The Chancellor Manuscript (60 page)

“I suggest we return to the car, and you can see for yourself. I’ll keep both hands above me if you wish.”

“I wish.”

The keys were in the ignition of the Mark IV. Chancellor held the old man against the hood as he checked the diplomat’s pockets and chest St Claire carried no weapon. The realization was bewildering, as bewildering as the keys left in the Mark IV. An automobile was an escape; the leader of Inver Brass would know that.

The flashlight off, Peter shoved the automatic into St. Claire’s back. They walked up the steps and out to the front of the porch. He spun the old man around against the railing and stood facing him.

“If I was late, forgive me,” said the ambassador. “I haven’t driven in nearly twelve years. I tried to explain that to your unidentified friend on the telephone, but he wouldn’t listen.”

St. Claire’s statement made sense. It explained the swaying headlights. It also proved that St. Claire was frightened. He would never have taken such risks at night on the highways and back roads if he had been anything else. “But you came anyway, didn’t you?”

“You knew I couldn’t refuse. You found my man. You discovered the transmitters. I imagine they could be traced to me.”

“Could they?”

“I’m not an expert at such things. Varak was, but I’m not. I’m not even sure how they were obtained.”

“I can’t accept that The man who runs Inver Brass is much more resourceful.”

St. Claire drew himself up in the darkness. The sound of the name seemed to pain him. “You’ve been told, then.”

“Does it surprise you? I told you I knew the identities of Venice, Christopher, Paris, and Banner. And Bravo. Why not Inver Brass?”

“How much have you learned since?”

“Enough to frighten me to death. Forty years, countless millions. Unknown men who ran the country.”

“You’re exaggerating. We came to the aid of the country during periods of crisis. That’s far more accurate.”

“Who determined what a crisis was? You?”

“Crises have a way of being apparent”

“Not always. Not to everybody.”

“We had access to information not available to ‘everybody.’ ”

“And you acted on it rather than making the information public.”

“They were essentially acts of charity. Ultimately for the good of that ‘everybody’ you refer to. We never acted for ourselves.” St Claire’s voice rose, his defense of Inver Brass deeply felt.

“There are ways to provide charity openly. Why didn’t you use them?”

“That sort of charity is always temporary. It doesn’t attack root causes.”

“And root causes can’t be left to the judgments of those elected to understand them, is that it?”

“You’re oversimplifying our viewpoint, and you know it, Mr. Chancellor.”

“I know I’d rather take my chances with an imperfect system I can follow than one I can’t see.”

“That’s sophistry. It’s quite easy for you to argue civics, but while you’re arguing, a thousand pockets of frustration are inexorably spreading. If they touch, there’ll be an eruption of violence beyond your imagination. When that happens, freedom of choice will be eliminated in the cause of adequate diet. It’s as simple as that. Over the years we’ve tried to control that spread. Would you want to stop us?”

Peter conceded the logic of St. Claire’s reasoning, knowing that this brilliant, devious man, masked in such goodness, was forcing him on the defensive, veering him away from the point of their confrontation. He had to remind himself that St. Claire was a monster; there was blood on his hands.

“There are other ways,” he said. “Other solutions.”

“There may be, but I’m not sure we’ll find them in our lifetimes. Certainly not mine. Perhaps in the act of seeking solutions there’s the prevention of violence we hope for.”

Peter attacked suddenly. “You found one solution that was rooted in violence, though, didn’t you? The bait was the truth, after all.”

“What?”

“You killed Hoover! Inver Brass ordered his assassination!”

At the words St. Claire stiffened; a short stifled cry came from his throat. His confidence vanished. He was suddenly an old man accused of a terrible crime.

“Where did—?… 
Who—?”
He could not articulate the question.

“For the moment it doesn’t matter. What matters is that the order was given and carried out You executed a man without a trial, without the judgment of an open court. That’s what’s supposed to separate us from a large part of this world, Mr. Ambassador. From that violence you hate so.”

“There were reasons!”

