39

The night sky was oddly divided—clear moonlight behind, a ceiling of darkness ahead. The two automobiles raced over the country roads, the men in the Lincoln committed to protection without understanding, and Michael and Jenna understanding too well and afraid.

“There are no rules now,” said Michael. “The book hasn’t been written.”

“He’s capable of change, that’s all you really know. He was sent here for one purpose and walked over to the other side.”

“Or did he stumble? Alexander and Zelienski—Kalyazin—told them he felt old and worn—out, the pressures too great. Maybe he just gave up and walked into sanctuary.”

“Until he found another commitment and accepted an entirely different set of pressures,” said Jenna. “Exhilarating pressures for a man of his age, I imagine. He’s over seventy, isn’t he?”

“Around there, I’d guess.”

“Think of it. The end may not come for a long time but, still, it’s in sight. And as you approach it you suddenly find you’ve discovered an extraordinary solution you believe the world needs desperately, a lesson it has to be taught. What do you do?”

Havelock glanced at her. “That’s what frightens me. Why should you move off center? How can I make him move?”

“I wish I could answer that.” Jenna looked up at the windshield—at the myriad globules of water forming over the glass. “We’re heading into the rain,” she said.

“Unless there’s another solution,” said Michael quietly, switching on the wipers. “Exchange one lesson for another.”

“What?”

“I’m not sure, I don’t know. There aren’t any rules.” Havelock reached for the microphone and pulled it to his lips. “Escort, are you with me?”

“About four hundred feet behind, Sterile Five.”

“Slow down and make it at least a mile and a half. We’re getting into the area, and to a lot of people you’re an obvious government vehicle. I don’t want any connection between us or any startled eyes. If the man I’m making contact with gets even a hint of you, I don’t want to think about the consequences.”

“We don’t like the distance,” said the escort.

“Sorry to offend, but it’s an order. Stay out of sight. You know the destination; just take the mountain road as I described it. Seneca something or other. Go up about half a mile. We’ll be there.”

“Would you mind repeating the order, sir?”

Michael did so. “Is that clear?”

“Yes, Sterile Five. It’s also on tape.”

The dirt-layered car met the blanket of rain, dust and mud dissolving under the downpour. The driver swung into a long curve as the red signal tight on the powerful radio amplifier suddenly glowed.

“We’re on a different frequency,” said the man in the passenger seat as he reached for the microphone. He pressed the scanner for contact. “Yes?” he said.

“South?”

“We’re here.”

“It’s Victor. I’m approaching Warrenton on Sixty-six. Where are you?”

The man with the microphone studied the map on his lap with a pencil light. “North on Seventeen, heading into Marshall. You can pick it up in Warrenton.”

“Status?”

“Normal. We figure once they reach Marshall, they’ll either continue north on Seventeen or head west on the Front Royal Road. The turns are getting hairy; we’re going into the mountains.”

“We’ve got men covering both routes up there. I want to know which road they take and the distance between Sterile Five and his escort. Use this channel. I should catch up with you in ten to fifteen minutes.”

“What flight plan?”

“My own.”

The blond man sitting in the brown sedan in front of the Blue Ridge Diner slumped back in the seat, the microphone in his hand, his eyes on the road. He depressed the button. “It’s the Front Royal Road,” he said as the Buick coupe rushed by in the rain. “Right on time and in a hurry.”

“How far behind is the Lincoln?” asked the voice from the speaker.

“No sign of it yet.”

“You’re surer?”

“No headlights, and anyone damn fool enough to drive up here in this mess isn’t going to roll in the dark.”

It’s not normal. I’ll be right back.”

“It’s your equipment.”

The blond man lowered the microphone and reached for the cigarettes on the seat beside him. He jerked one out of the pack, put it to his lips, and snapped his butane lighter. Thirty seconds went by and still the Lincoln Continental had not come into view; nothing was in view but sheets of rain. Forty-five seconds. Nothing. A minute, and the voice, accompanied by static, burst out of the speaker. “Front Royal, where are you?”

“Here and waiting. You said you’d be right back, remember?”

“The escort. Has it gone by?”

“Nope. If it had, I would have rung you up, pal.… Wait. Stay there. We may have it.” A stream of light came out of the curve, and seconds later the long, dark car roared by in the downpour. “He just went by, old buddy. I’ll roll now.” The blond man sat up and eased the sedan out into the road.

“I’ll be right back,” said the voice.

“You keep repeating yourself, pal,” said the blond man, stopping on the accelerator. Gathering speed while watching the rain-soaked road closely, he saw the red taillights of the Lincoln flickering in the distance through the downpour. He breathed easier.

