The Chancellor Manuscript (7 page)

Varak got out quickly and thanked the astonished guard. The driver and a third man—seated next to the driver—also stepped out and offered pleasant but subdued greetings.

“Where’s the director?” asked the guard. “This is Mr. Hoover’s private car.”

“We’re here on his instructions,” said Varak calmly. “He wants us taken directly to Internal Security. They’re to call him. IS has the number; it’s on a scrambler. I’m afraid it’s an emergency. Please hurry.”

The guard looked at the three well-dressed, well-spoken men. His concern diminished; these men knew the highly classified gate codes that changed every night; beyond that, they carried instructions to call the director himself. On the scrambler phone at the Internal Security desk. That telephone number was
never
used.

The guard nodded, led the men inside to the security desk in the corridor, and returned to his post outside. Behind the wide steel panel with the myriad wires and small television screens, sat a senior agent dressed not unlike the three men who approached him. Varak took a laminated identification card from his pocket and spoke.

“Agents Longworth, Krepps, and Salter,” he said, placing his ID on the couner. “You must be Parke.”

“That’s right,” replied the agent, taking Varak’s identification and reaching for the other two ID’s as they were handed to him. “Have we met, Longworth?”

“Not in ten or twelve years. Quantico.”

The agent looked briefly at the ID’s, returned them to the counter, and squinted in recollection. “Yeah, I remember the name. Al Longworth. Long time.” He extended his hand; Varak took it. “Where’ve you been?”

“La Jolla.”

“Christ, you’ve got a friend!”

“That’s why I’m here. These are my two best men in southern Cal.
He
called me last night.” Varak leaned ever so slightly over the counter. “I’ve got bad news, Parke. It’s not good at all,” he said, barely above a whisper. “We may be getting near ‘open territory.’ ”

The expression on the agent’s face changed abruptly; the shock was obvious.

Among the senior officers at the bureau the phrase
open territory
meant the unthinkable: The director was ill. Seriously, perhaps fatally, ill.

“Oh, my God …” muttered Parke.

“He wants you to call him on the scrambler.”

“Oh, Christ!” Under the circumstances it was obviously the last thing the agent wanted to do. “What does he want? What am I supposed to say, Longworth? Oh,
Jesus
!
”

“He wants us taken up to Flags. Tell him we’re here; verify his instructions and clear one of my men for the relays.”

“The relays? What for?”

“Ask him.”

Parke stared at Varak for a moment, then reached for the telephone.

Fifteen blocks south, in the cellar of a telephone-company complex, a man sat on a stool in front of a panel of interlocking wires. On his jacket was a plastic card with his photograph and, in large letters beneath it, the word
Inspector
. In his right ear was a plug attached to an amplifier on the floor; next to the amplifier was a small cassette recorder. Wires spiraled up to other wires in the panel.

The tiny bulb on the amplifier lighted up. The scrambler phone at the FBI security desk was in use. The man’s eyes were riveted on a button in the cassette recorder; he listened with the ears of an experienced professional. Instantly he pushed the button; the tape rolled, and almost immediately he shut it off. He waited several moments and once again pushed the button, and once again the reels spun.

Fifteen blocks north Varak listened to Parke. The words had been lifted, edited, and refined from a number of tapes. As planned, the voice on the other end of the line would be louder than a normal voice; it would be the voice of a man wanting to not acknowledge illness, fighting to appear normal, and in so doing, speaking abnormally. It not only fit the subject psychiatrically, it had a further value. The volume lent authority, and the authority reduced the possibility that the deception would be spotted.

“Yes, what is it?” The gruff voice could be heard clearly.

“Mr. Hoover, this is senior agent Parke at Internal
Security. Agents Longworth, Krepps, and—” Parke stopped, forgetting the name, his expression bewildered.

“Salter,” whispered Varak.

“Salter, sir. Longworth, Krepps, and Salter. They’ve arrived, and they said I was to call you to verify your instructions. They said they’re to be taken upstairs to your offices, and one is to be cleared for the relays—?”

