“You may leave now,” said the Russian to the woman concealed behind him. She slid past, glancing at Havelock, then rushed to the door and let herself out.
“You’re Rostov. Pyotr Rostov. Director of External Strategies. KGB. Moscow.”
“Your face and name are also known to me. And your dossier.”
“You went to a lot of trouble, priyatel,” said Michael, using the Russian word for friend, its meaning, however, denied by his cold delivery. He shook his head, trying to clear it of a sickening mist, the effect of the ouzo and Scotch. “You could have stopped me on the street and invited me for a drink. You wouldn’t have learned any more or any less, and very little that’s valuable. Unless this is a kazn gariah.”
“No execution, Havlíček.”
“Havelock.”
“Son of Havlíček.”
“You’d do well not to remind me.”
“The gun is in my hand, not yours.” Rostov eased the hammer of his automatic back into its recess, the weapon still leveled at Michael’s head. “But that’s in the distant past and has no connection with me. Your recent activities, however, are very much my concern. Our concern, if you will.”
“Then your moles aren’t earning their money.”
“They file reports with irritating frequency, if only to justify it. But are they accurate?”
“If they told you I was finished, they were accurate.”
“Finished? A word with such finality, yet subject to interpretation, no? Finished with what? Finished with one phase, on to another?”
“Finished with anything that might concern you.”
“Out of sanction?” asked the KGB officer, rounding the border of the doorframe and leaning against the wall, his Graz-Burya steady, leveled now at Havelock’s throat. “No longer employed by your government in any official capacity? It’s difficult to accept. It must have been a blow to your dear friend Anthony Matthias.”
Michael studied the Russian’s face, lowering his eyes to the huge gun aimed at him. “A Frenchman mentioned Matthias the other day. I’ll tell you what I told him, although I don’t know why I should. You paid him to bring up Matthias’s name.”
“Gravet? He despises us. He’s civilized toward us only when he’s walking through the galleries of the Kremlin or the Hermitage in Leningrad. He might tell us anything.”
“Why did you use him, then?”
“Because he’s fond of you. It’s far easier to spot a lie when the liar is referring to someone he likes.”
“Then you believed him.”
“Or you convinced him and our people had no choice. Tell me. How did the brilliant and charismatic American Secretary of State react to his krajan’s resignation?”
“I have no idea, but I assume he understood. It’s exactly what I told Gravet. I haven’t seen Matthias or spoken to him in months. He’s got enough problems; there’s no reason why those of an old student should be added.”
“But you were far more than a student. His family knew your family in Prague. You became what you are—”
“Were,” interrupted Havelock.
“—because of Anton Matthias.”
“It was a long time ago.”
Rostov was silent; he lowered his weapon slightly, then spoke. “Very well, a long time ago. What about now? No one’s irreplaceable, but you’re a valuable man. Knowledgeable, productive.”
“Value and productivity are generally associated with commitment. I don’t have it anymore. Let’s say I lost it.”
“Am I to infer you could be tempted?” The KGB man lowered the weapon further. “In the direction of another commitment?”
“You know better than that. Outside of personal revulsions that go back a couple of decades, we’ve got a mole or two in the Dzerzhinsky. I’ve no intention of being marked ‘beyond salvage.’ ”
“A hypocritical term. It implies compassion on the part of your executioners.”
“It says it.”
“Not well.” Rostov raised his automatic, thrusting it forward slowly. “We have no such problems with verbal rationales. A traitor is a traitor. I could take you in, you know.”
“Not easily.” Michael remained still, his eyes locked with the Russian’s. “There are corridors and elevators, lobbies to pass through and streets to cross; there’s risk. You could lose. Everything. Because I have nothing to lose but a cell at the Lubyanka.”
“A room, not a cell. We’re not barbarians.”
“Sorry. A room. The same kind of room we have reserved in Virginia for someone like you—and we’re both wasting money. When people like you and me get out with our heads still on, everything’s altered. The Amytals and the Pentothals are invitations to traps.”
