The Parsifal Mosaic (86 page)

“Christ,
how
?”

“Matthias as much as told me I know him. Are you familiar with a company, a chain of stores, called the Voyagers Emporium?”

“Most of my luggage is, I regret to say. At least, my bank account regrets it.”

“Somewhere inside, in a department or a section, that’s the KGB clearing center. Ambiguity has to stay in touch; it’s where he gets his orders, transmits information. We’ll break it quietly—
very
quietly—tear it apart and find him. We don’t need much; we know where he’s located.”

“Right where you see him every day,” said Pierce, nodding. “What about the code name for the source control?”

“Hammer-zero-two. It doesn’t mean anything to us, and it can be changed by the network overnight, but the fact that we broke it, broke the
paminyatchik
circle so decisively, has got to make someone sweat inside the Kremlin.” Michael paused, then added, “When I give you the go-ahead, use what you need, all of it or any part. It’s basically a diversion, what you call deflection, but I think it’s a strong one. Create a diplomatic rhubarb, cause a storm of cables between Moscow and New York. Just buy us time.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure we don’t have a choice. We
need
time.”

“You could lose the source control.”

“Then we’ll lose him. We can live with a source control—
we’ve all got them in more than sixty countries. We can’t live with Parsifal. Any of us.”

“I’ll wait for your call.” The undersecretary of State glanced at his watch, squinting in the dim light to read the radium dial. “I still have a few minutes before we leave. The vault specialist had to be flown in from Los Alamos; he’s meeting with one of the men from his company who brought him the internal diagrams.… There’re so many things I want to ask, so much I need to know.”

“I’m here as long as you are; when you leave, I leave. I heard it from the President.”

“
I like him. I haven’t always liked presidents.”

“Because you know he doesn’t give a damn whether you do or not—not while he’s in the Oval Office. That’s the way I read him. I like him too, and I have every reason in the book not to.”

“Costa Brava? They told me everything.”

“It’s history. Let’s get current What else can I tell you that may help?”

“The obvious,” said Fierce, bis voice descending to a hollow sound. “If Parsifal
has
reached the Soviets, what can I say—if I’m given the chance to say it? If he’s hinted at the China factor, or at the vulnerabilities in their own counter—strike capabilities, how can I explain it? Where did he
get
it all? Exposing Matthias is only part of the answer. Frankly, it’s not enough, and I think you know that.”

“I know it.” Havelock tried to collect bis thoughts, to be as dear and concise as possible. “What’s in those so—called agreements is a mix of a thousand moves in a triple—sided chess game, the anchor player being us. Our penetration of the Russian and Chinese systems is far deeper than we’ve ever hinted at, and there are strategy committees set up to study and evaluate every conceivable option in the event some goddamn fool—on
any
side—gives the order to launch.”

“Such committees, I’m sure, exist in Moscow and Peking.”

“But neither Moscow nor Peking could produce an Anthony Matthias, the man with geopolitical panaceas, respected, even worshiped—no one on either side of the world like him.”

Pierce nodded. “The Soviets treat him as a valued go-between, not as an adversary. The Chinese throw banquets for him and call him a visionary.”

“And when he began to fall apart, he still had the imagination to conceive of the ultimate nuclear chess game.”

“But
how
?”

“He found a zealot. A naval officer on one of the Pentagon committees who’s up to his eyeballs in overkill theories. He gave Matthias everything. He made copies of all the strategies and counterstrategies the three committees exchanged with one another. They contained authentic data—they
had
to contain it; those war games are very real on paper. Everything can be checked by computers—the extent of megaton damage inflicted, damage sustained, the limits of punishment before the ground is useless. It was all there, and Matthias put it together. Matthias and the man who’s got us by the throat. Parsifal.”

“I’d say that naval officer is scheduled to begin a long period of confinement.”

“I’m not sure what that would accomplish. At any rate, I’m not finished with him; he’s still got more to give—may have given it by now.”

“Just a minute,” said the undersecretary of State, his face suddenly alive. “Could
he
be Parsifal?”

“No, not possible.”

“Why not?”

