The Chancellor Manuscript (39 page)

Peter heard no more. He ran, dodging the pedestrians on the sidewalk. He reached the corner; the light was red and traffic filled the street. He turned to his right, aware of a racing figure behind him, and started running again down the block. He dashed into the street, glancing off the fender of a car, and reached the other side. There was a crowd in front of a store window; beyond the glass a marionette show depicted Santa Claus and his elves. Chancellor forced his way between bodies like a man possessed. He looked back over the heads of the crowd.

The man in the raincoat was on the other side of the street, but he was making no move to cross over. Instead, he held a rectangular case against his face, angled from cheek to mouth. He was talking into a radio.

Peter edged his way along the side of the building, away from the crowd. Before he realized it, he was in front of another window, this one a jeweler’s. Suddenly the glass splintered; it was like no other sound he had ever heard.

An alarm went off, filling the air with a deafening bell. People turned to stare at him. Petrified, he looked at the window. Only inches from him was a small circle in the glass. A bullet hole!
An unseen hand was firing at him!

The crowds on the sidewalk began yelling. He raced to the corner; a man ran after him.

“Stop! I’m a police officer!”

Peter lunged into the crowd; if the policeman had his pistol leveled, he dared not fire it. He tugged and pulled and crashed his way to the curb, where he started racing along the edge of the street. The intersection was jammed, the rush-hour traffic at a standstill.

There was an empty taxi up the block, halfway toward the next corner. Chancellor ran toward it, hoping no one would reach it first. It was more than a means of travel, it was sanctuary.

“I’m off duty, buddy. No more fares.”

“Your light’s on!”

“A mistake. Now it’s off.” The driver looked at him, shaking his head in disgust.

Peter was suddenly aware that the repairman’s overalls had split; he looked disheveled, maybe worse. Without thinking, he began taking them off in the middle of the street.

“A pret-ty girl … is like … a mel-odie.…”

A drunk on the curb was watching him, clapping in the rhythm of the strip. The traffic moved; the taxi drove forward. Chancellor stepped out of the overalls and hurled them at the drunk on the curb.

The cars in the street jerked to a stop. Peter leaped between bumpers and trunks and ran into the crowds. He looked at his watch. It was twenty-seven minutes since he had talked to Longworth. He had to get to a telephone. In the next block, diagonally across the street, he could see the reflection of colored lights off the glass of a
booth. It was no longer twilight, it was evening. Above, the Washington sky was dark.

He threaded his way through the traffic in the street. The booth was occupied. A teen-aged girl in dungarees and a red flannel shirt was talking animatedly. Peter looked at his watch; twenty-nine minutes had passed. Longworth had said to call in precisely thirty minutes. How crucial was it? Would a minute or two make any difference?

Chancellor knocked on the glass. The girl shot him a hostile glance. He pushed the door and shouted. “I’m a police officer! I need that phone!” It was the only thing that came to mind.

It was enough. The girl dropped the phone. “Sure.” She started to slide out; then she thrust her head down toward the dangling instrument. “I’ll call ya’, Jennie!” She ran out into the crowds.

Peter replaced the phone, took out the paper with the numbers written on it, inserted a coin, and dialed.

“Manfriedie’s,” announced the voice on the line. There was music in the background; it was a restaurant.

“Peter Chancellor. I was told to call this number.” It was going to be one of the decoys, Peter was sure of it.

“There was a strange occurrence in Munich in the year 1923. It was a portent of things to come, but no one recognized it. What was it, describe it, name the book of yours in which it appeared.”

“It took place in the Marienplatz. Thousands of men held a rally. They were dressed in identical uniforms, and each carried a shovel. They called themselves the Army of Shovelers. The
Schutzstaffel
. It was the beginning of the Nazi. The book was
Reichstag!”

There was a brief silence, then the voice came back again. “Disregard the next telephone number given you. Use the same exchange, but the last four digits are now five, one, seven, seven. Fifty-one, seventy-seven. Have you got that?”

“Yes. Five, one, seven, seven. Same exchange.”

The man hung up. Peter dialed the new number.

