The Chancellor Manuscript

by Robert Ludlum

  “When did she meet your father?”

  Alison drew on her cigarette. “Let me think. God knows he told me often enough, but there were always variations. As if he constantly, purposely, exaggerated or romanticized.”

  “Or left something out?”

  She had been looking across the room at the wall. She shifted her eyes quickly to him. “Yes. That, too. Anyway, they met during the Second World War, right here in Washington. Dad was recalled after the North African campaign. He was being transferred to the Pacific, which meant briefing and training in D.C. and Benning. He met her at one of those army receptions.”

  “What was the daughter of a Baptist bishop doing at an army reception in wartime Washington?”

  “She worked for the army as a translator. Nothing dramatic—pamphlets, manuals. ‘I am an American pilot who has parachuted into your beautiful country, and I am your ally’—that sort of thing. She could read and write several Far Eastern languages. She could even work her way through basic Mandarin.”

  Chancellor sat up. “Chinese?”

  “Yes.”

  “She was in China?”

  “I told you. The provinces of the Po Hai Gulf. She spent four years there, I think. Her father operated—if that’s the word—between Tientsin and Tsingtao.”

  Peter looked away, trying to conceal his sudden apprehension. A dissonant chord had been struck, its abrasive sound disturbing. He let the moment pass as quickly as possible and turned back to Alison. “Did you know your grandparents?”

  “No. I vaguely recall Dad’s mother, but his father—”

  “Your mother’s parents.”

  “No.” Alison reached over and crushed out her cigarette. “They died proselytizing.”

  “Where?”

  Alison held her extinguished cigarette against the glass of the ashtray and replied softly without looking at Peter. “In China.”

  They were silent for several moments. Alison sat back against the headboard. Chancellor remained motionless and held her gaze. “I think we both know what we’re saying. Do you want to talk about it?”

  “About what?”

  “Tokyo. Twenty-two years ago. Your mother’s accident.”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “I think you do.”

  “I was so young.”

  “Not that young. You said you were five or six, but you shaved a couple of points. You were nine. Newspapermen are usually accurate in matters of age; it’s easy to check. That article on your father gave your right age—”

  “Please—”

  “Alison, I love you. I want to help you, help us. At first only I had to be stopped. Now you’re involved because you’re part of the truth. Chasǒng is part of it.”

  “What truth are you talking about?”

  “Hoover’s files. They were stolen.”

  “No! That’s in your book. That’s not real!”

  “It’s been real from the beginning. Before he died, they were taken. They’re being used right now. And the new owners are tied in with Chasǒng. That’s all we know. Your mother’s tied in, and your father protected that connection throughout her life. Now we’ve got to find out what it was. It’s the only thing that will lead us to the man who has those files. And we’ve got to find him.”

  “But that doesn’t make sense! She was a sick woman, getting worse. She wasn’t important!”

  “She was to somebody. She still is. For God’s sake, stop running away from it! You couldn’t lie to me, so you skimmed over it, then you circled it, and finally you said it: China. The Po Hai provinces are China. Your mother’s parents died in China. At Chasǒng we were fighting China!”

  “What does it mean?”

  “I don’t know! I may be so far off base, but I can’t help thinking. Nineteen fifty … Tokyo. Korea. The Chinese Nationalists thrown out of the mainland; they wandered pretty freely, I would think. And if they did, they could be infiltrated. Orientals can tell one another apart; Westerners can’t. Was it possible your mother was reached? The wife of one of the top commanders in Korea reached and somehow compromised—because she had parents in China. Until something snapped. What happened twenty-two years ago?”

  The words came painfully to Alison. “It started several months before, I think. When we first got to Tokyo. She just gradually began to slip away.”

  “What do you mean, ‘slip away’?”

  “I’d say something to her and she’d simply stare at me, not hearing. Then she’d turn without answering and walk out of the room, singing bits and pieces of tunes.”

