The Chancellor Manuscript

by Robert Ludlum

  The black giant was dead.

  “Chancellor!” O’Brien was yelling at him, his voice penetrating the explosions and the spits of gunfire. For what purpose? To kill him? Who was O’Brien? What was O’Brien?

  He would not answer; he would not become a target Survival forced him to move. He lurched over the slain Daniel Sutherland toward the mass of steel machinery at the foot of the dock. He scrambled on all fours, diving, twisting, zigzagging as fast as he could over the filthy planks.

  There was the ping of a ricocheting bullet. He had been seen! He had no choice; he rose partially off the ground, his legs aching in fear, and sped toward the black iron objects. He was in front of them; he plunged between the arch of cascading coils, twisting to his right behind a shield of steel.

  “Chancellor! Chancellor!” Still O’Brien’s shouts punctuated the gunfire. Still Peter would not heed him. For there was only one explanation. The man he had pitied, admired, given his life to, had led him into the trap!

  There was a sudden fusillade, followed by an explosion. Flames leaped up from the stern of a trawler two docks away. Then a second detonation; another boat erupted in fire. There were shouts, orders; men ran over the docks and jumped from railings into the water. The gunfire seemed to diminish in the confusion. Then there was a single loud report, and a third boat burst into flames. Another shot followed; a man screamed. He screamed words.

  The words were unintelligible. All but one: Chasǒng.

  Chasǒng!

  A man was hit, his last words a roar of defiance before death; no other motive could cause the fanatic sound. It was the language Varak had not understood! Chancellor now heard it for himself; it was like no other he had ever heard.

  The noise abated. Two men in wet suits climbed over the end of the short pier where Daniel Sutherland lay dead. Across the water on the opposing dock three shots came in rapid succession; a ricocheting bullet glanced harshly off a gearbox above Peter and imbedded itself in the wood beside him. A figure raced toward the shore, jumping between the boats, over railings, onto decks, around wheelhouses. More shots; Chancellor ducked beneath the shield of steel. The figure of the racing man reached the muddy shore and dove beyond a beached rowboat. He stayed there only seconds, then rose and ran into the darkness.

  It was O’Brien! Peter watched in disbelief as he disappeared into the woods that bordered the boat basin.

  The gunfire stopped. From the water beyond the docks came the sound of a motor launch. Chancellor could not wait any longer. He crawled out of his sanctuary, got to his feet, and raced between the boats toward the automobile.

  Alison lay prostrate on the ground next to the car. Her eyes were glazed, her body trembled. Peter sank down beside her and held her in his arms.

  “I never thought I’d see you alive!” she whispered, her fingers digging into him, her moist cheek against his.

  “Come on. Quickly!” He pulled her to her feet. He yanked the car door open and pushed Alison inside.

  There was a commotion on the dock. The motor launch he had heard in the distance had pulled alongside. There was an argument; men turned, several started toward the shore.

  It was the moment to move. In seconds it would be too late. He looked through the windshield and turned the ignition key. The motor groaned but did not start.

  The morning dampness! The car had not run in hours!

  He heard shouts from the base of the dock. Alison heard them, too; she grabbed for his gun from the seat where he had dropped it. Automatically, with the swiftness born of experience, she cracked out the magazine.

  “You’ve only got two shells left! Do you have others?”

  “Bullets? No!” Peter turned the key again, pressing the accelerator.

  The figure of a man in a wet suit loomed between the hulls of the beached trawlers. He started toward them.

  “Watch your eyes!” shouted Alison.

  She fired the weapon, the explosion thunderous inside the car. The side window blew open. The motor started.

  Chancellor yanked the gearshift into drive and plunged his foot on the accelerator. The car lurched forward wildly. He swung the wheel to his right; the car skidded sideways, throwing up sprays of mud and dust. He straightened the wheel out and sped toward the exit turn.

  They could hear shots behind them; the back window exploded.