“Those men,” came the harsh, unrhythmic interruption, “are there at my personal orders. Do as they say. They are to be given complete cooperation, and nothing is to be said to anyone. Is that understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What’s your name again?”

“Senior Agent Lester Parke, sir.”

There was a pause; Varak tensed his stomach muscles and held his breath. The pause was too long!

“I’ll remember that,” came the words finally. “Good night, Parke.” A concluding click was heard on the line.

Varak breathed again. Even the use of the name worked; it had been lifted from a conversation the subject had had during which he had complained about the crime rate in Rock Creek Park.

“He sounds awful, doesn’t he?” Parke replaced the telephone and reached underneath the counter for three night passes.

“He’s a very courageous man,” said Varak. “He asked for your name?”

“Yeah,” replied the agent, inserting the passes into the automatic timer.

“If the worst happens, you might find yourself with a bonus,” added Varak, turning his head away from his two companions.

“What?” Parke looked up.

“A personal bequest. Nothing official.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You’re not supposed to. But you heard the man; I heard him, too. Keep your own counsel, as the book says. You’ll answer to me if you don’t.… The director’s the best friend I’ve ever had.”

Parke stared at Varak. “La Jolla,” he said.

“La Jolla,” answered Varak.

A great deal more was conveyed than the name of a California seacoast town. Stories had circulated for years—the grand designs of a retired monarch, a mansion overlooking
the Pacific, a clandestine government housing the secrets of a nation.

The sad-faced middle-aged woman watched the second hand of the clock on the wall in the small studio. Fifty-five seconds to go. The telephone was on the table, in front of the tape machine she had used to rehearse the words. Over and over again, a full week of rehearsals aimed for a single performance that would last no more than a minute.

Rehearsal. Peformance
.

Terms of a nearly forgotten lexicon.

She was no fool. The strange, blond-haired man who had hired her had explained very little, but enough to let her know that what she was about to do was a
good
thing. Desired by far better men than the man she would talk to on the telephone in … forty seconds.

The woman reminisced as she watched the hand on the clock move slowly toward the mark. They had once said her husband was a fine talent; that’s what everyone had said. He was on his way to becoming a star, a
real
star, not a photogenic accident. Everyone had said so.

And then other people came along and said he was on a list. A very important list that meant he was not a good citizen. And those on the list were given a label.

Subversive
.

And the label was given legitimacy. Tight-lipped young men in dark suits began to show up in studios and producers’ offices.

Federal Bureau of Investigation
.

Then they went behind closed doors and held private conversations.

Subversive
. It was a word associated with the man she was about to speak to.

She reached for the telephone.

“This is for you, my darling,” she whispered. She was primed; the adrenalin was flowing as it used to flow. Then a calm swept over her. She was confident, a professional again. It would be the performance of her life.

John Edgar Hoover lay in bed, trying to focus on the television set across the room. He kept changing channels on the remote control; none of the pictures was clear. He was further aggravated by a strange hollowness in his
throat. He’d never experienced the feeling before; it was as though a hole had been drilled in his neck, allowing too much air into his upper chest. But there was no pain, just an uncomfortable sensation that was somehow related to the distortion in the sound now coming from the television set.

In and out. Louder, then softer.

And oddly enough, he felt hungry. He had never been hungry at that hour; he had trained himself not to be.

It was all very annoying, the annoyance heightened by the dull ring of his private telephone. No more than ten people in Washington had the number; he was not feeling up to a crisis. He reached for the phone and spoke angrily.

“Yes? What is it?”

“Mr. Hoover. I’m sorry to disturb you, but it’s urgent.”

“Miss Gandy?” What was wrong with his hearing? Gandy’s voice seemed to float, in and out, louder, then softer. “What’s the matter, Miss Gandy?”

“The President phoned from Camp David. He’s en route to the White House and would like you to see Mr. Haldeman tonight.”

“Tonight? Why?”

“He told me to tell you it was a matter of the utmost importance, related to information the CIA has gathered during the past forty-eight hours.”