“There are still the moles.”
“I don’t know who they are any more than you did when you were in the field—for those same reasons, those same rooms. None of us do on either side. We only know the current codes, words that take us where we have to go. Whatever ones I had are meaningless now.”
“In all sincerity are you trying to convince me a man of your experience is of no value to us?”
“I didn’t say that,” interrupted Havelock. “I’m simply suggesting that you weigh the risks. Also something else, which, frankly, you pulled off with reasonable success two years ago. We took a man of yours who was finished, ready for a farm in Grasnov. We got him out through Riga into Finland and flew him to a room in Fairfax, Virginia. He was injected with everything from scopolamine to triple Amytal, and we learned a lot. Strategies were aborted, whole networks re-structured, confusion the order of the day. Then we learned something else: everything he told us was a lie. His head was programmed like a computer disk; valuable men became useless, time was lost. Say you got me to the Lubyanka—which I don’t think you could—how do you know I’m not our answer to what you did to us?”
“Because you would not expose the possibility.” Rostov pulled the gun back, but did not lower it.
“Really? It strikes me as a pretty good blanket. I mean, you’d never know, would you? On the other hand, we’ve developed a serum—which I know nothing about except that it’s injected at the base of the skull—that voids the programming. Something to do with neutralizing the lobus occipitalis, whatever the hell that is. From here on we can make a determination.”
“Such an admission astonishes me.”
“Why should it? Maybe I’m fust saving our respective directors a lot of aggravation; that could be my objective. Or maybe none of it’s true; maybe there is no serum, no protection, and I’m making it all up. That’s also a possibility.”
The Russian smiled. “Khvatit! You are out! You amuse us both with logic that could serve you. You’re on your way to that farm in your own Grasnov.”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. Am I worth the risk?”
“Let’s find out.” Suddenly the Russian flipped his automatic, barrel up; he slapped it back in the palm of his hand and threw it to Havelock on the bed. Michael caught the weapon in midair.
“What am I supposed to do with this?”
“What do you want to do with it?”
“Nothing. Assuming the first three shells are rubber capsules filled with dye, I’d only soil your clothes.” Havelock pressed the magazine release; the clip dropped to the bed. “It’s not a very good test, anyway. Say the firing pin works and this thing makes any noise at all, twenty khruschei could break in here and blow me out of the park.”
“The firing pin works and there’s no one outside in the hallway. The Arethusa Delphi is very much in Washington’s camp; it’s watched and I’m not so foolish as to parade our personnel. I think you know that. It’s why you’re here.”
“What are you trying to prove?”
The Russian smiled again and shrugged. “I’m not really sure. A brief something in the eyes, perhaps. When a man’s under a hostile gun and that gun is suddenly his, there is an instant compulsion to eliminate the prior threat—assuming the hostility is returned. It’s in the eyes; no amount of control can disguise it—if the enmity is active.”
“What was in my eyes?”
“Absolute indifference. Weariness, if you will.”
“I’m not sure you’re right, but I admire your courage. It’s more than I’ve got. The firing pin really works?”
“Yes.”
“No capsules?”
The Russian shook his head, his expression conveying quiet amusement. “No bullets. That is to say, no powder in the shells.” Rostov raised his left hand and, with his right, pulled back the sleeve of his overcoat. Strapped to the flat of his wrist, extending up toward his elbow, was a thin barrel, the trigger mechanism apparently activated by the bending of his arm. “Snotvornoye,” he said, touching the taut, springlike wires. “What you call narcotic darts. You would have slept peacefully for the better part of tomorrow while a doctor insisted that your odd fever be stutdied at the hospital. We’d have gotten you out, flown you up to Salonika and over the Dardanelles into Sevastopol.” The Russian unsnapped a strap above his wrist and removed the weapon.
Havelock studied the KGB man, not a little perplexed. “You really could have taken me.”
