The Chancellor Manuscript (55 page)

“Maybe. There’s a doctor at Walter Reed. Phil Brown. He was a medic in Korea when my father found him. He flew helicopter runs to the front lines and treated the wounded when the doctors said no thank you. Later, Dad got him started in the right direction, including medical school, courtesy of the Army. He was from a poor family; it wouldn’t have been possible otherwise.”

“That was a long time ago.”

“Yes, but they stayed in touch. We stayed in touch. It’s worth a try. I can’t come up with anyone else.”

“Can you get him here? I don’t want to talk on the phone.”

“I can ask,” said Alison.

Within the hour a slender forty-three-year-old army doctor walked through the door and embraced Alison. There was a good-natured quality about the man, thought Chancellor; he liked him, although he had an idea that when Alison had said they’d “stayed in touch,” she meant precisely that. They were good friends; they had once been better friends.

“Phil, it’s so good to see you!”

“I’m sorry I didn’t make Mac’s burial,” said the doctor, holding Alison by the shoulders. “I figured you’d understand. All those sanctimonious words from all those bastards who wanted his stars impounded.”

“You haven’t lost your directness, Charlie Brown.”

The major kissed her on the forehead. “I haven’t heard that name in years.” He turned to Peter. “She’s a
Peanuts
freak, you know. We used to wait up for the Sunday papers—”

“This is Peter Chancellor, Phil,” interrupted Alison.

The doctor focused on Peter and offered his hand. “You’ve upgraded your friends, Ali. I’m impressed. I enjoy your books, Peter. May I call you Peter?”

“Only if I can call you Charlie?”

“Not in the office. They’d think I was an intellectual; that’s frowned upon.… Now, what’s this all about? Ali sounded like a fugitive from a narc raid.”

“Right to the first,” said Alison. “Far worse than the second. May I tell him, Peter?”

Chancellor looked at the major, at the abrupt concern in his eyes, at the strength veiled in pleasantness. “I think you can tell him everything.”

“I think you’d better,” said Brown. “This girl means a lot to me. Her father was an important part of my life.”

They told him. Everything. Alison began; Peter filled in. The telling was cathartic; there was someone they could trust at last. Alison started to explain the events in Tokyo twenty-two years before. She stopped when she got to her mother’s attack on her; further words would not come.

The doctor knelt in front of her. “Listen to me,” he said professionally. “I want to hear it all. I’m sorry, but you have to tell it”

He did not touch her, but in his voice was the soft, firm command.

When she had finished, Brown nodded to Peter and got up to make himself a drink. Chancellor went to Alison and held her as the doctor poured himself a drink.

“The bastards,” said Brown, revolving the glass in his hands. “Hallucinogens—that’s what they plateaued her on. They may have strung her out on a morphine derivative or cocaine, but the hallucinogens provoke visual displacement; that’s the prime symptom. Both sides were into heavy experiments in those days. The
bastards!”

“What difference does it make which narcotics were used?” asked Chancellor, his arm around Alison.

“Maybe none at all,” answered Brown. “But there could be. Those experiments were very restricted, very secret Somewhere there are records—God knows where—but they exist They could tell us the strategy, give us names and dates, tell us how wide the net spread.”

“I’d rather talk to the men who were at Chasǒng,” Peter said. “A few of the survivors, the higher the rank the better. Those in the VA hospitals. But there’s no time to chase all over the country looking for them.”

“You think you’ll find the answer there?”

“Yes. Chasǒng’s become a cult. I heard a dying man scream the name as if his own death were a willing sacrifice. There was no mistaking it”

“All right.” Brown nodded in agreement. “Then why couldn’t the sacrifice be based in revenge? Retribution for the activities of Mac’s wife, her mother?” The doctor looked at Alison, his expression apologetic. “Actions she had no control over, but whoever’s looking for revenge wouldn’t know that.”

“That’s the point,” interrupted Peter. “The kind of people involved in this are followers, willing to die—rank and file—not command personnel. They wouldn’t know anything about her mother. You just said it. Ramirez confirmed it Those experiments were restricted, very secret Only a few people knew. There’s no connection.”

