The Parsifal Mosaic (2 page)

“Always protection,” she said, tracing his eyebrows. “You never forget, do you? The early days, the terrible days.”

“History. I’ve forgotten.”

“What will we do?”

“Live. I love you.”

“Do you think we’ll have children? Watch them going off to school; hold them, scold them. Go to hockey-ball games.”

“Football
 … 
or baseball. Not hockey-ball. Yes, I hope so.
”

“What will you do, Mikhail?”

“Teach, I suppose. At a college somewhere. I’ve a couple of starched degrees that say I’m qualified. We’ll be happy, I know that. I’m counting on it.”

“What will you teach?”

He looked at her, touching her face, then his eyes wandered up to the shabby ceiling in the run-down hotel room. “History,” he said. And then he reached for her, taking her in his arms
.

The beam of light swung across the darkness. It caught her, a bird on fire, trying to rise, trapped by the light that was her darkness. The gunshots followed—terrorists’ gunfire for a terrorist. The woman arched backward, the first bullets penetrating the base of her spine, her blond hair cascading behind her. Three shots then came separately, with finality—a marksman’s eye delivering a marksman’s score; they entered the back of her neck and her skull, propelling her forward over the mound of dirt and sand, her fingers clawing the earth, her blood-streaked face mercifully concealed. A final spasm, and all movement stopped.

His love was dead—for some part of love was a part of whatever they were. He had done what he had to do, just as she had done the same. Each was right, each wrong, ultimately so terribly wrong. He closed his eyes, feeling the unwanted dampness.

Why did it have to be? We are fools. Worse, we are stupid.

We do not talk; we die. So men with fluid tongues and facile minds can tell us what is right and wrong—geopolitically, you understand, which means that whatever they say is beyond our puerile understanding.

What will you do, Mikhail?

Teach, I suppose. At a college somewhere
 …

What will you teach?

History
…

It was all history now. Remembrances of things too painful. Let it be cold history, as the early days were history. They cannot be a part of me any longer. She cannot be a part of me, if she ever was, even in her pretense. Yet I will keep a promise, not to her but to myself. I am finished. I will disappear into another life, a new life. I will go somewhere, teach somewhere. Illuminate the lessons of futility
.

He heard the voices and opened his eyes. Below, the killers of the Baader-Meinhof had reached the condemned woman, sprawled out in death, clutching the ground that was her execution place—geopolitically preordained. Had she really been so magnificent a liar? Yes, she had been, for he had seen the truth. Even in her eyes he had seen it.

The two executioners bent down to grab the corpse and drag it away—her once graceful body to be consigned to fire or chained for the deep. He would not interfere; the evidence had to be felt, touched, reflected upon later when the trap was revealed, another lesson taught. Futility—geopolitically required.

A gust of wind suddenly whipped across the open beach; the killers braced themselves, their feet slipping in the sand. The man on the left raised his right hand in an unsuccessful attempt to keep the visored fishing cap on his head; it blew away, rolling toward the dune that was the shoulder of the road. He released his hold on the corpse and ran after it Havelock watched as the man came closer. There was something about him—About the face? No, it was the hair, seen clearly in the moonlight. It was wavy and dark, but not completely dark; there was a streak of white above his forehead, a sudden intrusion that was startling. He had seen that head of hair, seen that face somewhere before. But where? There were so many memories. Files analyzed, photographs
studied—contracts, sources, enemies. Where was this man from? KGB? The dreaded Voennaya? A splinter faction paid by Moscow when not drawing contingency funds from a CIA station chief in Lisbon?

It did not matter. The deadly puppets and the vulnerable pawns no longer concerned Michael Havelock—or Mikhail Havlíček, for that matter. He would route a cable to Washington through the embassy in Madrid in the morning. He was finished, he had nothing more to give. Whatever his superiors wanted in the way of debriefing he would permit, Even going to a clinic; he simply did not care. But they would have no more of his life.

That was history. It had ended on an isolated beach called Montebello on the Costa Brava.

