The Parsifal Mosaic by Robert Ludlum
“Did you explain that I’m to be reached at the White House?”
“Yes, sir.” The secretary had paused, embarrassment in her brief silence. “He said to tell you the Center’s painted white, too,” she added in a very soft voice. “He said that, Mr. Cross, I didn’t.”
“Then tell Genghis Khan for me that I’ll either hear from him within the hour or he may find the sheriff of Talbot County escorting him to the D.C.—Maryland border, where a White House detail will pick him up and bring him down here.”
Matthew Randolph returned the call, in fifty-eight minutes.
“Who the hell do you think you are, Cross?”
“An extremely overworked nonentity, Dr. Randolph.”
“You threatened me! I don’t like threats whether they come from the White House or a blue house or an outhouse! I trust you get my meaning.”
“I’ll convey your feelings to the President.”
“Do that. He’s not the worst, but I could think of better.”
“You might even get along.”
“I doubt it. Sincere politicians bore me. Sincerity and politics are diametrically opposed. What do you want? If it’s any kind of endorsement, you can start with a healthy government research grant.”
“I have an idea President Berquist would entertain that idea only if you openly opposed him.”
Randolph paused “Not bad,” he said. “What do you want? We’re busy here.”
“I want to ask you several questions about a man—a dead man—named Steven MacKenzie.”
Again the doctor paused, but it was a different silence. And when he resumed speaking, it was in a different tone. Previously his hostility had been genuine; now it was forced.
“Damn it, how many times do we have to go over that? MacKenzie died of stroke—a massive aortal hemorrhage, an aneurysm, to be precise. I turned over the pathology report and conferred with your spook doctors till hell froze over. They’ve got it all.”
“Spook doctors?”
“They sure as hell weren’t from Mary-General or Baltimore’s Mother of Mercy, I can tell you. Nor did they claim to be.” Randolph paused again; Michael did not fill the moment. He was listening with a trained ear, silences and audible breathing being a part of the abstract tonal picture he was trying to define. The doctor continued, his phrases too rushed, the edge of his voice too sharp; his previous confidence was waning, replaced by volume alone. “You want any information on MacKenzie, you get it from them. We all concurred; there was never any doubt. Aortal hemorrhage, plain and simple, and I don’t have the time to rehash this sort of thing. Do I make myself clear?”
“More than you know, Dr. Randolph.” It was Havelock’s turn to pause. He did so until he could see in his mind’s eye a mouth that had dropped open and hear the aggressive breathing of a man with something to hide. “I’d find the time, if I were you. The file isn’t closed here, Doctor, and for reasons of specific external pressures we can’t shut it—as much as we’d like to. You see, we want to conclude it precisely the way you determined, but we have to cooperate with each other. Do I make myself clear?”
“The pathology was unequivocal, you all agree with that?”
“We want to. Please understand that Be convinced of it.”
“What do you mean ‘external pressures’?” The doctor’s confidence was returning, the question asked sincerely.
“Let’s say in-house intelligence troublemakers. We’d like to shut them up.”
Costa Brava was never far away. Even in deceit. Randolph’s final pause was brief, “Come up tomorrow,” he said. “Be here at noon.”
Havelock sat in the back seat of the nondescript, armor-plated sedan; three Secret Service men were his companions. Conversation was at a minimum. The two men in front and the pleasant but quiet agent beside Michael had obviously been ordered to make no direct inquiries.
The Randolph Medical Center was indeed painted white. It was a glistening white complex of three buildings connected by enclosed walkways set down in the middle of a generous acreage of lawns, paths and a central winding driveway. They parked in the nearest available space to the entrance labeled ADMISSIONS AND ADMINISTRATION. Michael got out of the car, walked up the smooth concrete path that led to the glass double doors and went inside; he was expected.