“Arts and Industries,” said a woman’s voice.

“My name is Chancellor. Do you have a question for me?”

“Yes, I do,” answered the woman pleasantly. “There was an organization in Serbia, established during the second decade of the century and headed by a man—”

“Let me save you time,” interrupted Peter. “The organization was called the Unity of Death. It was formed in 1911, and its leader was known as Apis. His real name was Dragutin and he was the director of Serbia’s military intelligence. The book was
Sarajevo!”

“Very good, Mr. Chancellor.” The woman sounded as though she were in a classroom, appreciating a well-prepared student. “Now, here’s a new telephone number for you.”

She gave it to him; he dialed it. Again the exchange was the same.

“History and Technology, Laboratories Division.” The speaker was male. Peter identified himself and was told to wait a moment. Another voice came on the line, this time a woman’s, the accent foreign.

“I should like you to tell me what moves a man to separate himself from all he has known and accepted, and to risk becoming a pariah in the eyes of his peers. For to refuse that risk, to continue as he has, is to die within himself.”

Chancellor stared at the white casing of the telephone. Those were his words, from
Counterstrike!
One short paragraph among thousands, but for Peter it was the key to the entire book. If Longworth had the capacity to discern that, there was, perhaps, more to the man than he had considered.

“The knowledge that the administration of justice and fairness no longer mattered to the country’s leaders. The people must be shown this, the leaders confronted.” Chancellor felt foolish; he quoted himself.

“Thank you, Mr. Chancellor,” said the woman with the accent. “Please analyze your reply and the telephone calls you have just made. The combination will tell you what you want to know.”

Peter was bewildered. “It tells me nothing! I’ve got to reach Longworth! Now, you tell me where he is!”

“I don’t know any Mr. Longworth; I’m only reading what was given me over the phone by an old friend.”

There was a click and then the whine of a dial tone. Peter slammed his hand on the phone. It was crazy! Three unconnected phone calls involving books he’d written over—Unconnected? No, not actually. The exchanges were identical. That meant the locations—Where was the telephone book?

It was on a chain on the right side of the booth. He found Manfriedie’s Restaurant. The address was on Twelfth Street Northwest. The second call was taken by a woman who said the words
Arts and Industries
. The third was
History and Technology
. Where was the connection?

It was suddenly very obvious. They were buildings in the Smithsonian complex! Manfriedie’s was near the Mall. Near the Smithsonian! Probably the only restaurant in the area.

But where in the Smithsonian? It was immense.

Analyze your reply.

The knowledge that the administration of justice and fairness …

Administration!

The administration building at the Smithsonian! One of Washington’s landmarks.

That was it! Longworth was there!

Peter let the telephone book swing back into place. He turned and yanked the door open.

He stopped. In front of him stood the man in the raincoat. In the darkness, illuminated by the flashing colors of the Christmas lights, Chancellor saw the gun in the man’s hand. On its barrel was the perforated tube of a silencer. The weapon was pointed at his stomach.

There was no time for thought. So Peter screamed. As loudly and as maniacally as he could.

He swung his left hand down toward the obscene perforated cylinder. There were two vibrations, shots; a piece of cement exploded. Only yards away a man and a woman cried out hysterically. The woman grabbed her stomach, collapsing on the sidewalk, writhing; the man reeled, holding his face, blood rolling through his fingers. There was chaos. The man in the raincoat pulled the
trigger again. Chancellor heard the spit, his hand felt the white heat of the cylinder, and glass shattered behind him. Peter would not let go of the deadly thing; he kicked at the man’s legs, brought his knees up into the man’s groin, and pushed him backward into the street. The traffic was moving; the man crashed into the fender of an onrushing car, the impact hurling him back onto the curb.

Peter’s hand was burned, the skin blistered, but his fingers were still gripped around the cylinder, stuck to it. The gun was his.

With the strength born of panic the man in the raincoat staggered up; a knife was in his hand, the long blade whipping out from its recess. He lunged at Chancellor.