Time was the true narcotic for pain. Either the pain disappeared when it ran its course or a person learned to live with it. Havelock understood this, knowing that at this moment in time something of both was applicable. The pain had not disappeared but there was less of it; there were periods when the memories were dulled, the scar tissue sensitive only when prodded. And traveling helped; he had forgotten what it was like to cope with the complexities facing the tourist.

“If you’ll note, sir, it’s printed here on your ticket. ‘Subject to change without notice.’ ”

“Where?”

“Down here.”

“I can’t read it.”

“I can.”

“You’ve memorized it.”

“I’m familiar with it, sir.”

And the immigration lines. Followed by customs inspections. The intolerable preceded by the impossible; men and women who countered their own boredom by slamming rubber stamps and savagely attacking defenseless zippers whose manufacturers believed in planned obsolescence.

There was no question about it, he was spoiled. His previous life had had its difficulties and its risks, but they had not included the perils that confronted the traveler at every turn.
In his past life, on the other hand, whenever he got to where he was going, there was the movable prison. No, not exactly. There were appointments to keep, sources to contact, informers to pay. Too often at night, in shadows, far away from seeing or being seen.

Now there was none of that. There hadn’t been for nearly eight weeks. He walked in daylight, as he was walking now down the Damrak in Amsterdam toward the American Express office. He wondered if the cable would be there. If it was, it would signify the beginning of something. A concrete beginning. A job.

Employment. Strange how the unexpected was so often connected to the routine. It had been three months since that night on the Costa Brava, two months and five days since the end of his debriefing and formal separation from the government He had come up to Washington from the clinic in Virginia where he had spent twelve days in therapy. (Whatever they had expected to find wasn’t there; he could have told them that. He didn’t care anymore; couldn’t they understand?) He had emerged from the doors of the State Department at four o’clock in the afternoon a free man—also an unemployed, unpensioned citizen with certain resources hardly of the magnitude to be considered an annuity. It had occurred to him as he stood there on the pavement that afternoon that sometime in the future a job had to be found, a job where he could illuminate the lessons of—The lessons. But not for a while; for a while he would do the minimum required of a functioning human being.

He would travel, revisit all those places he had never really visited—in the sunlight. He would read—reread, actually—not codes and schedules and dossiers but all those books he had not read since graduate school. If he was going to illuminate anything for anybody, he had to relearn so much that he had forgotten.

But if there was one thing on his mind at four o’clock that afternoon, it was a fine dinner. After twelve days in therapy, with various chemicals and a restricted diet, he had ached at the thought of a good meal. He had been about to head back to his hotel for a shower and a change of clothes when an accommodating taxi drove down C Street, the sun bouncing off its windows and obscuring any occupants. It stopped at the curb in front of him—at the behest of his signal, Michael
had assumed. Instead, a passenger carrying an attaché case stepped out quickly, a harried man late for an appointment, fumbling for his billfold. At first neither Havelock nor the passenger recognized each other; Michael’s thoughts were on a restaurant, the other’s on paying the driver.

“Havelock?” the passenger inquired suddenly, adjusting his glasses. “It
is
you, isn’t it, Michael?”

“Harry? Harry Lewis?”

“You’ve got it. How are you, M.H.?”

Lewis was one of the few people he ever saw—and he rarely saw Harry—who called him by his initials. It was a minor legacy from graduate school, where he and Lewis had been classmates at Princeton. Michael had gone into government, Lewis into academia. Dr. Harry Lewis was chairman of the political science department at a small, prestigious university in New England, traveling down to D.C. now and then for consultation chores at State. They had run into each other several times when both were in Washington.

“Fine. Still picking up per diems, Harry?”

“A lot fewer than before. Someone taught you people how to read evaluation reports from our more esoteric graduate schools.”

“Good Christ, I’m being replaced by a beard in blue jeans with funny cigarettes.”

The bespectacled professor was stunned. “You’re kidding. You’re
out
? I thought you were in for life!”

“The opposite, Harry. Life began between five and seven minutes ago when I wrote out my final signature. And in a couple of hours I’m going to be faced with the first dinner check in years I can’t take out of contingency funds.”

“What are you going to do, Michael?”

“No thoughts. Don’t want any for a while.”