“Front Royal,” erupted the voice from the speaker.

“Right here, li’l darlin’.”

“Scan to seventeen-twenty megahertz for separate instructions.”

“Scanning now.” The blond man reached down and pressed the metal button; the digital readouts appeared on the narrow horizontal strip above the radio’s dials. “Front Royal in position,” he said.

“This is the man you don’t know, Front Royal.”

“Nice not to know you, old buddy.”

“How much are you being paid for tonight?” asked the new voice.

“Since you’re the man I don’t know, I figure you ought to know how much.”

“How good are you?”

“Very. How good’s your money?”

“You’ve been paid.”

“Not for what you want now.”

“You’re perceptive.”

“You’re kind of obvious.”

“That big fellow up ahead. He knows where the little fellow’s going, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Sure would. There’s a lot of space between them, ’specially for a night like this.”

“Do you think you could get between them?”

“Can do. Then what?”

“A bonus.”

“For what?”

“The little fellow’s going to stop somewhere. After he does, I don’t want the big fellow around him any longer.”

“You’re talking about a pretty big bonus, Mr. No-Name. That car’s an Abraham.”

“Six figures,” said the voice. “A reckless driver. Very feckless and very accurate.”

“You’re on, li’l darlin’.”

*   *   *

Arthur Pierce nodded through the window and the rain as he passed the old car four miles down the Front Royal Road. He lifted the microphone and spoke on the 1720 frequency.

“All right, South, here’s the manual. You stay with me, everyone else is dismissed. Thank them all for their time and say we’ll be in touch.”

“What about North? They travel.”

“I want them back with the naval contingent. It’s theirs now; they can alternate. Sooner or later—tonight, tomorrow, the next day—they’ll let him out. When they do, terminate. We don’t want to hear his voice.”

Havelock stopped the car and lowered the window; he peered through the rain at the sign nailed to the tree, feeling certain it was the one. It was:

SENECA’S NOTCH

DEAD END

He had driven Leon Zelienski home twice, once in the afternoon when the old man’s car would not start, and then several years later on a night like tonight when Matthias was worried that Leon might get stuck in the mud. Zelienski had not gotten stuck, but Michael had; it had been a long, wet walk back to Anton’s house. He remembered the roads.

He had taken Leon Zelienski home; he was coming after Alexei Kalyazin. Parsifal.

“Here we go,” said Havelock, turning up into the rock-hewn road with only remnants of long-eroded tarring on its surface. “If we stay in the center we should make it.”

“Stay in the center,” said Jenna.

They lurched and skidded up the narrow road, drenched darkness all around them, tires spinning, hurling loose rock behind and up into the metal fenders. The jarring ride did nothing to steady their nerves or set the tone for awesome negotiations. Michael had been brutal with Raymond Alexander, knowing he was right, but only partly right. He began to understand the other aspect of the journalist’s profound fear, fear that was driving him to the edge of hysteria. Zelienski’s threat was clear and terrifying! should Alexander betray the Russian or interfere in any way, the daily telephone call that Zelienski placed from various booths would not be made. The silence would be the signal for the nuclear agreements to be sent to Moscow and Peking.

And chemicals could not be used to force Zelienski to reveal the number that he was calling; there was too great a risk with a man of his age. One cubic centimeter of excess dosage and his heart could blow apart, and the number would be lost with the internal explosion. There were only words. What were the words one found for a man who would save the world with a blueprint for its annihilation? There was no reason in such a mind, nothing but its own distorted vision.

The small house came into view above them on the right; it was hardly larger than a cabin, square in design and made of heavy stone. A sloping dirt driveway ended in a carport, where a nondescript automobile stood motionless, protected from the downpour. A single light shone through a bay window, which was oddly out of place in the small dwelling.

Havelock switched off the headlights and turned to Jenna. “It all began here,” he said. “In the mind of the man up there. All of it. From the Costa Brava to Poole’s Island, from Col de Moulinets to Sterile Five; it started here.”

“Can we end it here, Mikhail?”

“Let’s try. Let’s go.”

They got out of the car and walked through the rain up the wet, soft mud of the driveway, rivulets of water racing down around their feet. They reached the carport; there was a door centered under the attached roof with a concrete step below. Havelock walked to the door; he looked briefly at Jenna and then knocked.

Moments later the door opened, and a slight, stooped old man with only a few strands of hair and a small white beard peppered with gray stood in the open space. As he stared at Havelock his eyes grew wide and his mouth parted, lips trembling.

“Mikhail,” he whispered.

“Hello, Leon. I bring you Anton’s affection.”