“Until the attempt is made, one never knows. I might have missed the first shot, and you’re younger, stronger than I; you could have attacked, broken my neck. But the odds were on my side.”
“I’d say completely. Why didn’t you play them?”
“Because you’re right. We don’t want you. The risks are too great—not those you spoke of, but others. I simply had to know the truth and I’m now convinced. You are no longer in the service of your government.”
“What risks?”
“They’re unknown to us, but they are there. Anything you can’t understand in this business is a risk, but I don’t have to tell you that.”
“Tell me something. I just got a pardon; I’d like to know why.”
“Very well.” The Soviet intelligence officer hesitated; he walked aimlessly toward the double doors that led to the miniature balcony and opened one several inches. Then he closed it and turned to Havelock. “I should tell you first that I’m not here on orders from Dzerzhinsky Square, or even with its blessings. To be frank, my aging superiors in the KGB believe I’m in Athens on an unrelated matter. You can either accept that or not.”
“Give me a reason to or not. Someone must know. You jedratele don’t do anything solo.”
“Specifically, two others. A close associate in Moscow and a dedicated man—a mole, to be sure—out of Washington.”
“You mean Langley?”
The Russian shook his head. He replied softly, “The White House.”
“I’m impressed. So two ranking kontrolyorya of the KGB and a Soviet mole within walking distance of the Oval Office decide they want to talk to me, but they don’t want to take me. They can fly me into Sevastopol and from there to a room at the Lubyanka, where any talking we did would be far more productive—from their point of view—but they won’t do that. Instead, the spokesman for these three—a man I know only from photographs and by reputation—tells me there are risks associated with me that he can’t define but knows that they exist, and because of them I’m given the option of talking or not—about what I haven’t the vaguest idea. Is that a fair reading?”
“You have the Slavic propensity for going right to the core of a subject.”
“I don’t see any ancestral connection. It’s common sense. You spoke, I listened; that’s what you said—or what you’re about to say. Basic logic.”
Rostov stepped away from the balcony doors, his expression pensive. “I’m afraid that’s the one factor that’s missing. The logic.”
“Now we’re talking about something else.”
“Yes, we are.”
“what?”
“You. The Costa Brava.”
Havelock paused. The anger was in his eyes, but it was controlled. “Go on.”
“The woman. She’s why you retired, isn’t she?”
“This conversation is terminated,” said Havelock abruptly. “Get out of here.”
“Please,” The Russian raised both hands, a gesture of truce, perhaps a plea. “I think you should listen to me.”
“I don’t think so. There’s nothing you could say that would remotely interest me. The Voennaya is to be congratulated; it was a hell of a job. They won, she won. And then she lost. It’s finished, and there’s nothing further to say about it.”
“There is.”
“Not to me.”
“The VKR are maniacs,” said the Russian quietly, urgently. “I don’t have to tell you that You and I are enemies, and neither would pretend otherwise, but we acknowledge certain rules between us. We’re not salivating dogs, we’re professionals. There’s a fundamental respect each has for the other, perhaps grounded in fear, although not necessarily. Grant me that, priyatel.”
Their eyes were level, penetrating. Havelock nodded. “I know you from the files, just as you know me. You weren’t part of it.”
“Wasted death is still death, still a waste. Unnecessary and provocative death a very dangerous waste. It can be hurled back tenfold in fury at the instigator.”
“Tell that to the Voennaya. There was no waste as far as they were concerned. Only necessity.”
“Butchers!” snapped Rostov, his voice guttural. “Who can tell them anything? They’re descendants of the old OGPU slaughterhouses, inheritors of the mad assassin Yagoda. They’re also up to their throats in paranoid fantasies going back half a century when Yagoda gunned down the quieter, more reasonable men, hating their lack of fanaticism, equating that lack with treason against the revolution. Do you know the VKR?”
“Enough so as to stand far back and hope to hell you can control it.”
“I wish I could answer confidently in the affirmative. It’s as if a band of your screaming right-wing zealots had been given official status as a subdivision of the Central Intelligence Agency.”
