The Parsifal Mosaic (62 page)

“Just get him out of here,” replied the soldier. “What you do is your business.”

“Hello, Havelock.” The man from State looked down with contempt. “You’ve been busy. It must have been fun killing that old guy in New York. What were you doing? Setting him up for contingency funds, with a little more of the same down here? Get on your feet, you bastard!”

Body and head racked, Michael slowly rolled onto his knees and pushed himself up. “What happened to him? What
happened?”

“I don’t answer questions.”

“Somebody has to … for Christ’s sake,
somebody
has to!”

“And give you a free ticket? No way, you son of a bitch.” The civilian addressed the guard, who was standing across the room. “Did you search him?”

“No, sir. I just removed his weapon and punched the alarm. There’s a flashlight on his belt and some kind of pouch.”

“Let me help you, Charley,” said Havelock, spreading the field jacket and reaching for the oilcloth packet. “It
is
Charley, isn’t it? Charley Loring … was it Beirut?”

“It was, and keep your goddamned hands still!”

“What you want’s in there. Go on, take it. It won’t detonate.”

The man from State nodded at the major; the soldier stepped forward and grabbed Michael’s hands as Charles Loring ripped the packet off the webbed belt.

“Open it,” continued Havelock. “It’s from me to you. All of you.”

The Cons Op agent unzipped the packet and took out the folded yellow pages. The major released his grip as the civilian walked to a floor lamp and began reading. He stopped,
looked over at Michael, then spoke to the soldier. “Wait outside, Major. And you,” he added, glancing at the guard. “In the other room, please.”

“Are you sure?” asked the officer.

“Very,” said Charley. “He’s not going anywhere, and I’ll shout if I need you.” The two men left, the soldier out the front door, the guard into the next room. “You’re the lowest piece of garbage I’ve ever known,” said the man from State.

“It’s a carbon, Charley.”

“I can see that.”

“Call Cons Op emergency. Every fifteen minutes since eleven o’clock they’ve gotten a message. It’s in the form of a question: ‘Billiards or pool?’ The response is, ‘We prefer pool.’ Tell them to give it.”

“Then what?”

“Patch yourself into the next call, give the response, and listen.”

“So some other piece of garbage can read this to me.”

“Oh, no, just twelve seconds’ worth. No way to trace. And don’t bother to think about giving me a needle. I’ve been in therapy before, so I took precautions. I have no idea where the calls are coming from, take my word.”

“I wouldn’t take your word for a goddamn thing,
garbage!”

“You’d better right now, because if you don’t, copies of those pages will be sent to appropriate addresses all over Europe. From Moscow to Athens, from London to Prague—from Paris to Berlin. Get on the phone.”

Twenty-one minutes later the man from State stared at the wall as he gave the response to Jenna Karas. Eleven seconds after that he hung up and looked over at Havelock. “You’re everything they said you were. You’re filth.”

“And ‘beyond salvage’?”

“That’s s right.”

“Then so are you, because you’re programmed, Charley. You’re useless. You forgot how to ask questions.”

“What?”

“You just accepted the verdict on me. You knew me—knew my record—but it didn’t make any difference. The word came down and the good little sheep said, ‘Why not?’ ”

“I could
kill
you.”

“And live with the consequences? Don’t do that. Call the White House.”

He could hear the deafening roar of the giant helicopter’s rotating blades and knew that the President of the United States had arrived at Poole’s Island. It was midmorning, and the Georgia sun was burning the pavements outside the open window. He was in a room, out there was no question that it was a cell even though there were no bars in the single window. He was two stories off the ground; there were four soldiers beneath, and the eerie façades and photographs of familiar buildings could be seen beyond. A world of lies, of artifice, of transplanted, warped reality.

Havelock walked back to the bed—more cot than bed—and sat down. He thought of Jenna, what she must be going through—again; what resources she had to summon to survive the unbearable tension. And of Matthias—good God, what had
happened?
Michael relived the horrible scene in the garden, trying to find a thread of sense.

You must not come near me. You don’t understand. You can never understand!