The blond man had seen the sign. The only part meaningful to him were the words Dead End. It was all he had to know. With his headlights still extinguished, he maneuvered the brown sedan several hundred feet down the smooth wet road and stopped on the far right, motor idling. He turned the headlights back on and reached under his coat to remove a large automatic with a silencer attached. He understood Mr. No-Name’s instructions; they were in sequence. The Lincoln would be along any moment now.

There it was! Two hundred yards away at the mouth of the road that branched off the highway. The blond man released the brake and began coasting, spinning the wheel back and forth, weaving—the unmistakable sign of a drunken, reckless driver. Cautiously the limousine slowed down, pulling as far to the right as possible. The blond man accelerated, and the weaving became more violent as the Lincoln’s horn roared through the torrents of rain. When he was within thirty feet, the blond man suddenly pressed the accelerator to the floor and swung to the right before making a sharp turn to the left.

The impact came, the sedan’s grille ramming the left rear door of the Lincoln. The sedan skidded and crashed into the entire side of the other car, pinning the driver’s door.

“Goddamn you sons of bitches!” screamed the blond man through the open window, slurring his words, his head swaying back and forth. “Holy Christ, I’m bleeding! My whole stomach’s bleeding!”

The two men lurched out of the limousine from the other side. As they came running around the hood in the blinding glare of the headlights the blond man leaned out the window and fired twice. Accurately.

“Do I call you Leon or Alexei?”

“I can’t believe you!” cried the old Russian, sitting in front of the fire, his eyes rheumy and blinking, riveted on Havelock. “It was degenerative, irreversible. There was no hope.”

“There are very few minds, very few wills like Anton’s. Whether he’ll ever regain his full capacities no one can tell, but he’s come back a long way. Drugs helped, electrotherapy as well; he’s cognizant now. And appalled at what he did.” Havelock sat down in the straight-backed chair opposite Zelienski-Kalyazin. Jenna remained standing by the door that led to the small kitchen.

“It’s never happened!”

“There’s never been a man like Matthias, either. He asked for me; they sent me to Poole’s bland and he told me everything. Only me.”

“Poole’s Island?”

“It’s where he’s being treated. Is it Leon or Alexei, old friend?”

Kalyazin shook his head. “Not Leon, it’s never been Leon. Always Alexei.”

“You had good years as Leon Zelienski.”

“Enforced sanctuary, Mikhail. I am a Russian, nothing else. Sanctuary.”

Havelock and Jenna exchanged glances, her eyes telling him that she approved—approved with enormous admiration—the course he had suddenly chosen.

“You came over to us … Alexei.”

“I did not come over to you. I fled others. Men who would corrupt the soul of my homeland, who went beyond the bounds of our convictions, who killed needlessly, wantonly, seeking only power for its own sake. I believe in our system, Mikhail, not yours. But these men did not; they would have changed words into weapons and then no one would have been proven right. We’d all be gone.”

“Jackals,” said Havelock, repeating the word he had heard only hours ago, “fanatics who in their heads marched with the Third Reich. Who didn’t believe time was on your side, only bombs.”

“That will suffice.”

“The Voennaya.”

Kalyazin’s head snapped up. “I never told Matthias that!”

“I never told him, either. I’ve been in the field for sixteen years. Do you think I don’t know the VKR?”

“They do not speak for Russia, not our Russia! … Anton and I would argue until the early hours of the morning. He couldn’t understand; he came from a background of brilliance and respectability, money and a full table. Over here none of you will ever understand, except the black people, perhaps. We had nothing and were told to expect nothing, not in this world. Books, schools, simple reading—these were not for us, the millions of us. We were placed on this earth as the earth’s cattle, worked and disposed of by our ‘betters’—decreed by God.…. My grandfather was hanged by a Voroshin prince for stealing game. Stealing game! … All that was changed—by the millions of us, led by prophets who had no use for a God who decreed human cattle.” An odd smile appeared on Kalyazin’s thin white lips. “They call us atheistic Communists. What would they have us be? We knew what it was like under the Holy Church! A God who threatens enternal fires if one rises up against a living hell is no God for nine-tenths of mankind. He can and should be replaced, dismissed for incompetence and unwarranted partiality.”

“That argument is hardly restricted to prerevolutionary Russia,” said Michael.

“Certainly not, but it’s symptomatic … and we were there! It’s why you’ll lose one day. Not in this decade or the next—perhaps not for many, many years, but you’ll lose. Too many tables are bare, too many stomachs swollen, and you care too little.”

“If that proves to be true, then we deserve to lose. I don’t think it is.” Havelock leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and looked into the old Russian’s eyes. “Are you telling me you were given sanctuary but you gave nothing in return?”

