The police swept through the streets of Savannah, patrol cars roaring out to the airport and screeching into bus and train stations. Car-rental agencies were checked throughout the city and roadblocks set up on the major highways and backcountry routes—north to Augusta, south to Saint Marys, west to Macon and Valdosta. The man’s description was radioed to all units—municipal, county, state—and the word spread down through the ranks from the highest levels of authority: Find him. Find the man with the streak of white in his hair. If seen, approach with extreme caution, weapons drawn. If movements are unexpected, shoot. Shoot to kill.
The manhunt was unparalleled in numbers and intensity, the federal government assuring the state, the cities and townships that all costs would be borne by Washington. Men off duty were called in by precincts and station houses; vehicles in for minor repairs were put back on the streets, and private cars belonging to police personnel were issued magnetic, circling roof lamps and sent out to prowl the dark country roads. Everywhere automobiles and pedestrains were stopped; anyone even vaguely approaching the man’s description was politely requested to remove his hat if he was wearing one, and flashlights roamed over faces and hairlines, searching for a hastily, imperfectly dyed streak of white hair rising above a forehead. Hotels, motels and rural inns were descended upon; registers were checked for late arrivals, desk clerks questioned, the interrogators alert to the possibility of evasion or deception. Farmhouses where lights remained on were entered—courteously, to be sure—but the intruders were aware that the inhabitants could be hostages, that an unseen child or wife might be held captive somewhere on the premises by the man with the streak of white in his hair. Rooms and barns and silos were searched, nothing left to speculation.
Morning came, and weary thousands reported back to points of dispatch, angry, frustrated, bewildered by the government’s ineffectual methods. For no photographs or sketches were issued; the only name given was “Mr. Smith.” The alarm was still out, but the blitzkrieg search was essentially over, and the professionals knew it. The man with the streak of white in his hair had slipped through the net. He could be blond or bald or gray by now, limping with a cane or a crutch, and dressed in tattered clothes, or in the uniform of the police or the military, without a vestige of his former appearance.
The newspapers carrying early-morning stories of the strange, massive hunt abruptly called off their reporters. Owners and editors had been reached by respected, men in government who claimed no special knowledge of the situation but had profound trust in those higher up who had appealed to them, Play it down, let the story die. In second editions the search was relegated to a few lines near the back pages, and those papers with third editions carried no mention of it at all.
And an odd thing happened at a telephone exchange beginning with the digits 0-7742. Since midnight it had not functioned, and by 8:00 A.M., when service was suddenly, inexplicably, resumed, telephone “repairmen” were in the building of the Voyagers Emporium annex, where orders were received, and every incoming call was monitored and taped, all tapes under fifteen seconds in length played instantly over the phone to Sterile Five. The brevity reduced the number to a very few.
International airports were infiltrated by federal agents with sophisticated X-ray equipment that scanned briefcases and hand luggage; they were looking for a two-inch-thick metal case with a combination lock on the side. There were two assumptions: one, the devastating file would not be entrusted to a cargo hold; and, two, it would remain in its original government container for authenticity. If container and file were separated, either shape was sufficient cause for examination. By 11:30 A.M. over twenty-seven hundred attaché cases had been opened and searched, from Kennedy to Atlanta to Miami International.
“Thanks very much,” said Havelock into the phone, forcing energy into his voice, feeling the effects of the sleepless night He hung up and looked over at Jenna, who was pouring coffee. “They can’t understand and I can’t tell them. Pierce wouldn’t call Orphan-ninety-six unless he thought he could get his message across with a very few words, spoken quickly. He knows I’ve got the place wired and maimed by now.”
“You’ve done everything you can,” said Jenna, carrying the coffee to the desk. “All the airports are covered—”
“Not for him,” Michael broke in. “He wouldn’t risk it, and besides, he doesn’t want to leave. He wants what I want. Parsifal.… It’s that file! One small single-engine plane crossing the Mexican border, or a fishing boat meeting another between here and Cuba, or out of Galveston toward Matamores, and that file’s on its way to Moscow, into the hand of the overkill specialists in the Voennaya. And there’s not a damn thing I can do about it.”
“The Mexican border is being patrolled, the agents doubled. The piers and marinas are watched both here and in the Gulf, all boats tracked, stopped if directions are in question. You insisted on these things and the President issued the orders.”
“It’s a long border, and those are large bodies of water.”
“Get some rest, Mikhail. You can’t function if you’re exhausted—it’s one of your rules, remember.”
