He had to. Because it wasn’t over. He knew it and so did she.
Chancellor knew something else, too. Alison had said that Ramirez was not important.
He was.
20
Once again the limousines arrived at the Georgetown house at different times, from different points of origin. Once again silent drivers had met their passengers sight unseen. Inver Brass convened.
It had been an unspoken agreement for many weeks between the elders—Bravo, Venice, and Christopher—that the choice of a new Genesis was between the two remaining younger men: Banner and Paris.
Beyond doubt, each was qualified, each brilliant, each extraordinary in several fields.
Banner had come to Liver Brass six years ago. He had been the youngest president in the history of a major eastern university, but he had left to assume chairmanship of the international Roxton Foundation. His name was Frederick Wells, and his expertise was in global finance. And yet, in spite of the worldwide impact of his decisions, Wells had never lost sight of the fundamental human need for dignity, respect, and the freedoms of choice and expression. Wells believed deeply in human beings, with all their flaws, and those who sought to repress human beings or shape them or dominate them felt his wrath.
As John Edgar Hoover had unknowingly felt it.
Paris was the newest recruit; he had joined Inver Brass barely four years before. He was a scholar. His ancestral roots were in Castile, but his own were fervently planted in America, where his family had fled to escape the Falangists. His name was Carlos Montelán. Presently, he occupied the Maynard Chair of International Relations at Harvard and was considered the country’s most perceptive analyst of twentieth-century geopolitical thought. For a dozen years succeeding administrations had tried to recruit Montelán into the State Department, but he had demurred. He was a scholar, not an activist. He knew the intrinsic dangers that existed when theoreticians moved into the swift world of pragmatic negotiations.
Yet Montelán never stopped probing, never ceased his questioning of men and their motives—whether personal or related to a larger cause. And when he found one or both without merit, or destructive, he did not hesitate to make an active decision.
As he had not hesitated in the case of John Edgar Hoover.
Bravo had put off the selection of either contender, in spite of Christopher’s urging. Christopher was Jacob Dreyfus, a banker, and last of the Jewish patriarchs, whose house rivaled the Baruchs’ and the Lehmans’. Christopher was eighty and knew his time was short; it was important to him that Inver Brass install its leader. A house without a man to give it direction was no house at all. And for Jacob Dreyfus there was no “house” in this beloved land as vital as the one he had helped found—Inver Brass.
He had said as much to Bravo, and Munro St. Claire knew that no one said it better than Jacob. St. Claire had been there at the beginning, too, as had Daniel Sutherland, the black giant whose extraordinary intellect had carried him from the fields of Alabama to the highest judicial circles in the country. But neither Bravo nor Venice could summon the words that defined Liver Brass as well as Christopher could.
As Jacob Dreyfus expressed it, Inver Brass had been born in chaos, at a time when the nation was being torn apart, on the edge of self-destruction. The market had collapsed, business had ground to a halt; factories had been closed, storefronts boarded up, farms allowed to fall into disuse as cattle died and machinery rusted. The inevitable explosions of violence had begun to take place.
In Washington inept leaders had been incapable of action. So in the last months of 1929 Inver Brass had been formed. The first Genesis had been a Scotsman, an investment banker who’d followed the advice of Baruch and Dreyfus and had gotten out of the market. It had been he who had given the group its name, after a small marshland lake in the Highlands that was not on any map. For Inver Brass had to exist in secrecy. It operated outside the government bureaucracy because it had to operate swiftly, without encumbrances.
Massive sums of money had been transferred to countless distressed areas where violence—born of need—had erupted. Throughout the country the sharp edges of that violence had been dulled by the wealth of Inver Brass; the fires had been dampened, contained within acceptable limits.
But mistakes had been made, corrected as soon as they’d been understood. Some had gone beyond repair. The Depression had been worldwide; infusions of capital had been required beyond the nation’s shores.