“Because you believed he was a killer? Because you’d heard he had his assassination teams, his ‘dispatch units’?”

“In large measure, yes!”

“Not good enough. If you knew it, you should have said it! All of you.”

“It couldn’t have been done that way! I told you, there were reasons.”

“Other
reasons, you mean?”

“Yes!”

“The files?”

“For God’s sake, yes! The files!”

“You’re better than he was,” said Chancellor quietly. “We believed with all our hearts and souls that we were.” St. Claire was passing through the first shock waves; he was finding part of the control he had lost “I can’t believe this. I misread Varak so completely.”

“Don’t try that,” replied Peter coldly. “I despise everything he was, but Varak gave his life for you. The truth is you misled him.” “Wrong! Never!”

“The whole time! Varak was ‘Longworth,’ and ‘Longworth’ got into the bureau the night Hoover was killed. Varak got those files! He gave them to
you!”

“
A
through
L
, yes! We’ve never denied it. They were destroyed. Not
M
through Z! They were missing. They
are
missing!”

“No!
Varak thought they were missing because that’s what you wanted him to think!”

“You’re insane!” St. Claire whispered. “There were two other men with Varak that night! One of them—maybe both working together—emptied and switched the folders, or combined them, or just lied. I don’t know how, but that’s where it was done. You knew Varak wouldn’t be compromised about the files, so you went around him.”

St. Claire shook his head, his expression tortured. “No. You’re wrong. The theory is plausible, even ingenious, I admit that. But it simply
is not true
!
”

“Those two men disappeared! Their names were covers, their identities impossible to trace!”

“For a different purpose! Hoover had to be eliminated. The country couldn’t stand even the hint of another assassination. There would have been chaos; it would have fueled the fanatics who want to run this government in violation of every constitutional principle! We couldn’t allow any traces. You must believe that!”

“You’ve lied and lied and lied! There’s no way you can make me believe anything.”

St. Claire paused, reflective. “Perhaps there is. By explaining why, then going one step further: putting my life and everything I’ve stood for for over fifty years of service in your hands.”

“The purpose first,” said Peter harshly. “Why was Hoover murdered?”

“He was the absolute ruler of a government unto itself. There was no clear-cut chain of command. His government was amorphous, without structure; he kept it that way. He had gone way beyond the severest illegalities. No one really knew how far, but there was sufficient evidence pointing to the killings you spoke of; we knew about the blackmail. It reached into the Oval Office. All this might, in itself, have justified the decision, but there was a further consideration that made it irrevocable. An amorphous chain of command was organizing; both within and outside the bureau. Viciously unprincipled men were circling around Hoover, flattering, cajoling, pretending to worship. They had only one objective: his private files. With them they could rule the country. He had to be eliminated before any pacts were made.”

St. Claire stopped. He was becoming tired; his own doubts showed on his face.

“I don’t agree with you,” said Peter, “but things are clearer. How are you going to put fifty years of service in my hands?”

St Claire took a deep breath. “I believe in man’s instinct at certain moments to perceive the truth no matter what I think this is one of those moments. Only two men on the face of the earth knew every step of Hoover’s assassination. The man who created the plan and myself. That man is dead; he died in front of you. I’m left. That plan is your find proof, for no strategy conceived by
human beings is perfect; something is always left undone if others know where to look. By telling you I not only place my life in your hands, but far more important, I place the work of a lifetime at your disposal. What you do with it means more to me than whatever time I have left. Will you accept this moment? Will you let me
try
to convince you?”

“Go ahead.”

As St. Claire spoke, Peter understood the devastating nature of what was being given him. The ambassador was right on two points. Chancellor knew instinctively that he was hearing the truth, and beyond that certainty, he realized that Hoover’s murder was within reach of being confirmed. St. Claire would not use names—other than Varak’s—but it was reasonable to assume that identities could be uncovered.

