The Chancellor Manuscript (24 page)

A book.

In his messianic drive to assuage his own guilt Longworth had killed again.
Again
. For he was responsible for Rawlins’s death at the Cloisters as surely as if he had pulled the trigger that took the congressman’s life. And now half a world away, there was another death, another murder.

Chancellor got up unsteadily from the couch and walked aimlessly about the room, the protected sanctuary where fiction took place, life and death only products of the imagination. But outside that room life and death were real. And they touched him because they were a part of his fiction; the marks on paper had sprung from the motives that drove other lives, brought about other deaths.
Real
life and
real
death.

What was happening? A nightmare, more realistic and grotesque than anything he might have dreamed, was being played out in front of a backdrop of fiction. A
nightmare
.

He stopped at the telephone as if somebody had commanded him to remain still. Thoughts of MacAndrew triggered images of a silver Mark IV Continental and a mask of a face behind the wheel.

Suddenly, Peter remembered what he had been about to do months ago, before the telephone call from Walter Rawlins that culminated in the madness in Fort Tryon. He had been about to telephone the Rockville, Maryland, police! He had never done so; he had never made that call!
He had protected himself by forgetting. He remembered now. Even the name of the patrolman. It was Donnelly.

He dialed information for the Rockville area code. Thirty seconds later he was speaking with a desk sergeant named Manero. He described the incident on the back road, gave the date, and identified Officer Donnelly.

Manero hesitated. “Are you sure you want Rockville, sir?”

“Of course I am.”

“What color was the patrol car, sir?”

“Color? I don’t know. Black and white, or blue and white. What difference does it make?”

“There’s no Officer Donnelly in Rockville, sir. Our vehicles are green with white stripes.”

“Then, it was green! The patrolman said his name was Donnelly. He drove me back to Washington.”

“Drove you into—Just one minute, sir.”

There was the click of a hold button. Chancellor stared out the window at the wind-blown flakes of snow and wondered whether he was losing his mind. Manero came back on the line.

“Sir, I’ve got the police blotter for the week of the tenth. There’s no record of any accident involving a Chevrolet and a Lincoln Continental.”

“It was a silver Mark Four! Donnelly told me it was picked up! A woman driver in dark glasses hit a mail track.”

“I repeat, sir. There’s no Officer Donnelly—?”

“Goddamn it, there is!” Peter could not help shouting. Perspiration broke out on his forehead; the pain in his temples increased. His memory raced back. “I remember! He said she was a drunk! With a record of violations, that was it. She was the wife of a Lincoln-Mercury dealer in—in Pikesville!”

“Just a minute!” The desk sergeant raised his voice. “Is this some kind of joke? My in-laws live in Pikesville. There’s no Lincoln dealer there. Who the hell could afford one? And there’s no police officer named Donnelly in this station. Now, get off the line. You’re interfering with official business!”

The phone went dead. Chancellor stood immobile, not believing the words he’d heard. They were trying to tell him he had lived a fantasy!

The car rental agency at Dulles Airport! He had telephoned from the Hay-Adams and spoken to the manager. The manager had assured him that everything would be taken care of: the agency would simply bill his account. He dialed.

“Yes, of course, I remember our conversation, Mr. Chancellor. I enjoyed your last book very—?”

“Did you get the car back?”

“Yes, we did.”

“Then someone had to take a tow truck out to Rockville. Did he see a police officer named Donnelly? Can you find out for me?”

“It won’t be necessary. The next morning the car was back in our parking depot. You said you thought there might be damage, but there wasn’t. I remember the dispatcher saying that it was about the cleanest automobile ever returned.”

Peter tried to control himself. “Did whoever brought back the car have to sign anything?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Who was it?”

“If you’ll hold on, I can find out.”

“I’ll hold.” Peter gripped the phone with all his strength; the muscles in his forearms ached. His mind went blank. Outside, the snowflakes fell.

“Mr. Chancellor?”

“Yes?”

“There was a mistake, I’m afraid. According to the depot, the signature on the invoice was yours. Obviously there was a misunderstanding. Because the car was leased to you, the man who returned it probably thought—?”