“One of the rules …?” Havelock brought both hands to the sides of his head, massaging his temples with his fingers. “Yes, that’s one of the rules, part of the rules.”
“Lie down on the couch and close your eyes. I can take the calls, let you know what they are. I slept for a while, you didn’t.”
“When did you sleep?” asked Michael, looking up, doubting.
“I rested before the sun was up. You were talking to your Coast Guard.”
“It doesn’t belong to me,” said Havelock wearily, pushing himself up. “Maybe I will lie down … just for a few minutes. It’s part of the rules.” He walked around the desk, then stopped; his eyes roamed the elegant study strewn with papers, notebooks and file folders. “God, I hate this room!” he said, heading for the couch. “Thanks for the coffee, but no thanks.”
The telephone rang, and Michael steeled himself, wondering if the bell would stop before a second ring or whether it would remain unbroken, the signal of an emergency. It stopped, then resumed ringing.
Havelock lowered himself down on the couch as Jenna answered, speaking calmly. “This is Sterile Five.… Who’s calling?” She listened, then covered the phone and looked over at Michael. “It’s the State Department, New York City, Division of Security. Your man’s come in from the Soviet consulate.”
Havelock rose unsteadily, briefly finding it necessary to center his balance. “I’ve got to talk to him,” he said, walking toward the desk. “I thought he’d be there hours ago.” Michael took the phone from Jenna and, after peremptory identifications, made his request. “Let me have the candidate, please.” The Russian got on the line. “Where the hell have you been?”
“Apparently, it is considered in poor taste over here to defect except during business hours,” began the Russian in a weary, singsong voice. “I arrived down here at the Federal Plaza at four o’clock this morning, after having survived an attempted mugging on the subway, only to be told by one of the night guards that there was nothing he could do until the office opened! I explained my somewhat precarious position, and the kind, vacuous idiot offered to buy me a cup of coffee—in a public diner. Finally getting into the building myself—your security is ludicrous—I waited in a dark, drafty hallway until nine o’clock, when your militia arrived. I then presented myself and the imbeciles wanted to call the police! They wanted to have me arrested for breaking and entering and the possible destruction of government property!”
“All right, you’re there now—”
“I’m not fin-nished!” yelled the Russian. “Since that auspicious beginning I have been filling out uncountable forms—with Russian nursery rhymes, incidentally—and repeatedly giving your number, asking to be put in touch with you. What is it with you people? Do you limit toll calls?”
“We’re in touch now—”
“Not fin-nished! This past hour I have been sitting alone in a room so poorly wired I was tempted to lower my trousers and fart into the microphones. And I have just been given additional forms to fill out, including one inquiring about my hobbies and favorite recreational pastimes! Are you sending me to camp, perhaps?”
Michael smiled, grateful beyond words for a momentary break in the tension. “Only where you’ll be safe,” he said. “Consider the source. We’re fools, remember, not jackals. You made the right choice.”
The Russian sighed audibly. “Why do I work myself up? The fruktovyje golovy are no better in the Dzerzhinsky—why not admit it? They’re worse. Your Albert Einstein would be on his way to Siberia, assigned to pull mules in a gulag. Where is the sense in it all?”
“There’s very little,” said Havelock softly. “Except to survive. All of us.”
“A premise I subscribe to.”
“So did Rostov.”
“I remember the words he sent you. He’s not my enemy any longer, but others are who may be mine as well.’ They are ominous words, Havelock.”
“The Voennaya.”
“Maniacs!” was the guttural reply. “In their heads they march with the Third Reich.”
“How operational are they here?”
“Who knows? They have their own councils, their own methods of recruitment. They touch too many you can’t see.”
“The paminyatchiki? You can’t see them.”
“Believe me when I tell you I was trusted but never that trusted. However, one can speculate—on rumors. There are always rumors, aren’t there? You might say the speculation has convinced me that I should take the action I’ve taken.” The Russian paused. “I will be treated as a valuable asset, will I not?”
“Guarded and housed as a treasure. What’s the speculation?”
“In recent months certain men have left our ranks—unexpected retirements to well-earned dachas, untimely illnesses—disappearances. None so crudely as Rostov, but perhaps there was no time to be clever. Nevertheless, it seems there is a disturbing sameness about the departed. They were generally categorized as quiet realists, men who sought solutions and knew when to pull back from confrontation. Pyotr Rostov exemplified this group; he was in fact their spokesman in a way. Make no mistake, you were his enemy, he despised your system—too much for the few, too little for the many—but he understood there was a point where enemies could no longer push forward. Or there was nothing. He knew time was on our side, not bombs.”
