The Parsifal Mosaic (48 page)

“I heard you before,” interrupted Havelock; he remained standing, his eyes scanning the room. There were bookshelves everywhere, old furniture—overstuffed chairs, fringed lamps, hassocks—nothing Spartan. Once more the smell of
Academe. “Jenna Karas!” said Michael suddenly, rapidly, raising his voice.

“Another message?” asked Handelman ingenuously, an old man bemused by a younger antagonist “So many messages—I must have a talk with my secretary. She overprotects me.”

“Jenna Karas came to see you last night, I know that!”

“Three … 
no
, four people came to see me last night, each a student of mine. I even have their names over here, and the outlines of two graduate papers.” Handelman walked to a cluttered desk against the wall.

“Cut it out!” shouted Havelock. “You packaged her and I’ve got to
find
her! That was Broussac’s message.”

“So many messages,” intoned the halfway man, as if chanting a Talmudic passage. “Ahh, here are the names, the graduate outlines,” continued Handelman, bending over the disorganized pile of papers. “So many visitors … so many messages. Who can keep track?”

“
Listen
to met Broussac wouldn’t have given me your name or told me where to find you if I weren’t telling you the truth. I have to
reach
her! A terrible thing was done to her—to us—and she doesn’t understand!”

“ ‘The Filioque Denials in the Councils of Arius,’ ” chanted Handelman, standing erect and holding a sheaf of papers under the light of a floor lamp. “Those would be the Nicene rejections of the Eastern Church around the fifth century. Very little understood—speaking of understanding.”

He may choose to tell you nothing
. “Goddamn you, where did you send her? Stop
playing
with me! Because—if I have to—I’ll—”

“Yes?” Jacob Handelman turned his head in the spill of the floor lamp and peered once again through the steel-rimmed glasses. He took several steps to his left and replaced the papers on the desk.

It was there, at that moment. It was all there. The eyes behind the thin rims of steel, the rigid posture of the soft body … the walk. Not the measured gait of a high prelate of the church or of a medieval baron entering a great hall … but the strutting of a man in uniform. A black uniform!

Sheets of lightning filled Havelock’s eyes. His mind exploded … 
then and now, now and then
! Not eight or ten years ago but the early years, the terrible years! He was one
of
them
! The images of his memory confirmed it; he saw the man in front of him now as he was then. The large face—without a beard, the hair straight and long, not white but
Aryan yellow
. Walking … 
strutting
 … down to rows of ditches. Machine-gun
fire. Screams.

Lidice!

As if in a trance, Michael started toward the halfway man, his hands taut and hard, his fingers curving into claws, tensed for combat with another animal—a lower form of animal.

“Vos?” Handelman drew out the sibilant s in his high-pitched whine. “What is the matter with you? Are you crazy, perhaps? Look at you … are you sick? Stay away from me!”

“The
Rabbi
 …? Oh, Christ, you son of a bitch! You incredible son of a bitch! What were you—
Standartenführer? Sturmbannführer
?… No, it was
Obergruppenführer
! It was you!
Lidice
!”

The old man’s eyes widened; magnified by the thick lenses, they looked monstrous. “You are mad, completely, utterly mad! Leave my house! You are not welcome here. With the pain I’ve suffered, I will not listen to the ravings of a madman!”

The intense singsong chant of the words covered the halfway man’s movement. His right hand slipped down to the desk, to the clutter of papers. Havelock lunged as a gun emerged in Handelman’s hand, placed there minutes ago by an
Obergruppenführer
who could never afford to forget his origins. The halfway man was a killer of Czechs and Poles and Jews, a man who had taken the identity of a ragged inmate he had sent into a shower of gas or a cave of fire.

Havelock grabbed the hand with the gun, jamming his third finger behind the trigger, slamming it repeatedly against the edge of the desk. It would not come loose! The halfway man was arched beneath him, pinning his right arm, the face grotesque, the mouth stretched like a rabid dog’s, the soft body suddenly hard, writhing in spasms. Handelman’s left hand surged up and clapped Michael’s face, the fingers digging into his eyes.

