Look to the fiction; there is nothing else left.
In Counterstrike! a telephone call was made to enlist help in an escape. The method was simple: A false message was given, logical to those who overheard it but virtually meaningless to the receiver. In it was hidden a clue to a specific location. It was up to the receiver to figure out where.
“A trade, then,” said Peter. “O’Brien for MacAndrew’s daughter.”
“That does not include Major Brown. He’s not part of the exchange. He’s our property.”
“You know about him?”
“Of course. From the data-processing center in McLean. Within minutes of the Chasǒng records being pulled, we were aware of it”
“I see. You’re going to kill him?”
“That depends. We don’t know him. It may well be he’ll be assigned to a base hospital thousands of miles away. We do not indiscriminately take life.”
You’ll kill him, thought Chancellor. Once you know him, you’ll kill him.
“You’re telling me you know where Brown and Alison are,” said Peter.
“We do. In Arundel Village. We have a man there, outside the hotel.”
“I want her driven into Washington where I can speak with her.”
“Demands, Mr. Chancellor?”
“If you want O’Brien.”
“She won’t be harmed. You have my word.”
“Let’s call it the initial proof that you’ll keep it For God’s sake, don’t push me. I don’t want to die. I’m frightened.” Peter kept his voice low; it was not difficult to be convincing.
“What guarantee do I have?” asked the judge. “How will you deliver O’Brien?”
“We’ll have to get to a telephone. This one’s dead, but you know that. I only have a number and a room. I have no idea where.” Chancellor raised his arm to look at his watch. The movement caused a sharp pain in his wounded shoulder. “O’Brien should be there for another twenty to thirty minutes. After that he’s to call me.”
“What’s the telephone number?”
“That won’t do you any good; he’s fifty miles away. He knows my voice. He worked out a code for me to use and one of several places to meet during specific times.” Peter’s mind raced as he spoke. Several nights ago O’Brien had used a fictitious pay telephone on Wisconsin Avenue as a cover for a second location, a second phone booth, where Peter was to go to take his call. There was a pay phone at a gas station outside of Salisbury. Quinn and Alison had been there with him when he’d called Morgan in New York. O’Brien would remember that booth.
“It’s two fifteen. Where could you meet at this hour?” Sutherland stood motionless, his voice wary.
“A gas station near Salisbury; I’m to confirm it. He’ll want me to describe the car I’m driving. And I don’t think hell show himself if he sees people in the car with me. You’ll have to conceal yourselves.”
“It’s not a problem. What are the words of the code?” asked the judge. “The precise words.”
“They don’t mean anything. He was reading a newspaper.”
“What are they?”
“The senator called a last-minute quorum on the defense expenditures.’ ”
Chancellor winced and reached across his chest to hold his wounded shoulder. The gesture diminished any importance Peter might have given to the meaning of the code. They were merely words chosen at random from a newspaper.
“We’ll use the ambassador’s car,” said Sutherland finally. “You’ll drive the last few miles. Until then you’ll ride in the back with me. Two of my men will accompany us. When you take the wheel, they’ll conceal themselves. I’m sure you’ll cooperate fully.”
“I expect your cooperation, too. I want your man away from Arundel. I want Alison driven to Washington. Brown can do that; you can go after him later. How far’s the nearest telephone?”
“On the table, Mr. Chancellor. Or will be in a matter of minutes.” The judge turned to the muscular black on his left He spoke quietly in an unfamiliar language.
It was the language shouted at the Chesapeake marina. Shouted in defiance at the moment of death. The language Varak had not understood.
The slender black man nodded and ran quickly into the hallway and out the front door.
“The telephone will be reconnected,” Sutherland explained. “The wires were not severed, only placed on an intermediate circuit that does not break the terminal line.” The judge paused, then continued. “I spoke in Ashanti. It was the language of the African Gold Coast in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It’s not easy to learn; there’s no language like it We can converse anywhere, among anyone; relay instructions, issue orders without being understood.”