“Are you saying those who replaced the Rostovs think otherwise?”
“That is the rumor.”
“The Voennaya?”
“That is the speculation. And should they take over the power centers of the KGB, can leadership of the Kremlin be far behind? This cannot happen. If it does.…” The Russian did not finish the statement.
“There’ll be nothing?” offered Havelock.
“That is the judgment. You see, they think you’ll do nothing. They believe they can chew you up, first in one area, then in another.”
“That’s nothing new.”
“With tactical nuclear weapons?”
“That’s very new.”
“It’s insane,” said the man from the KGB. “You’ll have to react, the world will demand it.”
“How can we stop the VKR?”
“By giving them little or no ammunition.”
“What do you mean, ‘ammunition’?”
“Knowledge of provocative or inflammatory actions on your part they can use to threaten the tired old men in the Presidium. The same as over here; you have your jackals. Beribboned generals and wild—eyed colonels closeting themselves with overweight, overaged senators and congressmen, making pronouncements of disaster if you don’t strike first. The wisest men do not always prevail; actually, you’re better at that than we are. Your controls are better.”
“I hope so,” said Michael, thinking fleetingly of men like Lieutenant Commander Thomas Decker. “But you say the Voennaya has filtered into your ranks, into the KGB.”
“Speculation.”
“If it’s true, it means that at least several of them could be walking around the embassy here or the consulate in New York.”
“I’m not even sure of my own superior.”
“And a paminyatchik outside would know them, could reach them, make a delivery.”
“You assume I know something. I don’t. What delivery?”
Havelock paused, trying to still the throbbing in his temples. “Suppose I were to tell you that just such ammunition as you describe was stolen last night by a mole so deep and entrenched he had access to information released only by executive order. He disappeared.”
“Willing to give up his entrenched position?”
“He was found out. You were instrumental; you told me about Rostov’s death and the VKR. He belongs to the Voennaya. He’s the enemy.”
“Then look for the sudden diplomatic departure of a low—level attaché, a street security man, or a communications officer. If there is a VKR recruit, he would be among these. Intercept if you can; hold up the plane if you have to. Claim stolen property, espionage, go to the limit. Don’t let them have that ammunition.”
“If we’re too late—”
“What can I tell you without knowing the nature of the delivery?”
“The worst.”
“Can you deny?”
“It’s beyond deniability. Part of it’s false—the worst part—but it will be accepted as the truth—by the beribboned generals and the wild-eyed colonels.”
The Russian was silent, then replied quietly, “You must speak with others much higher, much wiser. We have, as you say here, a rule of thumb when dealing with such matters. Go to substantial men in the Party between the ages of sixty and seventy who went through Operation Barbarossa and Stalingrad. Their memories are acute; they may help you. I’m afaid I can’t.”
“You have. We know what to watch for at the embassy and the consulate.… You’ll be brought down here for debriefing, you understand that.”
“I understand. Will I be permitted to see American films—on the television, perhaps? After the interrogation sessions, of course.”
“I’m sure something can be arranged.”
“I do so like the Westerns.… Havelock, stop the delivery to Moscow. You don’t know the Voennaya.”
“I’m afraid I do know it,” said Michael, rounding the desk and sinking once again into the chair. “And I’m afraid,” he added, hanging up.
There was no rest for the next three hours, coffee, aspirin and coldwater compresses serving to keep him awake and numb the piercing ache that pounded through his head. Every department in every intelligence and investigatory agency that had information on or access to the Soviet embassy or the consulate in New York was contacted and ordered to divulge whatever Sterile Five requested. The schedules for Aeroflot, LOT Airlines, Czechoslovak Airlines—CSA—and all the carriers to the Eastern bloc were studied, their manifests checked for diplomatic passengers. The cameras were doubled on both Soviet buildings in Washington and New York, personnel leaving the premises placed under surveillance, the units told to keep their subjects in sight even at the risk of being seen themselves. Everything was designed to inhibit contact, to cut off the delivery on its way to Moscow, and nothing could achieve this more effectively than a VKR agent knowing he might expose the fugitive if he kept a rendezvous, or Pierce realizing he might be caught if he made one.
