The Parsifal Mosaic (73 page)

“You sick bitch,” Elizabeth had said, slamming down the phone.

Havelock’s call came twenty minutes later, and Elizabeth Andrews was not inclined to tell the tale again. He suggested she call him back at the White House when she felt better; the ploy worked. The phone in the study in Fairfax rang six minutes after Michael had hung up.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Cross. It’s been a very trying time and some very trying reporters.”

“I’ll be as brief as possible.”

She recounted the morning’s events, beginning with Bradford’s sudden and unexpected emergence from his office shortly after she had arrived.

“He looked dreadful. He’d obviously been up all night and was exhausted, but there was something else. A kind of manic energy; he was excited about something. I’ve seen him like that lots of times, of course, but somehow yesterday it was different. He spoke louder than he usually did.”

“That could have been the exhaustion,” said Havelock. “It often works that way. A person compensates because he feels weak.”

“Perhaps, but I don’t think so, not with him, not yesterday morning. I know it sounds ghastly, but I think he’d made up his mind … that’s a horrible thing to say, but I believe it. It was as though he were exhilarated, actually looking forward to the moment when it was going to happen. It’s ghoulish, but he left the office shortly before ten, said he was going out for a few minutes, and I have this terrible picture
of him out on the street, looking up at the window … and thinking to himself, Yes, this is it.”

“Could there be another explanation? Could he have been going to see someone?”

“No, I don’t think so. I asked him if he’d be in another office in case a call came for him and he said no, he was going out for some air.”

“He never mentioned why he’d been there all night?”

“Only that he’d been working on a project that he’d fallen behind on. He’d been doing a fair amount of traveling recently—”

“Did you set up the transportation arrangements for him?” interrupted Havelock.

“No, he usually did that himself. As you probably know, he often … took someone with him. He was divorced, several times actually. He was a very private person, Mr. Cross. And so very unhappy.”

“Why do you say that?”

Ms. Andrews paused, then spoke firmly. “Emory Bradford was a brilliant man, and they didn’t pay attention to him. He was once very influential in this city until he told the truth—as he saw the truth—and as soon as the applause died down, they all ran away from him.”

“You’ve been with him a long time.”

“A long time. I saw it all happen.”

“Could you give me examples of this running away from him?”

“Sure. To begin with, he was consistently overlooked when his experience, his expertise could have been of value. Then he’d frequently write position papers, correcting powerful men and women—senators, congressmen, secretaries of this and that—who had made stupid mistakes in interviews and press conferences, but if one out of ten ever responded or thanked him, I never knew about it, and I would have. He’d monitor the early-morning television programs, where the worst gaffes are made-just as he was doing yesterday, right up to the end—and dictate what he called clarifications. They were always gentle, even kind, never offensive, and, sure enough, ‘clarifications’ were usually issued, but never any thanks.”

“He was watching television yesterday morning?”

“For a while … before it happened. At least, the set was
rolled out to the front of his desk. He moved it back … before it happened. Right up until the end he couldn’t break the habit. He wanted people to be better than they are; he wanted the government to be better.”

“Were there any notes on his desk that could have told you whom he was watching?”

“No, nothing. It was like his final gesture, leaving this world tidier than he’d found it. I’ve never seen his desk so neat, so clean.”

“I’m sure you haven’t.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Nothing. I was agreeing with you … I know you were at lunch, but were there any people in the vicinity of his office door who might have seen someone go in or out?”

“The police covered that, Mr. Cross. There are always people milling around; we all have different lunch breaks, depending on what’s happening in what time zone, but no one saw anything unusual. Actually, our section was pretty much cleared out. We had a secretarial pool meeting at one-thirty, so most of us—”

“Who called that meeting, Miss Andrews?”

“This month’s chairman—then, of course, he said he didn’t, so we sat around drinking coffee.”

“Didn’t you get a memo about the meeting?”

“No, the word was just passed around that morning. It frequently is; that’s standard.”

“Thank you very much. You’ve been most helpful.”

