“I won’t tell you that now. I will tomorrow if you want to talk further.”
“Why not now?”
“You’re a well-known writer. I’m sure a lot of people come up and tell you things that sound insane. You probably dismiss them quickly, as you should. I don’t want you to dismiss me. I want you convinced that I have a certain reasonable stature of my own.”
Peter listened. Longworth’s words made sense. During the past three years—since Reichstag!—people had pulled him over into corners at cocktail parties or slid into chairs across from him at restaurants to impart weird information they knew was right up his alley. The world was filled with conspiracies. And would-be conspirators.
“Fair enough,” said Chancellor. “Your name is Alan Longworth. You spent twenty years as a special agent; you retired five months ago, and you live in Hawaii.”
“Maui.”
“That would be listed in your file.”
At the mention of the word file, Longworth drew back. “Yes, it would be. In my file.”
“But then anyone might be able to learn the contents of a specific file. Give me something to identify you.”
“I wondered if you’d ask.”
“In my books I try to be convincing; it’s just step-by-step logic, with no spaces. You want me to be convinced, so fill the space.”
Longworth shifted his jacket from his right shoulder to his left, and with his right hand he undid the buttons of his shirt He pulled his shirt open. Across his chest, descending below the belt, was an ugly, curving scar. “I don’t think any of your blemishes can match this.”
Peter reacted to the words with a brief rush of anger. There was no point pursuing the statement. If Longworth was who he said he was, he had taken the time to gather his facts together. Undoubtedly, they included a great deal about the life of Peter Chancellor.
“What time will you be by in the morning?”
“What time’s convenient?”
“I get up early.”
“I’ll be here early.”
“Eight o’clock.”
“See you at eight.” Longworth turned and began walking down the beach.
Peter stood where he was and watched him, aware that the pain in his leg had disappeared. It had been there all day, but it was gone now. He would call Joshua Harris in New York. It was around four thirty in the East; there was still time. There was a lawyer in Washington, a mutual friend, who could get the information on Alan Longworth. Josh once jokingly said that the attorney should demand royalties for Counterstrike!, so helpful had he been in Chancellor’s research.
As Peter climbed up the porch steps, he found himself hurrying. It was a strangely gratifying sensation, and he could not really account for it.
An event took place less than a year ago.… A man died. A very powerful man. They said he died of natural causes. He didn’t. He was assassinated.…
Peter rushed across the porch toward the glass doors and the telephone inside.
The morning sky was angry. Dark clouds hung over the ocean; the rain would come soon. Chancellor was dressed for it, had been dressed for over an hour; he wore a nylon jacket above his khaki trousers. It was seven forty-five—ten forty-five in New York. Joshua had promised to call by seven thirty—ten thirty back East. What was the delay? Longworth would be there by eight.
Peter poured himself another cup of coffee, his fifth of the morning.
The telephone rang.
“You picked a strange one, Peter,” said Harris in New York.
“Why do you say that?”
“According to our friend in Washington, this Alan Longworth did what no one expected him to do. He retired at the wrong time.”
“Did he have his twenty years?”
“Just barely.”
“That’s enough for a pension, isn’t it?”
“Sure. If you supplement it with another salary. He hasn’t, but that’s not the point.”
“What is?”
“Longworth had an exceptional record. Most important, he was singled out by Hoover himself for high-echelon advancement. Hoover personally attached a handwritten favorable recommendation to his file. You’d think he’d want to stay on.”
“On the other hand, with that kind of record he could probably get a hell of a job on the outside. A lot of FBI men do. Maybe he’s working for someone, and the bureau doesn’t know it.”
“Not likely. They keep extensive files on retired agents. And if he was, why does he live on Maui? There’s not much activity there. At any rate, there’s no listing of a current employer. He doesn’t do anything.”
Peter stared out the window; a light rain began to fall from the dark sky. “Do the other items check out?”
“Yes,” answered Harris. “His field office was San Diego. Apparently, he was Hoover’s personal liaison with La Jolla.”
“La Jolla? What does that mean?”
“It was Hoover’s favorite retreat. Longworth was in charge of all communications.”
“What about the scar?”
“It’s listed under identifying marks, but there’s no explanation, and that’s where we come to the strangest part of his file. His last medical records are missing, the last two annual checkups. It’s very unusual.”
“It’s very incomplete,” mused Peter out loud. “The whole thing.”
“Exactly,” agreed Joshua.
“When did he retire?”
“Last March. On the second.”
Chancellor paused, struck by the date. Over the past several years, dates had come to have special meanings for him. He had trained himself to look for consistencies and inconsistencies where dates were concerned. What was it now? Why did the date bother him?
Through the kitchen windows he saw the figure of Alan Longworth walking across the beach in the rain toward the house. For some reason the sight triggered another image. Of himself. On the sand in bright sunlight. And a newspaper.
May second. J. Edgar Hoover had died on the second of May.
A man died. A very powerful man. They said he died of natural causes. He didn’t. He was assassinated.
“Jesus Christ,” said Peter quietly into the telephone.
