The Parsifal Mosaic

  “Which is, of course, the truth,” interrupted Brooks quietly.

  “The truth,” agreed Bradford. “What would they do?”

  “Get help,” said Halyard. “Advice.”

  “Guidance,” added the statesman.

  “Or practically speaking,” said the undersecretary, “especially if the facts weren’t clear, they’d spread the responsibility for the decision. Hours later it was made, and they were dead … and we don’t know who made it, who placed that final call. We only know it was someone sufficiently cleared, sufficiently trusted to be given the code Ambiguity. That man made the decision; he made the call to Rome.”

  “But Warren didn’t log it,” said Brooks. “Why didn’t he? How could it happen?”

  “The way it’s happened before, Mr. Ambassador. A routed line traceable only to a single telephone complex somewhere in Arlington is used, the authorization verified by code, and a request made on the basis of internal security. There is to be no log, no tape, no reference to the transmission; it’s an order, actually. The recipient is flattered; he’s been chosen, deemed by men who make important decisions to be more reliable than those around him. And what difference does it make? The authorization can always be traced through the code—in this case through the director of Cons Op, Daniel Stern. Only, he’s dead.”

  “It’s appalling,” said Brooks, looking down at his notes. “A man is to be executed because he’s right, and when the attempt fails, he’s held responsible for the death of those who try to kill him and labeled a killer himself. And we don’t know who officially gave the order. We can’t find him. What kind of people are we?”

  “Men who keep secrets.” The voice came from behind the dais. The President of the United States emerged from the white-paneled door set into the white wall. “Forgive me, I was watching you, listening. It’s often helpful.”

  “Secrets, Mr. President?”

  “Yes, Mal,” said Berquist, going to his chair. “The words are all there, aren’t they? Top Secret, Eyes Only, Highly Classified, Maximum Clearance Required, Duplication Forbidden, Authorization to Be Accompanied by Access Code … so many words. We sweep rooms and telephone lines with instruments that tell us whether bugs and intercepts have been placed, and then develop hardware that misdirects those same scanners when we implant our own devices. We jam radio broadcasts—including satellite transmissions—and override the jamming with laser beams that carry the words we want to send. We put a national security lid on information we don’t want made public so we can leak selected sections at will, keeping the rest inviolate. We tell a certain agency or Department one thing and another something else entirely, so as to conceal a third set of facts—the damaging truth. In history’s most advanced age of communications, we’re doing our damnedest to louse it up, to misuse it, really.” The President sat down, looked at the photograph of the dead man in Rome, and turned it over. “Keeping secrets and diverting the flow of accurate information have become prime objectives in our ever-expanding technology—of communications. Ironic, isn’t it?”

  “Unfortunately, often vital, sir,” said Bradford.

  “Perhaps. If only we could be certain when we applied them. I often wonder—late at night, watching the lights on the ceiling as I’m trying to sleep—if we hadn’t tried to keep a secret three months ago, whether we would be faced with what we’re faced with now.”

  “Our options were extremely limited, Mr. President,” the undersecretary said firmly. “We might have faced worse.”

  “Worse, Emory?”

  “Earlier, then. Time is the only thing on our side.”

  “And we have to use every goddamn minute,” agreed Berquist, glancing first at the general and then at Brooks. “Now you’re both aware of what’s happened during the past seventy-two hours and why I had to call you back to Washington.”

  “Except the most relevant factor,” said the statesman. “Parsifal’s reaction.”

  “None,” replied the President.

  “Then he doesn’t know,” said Halyard rapidly, emphatically.

  “If you’d get that written in stone, I could sleep at night,” said Berquist.

  “When did he last communicate with you?” asked Brooks.

  “Sixteen days ago. There was no point in reaching you; it was another demand, as outrageous as the others and now as pointless.”

  “There’s been no movement on the previous demands?” continued the statesman.

