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

ago I didn’t know I’d be inside that station; ten minutes before I saw her I didn’t know I’d be on that platform, and neither could anyone else. I came here yesterday and took a room in a
pensione
on the Due Macelli for a week, paid in advance. At eight-thirty tonight I saw a poster in a window and decided to go to Venice. I didn’t speak to anyone.” Michael reached into his pocket, took out his ticket for the
Freccia delta Laguna
and placed it in front of Lawrence Baylor. “The
Freccia
was scheduled to leave at nine-thirty-five. The time of purchase is stamped across the top of this. Read it!”
    “Twenty-one, twenty-seven,” said the army officer, reading. “Twenty-seven past nine. Eight minutes before the train left.”
    “All verifiable. Now look at me and tell me I’m lying. And while you’re at it, explain how that setup could have been mounted given the time span
and
the fact that she was on an incoming train!”
    “I can’t.
If s
he—”
    “She was talking to a conductor seconds before she got off. I’m sure I can find him.”
    Baylor was silent again; he stared at Havelock, then spoke softly. “Don’t bother. I’ll send the flag.” He paused, adding, “Along with qualified support. Whatever you saw, you’re not lying. Where can I reach you?”
    “Sorry. I’ll reach you.”
    “They’ll want to talk to you, probably in a hurry.”
    “I’ll be in touch.”
    “Why the static?”
    “Something Rostov said in Athens.”
    “Rostov?
Pyotr Rostov?” The colonel’s eyes widened. “You don’t go much higher in the Dzerzhinsky.”
    “There’s higher.”
    “He’ll do. What did he say? What did he tell you?”
    “That our nostrils never quite adjust. Instead, they develop a kind of sensitivity—to variations of the basic rotten smell. Like animals.”
    “I expected something less abstract,” said Baylor, annoyed.
    “Really? From where I stand, it sounds concrete as hell. The Costa Brava trap was engineered in Washington, the evidence compiled by the inner shell in one of those white, sterile offices on the top floor of State.”
    “I understood you were in control,” interrupted Baylor,
    “The last phase. I insisted on it.”
    “Then you—”
    “I acted on everything that was given to me. And now I want to know
why
it was given to me. Why I saw what I did tonight.”
    “If
you saw—”
    “She’s
alive
. I want to know why! How!”
    “I still don’t understand.”
    “Costa Brava was meant for
me
. Someone wanted me out. Not dead, but out. Comfortably removed from those temptations that often afflict men like me.”
    “Scores to settle?” asked the colonel. “The Agee syndrome? The Snepp complex? I didn’t know you were infected.”
    “I’ve had my quota of shocks, my share of questions. Someone wanted those questions buried and
she
went along. Why?”
    “Two assumptions I’m not willing to concede are facts. And if you intend to bare a few shocks not in the national interest, I imagine—and I’m speaking hypothetically in the extreme, of course—there are other methods of … burying them.”
    “Dispatch? Call me dead?”
    “I didn’t say we’d kill you. We don’t live in that kind of country.” The colonel paused, then added, “On the other hand, why not?”
    “For the same reason others haven’t met with odd accidents that prearranged pathologists might label something else. Self-protection is ingrained in our job, brother. It’s another syndrome; it’s called the Nuremberg. Those shocks, instead of being buried, might surface. Sealed depositions to be opened by unnamed attorneys in the event of questionable et ceteras.”
    “Jesus
, you said that? You went that far?”
    “Strangely enough, I never did Not seriously. I simply got angry. The rest was assumed.”
    “What kind of world do you people live in?”
    “The same one you do—only, we’ve been around a little longer, a little deeper. And that’s why I won’t tell you where you can