The Chancellor Manuscript (20 page)
Read The Chancellor Manuscript Online
Authors: Robert Ludlum
Peter lifted the pencil from the paper. He remembered Daniel Sutherland’s words about the Washington group: “And women, Mr. Chancellor.” But what kind of women would be recruited? Or selected? He smiled to himself. Why not a newspaperwoman? A character patterned after Phyllis Maxwell. However, unlike her; in the book the woman had to be a victim before becoming a member of the group. That was vital.
—and women for the purpose of mounting a defense against Hoover’s insidious attacks. They have a starting point: Hoover’s gunslinger. They go to the intelligence community and are covertly given every scrap of information that can be unearthed about the man. Dossiers, service records, bank statements, credit references—everything available.
Chancellor stopped writing. There it was again, the enigma named Longworth. Sutherland said that they had appealed to the agent’s conscience and had rewarded him with a soft job in Maui, his safety guaranteed. All that was, perhaps, credible, but what had Hoover been doing in the meantime? Had he just sat on his ass and said, “Sure, Alan, my boy. Your twenty years are up and you deserve your pension, and you have my best wishes for a pleasant retirement”?
Not likely. The Hoover that had been described to him would have had Longworth killed before cutting him loose.
There had to be another explanation.
The gunslinger is reached by the senator’s group. Through a combination of pressures he is recruited, and a medical deception is mounted. The man complains of prolonged abdominal pains and is sent to Walter Reed Hospital. The “report” is forwarded to Hoover: The agent is riddled with duodenal cancer. It has spread beyond surgery; his life expectancy is no more than a few months at best.
Hoover has no alternative. He releases the man, believing the agent is going home to die.
Thus, the anti-Hoover Nucleus is formed. The “retired” field agent is isolated and put to work. It will be established that he not only had access to the files but, being less a saint than an opportunist, pored over the dossiers with an appetite worthy of a KGB bureaucrat in the middle of a purge.
He provides the anti-Hoover group with hundreds of names and biographies. Names and facts trigger other names and additional facts. A master list of potential victims is prepared.
Its scope is frightening. Included are not only powerful men in the three branches of government but leaders of industry, labor, the academic world, and the news media.
The Nucleus—the name of the Washington group—must act immediately.
Confidential appointments are arranged. The agent is sent to scores of subjects, warning them of Hoover’s dossiers.
Their strategy will be described in rapid scenes. I won’t dwell on the specific information. It would be too confusing to introduce a whole new set of characters.
Speaking of the characters, I’ll get to them shortly. I want to carry out the plot line first.
Peter took a new pencil.
The turning point comes with two events: The first is when Alexander Meredith is contacted by the Nucleus. The second is the decision on the part of two or three of the Nucleus to assassinate Hoover.
This decision will be arrived at gradually, for these men are not killers. They come to regard assassination as an acceptable solution, and that is their unacceptable flaw. When Meredith learns of this, knowing that it is the decision of superior minds, all his values are put to a final test. For him murder cannot be a solution. He now struggles against opposing forces: the fanatics of the Bureau and those of the Nucleus.
His attempts to stop the assassination and
expose the illegalities of the bureau supply the momentum to carry the book to its conclusion.
Fictionally, the most difficult aspect of the narrative will be precisely what horrifies Alex Meredith: the decision on the part of two or three extraordinary people to accept murder as the solution.
The blocks of logic here will have to be built carefully, so that no other solution appears to be at hand. I think the acceptance of assassination will come with two events “rearranged” from recent history: the withdrawal of the most qualified man from the presidential race, and the resignation of an innovative justice of the Supreme Court.
The Nucleus recognizes both of these catastrophes as the work of J. Edgar Hoover. Irreparable damage is being done to the body politic.
The pencil broke, its point shattered under the force of his pressure. He was getting angry again, and the rage should be used later, when he was writing the novel itself. Now was the time to think.