“We have checks and balances—sometimes. If such a subdivision came to be—and it could—it would be continuously scrutinized, openly criticized. Funds would be watched closely, methods studied; ultimately the group would be thrown out.”
“You’ve had your lapses, your various un-American activities committees, your McCarthys, the Huston plans, purges in the irresponsible press. Careers have been destroyed, lives degraded Yes, you’ve had your share of lapses.”
“Always short-lived. We have no gulags, no ‘rehabilitation’ programs in a Lubyanka. And that irresponsible press has a way of becoming responsible now and then. It threw out a regime of arrogant hot shots. The Kremlin’s wilder ones stay in place.”
“We both have our lapses, then. But we’re so much younger; youth is allowed mistakes.”
“And there’s nothing,” interrupted Michael, “to compare with the VKR’s paminyatchik operation. That wouldn’t be tolerated or funded by the worst Congress or administration in history.”
“Another paranoid fantasy!” cried the KGB officer, adding derisively, “The paminyatchiki! Even the word is a corruption, meaningless! A discredited strategy mounted decades ago! You can’t honestly believe it still flourishes.”
“Perhaps less than the Voennaya does. Obviously more than you do—if you’re not lying.”
“Oh, come, Havelock! Russian infants sent to the United States, growing up with old-line, no doubt pathetically senile, Marxists so as to become entrenched Soviet agents? Insanity! Be reasonable. It’s psychologically unsound—if not disastrous—to say nothing of certain inevitable comparisons. We’d lost the majority to blue jeans, rock music and fast automobiles. We’d be idiots.”
“Now you’re lying. They exist. You know it and we know it.”
Rostov shrugged. “A question of numbers, then. And value, I might add. How many can be left? Fifty, a hundred, two hundred at the outside? Sad, amateurishly conspiratorial creatures wandering around a few cities, meeting in cellars to exchange nonsense, uncertain of their own values, the very reasons for being where they are. Very little credence is given these so-called travelers, take my word for it.”
“But you haven’t pulled them out.”
“Where would we put them? Few even speak the Russian language; they’re a large embarrassment. Attrition, priyatel, that’s the answer. And dismissing them with lip service, as you Americans say.”
“The Voennaya doesn’t dismiss them.”
“I told you, the men of the VKR pursue misguided fantasies.”
“I wonder if you believe that,” said Michael, studying the Russian. “Not all those families were pathetic and senile, not all the travelers amateurs.”
“If there is currently—or in the recent past—any movement of consequence on the part of the paminyatchiki, we are not aware of it,” said Rostov firmly.
“And if there is and you’re not aware of it, that would be something of consequence, wouldn’t it?”
The Russian stood motionless; he spoke, his voice low and pensive. “The VKR is incredibly secretive. It would be something of consequence.”
“Then maybe I’ve given you something to think about. Call it a parting gift from a retired enemy.”
“I look for no such gifts,” said Rostov coldly. “They’re as gratuitous as your presence here in Athens.”
“Since you don’t approve, go back to Moscow and fight your own fights. Your infrastructure doesn’t concern me any longer. And unless you’ve got another comic-book weapon up your other sleeve. I suggest you leave.”
“That’s just it, pyehshkah. Yes, pyehshkah. Pawn. It is as you say—an infrastructure. Separate sections, indeed, but one entity. There is first the KGB; all else follows. A man—or a woman—may gravitate to the Voennaya, may even excel in its deepest operations, but first he or she must have sprung from the KGB. At the very minimum there has to be a Dzerzhinsky dossier somewhere. With foreign recruits it’s, as you would say, a double imperative. Internal protection, of course.”
Havelock sat forward on the bed, confusion joining the anger in his eyes. “Say what you’re trying to say and say it quickly. There’s a smell about you, priyatel!”
“I suspect there is about all of us, Mikhail Havlíček. Our nostrils never quite adjust, do they? Perversely, they become sensitive—to variations of that basic odor. Like animals.”
