“Activity,” he said. “Stay alert. Respond.”
“North in touch” came the first reply.
“South also” was the second.
Pushing the open-channel radio into the leather collar around his throat, the man focused the binoculars on the car emerging from the drive. It was the Buick; he refined the focus, and the images beyond the windshield sharpened.
“It’s our man and the woman,” he said. “Turning north. It’s yours, North.”
“We’re ready.”
“South, take off and assume your alternate position.”
“Leaving now. North, keep us posted. Let us know when you want relief.”
“Will do.”
“Hold it! There’s a second car.… It’s the Lincoln, two federals in the front; I can’t see in back.… Now I can. No one else.”
“It’s an escort,” said one of the two men In the automobile a mile and a half north. “We’ll wait till he passes.”
“Give him plenty of room,” ordered the man in the tree. “They’re curious people.”
“Don’t worry.”
The Buick reached the intersection and turned left, the Lincoln Continental several hundred feet behind and following, a prowling behemoth protecting its young. Both vehicles headed west.
inside the dark repair shop of the gas station, a hissing sound accompanied the lowering of the hydraulic lift; the engine of the descending car was turned on and gunned. The driver raised his radio and spoke.
“South, they’ve taken the B route. Head west on the parallel road and pick us up six miles down.”
“Heading across into west parallel,” was the reply.
“Hurry,” said North. “They are.”
The white fence that marked the start of Alexander’s property shone in the glare of the headlights. Seconds later the floodlights beaming on the trees scattered throughout the immense front acreage could be seen cm the left, the wood end stone house beyond. Havelock then saw what he shoped he would see. There were no cars in the circular drive, very few lights in the windows. He slowed down and pulled the microphone from its dashboard recess.
“Escort, this is it,” he said, depressing the transmission switch. “Stay up here on the road. There are no visitors and I want the man we’re seeing to think we’re alone.”
“Suppose you need us?” asked Escort.
“I won’t.”
“That’s not good enough. Sorry, sir.”
“All right, you’ll hear me. I’m not shy; I’ll fire a couple of shots.”
“That’s good enough, as long as we’re down there at the house.”
“I want you up here on the road.”
“Sorry, again. We’ll leave the Abraham up here, but we’ll be down there, right outside. On foot.”
Michael shrugged, replacing the microphone; it was pointless to argue. He snapped off the headlights and turned into the drive, idled the engine, and let the Buick glide to within thirty feet of the entrance. The car came to a stop and he looked at Jenna. “Ready?”
“I think more than my life. Or death. He wanted both.” She slipped the photographs under her coat “Ready,” she said.
They got out, closed the doors quietly, and walked up the broad steps to the huge paneled oak door. Havelock rang the bell; again the waiting was unbearable. The door opened and the uniformed maid stood there, startled.
“Good evening. It’s Enid, isn’t it?”
“Yes, sir. Good evening, sir. I didn’t know Mr. Alexander was expecting guests.”
“We’re old friends,” said Michael, his hand on Jenna’s arm, as both stepped inside. “Invitations aren’t required. It’s part of the rules.”
“I’ve never heard that one.”
“It’s fairly new. Is Mr. Alexander where he usually is at this hour? In his library?”
“Yes, sir. I’ll tell him you’re here. The name again, please?”
There was a sudden hollow echo preceding the voice that filled the large hall. “It won’t be necessary, Enid.” It was the clipped, high-pitched voice of Raymond Alexander pouring out of an unseen speaker. “And I have been expecting Mr. Havelock.”
Michael’s eyes darted about the walls, his hand now gripping Jenna’s arm. “Is this another rule, Raymond? Make sure the guest is who he says he is?”
“It’s fairly new,” replied the voice.
Havelock walked with Jenna through the elegant living room, filled with antiques from the far corners of the earth, to the hand-carved door of the library. He guided her to his left, beyond the frame; she understood. He reached under his jacket for the Llama automatic and held it at his side before turning the heavy brass knob. He shoved the door open, his back pressed against the wall, his weapon ready.
“Is that really necessary, Michael?”
Havelock moved slowly into the frame, quickly adjusting his eyes to the shadowy indirect lighting of the library. The source was two lamps: one fringed and on the large desk at the far end of the room; the other a floor lamp, above the soft leather armchair, shining down on the wild, unkempt head of Raymond Alexander. The old warhorse sat motionless, and in his bloated, pale white hands was a brandy glass, held in front of his deep-red velvet smoking jacket.
“Come in,” he said, turning to a small boxlike device on the side table. He pressed a button, and somewhere overhead, on the wall above the door, the dim glow of a television monitor faded away. “Miss Karas is a handsome woman. Very lovely.… Come in, my dear.”
Jenna appeared, standing next to Michael. “You’re a monster,” she said simply.
“Far worse.”
“You wanted to kill us both,”she continued. “Why?”
“Not him, never him. Not-Mikhail.” Alexander raised his glass and drank. “Your life-or death-was never really considered one way or the other. It was out of our hands.”
“I could kill you for that,” said Havelock.