Havelock twisted violently back and forth, and the halfway man slipped out from under him. They were at the edge
of the desk, immobilized by each other’s arms bent to the breaking point. Suddenly Michael freed his right hand; he clenched it into a fist and brought it crashing down like a hammer into where he could see the blur of Handelman’s face.

The steel-rimmed glasses shattered. The German screamed, and the gun clattered to the floor as he brought both his hands to his face.

Havelock leaped backward, yanking the German to his feet, and clamped his hand across the ugly mouth. Havelock’s eyes burned, and tears and specks of blood clouded his vision. But he could see; the Nazi could not.

“You raise your voice, old man, I’ll kill you the instant you do. Now, sit down!”

He pulled the German away from the desk and pushed him into the nearest chair with such force that the halfway man’s neck snapped back. The shattered glasses, however, remained secure on Handelman’s face; they were a part of that face, part of the ugliness.

“You have blinded me!” whined the soldier from Lidice. “A madman comes into my house—”

“Forget it!” said Michael. “I was there!”

“Madness!” Gasping, Handelman raised his hands to remove his glasses.

“Leave them alone!” ordered Havelock. “Let them stay right where they are.”

“Young man, you are—”

“Don’t talk! Listen. I can put out a trace on a man named Jacob Handelman, going back fifty years. Everything about him—old pictures, Germans still alive who knew him, if he ever existed. Then circulate a photograph of you, minus the beard, of course, in certain sections of Prague. You were there; I saw you later and wanted to kill you. A boy of nine or ten wanted to put a knife in your back in the street. And someone still living in Prague or Rudna or Kladno would want to do the same even now. That’s the bottom line, you
bastard
! So don’t talk to me about people who weren’t here last night, tell me about the one who was. Where is she?”

“I am a very valuable man—”

“I’ll bet you are. Who’d know more about finding safe territories than someone who did it so well And who could protect
himself better than someone who could expose the whereabouts of so many. You’ve covered yourself,
Mörder
. But not with me, do you understand that? Because I don’t care. Now, where is
Jenna Katas
?”

“While not addressing myself to the preposterous accusations you make,” whined the German, “there are considerations of exchange.”

“You have your life,” said Havelock. “I’m not interested in it It’s enough that you know I’m out there and can end it anytime I like. That’s your exchange. Where is she?”

“The top drawer of the desk.” The halfway man gestured with his trembling hand, his eyes unseeing behind the shattered glasses. “Lift up the pencil rack. There’s a folded green paper.”

Michael went to the desk, opened the drawer, and pulled out the concave receptacle for pens and pencils. There was the light green paper; he picked it up and unfolded it. It was a page of memorandum stationery from the Columbia University Graduate Faculty of Philosophy. In precise, handwritten block letters was the information Havelock would have killed for; it was everything.

“Is Corescu the name she’s using?” asked Havelock sharply.

“Temporarily. The papers are only temporary; they had to be manufactured in a few hours. Others will follow … if they are to follow.”

“Which means?”

“They must be paid for. Nothing is for nothing.”

“Naturally; the hook’s sunk in and the line keeps reeling out. You must have some very impressive fish out there.”

“You could say I have powerful—friends. In many places.”

“Who’s this Kohoutek?”

“A Slav,” said the halfway man, shrugging derisively. “He has farm land.”

“When did she leave?”

“She was picked up this morning.”

“What’s her cover?”

“Another destitute refugee a niece, perhaps—gotten out of the Balkans, or wherever. Away from the Bear, as they say. Kohoutek will get her work; he has friends in the textile unions.”

“From which she pays him and you, or the papers don’t follow.”

“One needs papers,” whined Handelman, “to drive a car, or use a bank—”

“Or to be left alone by immigration,” interrupted Michael “That threat’s always there, isn’t it?”

“We are a nation of laws, sir.”

“You make me sick,” said Havelock approaching the chair, looking down at the animal from Lidice. “I could kill you now, feeling nothing but joy,” he added quietly. “Can you understand that, philosopher? But I won’t, because I want you to know what it’s like to realize it can happen any moment, any day, any night With a knock on your door. You live with that,
du altes Luder. Hail Hitler
.”