  “Nothing. As of fifteen days ago we’ve tunneled eight hundred million dollars into banks throughout the Bahamas, the Caymans and Central America. We’ve set up every—” The President paused as he touched the photograph in front of him, folding a comer until part of a bloodied trouser leg could be seen. “—every code and countercode he’s asked for, so he could verify the deposits whenever he wished, have the monies sent to blind accounts in Zurich and Bern where they would be accessible to him. He hasn’t moved a cent, and except for three verifications he’s made no contact at all with the other banks. He has no interest in the money; it’s only a means of confirming our vulnerability. He knows we’ll do anything he asks.” Berquist paused again; when he spoke, his voice was barely audible. “God help us, we can’t afford not to.”

  There was silence on the dais, an acknowledgment of the unthinkable. It was broken by the general’s businesslike comment “There are a couple of holes here,” he said, reading his notes, then looking at the undersecretary. “Can you fill them in?”

  “I can speculate,” replied Bradford. “But to do even that, we’ve got to go back to the very beginning. Before Rome.”

  “Costa Brava?” asked Brooks disdainfully.

  “Before then, Mr. Ambassador. To when we all agreed there had to be a Costa Brava.”

  “I stand rebuked,” said the statesman icily. “Please go on.”

  “We go back to when we learned that it was Matthias himself who initiated the investigation of Jenna Karas. It was the great man himself, not his aides, who relayed information from unnamed informants, sources so deep in Soviet intelligence that even to speculate on their identities was tantamount to exposing our own operations.”

  “Don’t be modest, Emory,” Interrupted the President “We didn’t learn that it was Matthias. You did. You had the perspicacity to go around the ‘great man,’ as you call him.”

  “Only with a sense of sadness, sir. It was you, Mr. President, who demanded the truth from one of his aides in the Oval Office and he gave it to you. He said they didn’t know where the information had come from, only that Matthias himself had brought it in. He never would have told me that.”

  “The room did it, I didn’t,” said Berquist. “You don’t lie to the man sitting in that room … unless you’re Anthony Matthias.”

  “In fairness, Mr. President,” said Brooks softly, “his intention was not to deceive you. He believed he was right.”

  “He believed he should have been sitting in my chair, my office! Good Christ, he still believes it. Even now! There’s no end to his goddamned megalomania! Go on, Emory.”

  “Yes, sir.” Bradford looked up. “We concluded that Matthias’s objective was to force Havelock to retire, to get his old student and one of the best men we had out of Consular Operations. We’ve covered that before; we didn’t know why then and we don’t know why now.”

  “But we went along,” said Berquist, “because we didn’t know what we had. A broken foreign service officer who didn’t want to go on, or a fraud—worse than a fraud. Matthias’s lackey, willing to see a woman killed so he could work for the great man on the outside. Oh, and the work he could have done! The international emissary for Saint Matthias, Or was it Emperor Matthias, ruler of all the states and territories of the republic?”

  “Come on, Charley.” Halyard touched the President’s arm; no one else in that room would have risked such an intimate gesture. “It’s over. It’s not why we’re here.”

  “If it wasn’t for that son of a bitch Matthias we woul
dn’t be here! I find that hard to forget. And so could the world one day … if there’s anyone left with a memory.”

  “Then may we return to that infinitely more ominous crisis, Mr. President?” said Brooks gently.

  Berquist leaned back; he looked at the aristocratic statesman, then at the old general. “When Bradford came to me and convinced me that there was a pattern of deception at the highest levels of State involving the great Anthony Matthias, I asked for you two—and only you two. At least, for now. I’d better be able to take your criticism, because you’ll give it to me.”

  “Which I think is why you asked for us,” said Halyard. “Sir.”

  “You’re a ball-breaker, Mal.” The President nodded toward the man from State. “Sorry. All right, we didn’t know then, and we don’t know now, why Matthias wanted Havelock out But Emory brought us the scenario.”

