The Parsifal Mosaic by Robert Ludlum
“No, but I can question them without being seen. I can use the phone if it’s set up properly. I know what I want to ask and “I’ll know what to listen for. From these conversations I’ll refine whom I want to see and set up contacts. I’m experienced at this, Mr. President.”
“I don’t have to take your word for it. How is it set up—properly?”
“Give me a name, and call me an assistant counsel to the President, or something like that. It’s not unusual for the Oval Office to make its own discreet inquiries into certain matters, is it?”
“Hell, no, I’ve got a staff for that, and it’s not necessarily discreet. Hundreds of reports are sent to the White House every week. They have to be checked out, experts questioned, figures substantiated. Without it all, responsible decisions can’t be made. In Lincoln’s time he had two young men, and they took care of everything, including the drafting of letters. Now we have scores of aides and assistants to aides and secretaries to assistants and they can’t half handle the volume. The answer is yes.”
“What happens if someone is called by an aide or an assistant aide and that someone doubts the authority of the person questioning him?”
“It happens a lot, especially at the Pentagon; there’s a simple solution. He’s told to call the White House switchboard and ask to be connected to the aide’s or the assistant’s office. It works.”
“It will work,” said Michael. “Along with the lines already on this phone can you add another one, listing me in the White House index, the extension routed here?”
“Havelock, one of the more exotic pleasures in being President, or close to a President, is the trunkful of electronic gimmickry available on short notice. You’ll be indexed and patched into the switchboard within the hour. What name do you want to use?”
“You’ll have to choose one, sir. I might duplicate someone already there.”
“I’ll call you back.”
“Mr. President, before you hang up—”
“What is it?”
“I’ll need another one of those things that may not be in your lexicon. A context backup.”
“It sure as hell isn’t. What is it?”
“In the event someone calls the White House index and wants to know exactly what I do, there should be someone else there who can tell him.”
Again there was the pause from Washington. “You were right, down on Poole’s Island,” said Berquist pensively. “The words say exactly what they mean, don’t they? You need someone to back you up in the context of what you’re presuming to do, or be.”
“That’s right, sir.”
“Call you back.”
“May I suggest something?” said Michael quickly.
“What?”
“Within the next few days—if we have a few days—someone is going to come up to that someone else in the White House and ask where my office is. When he or she does, hold him-or her-because whoever it is will bring us a step closer.”
“If that happens,” said Berquist angrily, “whoever it is may be strangled by a Minnesota farm boy before you get a chance to talk to him. Or her.”
“I’m sure you don’t mean that, Mr. President.”
“I’m not going to throw a nuclear warhead on Leningrad, either. Call you back.”
Havelock replaced the phone and looked over at Jenna. “We can begin narrowing down the names. We’ll start calling in an hour.”
“Your name is Cross. Robert Cross. Your title is Special Assistant to the President, and all inquiries as to your status and functions are to be directed to Mrs. Howell—she’s counsel to White House internal affairs. She’s been told what to do.”
“What about my office?”
“You’ve got one.”
“What?”
“You’ve even got an assistant. In the security area of E.O.B. You need a key to get in the main corridor over there, and your man is instructed to take into custody anyone who comes around looking for Mr. Cross. He’s a member of the Secret Service detail and if anyone does show up asking for you, he’ll alert you and bring that person down to Fairfax under guard. I assumed that’s what you wanted.”
“It is. What about the other offices in that area? Will the people in them be curious?”
“Unlikely. By and large those assignments are temporary, everyone working on his own quiet project. Curiosity’s discouraged. And if it surfaces, you’ve got your man in place.”
“It sounds tight.”
“I think so. Where are you going to start?… Emory showed me the list of the items you wanted and assured me you’d have it all in the morning. Did you get everything?”
“Everything. Bradford’s secretary to first, then the doctor in Maryland. MacKenzie’s death.”
“We were extremely thorough with him,” said Berquist. “Under the circumstances, we were able to bring in the Central Intelligence Agency and those people were aggressive. What are you looking for?”
“I’m not sure. Someone who’s not around anymore, perhaps. A puppet.”
“I won’t try to follow that.”
“I may need your direct intervention in one area, however. You said before that the Pentagon frequently balks at being questioned by White House personnel.”
“It goes with the uniforms; they’re not worn over here. I expect you’re referring to the Nuclear Contingency Committees. I saw them on your list.”
“I am.”
“They’re touchy. Rightfully so, I’d say.”
“I have to talk to every member of those three teams; that’s fifteen senior officers. Can you get word to the chairman that you expect them all to cooperate with Mr. Cross? Not in the area of maximum restricted information, but in terms of—progress evaluation.”
“One of those phrases again.”
“It says it, Mr. President. It would help if you could work Matthias in.”
