The Parsifal Mosaic (44 page)

“I think he supplied everything.” Bradford shook his head slowly, arching his brows, as if recalling the impossible. “Including the suitcase, the Baader-Meinhof informer, our own codes and the instructions from Moscow. Everything just appeared in Barcelona—out of nowhere. And no one really knows how.”

“I imagine it’s pointless to press Matthias further?” said Brooks, asking the question nevertheless.

“Pointless,” replied Bradford. “He repeats what he’s Malntained from the beginning. The evidence was there. It was true. It was channeled to me.’ ”

“The bells are heard by Saint Anthony!” exploded the President.

“The mole at
State
” Halyard persisted. “Good
Christ
, he can’t be that hard to find. How many people would Stern talk to? What kind of time frame was involved? A few minutes? A few hours? Go back and trace every move he made.”

“The Cons Op strategists operated in total secrecy,” said Bradford. “There were no appointment calendars, no conference schedules. A call would come to a specific person upstairs, or over at the Agency, or the NSC, and the decks would be cleared for whichever strategist it was, but no record of the meeting was ever written down. Internal security again; a great deal could be pieced together by informers with access to such records or memoranda.”

“Misdirect the flow of accurate information at all costs,” said the President softly.

“By our estimates, Stern could have spoken to any of sixty
to seventy-five people,” continued Bradford. “And we could be
underestimating
that figure. There are authorities within teams of specialists, specialists among those considered authorities. The lists are endless, and all those people have maximum clearance.”

“But we’re talking about the
State Department
,” said Brooks emphatically. “Sometime between Stern’s last conversation with Rome and four hours later when the authorization was given to Col des Moulinets. That narrows down the possibilities considerably.”

“And whoever it is knows that,” said the undersecretary. “It further obscures his movements. Even the check-ins and check-outs won’t show him to be where he was.”

“Didn’t anyone see Stern?” persisted Brooks. “Surely, you’ve asked.”

“As quietly as we could. Not one of those we questioned admitted seeing him within twenty-four hours of the period in question, but then we didn’t expect the one who did to say so.”

“
Nobody
saw him?” asked the general, frowning in disbelief.

“Well, yes, someone did,” said Bradford, nodding. “The outside receptionist on the fifth floor, L Section. Dawson had left a message for Stern; he picked it up on his way to the elevator. He could have been in any of seventy-five offices beyond the reception-room door.”

“Who was inside at the time?” The ambassador shook his head the instant he asked the question, as if to say, Sorry, never mind.

“Exactly,” said Bradford, accepting the stateman’s unspoken afterthought. “It wasn’t any help. Twenty-three people were listed as not having checked out. There were conferences, secretaries taking notes, and briefings by division personnel. Everything was substantiated. No one left a meeting long enough to place that call.”

“But, damn it, you’ve got a floor!” cried the soldier. “Seventy-five offices, seventy-five people. That’s not a hundred and fifty, or a thousand; it’s seventy-five and one of them’s your mole! Start with those closest to Matthias and pull them in. Put every goddamn one of them into a clinic if you have to!”

“There’d be panic; the entire State Department would be
demoralized,” said Brooks. “Unless—Is there a clique, a particular group, closest to Matthias?”

“You don’t understand him.” Bradford brought his folded hands to his chin, searching for words. “He’s first, last and always
Dr.
Matthias, teacher, enlightener, provoker of thought. He’s a hustling Socrates on the Potomac, gathering his worshipers wherever he can find them, extolling those who see the light, striking down the disbelievers with the cruelest humor I’ve ever heard. Cruel but always couched in brilliantly humble phrases. And like most self-appointed arbiters of an elite, his arrogance makes him fickle as hell. A section will catch his eye and they’re his fair-haired boys and girls for a while, until another group comes along and flatters him at the right moment, and there’s suddenly a new court of supplicants he can lecture. Naturally, during the past year it’s gotten worse—but it was always there.” Bradford permitted himself the start of a strained smile. “Then, of course, I could be biased. I was never allowed in one of those charmed circles.”

“Why do you think you were excluded?” asked the ambassador.