“Not of my country’s secrets, nor did Anton ever ask me a second time. I think he considered the work I did—the work you did before you resigned—to be in the main quite pointless. Our decisions counted for very little; our accomplishments were not important at the summits. I did, however, give you a gift that served us both, served the world as well. I gave you Anthony Matthias. I saved him from the Cuban trap; it would have driven him from office. I did so because I believed in him, and not in the madmen who temporarily had far too much control of my government.”

“Yes, he told me. He would have been destroyed, his influence finished.… It’s on that basis—your belief in him—that he asked me to come and see you. It’s got to stop, Leon—excuse me—Alexei. He knows why you did what you did, but it’s got to stop.”

Kalyazin’s gaze strayed to Jenna. “Where is the hatred in your eyes, young lady? Surely, it must be there.”

“I won’t lie to you, it’s close to my thoughts. I’m trying to understand.”

“It had to be done; there was no other way. Anton had to be rid of the specter of Mikhail. He had to know he was far away from the government, with other interests, other pursuits. He was so afraid his … his son … would learn of his work and come to stop him.” Kalyazin turned to Havelock. “He couldn’t get you out of his mind.”

“He approved of what you did?” asked Michael.

“He looked away, I think, a part of him revolted by himself, another part crying to survive. He was failing rapidly by then, his sanity pleading to be left intact whatever the cost. Miss Karas became the price.”

“He never asked you how you did it? How you reached men in Moscow to provide what you needed?”

“Never. That, too, was part of the price. Remember, the world you and I lived in was very unimportant to him. Then, of course, everything became chaos …”

“Out of control?” suggested Jenna.

“Yes, young lady. The things we heard were so unbelievable, so horrible. A woman killed on a beach …”

“What did you expect?” asked Havelock, controlling himself and not finding it easy. Two … three demented old men.

“Not that. We weren’t killers. Anton had given orders that she was to be sent back to Prague and watched, her contacts observed, and eventually her innocence was to be established.”

“Those orders were intercepted, changed.”

“By then he could do nothing. You had disappeared and he finally went completely, totally mad.”

“Disappeared? I disappeared?”

“That’s what he was told. And when they told him he collapsed, his mind went. He thought he’d killed you, too. It was the final pressure he could not withstand.”

“How do you know this?” pressed Michael.

Kalyazin balked, his rheumy eyes blinking. “There was someone else. He had sources, a doctor. He found out.”

“Raymond Alexander,” said Havelock.

“Anton told you, then?”

“Boswell.”

“Yes, our Boswell.”

“You mentioned him when I called you from Europe.”

“I was frightened. I thought you might speak to someone who had seen him at Anton’s house; he was there so often. I wanted to give you a perfectly acceptable reason for his visits, to keep you away from him.”

“Why?”

“Because Alexander the Great has become Alexander the Diseased. You’ve been away, you don’t know. He rarely writes anymore. He drinks all day and most of the night; he can’t stand the strain. Fortunately, for his public, there’s the death of his wife to blame it on.”

“Matthias told me you had a wife,” said Michael, his ear picking up something in Kalyazin’s voice. “In California. She died and he persuaded you to come here to the Shenandoah.”

“I had a wife, Mikhail. In Moscow. And she was killed by the soldiers of Stalin. A man I helped destroy, a man who came from the Voennaya.”

“I’m sorry.”

A brief rattling somewhere in the small house was louder than the pounding rain outside. Jenna looked at Havelock.

“It’s nothing,” said Kalyazin. “There’s a piece of wood, a wedge, I place in that old door on windy nights. The sight of you made me forget.” The old man leaned back in his chair and brought his thin, veined hands to his chin. “You must be very clear with me, Mikhail, and you must give me time to think. It’s why I did not answer you a few moments ago.”

“About Anton?”

“Yes. Does he really know why I did what I did? Why I took him through those terrible nights? Auto and external suggestion, swelling him up until he performed like the genius he was, debating with men who weren’t there. Does he really understand?”

“Yes, he does,” replied Havelock, feeling a thousand pounds on the back of his neck. He was so close, but a wrong response would send this Parsifal back into self-imposed, unbreakable silence. Alexander was right, after all; Kalyazin had a Christ complex. Beneath the old Russian’s mild speech was a commitment forged in steel. He knew he was right. “No single man,” said Michael, “should be given such power and the strains of that power ever again. He begs you, pleads with you on the strength of all the talks vou and he had before his illness, to give me those incredible agreements you both created and whatever copies exist. Let me burn them.”

“He understands, then, but is it enough? Do the others? Have they learned?”

“Who?”