“Say it.”
“There is no listing for a Jenna Karasova or the Anglicized Karas in any branch or division of the KGB.”
Havelock stared at the Russian, then suddenly he spun off the bed, gripping the sheet and whipping it into the air, obscuring the Russian’s vision. He lunged forward, hammering Rostov against the wall beyond the balcony doors. He twisted the KGB man clockwise by the wrist and smashed his head into the frame of a cheap oil painting as he whipped his right arm around Rostov’s neck in a hammerlock. “I could kill you for that,” he whispered, breathless, the muscles of his jaw pulsating against Rostov’s bald head. “You said I might break your neck. I could do it right now!”
“You could,” said the Russian, choking. “And you’d be cut down. Either in this room or on the street outside.”
“I thought you didn’t have anyone in the hotel!”
“I lied. There are three men, two dressed as waiters down the hallway by the elevators, one inside the staircase. There’s no final protection for you here in Athens. My people are out there—on the street as well—every doorway covered. My instructions are clear: I’m to emerge from a specific exit at a specific time. Any deviations from either will result in your death. The room will be stormed; the cordon around the Arethusa is unbreakable. I’m not an idiot.”
“Maybe not, but as you said, you’re an animal!” He released the Russian and hurled him across the room. “Go back to Moscow and tell them the bait’s too obvious, the stench too rotten! I’m not taking it, priyatel. Get out of here!”
“No bait,” protested Rostov, regaining his balance and holding his throat. “Your own argument: what could you really tell us that would be worth the risks, or the reprisals, perhaps? Or the uncertainties? You’re finished. Without programming, you could lead us into a hundred traps—a theory that has crossed our minds, incidentally. You talk freely and we act on what you say, but what you tell us is no longer operative. Through you we go after strategies—not simple codes and ciphers, but supposedly long-term vital strategies—that Washington has aborted without telling you. In the process we reveal our personnel. Surely you’re aware of this. You talk of logic? Heed your own words.”
Havelock stared at the Soviet officer, his breathing audible, anger and bewilderment compounding the emotional strain. Even the shadow of a possibility that an error had been made at Costa Brava was more than he could face. But there was no error. A Baader-Meinhof defector had set off the revealing chain of events. The evidence had been sent to Madrid, and he had pored over it, sifting every fragment for a shred to the contrary. There was nothing; there was everything. Even Anthony Matthias—Anton Matthias, friend, mentor, surrogate father—had demanded indepth verification; it had been returned: Positive.
“No! The proof was there! She was there! I saw for myself! I said I had to see for myself and they agreed!”
“‘They’? who is ‘they’?”
“You know as well as I do! Men like you! The inside shell—strategists! You didn’t look hard enough. You’re wrong!”
The Russian moved his head slowly in circles, his left hand massaging his throat; he spoke softly. “I won’t deny that the possibility exists—as I said, the VKR is maniacally secretive, especially in Moscow—but that possibility is remote.… We were astonished. An unusually productive decoy conduit is led into a terrorist trap by her own people, who then proceed to hold the KGB responsible for her death by claiming she was one of us. The result of this manipulation is the neutering of the woman’s constant companion, her lover, a deep-cover, multilingual field agent of exceptional talent. Disillusion and disgust overwhelm him; he takes himself out. We are amazed; we search the dossier vaults, including the most inaccessible. She is nowhere. Jenna Karas—Karasova—was never a part of us.” Rostov paused, his eyes conveying his awareness: Michael Havelock was a dangerously provoked panther about to spring, about to strike. The Russian continued, his voice flat: “We are grateful; we profit by your elimination, but we ask ourselves Why? Why was this done? Is it a trick? If so, for what purpose? Who gains? On the surface we do, but again, why? How?”
“Ask the VKR!” shouted Michael contemptuously. “They didn’t plan it this way, but that’s the way it happened. I’m the bonus! Ask them!”
