The Parsifal Mosaic Read Online Free

square five, pushing them back to four, so they jump over us to seven. Then we buy our way to eight; they block us at nine, and no one reaches square ten. Everyone nods pensively and starts all over again. In the meantime we lament our losses and extol the body count, never admitting that it doesn’t make any difference.”
    “That’s a crock of shit! We’re not going to be buried by
anyone.”
    “Yes, we are, George. All of us. By ‘children yet unborn and unbegot.’ Unless they’re smarter than we are, which may very well be the case. Christ, I hope so.”
    “What the hell are you talking about?”
    “ ‘The purple atomic testament of bleeding war.’ ”
    “What!”
    “History, George. Let’s have that drink.”
    “No, thanks.” The CIA station chief slid back across the seat. “And I think you’ve had enough,” he added, standing up.
    “Not yet.”
    “Go to hell, Havelock.” The intelligence officer started to turn away.
    “George.”
    “What?”
    “You missed. I was about to say something about this afternoon, but you didn’t let me finish.”
    “So what?”
    “So you knew what it was I was going to tell you. When did you intercept the cable? Around noon?”
    “Go to hell.”
    Michael watched as the CIA man returned to his table across the room. He had been dining alone, but Havelock knew he was not alone. Within three minutes the judgment was confirmed. George signed his check—bad form—and walked rapidly through the entrance arch into the lobby. Forty-five seconds later a youngish man from a table on the right side of the room got up to leave, leading a bewildered lady by the elbow. A minute passed, and two men who had been in a booth on the left side rose as one and started for the arch. Through the candlelight, Michael focused on the plates in the booth. Both were piled with food. Bad form.
    They had been following him, watching him, employing intercepts. Why? Why couldn’t they leave him alone?
    So much for Amsterdam.
    The noonday sun in Paris was a blinding yellow, its quivering rays bouncing off the river Seine below the bridge. Havelock reached the midpoint of the Pont Royal, his small hotel only blocks away on the Rue du Bac, the route he followed being the most logical one from the Louvre. He knew it was important not to deviate, not to let whoever it was behind him think he suspected his or her presence. He had spotted the taxi, the same taxi, as it made two swift turns in traffic to keep him in sight. Whoever was directing the driver was good; the taxi had stopped for less than two or three seconds at a corner, and then had sped away in the opposite direction. Which meant that whoever was following him was now on foot on the crowded bridge. If contact was the objective, crowds were helpful, and a bridge even more so. People stopped on bridges over the Seine simply to stare absently down at the water; they had been doing so for centuries. Conversations could be had unobtrusively. If contact was the objective, and not surveillance alone.
    Michael stopped, leaned against the chest-high stone wall that served as a railing, and lighted a cigarette, his eyes on a
bateau mouche
about to pass under the bridge. That is to say, if anyone was watching him, it would seem as if he were looking at the tourist boat, waving casually at the passengers below. But he was not; pretending to shield his eyes fromthe sun, he concentrated on the tall figure approaching on his right.
    He could distinguish the gray homburg, the velvet-collared overcoat, and the glistening black patent-leather shoes; they were enough. The man was the essence of Parisian wealth and elegance, traveling all over Europe and gracing the salons of the rich. His name was Gravet, and he was considered the most knowledgeable critic of classical art in Paris—which meant the Continent—and only those who had to know knew he also sold far more than his critical expertise. He stopped at the railing seven feet to the right of