The Chancellor Manuscript: A Novel

  And she was unpredictable as well. He had learned that when he picked her up in the taxi earlier in the afternoon. He told her he had phoned the Hay-Adams in Washington and made reservations for them.

  “Don’t be silly. There’s plenty of room in the Rockville house. We’ll stay there. I think we should.”

  Why should they? He did not pursue the question.

  Chancellor opened his briefcase and took out the leather notebook that traveled with him wherever he went. It had been a gift from Joshua Harris two years before. There was a row of sharpened pencils in the inside pocket of the cover. He removed one and wrote on the attached pad.

  Chapter 8—Outline

  Before he began he thought about Alison’s remark the night before.

  … say it’s true. Isn’t that all the more reason to go on?

  He looked at the words he had just writen: Chapter 8—Outline. The coincidence was disquieting. This was the chapter in which Meredith is driven to the point of madness because of a terrible secret of his own.

  Alex leaves his office at the Federal Bureau of Investigation earlier than usual. He knows he’s being followed, so he tries to lose himself in the crowds, walking up short streets and alleys, through several buildings, going in one entrance, emerging from another. He dashes onto a bus; it takes him to within a block of the apartment where the assistant attorney general lives. They have agreed to meet.

  At the apartment bouse the doorman hands him a note from the assistant attorney general. He will not see Alex. He does not want any further association. If Meredith persists, the man will be forced to report his odd behavior to others. In his judgment, Alex is unbalanced, paranoid over imagined abuses.

  Meredith is stunned, the lawyer in him furious. The evidence is there. The assistant attorney general has been reached as so many others have been reached. Hoover’s forces have succeeded in blocking Meredith’s every move. The raw power of the FBI is all-pervasive.

  Outside the apartment house he sees the bureau vehicle that has picked up his trail. There is a driver and a man beside him; they stare at Alex silently. It is part of the strategy of fear aroused when a man knows he is being watched, especially at night. It fits Hoover’s methods.

  Meredith takes a cab to the garage where his car is parked. We see him speeding down Memorial Parkway, weaving in and out of traffic, aware of the FBI car behind him.

  On impulse he changes direction, taking an unfamiliar exit off the highway into the Virginia countryside. The husband and father in him has rebelled. He will not lead those following him back to his house again, back to his wife and his children. His fear is turning into fury.

  There is a chase through the back roads. The speed, the rushing scenery, the screeching tires around sharp curves, all contribute to Alex’s growing panic. He is a man alone racing in a maze for survival. We understand that the disorientation produced by the events of the past weeks is heightened by the madness of the chase. Meredith is beginning to crack.

  In the growing darkness Alex miscalculates a sudden curve. He slams on the brakes; the car swerves, jumps the road and plunges through the fence into the field.

  Bruised, his forehead bleeding from the impact with the windshield, Meredith climbs out of the car. He sees the FBI vehicle back on the road. He races toward it, screaming. His state of mind demands violence, physical confrontation.

  He does not get it in the way that he seeks it. Instead, the two FBI men get out of the car and swiftly subdue him. They feign professional procedures by searching him for a weapon.

  The driver speaks coldly. “Don’t press us, Meredith. We don’t have much use for people like you. Men who put on a uniform and work for the other side.”

  Alex collapses. It is the secret that is buried in his past. Years ago, during the Korean War, as a young lieutenant barely in his twenties, Meredith had been captured and broken by his captors. He was not alone; there were hundreds. Men driven mad by physical and psychological tortures unknown in modern warfare. The Army understood; the Geneva covenants had been violated. The broken men were assured that all records of their nightmare would be expunged. They had served honorably; they had faced things for which the Army had never prepared them. Each could pick up his life without punishment.

  Now Alex realizes that the darkest moment of his life is known by men who will use it ruthlessly against him, and even against his wife and children.

  The FBI agents release him. He wanders down the country road in the twilight.

  Peter closed the notebook and looked over at Alison. She was staring straight ahead, her eyes wide, unblinking. The two-man military escort sat in the front of the plane, where their attentions could not fall on private grief.

  She felt his gaze on her and turned to him, forcing a smile. “You working?”

  “I was. Not now.”

  “I’m glad you were. It makes me feel better. Less like I was interrupting you.”

  “That’s hardly the case. You made me go on, remember?”

  “We’ll be there soon,” she said mechanically.

  “No more than ten or fifteen minutes, I think.”

  “Yes.” She went back to her thoughts, looking out the window at the bright blue sky beyond.

  The aircraft began its descent into Andrews Field.

  They taxied to a stop, disembarked, and were instructed to wait in the officers’ lounge at terminal six.

  The only person in the lounge was a young army chaplain, obviously ordered to be in attendance. He was both relieved and somewhat startled to find his presence superfluous.

  “It’s kind of you to be here,” said Alison with authority, “but my father died several days ago. The shock’s worn off.”

  The minister shook hands solemnly and left. Alison turned to Peter. “They’ve scheduled the service for ten tomorrow morning at Arlington. I’ve requested the minimum; just the officers’ cortege within the grounds. It’s nearly six. Why don’t we have an early dinner somewhere and get out to the house?”