“Dr. Randolph’s in his office, Mr. Cross,” said a uniformed nurse behind the marble counter. “Take the first corridor to your right; his is the last door at the end of the hall. I’ll tell his secretary you’re on your way.”
“Thank you.”
As he walked down the spotless white corridor toward Randolph’s office, Havelock considered the options available to him. How much he told the doctor depended upon how much Randolph already knew about Steven MacKenzie. If what he knew was little, Michael’s words would be laced with security-conscious innuendo; if a great deal, there was no harm corroborating parts of the truth. However, what primarily concerned Havelock was the reason behind the doctor’s extraordinary behavior. The man as much as admitted having twisted or concealed some aspect of MacKenzie’s death, and regardless of whether he considered it minor or not, it was a dangerous act. Tampering with cause of death or withholding pertinent information was a criminal act. What had the physician done and why had he done it? Even to consider Matthew Randolph as part of an intelligence conspiracy was absurd, irrational. What had he done?
A stern-visaged secretary with disciplined angry hair pulled back and lashed into a bun rose from her chair. But her voice contradicted her appearance; it was the same voice that had relayed the doctor’s comment about his Medical Center’s being the same color as the White House. It was obvious that she had thrown up a wall to protect herself from the Randolph hurricane.
“He’s very upset today, Mr. Cross,” she said in that frail, intense tone. “You’ll do better getting straight to your business. He hates to waste time.”
“So do I,” replied Michael as the woman escorted him to an ornate paneled door. She rapped twice—not once or three times, but precisely twice—standing rigidly with splendid posture, as though she were about to refuse a blindfold.
The cause of her stoicism was soon apparent. The door opened, revealing a tall, slender, angular man with a fringe of gray hair circling a bald head, the eyes behind the steel-rimmed glasses alive and impatient. Dr. Matthew Randolph was rich, American Gothic, with not a little of Savonarola thrown in, his long graceful hands somehow looking appropriate for holding a pitchfork, a torch or a scalpel. He looked past his secretary and barked; he did not speak.
“You Cross?”
“Yes.”
“You’re eight minutes late.”
“Your watch is fast.”
“Maybe. Come in.” He now looked at his secretary, who had stepped aside. “No interruptions,” he instructed.
“Yes, Dr. Randolph.”
The physician closed the door and nodded at the chair in front of his large, cluttered desk. “Sit down,” he said, “but before you do, I want to make damn sure you don’t have one of those recording machines on you.”
“You have my word.”
“Is it any good?”
“Is yours?”
“You called me. I didn’t call you.”
Havelock shook his head. “I have no taping device on me for the simple reason that our conversation could be far more harmful to us than to you.”
“Maybe,” muttered Randolph, going behind the desk as Michael sat down. “Maybe not. We’ll see.”
“That’s a promising beginning.”
“Don’t get smart-ass, young fella.”
“I apologize if I sounded that way. I meant it. We have a problem and you could put it to rest.”
“Meaning I didn’t before.”
“Let’s say there are new questions and, frankly, they may be valid. Certainly they could be embarrassing, not only politically but in terms of morale in certain areas of the intelligence community. Someone might even care to go into print. That’s
“That’s what I want to hear.” The physician nodded, adjusting his glasses so he could look over the steel rims. “Your problem. Spell it out.”
Havelock understood. Randolph wanted an admission of guilt from the White House before he would implicate himself in any conceivable wrongdoing. Therefore, it was reasonable to assume that the more serious Havelock’s first admission, the more latitude Randolph would permit himself regarding his own possible duplicity. Thieves in concert and conversation; who could go screaming to a judge?
“Do you know the kind of work MacKenzie was involved in?”
“I’ve known Mac and his family for over forty years. His parents were close friends of mine and his three children were born right here at the Center. I delivered them my-self—probably delivered his wife, Midge, too.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
“It should. I’ve been caring for the MacKenzies most of their lives, and that included young Steve, as well as the adult Steve—as far as you permitted him to live as an adult. Actually, to be more accurate, these past years I more or less double-checked whatever the doctors did at Walter Reed; by and large they were damned good. You could hardly tell from the scars that four of them were bullet wounds.”