They walked along the beach by the water through the drizzle. Longworth would not talk inside the house, nor within any enclosure that might contain electronic surveillance. He was too experienced for that.
“Did you check me out?” asked the blond-haired man.
“You knew I would,” said Peter. “I just got off the phone.”
“Are you satisfied?”
“That you are who you say you are, yes. That you had a good record, your abilities personally recognized by Hoover himself, and that you retired five months ago—yes to all that, too.”
“I didn’t mention any personal endorsements from Hoover.”
“They’re there.”
“Of course they are. I worked directly for him.”
“You were based in San Diego, as you said. You were his liaison to—or with—La Jolla.”
Longworth smiled grimly, with no humor. “I spent more time in Washington than I ever spent in San Diego. Or La Jolla. You won’t find that in my bureau record.”
“Why not?”
“Because the director didn’t want it known.”
“Again, why not?”
“I told you. I worked for him. Personally.”
“In what way?”
“With his files. His private files. I was a messenger. La Jolla meant a lot more than the name of a village on the Pacific coast.”
“That’s too cryptic for me.”
The blond man stopped. “That’s the way it’s going to remain. Anything more you find out will have to come from someone else.”
“Now you’re arrogant. What makes you think I’ll look?”
“Because you can’t understand why I retired. Nobody could; it didn’t make sense. I have a minimum pension with no additional income. Had I remained with the bureau, I might have
become an assistant, even an associate, director.”
Longworth started walking again. Peter kept pace, no pain whatsoever in his leg. “All right, why did you retire? Why don’t you have a job?”
“The truth is that I didn’t retire. I was transferred to another government post and given certain guarantees. My employer of record—a record you’ll never find in any file—is the State Department. Foreign Service, Pacific operations. Six thousand miles from Washington. If I had stayed in Washington, I would have been killed.”
“All right, hold it!” Chancellor stopped. “I’ve got a damned good idea what you’re leading up to, and I’m getting sick of the bullshit. You’re implying that J. Edgar Hoover was murdered. He’s the ‘powerful man’ you meant.”
“You pieced it together, then,” said the agent.
“It’s a pretty logical conclusion, and I don’t believe it for a minute. It’s ridiculous.”
“I didn’t say I could prove it.”
“I would hope not. It’s preposterous. He was an old man with a history of heart trouble.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. I never knew anyone who ever saw his medical records. The originals were sent directly to him, and no copies were allowed. He had ways of enforcing those demands. No autopsy was permitted on his body.”
“He was over seventy.” Peter shook his head in disgust. “You’ve got one hell of an imagination.”
“Isn’t that what novels are all about? Don’t you start with a concept? An idea?”
“Granted. But the kind I write have got to be at least credible. There’s got to be some basic reality, or the appearance of it.”
“If by reality you mean facts, there are several.”
“Name them.”
“The first is myself. Last March I was approached by a group of people who wouldn’t be identified but who were influential enough to move the highest, most classified wheels at the State Department and effect a transfer that Hoover would never have permitted. Even I don’t know how they did it. They were concerned with certain information Hoover had compiled. Dossiers on several thousand subjects.”
“These were the same people who gave you the guarantees? For those services rendered you won’t elaborate on?”
“Yes. I think—I can’t be sure—but I think I know the identity of one of them. I’m willing to give it to you.” Longworth stopped; he was, again, as he had been yesterday, uncertain. The urgency returned to his eyes.
“Go ahead,” said Chancellor impatiently.
“I have your word that you’ll never use my name with him?”
“Goddamn it, yes. To be honest with you, I have an idea we’ll say good-bye in a few minutes and I won’t even think of you.”
“Have you ever heard of Daniel Sutherland?”
Peter’s expression conveyed his astonishment. Daniel Sutherland was a giant, both figuratively and literally. A huge black man whose extraordinary accomplishments matched his enormous size. A man who had crawled his way out of the squalor of the Alabama fields a half century ago, and climbed to the highest circles of the nation’s judicial system. He had twice refused presidential appointments to the Supreme Court, preferring the more active bench. “The judge?”
“Yes.”
“Of course. Who hasn’t? Why do you think he was one of the group who made contact with you?”
“I saw his name on a State Department tracer about me. I wasn’t supposed to see it, but I did. Go to him. Ask him if there was a group of men concerned about the last two years of Hoover’s life.”
The request was irresistible. The stories about Sutherland were legend. Peter now took Alan Longworth far more seriously than he had only seconds ago.
“I may do that. What are the other facts?”
“There’s only one that really counts. The rest are minor compared to it. Except perhaps one other man. A general named MacAndrew. General Bruce MacAndrew.”
“Who’s he?”
“Until recently, a man very high at the Pentagon. He had everything going for him; Chairman of the Joint Chiefs was probably his for a nod of the head. Suddenly, without any apparent reason he threw it all away. Uniform, career, Joint Chiefs, everything.”
“Not unlike you in a way,” ventured Chancellor. “On a somewhat grander scale, perhaps.”