Helicopters crisscrossed along the Mexican border by the scores, following small aircraft; radio checks were constant, and planes with unsatisfactory replies were ordered to return and searched. Off the coasts of Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas, navy jets soared low over the water, tracking boats that veered too far southeast; radios were used here, too, and unless explanations were satisfactory, directions were altered. Out of Corpus Christi, other jets and Coast Guard patrols spotted and intercepted fishing and pleasure craft on their way toward Mexican waters; fortunately, inclement weather in the western Gulf had reduced their number. None made contact with other boats; none went beyond Port Isabel or Brazos Island.
It was a quarter to four when Havelock, exhausted, returned to the couch. “We’re holding,” he said. “Unless we’ve missed something, we’re holding. But we may have …” He fell onto the pillows. “I’ve got to go back to the names. He’s there. Parsifal’s there and I have to find him! Berquist says we can’t go beyond tonight, he can’t take the chance. The world can’t take the chance.”
“But Pierce never got into that room,” protested Jenna. “He never saw the agreements.”
“The psychiatric file on Matthias spells them out—in ail their insanity. In some ways it’s worse. A diagnosed madman running the foreign policy of the most powerful, most feared country on earth. We’re lepers … Berquist said we’ll be lepers. If we’re alive.”
The telephone rang; Michael expelled his breath and buried his head. The mists were closing in again, now enveloping him, suffocating him.
“Yes, thank you very much,” said Jenna into the phone across the room.
“What is it?” asked Havelock, opening his eyes, staring at the floor.
“The Central Intelligence Agency unearthed five more photographs. That leaves only one, and that man they’re quite sure is dead. Others may be also, of course.”
“Photographs? Of what, whom?”
“The old men on my list.”
“Oh?” Michael turned over; his eyes, fixed on the ceiling, were closing rapidly. “Old men,” he whispered. “Why?”
“Sleep, Mikhail. You must sleep. You’re no good to yourself or anyone else this way.” Jenna walked to the couch and knelt beside him. She pressed her lips lightly against his check. “Sleep, my darling.”
Jenna sat at the desk, and each time the phone began to ring she pounced on it like a breathless cat protecting its lair from predators. The calls came from everywhere—progress reports issued by men who were following orders blindly.
They were holding.
* * *
The handsome couple in riding breeches, boots and emblazoned red jackets galloped across the field on their hunters—the horses straining, nostrils flared, long legs pounding the hard earth and plunging through the tall grass. In the distance to their right was a split-rail fence signifying the property line of an adjacent estate, and beyond it was another field that disappeared into a wall of giant maples and oaks. The man gestured at the fence, laughing and nodding his head. The woman at first feigned surprise and maidenly reluctance, then suddenly whipped her mount to the right and raced ahead of her companion, high in the saddle as she approached the fence. She soared over it, followed by the man only yards behind and to her left; they rode swiftly toward the edge of the woods, where both reined in their horses. The woman grimaced as she came to a stop.
“Damn!” she shouted. “I pulled the muscle in my calf! It’s screaming!”
“Get off and walk around. Don’t sit on it.”
The woman dismounted as the man reached over for the reins of her horse. His companion walked in circles, her limp pronounced, swearing under her breath.
“Good God, where are we?” she asked, half shouting.
“I think it’s the Heffernans’ place. How’s the leg?”
“Murder, absolute murder! Christ!”
“You can’t ride on it.”
“I can hardly walk on it, you damn fool.”
“Temper, temper. Come on, let’s find a phone.” The man and woman started through the edge of trees, the man leading both horses, threading them around several thick trunks. “Here,” he said, reaching for a low branch on a thick bush. “I can tie them up here and come back for them; they won’t go anywhere.”
“Then you can help me. This really is excruciating.”
The horses tied and grazing, the couple began to walk. Through the trees they could see the outlines of the wide semicircular drive at the front entrance of the large house. They also saw the figure of a man who seemed to emerge out of nowhere. He was in a gabardine topcoat, with both hands in his pockets. They met and the man in the topcoat spoke. “May I help you? This is private property.”
“I trust we all have private property, old man,” replied the sportsman supporting the woman. “My wife pulled a muscle over our last jump. She can’t ride.”
“What?”
“Horses, sport. Our horses are tied up back there. We were doing a little pre-hunt work over the course before Saturday’s meet, and I’m afraid we came a cropper, as they say. Take us to a phone, please.”
“Well, I … I …”
“This is the Heffernans’ house, isn’t it?” demanded the husband.