“Then you did know,” said Michael nodding.
“I told him to get out. My God, I told him that over and over again for the last five, six years now. The strain on him was something fierce—worse, I think, for Midge. Him flying all over the world, she never knowing whether he’d come back; not that he ever told her a hell of a lot, he wouldn’t do that … Yes, Mr. Cross, I knew what Steve did—not the specifics or his title or anything like that, but I knew it wasn’t your everyday desk job.”
“It’s strange,” mused Havelock, indeed sensing the strangeness. “I never thought of MacKenzie as having a wife and children, coming from a relatively normal background.” He was not a survivor. Why did he do it?
“Maybe that’s why he was so good. You looked at him and saw a pretty average successful executive—something like you, in fact. But underneath he had a fever because you bastards poisoned him.”
The suddenness of the charge, its harshness, and the fact that it was delivered in a conversational tone was unnerving. “That’s quite a statement,” said Michael, his eyes roaming the doctor’s face. “Would you care to explain it? To the best of my knowledge, no one held a gun to MacKenzie’s head and told him to do whatever it was he was doing.”
“You didn’t have to, and you’re damn right I care to explain it. I figure it’s your blueprint for narcotizing a man so he turns away from a normal, productive, reasonably happy life to one where he wakes up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night because he probably hasn’t had the luxury of sleeping for the past several weeks. Or if he does sleep, the first sharp sound sends him lunging for protection. Or a gun.”
“You’re very dramatic.”
“It’s what you did.”
“How?”
“You fed him a diet of tension, excitement—even frenzy—with fair doses of blood to go with it.”
“Now you’re melodramatic.”
“You know where it started for him?” Randolph went on, as if Havelock had not spoken. “Thirteen, fourteen years ago Mac was one of the best sailors on the Eastern Shore, probably the Atlantic coast and the Caribbean, too. He could sense a new wind and smell the currents. He could look at the stars in a dark sky and helm a craft—pot or sail—all through the night and take you within sight of where he said you’d be by dawn. It was a gift.… Then came the war in Vietnam and he was a naval officer. Well, it didn’t take those brass boys long to spot a good thing. Before you could pronounce one of those unpronounceable places, he was ferrying men and supplies up the coast and the inland waterways. That’s where it started. He was the best there was; he could read gook maps and get anybody anywhere.”
“I’m not sure I understand.”
“Then you’re thick. He was taking assassination and sabotage teams behind enemy lines. Fleets of small craft were under his command; he was a secret navy all by himself. Then it happened.”
“What?”
“One day he didn’t just ferry those people, he became one of them.”
“I see.”
“I wonder if you do. It’s where the fever first touched him. Men who were nothing more than cargo became friends he made plans with, fought beside, who died before his eyes. He did that for twenty-eight months until he was wounded and sent home. Midge was waiting for him; they got married and he headed back to finish law school. Only, he couldn’t stand it. Before a year was up, he left, and began talking with people in Washington. A part of him missed that crazy—Christ, I don’t know what you call it.”
“It doesn’t make any difference,” said Havelock quietly. “I know what you mean.”
The doctor looked hard at Michael. “Maybe you do. Maybe that’s why you’re here.… Like a lot of men, Mac came back from that war a different person; not on the surface, but underneath. There was an anger in him I’d never seen before, a need to compete—angrily—for the highest stakes he could find. He couldn’t sit still for twenty minutes at a time, much less absorb the finer points of law. He had to keep moving.”
“Yes, I know,” interrupted Michael involuntarily.
“And you bastards in Washington knew just what to feed him. Get him back into the excitement, the tension. Promise him the best—or worst—competition you could find, and make the stakes so high no normal man would consider them. And all the while keep telling him he was the best, the best, the best! He thrived on it … and at the same time it was tearing him apart.”
