The Chancellor Manuscript (29 page)

“Why?”

“He’s still a major. Most of his contemporaries are light colonels, full birds, or brigadiers.”

“Is his resentment justified? Did he get passed over because he’s Puerto Rican?”

“Oh, I suppose, partially. It’s a pretty closed society in those regions. And I’ve heard the jokes: ‘Be careful if you take Ramirez to a fleet cocktail party. They’ll put a jacket on him.’ In the navy the P.R.’s are houseboys. That sort of thing.”

“That sort of thing justifies a lot of resentment.”

“I’m sure it does, but it’s not the whole picture.
Ramirez was given a great many opportunities—more than most—perhaps because he
was
a member of a minority. He hasn’t done much with them.”

Peter glanced out the window, vaguely troubled. The look he had seen in Ramirez’s eyes was specific hatred, directed at specific objects. MacAndrew’s coffin. MacAndrew’s grave. MacAndrew.

“What did your father think of him?” he asked.

“About what I just told you. He was a lightweight, hotheaded and too emotional. Not at all reliable. Dad refused to second two field promotions for him. Beyond that, he didn’t say much.”

“What did he mean, ‘not at all reliable’?”

Alison frowned. “I’d have to think. It was in the areas of recap and recon, I believe.”

“That’s nice. I haven’t the vaguest idea what you’re talking about.”

She laughed. “Sorry. They’re written reports to field headquarters. Combat summaries and reconnaissance.”

“That doesn’t help much, but I think I know what you mean. Your father was saying that Ramirez was a liar. Either emotionally or by design.”

“I guess so. He’s not important, Peter.” Alison placed her hand on his. “It’s over. Finished, past,
over
. Thank you, thank you more than I can ever say.”

“We’re not ‘over,’ ” he said.

She held his eyes. “I hope not.” Then she smiled. “A hotel’s a beautiful idea. We’ll luxuriate for a whole day and not think about anything. I’m sick of thinking. Then tomorrow I’ll go see the lawyer and take care of things. I don’t want you to feel you have to stay. I’ll be back in New York in a few days.”

Chancellor was startled; he wondered if she’d forgotten. So abruptly, so completely. He held her hand, not wanting her to pull away. “But there’s the house in Maryland. Men broke in and—?”

“Oh, God! Let it go! He’s dead. They made their point, whatever it was.”

“We’ll talk about it later,” he said.

“All right.”

Peter understood. Alison had faced the agony of her father’s death and the further anguish of examining that death. At the burial she had confronted the men who had tried to destroy him. The service at Arlington was a symbol
for her: The Gordian knot had been severed; she was free to find her own world. And now he was asking her to go back.

He had to. Because it wasn’t over. He knew it and so did she.

Chancellor knew something else, too. Alison had said that Ramirez was not important.

He was.

Once again the limousines arrived at the Georgetown house at different times, from different points of origin. Once again silent drivers had met their passengers sight unseen. Inver Brass convened.

It had been an unspoken agreement for many weeks between the elders—Bravo, Venice, and Christopher—that the choice of a new Genesis was between the two remaining younger men: Banner and Paris.

Beyond doubt, each was qualified, each brilliant, each extraordinary in several fields.

Banner had come to Liver Brass six years ago. He had been the youngest president in the history of a major eastern university, but he had left to assume chairmanship of the international Roxton Foundation. His name was Frederick Wells, and his expertise was in global finance. And yet, in spite of the worldwide impact of his decisions, Wells had never lost sight of the fundamental human need for dignity, respect, and the freedoms of choice and expression. Wells believed deeply in human beings, with all their flaws, and those who sought to repress human beings or shape them or dominate them felt his wrath.

As John Edgar Hoover had unknowingly felt it.

Paris was the newest recruit; he had joined Inver Brass barely four years before. He was a scholar. His ancestral roots were in Castile, but his own were fervently planted in America, where his family had fled to escape the Falangists. His name was Carlos Montelán. Presently, he occupied the Maynard Chair of International Relations
at Harvard and was considered the country’s most perceptive analyst of twentieth-century geopolitical thought. For a dozen years succeeding administrations had tried to recruit Montelán into the State Department, but he had demurred. He was a scholar, not an activist. He knew the intrinsic dangers that existed when theoreticians moved into the swift world of pragmatic negotiations.