  “An incredible scenario,” agreed Bradford, his hands on top of the papers, no longer needing his notes. “The case that Matthias concocted against the Karas woman was a study in meticulous invention. A reformed terrorist from Baader-Mein-hof suddenly appears looking for absolution; he’ll trade information for relocation and the cancellation of his death sentence. Bonn agrees—reluctantly—and we buy his story. The woman working with a Cons Op field officer then in Barcelona is actually a member of the KGB. A method of transferring orders is described, which entails the passing of a key, and a small overnight suitcase is located at an airport, her suitcase, filled with all the evidence needed to convict her—detailed analyses of the activities she and Havelock bad been involved with during the past five weeks, summaries of in-depth, classified information Havelock had sent back to the State Department, and copies of the current codes and radio frequencies we used in the field. Also in that overnight bag were instructions from Moscow, including the KGB code that she was to employ should contact with KGB Northwest Sector be required. We tested the code and got a response; it was authentic.”

  Brooks raised his left hand no more than a few inches above the surface of the dais, the gesture of a man used to commanding attention. “General Halyard and I are familiar with much of this, albeit not the specifics. I assume there’s a reason for your restating it in such detail.”

  “There is, Mr. Ambassador,” agreed Bradford. “It concerns Daniel Stern. Please bear with me.”

  “Then while you’re at it,” said the general, “how did you verify that KGB code?”

  “By using the three basic maritime frequencies for that area of the Mediterranean. It’s standard procedure for the Soviets.”

  “That’s pretty damn simple of them, isn’t it?”

  “I’m no expert, General, but I’d say it’s pretty damn smart. I’ve studied the way we do it—I’ve had to—and I’m not sure ours is more effective. The frequencies we select are usually the weaker ones, not always clear, and easily jammed if discovered. You don’t tamper with maritime channels, and no matter how much traffic, the codes get through within a reasonable period of time.”

  “You’re very impressive,” said Brooks.

  “I’ve had a series of crash courses during the past three months. Thanks to an executive order from the President, I’ve also had the benefit of the best brains in the intelligence community.”

  “The reason for that executive order was not explained,” interrupted Berquist, glancing at the older men, then turning back to Bradford. “All right, you verified the KGB code to be authentic.”

  “It was the most incriminating document in that suitcase; it couldn’t have been faked. So her name was put through the wheels at Central Intelligence—very deep wheels.” Bradford paused. “As you may or may not know, General—Mr. Ambassador—it was at this point that I came on the scene. I didn’t seek to be included; I was sought out by men I’d worked with during the Johnson administration … and in Southeast Asia.”

  “Remnants of the benevolent AID in Vientiane who stayed with the Agency?” asked Halyard sardonically.

  “Yes,” replied the undersecretary; there was no apology in his answer. “Two men whose wide experience in undercover operations—favorable and unfavorable—led them to become what’s called source controls for informants deep within the Soviet apparatus. They phoned me at home one night, said they were at a local bar in Berwyn and why didn’t I join them for a drink—old times’ sake. When I said it was late, the one I was talking to pointed out that it was also late for them, and Berwyn Heights was a long drive from McLean and Langley. I understood and joined them.”

  “I’ve never heard this,” interrupted the former ambassador. “Am I to infer that these men did not report back through normal channels but, instead, went directly to you?”

  “Yes, sir. They were disturbed.”

  “Thank God for the communion of past sinners,” said the President. “When they returned to those normal channels, they did it our way. It was beyond their scope, they reported. They pulled out and left it in Bradford’s lap.”

  “The information requested about the Karas woman was a basic intelligence query,” said Halyard. “Why were they dis-turbed?”

  “Because it was a highly negative inquiry that presupposed the subject was too deep, too concealed for CIA detection. She was going to be found guilty no matter what the Agency came back with.”

  “Then it was the arrogance that angered them?” suggested Brooks.