John Edgar Hoover could not help the scowl that crossed his face. The Central Intelligence Agency was an abomination, a band of sycophants led by the liberal orthodoxy. It was not to be trusted.

Neither was the present occupant of the White House, but if he had data that rightfully belonged to the bureau and it was sufficiently vital to send out a man—
that
man—in the middle of the night to deliver it, there was no point in refusing.

Hoover wished the hollowness in his throat would go away. It was most irritating. And something else bothered him.

“Miss Gandy, the President has this number. Why didn’t he call himself?”

“He understood you were having dinner out He knows you dislike being disturbed in a restaurant. I was to coordinate the meeting.”

Hoover squinted through his glasses at the bedside clock. It was not the middle of the night; it was barely ten
fifteen. He should have realized that. He had left Tolson’s at eight, claiming a sudden weariness. The President’s intelligence was not very accurate, either. He was not at a restaurant, he had been with Clyde.

He was so tired he had gone to bed much earlier than usual. “I’ll see Haldeman. Out here.”

“I assumed that, sir. The President suggested that you might wish to dictate several memorandums, instructions to a number of field offices. I volunteered to drive out with Mr. Haldeman. The White House car is picking me up.”

“That’s very thoughtful, Miss Gandy. They must have something interesting.”

“The President wants no one to know that Mr. Haldeman is coming to see you. He said it would be terribly embarrassing.”

“Use the side entrance, Miss Gandy. You have a key. The alarms will be shut off. I’ll notify surveillance.”

“Very well, Mr. Hoover.”

The middle-aged woman replaced the phone in front of the tape machine and sat back in the chair.

She had done it! She had really done it! She’d fallen into the rhythm, every tonal nuance, the imperceptible pauses, the slightly nasal inflections. Perfect!

The remarkable thing was that there had never been an instant of hesitation. It was as if the terrors of twenty years had been erased in a matter of moments.

She had one more call to make. Here she could use any voice she liked, the blander the better. She dialed.

“The White House,” said the voice on the line.

“FBI, honey,” said the middle-aged actress in a faintly southern accent. “This is just information for the logs, nothing urgent. At nine o’clock this evening the director received Mr. Haldeman’s message. This is to confirm the receipt, that’s all.”

“Okay, it’s confirmed. I’ll list it. Muggy day, isn’t it?”

“It’s a beautiful night, though,” replied the actress. “The most beautiful night ever.”

“Someone’s got a heavy date.”

“I’ve got something better than that. Much better. Good night, White House.”

“Good night, Bureau.”

The woman got up from the chair and reached for her pocketbook. “We did it, my darling,” she whispered. Her
last performance had been her finest. She was revenged. She was free.

The driver in the telephone van studied the graph of the electrical field scope closely. There were breaks in the heavier circuits in the lower left and left central areas. It meant that the alarm devices had been shut down in those sections: the driveway entrance, the door in the stone wall, and the path beyond it that led to the rear of the house.

Everything was on schedule. The driver looked at his watch; it was nearly time to climb the telephone pole. He checked the rest of his equipment. When he threw a switch, the electrical current throughout Hoover’s residence would be interrupted. Lights, television sets, and radios would fade and return in a quick series of disturbances. The disruptions would last for twenty seconds, no more. The length of time was sufficient, the momentary distraction enough.

But before that switch was thrown, there was a prior job to be done. If a custom unchanged for years was repeated tonight, an obstacle would be removed efficiently. He looked at his watch again.

Now.

He opened the rear doors of the van and jumped to the pavement He crossed rapidly to the pole, unhooked one end of the long safety belt, and whipped it around the wood, snapping the hook into his waist clamp. He lifted his boots one at a time and kicked the spikes into place.

He looked around. There was no one. He slapped the safety belt above him on the pole and began to climb. In less than thirty seconds he was near the top.

The spill of the streetlight was too bright, too dangerous. It hung suspended from a short metal brace just above him. He reached into his pocket and pulled out an air pistol loaded with lead pellets. He scanned the ground, the alley, the windows above the row of garages. He angled the air gun up at the lighted glass sphere and pulled the trigger.