“The men who allocate such power, who permit the canonization of would-be saints only to find that their heroes are only mortals, broken by swollen egos, and by the demands made on them.”

“They’re terrified. What more do you want?”

I want them to know what they’ve done, how this world can be set on fire by a single brilliant mind caught in the vortex of unbearable pressures. The madness is contagious; it does not stop with a broken saint.”

“They understand. Above all, the one man most people consider the most powerful on earth, he understands. He told me they had created an emperor, a god, and they had no right to do either. They took him up too high; he was blinded.”

“And Icarus fell to the sea,” said Kalyazin. “Berquist is a decent man, hard but decent. He’s also in an impossible job, but he handles it better than most.”

“There’s no one I’d rather see there now.”

“I’m inclined to agree.”

“You’re killing him,” said Havelock. “Let him go. Free him. The lesson’s been taught, and it won’t be forgotten. Let him get back to that impossible job and do the best he can.”

Kalyazin looked at the glowing embers of the fire. “Twenty-seven pages, each document, each agreement. I typed them myself, using the form employed by Bismarck in the treaties of Schleswig-Holstein. It so appealed to Anton.… I was never interested in the money, they know that, don’t they?”

“They know that. He knows it.”

“Only the lesson.”

“Yes.”

The old man turned back to Michael. “There are no copies except the one I sent to President Berquist in an envelope from the State Department, from Matthias’s office, with the word Restricted stamped across the front. It was marked, of course, for his eyes only.”

Havelock tensed, recalling so clearly Raymond Alexander’s statement that Kalyazin had “caged” him, that if a telephone call was not made, the documents would be sent to Moscow and Peking. The numbers added up to four, not two. “No other copies at all, Alexei?”

“None.”

“I would think,” remarked Jenna unexpectedly, taking hesitant steps toward the frail old Russian, “that Raymond Alexander, your Boswell, would have insisted on one. It’s the core of his writing.”

“It’s the core of his fear, young lady. I control him by telling him that if he divulges anything to anyone, copies will be sent to your enemies. That was never my intention-on the contrary, the furthest thought from my mind. It would bring about the very cataclysm I pray will be avoided.”

“Pray, Alexei?”

“Not to any god you know, Mikhail. Only to a collective conscience. Not to a Holy Church with a biased Almighty.”

“May I have the documents?”

Kalyazin nodded. “Yes,” he said, drawing out the word. “But not in the sense of possession. We will burn them together.”

“Why?”

“You know the reason; we were both in the same profession. The men who allow the Matthiases of this world to soar so high they’re blinded by the sun, those men will never know. Did an old man lie? I deceived them before. Am I deceiving them again? Are there copies?”

“Are there?”

“No, but they won’t know that.” Kalyazin struggled out of the chair; he stood up and breathed deeply, planting his feet firmly on the floor. “Come with me, Mikhail. They’re buried in the woods along the path to the Notch. I pass them every afternoon, seventy-three steps to a dogwood tree, the only one in Seneca’s burial ground. I often wonder how it got there.… Come, let’s get it over with. We will dig in the rain and get terribly wet and return with the weapons of Armageddon. Perhaps Miss Karas might make us some tea. Also, glasses of vodka … with buffalo grass, always buffalo grass. Then we shall burn the evidence and rekindle the fire.”

The door to the kitchen crashed open like a sudden explosion of thunder, and a tall man with a fringe of gray around his bald head stood there, a gun in his hand.

“They lie to you, Alexei. They always lie and you never know it. Don’t move, Havelock!” Arthur Pierce reached out, gripped Jenna’s elbow and yanked her to him, lashing his left arm around her neck, the automatic pressed against her head. “I’m going to count to five,” he said to Michael. “By which time you will have removed your weapon with two fingers and thrown it on the floor, or you will see this woman’s skull blown into the wall One, two, three—”

Havelock unbuttoned his coat, spreading it open, and, using two fingers as pincers, took out the Llama from its bolster. He dropped it on the floor.

“Kick it over!” yelled the traveler.

Michael did so. “I don’t know how you got here, but you can’t get out,” he said quietly.

“Really?” Pierce released Jenna, shoving her toward the astonished old Russian. “Then I should tell you that your Abraham was cut down by an ungrateful Ishmael. You can’t get out.”

“Others know where we are.”

“I doubt that There’d be a hidden army out there on that road if they did. Oh, no, you went in solo—”

“You?” cried Kalyazin, shaking, then nodding his trembling head. “It is you!”

“Glad you’re with us, Alexei. You’re slowing down in your old age. You don’t hear lies when you’re told them.”

“What lies? How did you find me?”