The academician paused, taking his change from the taxi driver, then spoke rapidly. “Listen, I’m late for upstairs, but I’m in town overnight. Since I’m on per diem, let me pay for the dinner. Where are you staying? I may have an idea.”

No government per diem in the civilized world could have paid for the dinner that night two months and five days ago, but Harry Lewis did have an idea. They had been friends once; they became friends again, and Havelock found it easier to talk with a person who was at least vaguely aware of the work he had done for the government rather than
with someone who knew nothing about it. It was always difficult to explain that something could not be explained; Lewis understood. One thing led to another, which in turn led to Harry’s idea.

“Have you ever given any thought to getting back to a campus?”

Michael smiled. “How would ‘constantly’ sound?”

“I know, I know,” Lewis pressed, inferring sarcasm. “You fellows—‘spooks,’ I assume, is the term—get all kinds of offers from the multinationals at damn good money, I’m aware of that. But, M.H., you were one of the best. Your dissertation was picked up by a dozen university presses; you even had your own seminars. Your academic record coupled with your years at State—most of which I realize you can’t go into specifically—could make you very attractive to a university administration. We’re always saying, ‘Let’s find someone who’s been there, not Just a theoretician.’ Damn it, Michael, I think you’re
it
. Now, I know the money’s not—”

“Harry, you misunderstood. I meant it. I
constantly
think about getting back.”

It was Harry Lewis’s turn to smile. “Then I’ve got another idea.”

A week later Havelock had flown to Boston and driven from there to the brick-and-ivy-and-white-birch campus on the outskirts of Concord, New Hampshire. He spent four days with Harry Lewis and his wife, wandering around, attending various lectures and seminars, and meeting those of the faculty and administration whose support Harry thought might be helpful. Michael’s opinions had been sought “casually” over coffee, drinks and dinners; men and women had looked at him as if they considered him a promising candidate. Lewis had done his missionary work well. At the end of the fourth day Harry announced at lunch:

“They like you!”

“Why not?” his wife said. “He’s damned likable.”

“They’re quite excited, actually. It’s what I said the other day, M.H. You’ve
been there
. Sixteen years with the State Department kind of makes you special.”

“And?”

“There’s the annual administration-trustees conference coming up in eight weeks. That’s when the supply-and-demand
quotients are studied. Horseflesh. I think you’ll be offered a job. Where can I reach you?”

“I’ll be traveling. I’ll call you.”

He had called Harry from London two days ago. The conference was still in progress, but Lewis thought there would be an answer momentarily.

“Cable me AX, Amsterdam,” Michael had said. “And thanks, Harry.”

He saw the glass doors of the American Express office swing open just ahead. A couple emerged, the man awkwardly balancing the shoulder straps of two cameras while counting money. Havelock stopped, wondering for a moment if he really wanted to go inside. If the cable was there, it would contain either a rejection or an offer. If a rejection, he would simply go on wandering—and there was a certain comfort in that; the floating passivity of not planning had become something of value to him. If an offer, what then? Was he ready for it? Was he prepared to make a decision? Not the kind of decision one made in the field, where it had to be instinctive if one was to survive, but, rather, a decision to commit oneself. Was he capable of a commitment? Where were yesterday’s commitments?

He took a deep breath, consciously putting one foot in front of the other, and approached the glass doors.

POSITION AVAILABLE VISITING PROFESSOR OF GOVERNMENT FOR PERIOD OF TWO YEARS. ASSOCIATE STATUS PENDING MUTUAL ACCEPTANCE AT THE END OF THIS TIME. INITIAL SALARY TWENTY-SEVEN-FIVE. WILL NEED YOUR REPLY WITHIN TEN DAYS. DON’T KEEP ME HOLDING MY BREATH
.

EVER, HARRY
.

Michael folded the cable and put it in his jacket pocket; he did not go back to the counter to write out his own cable to Harry Lewis, Concord, New Hampshire, U.S.A. It would come later. It was enough for the moment to be wanted, to know there was a beginning. It would take several days to absorb the knowledge of his own legitimacy, perhaps several days thereafter to come to grips with it. For in the legitimacy was the possibility of commitment; there was no red beginning without it.