  “Fine. Shall I rent a car?”

  “No need to. They’ll have one for us.”

  “That means a driver, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes.” Alison frowned again. “You’re right. That’s a complication. Do you have your license with you?”

  “Of course.”

  “You can sign for the vehicle. Do you mind?”

  “Not at all.”

  “It’ll be simpler without a third person,” she said. “Army drivers are notorious scouts for superior officers. Even if we didn’t ask him in, I’m sure his orders would be to remain on the premises until relieved.”

  Alison’s words could be taken on several levels. “What do you mean?” he asked.

  Alison saw his caution. “If something did happen to my father years ago, something he considered so terrible it could change his life, then there might be a clue to what it was in the Rockville house. He kept mementos from his posts. Photographs, roster sheets, things that were important to him. I think we should go through them all.”

  “I see. Better done by two than three,” added Peter, curiously satisfied that this was what Alison meant. “Perhaps you’d rather look by yourself. I can stand by and take notes for you.”

  She searched his eyes in that strange noncommittal way that reminded him of her father. But there was warmth in her voice. “You’re very considerate. It’s a quality I admire. I’m not. I wish I were, but I don’t think it went, as they say, with the territory.”

  “I’ve got an idea,” he said. “I have one solid talent: I can cook a hell of a meal. You’re anxious to get to Rockville. So am I. Why don’t we stop at a supermarket and I’ll pick up some things? Like steaks and potatoes and Scotch.”

  She smiled. “We’d save a lot of time.”

  “Done.”

  They took the eastern roads north and west into the Maryland countryside, stopping at a store in Randolph Hills for groceries and whisky.

  It was growing dark. The December sun
was below the hills; elongated shadows shot across the windshield of the army car, creating odd shapes that came and went swiftly. As he swung off the highway into the twisting back road that led to the general’s house, he reached the flat stretch of farmland and saw the outlines of the barbed-wire fence and the field beyond, where three months before he’d thought he would lose his life.

  The road turned sharply. He held his foot on the accelerator, afraid to lessen the pressure. He had to get away. The ache was at his right temple now, spreading downward, curving in his neck, throbbing at the base of his skull. Faster!

  “Peter! For God’s sake!”

  The tires screeched; he held the wheel firmly as they rounded the turn and came out of it. He braked the car, reducing speed.

  “Is anything the matter?” she asked.

  “No,” he lied. “I’m sorry. I just wasn’t thinking.” He could feel her looking at him; he had not fooled her for an instant. “That’s not true,” he continued. “I was remembering when I was here before, when I saw your father and mother.”

  “I was thinking about my last visit, too,” she said. “It was this past summer. I came down for a few days. I was supposed to stay a week, but it didn’t work out that way. I upped and left with a number of choice words I wish to God I’d never said.”

  “Was that when he told you he was resigning?”

  “Had resigned. I think that bothered me as much as anything. We’d always discussed important things. And then the most important decision of his life arose, and I was cut off. I said terrible things.”

  “He made an extraordinary decision without explaining it to you. Your reaction was natural.”

  They fell silent; neither said anything of consequence for the final ten miles. The night had come quickly; the moon had risen.

  “There it is. The white mailbox,” said Alison.

  Chancellor slowed down and turned into the concealed driveway, hidden by the profuse foliage on either side and the low-hanging branches of the trees beyond. Had it not been for the mailbox, the entrance could have easily been missed.

  The house stood in eerie isolation, ordinary and alone and still. Moonlight filtered through the trees, speckling the front with shadows. The windows were smaller than Peter remembered, the roof lower. Alison got out of the car and walked slowly up the narrow path to the door. Chancellor followed, carrying the groceries and the whisky from the store in Randolph Hills. She unlocked the door.

  They both smelled it at once. It was not overpowering, or even unpleasant, but it pervaded the area. A musklike odor, faintly aromatic, a dying fragrance escaping closed quarters into the night air. Alison squinted her eyes in the moonlight, her head angled in thought Peter watched her; for a moment she seemed to shiver.

  “It’s Mother’s,” she said.

  “Perfume?”

  “Yes. But she died over a month ago.”

  Chancellor remembered her words in the car. “You said you were here last summer. Didn’t you come down—”

  “For the funeral?”

  “Yes.”

  “No. Because I didn’t know she’d died. My father called me when everything was over. There was no announcement, no service to speak of. It was a private burial, just he and the woman he remembered as no one else remembered her.” Alison walked into the dark hallway and turned on the light. “Come on, we’ll put the bags in the kitchen.”

  They walked through the small dining room to a swinging door that led to the kitchen. Alison switched on the lights, revealing oddly old-fashioned counters and cabinets in contrast to a modern refrigerator. It was as if a 1930s kitchen had been intruded upon by a futuristic appliance. Peter was struck by his memory of the house. Except for the general’s study, what he had seen of it was old-fashioned, as if deliberately decorated for a different era.

  Alison seemed to read his thoughts. “My father reconstructed wherever possible the types of surroundings she associated with her childhood.”

  “It’s an extraordinary love story.” It was all he could say.

