. No-Name’s instructions; they were in sequence. The Lincoln would be along any moment now.

There it was! Two hundred yards away at the mouth of the road that branched off the highway. The blond man released the brake and began coasting, spinning the wheel back and forth, weaving—the unmistakable sign of a drunken, reckless driver. Cautiously the limousine slowed down, pulling as far to the right as possible. The blond man accelerated, and the weaving became more violent as the Lincoln’s horn roared through the torrents of rain. When he was within thirty feet, the blond man suddenly pressed the accelerator to the floor and swung to the right before making a sharp turn to the left.

The impact came, the sedan’s grille ramming the left rear door of the Lincoln. The sedan skidded and crashed into the entire side of the other car, pinning the driver’s door.

“Goddamn you sons of
bitches
!” screamed the blond man through the open window, slurring his words, his head swaying back and forth. “Holy
Christ
, I’m bleeding! My whole stomach’s
bleeding
!”

The two men lurched out of the limousine from the other side. As they came running around the hood in the blinding glare of the headlights the blond man leaned out the window and fired twice. Accurately.

“Do I call you Leon or Alexei?”

“I can’t
believe
you!” cried the old Russian, sitting in front of the fire, his eyes rheumy and blinking, riveted on Havelock. “It was degenerative, irreversible. There was no
hope.”

“There are very few minds, very few wills like Anton’s. Whether he’ll ever regain his full capacities no one can tell, but he’s come back a long way. Drugs helped, electrotherapy as well; he’s cognizant now. And appalled at what he did.” Havelock sat down in the straight-backed chair opposite Zelienski-Kalyazin. Jenna remained standing by the door that led to the small kitchen.

“It’s never
happened
!”

“There’s never been a man like Matthias, either. He asked for me; they sent me to Poole’s bland and he told me everything. Only me.”

“Poole’s Island?”

“It’s where he’s being treated. Is it Leon or Alexei, old friend?”

Kalyazin shook his head. “Not Leon, it’s never been Leon. Always Alexei.”

“You had good years as Leon Zelienski.”

“Enforced sanctuary, Mikhail. I am a Russian, nothing else. Sanctuary.”

Havelock and Jenna exchanged glances, her eyes telling him that she approved—approved with enormous admiration—the course he had suddenly chosen.

“You came over to us … Alexei.”

“I did not come over to you. I fled others. Men who would corrupt the soul of my homeland, who went beyond the bounds of our convictions, who killed needlessly, wantonly, seeking only power for its own sake. I believe in our system, Mikhail, not yours. But these men did not; they would have changed words into weapons and then no one would have been proven right. We’d all be gone.”

“Jackals,” said Havelock, repeating the word he had heard only hours ago, “fanatics who in their heads marched with the Third Reich. Who didn’t believe time was on your side, only bombs.”

“That will suffice.”

“The Voennaya.”

Kalyazin’s head snapped up. “I never told Matthias that!”

“I never told him, either. I’ve been in the field for sixteen years. Do you think I don’t know the VKR?”

“They do not speak for Russia, not
our
Russia! … Anton and I would argue until the early hours of the morning. He couldn’t understand; he came from a background of brilliance and respectability, money and a full table. Over here none of you will ever understand, except the black people, perhaps. We had nothing and were told to expect nothing, not in this world. Books, schools, simple reading—these were not for us, the millions of us. We were placed on this earth as the earth’s cattle, worked and disposed of by our ‘betters’—decreed by God.…. My grandfather was hanged by a Voroshin prince for stealing game. Stealing
game
! … All that was changed—by the millions of us, led by prophets who had no use for a God who decreed human cattle.” An odd smile appeared on Kalyazin’s thin white lips. “They call us
atheistic Communists. What would they have us be? We
knew
what it was like under the
Holy Church
! A God who threatens enternal fires if one rises up against a living hell is no God for nine-tenths of mankind. He can and should be replaced, dismissed for incompetence and unwarranted partiality.”

“That argument is hardly restricted to prerevolutionary Russia,” said Michael.

“Certainly not, but it’s symptomatic … and we were
there
! It’s why you’ll lose one day. Not in this decade or the next—perhaps not for many, many years, but you’ll lose. Too many tables are bare, too many stomachs swollen, and you care too little.”

“If that proves to be true, then we deserve to lose. I don’t think it is.” Havelock leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and looked into the old Russian’s eyes. “Are you telling me you were given sanctuary but you gave nothing in return?”

“Not of my country’s secrets, nor did Anton ever ask me a second time. I think he considered the work I did—the work you did before you resigned—to be in the main quite pointless. Our decisions counted for very little; our accomplishments were not important at the summits. I did, however, give you a gift that served us both, served the world as well. I gave you Anthony Matthias. I saved him from the Cuban trap; it would have driven him from office. I did so because I believed in him, and not in the madmen who temporarily had far too much control of my government.”