Yet Montelán never stopped probing, never ceased his questioning of men and their motives—whether personal or related to a larger cause. And when he found one or both without merit, or destructive, he did not hesitate to make an active decision.

As he had not hesitated in the case of John Edgar Hoover.

Bravo had put off the selection of either contender, in spite of Christopher’s urging. Christopher was Jacob Dreyfus, a banker, and last of the Jewish patriarchs, whose house rivaled the Baruchs’ and the Lehmans’. Christopher was eighty and knew his time was short; it was important to him that Inver Brass install its leader. A house without a man to give it direction was no house at all. And for Jacob Dreyfus there was no “house” in this beloved land as vital as the one he had helped found—Inver Brass.

He had said as much to Bravo, and Munro St. Claire knew that no one said it better than Jacob. St. Claire had been there at the beginning, too, as had Daniel Sutherland, the black giant whose extraordinary intellect had carried him from the fields of Alabama to the highest judicial circles in the country. But neither Bravo nor Venice could summon the words that defined Liver Brass as well as Christopher could.

As Jacob Dreyfus expressed it, Inver Brass had been born in chaos, at a time when the nation was being torn apart, on the edge of self-destruction. The market had collapsed, business had ground to a halt; factories had been closed, storefronts boarded up, farms allowed to fall into disuse as cattle died and machinery rusted. The inevitable explosions of violence had begun to take place.

In Washington inept leaders had been incapable of action. So in the last months of 1929 Inver Brass had been formed. The first Genesis had been a Scotsman, an investment banker who’d followed the advice of Baruch and Dreyfus and had gotten out of the market. It had been he
who had given the group its name, after a small marshland lake in the Highlands that was not on any map. For Inver Brass had to exist in secrecy. It operated outside the government bureaucracy because it had to operate swiftly, without encumbrances.

Massive sums of money had been transferred to countless distressed areas where violence—born of need—had erupted. Throughout the country the sharp edges of that violence had been dulled by the wealth of Inver Brass; the fires had been dampened, contained within acceptable limits.

But mistakes had been made, corrected as soon as they’d been understood. Some had gone beyond repair. The Depression had been worldwide; infusions of capital had been required beyond the nation’s shores.

There was Germany. The economic devastations of the Versailles Treaty, the inadequacy of the Locarno pacts, the impracticality of the Dawes Plan—they were all misunderstood, the men of Inver Brass had thought. And that had been their most calamitous mistake. One that thirty-five years later a graduate student named Peter Chancellor began to perceive as the one thing it was
not
. A conspiracy of global politics.

He had to be stopped, this young man Chancellor. Inver Brass was in the shadows of his imagination, and he did not know it.

But the mistake had led the men of Inver Brass into new territory. They had entered the realm of national policy. At first it was to try to rectify the errors they had made. But later it was because they could contribute. Inver Brass had the wisdom and the resources. It could act and react swiftly, without interference, answerable to no one but its collective conscience.

Munro St. Claire and Daniel Sutherland had listened to Jacob’s impassioned plea for the quick appointment of a new Genesis. Neither replied with any passion at all. Each had agreed without conviction, essentially saying nothing. St. Claire knew that Sutherland could not know what he knew: There was the possibility Inver Brass harbored a traitor. So Sutherland’s doubts had to lie elsewhere. St. Claire thought he knew what those doubts were: The days of Inver Brass were coming to a close. Perhaps they would end with the elders, and maybe it was better that way. Time mandates change; they were from another era.

St. Claire’s doubts were much more specific. It was why he could not permit the elevation of a new Genesis. Not from either contender. For if there was a traitor in Liver Brass, it was either Banner or Paris.

They sat around the circular table, the empty Genesis chair a reminder of their essential impermanence. There was no need for a fire in the Franklin stove. No papers would have to be burned; none were on the table, nor would there be any. No coded reports had been delivered, for there were no decisions to make, only information to be imparted and comments to be heard.