  Chancellor pushed Alison to the floor of the car as he whipped the steering wheel to the left. She would not stay down but lunged up, firing the second and last bullet. Briefly the gunshots behind them stopped.

  Then they resumed, the bullets wild, without effect. Peter reached the entrance of the boat basin and raced down the road cut out of the forest toward the highway.

  They were alone. An hour before there had been three fugitives; now there were two.

  They had given their trust to Quinn O’Brien; he had betrayed them.

  Whom would they turn to now?

  They had only each other. Houses and office buildings were watched. Friends, acquaintances, placed under surveillance. Telephones were tapped, their car known. The highways and back roads would soon be patrolled.

  Peter began to feel a remarkable change within himself. He wondered for a moment whether it was real or merely another aspect of his imagination; whatever, he decided he was grateful for it.

  The fear—the sense of utter helplessness—was replaced by anger.

  He gripped the wheel and drove on, the scream of death he had heard only minutes before echoing in his ears.

  Chasǒng!

  After everything was said, it was still the key.

  37

  The average citizen was not aware of their flight. No radio broadcasts described them; no photographs appeared on television or in the newspapers. And yet they ran, for ultimately there would be no protection; laws had been broken, men had been killed. To turn themselves in would lead to a dozen traps. The unknown men were everywhere among the authorities.

  Hoover’s private files were their only vindication, their only hope of survival.

  Death had brought them nearer to the answer. Varak had said it was one of four men. Peter had added a fifth. Now Sutherland was dead and Dreyfus was dead and that left three. Banner, Paris, and Bravo.

  Frederick Wells, Carlos Montelán, Munro St. Claire.

  You’ve been lied to far more expeditiously by someone else.

  But there was the key. Chasǒng. It was not a lie. One of the three remaining members of Inver Brass was somehow deeply, irrevocably associated with the waste at Chasǒng twenty-two years ago. Whoever he was had the files.

  Peter recalled Ramirez’s words. Chasǒng is … represented in scores of veterans’ hospitals.

  There was only a remote chance that something might be learned from the survivors. Their memories would be vague, but it was the only step he could think of. Perhaps the last one.

  His thoughts turned to Alison. She had developed an anger matching his own, and in that anger was a remarkable sense of inventive determination. The general’s daughter had resources, and she used them; her father had accumulated favors during a lifetime of service. She approached only those she knew were far removed from the centers of Pentagon influence and control. Men she had not spoken with in years received telephone calls asking for help—tactful assistance to be rendered privately, without questions.

  And so that no complete picture be traced to a single source, the requests were divided.

  An Air Force colonel attached to NASA Ordnance met them across the Delaware line in Laurel and gave them his car. O’Brien’s automobile was hidden in the woods near the banks of the Nanticoke River.

  An artillery captain at Fort Benning made reservations for them in his name at a Holiday Inn outside of Arundel Village.

  A lieutenant commander in the Third Naval District, once a skipper on an LCI at Omaha Beach, drove to Arundel and brought three thousand dollars to their room. He accepted—without question—a note from Chancellor addressed to Joshua Harris inst
ructing the literary agent to pay the borrowed sum.

  The last thing they needed was the hardest to get: the casualty records of Chasǒng. Specifically, the whereabouts of the permanently disabled survivors. If there was a single focal point that might be under round-the-clock surveillance, it was Chasǒng. They had to work on the assumption that unseen men were watching, waiting for an interest to be shown.

  It was nearly eight in the evening. The lieutenant commander had left minutes ago, the three thousand dollars dropped casually on the night table. Peter reclined wearily on the bed, leaning against the headboard. Alison was across the room at the desk. In front of her were her notes. Dozens of names, most crossed out for one reason or another. She smiled.

  “Are you always so nonchalant about money?”

  “Are you always so handy with a gun?” he replied.

  “I’ve been around weapons most of my life. It doesn’t mean I approve of them.”

  “I’ve been around money for about three and a half years. I approve of it very much.”

