The Chancellor Manuscript: A Novel

  Chancellor paused; the aged diplomat’s question was unexpected. “Research? A lot more than the committee believes and a lot less than certain conclusions warrant. That’s as honest as I can put it.”

  “It’s honest. Will you give me specifics? There’s very little documentation of sources.”

  Suddenly Peter felt uneasy. What had begun as a discussion was turning into an interrogation. “Why is it important? There’s very little documentation because that’s the way the people I spoke to wanted it.”

  “Then honor their wishes, by all means. Don’t use names.” The old man smiled; his charm was extraordinary.

  We don’t need names. Names can be uncovered easily, once areas are discerned. But it would be better not to pursue names. Much better. The whispers would start again. There is a better way.

  “All right. I interviewed people who were active during the period from ’23 to ’39. They were in government—mainly the State Department—and in industry and banking. Also I spoke with about half a dozen former senior officers attached to the War College and the intelligence community. None, Mr. St. Claire, none would allow me to use his name.”

  “They provided you with so much material?”

  “A great deal lay in what they would not discuss. And odd phrases, offhand remarks that were often non sequiturs, but just as often applicable. They’re old men now, all—or nearly all—retired. Their minds wandered; so did their memories. They’re kind of a sad collection; they’re—” Chancellor stopped. He was not sure how to continue.

  St. Claire did. “By and large, embittered minor executives and bureaucrats living on inadequate pensions. Such conditions breed angry, all too often distorted memories.”

  “I don’t think that’s fair. What I learned, what I wrote, is the truth. That’s why anyone who reads the thesis will know which those companies were, how they operated.”

  St Claire dismissed the statement as though he had not heard it. “How did you reach these people? What led you to them? How did you get appointments to see them?”

  “My father started me off, and from those few came others. Sort of a natural progression; people remembered people.”

  “Your father?”

  “In the early fifties he was a Washington correspondent for Scripps-Howard—?”

  “Yes.” St. Claire interrupted softly. “So, through his efforts, you obtained an initial list.”

  “Yes. About a dozen names of men who had dealings in prewar Germany. In government and out. As I said, these led to others. And, of course, I read everything Trevor-Roper and Shirer and the German apologists wrote. That’s all documented.”

  “Did your father know what you were after?”

  “A doctorate was enough.” Chancellor grinned. “My father went to work with a year and a half of college. Money was tight.”

  “Then, shall we say, is he aware of what you found? Or thought you found.”

  “Not really. I figured my parents would read the thesis when it was finished. Now, I don’t know if they’ll want to; this is going to be a blow to the home front.” Peter smiled weakly. “The aging, perpetual student comes to nothing.”

  “I thought you said professional student,” corrected the diplomat.

  “Is there a difference?”

  “In approach, I think there is.” St. Claire leaned forward in silence, his large eyes leveled at Peter. “I’d like to take the liberty of summarizing the immediate situation as I see it.”

  “Of course.”

  “Basically, you have the materials for a perfectly valid theoretical analysis. Interpretations of history, from doctrinaire to revisionist, are neverending topics of debate and examination. Would you agree?”

  “Naturally.”

  “Yes, of course. You wouldn’t have chosen the subject in the first place if you didn’t.” St. Claire looked out the window as he spoke. “But an unorthodox interpretation of events—especially of a period in such recent history—based solely on the writings of others, would hardly justify the unorthodoxy, would it? I mean, certainly historians would have pounced on the material long before now if they had thought a case could be made. But it couldn’t, really, so you went beyond the accepted sources and interviewed embittered old men and a handful of reluctant former intelligence specialists and came away with specific judgments.”

  “Yes, but—?”

  “Yes, but,” broke in St. Claire, turning from the window. “By your own telling, these judgments were often based on ‘offhand remarks’ and ‘non sequiturs.’ And your sources refuse to be listed. In your own words your research did not justify numerous conclusions.”

  “But they did. The conclusions are justified.”

  “They’ll never be accepted. Not by any recognized authority, academic or judicial. And quite rightly so, in my judgment.”

  “Then you’re wrong, Mr. St. Claire. Because I’m not wrong. I don’t care how many committees tell me I am. The facts are there, right below the surface, but nobody wants to talk about them. Even now, forty years later. Because it’s happening all over again! A handful of companies are making millions all over the world by fueling military governments, calling them our friends, our ‘first line of defense.’ When their eyes are on profit-and-loss sheets, that’s what they care about.… All right, maybe I can’t come up with documentation, but I’m not going to throw away two years’ work. I’m not going to stop because a committee tells me I’m academically unacceptable. Sorry, but that’s unacceptable.”

  And that’s what we had to know. At the last, would you cut your losses and walk away? Others thought you would, but I didn’t. You knew you were right, and that’s too great a temptation in the young. We must now render you impotent.

  St. Claire looked down at Peter and held his eyes. “You’re in the wrong arena. You sought acceptance from the wrong people. Seek it elsewhere. Where matters of truth and documentation are not important.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Your dissertation is filled with some rather splendidly imagined fiction. Why not concentrate on that?”

  “What?”