Sutherland turned to the two men across the room. Again he spoke in the strange-sounding Ashanti. The two blacks put their weapons in their belts and walked rapidly to St. Claire’s dead body. They picked it up and carried it out.
The telephone rang once. “It’s fixed,” Sutherland said. “Call O’Brien. Our man is listening on the line. If you say anything unacceptable, the connection will be broken, the woman killed.”
Peter walked to the telephone. St. Claire’s blood formed jagged blots and streaks on the wall next to the table. He could feel it beneath the soles of his shoes. He picked up the phone.
He dialed the number of the motel in Ocean City and asked the switchboard for Upper South Suite. The room phone rang; the wait was unbearable; O’Brien wasn’t there!
Then he heard the click and a quiet “Yes?”
“Quinn?”
“Peter! My God, where are you? I’ve been—”
“There’s no time!” interrupted Chancellor, speaking in uncharacteristic anger in the hope that O’Brien would look for a message in his words. “You asked for a goddamned code, so I’m giving it to you. The senator called a last-minute quorum over the defense expenditures.’ Wasn’t that it? If it isn’t, it’s close enough.”
“What the hell—?”
“I want to meet as soon as possible!” Again the interruption was abrasive, discourteous, on the edge of contempt So out of character, so inconsistent. “It’s between two and three in the morning. According to your schedule that’s the gas station on the road to Salisbury. I’ll be driving a light-colored Continental. A silver Mark IV. Be sure you’re alone!”
There was a brief silence on the line. Peter stared at the blood-soaked wallpaper and closed his eyes, his face turned away from Sutherland. When he heard Quinn’s words, he felt like crying. Tears of relief. “All right,” said O’Brien, his voice as hostile as Chancellor’s. “A Mark IV. I’ll be there. And for your information, a code isn’t stupid. By using it I know you’re not under pressure. And with you, you son of a bitch, that’s rare. See you in an hour.”
O’Brien hung up. He had understood. Quinn’s final words confirmed it. They were as out of character as his own. The false message had carried the right meaning.
Peter faced the judge. “Now it’s your turn. Call Arundel.”
Sutherland sat beside him in the back seat of the Continental, the two blacks in front They sped south over country roads, across the Choptank River, past signs that proclaimed the townships of Bethlehem, Preston, and Hurlock. Toward Salisbury. The judge had kept his word. Alison was in Washington; she’d arrive at the Hay-Adams long before they reached Salisbury. Peter would telephone her from a roadside booth once O’Brien was taken. It was to be his good-bye, his death to follow, mercifully quick, at an unexpected moment—that, too, was part of the agreement.
Chancellor turned to the judge. The huge black head reflected racing flashes of light and shadow.
“How did you get the files?” Peter asked.
“M through Z, Mr. Chancellor,” said Sutherland. “That’s what we have. A through L were destroyed by Inver Brass. I could only get half.”
“I’m going to die; that’s not easy for me to say. I’d like to know how you got them.”
The judge looked at Peter, his dark
eyes magnified in the dim light. “There’s no harm in telling you. It wasn’t difficult. As you know, Varak assumed Longworth’s name. The real Alan Longworth is exactly what I told you he was in my office several months ago: one of Hoover’s closest associates, persuaded to work against Hoover. His reward was to spend the rest of his life in the Hawaiian Islands, his wants supplied, beyond the reach of those who might try to kill him. Hoover was told he died of natural causes: a disease. In fact, a memorial service was held for Longworth. Hoover himself gave the eulogy.”
Chancellor thought of the outline for his novel The fiction was again the reality.
A medical deception is mounted.… The report is forwarded to Hoover: The agent is riddled with duodenal cancer. It has spread beyond surgery; his life expectancy is no more than a few months at best. Hoover has no alternative. He releases the man, believing the agent is going home to die.…
“Hoover never questioned Longworth’s death?” asked Peter.