A trap was to be set. First, developments had to be described in such a way that St. Claire could observe the reaction of each man at that table. And then two names would be given: Phyllis Maxwell, journalist; Paul Bromley—code: Viper—vanished critic of the Pentagon. Vanished, but easily traced by any man at that table.

“Our meeting will be short this evening,” said Bravo. “The purpose is to bring you up to date and hear anything you might have to say regarding the new developments.”

“I trust that includes a comment on past decisions,” said Paris.

“It includes anything you like.”

“Good,” continued Paris. “Since the other evening, I’ve picked up two books by Peter Chancellor. I’m not sure why you chose him. True, he has a quick mind and a flair for prose, but he’s hardly a writer of lasting distinction.”

“We weren’t looking for literary merit.”

“Neither am I. And I don’t discount the popular novel. I merely refer to this specific writer. Is he as capable as perhaps a dozen others? Why him?”

“Because we knew him,” interjected Christopher. “We don’t know a dozen others.”

“I beg your pardon?” Paris leaned forward.

“Christopher’s point is well taken,” said Bravo. “We know a great deal about Chancellor. Six years ago we had reason to learn. You both know the history of Inver Brass; we’ve concealed nothing from you. Our contributions, our errors. In the late sixties Chancellor was writing …” Bravo paused and addressed Paris—“an analytical dissertation on the Weimar collapse and the emergence of militant Germany. He came very close to identifying Inver Brass. He had to be stopped.”

There was silence around the table. St. Claire knew that the Negro and, more profoundly, the Jew were thinking about those days. Each in his own anguish.

“That dissertation,” clarified Banner, staring at Paris, “became the novel
Reichstag!”

“Wasn’t that dangerous?” asked Paris.

“It was fair,” replied Venice.

“It was also fiction,” added Christopher disagreeably.

“That answers my question,” said Paris. “It was a matter of familiarity as much as anything. Better a known entity with its limitations than an unknown one with greater promise.”

“Why do you persist in discrediting Chancellor?” asked Venice. “We’re after Hoover’s files, not literary distinction.”

“Subjective comparisons,” answered the scholar. “He’s the type of writer that annoys me. I know something about the events of Sarajevo and the conditions prevalent at the time. I read his book. He bases his conclusions on intentionally misinterpreted facts and on exaggerated associations. Yet I’m sure thousands of readers accept what he writes as authentic history.”

Bravo leaned back in his chair. “I read that book too, and know something about the events leading up to Sarajevo. Would you say that Chancellor’s inclusion of the industrial conspiracy was in error?”

“Of course not It’s been established.”

“Then, regardless of how he arrived at it, he was correct.”

Paris smiled. “If you’ll forgive me, I’m relieved that you don’t teach history. But as I said, my question is answered. What are the new developments?”

“The developments constitute authentic progress; they can be termed nothing eke.” Bravo proceeded to describe Chancellor’s driving with Alison to Kennedy Airport, their meeting with the military escort, and the arrival of the plane bearing the general’s coffin. As Varak had suggested, St Claire spoke slowly, watching for any reaction that would indicate someone at the table anticipated his words because the events were known to him. It would be in the eyes, Varak had said. A brief, clouded response that was recognition. Certain chemical changes could not be concealed; the eyes were the microscope.

St. Claire found no such reactions. No such responses. Only total absorption from each member at the table.

He proceeded to describe what had been heard on the tape, what had been seen on film.

“Without Varak’s preparations we wouldn’t have learned of the extraordinary action taken against Chancellor. And it
was
against Chancellor, not MacAndrew’s daughter. We believe it’s an attempt to throw him off course; to convince him MacAndrew’s resignation was the result of command decisions made years ago in Korea, at a place called Chasǒng.”

Paris’s eyes widened; he reacted visibly. Then he spoke. “The killers of Chasǒng.…”

A sharp pain shot through St. Claire’s chest; he lost his breath, unable for a moment to find it. He struggled for control as he looked sharply at Carlos Montelán.

The words Paris spoke were chilling to him. There was no way Paris could have known them! Nowhere on the tapes had the phrase been employed, and St. Claire had not used it!