“All right.” Alison nodded. The soldier’s daughter understood. “But I worry about you. Suppose you have another attack?”
“I won’t.” He paused for a moment and then reached out, pulling her to him. “There’s something else,” he said, looking down into her eyes. “I don’t want to involve you. It’s over, finished. You said it yourself, remember? I didn’t agree with you then. I do now.”
“Thank you for that. I guess what I’m saying is that whatever he did, it’s done and can’t be changed. He stood for something. I don’t want that damaged.”
“I have something important in mind too, and that won’t be changed, either. Or damaged. Us.” He kissed her lightly. “When tonight’s over, we can start living our own lives. I find that prospect very exciting.”
She smiled and returned his kiss. “I was shameless. I caught you at a weak moment and seduced you. I should be branded.” And then her smile waned; she held his eyes, the vulnerability in her own. “Everything’s happened so fast. I don’t require commitments, Peter.”
“I do,” he answered.
“If you’ll take a seat inside the lobby, sir, I’ll be with you shortly,” said the doorman at Phyllis Maxwell’s apartment house. The man did not hesitate for an instant; it was almost as though he expected him.
Peter sat down in a green plastic chair and waited. The doorman simply stood outside, rocking back and forth on his heels, his gloved hands clasped behind his uniformed overcoat.
It was very odd.
Five minutes went by. The doorman made no move to come inside the lobby. Was it possible he’d forgotten? Chancellor got out of the chair and looked around. He had spoken to an operator; where was the apartment switchboard?
There was a small glass panel at the rear of the lobby, sandwiched between rows of mailboxes and a bank of elevators. He walked over to it and peered inside. The operator was talking into a mouthpiece attached to her single-eared headset. She spoke rapidly, with emphasis; the conversation was between friends, not switchboard and inquirer. Peter tapped on the glass; the operator suspended her conversation and slid the panel open.
“Yes, sir?”
“I’m trying to reach Phyllis Maxwell. Will you ring her apartment and let me speak with her, please? It’s urgent.”
The operator’s reaction was as odd as the doorman’s. Different, but nevertheless strange. She hesitated, embarrassed.
“I don’t believe Miss Maxwell is in,” she said.
“You won’t know until you ring her, will you?”
“Have you checked with the doorman?”
“What the hell is this?” Peter understood. These people were following instructions. “Ring her apartment!”
As he could have predicted, there was no answer on the switchboard telephone and no point in wasting any more time. He walked rapidly back outside and confronted the doorman.
“Let’s cut the crap, shall we? You’ve got something to tell me. What is it?”
“It’s touchy.”
“What is?”
“She described you, said your name was Chancellor. If you’d arrived, say, an hour ago, I was to tell you to come back at eleven o’clock. That Miss Maxwell had called in saying she’d be back then.”
Peter looked at his watch. “All right. It’s almost eleven. What happens then?”
“Just a little while longer, okay?”
“Not okay. Now. Or you can say whatever it is to me and the police.”
“Okay, okay. What the hell, it’s only a few minutes.” The doorman reached into his inside overcoat pocket and took out an envelope. He gave it to Chancellor.
Peter looked at the man, then the envelope. His name was written on it. Moving back inside to the light, he ripped open the envelope and took out the letter.
My dear Peter:
I’m sorry I ran, but I knew you would follow me. You saved my life—and to some degree my sanity—and you deserve an explanation. I’m afraid it will be limited.
By the time you read this, I’ll be on a plane. Don’t try to trace me. It would be impossible. For several years I’ve had a false passport, knowing that someday I might have to use it. Apparently the time is now.
This afternoon, after that horrible call telling me I was a character in your novel, I informed my paper that I might be taking an extended leave for reasons of health. In truth, my editor did not argue very much. My work hasn’t been particularly outstanding in recent months.
The decision to leave is not sudden. I’ve considered it for quite a while. Tonight simply made it irreversible. Whatever my transgressions, they do not warrant the loss of my life. Mine, yours, or anyone’s. Nor should they compromise the responsibilities I have professionally.
This last has been accomplished. My work is compromised. Truths are suppressed when they should be told. The loss of life was avoided—for how long, who knows?—because of you. I cannot continue any longer.
Thank you for my life. And my deepest apologies for my thinking you were part of something you were not.
A part of me says, for God’s sake, give up your book! It is balanced by another voice that says you can’t!
You will not hear from me again, my dear young, young man. But you will always have a part of my love. And my gratitude.
Phyllis
Peter reread the letter, trying to grasp the meaning behind the words. Phyllis had chosen her phrases with a deliberateness born of extraordinary fear. But of what? What were her “transgressions”? What could she have done—or not done—that would cause her to throw away a lifetime of accomplishment? It was insane!
It was all insane. Everything! And the insanity was going to stop! He started for the door. From somewhere he heard a prolonged buzzing. It stopped as he had his hand on the glass bar of the door. And then he heard the words, accompanied by the sliding of a glass panel.
“Mr. Chancellor?” The operator was calling him, her head halfway through the switchboard opening. “There’s a call for you.”