“We did,” said the Russian. “A section director, saner than most, who, because of his relative sanity, is frightened of his peers. He told us that he personally was not familiar with the Karas woman or the specifics at Costa Brava, but since the field personnel raised no questions, he assumed no questions should be raised. As he pointed out, the results were favorable: two condors shot down, both talented, one exceptional. The Voennaya was pleased to take credit.”
“Why shouldn’t they? I was out, and she could be Justified. A sacrifice by any name is still the same. It’s expendable for a purpose. He said it; he acknowledged it.”
“He did not acknowledge it and he was saying something quite different. I told you, he’s a frightened man. Only my rank persuaded him to go as far as he did.”
“You’re reaching.”
“I listened. As you listened to me a few moments ago. He was telling us that he hadn’t the vaguest idea what had happened or why.”
“He personally didn’t know,” said Havelock angrily. “The people in the field knew. She knew!”
“A tenuous rationalization. His office is responsible for all activities in the southwest Mediterranean sector. The territory includes the Costa Brava. An emergency rendezvous—especially one ostensibly involving the Baader-Meinhof—would certainly be cleared by him.” Rostov paused briefly, then added quietly, “Under normal circumstances.”
“A not so tenuous rationalization?” asked Michael.
“I leave myself the narrowest margin for error. An extremely remote possibility.”
“It’s the one I accept!” Havelock shouted again, suddenly disturbed at his own outburst.
“You want to accept it. Perhaps you have to.”
“The VKR more often than not gets its orders directly from the policy rooms of the Kremlin. It’s no secret. If you’re not lying, you were passed over.”
“To be sure, and the thought frightens me more than I can tell you. But as much as I’m forced to acknowledge your professional accomplishments, priyatel, I do not think the policy makers in the Kremlin are concerned with the likes of you and me. They have more weighty matters, global matters. And, to the point, they have no expertise where we’re concerned.”
“They do with Baader-Meinhof! And the PLO, and the Brigate Rosse, and a couple of dozen ‘red armies’ blowing things up all over the goddamn place! That’s policy!”
“Only for maniacs.”
“Which is exactly what we’re talking about! Maniacs!” Michael paused, the obvious striking him. “We broke the VKR codes. They were authentic; I’ve seen too many variations not to know. I set up the contact. She responded. I sent the final transmission to the men in the boat offshore. They responded! Explain that!”
“I can’t.”
“Then get out!”
The KGB officer looked at his watch. “I must, in any event. Time is up.”
“Yes, it is.”
“We’re at an impasse,” said the Russian.
“I’m not.”
“No, I don’t think you are, and that compounds the risk about you. You know what you know and I know what I know. Impasse, whether you like it or not.”
“Your time’s up, remember?”
“I’m not forgetting. I don’t care to be caught in the cross fire. I’ll leave now.” Rostov went to the door and turned, his hand on the knob. “Several minutes ago you said the bait was too obvious, the stench too rotten. Tell that to Washington, priyatel. We’re not taking it either.”
“Get out!”
The door closed, and Havelock stood motionless for nearly a minute, picturing the Russian’s eyes. They had held too much truth in them. Over the years Michael had learned to discern the truth, especially in his enemies. Rostov had not been lying; he had spoken the truth as he believed it to be. Which meant that this powerful strategist for the KGB was being manipulated by his own people in Moscow. Pyotr Rostov was a blind probe—an influential intelligence officer sent out with information he is convinced his superiors do not have in order to make contact with the enemy and turn an American agent, recruiting him for the Soviets. The higher up the officer, the more credible his story—as long as he spoke the truth as he saw it, truth that was perceived as such by his enemy.
Michael walked to the bedside table, where he had left the glass of whisky a half hour ago. He picked it up, drained the Scotch, and looked down at the bed. He smiled to himself, thinking how the evening had veered from where it had been heading thirty minutes ago. The whore had performed, but not in any way he might have expected. The sensuous courtesan from the playgrounds of the rich had been a setup. When were the setups going to stop? Amsterdam. Paris. Athens.
