“Names aren’t necessary,” said the agent initially assigned to Chancellor. “He’ll take over for me.”
Peter nodded. “Okay. No names, no handshakes. I wouldn’t want you to catch anything.”
“What you’ve got jumps,” said the second man quietly, with an offensive tone worthy of his companion. He turned to the first agent. “He stays in the hotel, right?”
“That’s what we’ve agreed to. No outside work.”
Both men turned, dismissing him, and walked toward the elevators. Peter went inside and closed the door. He listened for the faint sounds of the elevator. When they came, he waited an additional ten seconds before he opened the door.
The CIA man slid past Chancellor into the small foyer of the suite. Peter closed the door. “Christ!” said the agent. “I nearly had a cardiac arrest when I got the call last night.”
“You? I damned near fell over when I saw you standing there!”
“You carried it off. Sorry. I couldn’t take the chance of phoning you.”
“How did it happen?”
“O’Brien. He’s one of our contacts at the bureau. When Hoover shut down communications, O’Brien and several others worked with us, got us information we had to have. It wouldn’t make sense for him to call anyone else; they’d probably refuse him. He knew we wouldn’t”
“You owed him,” said Chancellor.
“More than you can realize. O’Brien and his friends put their necks as well as their careers on the line for us. If they’d ever been found out, Hoover would have gone berserk. He’d have made sure they were sent to some choice prisons for ten to twenty years apiece.”
Peter winced. “He could do that, couldn’t he?”
“Could and did. There are several unadvertised carcasses rotting away in Mississippi cells even now. It was his last Siberia. O’Brien’s owed; we can’t forget that.”
“But Hoover’s dead.”
“Maybe somebody’s trying to bring him back. Isn’t that what this is all about? Why else would O’Brien call us in?”
Chancellor wondered. It was as valid a possibility as he had heard. O’Brien spoke of the Hoover group—some known, others not, none to be trusted. Did they have Hoover’s files? Were they trying to regain control of the bureau? If so, men like Quinn O’Brien had to be destroyed for that control to be taken. “You could be right,” he said.
The man nodded. “It starts all over again. Not that it’s ever really stopped. When I heard your name last night, I wondered what had taken you so long.”
“What does that mean?” Peter was confused.
“The information I gave you. You used it pretty exclusively against us. Why? There were a lot of people at fault, not just us.”
“I’ll say now what I said two years ago. The agency used the failings of other people as an excuse. Too damned quickly and with too much enthusiasm. I thought we’d agreed. I thought that’s why you gave me the information.”
The man shook his head. “I guess I thought you’d spread the guilt around a little more. Then I figured you were saving it for another book. That is what this is all about, isn’t it? You’re writing a book about the bureau.”
Chancellor was stunned. “Where did you hear that?”
“I didn’t hear it, I read it. In this morning’s paper. Phyllis Maxwell’s column.”
25
She had done it. The column was short, ominous in its brevity as well as its content, and centered on the editorial page with a black border around it. It would be read widely, raising startling questions and no less startling alarms. Chancellor could picture the distraught Phyllis Maxwell at the airport, clinging to her sanity, reaching the inevitable decision and calling her newspaper’s night desk. No editor would cut the copy; she had a sure reputation for documenting her facts. But beyond this, it was a last gesture, a final testament, and recognizable as such. She owed it to her profession, and that profession would not turn its back on her.
Washington, December 19—Information from an unimpeachable source reveals that the Federal Bureau of Investigation will soon be confronted with extraordinary charges of malfeasance, extortion, suppression of criminal evidence, and illegal surveillance of citizens in flagrant violation of their constitutional rights. These allegations will be made in a forthcoming novel by Peter Chancellor, author of Counterstrike! and Sarajevo! Although the work has been written as fiction, Chancellor has developed his material from fact. He has traced victims and observed their paralyses. Due only to his own sense of morality has he withheld identities and fictionalized the events. This book is long overdue. Throughout this magnificent city with its symbols everywhere of a people’s unique struggle for freedom, men and women are afraid. For themselves, their loved ones, their very thoughts, and often their sanity. They live with their fears because a giant squid has reached its tentacles into every corner, spreading its terror. The head of this monster is somewhere within the FBI.
This reporter has been touched by these tactics. Therefore, in conscience, I will be absent from these pages for an indeterminate period of time. It is my hope to return one day, but it will only be when I can dispatch my responsibilities in a manner to which you, the reader, are entitled.
A final word. Too many good and powerful men in the government have been compromised by the working methods of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. These assaults must stop. Perhaps Mr. Chancellor’s fiction will bring about that reality. If so, a part of our system will be cleansed.
It was a bombshell; its crater was smoldering, defined by the black border. Peter looked at his watch; it was twenty minutes past eight. He was surprised O’Brien had not called him. Surely he’d seen the paper; surely there was chaos at the FBI. Perhaps the agent was being exceptionally careful. A telephone was suddenly an instrument of danger.
And then, as if his thoughts had willed it, the phone rang and O’Brien was there.