Havelock brought his hands together, gripping them, moved both to anger and understanding. It was no time, however, to betray either; he wanted information. “What should we—bastards in Washington—have done, then?” he asked calmly.
“That’s such a stupid question only one of you sons of bitches would ask it.”
“Would you mind answering?”
“Get him medical attention! Psychiatric care!”
“Why didn’t you? You were his doctor.”
“Damn it, I tried! I even tried to stop you!”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Somewhere in a number of old files there are letters from me to the Central Intelligence Agency describing—goddamn it, diagnosing—a troubled man, a disturbed man. Mac would come home and for a few weeks he’d cover it, driving back and forth to Langley like a regular commuter. Then you could see it happening; he’d go into a kind of depression, wouldn’t talk very much, and when he did, he sure as hell wasn’t listening. Then he’d become restless, impatient—his mind always somewhere else. You see, he was waiting, waiting for his next fix!”
“And we gave it to him,” said Michael.
“Right on, as the youngsters say! You knew exactly how long he could take it. You were priming him, honing his machine until he’d either blow apart or get back into—whatever the hell you call it.”
“The field,” said Havelock.
“That’s it, the goddamned field! Midge would come to me and tell me Mac was going to pieces, couldn’t sleep, wouldn’t communicate, and I’d write another letter. You know what I’d get back? A thank-you-for-your-interest, as though I’d suggested you bastards change your laundry service! Midge and those kids were going through hell, and you people thought your shirts had just the right amount of starch in ’em!”
Michael’s eyes strayed to the bare white wall behind Randolph. How many buried letters were there in how many unopened files? How many MacKenzies … and Ogilvies … and Hacelocks? What was the gunslinger count these days? Men primed, machines honed in the cause of futility. Deadly talents kept in the field because somewhere it was written they could do the job regardless of the mind and the body count … their own and others. Who profited?
“I’m sorry,” said Havelock. “With your permission, I’ll report this conversation where
“So far you’ve got my permission. Up to now.”
“Up to now,” agreed Michael.
The physician leaned back in his chair. “I’ve drawn a picture for you. It’s not pretty, but I’ve got my reasons. Now, you draw one for me and we’ll see where we stand.”
“All right.” Havelock crossed his legs, then spoke, choosing his words cautiously. “As I’m sure you’re aware, most intelligence work is dull, pedestrian. It’s routine digging for facts, reading newspapers, reports, scientific journals, and gathering information from a wide variety of other sources, the majority of which are reasonable people, perfectly amenable to imparting what they know because they see no reason to conceal it Then, of course, there are others who are in the business of making a profit by selling the facts they’ve bought; buy low, sell higher, a time-honored principle. These people generally deal with a different kind of intelligence officer, one trained to distinguish between fact and fiction; the buy-low-sell-highers can be pretty imaginative.” Michael paused, knowing that the timing of his delivery was vital. “Normally,” he continued, “the combination of these sources and the sheer volume of the information they provide is sufficient for specialists to put together an accurate pattern of facts and events, like fitting the pieces of a puzzle together. That’s an abused expression, but it says it.” Again Havelock paused. What Randolph wanted—needed—to hear called for a silent introduction. Three seconds were enough. “Finally, there’s a last category of potential information. It’s the most difficult to obtain because it has to be extorted from sources who know they possess secrets that could cost them their lives if their superiors knew they had revealed them. These require an entirely different sort of intelligence officer, a specialist himself. He’s trained to manipulate, to engineer situations in which individuals are convinced they have no choice but to take a specific course of action, in the end revealing secrets—or doing something—they would not previously have considered. Steven Mackenzie was that kind of specialist, and he was one of the best; no one had to convince him. But on his last, his final, assignment, someone intercepted and altered the situation MacKenzie had created. And in order for that original situation to remain the accepted one, he was marked for takeout.”