Understand
what?

He had no idea how long he sat there thinking; he only knew that his thoughts were interrupted by the crack of the glass panel in the center of the door. A face appeared; it was under the gold braid of a visored cap. The door opened, and a broad-shouldered, middle-aged colonel walked in, gripping a pair of handcuffs.

“Turn around,” he ordered. “Extend your arms.”

Havelock did as he was told, and the cuffs were clamped around his wrists. “What about my feet?” asked Michael curtly. “Aren’t they considered weapons?”

“I’ll have a much more effective one in my hand,” said the officer, “and I’ll be watching you every second. You pull one thing I could even misinterpret, I’m inside, and you’re dead.”

“A one-on-one conference. I’m flattered.”

The colonel spun Havelock around. “I don’t know who you are, or what you’re doing, or what you’ve done, but you remember this, cowboy. That man is my responsibility, and there’s no way I wouldn’t blow you out of this room and ask questions later.”

“Who’s the cowboy?”

As if to punctuate his threat, the officer shoved Michael back into the wall. “Stay there,” he commanded, and left the room.

Thirty seconds later the door was opened again, and President Charles Berquist walked in. In his hand were the thirteen carbons of Havelock’s indictment. The President stopped, and looked at Michael. He raised the yellow pages.

“This is an extraordinary document, Mr. Havelock.”

“It’s the truth.”

“I believe you. I find a great part of it beneath contempt, of course, but then, I tell myself that a man with your record would not cavalierly cause the exposure and death of so many. That, basically, this is a threat—an irresistible threat—to make yourself heard.”

“Then you’d be telling yourself another lie,” said Michael, motionless against the wall. “I was placed ‘beyond salvage.’ Why should I concern myself with anyone?”

“Because you’re an intelligent man who knows there have to be explanations.”

“Lies, you mean?”

“Some are lies and they will remain lies for the good of this country.”

Havelock paused, studying the hard Scandinavian face of the President, the steady eyes that were somehow a hunter’s eyes. “Matthias?”

“Yes.”

“How long do you think you can bury him here?”

“For as long as we possibly can.”

“He needs help.”

“So do we. He had to be stopped.”

“What have you done to him?”

“I was only part of it, Havelock. So were you. We all were. We made him an emperor when there were no personal empires to be allocated by divine right, much less ours. We made him a god when we didn’t own the heavens. There’s only so much the mind can absorb and act upon when elevated to such heights in these very complicated times. He was forced to exist in the perpetual illusion of being unique, above all other men. We asked too much. He went mad. His mind—that extraordinary instrument—snapped, and when it could no longer control itself, it sought control elsewhere. To compensate, perhaps, to convince himself
that he was what we said he was, although a part of him told him he wasn’t. Not any longer.”

“What do you mean ‘sought control elsewhere’? How could he do that?”

“By committing this nation to a series of obligations that were, to say the least, unacceptable. Try to understand, he had feet of quicksilver, not of clay, like you and me. Yes, even me, the President of the United States, some say the most powerful man in the world. It’s not true. I’m bound by the body politic, subject to the goddamn polls, guided by the so-called principles of a political ideology, with my head on a congressional chopping block. Checks and balances, Mr. Havelock. But not him. We made him a superstar; he was bound to nothing, accountable to no one. His word was law, all other judgments were subordinate to his brilliance. And then there was his charm, I might add.”

“Generalities,” said Michael. “Abstractions.”

“Lies?” asked Berquist.

“I don’t know. What are the specifics?”

“I’m going to show you. And if after what you’ve seen, you still feel compelled to carry out your threat, let it be on your head, not mine.”

“I don’t have a head. I’m ‘beyond salvage.’ ”

“I told you, I’ve read these pages. All of them. The order’s been rescinded. You have the word of the President of the United States.”

“Why should I accept it?”

“If I were you, I probably wouldn’t. I’m simply telling you. There are many lies and there will continue to be lies, but that’s not one of them.… I’ll have the handcuffs removed.”

