The Chancellor Manuscript (9 page)

Stefan Varak noted that the crowds seemed to move back, although none had been in the hearse’s path. Further proof of the legacy, he thought.

Ranks of servicemen stood at attention at either side of the rotunda steps; uniforms were darkened with rain, eyes stared straight ahead. It was eleven twenty-five. The body of John Edgar Hoover was to lie in state throughout the day and night. It was an honor accorded to no civil servant before in the nation’s history.

Or was it a desire on the nation’s part to prove to itself and to the world that he was really dead—this man who had sprung giantlike out of the morass of corruption that
had been the original Bureau of Investigation to fashion an efficient, extraordinary organization, only to disintegrate with the passing years, still believing in his own infallibility. If he had only stopped before the fever gripped him, thought Varak.

Eight servicemen had solemnly broken away from the ranks and were at the rear door of the hearse, four on either side. The heavy panel swung back; the flag-wrapped coffin slid out, dipping slightly as fingers gripped protruding steel handles and pulled it free of the vehicle. In a tortuously slow march the soldiers moved toward the steps through the thickening drizzle.

They began the agonizing climb up the thirty-five steps to the entrance of the rotunda. Lifeless eyes were focused forward, at nothing; faces were drenched with sweat and rain; veins close to bursting could be seen below the cuffs of the uniforms; collars were black from the rivulets of perspiration that rolled down straining necks.

The crowds seemed to suspend their collective breathing until the casket reached the top of the steps. The soldiers paused at attention; then they started again and carried their burden through the great bronze doors of the rotunda.

Varak turned to the cameraman at his side. Both stood on a small, raised platform. The metal initials below the thick lens of the camera were those of a television station in Seattle, Washington. The station was part of a West Coast pool; it had no personnel in the Capitol Plaza that morning.

“Are you getting everything?” asked Varak in French.

“Every group, every row, every face the zoom can reach,” replied the Frenchman.

“Will the dim light—the rain—be a problem?”

“Not with this film. Nothing faster.”

“Good. I’m going upstairs.”

Varak, his NSC photo-identification prominent on his lapel, threaded his way through the crowds to an entrance and walked past the guards to the security desk. He spoke to the uniformed man on duty.

“Is the staircase from Documents sealed off yet?”

“I don’t know, sir.” The guard’s eyes riveted on the page of instructions in front of him. “There’s nothing here about closing it.”

“Goddamn it, there should be,” said Varak. “Make a note of it, please.”

Varak walked away. There was no vital reason for that particular staircase to be closed, but by so ordering it, Varak had established his authority with the guard. If their communications equipment broke down, he would need access to a telephone, without seconds wasted for identification purposes. Those precious moments would not be lost now; the guard would remember.

He climbed the staircase, two steps at a time, and stood behind the crowd filling the House entrance to the rotunda. A perspiring congressman was trying to make his way through; he was drunk and twice stumbled. A younger man, obviously an aide, reached him, grabbed his left elbow and pulled him back out of the crowd. The congressman pivoted unsteadily and his shoulders slammed into the wall.

As Varak looked at the bewildered, sweating face, he remembered that the congressman had publicly accused the FBI of tapping his phone; he had embarrassed the director. Then abruptly the accusations had stopped. Suddenly, the evidence that had been promised did not materialize; the man had no more to say.

His is one of the missing files, Varak guessed as he walked down the corridor to a door. He nodded to the guard, who scrutinized the NSC identification and opened the door for him. Inside were the twisting, narrow steps that led to the dome of the rotunda.

Three minutes later Varak knelt beside a second cameraman 160 feet above the rotunda floor. They were on the upper walkway, closed for years to tourists. The quiet hum of the camera was barely heard; it was packed with triple insulation, the telescopic lens screwed in and locked with reinforced clamps. There was no way that camera or the man operating it could be seen from the floor. Several feet away were three cartons of film.