  “It was an extraordinary sacrifice,” she said.

  “You resented her, didn’t you?”

  She did not flinch from the question. “Yes, I did. He was an exceptional man. He happened to be my father, but that was irrelevant. He was a man of ideas. I read once that an idea was a greater monument than a cathedral, and I believe that. But his cathedral—or cathedrals—never got built. His commitments were always sidetracked. He was never allowed the time to see them through. He had her in his footlocker.”

  Chancellor did not let her angry eyes waver from his. “You said the men around him were sympathetic. They helped him in every way they could.”

  “Of course they did. He wasn’t the only one with a whacked-out woman. It’s pretty standard, according to the West Point underground. But he was different. He had something original to say. And when they didn’t want to hear it, they killed him with kindness. ‘Poor Mac! Look what he has to live with!’ ”

  “You were his daughter, not his wife.”

  “I was his wife! In everything but the bed! And sometimes I wondered whether that—It doesn’t matter. I got out.” She gripped the edge of the counter. “I’m sorry. I don’t know you that well. I don’t know anyone that well.” She bent over the counter, trembling.

  Peter resisted the instinct to hold her. “Do you think you’re the only girl in the world who’s felt that way? I don’t think so, Alison,”

  “It’s cold.” She pushed herself partially up; still he did not touch her. “I can feel the cold. The furnace must have gone off.” She stood erect and wiped away the tears with the back of her hand. “Do you know anything about furnaces?”

  “Gas or oil?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’ll find out Is that the door to the basement?” He pointed to a door in the right wall.

  “Yes.”

  He found the light switch and walked down the narrow stairs, pausing at the bottom. The furnace was in the center of a low-ceilinged room; an oil tank was against the left wall. It was cold; a damp chill permeated the basement as though an outside door had been left open.

  But the outside door was bolted. He checked the oil-tank gauge; it registered half full, but could very well be inaccurate. Why else would the furnace be off? MacAndrew was not the sort of man to leave a house in the country without heat in the winter. He tapped the side of the tank. Hollow above, full lower down. The gauge was accurate.

  He lifted the plate of the firing mechanism and saw the cause of the problem. The pilot light had gone out Under normal circumstances it would take a strong gust of wind to extinguish it. Or a blockage in the line. But the furnace had been checked recently. There was a small strip of plastic adhesive dating the last inspection. It was six weeks old.

  Peter read the instructions. They were nearly identical to those of his parents’ furnace.

  Press red button for sixty seconds. Hold match beneath …

  He heard a sudden, sharp clattering; the sound caused him to gasp. The muscles of his stomach tensed; he angled his head, frozen by the rat-tat-tat somewhere behind him. It stopped.

  Then started again! He spun around and moved toward the stairs. He looked up.

  On the top of the basement wall a window was open. It was at ground level; the wind outside was hammering against it.

  That was the explanation. Wind from the window had extinguished the pilot light. Chancellor walked to the wall, suddenly afraid again.

  The pane of glass had been shattered. He could feel the crunching of glass beneath his feet. Someone had broken into MacAndrew’s home!

  It happened too quickly. For an instant, he could not send commands from his mind to his body.

  Screams came from upstairs. Again and again! Alison!

  He raced up the narrow steps to the kitchen. Alison was not there, but her screams continued, animallike and terrified.

  “Alison! Alison!”

  He ran into the dining roo
m.

  “Alison!”

  The screaming subsided abruptly, replaced by low moans and sobs. They came from across the house, through the hallway and the living room. From MacAndrew’s study!

  Peter raced through the rooms, kicking one chair out of the way, sending another crashing to the floor. He burst through the study door.

  Alison was on her knees, holding a faded, bloodstained nightgown in her hands. All around her were smashed bottles of perfume, the odor overpowering now and sickening.

  And on the wall, painted in blood-red enamel, were the words:

  MAC THE KNIFE. KILLER OF CHASŎNG.

  18

  The paint on the walls was soft to the touch but not wet. The blood on the tattered nightgown was moist. The general’s study had been searched thoroughly by professionals. The desk had been pried apart, the leather uphofetery carefully slit. The boxed windowsills and weight sashes had been separated and exposed, the bookcase emptied of its contents, the bindings precisely cut.

  Peter led Alison back into the kitchen, where he poured two glasses of straight Scotch. He returned to the basement, started the furnace, and plugged the broken window with rags. Upstairs in the living room he discovered that the fireplace worked; more than a dozen logs were in a large wicker bin to the right of the screen. He built a fire and sat with Alison on the couch in front of it. The horror was fading, but the questions remained.

  “What’s Chasǒng?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. I think it’s a place in Korea, but I’m not sure.”

  “When we find out, we may learn what it was that happened. What it was they were looking for.”

  “Anything could have happened. It was war, and—” She stopped, watching the flames.

  “And he was a soldier who sent other soldiers into combat. It might be as simple as that. Someone who lost a son or a brother; someone out for vengeance. I’ve heard of such things.”

  “But why him? There were hundreds like him. And he was known for leading his men, not staying behind. No one ever questioned any of his commands. Not that way.”