Peter fell against the booth, avoiding the knife. He pulled the cylinder from his left hand; the blistered skin of his palm came partially off with it. He pointed the barrel at the man in the raincoat.

He could not pull the trigger! He could not fire the gun!

The man slashed the knife up in a backhand lunge, the blade meant to sever Chancellor’s throat. Peter lurched away, the blade’s point entering his sweater. He brought his right foot up, catching the man in the chest and hammering him backward. The man fell on his shoulder. For an instant he lay stunned.

Sirens wailed in the distance now. Shrill whistles blew as the police converged. Chancellor followed his physical instincts. Holding the pistol in his hand, he sprang at his stunned attacker and brought the barrel down on the man’s head.

Then he ran through the hysterical crowds to the intersection, out into the street, against the traffic. He kept running.

He turned into a narrow side street; the cacophony of sirens and screams receded behind him. The street was darker than those of the shopping district; it housed small offices in old two- and three-story brick buildings.

Peter fell into the shadows of a doorway. His chest and legs and temples were in pain. His breath was so spent he thought he would vomit; so he went limp and let air fill his lungs.

Somehow he would have to get to the Smithsonian. To Alan Longworth. He did not want to think about it,
not for a few minutes. He had to find a moment of quiet, a void where the pounding in his head would cease because there would be no—

Oh, Jesus! At the entrance of the narrow street, in the dim spill of the streetlights, two men were stopping pedestrians, asking questions. They had followed him. His scent was no less than that left by a fugitive tracked down by bloodhounds.

Chancellor crept out of the shadows into other shadows on the sidewalk. He could not run; he would be seen too easily. He spun around behind the iron grillwork of a railing that rose above a stone staircase, and looked back between the fluting. The men were talking to each other now, the man on the right holding a walkie-talkie next to his ear.

There was the sound of a horn. A car was turning into the street, and the two men were in its path. They moved to their left to let the automobile go by; they were blocked from sight. If they were blocked, so was he! But it would only be for seconds—two or three at most.

Chancellor stepped out from behind the grillwork and started running to his right down the sidewalk. If he could pace himself somehow with the approaching car, he could stretch out the time he would be out of sight; three or four more seconds would be enough. He listened for the engine behind him. The maneuver worked! He was at the corner. He ducked behind the edge of the building and pressed his back against the stone. He inched his face forward and looked around into the narrow street. The two men were moving cautiously from doorway to doorway, their caution itself bewildering Peter. Then he understood. In his panic he had forgotten, but the weight in his jacket pocket reminded him: He had the gun. The gun he could not fire.

Strollers looked at him; a couple hurried past; a mother and child crossed to the curb edge of the sidewalk to avoid him. Chancellor raised his eyes to the street sign. New Hampshire Avenue; diagonally across was the intersection of T Street He had been in the shopping district north of Lafayette Square; he had run between fifteen and twenty blocks, perhaps more if he took into account the various cutoffs and alleyways. He had to double back somehow and head southeast toward the Mall.

The two men were no more than fifty yards away. To his right, a half block north of where he was, the traffic
light turned green. Chancellor started to run again. He reached the corner, crossed the street, turned left, and stopped. A policeman stood beneath the traffic signal; he was looking at Peter.

It was, thought Chancellor, perhaps the only opportunity he’d have. He could go up to the police officer, identify himself, and say that men were hunting him. The officer could call in and learn of the chaos twenty blocks away, hear for himself how a gun had been fired and shoppers wounded. He could say all this to the officer and plead for assistance.

But even as he considered the idea, he realized that there would be questions, and forms to fill out, and statements to be made. Longworth would wait only so long. And there were men with radios and weapons looking for him; back at the hotel Alison was alone, with only one man to protect her. The madness would not be stopped by going to the police. It would only be prolonged.

The light changed. Peter walked rapidly across the intersection, past the police officer, and into T Street. He stepped into a doorway, into the shadows, and looked back. A block and a half south a black limousine heading north had pulled to a stop at the corner of the narrow street and New Hampshire Avenue. Directly in front of the car was a streetlamp. He could see the two men approaching the car; a rear window slid down.