In a taxi headed for Ramirez’s house, Peter took out the page of bloodstained paper with the dead Varak’s handwriting on it. Once again he was awed by the names. Awed and frightened, for they were extraordinary men—each renowned, each brilliant, each immensely powerful. And one of them had Hoover’s files.
For God’s sake, why? Peter looked at each name; each evoked an image.
The lean, sharp-featured Frederick Wells—code name: Banner. University president, dispenser of millions through the huge Roxton Foundation, one of the brightest architects of the Kennedy years. A man who was known never to compromise on principle, even when his stand incurred the wrath of all Washington.
Daniel Sutherland—Venice—perhaps the most honored black in the country. Honored not only for his accomplishments, but for the wisdom of his judicial decisions. Peter had felt the judge’s compassion in his brief half-hour conversation with him months ago. It was in his eyes.
Jacob Dreyfus—Christopher. Dreyfus’s face was less clear than the others in Peter’s mind. The banker shunned public attention, but he could never be ignored by the financial community, which meant the financial press. His influence often formed the basis of national monetary policy; the Federal Reserve rarely made decisions without consulting him. His charity was known throughout the world, his generosity limitless.
Carlos Montelán—Paris—was the tutor of presidents, a force at the Department of State, an academic giant whose analyses of global politics were discriminating and audacious. Montelán was a naturalized American; his family was Spanish, intellectual Castilians who had fought a compromising church and Franco alike. He was an archenemy of oppression in any form.
One of these four exceptional men had betrayed the beliefs he professed to hold. Was it Varak’s “splendid temptation?” The commission of dreadful acts for an idealistic reason? It was impossible to accept. From lesser men perhaps. Not these.
Unless one of the four was not what he appeared to be. And that was the most frightening thing of all. That a man could be raised to such height concealing such fundamental corruption.
Chasǒng.
Varak knew he was dying, and so he had selected his words carefully. He had at first narrowed his options down to Wells and Montelán—Banner and Paris—and then reversed himself and expanded the possibilties to include Sutherland and Dreyfus—Venice and Christopher. His change of mind had been related to a language he did not know and the fanatic repetition of the name Chasǒng. But why these? What had led Varak to single out an unfamiliar language and a repeated cry? What had been his reasoning? He had not had time to explain.
The meaning behind the slaughter of Chasǒng. The slaughter! Peter remembered Ramirez’s expression of cold loathing at MacAndrew’s burial. Ramirez hated MacAn-drew. But was it connected to Chasǒng? Or just the passions of jealousy that found no comfort in a rival’s death? That was possible, but there was something too specific in Ramirez’s eyes.
He would know soon; the taxi had crossed into Bethesda. And if the connection was there, to which of the four extraordinary men would Chasǒng lead? And how?
Peter folded Varak’s scrap of paper and shoved it into his jacket pocket. There was a fifth man, unidentified—code name: Bravo. Who was he? And had Varak mistakenly protected him? Could the unknown Bravo have the files? Suddenly Peter remembered something else. Venice you know.… Bravo, too.… How would he know such a man, Peter wondered. Who was Bravo?
There were too many questions, too few answers. Only one stood out: Alison MacAndrew. She was his answer to so much.
The house was small and made of brick. The neighborhood was one of those middle-class developments that had proliferated in the Washington area—plots of equal size, frontages identical. Chancellor told the driver the truth: He had no idea how long he’d be. He did not even know if Ramirez was home. Or if he was married, or had children. It was possible he had made the trip to Bethesda for nothing, but if he had called first, Major Ramirez doubtless would have refused to see him.
The door opened. To Peter’s relief Pablo Ramirez stood in the frame, his expression quizzical. “Major Ramirez?” “Yes. Have we met?” “No, but we were both at Arlington Cemetery the other morning. My name’s”
“You were with the girl,” interrupted the major. “His daughter. You’re the writer.”
“Yes. My name’s Peter Chancellor. I’d like to talk with you.”