“Because in his own misguided way he believed in what he was doing. He has a permanent love affair with his uniform and his country; he’d neither allow the possibility of compromise nor give the Russians an ounce of ammunition. Decker’s not an original, but he’s genuine. I doubt the Lubyanka could break him.”

“Decker … You’ve got him put away, don’t you?”

“He’s not going anywhere. He’s at home with an escort unit outside.”

Pierce shook his head while reaching into his pocket. “It’s all so insane!” he said as he pulled out a pack of cigarettes and matches. “Care for one?” he asked, preferring the pack.

“No, thanks. I’ve had my quota of five hundred for the day.”

The man from State stuck a match, holding the flame under the cigarette. Without the protection of a second hand, it was extinguished by the wind. He struck another, left palm up, and inhaled, the smoke from his mouth mingling with the vapor of his breath. “At the meeting this afternoon, Ambassador
Brooks brought up something I didn’t understand. Ha said an intelligence officer from the KGB had made contact with you and speculated on the identity of the faction in Moscow who’d worked with Matthias at Costa Brava.”

“He meant with Parsifal; Matthias was being led by then. And Rostov—his name’s Rostov—didn’t speculate. He knew. They’re a collection of fanatics in a branch called the VKR, the Voennaya. They make even our Deckers look like flower children. He’s trying to break it open and I wish him luck. It’s crazy, but a dedicated enemy may be one of our hopes.”

“What do you mean, ‘break it open’?”

“Get names, find out who did what and let the saner people deal with them. Rostov’s good; he may do it, and if he does, he’ll somehow get word to me.”

“He
will
?”

“He’s already offered me a white contact. It happened at Kennedy Airport what I flew in from Paris.”

There was the sound of a gunning engine in the distance. Pierce threw down his cigarette and crushed it under his foot as he spoke. “What more do you think this Decker can give you?”

“He may have spoken to Parsifal but doesn’t know it. Or someone calling for Parsifal. In either case, he was reached at home, which means that somewhere in a couple of hundred thousand long-distance records is a specific call made to a specific number at a specific time.”

“Why not a couple of million records?”

“Not if we’ve got a general location.”

“Do
you?”

“I’ll know more by tomorrow. When you get back—”

“Mr. Undersecretary!
Mr. Undersecretary!”
The shouting was accompanied by the roar of the jeep’s motor and the screeching of its tires as it came to a stop only a few feet from them. “Undersecretary Pierce?” said the driver.

“Who gave you my name?” asked Pierce icily.

“There’s an urgent telephone call for you, sir. They said it was your office at the United Nations and they have to speak to you.”

“The Soviets,” said Pierce under his breath to Havelock; his alarm was apparent “Please, wait for me.”

The undersecretary of State swung himself rapidly into the air force jeep and nodded to the driver; his eyes were on the
lights of the maintenance hangar. Michael pulled his coat around him, his attention drawn to the small propjet aircraft several hundred feet away in the opposite direction. The left engine had been started, and the pilot was revving it; the right coughed into operation seconds later. Then Havelock saw another jeep; it had taken the place of the fuel truck next to the plane. The vault specialist had arrived; the departure for Poole’s Island was imminent.

Arthur Pierce returned six minutes later, climbed out of the open vehicle and dismissed the driver. “It
was
the Soviets,” he said, approaching Michael. “They wanted an unrecorded, unlogged meeting tomorrow morning; that means an emergency. I reached the senior aide of the delegation and told him I had called my own emergency conference tomorrow on the strength of their reactions late this afternoon. I also suggested I might have information for them that would necessitate a storm of cables—I used your phrase—between New York, their embassy in Washington and Moscow. I hinted that perhaps the pounding shoe was in another hand.” The undersecretary stopped, hearing the preliminary warm—up of the jets from the plane in the distance; the jeep was leaving the area. “That’s my signal; the vault specialist’s here. You know, it’s going to take at least three hours to break into that room. Walk over with me, will you?”

“Sure. What was the Soviets’ reaction?”