“Yes, but Mr, and Mrs. Heffernan are not here, sir. Our orders are to allow no one inside.”
“Oh, shit!” exploded the wife. “How tacky can you be? My leg hurts, you ass! I need a ride back to the club.”
“One of the men will be happy to drive you, ma’am.”
“And my chauffeur can bloody well come and pick me up! Really, just who are these Heffernans? Are they members, darling?”
“I don’t think so, Buff. Look, the man has his orders, and tacky as they are, it’s not his fault. You go along and I’ll take the horses back.”
“They’d better not try to become members,” said the wife as the two men helped her across the drive to an automobile.
The man walked back through the woods to the horses, untied them, and led them across the field, where he lowered the rails and prodded them through into the tall grass. He replaced the rails, mounted his hunter and, with the woman’s horse in tow, trotted south over the course of Saturday’s hunt—as he understood the course to be from his first and only study of the charts as a guest of the club.
He reached under his saddle and pulled out a powerful hand-held radio; he pressed a switch and raised the instrument to his lips.
“There are two cars,” he said into the radio. “A black Lincoln, license plate seven-four-zero, MRL; and a dark green Buick, license one-three-seven, GMJ. The place is ringed with guards, and there are no rear exit roads. The windows are thick; you’d need a cannon to blow through them, and we were picked up by density infrareds.”
“Got it” was the reply, amplified over the tiny speaker. “We’re mainly interested in the vehicles.… By the way, I can see the Buick now.”
The man with the various saws dipped to and dangling from his wide leather belt was high up in the tall pine tree bordering the road, his safety strap around it and clamped to his harness. He shoved the hand-held radio into its holster and adjusted the binoculars to his eyes, looking diagonally down through the branches, focusing on the automobile coming out of the tree-lined drive.
The view was clean, all angles covered. No cars could enter or leave the premises of Sterile Five without being seen-even at night; the capabilities of infrared applied to lenses as well as trip lights.
The man whistled; the door of the truck far below opened, and on its panel were the words HIGH TOP TREE SURGEONS. A second man stepped out and looked up.
“Take off,” said the man above, loud enough to be heard. “Relieve me in two hours.”
The driver of the truck headed north for a mile and a half to the first intersection. There was a gas station on the right; the doors of its repair shop were open, and an automobile was inside, off the ground on a hydraulic lift, facing front. The driver reached for the switch and snapped his headlights on and off. Instantly, within the garage’s shop the headlights of the car on the lift flashed on and off—the signal had been acknowledged, the vehicle was in position. The station’s owner believed he was cooperating—confidentially—with the narcotics division of the state police. It was the least a citizen could do.
The driver swung to his right, then immediately to the left, making a U-turn between the converging roads; he headed south. Three minutes later he passed the pine tree that concealed his companion beyond the branches near the top. Under different circumstances he might have touched his horn; he couldn’t now. There could be no sound, no sight that marked in any way that area of the road. Instead, he accelerated and in fifty seconds came to another intersection, the first south of Sterile Five.
Diagonally across on the left was a small country inn, miniature antebellum in design—a large dollhouse built to bring back memories of an old plantation. In the back was a black asphalt parking lot, where perhaps a dozen cars were lined up, like large brightly colored toys. Except one, the fourth from the end, with a clear view of the intersection and swift access to the exit Facing front, it was layered with dirt, a poor relation in the company of its shiny, expensive cousins.
Again the driver leaned forward and flicked his headlights on and off. The dirty automobile—with an engine more powerful than any other in the lot-did the same. Another signal was acknowledged. Whatever emerged from Sterile Five could be picked up in either direction.
Arthur Pierce studied his face in the mirror of the run-down motel on the outskirts of Falls Church, Virginia; he was satisfied with what he saw. The fringe of gray circling his shaved head was in concert with the rimless glasses and the shabby brown cardigan sweater worn over the soiled white shirt with the frayed collar. He was the image of the loser, whose minor talents and lack of illusion kept him securely, if barely, above the poverty level. Nothing was ventured because it was useless. Why bother? No one stopped such men on the street; they walked too slowly; they were inconsequential.