Perhaps they would not stop. Until he did. Perhaps as long as he kept moving the would-be trappers would keep moving with him, watching him, cornering him, waiting for him to commit whatever crimes their imaginations led them to believe he would commit. It was in the movement itself that they found the ominous substance for their suspicions. No man wandered aimlessly after a lifetime of wandering under orders. If he kept it up, it had to mean he was following other orders, different orders; otherwise he’d stay put. Somewhere.
Perhaps it was time he stopped. Maybe his odyssey of recovery had about run its course; there was a cable to be sent, a commitment to be made. A beginning. A nearly forgotten friend had become a friend again, and that man had offered him a new life, where the old life could be buried, where there were roots to cultivate, relationships to create, things to teach.
What will you teach, Mikhail?
Leave me alone! You are no part of me—you never were!
He would send the cable to Harry Lewis in the morning, then rent a car and drive northwest to the ferry for the Adriatic port of Kérkira, where he would catch the boat to Brindisi in Italy. He had done it before under God knows what name or with what objective. He would do it now as Michael Havelock, visiting professor of government. From Brindisi he would take the circuitous train routes across Italy into Rome, a city he enjoyed immensely. He would stay in Rome for a week or two; it would be the last stop on his odyssey, the place where he would put to rest all thoughts of a life that was over.
There were things to do in Concord, New Hampshire, U.S.A. He would assume his duties as visiting professor in something less than three months; in the meantime there were practicalities to be dealt with: lectures to be sketched out under the guidance of knowledgeable associates; curricula to study and evaluate, determining where his contributions might best be directed. A short visit, perhaps, with Matthias, who would certainly have insights to offer. No matter how pressed for time, Matthias would take the time, because, above all men, Anton would be happiest for him: his old student had returned to the campus. It was where it had all begun.
So many things to do.
He needed a place to live: a house, furniture, pots and pans and books, a chair to sit in, a bed to sleep in. Choices. He had not thought about such things ever before. He thought about them now and felt the excitement growing inside him.
He went to the bureau, uncapped the Scotch and poured himself a drink. “Příteli,” he said softly, for no particular reason, as he looked at his face in the mirror. Suddenly he stared at his eyes and, in terror, slammed the glass down with such force that it shattered; blood spread slowly over his hand. His eyes would not let him go! And he understood. Had his own eyes seen the truth that night on the Costa Brava?
“Stop it!” he screamed, whether silently or out loud, he could not tell. “It’s over!”
Dr. Harry Lewis sat at his desk in his book-lined study, the cablegram in his hand. He listened for the sound of his wife’s voice. It came.
“See you later, dear,” she called from the hallway beyond. The front door opened and closed. She was out of the house.
Lewis picked up his telephone and dialed the area code 202. Washington, D.C. The seven digits that followed had been committed to memory, never written down. Nor would they be recorded on a bill, having bypassed the computers electronically.
“Yes?” asked the male voice on the other end of the line.
“Birchtree,” said Harry.
“Go ahead, Birchtree. You’re being taped.”
“He’s accepted. The cable came from Athens.”
“Is there any change in dates?”
“No. He’ll be here a month before the trimester starts.”
“Did he say where he was going from Athens?”
“No.”
“We’ll watch the airports. Thank you, Birchtree.”
The Rome Havelock had come to visit was not the Rome in which he cared to stay. Strikes were everywhere, the chaos compounded by volatile Italian tempers that erupted on every street corner, every picket line, in the parks and around the fountains. Mail had been strewn in gutters, adding to the uncollected garbage; taxis were scarce—practically nonexistent—and most of the restaurants had been closed because of the lack of deliveries. The poliziotti, having taken sufficient abuse, were on a work stoppage, snarling further the normal insanity of Rome’s traffic, and since the telephones were part of the government’s postal service, they functioned on a level below normal, which made them damn near impossible. The city was full of a kind of hysteria, which was aggravated by yet another stern papal decree—from a foreigner, a polacco!—that was at odds with every progressive step since Vatican II. Giovanni Ventitreesimo! Dove sei?