“By following a persistent man. Let’s talk about the lies.”

“What lies?

“Matthias recovering. That’s the biggest lie of all. There’s a metal case in my car the contents of which will make remarkable reading all over the world. It shows Anthony Matthias for what he is. A screaming, hollow shell, a maniac, violent and paranoid, who has no working concept of reality. He builds delusions out of images, fantasies out of abstractions—he can be programmed like a deranged robot, reenacting his crimes and offenses. He’s insane and getting worse.”

“That can’t be true!” Kalyazin looked at Michael. “The things he told me … only Anton would know them, recall them.”

“Another lie. Your convincing friend failed to mention that he’s just driven down from the village of Fox Hollow, the residence and dateline of a well-known commentator. One Raymond Alexander—What did Miss Karas just call him? YourBoswell, I think. I’ll visit him. He can add to our collection.”

Mikhail? Why? Why did you say these things? Why did you lie to me?”

“I had to. I was afraid you wouldn’t listen to me. And because I believe that the Anton we both knew once would have wanted me to.”

“Still another lie,” said Pierce, lowering himself cautiously, his gun extended as he picked up the Llama from the floor and shoved it into his belt. “All they want are those papers so business can go on as usual. So their nuclear committees can go on designing new ways to blow the godless out of existence. That’s what they call us, Alexei. Godless. Perhaps they’ll make Commander Decker the next Secretary of State. His type is very much in vogue; ambitious zealots are the order of the day.”

“That couldn’t happen and you know it, Traveler.”

Pierce looked at Havelock, studying him. “Yes, a traveler. How did you do it? How did you find me?”

“You’ll never know that. Or how deeply we’ve penetrated the paminyatchik operation. That’s right. Penetrated.”

The traveler stared at Michael. “I don’t believe you.”

“That doesn’t matter.”

“It won’t make any difference. We’ll have the documents. All the options will be ours, nothing left to you. Nothing. Except burning cities if you make a wrong turn, a wrong judgment. The world won’t tolerate you any longer.” Pierce stabbed the air with his gun. ‘Let’s go, all of you. You’re going to dig them up for me, Havelock. “Seventy-three steps to a dogwood tree.’ ”

“There are a dozen paths up to the Notch,” said Michael quickly. “You don’t know which one.”

“Alexei will show me. When it comes down to it, he chooses us, not you. Never you. Not business as usual, conducted by liars. He’ll tell me.”

“Don’t do it, Kalyazin.”

“You lied to me, Mikhail. If there must be ultimate weapons-even on paper—they can’t be yours.”

“I told you why I lied, but there’s a final reason. Him. You came over to us not because you believed in us but because you couldn’t believe in them. They’ve come back. He was the man at the Costa Brava—he killed at the Costa Brava.”

“I carried out what you only pretended! You had the stomach only for pretense. It had to be done, not faked!”

“No, it didn’t. But where there’s a choice, you kill. You killed the man who set up the operation, an operation where no one’s death was called for.”

I did exactly what you would have done but with far more finesse and inventiveness. His death had to be credible, aocepted for what it appeared to be. MacKenzie was the only one who could retrace the events that night, who knew his personnel.”

“Also killed!”

“Inevitable.”

“And Bradford? Inevitable, too?”

“Of course. He’d found me.”

“You see the pattern, Alexei?” shouted Havelock, his eyes on Pierce. “Kill, kill, kill! … Do you remember Rostov, Alexei?”

“Yes, I remember him.”

“He was my enemy, but he was a decent man. They killed him, too. Only hours ago. They’ve come back and they’re marching.”

“Who?” asked the old Russian haltingly, memories stirred.

“The Voennaya. The maniacs of the VKR!”

“Not maniacs,” said Pierce firmly, quietly. “Dedicated men who understand the nature of your hatred, your mendacity. Men who will not compromise the principles of the Soviet Union only to watch you spread your sanctimonious lies, turning the world against us.… Our time has come, Alexei. You’ll be with us.”

Kalyazin blinked, his watery eyes staring at Arthur Pierce. Slowly he shook his head and whispered, “No … no, I will never be a part of you.”

“What?”

“you do not speak for Russia,” said the old man, his voice growing until it filled the room. “You kill too easily-you killed someone very dear to me. Your words are measured and there’s truth in what you say, but not in what you do or the way you do it! You are animals!” Without the slightest warning, Kalyazin lunged at Pierce, hurling his frail body at the traveler, his gaunt hands gripping the weapon. “Mikhail, run! Run, Mikhail!” There was a muffled roar as the gun ex-ploded into the old man’s stomach. Still he would not let go. Run.…!” The whisper was a final command.

