The Chancellor Manuscript Read online

  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.

  There was a spit, instantly followed by the quiet static of exploding electric filaments. The light went out.

  He waited silently; there was no sound. In the darkness he opened the flap of the equipment case and slid out a metal cylinder eighteen inches long. It was the barrel of an odd-looking rifle. From another compartment he withdrew a heavy steel rod and attached it to the cylinder; at the end was a curved brace. From a third pocket in the leather tool-case the driver extracted a twelve-inch infrared telescope that had been precision-tooled for the top of the cylinder; it was self-locking and once locked, accurate. Finally, the man reached into his jacket and pulled out the trigger-housing unit. He snapped it into the opening on the underside of the barrel and tested the silent bolt action; all was ready, only the ammunition remained.

  Cradling the odd rifle in his left arm, he slid his right hand into his pocket and took out a steel dart, the flared end dipped in luminous paint. He inserted it into the chamber and slid the bolt back into place. The hammer was cocked, the rifle ready to fire.

  His watch read ten forty-four; if the longstanding habit was going to be observed this night, he’d know it shortly. Suspended thirty-five feet above the ground, the man rebraced himself and tightened the safety strap until his body was pressed against the pole. He raised the rifle and jammed the curved brace into his shoulder.

  He looked through the luminous green circle that was the sight and moved it carefully until he had the rear door of the director’s house clearly in view. In spite of the darkness, the picture was clear; the cross hairs of zero aim were focused directly on the steps of the entrance.

  He waited. Minutes passed slowly. He stole a glance at the dial of his watch; it was ten fifty-three. He could not wait much longer; he had to return to the van to throw the switch.

  Of all nights! Routine was not going to be observed!

  Then he saw the porch light! The door opened; the driver felt a wave of relief.

  Through his infrared scope the huge animal came into focus. It was Hoover’s enormous bull mastiff, rumored to be among the most vicious of dogs. It was said the director enjoyed the comparisons between the faces of
master and animal.

  The custom of years was being carried out. Every evening between ten forty-five and eleven Hoover or Annie Fields let the dog out to wander in the enclosed grounds of the residence, its waste picked up in the morning.

  The door closed, the porch light remained on. The man on the pole moved his weapon with his quarry. The cross hairs were now on the animal’s enormous throat.

  The driver squeezed the trigger; there was a slight metallic click. Through the sight he could see the mastiff’s eyes widen in shock; the huge jaws sprang open, but no sound came.

  The animal fell to the ground, narcotized.

  A nondescript gray automobile coasted to a stop a hundred feet past the driveway of 4936 Thirtieth Street Place. A tall man in a dark suit got out of the passenger door and looked up and down the block. Near the grounds of the Peruvian embassador’s residence a woman walked a dalmatian. In the other direction, perhaps two hundred yards away, a couple were strolling up a path toward a lighted doorway.

  Otherwise there was nothing.

  The man looked at his watch and felt the small bulge in his coat pocket.

  He had exactly half a minute, thirty seconds, and after that he would have precisely twenty seconds. He nodded to the driver and walked rapidly back toward the driveway, the crepe soles of his shoes noiseless on the pavement. He swung into the shadowed drive without breaking his stride, approached the door in the wall, and removed a small air pistol from his belt, shifting it to his left hand. The dart was in place; he hoped he would not have to use it.

  He looked again at his watch. Eleven seconds; he would allow an additional three for safety. He checked the position of the key in his right hand.

  Now.

  He inserted the key, turned the lock, opened the door, and entered the grounds, leaving the door open six inches. The huge dog was on the grass, its jaws slack, its enormous head pressed against the earth. The driver of the telephone van had done his job efficiently. He would remove the dart on his way out; there would be no trace of the narcotic in the morning. He returned the dart gun to his pocket.

  He walked rapidly to the door on the first floor, his mind ticking off the seconds. He could see the intermittent dimming of lights throughout the house. By his estimate nine seconds remained as he inserted the second key.

  The lock would not turn! The tumblers jammed. He manipulated the key furiously.

  Four seconds, three …

  His fingers—his surgeon’s fingers encased in surgical gloves—delicately, swiftly maneuvered the jagged metal within the jagged orifice as if it were a scapel in flesh.

  Two seconds, one …

  It opened!

  The tall man stepped inside, leaving this door, too, ajar.

  He stood in the hallway and listened. The lights were steady again. There was the sound of a television set from the housekeeper’s room at the other side of the house. Upstairs the sounds were fainter but discernible; it was the eleven o’clock news. The doctor wondered briefly what tomorrow’s eleven o’clock news would be like. He wished he could be in Washington to hear it.

  He crossed to the staircase and began to climb. At the top he stood in front of the door to the right of the staircase, in the center of the landing. The door that led to the man he had waited over two decades to see.

  Waited in hatred. Deep hatred, never to be forgotten.

  He turned the knob cautiously and opened the door. The director had dozed off, his enormous head angled down, the jowls falling over his thick neck. In his fat, feminine hands were the spectacles his vanity rarely allowed him to use to public.

  The doctor went to the television set and turned it up so that the sound filled the room. He crossed back to the foot of the bed and stared down at the object of his loathing.