“You
found it. With Ramirez.”

“I was
expected
to find it, expected to settle for it But something else happened at Chasǒng. Varak sensed it, but he couldn’t put a label on it, so he called it a decoy.”

“A decoy?”

“Yes. Same pond, wrong duck. ‘Mac the Knife’ had nothing to do with his wife’s manipulation. The torn nightgown on the floor of the study in Rockville, the smashed glasses, the perfume—they were all signposts pointing in the wrong direction. Pointing toward a wreck of a woman destroyed by the enemy, and I was supposed to leap at it I did, too, but I was wrong. It’s something else.”

“How do you know all this? How can you be so sure?”

“Because, goddamn it, I’ve invented this sort of thing myself. In books.”

“In
books?
Come on, Peter, this is real.”

“I could answer that, but you’d tie me up and take me in for observation. Just get me as many names as you can of the Chasǒng survivors.”

Major Philip Brown, M.D., looked at the memorandum that resulted from the morning’s conference. He was pleased with himself. The memo had just the right portentous
ring to it without raising alarms that might be too shrill.

It was the sort of paper he could use to gain access to those thousands of microfilmed records that specified the location and brief medical histories of the disabled men residing in veterans’ hospitals throughout the country.

Essentially the memorandum theorized that in a number of older disabled soldiers certain internal tissues were deteriorating at a somewhat faster pace than the normal aging process allowed for. These men had served in Korea, in and around Chagang Province. It was quite possible that a virus had infected their bloodstreams, and though it had appeared dormant, it was in fact molecularly active. The memo theorized that it was the
Hynobius
, a microscopic antigen carried by insects indigenous to Chagang Province. Further study was recommended as priorities allowed.

It was effective nonsense. The major had no idea if a
Hynobius
antigen existed. He reasoned that if he invented it, there could be no one to dispute him.

Memorandum in hand, Brown walked into the microfilm depository. He did not use the name Chasǒng with the staff sergeant in charge. Instead, he let the sergeant arrive at the selections. The enlisted man took his detective work seriously; he went back into the metal stacks and returned with the microfilms.

Three hours and twenty-five minutes later, Brown stared at the last projection on the screen. His tunic had been removed long ago, draped over a chair. His tie had been loosened, his collar unbuttoned. He sat back stunned.

In the hundreds of feet of microfilm there was not one mention of Chasǒng.

Not one.

It was as though Chasǒng had never existed. Nothing had ever happened there according to the microfilm depository of the Walter Reed Hospital.

He stood up and carried the rolls back to the sergeant Brown knew he had to be cautious, but whatever the risk, it had to be taken. He had reached a dead end.

“I’ve extracted a lot of what we need,” he said, “but I think there’s more.
Hynobius
in the Ss sub-groupings turned up in the mobile labs around P’yǒng-yang. A number of these records refer to a Chasǒng district or province. I wondered if you had an index on it.”

There was an immediate response from the sergeant, a speck of recognition in his eyes. “Chasǒng? Yes sir, I know the name. I saw it recently. I’m trying to think where.”

Brown’s pulse accelerated. “It could be important, Sergeant It’s just another line in the spectrograph, but it could be the one we need. The
Hynobius
is a bitch. Try to remember, please.”

The sergeant got out of his chair and came to the counter, still frowning. “I think it was an entry on another shift, the insert in the far right column. That’s always a little unusual, so it sort of stands out.”

“Why is it unusual?”

“That column’s for removals. The films are signed out. Generally people use the equipment here like you did.”

“Can you pinpoint the time?”

“Couldn’t have been more than a day or so ago. Let me look.” The clerk pulled a metalbound ledger from a shelf. “Here it is. Yesterday afternoon. Twelve strips were signed out. All Chasǒng. At least signing them out makes sense.”

“Why is that?”

“It’d take someone two days in here to go through all that material. I’m surprised it was even collated the way it was.”

“What way was that?”

“Coded indexes. National-security classification. You need the master schedule to locate the films. Even though you’re a doctor, you couldn’t see them.”

“Why not?”