“What about?” “MacAndrew.” Ramirez paused before replying, studying Peter’s face. He spoke quietly, with the slightest trace of an accent, but to Chancellor’s surprise there was no hostility in his voice. “I really haven’t anything to say about the general. He’s dead. Leave him in peace.”
“That wasn’t what you had in mind at the burial. If the dead could be killed twice, your looks would have done just that.”
“I apologize.”
“Is that all you’ll say?”
“I believe it’s sufficient. Now, if you don’t mind, I have work to do.”
Ramirez stepped back, his hand on the doorknob. Peter spoke quickly.
“Chasǒng. The slaughter at Chasǒng.”
The major stopped, his body rigid. The connection was there. “That goes back a long time. The ‘slaughter,’ as you call it, was thoroughly investigated by the Inspector General. The heavy losses were attributed to unexpected and overwhelming Chincom firepower.”
“And perhaps overzealousness in command,” added Peter swiftly. “For instance, in the command of Mac the Knife, killer of Chasǒng.”
The major remained immobile, his eyes clouded in that odd, noncommittal way peculiar to the military.
“I think you’d better come inside, Mr. Chancellor.”
Peter had a sense of déjà vu. Once again he had stepped up to a stranger’s door—that stranger an Army officer—and demanded an audience through the use of information he was not supposed to have. There was even a similarity between Ramirez’s and MacAndrew’s studies. The walls were lined with photographs and mementos of a career. Chancellor glanced at the open study door, his mind wandering back for a moment to the isolated house in the countryside. Ramirez misinterpreted his look.
“There’s no one else here,” he said curtly—as curtly as MacAndrew had spoken months before. “I’m a bachelor.”
“I didn’t know that I know very little about you, Major. Except that you went to West Point around the same time MacAndrew did. Also that you served with him in North Africa and later in Korea.”
“I’m sure you’ve learned other things. You couldn’t know even that much without having been told more.”
“Such as?”
Ramirez sat down in the armchair opposite Peter. “That I’m discontented, if not a certified malcontent. A troublemaker from Puerto Rico who feels he’s been passed over because of his race.”
“I heard a tasteless Navy joke I didn’t like.” “Oh, the fleet cocktail party? The one where they put a busboy’s jacket on me?” A mechanical smile appeared on the major’s face. Chancellor nodded. “That’s not bad. I made that one up myself.” “What?”
“I work in a very specialized, extremely sensitive department of the Pentagon. But it has nothing to do with orthodox intelligence. For lack of a better phrase, we call it minority relations.”
“Major, what are you saying?…” “I’m not a major. My permanent rank is brigadier general. I will undoubtedly receive my second star in June. You see, a major—especially one of my age—can go into many areas and have better communication with the men than can a colonel or a general.”
“You have to go to those extremes?” asked Peter. “Today’s military faces an extraordinary problem. Nobody likes to put it into words, but no one can bury it, either. The ranks are being filled with unemployables, the outcasts. Do you know what can be the result when that happens?”
“Sure. The quality of the services diminishes.” “That’s the first stage. We get the My Lais, and we get spaced-out troops trading in narcotics like C-rations. Then there’s another step, and it’s not far down the road. By simple attrition, the lack of quality recruitment, and a superiority of numbers, the quality of leadership deteriorates. Historically, that’s frightening. Forget Genghis Khan and even the later-day Cossacks; their environments were barbarian. There’s a more recent example. The criminals took over the German army, and the Nazi Wehrmacht was the result. Do you begin to understand?”
Peter shook his head slowly. The soldier’s evaluations seemed exaggerated; there were too many controls. “I can’t buy some kind of black terrorist junta.”
“Neither can we. Statistics—base demographics, actually—confirm what we’ve suspected for a long time. The average black drawn to the military is more highly and properly motivated than his white counterpart. Those that aren’t motivated run with the wild packs anyway. It’s a very democratic filtering system: Garbage attracts garbage. And they are minorities: Spanish Harlem, Slovak Chicago, Chicano Los Angeles. The words are unemployment, poverty, and ignorance.”