“It’s all such a waste, Mr. Cross. Such a goddamned terrible waste.”

“I know. Good—bye.” Havelock hung up and spoke, his eyes still on the phone. “Our man
is
good,” he said. “Invisible paint.”

“She couldn’t tell you anything?”

“Yes, she did. Bradford listened to me. He went outside to a booth and called for whatever it was he wanted. The number we need won’t be found charged to his office phone; it’s among a couple of million lost in the underground trunk lines.”

“Nothing else?”

“Maybe something.” Michael looked over at Jenna, a frown on his face, his eyes clouded. “See if you can find a copy of yesterday’s paper around here, will you? I want to
know the name of every senior official at State who was interviewed on the morning television programs. It’s crazy. The last thing on Bradford’s mind was television.”

Jenna found the newspaper. No one from the Department of State had been on television that morning.

If Talbot County, Maryland, had an esteemed physician in Dr. Matthew Randolph, it also had an extremely unpleasant man. Born to Eastern Shore money, raised in the tradition of privilege, which included the finest schools and clubs, and possessing what amounted to unlimited funds, he nevertheless abused everyone and everything within these rarefied circles in the pursuit of medicine.

When he was thirty, having graduated magna cum laude from Johns Hopkins and completed pathological and surgical residencies at Massachusetts General and New York, he decided he could not function at his talented best within the stultifying, politicized confines of a normal hospital. The answer for him was simple: he virtually extorted monies from the legions of the Chesapeake privileged, threw in an initial two million dollars himself and opened his own fifty-bed medical center.

It was run his way, which amounted to a none too benevolent dictatorship. There was no exclusivity with regard to admission, but there was a rule-of-thumb policy: the rich were soaked outrageously for services rendered them, and the poor given financial consideration only after enduring the ignominy of disclosing overwhelming proof of poverty and listening to a lecture on the sin of indolence. Rich and poor alike, however, continued in growing numbers to put up with these
insults, for over the years the Randolph Medical Center had established a reputation that was second to none. Its laboratory equipment was the finest money could buy; its generously paid staff physicians were the brightest graduates from the best schools and toughest residencies; the visiting surgical and pathological specialists were flown in from all over the globe, and the talents of the overpaid technicians and nursing corps were far in excess of normal hospital standards. In essence, treatment at Randolph was both medically superb and personally gratifying. The only way it might be improved upon, some said, would be to remove the abrasive personality of the sixty-eight-year-old Matthew Randolph. However, others pointed out that one way to cripple a smoothly running craft in rough waters was to tear out the throttle because the engine pitch was grating to the ears. And in Randolph’s case, short of his own death—which seemed unlikely for several centuries—physically tearing him out was the only way to remove him.

Besides, who else could look down at a nephew of Emile du Pont just before an operation and ask, “How much is your life worth to you?”

In the du Pont case, it was a million-dollar-plus tie-in computer with four of the nation’s leading research centers.

Havelock learned these details from CIA files as he researched the death of a black-operations officer named Steven MacKenzie, the “engineer” of Costa Brava. In Cagnessur-Mer, Henri Salanne had by implication questioned the veracity of the doctor who signed Mackenzie’s death certificate. Michael in his own mind had gone further; he had considered altered laboratory reports, autopsy findings not consistent with the state of the corpse and—after the President had mentioned X-rays—the obvious switching of photographic plates. However, in light of the information on Randolph and his Medical Center, it was difficult to credit these possibilities. Everything connected to and with the official cause of death was processed through Randolph’s personal on-site attendance and his own laboratories. The abrasive doctor might well be dictatorial, petulant, most definitely opinionated and unpleasant, but if ever there was a person who deserved to be called a man of integrity, it was Matthew Randolph. His Medical Center, too, was irreproachable. All things considered—
all
things—there was no reason on earth for either to be otherwise.

And for Havelock, that was the flaw. It was simply too symmetrical. Pieces rarely, if ever, fell into place—even negatively—so precisely. There were always caves to explore that might lead to hidden pools—whether they did or not was ir-revelant, the caves were
there
. Here, there were none.