“There was no reason to,” replied Sutherland. “The surgeon’s report was sent to him. It left no doubts.” The fiction. The reality.
The judge continued. “I brought Alan Longworth back to life. From Hawaii For one day. It was most dramatic. A man returned from the dead for only a single day, but it was a day J. Edgar Hoover nearly stopped the wheels of government; his fury was intense. And his fear.” A slow smile came to Sutherland; it could be seen in the swiftly moving shadows. He went on, staring straight ahead. “Longworth told Hoover the truth as far as he knew it, as much as we told him. He was psychologically ready to do this, so deep was his own guilt. Hoover had been his mentor—in a way his god—and he had been forced to betray him. There was a conspiracy to murder him, Longworth told Hoover. For his private files. The conspirators were unknown men inside and outside the bureau. Men with access to every code, every release of a vault in an emergency. Hoover panicked, as we knew he would panic. Phone calls were made all over Washington—including one to Ramirez, incidentally—and Hoover learned nothing. There was only one person he felt he could trust: his closest friend, Clyde Tolson. He began systematically removing the files to Tolson’s house—to his basement, to be precise. But he fell behind the schedule we had projected; not all the files were removed. We couldn’t press him; we couldn’t take the risk of doing that. We could get inside Tolson’s home. We had enough. We have enough. Files M through Z will give us the leverage we never had before.”
“For what?”
“To shape the concerns of government,” said Sutherland emphatically.
“What happened to Longworth?”
“You killed him, Mr. Chancellor. MacAndrew pulled the trigger, but you killed him. You sent MacAndrew after him.”
“And your people killed MacAndrew.”
“We had no choice. He’d learned too much. He had to die, at any rate. Although he wasn’t responsible, he was the symbol of Chasǒng. Hundreds of black soldiers murdered, led to their deaths by their own commanders. The most heinous crime of which man is capable.”
“Racial murder,” said Peter quietly.
“A form of genocide. The most despicable form,” said Sutherland, his eyes filled with hatred. “For convenience. To stop one man from learning the truth because that truth would expose a network of crimes—experiments—that civilized men should never have sanctioned but did.”
Chancellor let the moment pass. The silence was electric. “The phone calls. The killing. Why? What did Phyllis Maxwell or Bromley or Rawlins have to do with Chasǒng? Or O’Brien, for that matter? Why did you go after them?”
The judge answered rapidly. The victims mentioned were not of consequence. “Chasǒng was not involved. Phyllis Maxwell had uncovered information we wished to use ourselves; it led to the Oval Office. Bromley deserved no less. He had the courage to take on the Pentagon, but he crippled an urban-renewal project in Detroit that would have benefited thousands of destitute slum dwellers. Black people, Mr. Chancellor. He sold out to criminal elements who provided him with information that augmented his headline-gathering crusade against the military. At the expense of black people! Rawlins was the most dangerous example of the false New South. He gave lip service to emerging ‘new values’ and privately in committee thwarted every congressional attempt to give teeth to the laws. And he abused black women, don’t forget that. The parents of those children can’t”
Sutherland had finished.
“What about O’Brien?” Peter asked. “Why do you want him now?”
“Once again, you’re responsible. He’s the only one who pieced together the theft of the remaining files. If that were all, he might have lived. His silence could be counted on; he had no viable proof. However, no longer. He knows Venice’s identity. You gave it to him.”
Peter looked away. He was surrounded by death; he was the precursor of death.
“Why you?” asked Peter softly. “Of all men, why you?”
“Because I can,” replied Sutherland, his eyes on the road ahead.
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s taken me a lifetime to understand what the young see every day of their lives. I was too filled with doubts; it’s not complicated at all. This nation has forsaken its black citizens. The black man must no longer interfere. America is bored with his dreams; the black man’s attainments are suspect. It was fashionable to support him while he was an achieving oddity, but not when he becomes a challenge and moves into the neighborhood.”
“You weren’t forsaken.”