Phyllis? Perhaps she’d changed her mind! He ran across the lobby and took the phone.
It was not Phyllis Maxwell. It was Alison.
“Something dreadful’s happened. You had a telephone call from a man in Indianapolis. He was out of his mind. He was at the airport, catching a plane for Washington—”
“Who was it?”
“A man named Bromley. He said he was going to kill you.”
Carroll Quinlan O’Brien took the security logs from the guard and thanked him. The Pennsylvania Avenue doors were closed; the list of names of those who had entered and exited would be processed and sent down to the main desk. At all times every person in the FBI complex was accounted for; at no time was anyone permitted to leave without surrendering his pass.
It was a security-logs entry that had started it all four months before, O’Brien thought. Started his rapid decline in the eyes of the bureau. Four months ago he had found three names on the May 1 P.M. logs: Salter, Krepps, and Longworth. Two names were unassigned field covers, the third belonged to a retired agent living on the island of Maui in the Pacific. These three unknown men had gained entrance that night. The next morning Hoover was dead, and all traces of the director’s files had vanished. The dossiers themselves had become a quickly forgotten legacy from hell that no one cared to exhume or examine.
So Quinn O’Brien had asked questions, keeping his voice down, seeking counsel from those he knew would listen because they cared. Men like him within the bureau whose sensibilities had been offended during the past years—theirs more than his, mostly. At least over a longer time. He had arrived only four and a half years before, the war hero from Sacramento, the cosmetic from Army G2, the forty-year-old lawyer who had escaped from a Viet Cong prison camp and had later been given parades in California. Washington had summoned him, the President had decorated him, Hoover had employed him. It was good public relations. He lent a much-needed air of dignity to the bureau. It was supposed to be good for Quinn, too. He could
have had a future at the Justice Department.
Could have had. No longer. Because he had asked questions. A whisper over a telephone had ordered him to stop. A flat, terrible, high-pitched whisper that told him they knew. They had a deposition written by a captured lieutenant colonel who faced execution with seven other men because of the actions of one Major Carroll Quinlan O’Brien. The major had disobeyed a direct order. Eight American soldiers had been executed as a result.
Of course, it was only one half of the story. There was another half. It told of this same major looking after the sick and the wounded of the compound with far greater concern than the executed lieutenant colonel. It told how this major had taken others’ work details, how he had stolen food and medicine from the guards to help sustain the men, how in the last analysis he had made his escape as much for the other prisoners as for himself.
He was a lawyer, not a soldier. It was the lawyer’s logic that had guided him, not a soldier’s strategy. Nor a soldier’s willingness to accept the unbearable cruelties of war—and therein, he realized, was the weakness of his argument. Did he do what he did for the combined concerns of all? Or did he do what he did for himself alone?
O’Brien was not sure there was a clear-cut answer. It was the question itself that could destroy him. An exposed “war hero” was the most despicable of citizens. People had been fooled; they were embarrassed—that was the part that made them furious.
These were the things the terrible whisper had made clear. And all because he had asked questions. Three unknown men without accountability had gained entrance the night before Hoover’s death. And the next morning Hoover’s files had disappeared.
If O’Brien needed proof of his continuing decline within the bureau, he had only to look at his own assignment sheet. He had been removed from several committees; he no longer received classified reports dealing with the newly reestablished liaisons with NSA and CIA. And he was suddenly drawing continuous night-duty assignments. Night duty! It was the Washington equivalent of the Omaha field office. It forced an agent to reevaluate a lot of things, primarily his own future.
It also forced O’Brien to wonder who within the bureau was after him. Whoever it was knew something about three unidentified men using improper covers to infiltrate the building the night before Hoover died. And whoever it was perhaps knew a great deal more about hundreds and hundreds of dossiers that had been Hoover’s private files.
One other consideration was forced on Quinn O’Brien. It was not one he relished thinking about. Since that whispered voice on the telephone four months ago the will to resist, to fight, had gone out of him. It was entirely possible that his decline at the bureau was due to himself. To his own performance.
The ring of the telephone interrupted his thoughts, bringing him back to the minor realities of night duty. He looked at the lighted button; it was an inside call from one of the two entrance desks.
“This is the Tenth Street desk. We’ve got a problem. There’s a man down here who insists on seeing someone in authority, whoever’s in charge. We told him to come back in the morning, but he refuses.”
“Is he drunk? Or a nut?”
“Can’t say that he’s either. As a matter of fact, I know who he is. I read a book he wrote. A thing called Counterstrike! His name’s Chancellor. Peter Chancellor.”
“I’ve heard of him. What’s he want?”
“He won’t say. Only that it’s an emergency.”
“What do you think?”
“I think he’ll stay here all night until somebody sees him. I figure that’s you, Quinn.”
“All right. Check him for weapons, assign an escort, and send him up.”
23
Peter walked into the office, nodding his thanks to the uniformed guard, who closed the door and left. Behind the desk in front of the window a stocky man with reddish brown hair got to his feet and extended his hand. Chancellor approached and took it; the grip was strange. It was cold, physically cold, and abrupt.