Below, in the rotunda, the bearers had placed the coffin on the catafalque. Beyond the ropes, crowded in with little dignity, were the leaders of the nation competing for solemn recognition. The honor guard took up its positions, each branch of the military represented. From somewhere far away in the great hall a telephone rang twice. Instinctively Varak reached into his pocket and pulled out the
small radio unit that was his link to others. He held it to his ear, flipped on the switch, and listened. There was nothing and he breathed again.

A voice floated up; Edward Elson, the Senate chaplain and minister of the Presbyterian Church, delivered the opening prayer. He was followed by Warren Burger, who began his eulogy. Varak heard the words; the muscles of his jaw tensed.

“… a man of quiet courage, who would not sacrifice principle to public clamor … who served his country and earned the admiration of all who believed in ordered liberty.”

Whose principles? What is ordered liberty? mused Varak as he watched the scene far below. There was no time for such thoughts. He whispered to the cameraman; the language he spoke was Czech. “Is everything all right?”

“Yes, if I don’t get cramps.”

“Stretch out every now and then, but don’t get up. I’ll relieve you for thirty minutes every four hours. Use the room off the second walkway; I’ll bring food.”

“Through the night as well?”

“It’s what you’re being paid for. I want every face that walks through those bronze doors. Every goddamned face.”

Beyond the echoing, bass-toned words that filled the dome he could hear another sound. Far in the distance, outside, behind barricades In the rain across the plaza, the war resisters had begun their own particular chant for the dead. Not for the body in the rotunda, but for thousands halfway across the world. A liturgical drama was being played out in bitter ecclesiastical irony.

“Every face,” repeated Varak.

The spray of the fountain cascaded down into the waters of the circular pool in the gardens in front of the Presbyterian Church. Beyond the fountain the white marble tower rose in constricted splendor. To the right was the double-laned drive that passed under a stone portico, with doors on the left that led into the church. The effect was one of tollbooths, not a protected entrance into the house of God.

Varak had his cameras positioned, the two exhausted operators filled with coffee and Benzedrine. In a few hours it would all be over. Both would be far richer than they
had been a few days ago; both would be flying home. One to Prague, one to Marseilles.

The limousines started arriving at nine forty-five; the funeral service was scheduled for eleven. The Czech was outside. The Frenchman was the one now cramped; he was on his knees—not in supplication—in a raised doorway to the far left of the altar. He and his camera were concealed by heavy drapes; the official-looking identification pinned to his breast pocket was stamped with the seal of the Department of Archives.

No one questioned it; no one knew what it meant.

The mourners left their cars and filed inside; the cameras were rolling. The somber tones of the organ filled the church. An army chorus of twenty-five men in gold-ribbed black tunics marched like sleepwalkers into the chancel.

The service began. Unending words, delivered by those who loved and those who hated. Prayer and psalm, selection and recital. Somehow cold, too controlled, thought Varak. Not that he cared; the cameras were roiling.

And then he heard the familiar, sanctimonious voice of the President of the United States, its peculiar cadence fashioned to the occasion. A breathless, hollow echo.

“The trend of permissiveness, a
trend
which has
dangerously
eroded our national heritage as law-abiding people, is now being
reversed
. American people today are
tired
of a
disrespect
for law. America wants to come
back
to the
law
as a way of
life
.…”

Varak turned and walked out of the church.

There were better things to do. He crossed over the manicured lawn, past a row of spring flowers to a flagstone path that led to the fountain. He sat on the ledge, feeling the spray on his face. He pulled a road map from his pocket and studied it.

Their last stop was the Congressional Cemetery. They would arrive before the cortege and set up their cameras out of sight. They would photograph the final moments when the body of J. Edgar Hoover was consigned to the ground, his remains interred beneath the earth.

But not his presence. His presence would be felt for as long as the files were missing.

Files
M
through Z. Estimated number: 3,000. Three thousands dossiers that could shape the government, alter the laws and attitudes of the country.

Who had them? Who
was
it?