“The extraordinary man never is. I say that with no sense of false pride. My gifts were from God, and they were extraordinary. But what of the ordinary man? The ordinary woman, the ordinary child, who grow up to be less than ordinary because they’re marked at birth? No change of name can alter that stigma; no certificate can lighten the skin. I’m no revolutionary in the accepted sense, Mr. Chancellor. I know very well that such a course would result in a holocaust unknown to the Jews. Quite simply, the numbers and the hardware are against us. I’m merely using the tools of the society in which we live. Fear. The most common weapon known to man. It has no prejudice; it respects no racial barriers. That’s what those files represent—nothing more, nothing less. We can do so much with them, influence so much legislation, enact so many laws, give teeth to statutes that are violated daily. That’s what those files can accomplish. I seek no violence that would certainly ensure our annihilation. I want none of that. I seek only what rightfully belongs to us, what’s been withheld from us. And providence has given me the weapon. I intend to lead the ordinary black man out of his sorrow and embarrassment.”
“But you do use violence. You kill.”
“Only those who would take our lives!” Sutherland’s voice thundered; it filled the car. “As our lives were taken! Only those who would interfere!”
Sutherland’s explosion caused Peter to react in kind, with his own intensity, his own anger. “An eye for an eye? Is that where you’re at? Is that what you came away with after a lifetime of law? For Christ’s sake, not you! Why?”
Sutherland turned in the seat, his eyes furious. “I’ll tell you why. It wasn’t the judgment of a lifetime. It was the result of a brief half hour five years ago. I had rendered a decision that was not particularly popular with the Justice Department. It prohibited further abuses of Miranda and upheld the conviction of a well-known superintendent of police.”
“I remember,” said Peter, and he did. It had been called the Sutherland decision, an anathema to the law-and-order crowd. Had any other judge but Sutherland rendered it, it would have been appealed to the Supreme Court.
“I received a call from J. Edgar Hoover, requesting me to come to his office. More from curiosity than anything else, I bowed to his arrogance and accepted the invitation. During that meeting I listened to the unbelievable. On the desk of the highest law-enforcement officer in the country were spread the dossiers of every major black civil rights leader: King, Abernathy, Wilkins, Rowan, Farmer. They were volumes of filt
h—scurrilous rumor, unsubstantiated gossip, transcripts of telephone and electronic taps; words taken out of context made to appear inflammatory—morally, sexually, legally, philosophically! I was enraged, appalled! That it could happen in that office! Blackmail! Blatant extortion! But Hoover had been through it many times before. He let me vent my rage, and when I had finished, he viciously said that were I to continue to be an obstruction, those files would be put to use. Men and their families destroyed! The black movement crippled! At the very last, he said to me, ‘We don’t want another Chasǒng, do we, Judge Sutherland?’ ”
“Chasǒng,” said Peter, repeating the name softly. “That’s where you heard it first”
“It took me nearly two years to learn what happened at Chasǒng. When I did, I reached the decision. The children had been right all along. In their simplicity they saw what I did not see. As a people we were expendable. But then I saw what the young did not see. The answer was not indiscriminate violence and protests. It was to use the weapon Hoover used; make the system work from within. By fear!… We’ll talk no more. You should have silence. Make peace with your God.”
The man beside the driver studied a map with the aid of a pencil flashlight He turned his head slightly to speak with the judge in Ashanti.
Sutherland nodded and replied in the strange African tongue. He looked at Peter. “We’re within a mile and a half of the gas station. We’ll stop a quarter of a mile short of it. These men are efficient scouts. They learned the expertise of night patrol in Southeast Asia. Those patrols were usually the province of black soldiers; the casualty rates were the highest. If O’Brien’s brought anyone with him, if there’s any hint of a trap, they’ll come back, and we’ll drive away. The girl will die in front of you.”
Chancellor’s throat went dry. It’s over. He should have known. Sutherland would never settle for words over a telephone. Peter had sentenced Alison to death. He had loved two women in his life, and he had killed them both.