Read The Parsifal Mosaic for Free Online Page B

be—and it could—it would be continuouslyscrutinized, openly criticized. Funds would be watched closely, methods studied; ultimately the group would be thrown out.”
    “You’ve had your lapses, your various un-American activities committees, your McCarthys, the Huston plans, purges in the irresponsible press. Careers have been destroyed, lives degraded Yes, you’ve had your share of lapses.”
    “Always short-lived. We have no gulags, no ‘rehabilitation’ programs in a Lubyanka. And that irresponsible press has a way of becoming responsible now and then. It threw out a regime of arrogant hot shots. The Kremlin’s wilder ones stay in place.”
    “We both have our lapses, then. But we’re so much younger; youth is allowed mistakes.”
    “And there’s nothing,” interrupted Michael, “to compare with the VKR’s
paminyatchik
operation. That wouldn’t be tolerated or funded by the worst Congress or administration in history.”
    “Another paranoid fantasy!” cried the KGB officer, adding derisively, “The
paminyatchiki!
Even the word is a corruption, meaningless! A discredited strategy mounted decades ago! You can’t honestly believe it still flourishes.”
    “Perhaps less than the Voennaya does. Obviously more than you do—if you’re not lying.”
    “Oh,
come
, Havelock! Russian infants sent to the United States, growing up with old-line, no doubt pathetically senile, Marxists so as to become entrenched Soviet agents? Insanity! Be reasonable. It’s psychologically unsound—if not disastrous—to say nothing of certain inevitable comparisons. We’d lost the majority to blue jeans, rock music and fast automobiles. We’d be idiots.”
    “Now you’re lying. They exist. You know it and we know it.”
    Rostov shrugged. “A question of numbers, then. And value, I might add. How many can be left? Fifty, a hundred, two hundred at the outside? Sad, amateurishly conspiratorial creatures wandering around a few cities, meeting in cellars to exchange nonsense, uncertain of their own values, the very reasons for being where they are. Very little credence is given these so-called travelers, take my word for it.”
    “But you haven’t pulled them out.”
    “Where would we put them? Few even speak the Russianlanguage; they’re a large embarrassment. Attrition,
priyatel
, that’s the answer. And dismissing them with lip service, as you Americans say.”
    “The Voennaya doesn’t dismiss them.”
    “I told you, the men of the VKR pursue misguided fantasies.”
    “I wonder if you believe that,” said Michael, studying the Russian. “Not all those families were pathetic and senile, not all the travelers amateurs.”
    “If there is currently—or in the recent past—any movement of consequence on the part of the
paminyatchiki
, we are not aware of it,” said Rostov firmly.
    “And if there is and you’re not aware of it, that would be something of consequence, wouldn’t it?”
    The Russian stood motionless; he spoke, his voice low and pensive. “The VKR is incredibly secretive. It would be something of consequence.”
    “Then maybe I’ve given you something to think about. Call it a parting gift from a retired enemy.”
    “I look for no such gifts,” said Rostov coldly. “They’re as gratuitous as your presence here in Athens.”
    “Since you don’t approve, go back to Moscow and fight your own fights. Your infrastructure doesn’t concern me any longer. And unless you’ve got another comic-book weapon up your other sleeve. I suggest you leave.”
    “That’s just it,
pyehshkah
. Yes,
pyehshkah
. Pawn. It is as you say—an infrastructure. Separate sections, indeed, but one entity. There is first the KGB; all else follows. A man—or a woman—may gravitate to the Voennaya, may even excel in its deepest operations, but first he or she must have sprung from the KGB. At the very minimum there
has
to be a Dzerzhinsky dossier
somewhere
. With foreign recruits it’s, as you would say, a double