“I’m not sure. I had a certain reputation of my own once; perhaps he was uncomfortable with it. But I think it was because I used to watch him very closely, very hard. I was fascinated, and I know he was uncomfortable with that.… You see, the ‘best and the brightest’ were led down a lot of strange paths by men like him. Some of us grew up, and I don’t think Matthias approved of that growth. Skepticism comes with it. The Thomistic leap isn’t good enough anymore; blind faith can ruin the eyesight—and the perspective.” Bradford leaned forward, his eyes on Halyard. “I’m sorry, General. My answer to both you and Ambassador Brooks is that there is no one group I’d zero in on, no guarantee that our mole would be caught before he panicked and ran. And we can’t let that happen. I know I’m right. If we can find him, he can lead us to the man we call Parsifal. He may have lost him temporarily, but he knows who Parsifal is.”

The older men were silent; they looked at each other, then turned back to Bradford. The general frowned, a questioning look in his clear eyes. The President nodded his head slowly,
bringing his right hand to his cheek and staring at the man from State.

The ambassador spoke, his slender figure rigid in his chair. “I commend you, Mr. Undersecretary. May I try to reconstruct the new scenario?… For reasons unknown, Matthias needed an incontrovertible case against the Karas woman, which would lead to Havelock’s retirement. By now, because of what he’s done. Matthias is Parsifal’s puppet—his prisoner, really—but Parsifal knows it’s in his interest to carry out Matthias’s obsession. He goes to a well—entrenched Soviet agent in the upper regions of the State Department and the incriminating evidence against the Karas woman is provided, studied and accepted. Except that two source controls from the CIA come to you and tell you it can’t be true—any of it—and you, Emory Bradford, enter the picture. In fact, the President, alarmed by what appears to be a conspiracy at State brings us
all
into the picture—and we in turn recruit a black-operations officer to mount the Costa Brava exercise. That exercise—that scene—is turned into murder, and at this juncture, it’s your thesis that the mole lost sight of Parsifal.”

“Yes. Parsifal, whoever he is, got what he wanted from the mole, then dropped him. The mole is stunned, possibly frantic. He’s undoubtedly made promises to Moscow—based on assurances from Parsifal—that projected a major setback for American foreign policy, conceivably its collapse.”

“Either,” interjected the President in a quiet monotone, “would be a benevolent alternative.”

“And whoever has the information contained in Parsifal’s documents will assume control of the Kremlin.” Brooks remained rigid, his aristocratic face pale, drawn. “We’re at war,” he added softly.

“I repeat,” said Halyard. “Go after those seventy-five offices at State. Mount a sweep, call it a medical quarantine; it’s simple but effective, even acceptable. Do it in the early evening after they’ve left work. Round them up in their homes, restaurants; pull them in and get them down to your laboratories. Find your mole!” The general’s forceful rendering of the tatic impressed the civilians, who remained silent. Halyard lowered his voice. “I know it smells, but I don’t think you’ve got a choice.”

“We’d need two hundred men posing as medical techniclans
and drivers,” said Bradford. “Between thirty and forty government vehicles. No one knowing anything.”

“We’d also be dealing with families and neighbors and ‘technicians’ knocking on doors at night,” countered Berquist. “
Christ
, that son of a bitch! That
man
for all
seasons
!” The President stopped; he took a deep breath, then continued, “We’d never get away with it; the rumors would spread like a Mesabi brush fire in a dry July. The press would break it open and call us everything in the book, everything we deserve. Mass arrests without explanation—there’s none we could give—interrogations without due process, storm troopers … chemicals. We’d be crucified on every editorial page in the country, hanged in effigy on every campus, denounced from every pulpit and soapbox, to say nothing of the acid from our legislative brethren. I’d be impeached.”

“More important, Mr. President,” said the ambassador, “and I’m sorry to say I mean that, the action itself would undoubtedly throw Parsifal into panic. He’d see what we were doing, know whom we were trying to unearth in order to find him. He could carry out his threats, carry out the inconceivable.”

“Yes, I know. We’re damned if we move, helpless if we don’t.”

“It could
work
,” persisted the general.

“Handled correctly, it might, Mr. President,” added Bradford.

“For God’s sake, how?”

“Anyone who objected strenuously, to the point of refusal or evasion, would probably be our man,” replied Bradford.