“I repeat. Out of our hands. Frankly, we thought she’d be retired, returned to Prague, and eventually cleared. Don’t you see, Michael, she wasn’t important. Only you; you were the only one that mattered. You had to go, and we knew they’d never let you, you were too valuable. You had to do it yourself, insist on it yourself. Your revulsion had to be so deep, so painful that there was no other way for you. It worked. You left. It was necessary.”
“Because I knew you,” said Havelock. “I knew the man who lead a sick, disintegrating friend down the road of insanity, turning him into some kind of grotesque thing—Belial with his finger on the nuclear switch. I knew the man who did this to Anton Matthias. I knew Parsifal.”
“Is that the name they’ve given? Parsifal? Exquisite irony. No healing wounds with this fellow, only tearing them apart. Everywhere.”
“It’s why you did what you did, isn’t it? I knew who you were.”
Alexander shook his head, the unkempt hair a thousand coiled springs in motion, his green eyes, under the full, arched brows, briefly closing. “I wasn’t important either. Anion insisted; you became an obsession with him. You were what was left of his failing integrity, his decaying conscience.”
“But you knew how to do it. You knew a Soviet double agent so high in the government he could have been made Secretary of State. Would have been if he hadn’t been there on that beach at the Costa Brava. You knew where he was, you knew his name, you reached him!”
“We had no part of the Costa Brava! I learned of it only after inquiring about you. We couldn’t understand, we were shocked.”
“Not Matthias. He was beyond being shocked.”
“It was when we knew everything was out of control.”
“Not we! You!”
The old journalist again stopped all movement, his hands gripping the glass. He locked his eyes with Michael’s and answered, “Yes. Me. I knew.”
“So you sent me to Poole’s Island, expecting me to be killed, and once dead I was guilty by reason of silence.”
“No!” Alexander shook his head, now
violently. “I never thought you’d go there, never thought you’d be permitted to go there.”
“That very convincing story about a soldier’s wife you met and what she told you. It was all a lie. There’ve been no emergency leaves, no one’s left that island. But I believed you, gave you my word I’d protect the source. Protect you. I never said anything, not even to Bradford.”
“Yes, yes, I wanted to convince you, but not that way. I wanted you to go up the ladder, using your regular channels, confront them, make them tell you the truth.… And once you learned the truth, the entire truth, you might see, you might understand. You might be able to stop it.… Without me.”
“How? For Christ’s sake, how?”
“I think I know, Mikhail,” said Jenna, touching Havelock’s arm as she stared down at Alexander. “He did mean ‘we.’ Not ‘I.’ This man is not Parsifal. His servant, perhaps, but not Parsifal.”
“Is that true?” asked Havelock.
“Pour yourself and Miss Karas a drink, Michael. You know the rules. I have a story to tell you.”
“No drinks. Your rules don’t apply any longer.”
“At least sit down, and put that gun away. You have nothing to fear here. Not from me. Not any longer.”
Havelock looked at Jenna; he nodded, leading them both to adjacent chairs across from Alexander. They sat down, Jenna removing the photographs from her coat and placing them on her lap. Michael shoved the weapon into his pocket. “Go on,” he said curtly.
“A number of years ago,” began the journalist, staring at the glass in his hands, “Anton and I committed a crime. In our minds it was far more serious than any punishment for it might indicate, and the punishment would have been severe in the extreme. We were fooled … ‘gulled’ is the innocuous word, ‘deceived’ more appropriate, ‘betrayed’ more appropriate still. But the fact that it could have happened to us—two pragmatic intellectuals, as we believed we were—was intolerable to us. Still, it had happened.” Alexander drained his glass and placed it on the table next to his chair. He folded his puffed, delicate hands and continued. “Whether it was because of my friendship with Matthias, or for whatever standing I might have had in this city, a man called me from Toronto saying he had obtained a false passport and was flying to Washington. He was a Soviet citizen, an educated man in his early sixties, and an employee in a reasonably high position in the Soviet government. His intention was to defect, and he asked if I could put him in touch with Anthony Matthias.” The journalist paused and leaned forward, gripping the arms of the chair. “You see, in those days everyone knew Anton was about to be tapped for extraordinary things; his influence was growing with every article he wrote, every trip to Washington. I arranged a meeting; it took place in this room.” Alexander leaned back and kept his eyes on the floor. “That man had remarkable insights to offer, a wide knowledge of internal Soviet affairs. A month later he was working for the State Department. Three years after that Matthias was special assistant to the President, and two years later, Secretary of State. The man from Russia, by way of Toronto, was still in the department, his talents so appreciated that by then he was processing highly classified information as the director of Eastern bloc debriefings and reports.”
“When did you find out?” asked Havelock.
The journalist looked up, and said quietly, “Four years ago. Again, in this room. The defector asked to meet with us both; he said that what he had to say was urgent and our schedules for that very night must be cleared—there could be no delays. He sat where Miss Karas is sitting now and told us the truth. He was a Soviet agent and had been continuously funneling the most sensitive information to Moscow for the past six years. But something had happened and he could no longer function in his role. He felt old and worn-out, the pressures were too great. He wanted to disappear.”