There was Germany. The economic devastations of the Versailles Treaty, the inadequacy of the Locarno pacts, the impracticality of the Dawes Plan—they were all misunderstood, the men of Inver Brass had thought. And that had been their most calamitous mistake. One that thirty-five years later a graduate student named Peter Chancellor began to perceive as the one thing it was not. A conspiracy of global politics.
He had to be stopped, this young man Chancellor. Inver Brass was in the shadows of his imagination, and he did not know it.
But the mistake had led the men of Inver Brass into new territory. They had entered the realm of national policy. At first it was to try to rectify the errors they had made. But later it was because they could contribute. Inver Brass had the wisdom and the resources. It could act and react swiftly, without interference, answerable to no one but its collective conscience.
Munro St. Claire and Daniel Sutherland had listened to Jacob’s impassioned plea for the quick appointment of a new Genesis. Neither replied with any passion at all. Each had agreed without conviction, essentially saying nothing. St. Claire knew that Sutherland could not know what he knew: There was the possibility Inver Brass harbored a traitor. So Sutherland’s doubts had to lie elsewhere. St. Claire thought he knew what those doubts were: The days of Inver Brass were coming to a close. Perhaps they would end with the elders, and maybe it was better that way. Time mandates change; they were from another era.
St. Claire’s doubts were much more specific. It was why he could not permit the elevation of a new Genesis. Not from either contender. For if there was a traitor in Liver Brass, it was either Banner or Paris.
They sat around the circular table, the empty Genesis chair a reminder of their essential impermanence. There was no need for a fire in the Franklin stove. No papers would have to be burned; none were on the table, nor would there be any. No coded reports had been delivered, for there were no decisions to make, only information to be imparted and comments to be heard.
A trap was to be set. First, developments had to be described in such a way that St. Claire could observe the reaction of each man at that table. And then two names would be given: Phyllis Maxwell, journalist; Paul Bromley—code: Viper—vanished critic of the Pentagon. Vanished, but easily traced by any man at that table.
“Our meeting will be short this evening,” said Bravo. “The purpose is to bring you up to date and hear anything you might have to say regarding the new developments.”
“I trust that includes a comment on past decisions,” said Paris.
“It includes anything you like.”
“Good,” continued Paris. “Since the other evening, I’ve picked up two books by Peter Chancellor. I’m not sure why you chose him. True, he has a quick mind and a flair for prose, but he’s hardly a writer of lasting distinction.”
“We weren’t looking for literary merit.”
“Neither am I. And I don’t discount the popular novel. I merely refer to this specific writer. Is he as capable as perhaps a dozen others? Why him?”
“Because we knew him,” interjected Christopher. “We don’t know a dozen others.”
“I beg your pardon?” Paris leaned forward.
“Christopher’s point is well taken,” said Bravo. “We know a great deal about Chancellor. Six years ago we had reason to learn. You both know the history of Inver Brass; we’ve concealed nothing from you. Our contributions, our errors. In the late sixties Chancellor was writing …” Bravo paused and addressed Paris—“an analytical dissertation on the Weimar co
llapse and the emergence of militant Germany. He came very close to identifying Inver Brass. He had to be stopped.”
There was silence around the table. St. Claire knew that the Negro and, more profoundly, the Jew were thinking about those days. Each in his own anguish.
“That dissertation,” clarified Banner, staring at Paris, “became the novel Reichstag!”
“Wasn’t that dangerous?” asked Paris.
“It was fair,” replied Venice.
“It was also fiction,” added Christopher disagreeably.
“That answers my question,” said Paris. “It was a matter of familiarity as much as anything. Better a known entity with its limitations than an unknown one with greater promise.”
“Why do you persist in discrediting Chancellor?” asked Venice. “We’re after Hoover’s files, not literary distinction.”
“Subjective comparisons,” answered the scholar. “He’s the type of writer that annoys me. I know something about the events of Sarajevo and the conditions prevalent at the time. I read his book. He bases his conclusions on intentionally misinterpreted facts and on exaggerated associations. Yet I’m sure thousands of readers accept what he writes as authentic history.”