Pierce turned from the mirror and walked across the room to the road map spread out under the light of a plastic lamp on the cheap, stained desk against the wall. On the right, holding the map in place, was a gray metal container with the emblem of the United States Navy stamped on the top, the medical insignia below it, and a brass, built-in combination lock on the side. In it was a document as lethal as any in history. The psychiatric diagnosis of a statesman the world revered, a diagnosis labeling that man as insane—as having been insane while functioning as the international voice of one of the two most powerful nations on earth. And the nation that permitted this intolerable condition to exist could no longer serve as the leader of the cause it espoused. A madman had betrayed not only his own government but the world-lying, deceiving, misleading, forging alliances with enemies, scheming against supposed allies. No matter that he was insane, it had happened. It was all there.
The steel container contained an incredible weapon, but for it to be used with devastating effect it had to reach the proper hands in Moscow. Not the tired old compromisers, but the visionaries with the strength and the will to move swiftly to bring the corrupt, incompetent giant to its knees. The possibility that the Matthias file might fall into soft, wrinkled hands in Moscow was insufferable; it would be bartered, negotiated, finally thrown away by weak men frightened of the very people they controlled. No, thought Arthur Pierce, this metal container belonged to the VKR. Only to the Voennaya.
He could afford no risks, and several phone calls had convinced him that there was risk in channeling it out with the few he could trust. As expected, embassy and consulate personnel were under heavy surveillance; all international flights were monitored, and hand and cargo luggage X-rayed. Too much risk.
He would bring it out himself, along with the ultimate weapon, the terminal weapon, documents that called for successive nuclear strikes against Soviet Russia and the People’s Republic of China—agreements signed by the great American Secretary of State. They were nuclear fantasies conceived by an insane genius, working with one of the most brilliant minds ever produced by the Soviet Union. Fantasies so real that the tired old men in the Kremlin would run for their dachas and their vodka, leaving decisions to those who could cope, to the men of the Voennaya.
Where was the brilliant mind that had made it all possible? The man who had turned on his homeland only to learn the truth—that he had been wrong. So wrong! Where was Parsifal? Where was Alexei Kalyazin?
With these thoughts Pierce turned to the map again. The inept—and not so inept—Havelock had mentioned the Shenandoah—that the man they called Parsifal was somewhere in the Shenandoah area, by implication within a reasonable distance of Matthias’s country home. The implied reasonable distance, however, was the variable quotient. The Shenandoah Valley was more than a hundred miles long, over twenty miles wide, from the Allegheny to the Blue Ridge Mountains. What might be considered reasonable? There was no reasonable answer, so the solution was to be found in the opposite direction. In the plodding mind of Michael Havelock—Mikhail Havlíček, son of Václav, named for a Russian grandfather from Rovno—a man whose talents lay in persistence and a degree of imagination, not brilliance. Havelock would reduce the arc, put in use a hundred computers to trace a single telephone call made at a specific time to a specific place to a man he called a zealot Havelock would do the work and a paminyatchik would reap the benefits. Lieutenant Commander Decker would be left alone; be was a key that might well unlock a door.
Pierce bent over the map, his index finger shifting from one line to another. The arc, the semicircle that blanketed the Shenandoah from Sterile Five, was covered, with men and vehicles in position. From Harpers Ferry to the Valley Pike, Highways 11 and 66, Routes 7, 50,15, 17, 29, and 33, all were manned, waiting for word that a specific car was approaching at a specific time heading for a specific place. That place was to be determined and reported; nothing else was required of the men in those vehicles. They were hirelings, not participants, their time paid for in money, not purpose or destiny.
Arthur Pierce, born Nikolai Petrovich Malyekov in the village of Ramenskoye, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, suddenly thought about that destiny, and the years that had led to his own electrifying part in it. He had never wavered, never forgotten who he was or why he had been given the supreme opportunity to serve the ultimate cause, a cause so meaningful and so necessary for a world where the relative few tyrannized the many, where millions upon millions lived on the edge of despair or in hopeless poverty so that the capitalist manipulators could laugh over global balance sheets while their armies burned pajama-clad children in faraway lands. This was fact, not provocative propaganda. He had seen it all for himself—from the burning villages in Southeast Asia to the corporate dining rooms where offers of employment were accompanied by grins and winks and promises of stock options that were the first steps toward wealth, to the inner corridors of government power where hypocrites and incompetents encouraged more hypocrisy and incompetence. God, he hated it all! Hated the corruption and the greed and the sanctimonious Bars who deceived the masses to whom they were responsible, abusing the powers given them, lining their pockets and the pockets of their own.… There was a better way. There was commitment. There was the Voennaya.
