The Chancellor Manuscript Page 5

  The blond girl beside Peter on the bed was Sheffield’s wife.

  Chancellor turned to her. The vacuous eyes were brighter, but still dead. The mouth opened, and an experienced tongue slid sensuously out and then back and forth, conveying an unmistakable message.

  The well-applauded performer was ready to perform again.

  Who gave a shit? He reached for her.

  3

  The man whose face was among the most recognized in the nation sat alone at table ten in the Mayflower Restaurant on Connecticut Avenue. The table was by a window, and the occupant kept glancing through the glass absently, but not without a certain vague hostility, at the passersby on the street.

  He had arrived at precisely eleven thirty-five; he would finish his lunch and depart at twelve-forty. It had been an unbroken custom for over twenty years. The hour and five minutes was the custom, not the Mayflower. The Mayflower was a recent change, since the closing of Harvey’s, several blocks away.

  The face, with its enormous jaws, drawn-out mouth, and partially thyroid eyes, had disintegrated. The jaws were sagging jowls; creased, blemished flesh overlapped the slits that had been eyes; the touched-up strands of hair attested to the ferocious ego that was intrinsic to the aggressively negative expression.

  His usual companion was not in evidence. Declining health and two strokes prevented his elegantly dressed presence. The soft, pampered face—struggling for masculinity—had for decades been the flower to the bristled cactus. The man about to have lunch looked across the table as if he expected to see his attractive alter ego. That he saw no one seemed to trigger a periodic tremor in his fingers and a recurrent twitching of his mouth. He seemed enveloped in loneliness; his eyes darted about, alert to real and imagined ills surrounding him.

  A favorite waiter was indisposed for the day; it was a personal affront. He let it be known.

  Fruit salad with a dome of cottage cheese in the center was marked for table ten. It was processed from the open, stainless steel shelf in the kitchen to the service counter. The blond-haired second assistant chef, temporarily employed, marked off the various trays, appraising their appearance with a practiced eye. He stood over table ten’s fruit salad, a clipboard in his hand, his gaze directed at the trays in front of it.

  Underneath the clipboard a pair of thin silver tongs were held horizontally. In the tongs’ teeth was a soft white capsule. The blond-haired man smiled at a harassed waiter coming through the dining-room door; at the same moment he plunged the silver tongs into the mound of cottage cheese beneath the clipboard, removed them, and moved on.

  Seconds later he returned to the order for table ten, shook his head, and touched up the dome of cottage cheese with a fork.

  Within the inserted capsule was a mild dose of lysergic acid diethylamide. The capsule would disintegrate and release the narcotic some seven to eight hours after the moment of ingestion.

  The minor stress and the disorientation that resulted would be enough. There would be no traces in the bloodstream at the time of death.

  The middle-aged woman sat in a windowless room. She listened to the voice coming out of the wall speakers, then repeated the words into the microphone of a tape machine. Her objective was to duplicate as closely as possible the now familiar voice from the speakers. Every sliding tone, every nuance, the idiosyncratic short pauses that followed the partially sibilant s’s.

  The voice coming from the speakers was that of Helen Gandy, for years the personal secretary of John Edgar Hoover.

  In the corner of the small studio stood two suitcases. Both were fully packed. In four hours the woman and the suitcases would be on a transatlantic flight bound for Zurich. It was the first leg of a trip that would eventually take her south to the Balearic Islands and a house on the sea in Majorca. But first there was Zurich, where the Staats-Banque would pay upon signature a negotiated sum into Barclays, which would in turn transfer the amount in two payments to an account at its branch in Palma. The first payment would be made immediately, the second in eighteen months.

  Varak had hired her. He believed that for every job there was a correct, skilled applicant. The computerized data banks at the National Security Council had been programed in secret, by Varak alone, until they produced the applicant he sought.

  She was a widow, a former radio actress. She and her husband had been caught in the crosscurrents of the Red Channels madness of 1954 and had never recovered. It was a madness sanctioned and aided by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Her husband, considered by many to have been a major talent, did not work for seven years. At the end of that time, his heart had burst in anguish. He had died in a subway station on his way to a clerical job at a downtown bank. By now the woman had been finished professionally for eighteen years; the pain and the rejection and the loneliness had robbed her of the ability to compete.