  “Fiction. Write a novel. No one cares whether a novel is accurate, or has historical authenticity. It’s simply not important.” St. Claire once again leaned forward, his eyes steady on Chancellor. “Write fiction. You may still be ignored, but at least there’s a chance of a hearing. To pursue your present course is futile. You’ll waste another year, or two, or three. Ultimately, for what? So write a novel. Spend your outrage there, then go about your life.”

  Peter stared at the diplomat; he was at a loss, uncertain of his thoughts, so he merely repeated the single word. “Fiction?”

  “Yes. I think we’re back to that malfunctioning carburetor, although the analogy may be terrible.” St. Claire settled back in his chair. “We agreed that words held no great fear for you; you’ve seen blank pages filled with them most of your life. Now, repair the work you’ve done with other words, a different approach that eliminates the necessity of academic sanction,”

  Peter exhaled softly; for several moments he had held his breath, numbed by St. Claire’s analysis. “A novel? It never crossed my mind.…”

  “I submit it may have unconsciously,” interjected the diplomat. “You didn’t hesitate to invent actions—and reactions—when it served you. And God knows you have the ingredients of a fascinating story. Farfetched, in my opinion, but not without merit for a Sunday afternoon in a hammock. Fix the carburetor; this is a different engine. One of less substance, perhaps, but conceivably quite enjoyable. And someone may listen to you. They won’t in this arena. Nor, frankly, should they.”

  “A novel. I’ll be damned.”

  Munro St. Claire smiled. His eyes were still strangely noncommittal.

  The afternoon sun disappeared below the horizon; long shadows spread across the lawns. St. Claire stood at the window, gazing out on the quadrangle. There was an arrogance in the serenity of the scene; it was out of place in a world
so locked in turbulance.

  He could leave Park Forest now. His job was finished, the carefully orchestrated conclusion not perfect but sufficient unto the day.

  Sufficient unto the limits of deceit.

  He looked at his watch. An hour had passed since the bewildered Chancellor had left the office. The diplomat crossed back to his desk, sat down, and picked up the telephone. He dialed the area code 202 and then seven additional digits. Moments later there were two clicks over the line, followed by a whine. For any but those aware of the codes the sound would have simply signified a malfunctioning instrument.

  St. Claire dialed five more digits. A single click was the result, and a voice answered.

  “Inver Brass. Tape is rolling.” In the voice was the flat a of Boston, but the rhythm was Middle-European.

  “This is Bravo. Patch me through to Genesis.”

  “Genesis is in England. It’s past midnight over there.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t be concerned with that. Can you patch? Is there a sterile location?”

  “If he’s still at the embassy, there is, Bravo. Otherwise it’s the Dorchester. No guarantees there.”

  “Try the embassy, please.”

  The line went dead as the Inver Brass switchboard linked up communications. Three minutes later another voice was heard; it was clear, with no distortions, as though it were down the street, not 4,000 miles away. The voice was clipped, agitated, but not without respect. Or a degree of fear.

  “This is Genesis. I was just leaving. What happened?”

  “It’s done.”

  “Thank God!”

  “The dissertation was rejected. I made it clear to the committee, quite privately of course, that it was radical nonsense. They’d be the laughingstock of the university community. They’re sensitive; they should be. They’re mediocre.”

  “I’m pleased.” There was a pause from London. “What was his reaction?”

  “What I expected. He’s right and he knows it; therefore he’s frustrated. He had no intention of stopping.”

  “Does he now?”

  “I believe so. The idea’s firmly planted. If need be, I’ll follow up indirectly, put him in touch with people. But I may not have to. He’s imaginative; more to the point, his outrage is genuine.”

  “You’re convinced this is the best way?”

  “Certainly. The alternative is for him to pursue the research and dredge up dormant issues. I wouldn’t like that to happen in Cambridge or Berkeley, would you?”

  “No. And perhaps no one will be interested in what he writes, much less publish it. I suppose we could bring that about.”

  St. Claire’s eyes narrowed briefly. “My advice is not to interfere. We’d frustrate him further, drive him back. Let things happen naturally. If he does turn it into a novel, the best we can hope for is a minor printing of a rather amateurish work. He’ll have said what he had to say, and it will turn out to be inconsequential fiction, with the usual disclaimers as to persons living or dead. Interference might raise questions; that’s not in our interest.”

  “You’re right, of course,” said the man in London. “But then you usually are, Bravo.”

  “Thank you. And good-bye, Genesis. I’ll be leaving here in a few days.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’m not sure. Perhaps back to Vermont. Perhaps far away. I don’t like what I see on the national landscape.”

  “All the more reason to stay in touch,” said the voice in London.

  “Perhaps. And then again, I may be too old.”

  “You can’t disappear. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Yes. Good night, Genesis.”

  St. Claire replaced the telephone without waiting for a corresponding good-bye from London. He simply did not want to listen further.

  He was swept by a sense of revulsion; it was not the first time, nor would it be the last. It was the function of Inver Brass to make decisions others could not make, to protect men and institutions from the moral indictments born of hindsight. What was right forty years ago was anathema today.