“Your rank isn’t high enough, sir.”

“Who did sign them out?”

“A Brigadier General Ramirez.”

Brown turned his TR-6 into the drive of the enormous data-processing center in McLean, Virginia. There was a guardhouse on the left Across the roadway was a barrier with the inevitable Authorized Government Personnel Only sign affixed to the metal strips.

It hadn’t taken much pressure to convince the staff sergeant at the depository that if men died because a general named Ramirez had removed the means of tracing the
Hynobius
, the sergeant could well be responsible.

Besides, Brown was perfectly willing to take full responsibility—rank and medical—and sign for the microfilm identification numbers under his own name. The sergeant was not giving him the film, only the numbers; Reed Security would clear him for the duplicates in McLean.

The doctor reasoned that he had a personal score to settle with Ramirez. The brigadier had destroyed General MacAndrew, and MacAndrew had given Phil Brown, farm boy from Gandy, Nebraska, a very decent chance in life. If Ramirez didn’t like it, he could always file charges.

Somehow Brown didn’t think the brigadier would do that.

Breaching the security desk at Walter Reed was not very difficult. It was a question of using the memorandum to browbeat a nonmedical security officer into giving him a general clearance for McLean.

Brown showed his clearance to the civilian behind the entrance desk at McLean. The man punched the buttons of a computer; small green numbers appeared on the miniature screen, and the doctor was directed to the proper floor.

The main point, reflected Brown as he walked through the doors into Section M, Data Processing, was that since he had the serial numbers for the material signed out by Ramirez, he needed nothing else. Each strip of microfilm had its own individual identification. The medical clearance was accepted; the obstacles fell, and ten minutes later he sat in front of a very complicated machine that, weirdly enough, looked like a shiny new version of an old-time Moviola.

And ten minutes after that he realized the staff sergeant at the depository was wrong when he said it would take someone two days to go through these records. It would take less than an hour. Brown was not sure what he had found, but whatever it was, it caused him to stare in disbelief at the information flashed on the small screen in front of him.

Of the hundreds of men who had engaged in the Battle of Chasǒng, only thirty-seven had survived. If that were not startling enough, the disposition of the thirty-seven was appalling. It was in contradiction to every accepted psychological practice. Men severely maimed or crippled in the same combat operation were rarely separated.
Since they would spend the rest of their lives in institutions, their comrades were often all they had left, families and friends visiting them less and less frequently until they were only uncomfortable, unseemly shadows in far distant wards.

Yet the thirty-seven survivors of Chasǒng had been meticulously isolated from one another. Specifically, thirty-one had been separated, in thirty-one different hospitals from San Diego to Bangor, Maine.

The remaining six were together, but their close association was next to meaningless. They were in a maximum-security psychiatric ward ten miles west of Richmond. Brown knew the place. The patients were certifiably insane—all dangerous, most homicidal.

Still, they were together. It was not a pleasant prospect, but if Chancellor believed he could learn something, here were the names of six survivors of Chasǒng. From the writer’s point of view the circumstances might be advantageous. As long as communication was possible, these men whose mental capacities had been destroyed at Chasǒng might be capable of revealing a great deal. Unconsciously perhaps, but without the inhibiting strictures imposed by rational thought The causes of insanity rarely left the minds of the insane.

Something he could not define bothered the doctor, but he was too stunned to analyze it. His mind was too packed with the inexplicable to think anymore.

Too, he wanted to get out of the data-processing center into the cold fresh air.

They were not entering a hospital, Peter felt. They were going inside a prison. A sanitized version of a concentration camp.

“Remember, your name is Conley, and you’re an M.N. subgroup specialist,” said Brown. “I’ll do the talking.”

They walked down the long white corridor lined with white metal doors on both sides. There were small, thick observation windows in the walls beside the doors, behind which Chancellor could see the inmates. Grown men lay curled up on bare floors, many soiled by their own wastes. Others paced like animals, when, suddenly catching sight of strangers in the corridor, they thrust contorted faces
against the glass. Still others stood at their windows, staring blankly at the sunlight outside, lost in silent fantasies.