  “My father used to take me out to the pistol and rifle ranges several times a month. When nobody was around, of course. Did you know I could dismantle a carbine and a regulation .45 blindfolded by the time I was thirteen? God, how he must have wished I were a boy!”

  “God, how he must have been out of his mind,” said Chancellor, imitating her cadence. “What are we going to do about the casualty lists? Can you pull another string?”

  “Maybe. There’s a doctor at Walter Reed. Phil Brown. He was a medic in Korea when my father found him. He flew helicopter runs to the front lines and treated the wounded when the doctors said no thank you. Later, Dad got him started in the right direction, including medical school, courtesy of the Army. He was from a poor family; it wouldn’t have been possible otherwise.”

  “That was a long time ago.”

  “Yes, but they stayed in touch. We stayed in touch. It’s worth a try. I can’t come up with anyone else.”

  “Can you get him here? I don’t want to talk on the phone.”

  “I can ask,” said Alison.

  Within the hour a slender forty-three-year-old army doctor walked through the door and embraced Alison. There was a good-natured quality about the man, thought Chancellor; he liked him, although he had an idea that when Alison had said they’d “stayed in touch,” she meant precisely that. They were good friends; they had once been better friends.

  “Phil, it’s so good to see you!”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t make Mac’s burial,” said the doctor, holding Alison by the shoulders. “I figured you’d understand. All those sanctimonious words from all those bastards who wanted his stars impounded.”

  “You haven’t lost your directness, Charlie Brown.”

  The major kissed her on the forehead. “I haven’t heard that name in years.” He turned to Peter. “She’s a Peanuts freak, you know. We used to wait up for the Sunday papers—”

  “This is Peter Chancellor, Phil,” interrupted Alison.

  The doctor focused on Peter and offered his hand. “You’ve upgraded your friends, Ali. I’m impressed. I enjoy your books, Peter. May I call you Peter?”

  “Only if I can call you Charlie?”

  “Not in the office. They’d think I was an intellectual; that’s frowned upon.… Now, what’s this all about? Ali sounded like a fugitive from a narc raid.”

  “Right to the first,” said Alison. “Far worse than the second. May I tell him, Peter?”

  Chancellor looked at the major, at the abrupt concern in his eyes, at the strength veiled in pleasantness. “I think you can tell him everything.”

  “I think you’d better,” said Brown. “This girl means a lot to me. Her father was an important part of my life.”

  They told him. Everything. Alison began; Peter filled in. The telling was cathartic; there was someone they could trust at last. Alison started to explain the events in Tokyo twenty-two years before. She stopped when she got to her mother’s attack on her; further words would not come.

  The doctor knelt in front of her. “Listen to me,” he said professionally. “I want to hear it all. I’m sorry, but you have to tell it”

  He did not touch her, but in his voice was the soft, firm command.

  When she had finished, Brown nodded to Peter and got up to make himself a drink. Chancellor went to Alison and held her as the doctor poured himself a drink.

  “The bastards,” said Brown, revolving the glass in his hands. “Hallucinogens—that’s what they plateaued her on. They may have strung her out on a morphine derivative or cocaine, but the hallucinogens provoke visual displacement; that’s the prime symptom. Both sides were into heavy experiments in those days. The bastards!”

  “What difference does it make which narcotics were used?” asked Chancellor, his arm around Alison.

  “Maybe none at all,” answered Brown. “But there could be. Those experiments were very restricted, very secret Somewhere there are records—God knows where—but they exist They could tell us the strategy, give us names and dates, tell us how wide the net spread.”

  “I’d rather talk to the men who were at Chasǒng,” Peter said. “A few of the survivors, the higher the rank the better. Those in the VA hospitals. But there’s no time to chase all over the country looking for them.”

  “You think you’ll find the answer there?”

