I remember reading The Road to Gandolfo years ago and the copy touting it as being by the author of The Parsifal Mosaic. I mentioned that sounded like a cool book, and my dad's response was essentially, "Not really."
But when have I ever listened to him? So, we've operative Michael Havelock. He's left the intelligence business after he found Jenna Karas, a woman he'd been working with for some time and preparing to make a life with, was actually working for the Soviets. He had to set up her elimination and watching her die, surprise! fucked with his emotional state.
So he's drifting, and in the early going, Ludlum does a good job of helping us grasp Havelock's sense that something's going on around him that he can't perceive. Havelock eventually, purely by chance, spies Jenna is a train station in Rome. She runs, and he pursues, certain now that he's been tricked, but with no idea why. As he's hunting her, American intelligence agencies are hunting him, because he's threatened to leak evidence of illicit crap they pulled all across Europe if they don't fess up to the shit they pulled on him and Jenna. Except they have no idea what he's talking about.
There's several phases to the book, each more or less a puzzle to be unraveled. Or each is a small portion of a larger puzzle. And in that, too, Ludlum's pretty good at presenting the different angles the various groups are taking. What information they have, what they don't, how that colors their perceptions and decisions. The way that their efforts to keep things hidden from enemies can easily hamstring them as well.
Unfortunately, it does result in a lot scenes of men in hidden conference rooms, arguing back and forth while making statements of doom. "My God, if that information gets out - " "I know, our standing in the world will be destroyed forever." That kind of thing. Most of the time the scenes can breeze along, if for no other reason than you want to see if this is the time they finally pull everything together. (It usually isn't.)
One thing that doesn't work so well is that there are really two manhunts going on. The search for the mole in the government, the one who tried to eliminate Michael and Jenna permanently, and the mysterious Parsifal, who everyone, including the mole, is looking for because of the terrible evidence he has. But Michael is also concerned about his mentor, the Secretary of State, who has abandoned Michael when he needs him most.
(I had a hunch about the Secretary of State, just from the way Ludlum wrote Michael's perception of him. I was partially right, but probably wrong in the largest respects.)
With all that, Parsifal tends to fall into the background, almost an afterthought. The more pressing issue seems to be the mole, who's also hunting him, and whose identity we learn partway through. I think so we can see their thoughts and know they're just as desperate to find Parsifal. It creates the effect of making the mole the bigger deal, but they're only truly dangerous if they get their hands on what Parsifal has.
That might be because the mole is a bigger deal to Michael. The mole's the one who he feels really fucked his life up. So finding Parsifal is almost a way to draw out the mole so he can get them. And Ludlum writes Michael as sort of an emotional wreck. Not sleeping well, almost hysterical at times, grimly determined at others. Havelock is probably superhuman in terms of how far he gets considering the number of times he's knocked unconscious or shot, but it isn't readily apparent in how fights are written. Ludlum keeps those short and sweet. Havelock finds an opportunity, seizes it, fight's over. If the Bourne Identity fights were like this, the camera wouldn't have time to even starting shaking, let alone make anyone nauseous.
'It did not set him free. Instead, it bound him to another truth, an obligation of his profession. Those who betrayed the living and brokered death had to die. No matter who, no matter. . .Michael Havelock had made the decision, and it was irrevocable. He had set the last phase of the trap himself, for the death of the woman who briefly had given him more happiness than any other person on earth. His love was a killer; to permit her to live would mean the killing of hundreds, perhaps thousands.'
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