“I knew they were waking you at eight,” said Quinn. “Have you seen the paper?”
“Yes. I wondered when you’d call.”
“I’m in a phone booth. Obviously. I didn’t want to call from home. I got off at four this morning and drove around just thinking for a while, then managed a couple of hours’ sleep. Did you expect her to do this?”
“It’s the last thing I expected. But I can understand. Maybe it was the only thing she thought she could do.”
“It’s an unnecessary complication, that’s what it is. They’ll be looking for her. God help her if she’s found. One side will want her life, the other her testimony.”
Peter thought for a moment. “She wouldn’t have done what she did if she believed she’d be found. She meant what she said in her letter: She planned this for a long time.”
“Which means a dead skip. I know something about dead skips. All too often they end up more dead than skipped. But that’s her problem; we’ve got enough of our own.”
“Your compassion is touching. Did you reach your man Varak?”
“I’ve put out an emergency defector code for him. He’ll have to respond. It’s his specialty.”
“What do we do until then?”
“Stay where you are. We’ll move you later. Varak will know where.”
“I know where,” said Peter angrily. O’Brien was treating them like fugitives. “My house in Pennsylvania. We’ll go there. You just get us—”
“No,” interrupted the FBI man firmly. “For the time being you stay away from that house and your apartment You go where I tell you to go. I want you alive, Chancellor. You’re very important to me.”
The words had their effect; memories of gunfire returned. “All right. We sit and wait.”
“Does anyone in New York or Pennsylvania know where you are?”
“Not specifically. They know I’m in Washington.”
“Would they know where to look?”
“Probably this hotel. I stay here a lot.”
“You’re no longer registered there,” said O’Brien. “
You checked out late last night; the manager made that clear to the front desk.”
It was a chilling piece of news. That it could be effected so easily, that it was even necessary in the agent’s judgment, caused Peter to swallow involuntarily. Then he remembered. “I called room service. I gave my name and room number. I signed the bill.”
“Goddamn it!” O’Brien exploded. “I didn’t consider that.”
“I’m glad you’re not perfect.”
“Less so than I want to think about. It’s the kind of mistake Varak wouldn’t make. We’ll handle it, though. It’s only for a few hours. You simply want to be incognito.”
“What’s my new name?”
“Peters. Charles Peters. It’s not very original, but it doesn’t matter. I’ll be the only one calling you. Now, as soon as you can, telephone anyone in New York who knows you’re in Washington. Tell them you and Miss MacAndrew have decided to take a couple of days off. You’re driving down through Virginia, the Fredericksburg route, toward the Shenandoah. Have you got that?”
“I’ve got it, but I don’t know what I’ve got. Why?”
“There are a limited number of hotels and motels where you could stay overnight. I want to see who shows up.”
Chancellor felt a knot in his stomach. For a moment he was speechless. “What the hell are you saying?” he whispered. “You think Tony Morgan or Joshua Harris are a part of this? You’re out of your mind!”
“I told you,” replied O’Brien. “I drove around last night just thinking. Everything that’s happened to you has happened because of this book you’re writing. Most of the places you’ve been—not all, but most—have been known by those men because you told them.”
“I won’t listen to this! They’re my friends!”
“They may have no choice,” said O’Brien. “I know the recruitment methods better than you do. And I’m not saying they are involved, I’m only saying they could be. I guess what I’m telling you is not to trust anyone. Not for the moment; not until we learn more.” O’Brien lowered his voice. “Perhaps not even me. I say I’m ready to be tested, and I think I am. But I haven’t been tested yet. I can only give you my word that I’ll try like hell. I’ll be in touch.”
Quinn hung up abruptly, as if he could not bring himself to talk a second longer. The fact that he was able to express his own self-doubt was remarkable. He was a brave man because he was so obviously frightened, accepting his fear in a loneliness that Chancellor did not have to know.
Peter sat down to breakfast. Only vaguely aware that he was eating, he went through juice, eggs, bacon, and toast. His thoughts were on what O’Brien had said to him: I guess what I’m telling you is not to trust anyone.
There was the echo of unreality about it. A once-removed quality too couched in melodrama to be part of life. Abnormal, false.
Fiction.
Without his thinking about it, his eyes strayed beyond the coffeepot to his notebook on the table in front of the couch. He got out of the chair, carrying his coffee, and sat down on the couch. He opened the notebook, staring at the words he had written yesterday before the madness had begun. The madness that had led him to Quinn O’Brien.
The compulsion was there. He recognized it for what it was: a need to translate the madness he had experienced into a reality he could communicate. Because he had experienced it He had always imagined what it would be like to be hunted, to be trapped, to be frightened and confused and face death—to strain every fiber and brain cell in a search for escape and survival. He had never before lived those feelings, until now. The changes in the book could come later, but for now he’d follow the story line he had developed and complete the chapter tomorrow. He had to put it down, this new, firsthand madness.
Chapter 10—Outline
Meredith has joined the Nucleus. He is to develop undeniable evidence that within the FBI there is a group of specific men who are involved in grossly illegal activities. Not words on paper but voices on tape.
