The Parsifal Mosaic

  “Moscow? Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure. On the word of a man who wasn’t afraid to the, but was afraid of living the way I promised him he’d be forced to live. Someone in Moscow, someone the controllers of the KGB know nothing about, is in contact with the liars.”

  “For what purpose. You? To destroy your credibility, then kill you? To void some recent accomplishment by maligning the record of a dead man?”

  “It’s not me; I’m only a part of it I wasn’t important before, but I am now.” Havelock turned his head and looked at old Broussac, her face now soft and compassionate, yet still ashen in the dim light. “Because I saw Jenna; because I found out she was alive. Now they have to kill me. They have to kill her, too.”

  “Why? You were the best!”

  “I don’t know. I only know that Costa Brava is where I have to look for answers. It’s where it started for Jenna and me … where it was supposed to end. One of us dead, the other dying inside, finished. Out.”

  “It is she who is dying inside now. It astonishes me that she can function as she does, move as she does. She’s remarkable.” Régine paused. The fountain’s spray had collapsed, and only trickles of water dripped over its saucerlike basin into the pool. “She loved you, you know.”

  “Past tense?”

  “Oh, yes. We all learn to accept new realities, don’t we? We’re better at it than most people because sudden change is an old acquaintance as well as our enemy. We constantly seek out betrayal in others; we preach it. And all the while we’re being tested ourselves, our adversaries intent on seducing our minds and our appetites. Sometimes we succeed, sometimes they do. That’s the reality.”

  “The futility,” said Havelock.

  “You are too much the philosophe for this business.”

  “It’s why I got out.” Michael looked away. “I saw her face in the window of the plane in Col des Moulinets. Her eyes. Christ, it was awful.”

  “I’m certain it was. It happens. Hatred replaces love, doesn’t it? It’s the only defense in these cases.… She’ll kill you It she can.”

  “Oh, God …” Havelock leaned forward on the bench, his elbows on his knees, hands cupped under his chin, staring at the fountain. “I love her so. I loved her when I killed her that night, knowing a part of me would always be at that beach for the rest of my life, my eyes seeing her running, falling in the sand, my ears hearing her screams … wanting to race down and hold her, tell her the whole world was a lie and nothing mattered but us! Just us … Something inside me was trying to tell me that terrible things were being done to us, and I wouldn’t listen.… I was too hurt to listen to myself. I, I, I! Me! I couldn’t get me out of the way and hear the truth she was screaming!”

  “You were a professional in a professional crisis.” said Régine softly, touching his arm. “According to everything you’d learned, everything you’d lived with for years, you were doing what you had to do. A professional.”

  Michael turned his head and looked at her. “Why wasn’t I myself?” he asked simply. “Why didn’t I listen to the other screams, the ones I couldn’t get out of my throat?”

  “We can’t always trust what we call instinct, Michael. You know that.”

  “I know that I love her … loved her when I thought I hated her, when that professional in me expected to see her the because I’d closed the trap on an enemy. I didn’t hate her, I loved her. Do you know why I know that?”

  “Why, man cher?”

  “Because there was no satisfaction in winning, not the slightest. Only revulsion, only sadness … only wanting things to be the way they couldn’t be.”

  “That’s when you got out isn’t it? It’s what we’d heard, what I found so difficult to believe. I understand now. You loved her very much. I am sorry, Michel.”

  Havelock shook his head, closing his eyes, the darkness comforting for a moment “In Barcelona,” he said, opening his eyes again, looking at the quiet pool in front of them, “what happened to her? Tell me what she told you.”

  “She can’t understand what happened. Did the Soviets actually buy you or did Washington order her execution? It’s an enigma to her—a violent enigma. She got out of Spain and went to Italy, going from city to city, seeking out those few people she thought she could trust to help her, hide her. But always there were the questions: Where were you? Why was she alone and not with you? At first, she was afraid to say, and when she did, no one believed her. Whenever she told the story and it was rejected, she felt she had to run again, convinced the few would reach you, and you would come after her. She lives with the nightmare that you’re always there, following—hunting her down. And when she settled briefly into a safe cover, a Russian appeared, someone you both knew in Prague, a KGB butcher. Coincidence? Who was to tell? She ran again, this time stealing a large sum of money from her employer.”