An actress whose husband had been destroyed during the McCarthy madness; two former Marine communications specialists, both experienced in electronics and telephone interceptions, one an expert marksman; an operative from Britain’s MI6, known to have worked closely with the National Security Council during the Berlin crisis; an American surgeon living in Paris, an expatriate socialist whose wife and son had been killed in an accident with an FBI vehicle that had been involved in illegal, unwarranted surveillance. These had been the team. The threads were uncut; they could be followed to their sources. The plan itself was the work of an intelligence genius, even to the subtle inclusion of a White House advisor’s name.

It accounted for Ramirez’s judgment:
There was no autopsy.… Orders from Sixteen hundred.… The White
House … killed him. If they didn’t, they think they did. They think someone over there did it. Or had it done.

What an incredible mind Varak had possessed!

St. Claire finished, exhausted. “Have I told you the truth? Do you believe me now?”

“As far as we’ve gone, yes. There’s one step further. If I sense a lie, it’s all a lie. Is that fair?”

“There are no more lies. Not where you are concerned. It’s fair.”

“What’s the meaning of Chasǒng?”

“I don’t know.”

“It’s not significant?”

“Quite the contrary. Varak called it a ‘decoy.’ He believed it was the key to the identity of the man of Inver Brass who betrayed us.”

“Explain that.”

Once again St. Claire breathed deeply, his exhaustion even more apparent “It concerned MacAndrew. Something happened at Chasǒng to discredit his command. Thus the phrase ‘Mac the Knife, killer of Chasǒng.’ There was an enormous loss of life; MacAndrew was held responsible. Once his guilt was established, it was expected to stop there. Varak thought that it shouldn’t. He felt there was something else, something that involved MacAndrew’s wife.”

“Did you ever learn the composition of the troops at Chasǒng?”

“The composition?”

“The racial composition.” Chancellor watched the old man closely.

“No. I wasn’t aware that there was any such thing as a ‘racial composition.’ ”

“Suppose I told you that the casualty records of Chas5ng are among the most closely guarded secrets in the Army archives; hundreds were killed and listed as missing. Only thirty-seven survived, six of whom are incapable of communicating. That the thirty-one remaining survivors are in thirty-one separate hospitals across the country. Would all this mean anything to you?”

“It would be further confirmation of the paranoia that exists in the Pentagon. Not unlike the Hoover regime at the bureau.”

“That’s all?”

“We’re speaking of wasted lives. Perhaps
paranoia
is too vague a term.”

“I’d say so. Because it wasn’t an unnecessary loss of life due to MacAndrew. It was a trap set by our own Army. It was a conspiracy of command. Those troops—to the last soldier—were black. It was racial murder.”

St. Claire held his position by the ratling, his expression frozen. Seconds passed; the only sounds were the waves against the rocks and the gusts of wind off the water. The ambassador found his voice.

“In the name of God,
why?”

Peter stared at the diplomat, feeling both relief and bewilderment. The old man was not lying; his shock was
genuine. St. Claire was many things that were unforgivable, but he was not the betrayer of Inver Brass. He did not have the files. Peter returned the gun to his pocket.

“To cover an intelligence operation that involved MacAndrew’s wife. To stop MacAndrew from asking questions. If it had been unearthed, it would have led to the exposure of dozens of similar operations. Men and women placed on drugs, on hallucinogens. Experiments that would have blown up in the faces of those who conceived them, destroyed their careers, and probably gotten several of them killed by the man they had led into the trap: Mac- Andrew.”

“And for
those
reasons they
sacrificed—
Oh, my
God!”

“That’s what Chasǒng means,” said Peter quietly. “Everything else was Varak’s decoy.”

St. Claire stepped forward, his legs unsteady, his features contorted. “Do you realize what you’re saying? Inver Brass—Only one member of Inver Brass is—”

“He’s dead.”

The breath left St Claire’s lungs. For an instant his whole body was contorted. Chancellor continued softly.

“Sutherland’s dead. So is Jacob Dreyfus. And you don’t have the files. That leaves two men. Wells and Montelán.”

The news of Dreyfus’s death was almost more than St. Claire could absorb. His eyes seemed to float in their sockets. He held the railing, gripping it awkwardly in his hands.