  “Yes. Chasǒng’s become a cult. I heard a dying man scream the name as if his own death were a willing sacrifice. There was no mistaking it”

  “All right.” Brown nodded in agreement. “Then why couldn’t the sacrifice be based in revenge? Retribution for the activities of Mac’s wife, her mother?” The doctor looked at Alison, his expression apologetic. “Actions she had no control over, but whoever’s looking for revenge wouldn’t know that.”

  “That’s the point,” interrupted Peter. “The kind of people involved in this are followers, willing to die—rank and file—not command personnel. They wouldn’t know anything about her mother. You just said it. Ramirez confirmed it Those experiments were restricted, very secret Only a few people knew. There’s no connection.”

  “You found it. With Ramirez.”

  “I was expected to find it, expected to settle for it But something else happened at Chasǒng. Varak sensed it, but he couldn’t put a label on it, so he called it a decoy.”

  “A decoy?”

  “Yes. Same pond, wrong duck. ‘Mac the Knife’ had nothing to do with his wife’s manipulation. The torn nightgown on the floor of the study in Rockville, the smashed glasses, the perfume—they were all signposts pointing in the wrong direction. Pointing toward a wreck of a woman destroyed by the enemy, and I was supposed to leap at it I did, too, but I was wrong. It’s something else.”

  “How do you know all this? How can you be so sure?”

  “Because, goddamn it, I’ve invented this sort of thing myself. In books.”

  “In books? Come on, Peter, this is real.”

  “I could answer that, but you’d tie me up and take me in for observation. Just get me as many names as you can of the Chasǒng survivors.”

  Major Philip Brown, M.D., looked at the memorandum that resulted from the morning’s conference. He was pleased with himself. The memo had just the right portentous ring to it without raising alarms that might be too shrill.

  It was the sort of paper he could use to gain access to those thousands of microfilmed records that specified the location and brief medical histories of the disabled men residing in veterans’ hospitals throughout the country.

  Essentially the memorandum theorized that in a number of older disabled soldiers certain internal tissues were deteriorating at a somewhat faster pace than the normal aging process allowed for. These men had served in Korea, in and around Chagang Province. It was quite possible that a virus had infected their bloodstreams, and though it had appeared dormant, it was in fact molecularly active. The memo theorized that it was the Hynobius, a microscopic antigen c
arried by insects indigenous to Chagang Province. Further study was recommended as priorities allowed.

  It was effective nonsense. The major had no idea if a Hynobius antigen existed. He reasoned that if he invented it, there could be no one to dispute him.

  Memorandum in hand, Brown walked into the microfilm depository. He did not use the name Chasǒng with the staff sergeant in charge. Instead, he let the sergeant arrive at the selections. The enlisted man took his detective work seriously; he went back into the metal stacks and returned with the microfilms.

  Three hours and twenty-five minutes later, Brown stared at the last projection on the screen. His tunic had been removed long ago, draped over a chair. His tie had been loosened, his collar unbuttoned. He sat back stunned.

  In the hundreds of feet of microfilm there was not one mention of Chasǒng.

  Not one.

  It was as though Chasǒng had never existed. Nothing had ever happened there according to the microfilm depository of the Walter Reed Hospital.

  He stood up and carried the rolls back to the sergeant Brown knew he had to be cautious, but whatever the risk, it had to be taken. He had reached a dead end.

  “I’ve extracted a lot of what we need,” he said, “but I think there’s more. Hynobius in the Ss sub-groupings turned up in the mobile labs around P’yǒng-yang. A number of these records refer to a Chasǒng district or province. I wondered if you had an index on it.”

  There was an immediate response from the sergeant, a speck of recognition in his eyes. “Chasǒng? Yes sir, I know the name. I saw it recently. I’m trying to think where.”

  Brown’s pulse accelerated. “It could be important, Sergeant It’s just another line in the spectrograph, but it could be the one we need. The Hynobius is a bitch. Try to remember, please.”

  The sergeant got out of his chair and came to the counter, still frowning. “I think it was an entry on another shift, the insert in the far right column. That’s always a little unusual, so it sort of stands out.”