The scene in the large, dark, windowless room was an unearthly depiction of a science-fiction nightmare. There were a dozen television screens mounted in a row on the wall, monitors that recorded and taped the activities seen by the various cameras. Below the screens was an enormous console manned by four technicians; several white-jacketed doctors entered, watching a scene or scanning tapes, writing notes, leaving quickly or conferring with colleagues. And the object of the whole sophisticated operation was to record and analyze
every movement made and every word spoken by Anthony Matthias.

His face and body were projected on seven screens at once, and under each monitor was a green digital readout showing the exact hour and minute of the filming; the screen on the far left was marked
Current
. The day was an illusion for Matthias, starting with morning coffee in the garden identical with his own in Georgetown.

“Before he wakes, he’s given two injections,” said the President, sitting next to Havelock at a second, smaller console at the rear wall. “One’s a muscle relaxant that reduces physical and mental tensions; the other, a stimulant that accelerates the heart, pumping blood, without interfering with the first narcotic. Don’t ask me the medical terms, I don’t know them; I just know it works. He’s free to associate with a degree of simulated confidence—in a way, a replica of his former self.”

“Then his day begins? His … simulated day?”

“Exactly. Read the monitors from right to left. His day starts with breakfast in the garden. He’s brought intelligence reports and newspapers corresponding to the dates of whatever issue is being probed. Then in the next screen you see him walking out of his ‘home’ and down his steps with an aide who’s talking to him, refining the options of the problem, building up the case, whatever it is. Everything, by the way, is taken from his logs; that remains constant throughout ‘the day.’ ” Berquist paused, and gestured at the third monitor from the right. “There you see him in his limousine, the aide still talking, bringing his focus back. He’s driven around for a while, then gradually brought in sight of places that are familiar to him, the Jefferson Memorial, the monument, certain streets, past the South Portico—the sequence is irrelevant.”

“But they’re not
whole,”
insisted Michael. “They’re fragments!”

“He doesn’t see that; he sees only the impressions. But even if he did see that they are fragments, as you call them, or miniatures of the existing places, the doctors tell me his mind would reject that and accept the reality of the impressions. Just as he refused to accept his own deterioration, and kept pressing for wider and wider responsibilities, until
he simply reached out and took them.… Watch the fourth screen. He’s getting out at the State Department, going inside, and telling his aide something; it will be studied. In the fifth, you can see him walking into his office—the same in every respect as his own on the eighth floor—and immediately scanning the cables and reading the day’s appointments, again identical with those that were there at the time. The sixth shows him taking a series of phone calls, the same calls he had taken before. Often his responses are meaningless, a part of him rejecting a voice, or a lack of authentic repartee, but other times what we learn is mind-blowing.… He’s been here nearly six weeks, and there are times when we think we’ve only scratched the surface. We’re only beginning to learn the extent of his massive excesses.”

“You mean the things he’s done?” asked Havelock, recoiling from the frightening turn of events.

Berquist looked at Michael in the glow of the console and the flickering light emanating from the screens across the room. “Yes, Mr. Havelock, the—‘things’—he’s done. If ever a man in the history of representative government exceeded the authority of his office, Anthony Matthias is that man. There were no limits to what he promised—what he
guaranteed—
in the name of the United States government. Take today. A policy was set and in the process of being implemented, but it did not suit the Secretary of State at this particular moment of irrationality, so he altered it … Watch the seventh screen, the one marked
Current
. Listen. He’s at his desk, and in his mind he’s back about five months, when a bipartisan decision had been made to close an embassy in a new African country slaughtering its citizens with mass hangings and death squads, revolting the civilized world. The aide is explaining.”

Mr. Secretary, the President and the Joint Chiefs, as well as the Senate, have gone on record as opposing any further contact at this time
 …

Then we won’t tell them, will we? Antediluvian reactions cannot be a keystone of a coherent foreign policy. I shall make contact myself and present a cohesive and judicious plan. Arms and well-sweetened butter are international lubricants, and we shall provide them
.

Michael was stunned. “He said that? He
did
that?”