  “I heard one in the Rockville house. She was singing an old tune. ‘Let It Snow.’ ”

  “That sort of thing came later. She’d get attached to a song, and it would last for months. Over and over again.”

  “Was your mother an alcoholic?”

  “She drank, but I don’t think so. At least, not then.”

  “You remember her quite well,” said Peter softly.

  Alison looked at him. “More than my father knew, and less than you think.”

  He accepted the rebuke. “Go on,” he said gently. “She began slipping away. Did anybody know? Was anything done for her?”

  Alison reached nervously for another cigarette. “I suppose I was the reason something was done. You see, there was no one to talk to. The servants were all Japanese. What few visitors we had were army wives; you don’t talk to army wives about your mother.”

  “You were alone, then. A child.”

  “I was alone. I didn’t know how to cope. Then the telephone calls started coming late at night. She’d get dressed and go out, sometimes with that dazed look in her eyes, and I didn’t know if she’d ever come back. One night my father called from Korea. She was always home when he called; he would write her the day and the time. But that night she wasn’t, so I told him everything. I guess I just blurted it out. A few days later he flew back to Tokyo.”

  “How did he react?”

  “I don’t remember. I was so happy to see him. I just knew everything would be all right.”

  “Was it?”

  “It was stabilized for a while; that’s the word I’d use now. An army doctor began coming to the house. Then he brought others, and they’d take her away for several hours every few days. The phone calls stopped, and she stopped going out at night”

  “Why do you say ‘stabilized for a while’? Did things come unglued?”

  Tears formed in her eyes. “There was no warning. She just suddenly went. It happened late one bright, sunny day; I’d just come home from school. She was screaming. She’d chased the servants out of the house; she was raving, smashing things. Then she stared at me. I’ve never seen such a look. As though she loved me one moment, then hated me, then was terrified by me.” Alison brought her hand to her mouth; it was trembling. She stared down at the blanket, her eyes frightened. She whispered the rest. “Then mother came at me. It was horrible. She had a kitchen knife in her hand. She grabbed me by the throat; she tried to plunge the knife into my stomach. She kept trying to stab me. I held her wrist and screamed and screamed. She wanted to kill me! Oh, God! She wanted to kill me!”

  Alison fell forward on her side, her whole body convulsed, her face ashen. Peter reached for her and held her, rocking her back and forth.

  He could not let her stop now. “Please, try to remember. When you came in the house, when you saw her, what was she screaming? What was she saying?”

  Alison pushed herself away from him and leaned back on the headrest, her eyes shut tight, her face wet with tears. But the crying had stopped. “I don’t know.”

  “Remember!”

  “I can’t! I didn’t understand her!” Her eyes opened; she stared at him. They both understood.

  “Because she was speaking a foreign language.” He said the words firmly, not asking a question. “She was screaming in Chinese. Your mother, who spent four years in the Po Hai provinces, who was fluent in Mandarin, was screaming at you in Chinese.”
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br />   Alison nodded. “Yes.”

  The real question was not answered; Chancellor understood that. Why would mother attack daughter? For a few seconds Peter let his mind wander, recalling vaguely the hundreds of pages he had written in which irrational conflicts led to terrible acts of violence. He was no psychologist; he had to think in simpler terms. Schizophrenic infanticide, Medea complex—these were not the areas to probe even if he were capable. The answer lay elsewhere. In more obvious descriptions.… Descriptions? A madwoman in a rage, unbalanced, unfocused. Unfocused. Late afternoon. Bright sunshine. Most houses in Japan were light and airy. Sun streaming through the windows. A child walks through the door. Peter reached for the child’s hand.

  “Try very hard to remember what you were wearing.”

  “It’s not hard. We wore the same thing every day. Dresses were considered immodest. We wore light, loose-fitting little slacks and jackets. It was the school uniform.”

  Peter looked away. A uniform. He turned back.

  “Was your hair long or short?”

  “During those days?”

  “During that day. When your mother saw you coming through the door that afternoon.”