“There was no mistake,” interrupted Peter quietly.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Thank you,” he said, hanging up the telephone.

It was suddenly clear. Everything. The terrible mask of a face. The silver Continental. A clean, repaired Chevrolet in a Washington parking depot. A spotless Mercedes in front of his New York apartment. A note on the door.

It was Longworth. It was all Longworth. The grotesque, powdered face, the long dark hair, the black glasses … and memories of a horrible night of death a year ago in a rainstorm, Longworth had done his research; he was trying to drive him mad. But
why?

Chancellor walked back to the couch; he had to sit down and let the pain in his temples pass. His eyes fell on the newspaper, and he knew what he had to do.

Alison MacAndrew.

He found her name in the New York telephone directory he kept in Pennsylvania, but the number had been disconnected. Which was to say a new, unlisted number had been assigned.

He called the Welton Greene Agency; a secretary told him Miss MacAndrew would be away from the office for several days. No explanation was offered, none sought.

Still, he had the address. It was an apartment building on East Fifty-fourth Street. He knew the one; it was on the river. There was nothing else to do. He had to see this woman, talk with her.

He threw a few clothes into the Mercedes, put his manuscript into his briefcase, and drove into the city.

She opened the door, her large brown eyes conveying both intelligence and curiosity. Curiosity tinged, perhaps, with anger, in spite of the sadness in her face. She was tall and seemed to have her father’s reserve, but her features were her mother’s. Fragile, etched in definition, the bone structure elegant, even aloof. Her light brown hair was casually shaped. She wore beige slacks and a yellow blouse, open at the neck. There were dark circles under her eyes; the effects of grief were evident but not for display.

“Mr. Chancellor?” she asked directly, no hand extended.

“Yes,” he nodded. “Thank you for seeing me.”

“You were very persuasive on the lobby phone. Come in, please.”

He walked inside the small apartment. The living room was modern and functional, given to swift, sharp lines of glass and chrome. It was a designer’s room, icelike
and cool, yet somehow made comfortable by the owner’s presence. Beyond her quality of directness Alison MacAndrew had a warmth about her she could not conceal. She gestured toward an armchair; he sat down. She sat on the couch opposite him.

“I’d offer you a drink, but I’m not sure I want you to stay that long.”

“I understand.”

“Still, I’m impressed. Even a bit awestruck, I guess.”

“Good heavens, why?”

“Through my father, I ‘discovered’ your books several years ago. You’ve got a fan, Mr. Chancellor.”

“I hope for my publisher’s sake there are two or three others. But that’s not important. It’s not why I’m here.”

“My father was one,” said Alison. “He had your three books; he told me you were very good. He read
Counterstrike!
twice. He said it was frightening and quite possibly true.”

Peter was startled. The general hadn’t conveyed any such feeling. No admiration beyond vague—very vague-recognition. “I didn’t know that. He didn’t say anything.”

“He wasn’t given to flattery.”

“We talked about other things. Things much more important to him.”

“So you said on the phone. A man gave you his name and implied my father was forced out of the Army. Why? How? I think it’s ridiculous. Not that there weren’t any number who wanted him out, but they couldn’t force him.”

“What about your mother?”

“What about her?”

“She was ill.”

“She was ill,” agreed the girl.

“The Army wanted your father to send her away. He wouldn’t do it.”

“That was his choice. It’s a moot point whether she would have received more professional care if he had. God knows he chose the most difficult way for him. He loved her, that was the important thing.”

Chancellor watched her closely. The hard patina, the clipped, precise words were only part of the surface. Beneath, he felt there was a vulnerability she was doing her utmost to hide. He could not help himself; he had to probe. “You sound as if you didn’t. Love her, that is.”

Anger flashed briefly in her eyes. “My mother became
 … ill when I was six years old. I never really knew her. I never knew the woman my father married, the one he remembered so vividly. Does that explain anything to you?”

Peter was silent for a moment. “I’m sorry. I’m a damned fool. Of course it does.”