History had provided a peaceful solution. A madman’s death and the destruction of his recorded poisons had allowed the Nucleus—if Sutherland was right—to disband. The alert was over.
These were the facts. But he was not dealing with historical reality. What would such a group of concerned, decent people do if faced with the collapse of the checks and balances so vital to the open form of government? Would such a group consider execution? Assassination?
In one sense they would have no alternative. Yet in taking that action, they would be plunging themselves down to the same level as the murdered man. Therefore, not all would subscribe to such a solution, and no such solution would be openly proposed.
But two, or perhaps three, might consider it the only decision that could be made. And here would be the Nucleus’s flaw. Murder is murder, its definition altered only by specific conditions of war. Those who employ murder as a solution are ultimately no better than their targets. The Nucleus would harbor two or three members who would become committed killers.
As Peter conceived it fictionally.
In the Nucleus are two men, and perhaps a woman (the dramatic possibilities here are inter
esting)
, of stature, dedicated to the principles espoused by the rest of the group. What we see, however, is a gradual change in their perspectives. It is born of frustration and anguish, a genuine detestation of Hoover’s progress and the Nucleus’s apparent ineffectiveness. It is brought to a head by the manipulation of a presidential election and the repressive shaping of the court. They have been pushed to the wall; no alternatives remain. There is only assassination.
But that would remove only half the cancer, the other half being Hoover’s files. They must be taken. They cannot be allowed to fall into the hands of his successor after his death.
These rebels within the Nucleus conceive of a plan of execution and theft I think it should be written in a crosscut documentary style, the suspense heightened by the ingeniousness of the plan itself and the realization that at any moment an error of timing or reaction could blow it all apart.
This is as far as I want to go with the plot line at the moment.
Peter stretched his arms, wincing as a sharp pain shot through the muscles of his left shoulder. He did not give it an instant’s thought His concentration was on the page in front of him. Now it would begin. The people.
He started with shadows, formless shapes slowly coming into focus. And then names. As was his custom, he would sketch out his cast of characters, restricting each to a couple of pages, knowing that each in turn would lead to his or her own friends and enemies, known and unknown. Characters gave birth to other characters; it was often as simple as that.
In addition to those he had already considered—the soldier in the prologue, Alexander Meredith, Hoover’s gun-slinger, the senator, and the cabinet member—he would flesh out the group—the Nucleus—first. There would be several from outside the government: a scholar, a lawyer, perhaps. And unquestionably a judge, but not a Negro judge—that he could not do. There was only one Daniel
Sutherland. And the women: They would have to be thought about carefully. The temptation to invent too close a fictional counterpart of Phyllis Maxwell had to be resisted. But some aspects of her would go into the book. He leaned forward and began.
There is a man in his seventies, an attorney named …
He could not tell how long he had been writing. Time was blurred, his concentration absolute. The sun was at quarter point in the sky, its rays streaming through the north window.
He looked at the pages next to the yellow pad; he had sketched no fewer than nine characters. His energy was flowing; he was grateful beyond words because the words were there at last.
The telephone rang, disorienting him. He walked across the room to answer it.
“Hello?”
“Is this here a writer by the name of Chancellor? A Peter Chancellor?” The man on the line spoke with a thick southern accent.
“Yes. This is Peter Chancellor.”
“What are you trying to
do
to me? You got no right—?”
“Who is this?”
“You know goddamned well who ah am.”
“I’m afraid I don’t.”
“Fun-
nee
. Your friend Longworth come to see me in Washington.”
“Alan
Longworth?”
“You got it. And you’re huntin’ in the wrong fields! You want to start a Nigra’ version of 1861 all over again, you go right ahead. But you better know what you’re doin’.”
“I haven’t the vaguest idea what you’re talking about Now, who the hell is this?”
“Congressman Walter Rawlins. Today’s Wednesday. I’ll be in New York on Sunday. We’re goin’ to meet.”
“Are we?”
“Yes. Before we both get our goddamned heads shot off.”