The method will be entrapment, and Alex is tutored by Alan Long. The converted Hoover gunslinger tells Meredith that the only approach is to feign total capitulation to the fanatics inside the bureau. He has the motive: He cannot take the harassment any longer.
The trap will be in the form of a miniaturized tape machine, placed in his handkerchief pocket, activated by touch.
There is a series of short, emotional confrontations in which Alex is seen abjectly “surrendering” to the Hoover forces. It is not difficult for him to be convincing, for he is reflecting a state of mind he has experienced.
There is a scene at night in which Meredith overhears—in detail—a plan to “eliminate” an FBI informant who has threatened to expose the bureau’s involvement in the killing of five black radicals in Chicago. The massacre was the direct result of FBI provocation. The informant is marked for death; the method will be an untraceable weapon in a crowded subway.
Alex has activated the miniaturized equipment He has the voices on tape. The evidence is now undeniable: conspiracy to commit murder.
The enormity of the charge is enough to drive Hoover from office. It will lead to the uncovering of additional abuses, for it is only one incident in a network of conspiracies. Hoover is finished.
Alex is seen leaving, but the Hoover men sense his duplicity.
Meredith races out of the bureau to his car. He has been given an address in McLean, Virginia, to reach in emergencies. There has never been an emergency like this; he has in his pocket the evidence that will destroy the Man and the men who would turn the country into their own personal police state.
As he drives out of the parking lot, he spots a car behind him he believes to be an FBI vehicle.
A wild chase ensues through the streets of Washington. At a traffic light the man beside the driver of the FBI automobile rolls down the window shouting “There!” He then leaps out for Meredith’s door. Alex jumps the light, careening down the street, pressing his horn, dodging other cars.
He recalls a tactic: lose an automobile, lose surveillance. He stops in front of a government building, leaves the motor running, gets out, and races up the steps inside.
Only a uniformed guard is there. Meredith flashes his FBI identification and runs across the marble floor past banks of elevators, pressing the buttons, looking for another exit. He sees a pair of glass doors leading to an open-air corridor that connects the building to another. He races out; from behind a pillar a man emerges. It is one of the two men following him. He holds a gun in his hand. Alex touches the recorder, activating it.
“It’s an old trick, Meredith. You’re not very good at it.”
“You’re executioners! You’re Hoover’s executioners!” screams Alex in panic.
The screams are enough to cause the man to lose his concentration; screams can be heard. In that brief instant Meredith does what he never believed he’d be capable of doing. He rushes at the man with the gun.
A violent struggle takes place; two shots are fired.
The first wounds Alex in the shoulder. The second kills the FBI fanatic.
Meredith stumbles through the corridor holding his wound. The second FBI man is seen running toward the glass doors at the other end.
He gets through to the other building and out on the street He hails a taxi, falls back into the seat and gives the driver the address in McLean.
He reaches McLean, barely conscious. He struggles up the path to the door and holds his hand on the bell. The former cabinet officer answers; it is his residence.
“I’m shot. In my pocket The recorder. Everything’s on it”
He falls into unconsciousness.
He awakes in a darkened room; he is on a couch, bandages across his chest and shoulder. He hears voices beyond the closed door; he gets up and edges his way along the wall to the door and opens it an inch. Beyond, around a dining room table, sits the cabinet officer, the newspaperwoman, and Alan Long. The senator is not there.
Alex’s tape recorder is by the e
x-member of the President’s cabinet. He is speaking to Long.
“Did you know about these … execution squads?”
“There’ve been rumors,” replies Long cautiously. “I was never involved.”
“You wouldn’t be trying to save your own neck?”
“What’s there to save?” asks Long. “If anyone found out what I’ve done—what I’m doing—I’m dead.”
“Which brings us back to these squads,” says the woman. “What did you hear?”
“Nothing specific,” answers Long. “No proof. Hoover departmentalizes everything. Everybody. He does it all secretly; no one really knows what the man in the next office does. That way everyone stays in line.”
“Gestapo!” says the woman.
“What did you hear?” The cabinet officer.
“Only that there were final solutions if everything fell apart on a project.”
The woman stares at Long, then briefly closes her eyes. “Final—Oh, my God.”
“If we ever needed a last, overwhelming justification,” says the balding man, “I think we have it Hoover will be killed two weeks from Monday, the files taken.”
“No!” Alex has yanked the door open with such force that it crashes into the wall. “You can’t do it! You have everything you need. Bring him to trial! Let him face the judgment of the courts! Of the country!”
“You don’t understand,” says the cabinet officer. “There’s not a court in the land, not a judge, not a member of the House or of the Senate, not the President or any of his cabinet, who can bring him to trial. It’s beyond that.” “No, it isn’t! There are laws!” “There are the files,” says the newspaperwoman softly. “People would be reached … by others who have to survive.”
Meredith sees the eyes staring at him. The eyes are cold, without sympathy.
“Then, you’re no better than he is,” says Alex, knowing that if he ever gets out of that house, he will be hunted again.