Havelock spun around and propelled Jenna toward the open kitchen door. He turned, prepared to throw himself on Pierce, but stopped, holding himself in check, for what he saw caused him to make an instantaneous decision. The dying Kalyazin held on fiercely, but the bloody gun was coming free; in an instant it would be aimed at him, fired into his head.

He lurched for the kitchen door and slammed it shut as he raced inside, colliding with Jenna. She held two kitchen knives in her hand; Michael grabbed the shorter blade, and they ran for the outside door.

“The woods!” he shouted, in the carport “Kalyazin can’t hold him. Hurry up! You go to the right, I’ll head left!” he cried as they ran across the grass in the downpour. “We’ll converge a couple of hundred yards inside!”

“Where is the path? Which is it?”

I don’t know!”

“He’ll be looking for it!”

“I know.”

Five gunshots exploded, but not from a single gun; there were two. They separated, Michael zigzagging toward the darkness of the trees on his left, spinning quickly to look behind him. Three men. Pierce was shouting orders to two others who had raced up the muddy drive. They ran from the carport, fanning out, flashlights on, weapons ready.

He reached the edge of the tall grass and plunged into the protective cover of the woods; he removed his coat and scrambled to his right, diving for the thickest underbrush. He crawled forward, his eyes cm the field, on the beam of the middle flashlight, and worked his way back toward the edge. His body was soaked; mud and wet foliage were everywhere. The bonier of the grass was his battle line; the downpour was loud enough to drown out the pound of quick movements. The man would come swiftly, then be stopped both by the overgrowth and by his own caution.

As the beam approached, Havelock inched toward the last bank of tangled bush; he waited, crouching. The man slowed down, sweeping the area with light. Then he entered the woods quickly, the beam moving up and down as he used his arm to open a path through the thick brush.

Now. Michael rolled out on the grass and rushed ahead; he was directly behind the traveler. He sprang, the knife gripped in his band. As he plunged the blade into the killer’s back, his left hand yanked back the man’s neck and clamped his mouth. Both fell into mud and brush and Michael worked the blade brutally until there was no movement beneath him. He yanked the head up as he ripped the gun from the lifeless hand; it was not Arthur Pierce. He lunged for the flashlight and snapped it off.

Jenna raced into the dark, narrow alleyway cut through the trees and the foliage. Was this it? she wondered. Was it the path to Seneca’s Notch: “seventy-three steps to a dogwood tree”? If it was, it was her responsibility. No one could be allowed to pass through, and the surest way of preventing it was as distasteful as it was frightening.

Yet she had done it before, always terrified by the prospect, sickened with the results, but there was no time to think of such things. She looked behind her; the flashlight beam was veering to its left, toward the path! She let out a short cry loud enough to be heard through the pounding rain. The flashlight halted, and was briefly immobile before shifting, now focusing directly on the entrance of the path. The man rushed into it.

Jenna lurched into the tangled branches on the border and crouched, holding the long blade of the kitchen knife rigid, diagonally up from her knees. The oscillating beam of the flashlight drew nearer, the figure behind it running hard, slipping on the mud, his concentration up ahead on the path, a killer racing after the remembered cry of an unarmed woman.

Ten feet, five … now!

Jenna hinged up through the brush with her eyes and blade centered on the body directly behind the light. The contact was sickening: a rush of blood erupted as the long blade sank into the flesh, impaling the body that had raced into it.

The man screamed, the terrible scream filling the woods and for a long moment drowning out the downpour.

Jenna lay gasping for air beside the dead man, rubbing her blood-soaked hand in the soft mud. She grabbed the flashlight and switched it off. Then she rolled to the border of the path and vomited. Havelock heard the sudden scream, and closed his eyes—then opened them, grateful beyond life itself to realize it was a man’s scream. Jenna had done it; she had taken out the man whose orders were to kill her. And that man was not Pierce. He knew it. He had seen the positions in the carport. Pierce had been on the left, closest to the door, the angles consistent when the chase had begun.

Arthur Pierce was somewhere between the middle ground and the road beyond Kalyazin’s house, an acre of forest drenched by the rain surging downward, dripping everywhere from the imperfect roof of the treetops.

Where was the last beam of light? It was not thero-of course it was not there! Light was a target and Pierce was no fool. They were two animals now, two predators stalking each other in the waterlogged darkness. But one had the advantage, and Michael knew it instinctively, felt it strongly: the forests had been good to Mikhail Havlíček; they were his friend and sanctuary. He did not fear the webbed darkness, for it had saved him too often, protected him from uniformed hunters who would shoot a child because of his father.

