The Parsifal Mosaic (38 page)

“You’ve still got the embassy.”

“I know, I was thorough. I’ll have to think about that.”

“Maybe I never showed up,” said Havelock, rubbing his shoulder, grateful that the pain was receding.

“
Merci.
”

The vest-pocket park in Denfert Rochereau was a plot of grass dotted with stone benches, sculptured trees and a graveled path circling a small pool with a fountain in its center. The only source of light was a streetlamp thirty feet away, its spill filtered by the branches of the trees. They sat beside each other on the cold bench. Michael told Broussac what he had seen—and what he had not seen—at the Costa Brava. He then had to ask the question. “Did she tell you what happened?”

“She was warned, told to follow instructions.”

“By whom?”

“A high government official from Washington.”

“How could she accept him?”

“He was brought to her by a man identified as the senior attaché from Madrid’s Consular Operations.”

“Consular … 
Madrid
? Where was I?”

“Madrid.”

“
Jesus
, right down to the hour!”

“What was?”

“The whole goddamned thing. What instructions was she given?”

“To meet a man that night and leave Barcelona with him.”

“Did she?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“She panicked. In her words, everything had collapsed for her. She didn’t feel she could trust
anyone
. She ran.”

“Thank God. I don’t know who was killed on that beach, but it was meant to be Jenna. In a way, it makes the whole thing even more obscene. Who was she? Someone who didn’t know a damn thing? A woman brought there and told to chase a Frisbee in the moonlight, suddenly shot at, knowing she was going to die?
Christ
, what kind of people one they?”

“Find out through Madrid. The attaché from Consular Operations.”

“I can’t She was fed another lie. There’s no Cons Op unit in Madrid; the climate’s too rotten. It operates an hour away out of Lisbon.”

Régine was silent, her eyes on him. “What’s happening, Michael?”

Havelock watched the fountain in the dark pool. Its cascading spray was diminishing, folding, dying; somewhere a hand was turning a dial, shutting it off for the remainder of the night. “Liars are operating at very high places in my government. They’ve penetrated areas I used to think were impenetrable. They’re controlling, killing—lying. And someone in Moscow is working with them.”

“
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.”