  “No, they’re used to that from State. What disturbed them was that the supposition couldn’t possibly be true. They reached five separate sources in Moscow, none aware of the others—moles who had access to every black file in the KGB. Each probe came back negative. She was clean, but someone at State wanted her dirty. When one of the men routinely called an aide of Matthias to get further background from Cons Op, he was told simply to send back a nonproductive report—State had everything it needed. In other words, she was hanged no matter what the Agency returned, and the source control had the distinct impression that whatever was sent back to State would be buried. But Jenna Karas was no part of the KGB and never had been.”

  “How did your friends explain the KGB code?” asked the soldier.

  “Someone in Moscow provided it,” said Bradford. “Someone working with or for Matthias.”

  Again the silence on the dais suggested the unthinkable, and once again it was broken by the general “We ruled that out!” he cried.

  “I’d like to revive it,” said Bradford quietly.

  “We’ve explored the possibility to the point of exhaustion,” said Brooks, staring at Bradford. “Practically and conceptually, there’s no merit in the theory. Matthias is inexorably bound to Parsifal; one does not exist without the other. If the Soviet Union had any knowledge of Parsifal, ten thousand multiple warheads would be in position to destroy half our cities and all our military installations. The Russians would have no choice but to launch, posing their final questions after the first strike. We have intelligence penetration to alert us to any such missile deployment; there’s been no such alert. In your words, Mr. Bradford, time is the only thing on our side.”

  “I’ll stay with that judgment, Mr. Ambassador. still, the KGB code found its way into the manufactured evidence against the Karas woman even though she was clean. I can’t believe it was for sale.”

  “Why not?” asked the general. “What isn’t for sale?”

  “Not a code like that. You don’t buy a code that changes periodically, erratically, with no set schedule of change.”

  “What’s your point?” Halyard interrupted.

  “Someone in Moscow had to provide that code,” said Bradford, raising his voice. “We may be closer to Parsifal than we think.”

  “What’s your thesis, Mr. Undersecretary?” Brooks leaned forward, his elbow on the dais.

  “There’s someone trying to find Parsifal as frantically as we are—for the same reasons we are. Whoever he is, he’s here in Washington—he may be someone we see every day, but we don’t know who he is. I only know he’s working for Mos
cow, and the difference between him and us right now is that he’s been looking longer than we have. He knew about Parsifal before we did. And that means someone in Moscow knows.” Bradford paused. “That’s the reason for the most God-awful crisis this country has ever faced—the world has ever faced. There’s a mole here in Washington who could tip the balance of power—of basic global recognition of our physical and moral superiority, which is power—if he reaches Parsifal first. And he may, because he knows who he is and we don’t.”

  18

  The man in the dark overcoat and low-brimmed bat that shadowed his face climbed out of the two-toned coupe; with difficulty he avoided stepping into a wide puddle by the driver’s door. The sounds of the night rain were everywhere, pinging off the hood and splattering against the glass of the windshield, thumping the vinyl roof and erupting in the myriad pools that had formed throughout the deserted parking area on the banks of the Potomac River. The man reached into his pocket, took out a gold-plated butane lighter and ignited it. No sooner had the flame erupted than he extinguished it; replacing the lighter in his pocket, he kept his gloved hand there. He walked to the railing and looked down at the wet foliage and the border of thick mud that disappeared into the black flowing water. He raised his head and scanned the opposite shoreline; the lights of Washington flickered in the downpour. Hearing the footsteps behind him, leather scraping over the soaked gravel, he turned.

  A man approached, coming into view through blocks of darkness. He wore a canvas poncho printed with the erratic shapes of green and black that denoted military issue. On his head was a heavy wide-brimmed leather hat, a cross between a Safari and a Digger. The face beneath the hat was thirtyish, hard, with a stubble of a beard and dull eyes set far apart, which could barely be seen between the squinting flesh. He had been drinking; the grin that followed recognition was as grotesque as the rest of him.

  “Hey, how about it, huh!” cried the man in the poncho, his speech guttural, slurred. “Wham! Splat! Boom … ka-boom! Like a fuckin’ gook rickyshaw hit by a tank! Wham! You never seen nothin’ like it!”