Bravo leaned back in his chair. “I read that book too, and know something about the events leading up to Sarajevo. Would you say that Chancellor’s inclusion of the industrial conspiracy was in error?”
“Of course not It’s been established.”
“Then, regardless of how he arrived at it, he was correct.”
Paris smiled. “If you’ll forgive me, I’m relieved that you don’t teach history. But as I said, my question is answered. What are the new developments?”
“The developments constitute authentic progress; they can be termed nothing eke.” Bravo proceeded to describe Chancellor’s driving with Alison to Kennedy Airport, their meeting with the military escort, and the arrival of the plane bearing the general’s coffin. As Varak had suggested, St Claire spoke slowly, watching for any reaction that would indicate someone at the table anticipated his words because the events were known to him. It would be in the eyes, Varak had said. A brief, clouded response that was recognition. Certain chemical changes could not be concealed; the eyes were the microscope.
St. Claire found no such reactions. No such responses. Only total absorption from each member at the table.
He proceeded to describe what had been heard on the tape, what had been seen on film.
“Without Varak’s preparations we wouldn’t have learned of the extraordinary action taken against Chancellor. And it was against Chancellor, not MacAndrew’s daughter. We believe it’s an attempt to throw him off course; to convince him MacAndrew’s resignation was the result of command decisions made years ago in Korea, at a place called Chasǒng.”
Paris’s eyes widened; he reacted visibly. Then he spoke. “The killers of Chasǒng.…”
A sharp pain shot through St. Claire’s chest; he lost his breath, unable for a moment to find it. He struggled for control as he looked sharply at Carlos Montelán.
The words Paris spoke were chilling to him. There was no way Paris could have known them! Nowhere on the tapes had the phrase been employed, and St. Claire had not used it!
“What does that mean?” asked Venice, shifting his large frame in the chair.
“As any military historian will tell you, it was an epithet used to characterize the officers at the Battle of Chasǒng,” said Paris. “It was suicidal madness. Troops revolted up and down the lines; many were shot by their own officers. It was a disastrous strategy, in some ways the political turning point of the war. If MacAndrew was there, it’s quite possible a long-dormant victim may have surfaced. It could be his motive for resigning.”
St. Claire watched Paris closely, relieved by the academic’s explanation.
“Could it be related to his death in Hawaii?” asked Christopher, his gnarled hands trembling as he spoke.
“No,” replied Bravo slowly. “MacAndrew was shot by Longworth.”
“You mean Varak?” asked an incredulous Wells.
“No,” said Bravo. “The real Longworth. In Hawaii.”
It was as though a loud whip had been cracked. Eyes were riveted on St. Claire.
“How? Why?” Anger was in Venice’s voice. Daniel Sutherland was outraged.
“It was unpredictable and therefore uncontrollable. As you know, Varak used Longworth’s name with Chancellor. It was a source he could check, a springboard. Chancellor gave the name to MacAndrew, told him that Longworth had access to the files. After his wife died, the general flew halfway across the world to find Longworth. He found him.”
“Then MacAndrew presumed that only Longworth knew what happened at Chasǒng,” said Frederick Wells thoughtfully. “That the information was in Hoover’s files and nowhere else.”
“And that leads us nowhere. Except back to the files.” Once again Christopher spoke disagreeably.
“It does help,” added Banner, looking at Bravo. “It confirms what you say. Chasǒng is a diversion.”
“Why?” asked Venice.
Wells turned to the judge. “Because there was no reason for it. Why was it used at all?”
“I agree.” St. Claire leaned forward, his composure regained. The first part of Varak’s trap had produced nothing. It was the moment for the second, the two names. “As I told you the other night, Chancellor is well into his novel. Varak managed to get his hands on the manuscript. There are two rather startling developments. I should say, two people have surfaced, neither of whom were considered previously. We don’t know why. One is a thinly disguised character in the book, the other a man in Chancellor’s notes—a man he is trying to find. The first is the newspaper columnist, Phyllis Maxwell. The second, an accountant named Bromley, Paul Bromley. He used to be with General Services. Do any of you have any particular information on either of these people?”