He turned and started for the door.

There was a sharp sound, as of something cracking, behind him. He spun around to see the long blade of a knife streaking toward him directly at his chest. The halfway man had torn the shattered glasses off his face and seized the weapon concealed in the overstuffed chair; the musty smell of Academe was suddenly the putrid odor of a no-man’s-land in a faraway battlefield. Havelock Jumped back, but not before the blade had ripped through the jacket of the suit, the razor-sharp edge sitting his flesh and marking his white shirt with a line of blood.

His right hand whipped under his coat for the Llama automatic. He kicked wildly in front of him, hoping to make contact with any part of the German’s body. As the blade came arcing back he spun away from its trajectory and raised his gun, aiming at the face.

He fibred twice; the halfway man fell to the floor, his head soaked in blood, one eye blown away.

A gun had stilled another gun from Lidice. But there was no joy; it had ceased to matter.

There was only Jenna. He had found her! She could not
stop him from reaching her now. She might kill him, but first she would have to look into his eyes. That did matter.

He shoved the Llama into his belt, the page of green paper into his pocket, and raced out of the apartment.

“The name’s Broussac Mr. President,” said Emory Bradford into the phone at his desk in the State Department. “Madame Régine Broussac. The Quai d’Orsay, Foreign Ministry, Section Four. She contacted the embassy the night before last, instructing a radio-car unit to be in the vicinity of Argenteuil for the purpose of picking up a former American intelligence officer who was to meet her there. Under highly unorthodox circumstances, she said.”

“Havelock?”

“She’s admitted that much, yes.”

“And?”

“The car drove up and down the streets of Argenteuil all night It was never contacted.”

“What did this Broussac say? I assume she’s been questioned.”

“Angrily. She claims he never showed up.”

“Well.”

“Our people think she’s lying.”

“Why?”

“One of our men went around to her flat and asked some questions. He learned that she returned home by one o’clock in the morning. If that was the case—and apparently it was; two neighbors confirmed it—why didn’t she phone the embassy and call off the car?”

“Has the been asked about this?”

“No, sir. Our people are waiting for instructions. It’s not customary for embassy personnel to go around asking questions surreptitiously about officials of the Quai d’Orsay.”

Charles Berquist paused, then spoke flrmly. “Have Ambassador Richardson call Madame Broussac and respectfully request that she accept an invitation to come to the embassy as soon as it’s convenient, preferably within the hour. A limousine will be sent for her, of course. The President of the United States wishes to speak with her on a confidential basis.”

“Mr.
President
—”

“Just do as I say, Mr. Undersecretary.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And, Emory?”

“Sir?”

“How’s the other task coming? The seventy-odd diplomats who may have been out of town during the Spanish problem?”

Bradford paused before answering. When he spoke, it was apparent he was trying to control his voice. “As of this moment, five are missing.”

“
What
?”

“I didn’t want to say anything until noon, until I have all the information, but the last report indicates that nineteen personnel were off the premises. Fourteen are accounted for, five aren’t.”

“Get it! Get
all
your information!”

“I’m trying.”

“By noon! Get it!”

The cold rain of the night before had lingered with diminishing strength, and the sky outside the Oval Office was dark. A drop of only a degree or two in temperature and there would be thin, erratic patches of snow on the White House lawn. Berauist stood by the window, briefly wondering how deep the drifts were in Mountain Iron, Minnesota. And how he wished to Christ he were back there now. There was a buzzing from his telephone console. He glanced at his watch as he walked to the desk; it was eleven-fifteen.

“Yes?”

“Your call from Paris, sir.”

“Thank you.” Berquist pushed the appropriate red button. “Madame Broussac?”

“
Oui, Monsieur le Président
. It is an honor, sir. I am flattered to have been summoned to speak with you.” The old woman’s voice was strong, but not without astonishment. And a measure of fear.

“And I’m most grateful, madame. As I instructed, are we alone?”

“Yes, Monsieur le Président. Ambassador Richardson most courteously permitted me the use of his office. Quite honestly, I am, as you might say, bewildered.”