  “I wondered about that How she could buy her way out of Italy, get across the border, and up into Paris. Compared with some other routes, she traveled first-class.”

  Broussao smiled, her blue eyes lively in the shadows, tell ing him that a brief moment of amusement was to follow, “She laughed about it—quietly, to be sure—but the laughter was good; that she could laugh was good, Michael. Do you see what I mean? For a minute or two she was like a little girl remembering a prank.”

  “I hear her laughter in my sleep … when I don’t hear her screams. Her laugh was always quiet, never loud, but somehow full … an echo from deep inside her. She loved to laugh; it was a release for her, something not usually permitted and therefore enjoyed so much more when it happened.” He paused, his eyes again on the still fountain. “How did she steal the money? Where?”

  “Milan.”

  “The Soviets are crawling all over Milan. Whomever she saw was a migratory coincidence.… Sorry, what happened?”

  “She was working in that enormous store in the Piazza del Duomo, the one that sells books and magazines and newspapers from all over the world. Do you know it?”

  “I’ve seen it.”

  “Her languages got her the job, and she dyed her hair, wore glasses, all the usual things. But her figure also got her the undivided attention of the owner, a pig with a large wife he was terrified of and eight children. He was forever asking her into his office and mauling her and promising her the Galleria Vittorio for her favors. One day at noon the Russian came in; she recognized him and knew she had to run; she was afraid that he was connected to you, that you were scouring Europe for her.… At the lunch hour, she literally assaulted the manager in his office, claiming that she could no longer wait for his favors, and that only a small loan stood between them and absolute ecstasy. By this time she had her blouse off and the poor man’s billfold under a chair. In a state of near apoplexy, the idiot opened the safe, where several days’ receipts were stored—it was a Friday, if you recall.”

  “Why should I?” interrupted Havelock.

  “We’ll get to that,” said Régine, a partial smile on her lips. “Regardless, when the aging, perspiring Lothario had the safe open and our Jenna was removing her brassiere, he counted out a few thousand lire in his quivering hands and she struck him in the head with a desk clock. She then proceeded to empty the safe, positively stunned by the amounts of money filling the bank-deposit pouches. That money was her passport and she knew it.”

  “It was also an invitation for a police hunt.”

  “A hunt that could be delayed, the delay permitting her to get out of Milan.”

  “How?”

  “Fear, confusion, and embarrassment,” replied Broussac. “Jenna closed the safe, stripped the owner naked, and marked him everywhere with streaks of lipstick. She then called his home and, speaking with a maid, said an urgent matter required the man’s wife to come to the store in an hour, not before and not later.”

  “Fear, confusion, and embarrassment,” agreed Michael, nodding. “She tapped him again, making sure he’d stay where he was, figuring he’d hardly rush to the safe
in front of his wife, compounding the mess he was already in.… And obviously, she took his clothes with her,” added Havelock, smiling, remembering the woman who was Jenna Karas.

  “Obviously. She used the next several hours to gather her things together, and realizing that a police warrant would be issued sooner or later, removed the dye from her hair. She then joined the crowds at the Milan railroad station.”

  “The railroad …?” Michael sat back on the bench and looked at Régine. “The train. She took the train to Rome! That’s where I saw her!”

  “It’s a moment she’ll never forget. There you were, standing there, staring at her. The man who had forced her into hiding, into running, who’d caused her to alter her appearance and change the sequence of her languages. The one person on earth she was terrified might find her, kill her—and there she was, all her disguise gone, recognized by the one she most feared.”