“And you’re the Army’s solution?”
“I’m a beginning. We try to reach them, upgrade them, make them better than they are. Educational programs, lessening of resentments, instilling self-respect. All the concepts the liberals think we’re incapable of practicing.”
There was something missing, something that did not make sense. “This is all very enlightening,” Peter said, “but what’s it got to do with General MacAndrew? With what I saw at Arlington?”
“What’s your reason for going back to Chasǒng?” countered the brigadier.
Peter looked away, at the photographs and decorations that were so reminiscent of MacAndrew’s study. “I won’t tell you how, but the name Chasǒng came up after MacAndrew resigned. I think it had something to do with his resignation.”
“Highly unlikely.”
“Then I saw you at Arlington,” continued Chancellor, ignoring Ramirez’s comment. “I’m not sure why, but I thought there might be a connection. I was right; there was. A few minutes ago you were closing the door in my face; I mention Chasǒng and you ask me in.”
“I was curious,” said the soldier. “It was a highly inflammatory issue.”
“But before we talk about it,” said Peter, again ignoring the interruption, “you make damned sure I hear about this sensitive department you work in. You’re preparing me for something. What is it? Why did you hate MacAndrew?”
“All right.” The brigadier shifted his position in the chair. Peter knew he was stalling, allowing himself a brief moment to consider how much to hide. Part truth, part lie. Peter had described many characters doing the same thing. “We all funtion best in those areas we feel deeply about Although I’m no malcontent, I am discontented. I have been, throughout my career. I’ve been an angry man. And in many ways MacAndrew represented the reason for my anger. He was an elitist, a racist. Strangely enough, he was a fine commander because he truly believed he was superior and thought of everyone else as inferior. All the faults of middle command were the result of inferior human beings given responsibilties beyond their capabilities. He would study roster sheets and equate last names with ethnic origins; too often those associations formed the basis of his decisions.”
Ramirez stopped. Peter remained silent for a moment, too disturbed to speak. The soldier’s explanation had both the ring of truth and the ring of falsehood to it. It was part truth, part lie. “You knew him very well, then,” he finally said.
“Well enough to understand the insidiousness.”
“Did you know his wife?”
There it was again. The rigidity in Ramirez’s bearing. It passed as rapidly as it appeared.
“She was a sad case. Unfortunate, unstable. A vacuous woman with too many servants, too little to do, and too much to drink. She went off the deep end.”
“I didn’t know she was an alcoholic.”
“Terms are unimportant.”
“Was there an accident? A near drowning?”
“She was involved in a number of ‘accidents.’ A few rather unsavory, I understand. But in my opinion the larger accident was inactivity. I really know very little about her.”
Again Peter sensed the lie in Ramirez’s words. This major-brigadier knew a great deal about Alison’s mother, but he was determined to say nothing. So be it, Chancellor thought. Not him. Her! He’s the decoy. Varak’s words. “There’s nothing more?” Peter asked.
“No. Now, I’ve been honest with you. What have you heard about Chasǒng?”
“That there was an unnecessary slaughter and maiming of thousands of men.”
“Chasǒng is only one of many battles represented in scores of veterans’ hospitals. To repeat, it was investigated.”
Chancellor sat forward. “Okay, General, I’ll be honest with you. I don’t think it was investigated anywhere near thoroughly enough. Or if it was, the results were shoved under a rug so fast the dust flew. There are a lot of things I don’t know, but the picture’s getting clearer. You hated MacAndrew; you freeze at the name Chasǒng; you give me a sermon, saying what a great guy you are; and then you freeze again when MacAndrew’s wife is mentioned, telling me that you don’t know much about her. A lie—you’re filled with lies and evasions. I’ll tell you what I think. I think Chasǒng is tied in with MacAndrew, his resignation, his murder, a gap in his service record, and missing files from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. And somewhere in this mess is MacAndrew’s wife. How much more there is, I haven’t the vaguest idea, but you’d better tell me. Because I’m going to find out. There’s a woman involved, and I love her, and I won’t let any of you go on any longer. Cut the bullshit, Ramirez! Tell me the truth!”
