Free The Parsifal Mosaic by Robert Ludlum

reach me. My nostrils have picked up a sickening odor from the Potomac.” Havelock leaned forward, his voice harsh, low, nearly a whisper again. “I know that girl. For her to do what she did, something had to have been done to her, held over her. Something obscene. I want to know what it was and why.”
    “Assuming—” Baylor began slowly, “assuming you’re right, and I don’t for an instant concede that you are, what makes you think they’ll tell you?”
    “It was all so sudden,” said Michael, leaning back, his body rigid, his voice now floating as if in a painful dream. “It was a Tuesday and we were in Barcelona. We’d been there for a week; something was going to happen in the sector, that’s all Washington told us. Then word came from Madrid: a Four Zero communication had been flown in by courier, contents restricted to the embassy, Eyes Only. Mine only. There’s no Cons Op station in Madrid, no one cleared to relay the information, so I flew in Wednesday morning, signed for that goddamned steel container, and opened it in a room guarded by three marines. Everything was there, everything she’d done, all the information she’d transmitted—information she could have gotten only from me. The trap was there, too, myself in control if I so wished—and I so wished. They knew it was the only way I’d be convinced. On Friday I was back in Barcelona, and by Sunday it was over … and I
was
convinced. Five days and the walls came tumbling down. No trumpets, Just flashlights and screams and loud ugly noises intruding on the surf. Five days … so sudden, so swift, everything at a crescendo. It was the only way it could have been done.”
    “You haven’t answered my question,” Baylor interrupted quietly. “If you’re right, what makes you think they’ll tell you?”
    Havelock leveled his eyes at the soldier. “Because they’re afraid. It comes down to the why. The questions, the shocks; which one was it?”
    “What are you talking about?”
    “The decision to remove me wasn’t made gradually, Colonel. Something triggered it. They don’t force a man out the way I was forced out because of accumulated differences. Talent’s expensive; proven field talent too difficult to replace. Accommodations can be made, explanations offered, agreements reached. All these are tried before they let the talent go. But no one tried with me.”
    “Can you be more specific?” the officer pressed, again an-noyed.
    “I wish I could be. It’s something I know, or they
think
I know. Something I could have written down. And it’s a bomb.”
    “Do you?” Baylor asked coldly, professionally. “Have such a piece of information?”
    “I’ll find it,” replied Havelock, suddenly pushing back his chair, prepared to leave. “You tell them that. Just as I’ll find her, tell them that, too. It won’t be easy because she’s not with them anymore. She got away; she’s gone under. I also saw that in her eyes. But I’ll find her.”
    “Maybe—” Baylor said urgently, “maybe if everything you say proves out, they’d be willing to help.”
    “They’d better be,” said Michael getting to his feet, and looking down at the soldier-conduit. “I’ll need all the help I can get. In the meantime I want this whole goddamned thing spelled out—chapter and verse, to quote an old source of mine. Because if it isn’t, I’m going to start telling tales out of school. When and from where none of you will know, but the words will be there loud and clear. And somewhere among them will be that bomb.”
    “Don’t do anything stupid!”
    “Don’t mistake me, I don’t want to. But what was done to her, to me—to us—just wasn’t fair, Colonel. I’m back in. Solo. I’ll be in touch.”
    Havelock turned and walked swiftly out of the café into the Via Pancrazio.
    He reached the Via Galvani on his way back to the railroad station, where he had deposited his newly acquired suitcase in a coin locker. Suddenly the