“Very negative, of course. They know me; they sense a deflection, a diversion—to use your word. We agreed to meet tomorrow evening.” Pierce paused and turned to Havelock. “For God’s sake, give me the green light, then. I’ll need every argument, every weapon I can have. Among them a medical report diagnosing exhaustion for Matthias … God knows, not the psychiatric file I’m bringing back to you.”

“I forgot. The President was to have gotten it to me yesterday—today.”

“I’m bringing it up.” Pierce started walking again as Michael kept pace. “I can see how it happens.”

“What happens?”

“The days melding into one another. Yesterday, today … tomorrow, if there is a tomorrow. One long, unending, sleepless night.”

“Yes,” said Havelock, feeling no need to amplify.

“How many weeks have you been living it?”

“More than a few.”

“Jesus.”
The roar of the combined engines grew louder as they drew nearer the plane. “I suppose this is actually the safest place to talk,” said Pierce, raising his voice to be heard. “No device could filter that noise.”

“Is that why you wanted to meet on the runway?” asked Michael.

“You probably think I’m paranoid, but yes, it is. I wouldn’t care if we were in the control room of a NORAD base, I’d want the walls swept before having a conversation like the one we just had. You probably
do
think I’m paranoid. After all, this is Andrews—”

“I don’t think you’re paranoid at all,” interrupted Havelock. “I think I should have thought of it.”

The door of the small aircraft was open, the metal steps in place. The pilot signaled from his lighted window; Pierce waved back, nodding affirmatively. Michael walked with the undersecretary to within ten feet of the door where the wash of the propellers was strong and growing stronger.

“You said something about having a general location in mind regarding that call to Decker,” shouted Pierce. “Where is it?”

“Somewhere in the Shenandoah,” yelled Havelock. “It’s only speculation, but Decker delivered the materials there.”

“I see.”

The engines roared a sudden crescendo, and the wind from the propeller blades reached gale force, whipping the hat from Arthur Pierce’s head. Michael crouched, scrambling after it through the powerful wash. He stopped it with his foot and carried it back to the undersecretary of State.

“Thanks very much!” shouted Pierce.

Havelock stared at the face in front of him, at the streak of white that sprang up from the forehead and shot through the mass of wavy dark hair.

It was an hour and forty-five minutes before he saw the floodlights that marked the entrance to the drive at Sterile Five. The flight from Andrews to Quantico and the trip by car to Fairfax had been oddly disturbing, and he did not know why. It was as though a part of his mind were refusing to function; he was conscious of a gap in his own thought process but was blocked by a compulsion not to probe. It was like a drunk’s refusal to face the gross embarrassments of the night before: something not remembered did not exist. And he was incapable of doing anything about it; he did not know what it was, only that it was not, and therefore, it was.

One long, unending, sleepless night
. Perhaps that was it. He needed sleep … he needed Jenna. But there was no time for sleep, no time for them to be together in the way they wanted to be together. No time for anything or anyone but Parsifal.

What was it? Why had a part of him suddenly died?

The marine sedan pulled up in front of the ornate entrance of the estate. He got out, thanked the driver and the armed guard, and walked up to the door. He thought as he stood there, with a finger on the bell, that like so many other doors in so many other houses he had entered, he had no key with which to open it. Would he ever have a key to a house that was his—theirs—and be able to open it as so many millions
opened theirs every day? It was a silly thought, foolishly pondered. Where was the significance of a house and a key? Still, the thought—the need, perhaps—persisted.

The door abruptly opened and Jenna brought him back to the urgent present, her striking, lovely face taut, her eyes burning into his.

“Thank
God
!” she cried, clutching him and pulling him inside. “You’re
back
! I was going out of my mind!”

“What is it?”

“Mikhail, come with me. Quickly!” She gripped his hand as they walked rapidly down the foyer past the staircase to the study, which she had left open. Going to the desk, she picked up a note and said, “You must call the Bethesda hospital. Extension six-seven-one. But first you have to know what happened!”

“What—?”

“The
paminyatchik
is dead.”

“Oh,
Christ
!” Michael grabbed the phone that Jenna held out for him. He dialed, his hand trembling. “When?” he shouted.
“How?”