“And since you and Anton—the pragmatic intellectuals—had been responsible for six years of infiltration, he had you exactly where he wanted you,” Michael said sharply. “God forbid the great men should be tarnished.”
“That was part of it, surely, but then, there was a certain justification. Anthony Matthias was at his zenith, reshaping global policies, reaching secure accommodations and détente, making the world somewhat safer than it was before him. Such a revelation would have been politically disastrous; it would have destroyed him—and the good he was doing. I myself presented this argument strongly.”
“I’m sure it didn’t take long to convince him,” said Havelock.
“Longer than you think, perhaps,” replied Alexander, a trace of weary anger in his voice, “You seem to have forgotten what he was.”
“Perhaps I never really knew.”
“You say this was part of it,” interrupted Jenna. “What was the other part?”
The journalist shifted his gaze to rest on Jenna before he spoke. “That man was given an order with which he could not—would not—comply. He was told to be prepared for a series of shocking Eastern bloc reports, which he was to shape in such a way as to force Anton to request a naval blockade of Cuba along with a presidential Red Alert.”
“Nuclear?”
“Yes, Miss Karas. A replay of the ’62 missile crisis, but far more provocative. These startling reports would corroborate photographic ‘evidence’ purporting to show the jungles and southern coastal regions of Cuba ringed with offensive nuclear weapons, the first bridge of an imminent attack.”
“For what purpose?” asked Jenna.
“A geopolitical trap,” said Michael. “He walks into it, he’s finished.”
“Precisely,” agreed Alexander. “Anton brings the full military might of the United States to the brink of war, and suddenly the gates of Cuba are opened and inspection teams from the world over are invited to see for themselves. There is nothing, and Anthony Matthias is humiliated, portrayed as a hysterical alarmist—the one thing he never was—all his bril—liant negotiations thrown away. The healing with them, I might add.”
“But this Soviet agent,” said Jenna, bewildered, “this man who had for six years fed Moscow secrets, was a professional, if nothing else; he refused. Did he say why?”
“Quite movingly, I thought. He said Anton Matthias was too valuable to be sacrificed to a cabal of hotheads in Moscow.”
“The Voennaya,” said Havelock.
“Those shocking reports came in and they were ignored. No crisis ever took place.”
“Would Matthias have accepted them as authentic if he hadn’t known?” asked Michael.
“Somebody would have forced him to. Perfectly conscientious men and women in the section would have become alarmed, would possibly have come to someone like me—if they hadn’t been told in advance what to expect, what the intemperate strategy was. Anton called in the Soviet ambassador for a long confidential talk. Men were replaced in Moscow.”
“They’ve come back,” said Havelock.
The journalist blinked; he did not understand, nor did he pretend to. He continued. “The man who had deceived us, but who ultimately would not betray some voice inside himself, disappeared. Anton made it possible. He was given a new identity, a new life, beyond those who would have had him killed.”
“He came back too,” said Michael.
“He never really went away. But yes, he came back. A little over a year ago, without calling, without warning, he came to see me and said we had to talk. But not in this room; he wouldn’t talk in here and I think I appreciated that. I remembered too well that night when he told us what we’d done. It was late afternoon, and we walked along the ridge above the ravine—two old men making their way slowly, cautiously over the ground, one profoundly frightened, the other curiously intense … in a quiet way, possessed.” Alexander paused. “I’d like some more brandy; this isn’t easy for me.”
“I’m not interested,” said Michael.
“Where is it?” asked Jenna, getting up and going to the table, reaching for the glass.
“The copper bar,” said the old man, look
ing up at her. “Against the wall, my dear.”
“Go on,” said Havelock impatiently. “She can hear you; we can both hear you.”
“I meant what I said. I need the brandy.… You don’t look well, Michael. You look tired; you’re unshaven and there are dark circles under your eyes. You should take better care of yourself.”
“I’ll make a note of it.”
Jenna returned. “Here you are,” she said, handing Alexander his drink and going to her chair.
It was the first time Havelock noticed that Raymond’s hand shook. It was why he held the glass in both hands, gripping it to reduce the tremble. “ ‘In a quiet way, possessed.’ That’s where you were.”
“Yes, I remember.” Alexander drank, then looked at Jenna. “Thank you,” he said.
She nodded. “Please, go on.”
“Yes, of course.… We walked along the ridge, we two old men that late afternoon, when suddenly he stopped and said to me, ‘You must do as I ask, for we have an opportunity that will never be presented to the world again.’ I replied that I was not in the habit of acceding to such requests without knowing what was being asked of me. He said it was not a request but a demand, that if I refused he would reveal the roles Matthias and I had played in his espionage activities. He would expose us both, destroy us both. It was what I feared most—for both of us, Anton more than myself, of course. But still myself, I can’t say otherwise.”
“What did he want you to do?” asked Havelock.
“I was to be the Boswell and my journals were to record the deterioration and collapse of a man with such power that he could plunge the world into the insanity that was down the road for him. My Samuel Johnson was, of course, Anthony Matthias, and the message to mankind was to be a sobering one: ‘This must not be allowed to happen again; no one man should ever again be elevated to such heights.’ ”