  “If the shock hadn’t been so paralyzing, if only I’d been quicker … so much would have been so different.” Michael arched his neck back and brought his hands to his face, covering his eyes. “Oh, Christ, we were so close! I yelled to her, I screamed and kept screaming, but she disappeared. I lost her in the crowds; she didn’t hear me—she didn’t want to hear me—and I lost her.” Havelock lowered his hands and gripped the edge of the stone bench. “Civitavecchia came next. Did she tell you about that?”

  “Yes. It was where she saw a crazed animal try to kill her on a pier—”

  “It wasn’t her! How could she think I thought it was? Jesus, a fucking whore from the docks!” Michael checked himself; it served no purpose to lose control.

  “She saw what she saw,” said old Broussac quietly. “She couldn’t know what you were thinking.”

  “How did she know I’d go to Civitavecchia? A man there told me she thought I’d question the taxi drivers. I didn’t There’s a strike, although a few are running, I suppose.”

  “There are, and you are the best of hunters. You yourself taught her that the surest way to get out of a country unseen is to go to a busy waterfront in the early hours of the morning. There is always someone willing to broker space, if only in a cargo hold. She asked people on the train, pretending to be a Polish merchant seaman’s wife, her husband on a freighter. People are not stupid; they understood; one more couple leaving the arms of the Bear. ‘Civitavecchia,’ they said. Try Civitavecchia!’ She assumed you might reach the same conclusion—based on what you’d taught her—and so she made her preparations. She was right; you arrived.”

  “By a different route,” said Havelock. “Because of a conductor on the third car of the train who remembered a bella ragazza.”

  “Regardless, she assumed the possibility and acted on it, placing herself in a position to observe. As I said, she’s remarkable, The strain, the pressures. To do what she did without panic, to mount the strategy alone … remarkable. I think you were a splendid teacher, Michael.”

  “She had ten years of training before I met her. There was a lot she could teach me, and did. You gave her a cover and diplomatic clearance. Where did she go? What arrangements did you make?”

  “How did you learn this?”

  “Don’t make me pay the price, I owe him. Instead, let me send him to you. Don’t turn him in; use him yourself. You won’t regret it, but I need the guarantee.”

  “Fair enough. Talent should be shared, and I respect the sender. I remember Bonn.”

  “Where did she go?”

  “Outside of a few remote islands in the Pacific, the safest place in the world for her now. The United States.”

  Havelock stared in astonishment at the old woman. “How did you figure that?”

  “I went back over the restricted cables from your State Department looking for any mention of Jenna Karas. Indeed, it was there. A single insertion dated January tenth, detailing briefly the events at the Costa Brava. She was described as an infiltrator caught in a reverse trap where she had lost her life, her death confirmed by two separate sightings and forensic examination of bloodstained clothing. The file was closed to the satisfaction of Consular Operations.”

  “The rotes have it,” said Michael. “Aye, aye, sir. Next case, please.”

  “The implausibility was glaring, of course. Sightings can be erroneous, but a forensic laboratory has to work with materials. Yet they couldn’t have, not with any legitimacy. Not only was Jenna Karas very much alive and sitting in my office, but she had never gone to that beach on the Costa Brava. The forensic confirmation was a lie, and someone had to know it, someone who wanted the lie accepted as the truth.” Broussac paused. “I assumed it was you. Termination carried out, execution as scheduled. If you had been bought by the Soviets, what better proof could they have than from the Department of State? If you had been carrying out Washington’s instructions, you could not allow them to think you had failed.”

  “In light of what she told you, I can understand.”

  “But I wasn’t satisfied; the acceptance was too simple, so I looked further. I went to the data—processing computers and placed her name in the security scanner relevant to the past three months.… It was extraordinary. She appeared no less than twelve times, but never on State Department communiqués. They were all on cables from the Central Intelligence Agency, and couched in very odd language. It was always the same, cable after cable: the U.S. government had an alert out for a woman matching her description who might be using the name of Karas—but it was third or fourth on a list of a half-dozen false names. It was a highly classified search, but obviously an intense one, the widest cooperation sought. It was strange, almost amateurish. As though one branch of your intelligence community did not want the other to know what it was doing.”