“Or someone with something else to hide,” said Brooks gently. “We’re in the age of anxiety, Mr. Undersecretary, and this is a city with a low threshold for privacy. You might very well corner a person who has nothing more to conceal than an unopened closet, or the loathing of a superior, an unpopular viewpoint, or an office affair. Parsifal will see only what his insanity compels him to see.”

Bradford listened, reluctantly accepting the statesman’s judgment. “There’s another approach we haven’t had time to implement. An itinerary check. Tracing the whereabouts of every person on that floor during the week of Costa Brava. If we’re right—if I’m not wrong—he wasn’t here. He was in Madrid, in Barcelona.”

“He’d cover himself,” objected Halyard.

“Regardless, General, he’d have to account for being away from Washington. How many such absences can there be?”

“When can you start?” asked Berquist.

“First thing in the morning—”

“Why not tonight?” the general interrupted.

“If those records were accessible, I could. They’re not, and to call someone in to open them at this hour would cause talk. We can’t afford that.”

“Even in the morning,” said the ambassador, “how can you suppress curiosity, keep it quiet?”

Bradford paused before speaking, his eyes cast downward, seeking an answer. “Time study,” he replied, looking up, the phrase bordering on a question. “I’ll tell whoever controls those records that it’s a routine time study. Someone’s always doing something like that.”

“Acceptable,” agreed Brooks. “Banal and acceptable.”

“Nothing’s acceptable,” said the President of the United States quietly, staring at the white wall, where an hour ago the faces of four dead men had been projected. “ ‘A man for all seasons,’ they call him. The original was a scholar, a statesman, the creator of Utopia … 
and
a burner of heretics—they conveniently forget that, don’t they? ‘Condemn the non-believers; they don’t see what I see, and I’m—inviolate.… Goddamn it, if I had my way, I’d do what fat Henry did with Thomas More. I’d cut off Matthias’s head, and instead of London Bridge, I’d jam it on top of the Washington Monument as a reminder. Heretics, too, are citizens of the republic and so,
holy
man, there can be no heresy!
Goddamn
him!”

“You know what would happen, don’t you, Mr. President?”

“Yes, Mr. Ambassador, I do. The people would look up at that bleeding neck, at that ever-benign face—no doubt with those tortoiseshell glasses still intact—and in their infinite wisdom they’d say he was right, had been right all along. Citizens—heretics included—would canonize him, and that’s the lousy irony.”

“He could still do it, I think,” Brooks mused. “He could walk out and the cries would start again. They’d offer him the crown and he’d refuse and they’d persist-until it became inevitable. Another irony. Hail not Caesar but Anthony—a coronation. A constitutional amendment would be rammed
through the House and the Senate and President Matthias would sit in the Oval Office. As incredible as it might seem, he could probably still do it Even now.”

“Maybe we should let him,” said Berquist softly, bitterly. “Maybe the people-in their infinite wisdom—are right, after all Maybe
he
’s been right all along. Sometimes I don’t know anymore. Perhaps he really does see things others don’t see. Even now.”

The aristocratic statesman and the plainspoken general left the underground room. The four would meet again at noon the next day, each arriving separately at the South Portico entrance, away from the inquisitive eyes of the White House press corps. If, in the morning, there were any startling developments in Bradford’s research at State, the time would be moved up, the President’s calendar erased. The mole took all precedence. He could lead them to a madman the President and his advisers called Parsifal.

“I commend you, Mr. Undersecretary,” said Berquist, lowering his voice in an amateur’s imitation of the ambassador’s fluid and graceful speech. It was an imitation with only a trace of rancor; respect was also there. “He’s the last of the originals, isn’t he?”

“Yes, sir. There aren’t many left, and none that I know of who care that much. Taxes and the great democratization have removed them—or alienated them. They feel uncomfortable, and I think It’s the country’s loss.”

“Don’t be sepulchral, Emory, it doesn’t suit you. We need him; the power brokers on the Hill are still in awe of him. If there ever was an answer to Matthias, it’s Addison Brooks. The
Mayflower
and Plymouth Rock, New York’s Four Hundred and fortunes built on the backs of immigrants-leading to the guilt feelings of the inheritors. Benevolent liberals who weep at the sight of swollen black bellies in the Mississippi Delta. But for Christ’s sake, don’t take away the Château d’Yquem.”