He had been thirteen years old when he was told by the loving couple he called Mother and Father. They explained while holding him and gazing into his eyes to let him see their love. He was theirs, they said, but he was also not theirs. He had been born to a chosen couple thousands of miles away who loved him so much they gave him to the State, to a cause that would make a better world for generations to come. And as his “mother” and “father” spoke, so many things in Arthur Pierce’s young memory began to fall into place. All the discussions—not only with his “mother” and “father,” but with the scores of visitors who came so frequently to the farmhouse—discussions that told of suffering and oppression and of a despotic form of government that would be replaced by a government dedicated to the people—all the people.
He was to be a part of that change. Over the early years certain other visitors had come and had given him games to play, puzzles to work, exercises to read—tests that graded his capabilities. And one day when he was thirteen he was pronounced extraordinary; on that same day he was told his real name. He was ready to join the cause.
It would not be easy, his “mother” and “father” had said, but he was to remember when pressures seemed overwhelming that they were there, always there. And should anvthing happen to them, others would take their place to help him, encourage him, guide him, knowing that still others were watching. He was to be the best in all things; he was to be American—kind, generous and, above all, seemingly fair; he was to use his gifts to rise as far as he was capable of rising. But he was never to forget who and what he was or the cause that gave him the gift of life and the opportunity to help make the world better than it was.
Things after that auspicious day were not as difficult as his “mother” and “father” had predicted. Through his high school years and college, his secret served to prod him—because it was his secret and he was extraordinary. They were years of exhilaration: each new prize and award was proof of his superiority. He found it easy to be liked; as though in a never-ending popularity contest, the crown was always his. Yet there was self-denial, too, and it served to remind him of his commitment. He had many friends but no deep friendships, no relationships. Men liked him but accepted his basic distance, ascribing it usually to his having to find jobs to pay his way through school. Women he used only for sexual release and formed no attachments whatsoever, generally meeting them miles away from wherever he was living.
During his postgraduate studies at Michigan he was contacted by Moscow and told his new life was about to begin. The meeting was not without amusement, the contact a recruitment executive from a large conservative corporation who had supposedly read the graduate student files and wanted to meet one Arthur Pierce. But there was nothing amusing in his news; it was deadly serious—and exhilarating.
He was to join the army, where certain opportunities would be found leading to advancement, and further advancement, and contact with civilian and military authorities. He would serve out an appropriate amount of time and return not to the Midwest but to Washington, where word of his record and talents would be spread. Companies would be lined up, anxious to employ him, but the government would step in. He was to accept.
But first the army—and he was to give it everything he had, he was to continue to be the best. His “father” and “mother” had thrown him a farewell party on the farm, and invited all his friends, including most of the old Boy Scout Troop 37. And it was a farewell party in more than one sense. His “father” and “mother” told him at the end of the night that they would not see him again. They were getting old and they had done their job: him. And he would make them proud. Besides, their talents were needed elsewhere. He understood; the cause was everything.
For the first time since he was thirteen, he had cried that night. But it was permitted—and, besides, they were tears of joy.
All those years, thought Arthur Pierce, glancing in the cheap motel mirror at the fringe of gray and the frayed collar around his neck. They had been worth it; the proof would be found in the next few hours.
The waiting had begun. The reward would be a place in history.
Michael opened his eyes, a sea of dark brown leather confronting him, moisture everywhere, the heat oppressive. He turned over and raised his head, suddenly aware that it was not sunlight but the glow of a distant lamp that washed the room. He was drenched with sweat It was night, and he was not ready for night. What had happened?
“Dobrý den.” The greeting floated over to him.
“What time is it?” he asked, sitting up on the couch.
“Ten past seven,” said Jenna, who was sitting at the desk. “You slept a little over three hours. How do you feel?”
“I don’t know. Left out, I think. What’s going on?”
“Not a great deal. As you said, we’re holding. Did you know that the lights on these buttons actually go on before the telephone rings? Only a split-second, but they do.”
“It’s not comforting. Who called?”
“Very serious, bewildered men reporting nothing, reporting that they had nothing to report. Several asked how long they were to keep up what they referred to as their ‘reconnaissance.’ I said until they were told otherwise.”
“That says it.”
“The photographs arrived.”
“What …? Oh, your list.”
“They’re on the coffee table. Look at them.”
Havelock focused on the row of five grainy faces staring at him. He rubbed his eyes and wiped the perspiration from his hairline, blinking repeatedly as he tried to concentrate. He began with the face on the far left; it meant nothing to him. Then the next, and the next, and the … next.