  There was no competition now. She was not told why she was doing what she was doing. Only that her brief conversation had to result in a “yes” on the other end of the line.

  The recipient of the call was a man the woman loathed with all her being. A basic accessory to the madness that had stolen her life.

  It was shortly past nine in the evening, and the telephone truck was not an uncommon sight on Thirtieth Street Place in northwest Washington. The short street was a cul-de-sac, ending with the imposing gates of the Peruvian embassador’s residence, the national shield prominently displayed on the stone pillars. Two thirds of the way down the block, on the left, was the faded red brick house belonging to the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. One or both residences were continuously upgrading communications facilities.

  And every once in a while unmarked vans patrolled the area, antennas protruding from their roofs. It was said that John Edgar Hoover ordered such patrols to check out any unwanted electronic surveillance that might have been planted there by inimical foreign governments.

  Frequently complaints were registered with the State Department by the Peruvian ambassador. It was embarrassing; there wasn’t anything State could do about the situation. Hoover’s private life was an extension of his professional barony.

  Peru wasn’t very important anyway.

  The telephone truck drove down the street, made a U-turn, and retraced its route back to Thirtieth Street, where it turned right for fifty yards, then right again into a row of garages. At the end of the garage complex was a stone wall that bordered the rear grounds of 4936 Thirtieth Street Place, Hoover’s residence. Above and beyond the garages were other houses with windows overlooking the Hoover property. The man in the telephone truck knew that in one of those windows was an agent from the bureau, one of a team assigned to twenty-four-hour surveillance. The teams were secret and were rotated every week.

  The driver of the truck was also aware that whoever was in one of those windows beyond the garage would place a routine call to a special number at the telephone company. The inquiry would be simple, asked above a strange hum on the line: What was the problem that brought a repair truck into the area at that hour?

  The operator would check her call sheet and reply with the truth as it had been given to her.

  There was a short in a junction box. Suspect: an inquisitive squirrel invading rotted insulation. The damage was responsible for the noticeable buzz on the line. Didn’t the caller hear it?

  Yes, he heard it.

  Varak had learned years ago, in his early days with the National Security Council, never to give too simple an answer to questions raised by area surveillance. It would not be accepted, anymore than an overly complicated one would be accepted. There was always a middle ground.

  The high-frequency radio phone in the truck hummed: a signal. An inquiring call had been made to the telephone company by an alert FBI man. The driver stopped the small van, once more turned around, and drove thirty-five yards back to the telephone pole. His sightlines to the residence were clear. He parked and waited, blueprints spread on the front seat as if he were studying the
m.

  Agents often took late-night walks in the vicinity. All contingencies had to be covered.

  The telephone truck was now eighty yards northwest of 4936 Thirtieth Street Place. The driver left his seat, crawled back into the rear of the van, and switched on his equipment. He had precisely forty-six minutes to wait During that time he had to lock in on the flows of current being received in Hoover’s residence. The heavier loads defined the circuits of the alarm system; the lesser ones were lights and radios and television sets. Defining the alarm system was crucial, but no less important was the knowledge that current was being used in the lower right area. It meant that electrical units were switched on in the maid’s room. It was vital to know that. Annie Fields, Hoover’s personal housekeeper for as long as anyone could remember, was there for the night.

  The limousine made a right turn off Pennsylvania Avenue into Tenth Street and slowed down in front of the far west entrance to the FBI. The limousine was identical to the one that daily brought the director to his offices—even to the slightly dented chrome bumper Hoover had left as it was, a reminder to the chauffeur, James Crawford, of the man’s carelessness. It was not, of course, the same car; that particular vehicle was guarded night and day. But no one, not even Crawford, could have told the difference.

  The driver spoke the proper words into the dashboard microphone, and the huge steel doors of the entrance parted. The night guard saluted as the limousine passed through the concrete structure, with its three succeeding concrete doorways, into the small circular drive. A second Justice Department guard leaped out of the south entranceway, reached for the handle of the right rear door, and pulled it open.

  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 gover
nment 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.