Read Online The Parsifal Mosaic by Robert Ludlum - Free Book Online Page A

the marks of recent scrapes and bruises on Havelock’s skin. It was obvious that he had made the connection. “Are you referring to the Costa Brava?” he asked finally.
    “You know damn well I am!” said Michael angrily. “My abrupt retirement and the circumstances thereof have been flashed to every goddamned station and post we’ve got. It’s why you just said what you did. ‘Beware the screwed-up talent,’ Washington tells you. ‘He might do anything, say anything, think he has scores to settle.’ ”
    “It’s happened.”
    “Not to me. I don’t have any scores to think about because I’m not interested in the ballgame. I’m rational. I saw what I saw. And she saw me! She acknowledged me! She
ran!”
    “Emotional stress is first cousin to hysteria,” said the colonel quietly. “A man can see a lot of things that aren’t there in that condition. And you had a jolt.”
    “Past tense, not currently applicable. I was out. I accepted the fact and the reasons—”
    “Come
on
, buddy,” insisted the soldier. “You don’t throw away sixteen years of involvement.”
    “I did.”
    “You were here in Rome with her. Memories get activated, twisted. As I said, it happens.”
    “Again, negative. Nothing was activated, nothing twisted. I
saw—
”
    “You even called
me
,” interrupted Baylor sharply. “Thethree of us spent a couple of evenings together. A few drinks, a few laughs. Association; you reached me.”
    “There was no one else. My cover was D-squared: you were my only contact here in Rome! I can walk into the embassy now, I couldn’t then.”
    “Then let’s go,” said the colonel quickly.
    “No way! Besides, that’s not the point.
You
are. You fielded orders to me from Washington seven months ago, and now you’re going to send an emergency flag back to those same people. Tell them what I’ve told you, what I saw. You haven’t got a choice.”
    “I’ve got an opinion. I’m relaying what a former talent said while in a state of extreme anxiety.”
    “Fine! Good! Then try this. Five days ago in Athens I nearly killed a man we both know from the Dzerzhinsky files for telling me Costa Brava wasn’t a Soviet exercise. That she wasn’t any part of the KGB, much less the VKR. I didn’t kill him because I thought it was a probe, a
blind
probe—that man was telling the
truth
, as he knew the truth. I sent a message back to Moscow. The bait was too obvious, the smell too rotten.”
    “I suppose that was charitable of you, considering your record.”
    “Oh, no, the charity started with
him
. You see, he could have taken me. I could have found myself in Sevastopol on my way to Dzerzhinsky Square without even knowing I’d left Athens.”
    “He was that good? That well connected?”
    “So much so, he was self-effacing. But he didn’t take me. I wasn’t booked on the Dardanelles airlift. He didn’t want me.”
    “Why not?”
    “Because he was convinced
I
was the bait. Pretty fair irony, isn’t it? There was no room at the Lubyanka. I was turned out. Instead, he gave me his own message for Washington: Dzerzhinsky wouldn’t touch me.” Havelock paused. “And now
this
.”
    The colonel narrowed his eyes pensively, and, with both hands, turned his glass on the table. “I don’t have your expertise, but say you actually did see what you say you saw.”
    “I did. Accept it.”
    “No concessions, but say it’s possible. It could still be alure. They’ve got you under a glass, know your plans, your itinerary. Their computers pick up a woman reasonably similar in appearance, and with a little cosmetic surgery they’ve got a double sufficient for short distances, ‘Beware the screwed-up talent.’ You never know when he thinks he has ‘scores to settle.’ Especially if he’s given some time to stew, to get worked up.”
    “What I saw was in her
eyes
! But even if you won’t accept that, there’s something else; it voids the strategy, and every point can be checked. Two hours