“All right,” said Berquist slowly. “I’ll lay it on the great man. It’s not in character, but he can hardly deny it. I’ll have my military aide convey the word: the Secretary of State wants those committees to provide an in-depth progress report for the Oval Office. A simple memorandum ordering cooperation within the limits of maximum classification should do it … They’ll say there’s a crossover, of course. You can’t have one without violating the other.”
“Then tell them to err on the side of classification. The final report’s for your eyes only, anyway.”
“Anything else?”
“The psychiatric file on Matthias. Bradford was to have gotten it for me.”
“I’m going to Camp David tomorrow. I’ll detour to Poole’s Island and bring it back with me.”
“One thing more. This Mrs. Howell; outside of calling in the Secret Service if anyone approaches her about me, what has she been told to say? About me, my functions?”
“Only that you’re on a special assignment for the President.”
“Can you change it?”
“To what?”
“Routine assignment. Researching old agendas so White House files can be completed on various matters.”
“We have people doing that. It’s basically political—how is this position defended, or why did that senator buck us and how do we stop him from doing it again.”
“Put me in with the crowd.”
“You’re in it. Good luck … but then you’ll need a great deal more than luck. This world needs more than luck. Sometimes I think we need a miracle to last another week.… Keep me informed; my orders are that whenever Mr. Cross calls, I’m to be interrupted.”
Bradford’s secretary, one Elizabeth Andrews, was at home, the sensational death of her superior having had its emotional impact. A number of newspaper people had telephoned her, and she had relayed the events of yesterday morning sadly but calmly, until a gossip-oriented reporter, noting Bradford’s marital track record, hinted at a sexual entanglement.
“You sick bitch,” Elizabeth had said, slamming down the phone.
Havelock’s
“I’m sorry, Mr. Cross. It’s been a very trying time and some very trying reporters.”
“I’ll be as brief as possible.”
She recounted the morning’s events, beginning with Bradford’s sudden and unexpected emergence from his office shortly after she had arrived.
“He looked dreadful. He’d obviously been up all night and was exhausted, but there was something else. A kind of manic energy; he was excited about something. I’ve seen him like that lots of times, of course, but somehow yesterday it was different. He spoke louder than he usually did.”
“That could have been the exhaustion,” said Havelock. “It often works that way. A person compensates because he feels weak.”
“Perhaps, but I don’t think so, not with him, not yesterday morning. I know it sounds ghastly, but I think he’d made up his mind … that’s a horrible thing to say, but I believe it. It was as though he were exhilarated, actually looking forward to the moment when it was going to happen. It’s ghoulish, but he left the office shortly before ten, said he was going out for a few minutes, and I have this terrible picture of him out on the street, looking up at the window … and thinking to himself, Yes, this is it.”
“Could there be another explanation? Could he have been going to see someone?”
“No, I don’t think so. I asked him if he’d be in another office in case a call came for him and he said no, he was going out for some air.”
“He never mentioned why he’d been there all night?”
“Only that he’d been working on a project that he’d fallen behind on. He’d been doing a fair amount of traveling recently—”
“Did you set up the transportation arrangements for him?” interrupted Havelock.
“No, he usually did that himself. As you probably know, he often … took someone with him. He was divorced, several times actually. He was a very private person, Mr. Cross. And so very unhappy.”
“Why do you say that?”
Ms. Andrews paused, then spoke firmly. “Emory Bradford was a brilliant man, and they didn’t pay attention to him. He was once very influential in this city until he told the truth—as he saw the truth—and as soon as the applause died down, they all ran away from him.”
“You’ve been with him a long time.”
“A long time. I saw it all happen.”
“Could you give me examples of this running away from him?”
“Sure. To begin with, he was consistently overlooked when his experience, his expertise could have been of value. Then he’d frequently write position papers, correcting powerful men and women—senators, congressmen, secretaries of this and that—who had made stupid mistakes in interviews and press conferences, but if one out of ten ever responded or thanked him, I never knew about it, and I would have. He’d monitor the early-morning television programs, where the worst gaffes are made-just as he was doing yesterday, right up to the end—and dictate what he called clarifications. They were always gentle, even kind, never offensive, and, sure enough, ‘clarifications’ were usually issued, but never any thanks.”
“He was watching television yesterday morning?”
“For a while … before it happened. At least, the set was rolled out to the front of his desk. He moved it back … before it happened. Right up until the end he couldn’t break the habit. He wanted people to be better than they are; he wanted the government to be better.”
“Were there any notes on his desk that could have told you whom he was watching?”
“No, nothing. It was like his final gesture, leaving this world tidier than he’d found it. I’ve never seen his desk so neat, so clean.”
“I’m sure you haven’t.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Nothing. I was agreeing with you … I know you were at lunch, but were there any people in the vicinity of his office door who might have seen someone go in or out?”
“The police covered that, Mr. Cross. There are always people milling around; we all have different lunch breaks, depending on what’s happening in what time zone, but no one saw anything unusual. Actually, our section was pretty much cleared out. We had a secretarial pool meeting at one-thirty, so most of us—”
“Who called that meeting, Miss Andrews?”