He crawled swiftly through underbrush, eyes straining, ears alert, trying to pick up sounds that were not part of the rain and the creaking weight of drenched limbs above. He semicircled the area, noting among a thousand other intuitively gathered bits of information that there were no paths, no breaks in the forest leading to Seneca’s Notch. Inside the house he had said there were a dozen such paths to confuse Pierce, not knowing whether there were any, never having been beyond Zelienski-Kalyazin’s front door.

He swept the arc again, closing it, snaking through the overgrowth; the trunks of trees were his intermittent fortress walls-he used them like parapets as he peered around them.

Movement! The sound of suction, not weight. A foot or a knee pressing into and rising from the mud.

Light was a target … light was a target.

He crawled out of the arc, fifteen, twenty, thirty, forty feet beyond the perimeter, knowing what he was looking for, feeling for—a branch. He found it.

A sapling-strong, supple, no more than four feet high, its roots deep, clawing the earth beneath.

Havelock reached into his belt and pulled out the flashlight he had taken from the dead traveler. He placed it on the ground and removed his shirt, spreading it in front of him and moving the flashlight to the center of the cloth.

Thirty seconds later the flashlight was securely tied and wrapped in the shirt, the sleeves wound around it, with sufficient cloth remaining for the final attachment. He knelt next to the small tree and lashed the flashlight laterally against the thin shaft of the trunk; he crisscrossed what remained of the sleeves so it was held firmly in place. He pulled the trunk back and let it go, testing it.

He snapped on the light and pulled the trunk back for the last time, then raced into the woods to his right. He spun around a thick tree and waited, watching the beam of light as it eerily swept back and forth over the ground. He leveled the traveler’s gun, steadying it against the bark.

His ears picked up the sound of suction again, footsteps coming through the rain. Then the figure emerged, looming grotesquely through the webbed branches.

Pierce crouched, trying to avoid the light, and fired his automatic; the ear-shattering explosions echoed throughout the dripping forest.

“You lose,” said Michael as he pulled the trigger and watched the killer of Costa Brava reeling backwards, screaming. He fired again, and the man from the Voennaya fell to the ground motionless, silent. Dead. “You didn’t know the woods,” said Michael. “I learned them from people like you.”

“Jenna! Jenna!” he yelled, lurching through the trees toward the open grass. “It’s over! The field, the field!”

“Mikhail? Mikhail!”

He saw her walking slowly, unsteadily in the distance through the sheets of the downpour. Seeing him, she quickened her pace and broke into a run. He, too, raced over the wet grass, wanting—needing—the distance between them to vanish.

They held each other; the world for a few brief moments was no part of them. The cold rain on his bare skin was only cool water, warmed by her embrace, her face against his face.

“Were there other paths?” she asked, breathless.

“None.”

“Then I found it. Come, Mikhail. Hurry!”

They stood in Kalyazin’s house, where the old Russian’s body was covered with a blanket, his tortured face mercifully hidden. Havelock walked to the telephone. “It’s time,” he said, dialing.

“What’s happened?” asked the President of the United States, his voice tense. “I’ve been trying to reach you all night!”

“It’s over,” said Michael. “Parsifal’s dead. We’ve got the documents. I’ll write a report telling you what I think you’ll have to know.”

There was a stunned silence over the line; then Berquist whispered simply, “I know you wouldn’t lie.”

“I would, but not about this.”

“What you think I have to know?” said Berquist, finding a part of his voice.

“Yes. I’ll leave out nothing that’s essential to you, for that impossible job you’re in.”

“Where are you? I’ll send an army for you—just get those documents here.”

“No, Mr. President We have a last stop to make, to a man they called Boswell. But before we leave, I’m going to burn them. There’s only one set and I’m burning it. The psychiatric file as well.”

“You’ve—?”

“It’ll be in the report.… There’s a practical reason for my doing what I’m doing. I don’t know what’s out there—I think I know, but I can’t be certain. It started here and it’s going to end here.”

“I see.” Berquist paused. “I can’t change your mind and I can’t stop you.”

“That’s true.”

“Very well, I won’t try. I like to think I’m a judge of men. You have to be to sit in this office—at least, you should be.… What can a grateful nation, a very grateful President do for you?”

“Leave me alone, sir. Leave us alone.”

“Havelock?”

“Yes?”

“How can I be certain? The burning?”

“Parsifal didn’t want you to be. You see, he never wanted it to happen again. No more Matthiases. Superstars are out. He never wanted you to be absolutely sure.”

“I’ll have to think about that, won’t I?”

“It’d be a good idea.”

“Matthias died this evening. It’s why I tried to call you.”

“He died a long time ago, Mr. President.”