  The director’s head snapped down, then abruptly up. His face was contorted.

  “What?”

  “Put on your glasses,” said the doctor above the noise of the television set.

  “What’s this? Miss Gandy?… Who are you? You’re not—?” Shaking, Hoover put on his glasses.

  “Look closely. It’s been twenty-two years.”

  The bulging eyes within the folds of flesh beyond the lenses focused. The sight they saw caused their possessor to gasp. “You! How—?”

  “Twenty-two years,” continued the doctor mechanically but loud enough to be heard above the sound of sirens and music from the television set. He reached into his pocket and took out a hypodermic needle. “I have a different name now. I practice in Paris, where my patients have heard the stories but don’t concern themselves. Le médecin américain is considered one of the finest in the hospital—?”

  Suddenly the director swung his arm out toward the night table. The doctor lunged forward at the side of the bed, pinning the soft wrist against the mattress. Hoover began to scream; the doctor jammed his elbow into the jowls, cutting off all sound. He raised the naked, trembling arm.

  With his teeth the doctor took off the rubber tip of the needle. He plunged the hypodermic into the rubbery flesh of the exposed armpit.

  “This is for my wife and my son. Everything you stole from me.”

  The driver of the gray automobile turned in his seat, his eyes directed at the second-story windows of the house. The lights were extinguished for five seconds, then turned on again.

  The unknown doctor had done his work; the release in the headboard had been found and activated. There were no seconds to be lost. The driver removed the microphone from the radio unit, pressed the button, and spoke.

  “Phase One completed,” he said tersely in a pronounced British accent.

  The office stretched for nearly forty feet. The large mahogany desk at one end was slightly elevated, facing low, overstuffed leather chairs, forcing visitors to raise their eyes to its occupant. Beyond the desk, obscuring the wall beyond, was a row of flags, the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s banner sharing the center position with the nation’s.

  Varak stood motionless in front of the desk, his eyes on the two telephones. One instrument had its receiver out of the cradle, the open line connected to a phone in the cellar of the building, to a man in the relay room where all alarms were controlled. The other phone was intact; it was an outside line that bypassed the bureau’s switchboard. There was no number printed on the circular tab in the middle of the dial.

  The center drawer of the desk was open. Beside it stood a second man, the spill of the desk lamp illuminating his right hand, which was angled, palm up, in the open space of the drawer. His fingers touched a small toggle switch recessed in the roof of the desk.

  The telephone began to ring. Varak picked it up at the first hint of sound. He said one word quietly.

  “Flags.”

  “Phase One completed,” was the relayed reply over the line.

  Varak nodded. The man in front of him snapped the unseen switch in his fingers.

  Four stories below, in a concrete room, a third man watched a panel of dark squares built into the wall. He heard the whistle from the open telephone that lay within arm’s reach on the steel table beside him.

  Suddenly a bell shattered the stillness of the enclosure. A red light in the center of the panel shone brightly.

  The man pushed the square beneath the bright red light.

  Silence.

  A uniformed guard burst through the corridor door, his eyes wild.

  “We’re testing,” said the man in front of the panel, calmly replacing the telephone. “I told you that.”

  “Christ!” exploded the guard, inhaling deeply. “You nightcrawlers will give me a heart attack.”

  “Don’t let us do that,” said the man, smiling.

  Varak watched Salter open the door of the closet beyond the flags and switch on the light inside. Both telephones were back in their cradles; there would be one more call. From Varak to Bravo.

  Not Genesis. Genesis was dead.

  The man was Bravo now. He would be told the job was done.

>   Several feet in front of the row of flags were two webbed metal baskets on wheels. They were a familiar sight in the bureau’s hallways, through which scores like them moved mountains of paper from one office to another. In a few minutes they would be filled with hundreds, perhaps several thousand, dossiers and taken downstairs past a senior agent named Parke to a waiting limousine. The files of John Edgar Hoover would be consigned to a blast furnace.

  And a growing Fourth Reich would be crippled.

  “Varak! Quick!”

  The shout came from the closet beyond the flags. Varak raced inside.

  The steel vault was open, the locks on the cabinets sprung. The four drawers were pulled out.

  The two drawers on the left were thick with papers, bulging. Files A through L were intact.

  The two drawers on the right were empty. The metal dividers fell against each other, holding nothing.

  Files M through Z were missing. One half of Hoover’s cabinets of filth was gone.

  4

  Chancellor lay in the hot sun and read the Los Angeles Times. The headlines seemed almost unreal, as if the event were not really possible, rooted somehow in fantasy.

  The man at last was dead. J. Edgar Hoover had died insignificantly in his bed, the way millions of old men die. Without drama, without consequence. Just the failure of the heart to keep pace with the years. But with that death a relief swept over the country; it was apparent even in the newspaper copy reporting the death.

  The statements issued by Congress and the administration were, as could be expected, sanctimonious and dripping with obsequious praise, but even in these well-chosen words the tears of the crocodiles could be clearly seen. The relief was everywhere.

  Chancellor folded the paper and shoved it into the sand to anchor it. He did not want to read any more.

  Far more to the point, he did not want to write, either. Oh, Christ! When would he want to? Would he ever want to? If there were such a thing as a Sybaritic vegetable, he would be it.