Whoever it was was recorded on film. It had to be so; there was no other conclusion. No stranger to Washington could have broken through the complex security and stolen them.

Somewhere in the tens of thousands of feet they had taken was a face. And a name that went with the face. He would find that face and that name, thought Varak angrily. He had to.

To fail was unthinkable.

The film rolled through the machine, projecting images on the wall. Magnified faces appeared one after another. Varak rubbed his eyes in weariness; he’d seen the film perhaps fifty times in the past three months.

M
through
Z
. Fourteen letters. More than likely it was a face with a name that began with one of those letters. The man who had stolen the files would not have overlooked the possibility that his dossier was among them. But which man? The mathematical possibilities seemed infinite, compounded by the realization that code names were not ruled out. A man with a name that began with a
K
or a
G
—a Kleindienst or a Grey—could be known to the bureau as “Nelson” or “Stark.” In point of fact, “Nelson” and “Stark”
were
Kleindienst and Grey.

The cellar of the Georgetown house had been converted into a studio with an adjacent office and sitting room. The films, the photographs, the cartons of paper—personnel and medical records, government dossiers, interviews, telephone and credit-card charges—it was all overwhelming. And there could be no staff to sort out and correlate. Only one man could have access to the materials. Anymore than one squared, then cubed, the possibilities of discovery.

It could
not
have begun with a stranger! In the beginning
there had to be a friend, a close friend, an associate. It did not make sense otherwise; there were too many barriers for a stranger to surmount. No stranger could trigger the releases; no stranger could throw unseen switches and abort alarms in restricted rooms guarded day and night.

But which friends? Which associates? Thirteen weeks of going through an accumulation of voluminous records, dossiers, motion-picture film and photographs led him nowhere. Every unusual face,
M
through
Z
, every abnormal scrap of information in a dossier or an interview or a credit check had been cause for an exhaustive examination of the subject. And all had led nowhere.

Varak walked into the small, windowless office. It seemed that he never saw the sun anymore, or smelled fresh air. He looked over at the corkboard on the wall; the desk lamp was angled up at a photographic enlargement of Hoover’s Last Will and Testament.

The sum total of the estate was written in the upper right-hand corner in the wide strokes of a felt-tipped marker. It was $551,500.

Included were the real estate on Thirtieth Street Place, bank accounts, stocks, bonds, and Civil Service benefits in the amount of $326,500. A family home in Georgetown had an estimated value of $100,000, and there was $125,000 worth of oil, gas, and mineral leases in Texas and Louisiana. Total: $551,500.

The chief beneficiary was his friend of nearly fifty years and second in command at the bureau, Clyde Tolson. Nearly everything was left to him; upon
his
death the estate was to be divided between the boys’ clubs and the Damon Runyon Fund. A blank wall.

Minor bequests of $2,000, $3,000, and $5,000 were assigned respectively to his chauffeur, James Crawford; his housekeeper, Annie Fields; and the redoubtable Helen Gandy, his secretary. Three people who had spent their lives in his service were dismissed with penny candy. It said something unattractive, but still it was another blank wall.

And there were those who were not mentioned at all, eight survivors of the “close-knit” Hoover family. Four nieces and four nephews, including one nephew who had spent ten years in the bureau. Most had come to the grave-site.

None was mentioned in Hoover’s will. Another blank wall behind which might be a room filled with rage and condemnation, but certainly it held no files.

So much for the Last Will and Testament of John Edgar Hoover, giant and myth. So much for everything else!

Damn!

Varak moved to the sitting room. Sitting room, bedroom, dining room,
cell
. Actually, Bravo had provided him with more than he needed. Bravo had also given him specific instructions in the event the diplomat died. Inver Brass was to be protected at all costs.

Strange, he never thought of Bravo as Munro St. Claire. He never thought of any of them by their rightful names. Bravo was simply Bravo.

His telephone rang; the outside line.

“Mr. Varak?” It was Bravo.

“Yes, sir?”

“I’m afraid it’s begun. I’m in town. Stay where you are. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”