He had done something he’d never done before: He had started writing the book before Morgan approved the outline. He could not help himself. The words kept leaping from head to paper.
With a twinge of guilt Peter admitted to himself that it did not matter. The story was everything. Through the story, a monster named Hoover was being revealed. It was important to Chancellor—somehow more important than anything he had ever tried to do before—that the Hoover myth be shown for what it was. Just as quickly as possible, so that it would never happen again.
But the work had to be interrupted for a day. He had agreed to meet with Rawlins. He did not want to meet with him; he had told Rawlins that whatever Alan Longworth had said to him, whatever threats he had made, Longworth was no friend of his. Peter wanted nothing further to do with him.
Still, Longworth had been in Washington four days ago when Rawlins telephoned. He was not back in the Hawaiian Islands. The enigma had reappeared. Why?
Chancellor decided to stay the night in his New York apartment. He had promised to have dinner with Joshua Harris.
He drove north on the old road parallel to the banks of the Delaware, through the town of Lambertville, and swung west up the long hill into Route 202. If he hit a minimum of country traffic, he’d reach the turnpike in forty-five minutes; from Exit 14 it was another half hour into New York.
There was almost no traffic. A few hay and milk trucks came cautiously out of dirt roads onto the highway, and speeding cars overtook him intermittently: salesmen who had covered the day’s territory, racing to the next motel. If he cared to, he could outrun just about anything on the road, he thought, fingering the thick steering wheel. His car was a Mercedes 450 SEL.
Fear had determined his selection of a car. He chose the heaviest he could find. As it happened, the car immediately available was a dark blue. That was fine; anything as long as it was not …
Silver?
Silver!
He could not believe what he saw! Behind him! In the wide convex mirror outside the window, the image magnified by the curvature, the shining grill immense! It was a silver automobile! The silver Continental!
His eyes were playing tricks on him. They had to be! He was almost afraid to look at the driver; he didn’t have to. The silver car pulled alongside him, the driver in his direct line of sight.
It was the woman! The same woman!
Two hundred miles away!
The wide hat, the long dark hair, the sunglasses, the pale white skin punctuated by bright red lips above an orange scarf. It was insane!
He jammed his foot on the accelerator; the Mercedes lunged forward. Nothing on the road could keep up with him!
But the Continental did. Effortlessly.
Effortlessly!
And the macabre driver was staring straight ahead. As if nothing were unreal, nothing out of the ordinary. Straight ahead. At nothing!
Peter glanced at the speedometer. The needle wavered over a hundred. It was a dual highway; cars on the other side were blurs. Cars.
Trucks!
There were two trucks up ahead! They followed one another around a long curve in the road. Chancellor moved his foot off the accelerator; he would wait till he was closer.
Now!
He pressed the brake pedal; the Continental shot ahead, pulling to the right side of the highway to block him.
Again,
now
! He stabbed the accelerator, turning the wheel counterclockwise, swinging to the left side of the road, the engine thundering as he sped past the terrible silver thing and the insane woman who drove it.
He raced past the two trucks in the curve, stunning the drivers, the Mercedes’s wheels half in the center island of autumn grass, the tires screaming.
Ringos
. The sign on the road said
Ringos
! There was a Ringo years ago, at a place where death had occurred, a gunslinger firing in a burst of fury.
Gunfight at the O.K. Corral
.
Why
did
he think of such things? Why did his head ache so?
Buffalo Bill’ s
defunct
.…
Jesus
he was a handsome man
… e. e. cummings. Why did he think of e. e. cummings? What the hell was
happening?
His head was splitting.
In the distance, perhaps a mile away, he could see an amber circle of light suspended in the air. For a moment he did not know what it was.
It was a traffic light at a highway intersection. Three cars up ahead were slowing down, one on the left, two on the right. He could not pass. They were half a mile away now. He slowed the Mercedes.
Oh,
God
! It was there again!