  Frightened men had whispered to other frightened men that Peter Chancellor had to be stopped. It was wrong for this obscure doctoral candidate to ask questions that had no meaning forty years later. The times were different, the circumstances altogether dissimilar.

  Yet there were certain gray areas. Accountability was not a limited doctrine. Ultimately, they were all accountable. Inver Brass was no exception. Therefore, Peter Chancellor had to be given the chance to vent his outrage, and in a way that removed him from consequence. Or catastrophe.

  St. Claire rose from the table and surveyed the papers on top of it. He had removed most of his personal effects during the past weeks. There was very little of him in the office now; and that was as it should be.

  Tomorrow he would be gone.

  He walked to the door. Automatically he reached for the light switch, and then he realized no lights were on. He had been standing, pacing, sitting, and thinking in shadows.

  The New York Times Book Review, May 10, 1969, Page 3

  Reichstag! is at once startling and perceptive, awkward and incredible. Peter Chancellor’s first novel would have us believe that the early Nazi party was financed by nothing less than a cartel of international bankers and industrialists—American, British and French—apparently with the acknowledged, though unspoken, approval of their respective governments. Chancellor forces us to believe him as we read. His narrative is breathless; his characters leap from the page with a kind of raw power that illuminates their strengths and weaknesses in a manner that might be vitiated by more disciplined writing. Mr. Chancellor tells his tale in outrage, and far too melodramatically, but withal the book is a marvelous “read.” And, finally, you begin to wonder: Could it have happened this way?…

  The Washington Post Book World April 22, 1970, Page 3

  In Sarajevo! Chancellor does for the guns of August what he did for the Führer’s Blitzkrieg last year.

  The forces that collided in the July crisis of 1914, preceded by the June assassination of Ferdinand by the conspirator Gavrilo Princip, are abstracted, rearranged, and put back on a fast track by Mr. Chancellor, so that no one emerges on the side of the angels and all is a triumph of evil. Throughout, the author’s protagonist—in this case a British infiltrator of a Serbo-Croat clandestine organization called, melodramatically, The Unity of Death—peels away the layers of deceit as they’ve been spread by the provocateurs of the Reichstag, the Foreign Office, and the Chamber of Deputies. The puppets are revealed; the strings lead back to the industrial vested interests on all sides.

  As with so much else, these rarely discussed coincidences go on and on.

  Mr. Chancellor has a conspiracy complex of a high order. He deals with it in a fascinating manner and with a high readability quotient. Sarajevo! should prove to be even more popular than Reichstag!

  The Los Angeles Times Daily Review of Books April 4, 1971, Page 20

  Counterstrike! is Chancellor’s best work to date, although for reasons that escape this reader, its serpentine plot is based on an extraordinary error of research that one does not expect of this author. It concerns the clandestine operations of the Central Intelligence Agency as they pertain to a spreading reign of terror imposed on a New England university city by a foreign power. Mr. Chancellor should know that all domestic involvements are specifically prohibited to the CIA in its 1947 charter.

  This objection aside, Counterstrike! is a sure winner. Chancellor’s previous books have shown that he can spin a yarn with such pace that you can’t turn the pages fast enough, but now he’s added a depth of character not mined previously.

  Chancellor’s extensive knowledge of counterespionage is, according to those who are supposed to know, on zero target. The CIA error notwithstanding.

  He gets into the minds as well as the methods of all those involved in an absolutely frightening situation drawing an explicit parallel to the racial dis
turbances that led to a series of murders in Boston several years ago. Chancellor has arrived as a first-rate novelist who takes events, rearranges the facts, and presents startling new conclusions.

  The plot is deviously simple: A man is chosen to perform a task for which he would seem to be ill equipped. He is given extensive CIA training, but nowhere in this training is there an attempt to strengthen his basic flaw. Soon we understand: That flaw is meant to bring about his death. Circles within circles of conspiracy. And once again, as with his previous books, we wonder: Is it true? Did this happen? Is this the way it was?…

  Autumn. The Bucks County countryside was an ocean of yellow, green, and gold. Chancellor leaned against the hood of a silver Mark IV Continental, his arm casually around a woman’s shoulder. His face was fuller now, the distinct features less in conflict with one another, softened yet still sharp. His eyes were focused on a white house that stood at the foot of a winding drive cut out of the gently sloping fields. The drive was bordered on each side by a high white fence.

  The girl with Chancellor, holding the hand draped over her shoulder, was as engrossed by the sight in front of them as he was. She was tall; her brown hair fell softly, framing her delicate but curiously strong face. Her name was Catherine Lowell.

  “It’s everything you described,” she said, gripping his hand tightly. “It’s beautiful. Really very beautiful.”

  “To coin a phrase,” said Chancellor, glancing down at her, “that’s one hell of a relief.”

  She looked up at him. “You bought it, didn’t you? You’re not just ‘interested,’ you bought it!”

  Peter nodded. “I had competition. A banker from Philadelphia was ready to put down a binder. I had to decide. If you don’t like it, I’m sure he’ll take it from me.”

  “Don’t be silly, it’s absolutely gorgeous!”

  “You haven’t seen the inside.”

  “I don’t have to.”