The Chancellor Manuscript (59 page)

Peter dropped the gun. The crash of metal against wood was loud and abrasive, but he did not hear it He heard only the echo of the brigadier’s last words.

Then, of course, he was killed.… Then, of course, he was killed.… Then, of course, he was killed
.

Spoken as if the incredible information were neither electrifying nor even shocking, neither appalling nor even, perhaps, out of the ordinary. Instead, as though it were routine, common knowledge—data recorded and accepted and so entered into the books.

But it was not
real
. Other things were real, but not that. Not the assassination. That was the fantasy, the fiction that had propelled him into the nightmare, but it was the one thing that had never happened!

“What did you say?”

“Nothing you didn’t know,” said Ramirez, staring at the gun on the floor next to his shoes.

“Hoover died of heart failure. The medical examiner called it a cardiovascular disease. That’s how he died! He was an old
man!
” Chancellor spoke without breathing.

The brigadier looked up into Peter’s eyes. “Are you playing games? There was no autopsy. You know why and so do I.”

“You tell me. Don’t assume I know anything. Why wasn’t there an autopsy?”

“Orders from Sixteen hundred.”

“Who?”

“The White House.”

“Why?”

“They killed him. If they didn’t, they think they did. They think someone there did it. Or had it done. They give oblique orders over there, very ambiguous. You’re either on the team or you’re not; you learn how to read what’s said. He had to be killed. What’s the difference who did it?”

“Because of the files?”

“Partly. But they’re records; they can be burned, destroyed. It was the dispatch units. They’d gone too far.”

“Dispatch units? What are you talking about?”

“For God’s sake, Chancellor! You know what I’m talking about, or you wouldn’t be here! You wouldn’t have done what you did!”

Peter grabbed Ramirez by the cloth of his shirt. “What are dispatch units? What were Hoover’s dispatch units?”

The general’s eyes were fiat. It was as if he did not care any longer. “Assassination teams,” he said. “Men assigned to engineer situations in which specific people were killed. Either by provoking violence resulting in local police or national-guard action, or by hiring psychopaths, known killers or potential killers, to do the work and cutting them down when it was done. It was all once removed, divided secretly inside the bureau. No one knows how far it went. How far it was going. What assassinations could be attributed to Hoover. Or who would be called an enemy next.”

Slowly, staring in disbelief as the throbbing in his temples increased, Chancellor released the brigadier. Blinding white spots converged again in front of his eyes.

Dispatch units! Execution squads!

His own words came back to him. He saw the page and read it in his mind’s eye with terrible pain.

It was all true. It had been true from the beginning. God in heaven, it was never fiction! it was fact!

J. Edgar Hoover had not died the natural death of a sick old man. He had been assassinated.

And with sudden clarity Peter knew who had called for that assassination. It had not been the White House. Instead, it had been a group of men above reproach who made decisions of such impact that they were often the unseen, unelected force that ran the nation.

“You can’t do it! You have everything you need. Bring him to trial! Let him face the judgment of the courts! Of the country!”

All true.

Inver Brass had demanded the death of J. Edgar Hoover, and the order had been carried out.

It happened so fast Chancellor could only react with a twisting, lurching movement of his body. He felt hands on his chest, then Ramirez’s shoulder against his ribs. He fell, turning sideways to avoid a second blow, but he was too late.

The brigadier had fallen to one knee, his right hand shooting out for the gun on the floor. He grabbed it, twisting it firmly in his grip, his fingers expertly around the handle, his thumb flicking upward instinctively to check the safety. He raised it.

Peter understood that if he had to die at this moment, he had to die trying to avoid that death. He sprang off his feet, hurling himself at the general.

Again he was too late. The thunderous explosion filled the room. Blood and tissue slapped against the nearby wall. The smoke from the barrel billowed in an acrid cloud.

Below him the soldier was dead. Brigadier General Ramirez, source control of Chasáng, had blown off most of his head.

The gunshot—the explosion—was so shattering it had to have been heard blocks away. Someone would have called the police. He could not be seen leaving the house. He had to get out the back way
quickly
, into the darkness, into the shadows.

He ran in blind panic through a narrow hallway into a small kitchen. He lurched across the tiled floor to the back door, opened it cautiously, and let himself out, spinning around the door frame, pressing his back against the wall.

The house that faced him was separated from Ramirez’s by a tall hedge; he could see a driveway beyond the garage. Peter leaped off the small back porch onto the lawn and ran toward the hedge, shouldering his way through the thick branches until he was on the other side. He raced down the driveway into the street, turned left and kept running. Brown’s Triumph was in the next block,
back on Ramirez’s street. At the corner he turned left again; a siren was whining harshly in the distance, coming closer. He slowed down and tried to walk casually; the police would not overlook a running man after reports of a gunshot.

He reached the Triumph and climbed inside. Through the rear window he could see that a small,
excited crowd
had gathered on Ramirez’s lawn. The flashing lights of a patrol car accompanied the approaching siren.

He heard the sound of another motor, this from the opposite direction. He turned; it was the military police vehicle. It stopped by the side of the Triumph. Brown got out, taking his keys from one of the soldiers.

They saluted the major; he did not return their salutes. The army car started up.

“Good. You’re back,” said Brown, opening the door.

“We’ve got to get out of here! Right away!”

“What’s the matter? What’s the crowd—?”

“Ramirez is dead.”

Brown said nothing. He climbed behind the wheel and started the Triumph’s engine. They sped off down the block, when suddenly coming toward them was a limousine, its headlights blinding, its outlines those of a giant killer shark slicing through dark waters. Peter could not help himself; he stared into the windows as the automobile raced past.