The first indication Michael had that there might be substance to his doubts was the fact that Matthew Randolph did not return his first call. In every other instance, including calls to eight senior officers of the Pentagon’s Nuclear Contingency Committees, Bradford’s secretary, CIA and NSC personnel, the phone in Fairfax had rung within minutes after he placed the contact call. One did not dismiss lightly a request to reach a presidential aide at the White House.

Dr. Matthew Randolph apparently felt no such compulsion. And so Havelock had phoned a second time, only to be told: “The doctor is extremely busy today. He said to say he’ll get back to you, Mr. Cross, when he has the free time.”

“Did you explain that I’m to be reached at the White House?”

“Yes, sir.” The secretary had paused, embarrassment in her brief silence. “He said to tell you the Center’s painted white, too,” she added in a very soft voice.
“He
said that, Mr. Cross, I didn’t.”

“Then tell Genghis Khan for me that I’ll either hear from him within the hour or he may find the sheriff of Talbot County escorting him to the D.C.—Maryland border, where a White House detail will pick him up and bring him down here.”

Matthew Randolph returned the call, in fifty-eight minutes.

“Who the
hell
do you think you are, Cross?”

“An extremely overworked nonentity, Dr. Randolph.”

“You threatened me! I don’t like threats whether they come from the White House or a blue house or an outhouse! I trust you get my meaning.”

“I’ll convey your feelings to the President.”

“Do that. He’s not the worst, but I could think of better.”

“You might even get along.”

“I doubt it. Sincere politicians bore me. Sincerity and politics are diametrically opposed. What do you want? If it’s any kind of endorsement, you can start with a healthy government research grant.”

“
I have an idea President Berquist would entertain that idea only if you openly opposed him.”

Randolph paused “Not bad,” he said. “What do you want? We’re busy here.”

“I want to ask you several questions about a man—a dead man—named Steven MacKenzie.”

Again the doctor paused, but it was a different silence. And when he resumed speaking, it was in a different tone. Previously his hostility had been genuine; now it was forced.

“Damn it, how many times do we have to go over that? MacKenzie died of stroke—a massive aortal hemorrhage, an aneurysm, to be precise. I turned over the pathology report and conferred with your spook doctors till hell froze over. They’ve got it all.”

“Spook
doctors?”

“They sure as hell weren’t from Mary-General or Baltimore’s Mother of Mercy, I can tell you. Nor did they claim to be.” Randolph paused again; Michael did not fill the moment. He was listening with a trained ear, silences and audible breathing being a part of the abstract tonal picture he was trying to define. The doctor continued, his phrases too rushed, the edge of his voice too sharp; his previous confidence was waning, replaced by volume alone. “You want any information on MacKenzie, you get it from them. We all concurred; there was never any doubt. Aortal hemorrhage, plain and simple, and I don’t have the time to rehash this sort of thing. Do I make myself clear?”

“More than you know, Dr. Randolph.” It was Havelock’s turn to pause. He did so until he could see in his mind’s eye a mouth that had dropped open and hear the aggressive breathing of a man with something to hide. “I’d find the time, if I were you. The file isn’t closed here, Doctor, and for reasons of specific external pressures we can’t shut it—as much as we’d like to. You see, we
want
to conclude it precisely the way you determined, but we have to cooperate with each other. Do
I
make myself clear?”

“The pathology was unequivocal, you all agree with that?”

“We
want
to. Please understand that Be convinced of it.”

“What do you mean ‘external pressures’?” The doctor’s confidence was returning, the question asked sincerely.

“Let’s say in-house intelligence troublemakers. We’d like to shut them up.”

Costa Brava was never far away. Even in deceit
. Randolph’s final pause was brief, “Come up tomorrow,” he said. “Be here at noon.”

Havelock sat in the back seat of the nondescript, armor-plated sedan; three Secret Service men were his companions. Conversation was at a minimum. The two men in front and the pleasant but quiet agent beside Michael had obviously been ordered to make no direct inquiries.