  “That didn’t exonerate me?”

  “On the contrary. You had been found out, the lie had been exposed.”

  “Then why wasn’t there an alert out for me?”

  “There was, is. As of five days ago.”

  Five days, thought Havelock. The Palatine. “But you weren’t aware of it.”

  “Those in the Quai d’Orsay who’ve listed you as an American liaison knew of it, and in time it would have crossed my desk as a matter of routine. However, neither you nor I have ever listed each other in our reports. That was the understanding between us.”

  “It served the purpose. Is the alert specific? Am I given a label?”

  “No. Only that it is imperative that you be located—as a matter of internal security. Again, I presumed: you had been exposed, either as a defector or as one who had lied to his superiors and disappeared. It really didn’t matter which. Because of Jenna Karas, you were the enemy in either case. It was confirmed for me when I called the embassy.”

  “I forgot. I’m dangerous.”

  “You are. To someone. I checked with London, Brussels, Amsterdam and Bonn. Both alerts have been circulated, both highest priority, but not connected.”

  “You still haven’t answered the question. Why did you send her to the States?”

  “I just did answer you; you weren’t listening. The search for her—and now you—is centered in Europe. Rome, the Mediterranean, Paris, London … Bonn. The curve is arcing north, the destination presumed to be the Eastern bloc. This is the line of progress they’re concentrating on, where their agents have fanned out, pulling in sources and contacts. They won’t think to look in their own barnyard.”

  “Backyard,” said Michael absently.

  “Qu’est-ce que c’est?”

  “C’est americain. Peu importe. When did she leave?”

  “Three-thirty this afternoon … yesterday afternoon now. Air France to New York, diplomatic status, cover name drawn from a dead file—unblemished, of course.”

  “And unknown.”

  “Yes, it’s not relevant. It will be changed.”

  “What are the arrangements?”

  “She’s to see a man; no doubt she’s already seen him. He will make the arrangements, and it is our policy never to inquir
e what they are. You have the same sort of men over here—in Paris, London, Amsterdam, wherever. They do not speak with us directly.”

  “The landlords of the halfway houses,” said Havelock, “guiding the people we send them into safe territories, providing identities, papers, families to live with, the towns and cities chosen carefully. We make our payments through blind conduits, and after contact we’re not involved. We’ve never heard of them; ignorance is the order of the day. But there’s another side, too, isn’t there? We don’t really know what happens to those people, do we?”

  “With safe transfer, our obligations are fulfilled. They ask no more and we offer no more, that’s always been the understanding between us. I, for one, have never been curious.”

  “I’m not curious, Régine, I’m going out of my mind! She’s in sight now, I can find her! I can find her! For Christ’s sake, help me! Whom did you send her to?”

  “You ask a great deal, Michael. You’re asking me to violate a confidence I’ve sworn never to break. I could lose a valuable man.”

  “I could lose her! Look at me! Tell me I wouldn’t do the same for you! If it was your husband and I was there and the Gestapo came for him, look at me and tell me I wouldn’t help you!”

  Broussac closed her eyes briefly, as if struck. “The reference is unkind but not without truth. You are much like him.… Yes, you would have helped.”

  “Get me out of Paris. Right away. Please!”

  Régine was silent for a moment, her eyes again roaming his face. “It would be better if you did so yourself. I know you can.”

  “It could take me days! I’d have to route myself through a back door in Mexico or Montreal. I can’t lose the time. With every hour she’s farther away. You know what can happen. She could get swallowed up, moving from one circle into the next, no one telling anyone anything. She could disappear and I’d never find her!”

  “Very well. Tomorrow, the noon flight on the Concorde. You’ll be French, a member of the United Nations delegation. Flush the papers down a toilet the minute you’re in the Kennedy terminal.”