The driver was intent only on reaching his destination. Through the rear window, Chancellor saw what that destination was: Ramirez’s house.

The driver was black. Peter closed his eyes, trying to think.

“What happened?” asked Brown, turning the Triumph west toward the highway. “Did you kill him?”

“No. I might have, but I didn’t You were right; he shot himself. He couldn’t face Chasǒng. He was responsible for the massacre. It was engineered to keep the wraps on what they’d done to MacAndrew’s wife.”

Brown was silent for a moment When he spoke, it was with loathing as well as disbelief. “
Bastards!”

“If the story of MacAndrew’s wife had been broken,” Peter continued, “it would have led to the exposure of dozens of other such operations. Other experiments. They knew what they were doing.”

“Ramirez admitted it?”

Peter looked at Brown. “Let’s say it came out. What’s mind-blowing is the rest I’m not sure I can even say the words. It’s that crazy.”

“Hoover’s files?”

“No. Hoover. He was killed. He was assassinated! It was true all along! It was never a lie!”

“Take it easy. I thought you said Varak told you it
was
a lie.”

“He
was lying! He was protecting—” Peter stopped.

Varak
. The
specialist
. The man of a hundred weapons, a dozen faces … assorted names. Good God! It had been there all the time, and he hadn’t seen it!
Longworth
. Varak
had
assumed the name of an agent named Longworth on the night of May first. It
wasn’t
someone else. Varak masquerading as Longworth had been one of the three men, without accountability, who had entered the bureau the night before Hoover died—which meant they
knew
that death was certain! They found half the files missing; that part was true. And Varak had given his life to trace them, then protected Bravo, protected with his life the extraordinary diplomat known to the world as Munro St. Claire.

Varak had been Hoover’s assassin! What had Frederick Wells said? Varak was the killer, not Inver Brass … I can and will raise disturbing questions … from the tenth of April through the night of May first … Varak has those files!

Which meant Munro St Claire had the files. Varak
himself
had been lied to, manipulated!

By his mentor Bravo.

And now the cult of Chasǒng had zeroed in on Ramirez. The cult given influence and power by Munro St. Claire, who had used Varak as he had used everyone else. Including one Peter Chancellor.

It was all coming to an end. The forces were closing in, colliding, as Carlos Montelán had said they would collie. It would be finished this night, one way or the other.

“I’m going to tell you everything I know,” he said. “Drive to Arundel; they can’t follow us. I’ll tell you on the way. I want you to stay with Alison. When we get there, I want to take your car. I want you to wait awhile, then call Munro St Claire in Washington. Tell him I’ll be waiting for him at Genesis’s house on the bay. He’s to come alone. I’ll be watching; he won’t find me if he’s not alone.”

The sound of waves slapping against rocks drifted up from the water’s edge. Peter lay in the wet grass. The air was cold as the ground was cold, the wind from the bay carried in gusts, whistling through the tall trees that bordered the winter lawn. A man who had betrayed him, a man he had believed was his friend, had taught him things in the midst of that betrayal That was why he was where he was, his eyes on the stone gates of the entrance fifty yards away and on the road beyond.

When making a contact, position was everything. Protect yourself by being able to observe all approaching vehicles; keep rapid, undetectable escape available.

Friends were enemies, and enemies taught one strategies with which to fight them. It was part of the insanity that was all too real.

He saw headlights in the distance, about a half mile away. Peter could not be sure, but the lights seemed to sway back and forth. Every now and then they appeared to be stationary, as if the car had stopped, only to start swaying again. Had the circumstances been different, Chancellor thought, he might have been watching a drunken driver trying to find his way home. Was it possible this powerful manipulator of men and governments had been drinking? Ramirez had blown his own head off because he could not face Chasǒng. Were the revelations about Inver Brass more than St Claire wanted to hear in a stable frame of mind?

The automobile came haltingly through the gates. Peter momentarily suspended his breath, his eyes riveted on the terrible sight It was the silver Mark IV Continental! That St Claire would drive it to their confrontation was confirmation that the man, like the vehicle, was a monster.

He watched as the silver obscenity rolled around the circular drive to the wide steps of the front entrance; then he focused his eyes back on the road beyond the gateposts. He peered into the darkness, his concentration total. There were no headlights on the road, nor any black shapes against gray darkness that would be a vehicle traveling with its headlights off.

He remained in the grass for nearly five minutes, alternately watching St Claire. The diplomat had gotten out of the car, climbed the steps, and walked to the end of the porch. He was standing by the railing, staring out at the water.

Another man, a compassionate man, had stood on a fisherman’s dock staring out at another stretch of water twelve hours before. At dawn. That man was dead, led into a trap by an enemy, cut down by fanatics who obeyed the instructions of a monster.

Chancellor was satisfied: Munro St Claire had come alone.

Peter rose from the grass and walked across the lawn toward the Victorian porch. St Claire remained at the railing; Chancellor approached him from behind. He reached into his pockets with both hands and pulled out Brown’s automatic in his right, the flashlight in his left. When he was within eight feet, he leveled both up at St Claire and snapped on the light.

“Keep your right arm above you,” he ordered. “With your left reach into your pocket and throw me the keys to your car.”

It took the ambassador several seconds to answer. He seemed shaken. The suddenness of Chancellor’s appearance, the blinding beam of light, the curt instructions barked from the darkness momentarily paralyzed him. Peter was grateful for an enemy’s training.

“I don’t have the keys, young man. They’re in the car.”

“I don’t believe you,” said Chancellor angrily. “Give me those keys!”