“Not a damned fool. A writer. I lived with a writer for nearly three years. You play with people; you can’t help it.”

“I don’t mean to,” he protested.

“I said you couldn’t help it.”

“Would I know your friend?”

“You might. He writes for television; he lives in California now.” She offered no name. Instead, she reached for a pack of cigarettes and a lighter on the table next to her. “Why do you think my father was forced out of the Army?”

Chancellor was confused. “I just told you. Your mother.”

She replaced the lighter on the table, her eyes locked with his. “What?”

“The Army wanted him to send her away, To an institution. He refused.”

“And you think that’s why?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Then, you’re wrong. As I’m sure you’ve gathered, I disliked many things about the Army, but its attitude toward my mother wasn’t one of them. For over twenty years the men around my father were very sympathetic, those above him and below. They helped him whenever they could. You look astonished.”

Peter was. The general had spelled it out.
Now you know what the damaging information is
 … 
doctors said she had to be sent away
 … 
I
wouldn’t do that
. Those were his words! “I guess I am.” He leaned forward. “Then, why did your father resign? Do you know?”

She inhaled on her cigarette. Her eyes strayed, seeing things Peter could not see. “He said he was finished, that he didn’t care anymore. When he told me that, I realized a part of him had given up. I think I knew the rest of him would go soon. Not the way it happened, of course, but somehow. And even that. Shot in a holdup—I’ve thought about it. It fits so well. A last protest. At the end, proving something to himself.”

“What do you mean?”

Alison brought her eyes back to him. “To put it in its simplest terms, my father lost his will to fight At that moment, when he said the words to me, he was the saddest man I ever saw.”

At first Peter did not reply. He was disturbed. “Are those the words he used? That he ‘didn’t care anymore’?”

“Essentially, yes. He was sick of it all. Pentagon infighting is very cruel. There’s never any letup. Get the hardware, always more hardware. My father used to say it was understandable. The men who run the Army now were once young officers in a war that really mattered, where hardware had won it. If we had lost that war. there would have been nothing.”

“When you say a war that ‘really mattered,’ do you mean—?”

“I mean, Mr. Chancellor,” interrupted the girl, “that for five years my father opposed our policy in Southeast Asia. He fought it every chance he could get. It was a very lonely position. I think the word is
pariah.”

“Good lord.…” Peter’s mind spun back involuntarily to the Hoover novel. To the prologue. The general he had invented was the pariah Alison MacAndrew had just described.

“My father wasn’t political; his judgment had nothing to do with politics. It was purely military. He knew the war couldn’t be won in any conventional way, and to use the unconventional was unthinkable. We couldn’t win it because there was no real commitment among those we supported. There were more lies coming out of Saigon than in all the court martials in military history—that’s what he said. He considered the whole thing an enormous waste of life.”

Chancellor sat back on the couch. He had to clear his head. He was hearing words he had written. Fiction. “I knew the general was opposed to certain aspects. I never thought he dwelt on the corruption, the lies.”

“It was almost all he dwelt on. And he was vehement about it. He was in the process of cataloguing hundreds of contradictory reports, logistical misrepresentations, body counts. He once told me that if the body counts were only fifty percent accurate, we would have won the war in ’68.”

“What did you say?” asked Peter incredulously. These were
his words
.

“What’s the matter?” asked Alison.

“Nothing. Go ahead.”

“There’s nothing more to tell. He was barred from attending conferences he knew he should be a part of, ignored in staff meetings. The more he fought, the more they disregarded him. Finally he saw it was all futile.”

“What about the reports he was cataloguing? The misrepresentations? The lies out of Saigon?”

Alison looked away. “They were the last things we talked about,” she said quietly. “I’m afraid it wasn’t my finest hour. I was angry. I called him names I now deeply regret. I didn’t realize how beaten he was.”

“What about the reports?”

Alteon raised her head and looked at him. “I think they became a symbol for him. They represented months, maybe years, of further agony, turning against men he’d served with. He wasn’t up to it anymore. He couldn’t face it. He quit.”