“Him,” he said, not knowing why he said it.
“Who?”
“The fourth one. Who is he?”
Jenna glanced down at a paper in front of her. “It’s a very old picture, taken in 1948. The only one they could find. It’s over thirty years old.”
“Who is he? Who was he?”
“A man named Kalyazin. Alexei Kalyazin. Do you recognize him?” Jenna got up from the desk.
“Yes … no. I don’t know.”
“It’s an old photograph, Mikhail. Look at it. Study it. The eyes, the chin, the shape of the mouth. Where? Who?”
“I don’t know. It’s there … and it’s not there. What did he do?”
“He was a clinical psychotherapist,” said Jenna, reading. “He wrote definitive studies evaluating the effects on men of the stress of combat or prolonged periods of enduring unnatural conditions. His expertise was used by the KGB; he became what you call here a strategist, but with a difference. He screened information sent in to the KGB by people in the field, looking for deviations that might reveal either double agents or men no longer capable of functioning in their jobs.”
“An evaluator. A flake with a penchant for overlooking the obvious.”
“I don’t understand you.”
“Gunslingers. They never spot the gunslingers.”
“I still don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I don’t know him. It’s a face like so many other faces, so many dossiers. God, the faces!”
“But there’s something!”
“Maybe, I’m not sure.”
“Keep looking at it. Concentrate.”
“Coffee. Is there any coffee?”
“I forgot,” said Jenna. “The first rule upon waking is coffee. Black and too strong. You are Czech, Mikhail.” She went to the table behind the couch, where an accommodating guard had plugged in the silver pot.
“The first rule,” repeated Havelock, suddenly disturbed. “The first rule?”
“What?”
“Where are your notes on Decker’s telephone call?”
“You had them.”
“Where are they?”
“Down there. On the table.”
“Where?”
“Under the last photograph. On the right.”
Get yourself a drink. You know the rules.
Michael threw the photograph of an unknown face off the table, and gripped the two notebook pages. He stared at them, shifting them back and forth.
“Oh, my God! The rules, the goddamned rules!”
Havelock got up and lurched toward the desk, his legs unsteady, his balance fragile.
“What is it?” asked Jenna, alarmed, the cup in her hand.
“Decker!” shouted Michael “Where are the notes on Decker?”
“Right there. On the left. The pad.”
Havelock riffled through the pages, his hand trembling again, his eyes seeing and not seeing, looking for the words. He found them.
“ ‘An odd accent,” ’ he whispered “ ‘An odd accent,’ but what accent?”
He grabbed the phone, barely able to control his finger as he dialed. “Get me Lieutenant Commander Decker, you’ve got his number on your index.”
“Mikhail, get hold of yourself.”
“Shut up!” The elongated buzz signified the ring; the wait was intolerable.
“Hello?” said the tentative voice of a woman.
“Commander Decker, please.”
“I’m … terribly sorry, he’s not here.”
“He’s there to me! This is Mr. Cross calling. Get him on the phone.”
Twenty seconds elapsed, and Michael thought his head would explode.
“What is it, Mr. Cross?” Decker asked.
“You said an ‘odd accent.’ What did you mean?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“The call! The call you got from Matthias, from the one who said he was speaking for Matthias! When you said he had an odd accent, did you mean foreign, Russian?”
“No, not at all. It was high-pitched and very Anglicized. Almost British, but not British.”
“Good night, Commander,” said Michael, hanging up.
Pour yourself a drink … you know the rules here.… Come now, we’re both out Freshen yours and do mine while you’re at it. That’s also pari of the rules, remember?
Havelock picked up the phone again, pulling the list of numbers in front of him. He dialed. The waiting was almost a pleasure, but it was too short; he needed time to adjust. Poole’s Island!
“This is Mr. Cross. Let me have Security, please.”
Two short hums were heard, and the officer on duty answered, “Checkpoint.”
“This is Cross. Executive order, priority-zero. Please confirm.”
“Start counting,” said the voice.
“One, two, three, four, five, six—”
“Okay. Scanners match. What is it, Mr. Cross?”
“Who was the officer who took an emergency leave approximately six weeks ago?”
The silence was interminable; when the reply came, it was a matter-of-fact response by a knowledgeable man. “Your information’s incorrect, Mr. Cross. There’s been no request for an emergency leave from the officer corps or anyone else. No one’s left the island.”
“Thank you, Security.”
Alexander the Great … Raymond Alexander!
Fox Hollow!