None did. But the names were planted, the second trap set. If there was substance in Varak’s conclusions, St. Claire wondered which of them would be caught. Banner or Paris? Frederick Wells or Carlos Montelán.
The conversation trailed off. Bravo indicated that Inver Brass’s meeting was over. He pushed back his chair but was stopped by Wells’s voice.
“Is Varak outside in the hallway?”
“Yes, of course,” answered the diplomat. “He’s made arrangements for your departures, as usual.”
“I’d like to ask him a question. I’ll address it first to all of you. There were microphones inside the Rockville house. You describe the sounds of men breaking in and ransacking MacAndrew’s study but no words to accompany these sounds. Outside, a camera is triggered but shows nothing because the intruders were out of visual range. It’s almost as if they knew about the equipment.”
“What’s your question?” asked Montelán, a sharp edge to his voice. “I’m not sure I like the implication.”
Banner looked at Paris. It was unmistakable, thought St. Claire. Lines were drawn. Lines? Lions, perhaps. The young standing up against the aging and each other, growling for leadership of the pride.
“I find it curious. The files were taken in such a way—at such a time—as to indicate the thieves anticipated Hoover’s death. Months of intensive investigation led nowhere; one of the best intelligence specialists in this country reports that he’s made no progress. Bravo conceives of the idea of using this writer Chancellor to probe. Our intelligence specialist expedites the plan; the writer is programmed and begins his work. As expected, he creates a disturbance. Those who have Hoover’s files are alarmed and make their move against him. A move, I submit, that should have been sufficient for them to be trapped. But we have no one on film, no voices on a tape.”
Montelán leaned forward in his chair. “Are you suggesting—?”
“I’m suggesting,” interrupted Banner, “that although our specialist is known for his thoroughness, there was a conspicuous absence of it yesterday.”
“Too muc
h!” Christopher exploded. His gaunt features were pinched, his bony fingers trembled. “Have you any idea who Varak is? What he’s seen in his life? What drives him?”
“I know he’s filled with hatred,” replied Banner softly. “And that frightens me.”
There was silence at the table. The essential truth of Frederick Wells’s statement had its effect. It was possible that Stefan Varak had operated on a different level from them, motivated by a hatred unknown to anyone in that room.
St. Claire remembered Varak’s words: I’ll seek out the Nazi in any form he is revived in and go after him. If you think there’s any difference between what those files represent and the objectives of the Third Reich, you’re very much mistaken.
Once the Nazi was found and destroyed, what better way to control his disciples than to control the files?
Bravo pushed his chair back and rose from the table. He went to a cabinet in the wall, unlocked it, and took out a short-barreled, .38-caliber pistol. He closed the cabinet, returned to his chair, and sat down. The weapon was in his hand, out of sight.
“Will you ask Mr. Varak to come in, please?”
Stefan Varak stood behind the empty Genesis chair studying the members of Inver Brass. St. Claire watched him closely, until Varak’s eyes met his.
“Mr. Varak, we have a question to ask you. We would appreciate a concise answer. Proceed, if you will, Banner.”
Wells did so. “Mr. Varak, through Chancellor you anticipated an event that could have led us to Hoover’s files,” he concluded. “One identification, visually or by a voice print. You set the trap, which presumes you understood its importance. Yet your acknowledged thoroughness, your professionalism, was not in evidence. I ask myself why. It would have been a simple matter to have positioned two, three, six cameras, if necessary. Had you done so, the hunt might have been over now, the files in our possession. Why, Mr. Varak? Or why not?”
The blood rushed to Varak’s blond head; he was flushed with anger. All the signs he had taught Bravo to look for were apparent in the teacher. Did anger, like fear, produce the uncontrollable chemical changes Varak had spoken of? St. Claire moved the pistol on his lap and inserted his finger over the trigger.
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