“Very unlike me,” replied Longworth. “I have information about MacAndrew. Let’s say it goes back to those services rendered. Something happened to him twenty-one, twenty-two years ago. No one apparently knows what—or if they do, they’re not saying—but it was serious enough to have been removed from his service record. Eight months in 1950 or ’51, that’s all I remember. It could be tied in with that one single overriding fact—your basic fact, Chancellor—and that scares the hell out of me.”
“What is it?”
“Hoover’s private files. MacAndrew could be part of them. Over three thousand dossiers, a cross-section of the country. Government, industry, the universities, the military; from the most powerful to those lower down. You may hear otherwise, but I’m telling you the truth. Those files are missing, Chancellor. Since Hoover’s death they’ve never been found. Someone’s got them, and now that someone’s using them.”
Peter started at Longworth. “Hoover’s files? That’s insane.”
“Think about it. That’s my theory. Whoever has those files killed Hoover to get them. You’ve checked me out; I’ve given you two names to reach. I don’t care what you say to MacAndrew, but you’ve given your word not to mention me to the judge. And I don’t want anything from you. I just want you to think about it, that’s all. Think about the possibilities.”
Without indicating he had finished, without a nod or a gesture, Longworth turned and, as he had the day before, walked away across the beach. Stunned, Peter stood in the light rain and watched as the retired FBI man broke into a run toward the road.
8
Chancellor stood at the bar in the restaurant on East Fifty-sixth Street. It strove to be an uprooted English chophouse, and Peter liked it. The atmosphere was conducive to long lunches given to volubility.
He had called Tony Morgan and Joshua Harris and had asked them to meet him there. Then he’d taken the late afternoon flight out of Los Angeles. For the first time in months he slept in his own apartment—how sane it felt. He should have come back much sooner. His false California sanctuary had become a very real prison.
It was happening. Something inside his head had snapped, a barricade had been shattered, freeing stored-up energy. He had no idea whether anything Longworth told him made any sense at all. No, it was too preposterous! The fact of assassination was in and of itself beyond reason. But the premise was fascinating. And every story began with a premise. The possibilities were as provocative as anything he had approached. Would an extraordinary man named Sutherland concede there was even a remote chance Hoover had been killed? Could a long-missing insert in a military record of a general named MacAndrew be tied in with the concept?
A momentary flash of light shot through the windows that fronted the street, drawing his eyes to the outside. Then he smiled as he saw the figures of Anthony Morgan and Joshua Harris walking together toward the entrance. The two men were arguing, but only those who knew them well would have understood that. To the casual observer they were two people talking quietly, oblivious to their surroundings and, conceivably, each other.
Tony Morgan was the physical embodiment of the Ivy League postgraduate turned New York publisher. He was slender and tall with shoulders slightly stooped from too many years of courteously feigning interest in the opinions of lesser mortals; his face was thin, the features clean, the brown eyes always a little distant but never vacant. Single-breasted charcoal suits and English-style tweed jackets above inevitable gray flannel trousers were his uniforms. He and Brooks Brothers had gone together for most of his forty-one years, and neither saw any reason to change.
But clothes and appearances did not capture the mercurial essence of Anthony Morgan. That
was found in his explosions of enthusiasm and his infectious proselytizing of a manuscript-in-progress or the discovery of an exciting new talent. Morgan was the complete publisher and an editor of rare perception.
And if Morgan the man was somehow sprung from within the cloistered walls of academic New England, Joshua Harris seemingly floated through the centuries from some elegant royal court of the 1700s. Generous of girth, Harris’s posture was erect, his bearing imperial. His large body moved gracefully, each step taken with deliberateness as if he were part of a baronial procession. He too was in his early forties, the years further disguised by a black chin beard that lent a slightly sinister quality to an otherwise pleasant face.
Peter knew there were scores of editors and agents in New York of equal, perhaps more than equal, stature, and he realized that neither Morgan nor Harris was universally loved. He’d heard the criticisms: Tony’s arrogance and often misplaced enthusiasms, Josh’s relish for uncomfortable confrontations based frequently on unfounded charges of abuse. But the detractions did not matter to Chancellor. For him these men were the best. Because they cared.
Peter signed his bar check and made his way to the foyer. Josh walked through the front door held by Tony, who, quite naturally, allowed an intervening couple to enter in front of him. The greetings were too loud, too casual. Peter saw the concern in both men’s eyes; each looked at him as though studying a disoriented brother.
The table was the usual table. In the corner, slightly separated from the others. The drinks were the usual drinks, and Chancellor was both amused and irritated to see Josh and Tony watch him closely when the whisky arrived.
“Call off the alert. I promise not to dance on the table.”
“Really, Peter …” began Morgan.
“Come on, now …” completed Harris.
They cared. That was the important thing. And the moment passed, the recognition of the unspoken accepted. There was business to be discussed: Chancellor began.
“I met a man; don’t ask me who, I won’t tell you. Let’s say I met him on the beach, and he told me the outlines of a story that I don’t for a minute believe, but I think it could be the basis for one hell of a book.”