“This month’s chairman—then, of course, he said he didn’t, so we sat around drinking coffee.”
“Didn’t you get a memo about the meeting?”
“No, the word was just passed around that morning. It frequently is; that’s standard.”
“Thank you very much. You’ve been most helpful.”
“It’s all such a waste, Mr. Cross. Such a goddamned terrible waste.”
“I know. Good—bye.” Havelock hung up and spoke, his eyes still on the phone. “Our man is good,” he said. “Invisible paint.”
“She couldn’t tell you anything?”
“Yes, she did. Bradford listened to me. He went outside to a booth and called for whatever it was he wanted. The number we need won’t be found charged to his office phone; it’s among a couple of million lost in the underground trunk lines.”
“Nothing else?”
“Maybe something.” Michael looked over at Jenna, a frown on his face, his eyes clouded. “See if you can find a copy of yesterday’s paper around here, will you? I want to know the name of every senior official at State who was interviewed on the morning television programs. It’s crazy. The last thing on Bradford’s mind was television.”
Jenna found the newspaper. No one from the Department of State had been on television that morning.
31
If Talbot County, Maryland, had an esteemed physician in Dr. Matthew Randolph, it also had an extremely unpleasant man. Born to Eastern Shore money, raised in the tradition of privilege, which included the finest schools and clubs, and possessing what amounted to unlimited funds, he nevertheless abused everyone and everything within these rarefied circles in the pursuit of medicine.
When he was thirty, having graduated magna cum laude from Johns Hopkins and completed pathological and surgical residencies at Massachusetts General and New York, he decided he could not function at his talented best within the stultifying, politicized confines of a normal hospital. The answer for him was simple: he virtually extorted monies from the legions of the Chesapeake privileged, threw in an initial two million dollars himself and opened his own fifty-bed medical center.
It was run his way, which amounted to a none too benevolent dictatorship. There was no exclusivity with regard to admission, but there was a rule-of-thumb policy: the rich were soaked outrageously for services rendered them, and the poor given financial consideration only after enduring the ignominy of disclosing overwhelming proof of poverty and listening to a lecture on the sin of indolence. Rich and poor alike, however, continued in growing numbers to put up with these insults, for over the years the Randolph Medical Center had established a reputation that was second to none. Its laboratory equipment was the finest money could buy; its generously paid staff physicians were the brightest graduates from the best schools and toughest residencies; the visiting surgical and pathological specialists were flown in from all over the globe, and the talents of the overpaid technicians and nursing corps were far in excess of normal hospital standards. In essence, treatment at Randolph was both medically superb and personally gratifying. The only way it might be improved upon, some said, would be to remove the abrasive personality of the sixty-eight-year-old Matthew Randolph. However, others pointed out that one way to cripple a smoothly running craft in rough waters was to tear out the throttle because the engine pitch was grating to the ears. And in Randolph’s case, short of his own death—which seemed unlikely for several centuries—physically tearing him out was the only way to remove
Besides, who else could look down at a nephew of Emile du Pont just before an operation and ask, “How much is your life worth to you?”
In the du Pont case, it was a million-dollar-plus tie-in computer with four of the nation’s leading research centers.
Havelock learned these details from CIA files as he researched the death of a black-operations officer named Steven MacKenzie, the “engineer” of Costa Brava. In Cagnessur-Mer, Henri Salanne had by implication questioned the veracity of the doctor who signed Mackenzie’s death certificate. Michael in his own mind had gone further; he had considered altered laboratory reports, autopsy findings not consistent with the state of the corpse and—after the President had mentioned X-rays—the obvious switching of photographic plates. However, in light of the information on Randolph and his Medical Center, it was difficult to credit these possibilities. Everything connected to and with the official cause of death was processed through Randolph’s personal on-site attendance and his own laboratories. The abrasive doctor might well be dictatorial, petulant, most definitely opinionated and unpleasant, but if ever there was a person who deserved to be called a man of integrity, it was Matthew Randolph. His Medical Center, too, was irreproachable. All things considered—all things—there was no reason on earth for either to be otherwise.
And for Havelock, that was the flaw. It was simply too symmetrical. Pieces rarely, if ever, fell into place—even negatively—so precisely. There were always caves to explore that might lead to hidden pools—whether they did or not was ir-revelant, the caves were there. Here, there were none.
The first indication Michael had that there might be substance to his doubts was the fact that Matthew Randolph did not return his first call. In every other instance, including calls to eight senior officers of the Pentagon’s Nuclear Contingency Committees, Bradford’s secretary, CIA and NSC personnel, the phone in Fairfax had rung within minutes after he placed the contact call. One did not dismiss lightly a request to reach a presidential aide at the White House.
Dr. Matthew Randolph apparently felt no such compulsion. And so Havelock had phoned a second time, only to be told: “The doctor is extremely busy today. He said to say he’ll get back to you, Mr. Cross, when he has the free time.”