It was his second night, and Michael had left his pensions on the Via Due Macelli over two hours before, walking nearly the mile to the Via Flaminia Vecchia in hopes of finding a favorite restaurant open. It was not, and no amount of patience brought forth a taxi to bring him back to the Spanish Steps.
Reaching the north end of the Via Veneto, he was heading toward the side street that would eliminate the crowds in the gaudy carnival that was the Veneto when he saw it—a poster in the lighted window of a travel agency proclaiming the glories of Venice.
Why not? Why the hell not? The floating passivity of not planning included sudden changes in plans. He looked at his watch; it was barely eight-thirty, probably too late to get out to the airport and chance a reservation on a plane, but if he remembered correctly—and he did—the trains kept running Until midnight out of Rome. Why not a train? The lazy, circuitous trip from Brindisi by rail, passing through countrysides that had not changed in centuries, had been startlingly beautiful. He could pack his single suitcase in minutes, walk to the train station in twenty. Surely the money he was willing to pay would get him accommodations; if not, he could always return to the Via Due Macelli. He had paid for a week in advance.
Forty-five minutes later Havelock passed through the huge portals of the massive Ostia Railroad station, built by Mussolini in the halcyon days of trumpets and drums and marching boots and trains that ran on time.
Italian was not Michael’s best language, but he could read it well enough: Biglietto per Venezia. Prima classe. The line was short and his luck held. The famed Freccia della Laguna was leaving in eight minutes, and if the signore wished to pay the premium scale, he could have the finest accommodations by way of his own compartment He so wished, and as the clerk stamped his ornate ticket, he was told that the Freccia was leaving from binario trentasei, a dual platform several football fields away from the counter.
“Fate presto, signore! Non perdete tempo! Fate in fretta!”
Michael walked rapidly into the mass of rushing humanity, threading his way as fast as possible toward dual Track 36. As usual—as he recalled from memories past—the giant dome was filled with crowds. Screeching arrivals and wailing departures were joined in counterpoint; screamed epithets punctuated the deafening roar, because the porters, too, were obviously on strike. It took nearly five hectic minutes to shoulder his way through the huge stone arch and emerge on the double-track platform. It was, if possible, more chaotic than the station itself. A crowded train had arrived from the north as the Freccia della Laguna was about to depart. Freight dollies collided with hordes of embarking and disembarking passengers. It was a scene from a lower circle of Dante, screaming pandemonium.
Suddenly, across the platform, through the milling crowds, he caught sight of the back of a woman’s head, the brim of a soft hat shadowing her face. She was stepping out of the incoming train from the north, and had turned to talk to a conductor. It had happened before: the same color or cut of the hair, the shape of a neck. A scarf, or a hat or a raincoat like those she had worn. It had happened before. Too often.
Then the woman turned; pain seared Havelock’s eyes and temples and surged downward—hot knives stabbing his chest. The face across the platform, seen sporadically through the weaving, colliding crowds, was no illusion. It was she.
Their eyes locked. Hers widened in raw fear; her face froze. Then she whipped her head away and plunged into the crowds in front of her.
Michael pressed his eyelids shut, then opened them, trying to rid himself of the pain and the shock and the sudden trembling that immobilized him. He dropped his suitcase; he had to move, run, race after this living corpse from the Costa Brava! She was alive! This woman he had loved, this apparition who had betrayed that love and had died for it, was alive!
Like a crazed animal, he parted the bodies in his path, screaming her name, ordering her to stop, commanding the crowds to stop her. He raced up the ramp and through the massive stone archway oblivious to the shrieking, furious passengers he pummeled and left in his wake, unaware of the slaps and punches and body blocks hurled at him, unconscious of the hands that ripped his clothing.
She was nowhere to be seen in the station crowds.
What in the name of God had happened?
Jenna Karas was alive!