  “I was wearing a cap. We all wore caps, and we usually kept our hair short.”

  That was it! thought Peter. An unbalanced woman in a rage, sun streaming through the windows, perhaps through the door; a figure comes in wearing a uniform.

  He reached for Alison’s other hand. “She never saw you.”

  “What?”

  “Your mother never saw you. That’s what Chasǒng’s all about. It explains the broken glass, the old nightgown underneath the words on the wall in your father’s study, the look in Ramirez’s eyes when your mother was mentioned.”

  “What do you mean, she never saw me? I was there!”

  “But she didn’t see you. She saw a uniform. That’s all she saw.”

  Alison brought her hand to her mouth, curiosity and fear intermingled. “A uniform? Ramirez? You went to see Ramirez?”

  “There’s a lot I can’t tell you because I dont know myself, but we’re getting nearer. Officers were rotated back and forth from the Korean combat zones to the command centers in Tokyo. That’s common knowledge. You say your mother went out frequently at night. There’s a pattern, Alison.”

  “You’re saying she was a whore. That she whored to get information!”

  “I’m saying it’s possible she was forced into acts that tore her apart. Husband and father. On the one hand, her husband, a brilliant commander at the front; on the other, an adored father held captive in China. What could she do?”

  Alison raised her eyes to the ceiling. Again she understood; it was a conflict with which she could identify. “I don’t want to go on. I don’t want to know any more.”

  “We have to. What happened after the attack?”

  “I ran outside. One of the servants was there; he had called the police from the house nearest ours. He took me there, and I waited … waited while the Japanese family stared at me as if I were diseased. Then an MP came and took me to the base. I stayed with a colonel’s wife for several days until my father came back.”

  “Then what? Did you see your mother?”

  “About a week or so later, I think. It’s hard to remember precisely. When she came home, a nurse was with her. She was never without a nurse or a companion ever again.”

  “How was she?”

  “Withdrawn.”

  “Permanently damaged?”

  “That’s difficult to say. It was more than a breakdown; that’s obvious to me now. But she might have recovered sufficiently to function then.”

  “Then?”

  “When she came home from the hospital the first time. With the nurse. Not after the second time.”

  “Tell me about it. The second time.”

  Alison blinked. The memory was obviously as painful to her as the violent image of her mother’s attack. “Arrangements had been made for me to go back to the States, to Dad’s parents. As I said, Mother was quiet, withdrawn. Three nurses were on eight-hour shifts; she was never alone. My father was needed back in Korea. He left, believing everything was under control Other officers’ wives would come to the house to see Mother, take us both out for picnics, take her shopping for an afternoon—that sort of thing. Everyone was very kind. Too kind, really. You see, mentally ill people are like alcoholics. If they’re gripped by an obsession, if they want to break away, they’ll suddenly pretend normality; they’ll smile and laugh and lie convincingly. Then when you least expect it, they’re gone. That’s what I think happened.”

  “You think? You don’t know?”

  “No. They told me that she’d been pulled out of the surf. That she’d been underwater so long, they thought she was dead. I was a child, and it was an explanation I could accept. It made sense; Mother was taken out for the day to Funabashi Beach. It was a Sunday, but I had a cold, so I stayed home. Then sometime in the afternoon the phone started ringing. Was my mother there? Had she come back? The first few calls were from the women who had taken her to Funabashi, but they didn’t want me to know that. They pretended to be other people, so as not to alarm me, I guess. Two Army officers drove out to the house. They were nervous and agitated, but they didn’t want me to know it, either. I went to my room; I knew something was wrong, and all I could think of was that I wanted my father.”

  The tears came again. Peter held both her hands; he spoke gently. “GO on.”