“I’m Senior Agent O’Brien, Mr. Chancellor. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that your coming here at this hour is highly irregular.”
“The circumstances are irregular.”
“You sure you don’t want the police? Our jurisdiction is limited.”
“I want you.”
“Whatever it is can’t wait until morning?” asked O’Brien, still standing.
“No.”
“I see. Sit down, please.” The agent gestured to one of the two chairs in front of the desk.
Peter hesitated. “I’d prefer to stand, at least for now. To tell you the truth, I’m very nervous.”
“Suit yourself.” OBrien returned to his chair. “At least take your overcoat off. That is, if you intend to be here long.”
“I may be here for the rest of the night,” said Chancellor, removing his coat and draping it over a chair.
“I wouldn’t count on it,” said O’Brien, watching him.
“I’ll let you decide. Is that fair?”
“I’m an attorney, Mr. Chancellor. Elliptical responses, especially when phrased as questions, are pointless and irritating. They also bore me.”
Peter stopped and looked at the man. “An attorney? I thought you said you were an agent. A senior agent”
“I did. Most of us are lawyers. Or accountants.”
“I forgot.”
“Now I’ve reminded you. But I can’t imagine it’s pertinent.”
“No, it isn’t,” replied Chancellor, forcing his concentration back to the issue. “I’ve got a story to tell you, Mr. O’Brien. When I’m finished, IH go with you to whoever you think should hear it, and repeat it. But I have to start at the beginning; it won’t make sense otherwise. Before I do, I’d like to ask you to make a telephone call.”
“Wait a minute,” interrupted the agent. “You came here voluntarily and refused our suggestion that you return in the morning for a formal appointment. I won’t accept any preconditions, and I won’t make any phone calls.”
“I’ve a good reason for asking you to.”
“If it’s a precondition, I’m not interested. Come back in the morning.”
“I can’t. Among other reasons, there’s a man flying in from Indianapolis who says he’s going to kill me.”
“Go to the police.”
“Is that all you can say? That, and ‘Come back in the morning’?”
The agent leaned back in his chair; his eyes conveyed his growing suspicion. “You wrote a book called Counterstrike!, didn’t you?”
“Yes, but that’s not—”
“I remember now,” interrupted O’Brien. “It came out last year. A lot of people thought it was true; a lot of other people were upset. You said the CIA was operating domestically.”
“I happen to think it’s true.”
“I see,” continued the agent warily. “Last year it was the agency. Is it the FBI this year? You come off the street in the middle of the night trying to provoke us into doing something you can write about?”
Peter gripped the back of the chair. “I won’t deny it started with a book. With the idea of a book. But it’s gone way beyond that. People have been killed. Tonight I was nearly killed; so was the person with me. It’s all connected.”
“I repeat emphatically. Go to the police.”
“I want you to call the police.”
“Why?”
“So you’ll believe me. Because it concerns people here at the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I think you’re the only ones who can stop it.”
O’Brien leaned forward, still wary, but aroused. “Stop what?”
Chancellor hesitated. He had to appear rational to this suspicious man. If the agent thought he was a lunatic—even half a lunatic—he’d throw him to the police. Peter did not reject the police; they were protection and he welcomed them. But the solution did not lie with the police. It lay within the bureau. He spoke as calmly as he could.
“Stop the killing, that’s first, of c
ourse. Then stop the terror tactics, the extortion, the blackmail. People are being destroyed.”
“By whom?”
“By others who think they have information that could irreparably damage the FBI.”
O’Brien remained motionless. “What’s the nature of this ‘irreparable damage’?”
“It’s found in the theory that Hoover was assassinated.”
O’Brien stiffened. “I see. And this phone call to the police. What’s that about?”
“An old house on Thirty-fifth Street Northwest, near Wisconsin, behind Dumbarton Oaks. It was burning when I left several hours ago. I set it on fire.”
The agent’s eyes widened, his voice urgent. “That’s quite an admission. As a lawyer I think you should”
“If the police look,” continued Peter, overriding O’Brien’s urgency, “they’ll find shells on the front lawn, bullet holes in the walls and woodwork as well as the furniture, and the upper half of the kitchen door smashed. Also, the telephone wires were cut.”
The FBI man stared at Chancellor. “What the hell are you saying?”
“It was an ambush.”
“Weapons were fired in the middle of a residential neighborhood?”
“The gunshots were muffled by silencers. No one heard anything. There were periods of quiet—probably for passing cars. That’s why I thought of the fire. The flames would be spotted by someone.”
“You left the scene?”
“I ran away. Now I’m sorry I did.”
“Why did you?”
Again Peter hesitated. “I was confused. Frightened.”
“The person with you?”
“That’s part of it, I imagine.” Chancellor paused, seeing the obvious question in the agent’s eyes. For a hundred reasons he could not protect her. As Phyllis herself had put it, whatever her transgressions, they did not warrant the loss of life. “Her name is Phyllis Maxwell.”
“The newspaperwoman?”
“Yes. She ran first. I tried to find her. I couldn’t.”
“You said this all happened several hours ago. Do you know where she is now?”