  “It was awful. At night, quite late, I heard screams. Then shouts and people running outside. Then there were the sounds of automobiles and sirens and tires screeching in the streets. I got out of bed and went to the door and opened it. My room was on the landing above the hall. Downstairs the house seemed to be filling up with Americans—Army mostly, but civilians, too. There probably weren’t more than ten men, but everyone was walking around rapidly, talking into the telephone, using hand radios. Then the front door opened, and she was brought inside. On a stretcher. She was under a sheet, but there were bloodstains on the cloth. And her face—it was white. Her eyes were wide, staring blankly as if she were dead. At the corners of her mouth were trickles of blood that rolled down over her chin onto her neck. As the stretcher passed beneath a light, she suddenly lurched up screaming, her head wrenching back and forth, her body writhing but held in place by the straps. I cried out and ran down the stairs, but a major—a handsome black major, I’ll never forget—stopped me and picked me up and held me, telling me that everything was going to be all right. He didn’t want me to go to her, not then. And he was right—she was in hysterics; she wouldn’t have known me. They lowered the stretcher to the floor, unstrapped her, and held her down. A doctor tore some cloth. He had a hypodermic needle in his hand; he administered it, and within seconds she was quiet. I was crying. I tried to ask questions, but nobody would listen to me. The major carried me back to my room and put me to bed. He stayed with me for a long time, trying to reassure me, telling me there’d been an accident and my mother would be all right. But I knew she wouldn’t be, not ever again. I was taken to the base and stayed there until Dad came back for the next to last time before we were flown home to America. His tour of duty had only a few months left.”

  Chancellor pulled her to him. “The only thing that’s clear is that the accident didn’t have anything to do with being caught in an undertow and pulled out to sea. For one thing, she was brought to the house, not to a hospital. It was an elaborate hoax that you pretended to believe but never did. You don’t believe it now. Why did you pretend all these years?”

  Alison whispered. “It was easier, I think.”

  “Because you thought she tried to kill you? Because she screamed at you in Chinese, and you didn’t want to think about that? You didn’t want to consider the alternatives.”

  Alison’s lips trembled. “Yes.”

  “But now you’ve got to face it—you understand that, don’t you? You can’t run away from it anymore. It’s
what’s in Hoover’s files. Your mother worked for the Chinese. She was responsible for the slaughter at Chasǒng.”

  “Oh, God.…”

  “She didn’t do anything willingly. Maybe not even knowingly. Months ago, when I was with your father, and your mother came downstairs, she saw me and began screaming. I started to back away into the study, but your father yelled at me and told me to get by a lamp. He wanted her to see my face, my features. She stared at me, then calmed down and just sobbed. I think your father wanted her to realize I wasn’t an Oriental. I think the accident that Sunday afternoon was no accident at all. I believe she was caught and tortured by the people who had been using her, forcing her to work for them. It’s possible your mother was a much braver woman than anyone’s given her credit for. She may have finally stood up to them and taken the consequences. That’s not congenital madness, Alison. That’s a person who’s been driven out of her mind.”

  He stayed with her for nearly an hour, until exhaustion made her finally close her eyes. It was past five; the sky outside the window was growing brighter. It would be morning soon. In a few hours Quinn O’Brien would move them to some other place of safety. Peter knew that he, too, had to sleep.

  But before he could allow himself sleep, he had to know if what he believed was true. It had to be confirmed, and one man could do that. Ramirez.

  He let himself out the bedroom door and walked to the telephone. He rummaged through his pockets until he found the scrap of paper on which he’d written Ramirez’s number. No doubt O’Brien’s man would be listening at the switchboard, but it did not matter. Nothing mattered anymore but the truth.

  He dialed The phone was answered almost immediately.

  “Yes, what is it?” The voice was slurred with sleep. Or was it alcohol?

  “Ramirez?”

  “Who’s this?”

  “Chancellor. I’ve got the answer now, and you’re going to confirm it for me. If you hesitate, if you lie, I’m going right to my publisher. He’ll know what to do.”

  “I told you to stay out of it!” The words spilled over each other; the soldier was drunk.

  “MacAndrew’s wife. There was a Chinese connection, wasn’t there? Twenty-two years ago she was carrying information to the Chinese. She was responsible for Chasǒngl”