The brigadier reacted as though suddenly pinned down by gunfire. His body tensed; his whisper was strained. “The gap in his service record. How did you know? You didn’t mention it. You had no right—You tricked me.” He began to shout. “You had no right to do that! You can’t understand! We did. We tried!”
“What happened at Chasǒng?”
Ramirez closed his eyes. “Only what you think. The slaughter was unnecessary. The command decisions faulty.… It was so long ago. Let it be!”
Chancellor got up from the chair and looked down at the brigadier. “No. Because I’m beginning to understand. I think Chasǒng was the biggest military cover-up in this country’s history. And somewhere, somehow, it’s in those files. I think after all these years, MacAndrew couldn’t live with it anymore. At long last he was going to talk about it. So you all got together and went after him because you couldn’t live with that!”
Ramirez opened his eyes. “That’s not true. For God’s sake, leave it alone!”
“Not true?” said Peter quietly. “I’m not sure you’d know the truth. You’re so guilty, you’re running standing still. Your righteousness is very suspect, General. I liked you better at Arlington; your anger was genuine then. You’re hiding something—maybe from yourself, I don’t know. But I know I’m going to find out what Chasǒng means.”
“Then, may God have mercy on your soul,” whispered Brigadier General Pablo Ramirez.
Chancellor hurried through Union Station toward the Amtrak gate. It was past two in the morning; the cavernous domed enclosure was nearly deserted. There was a scattering of old men slumped on the long benches, gathering warmth, escaping the December chill of the Washington night. One old man seemed to sit up and take notice as Peter rushed past toward the gate. A lonely dream of what never could be had been disturbed, perhaps.
He had to hurry. The train to Quantico was the last until six. He wanted to reach Alison; he had to talk with her, make her remember. Too, he also had to sleep; there was so much to do that to go on without rest would diminish whatever capabilities he had left. A plan was coming into focus. The beginnings of it were found in Ramirez’s offhand remark: Chasǒng … is represented in scores of veterans’ hospitals.
Peter walked to the center of a deserted car and slid into the seat by the window, noting his reflection in the spotted glass. Although the image was dark and filmy, there was no mistaking the haggard, drawn expression on his face. From somewhere outside on the platform a mechanical voice blared through a loudspeaker. Chancellor closed his eyes and sank into weariness as the wheels gathered speed, the rhythm quickly hypnotic.
He heard muted footsteps behind him in the aisle, heard them over the sounds of rolling metal against metal. He presumed it was the conductor, so he kept his eyes shut, expecting to be asked for his ticket.
No request came. The footsteps had stopped. Peter opened his eyes and turned in the seat.
It all happened so fast. The sick, pale, maniacal face behind him, the muffled report, the explosion of fabric beside him.
The seat had been blown apart! The man not three feet away had tried to kill him! Chancellor spun out of the seat, his body arcing in the air, his hands lunging downward for the bony white fingers that held the weapon. The old man tried to get up, tried to force the barrel of the gun into Peter’s stomach. Chancellor crashed the thin wrist against the metal arm of the seat; the weapon fell into the aisle, and Peter spun again, throwing himself between the seats, covering the gun, reaching under his body until it was in his grasp. He lurched to his feet; the old man started to run toward the end of the car. Chancellor sprang after him, grabbing him with one hand. He forced him to stop, pressing him against the rim of an aisle seat.
“Bromley!”
“Child killer!”
“You’re a goddamned lunatic!” Peter turned, pinning Bromley fiercely against the seat in the deserted car. Where was the conductor? The conductor could stop the train and summon the police! Then Chancellor balked; did he want the police?
“How could he have done it?” The old man was whimpering, the words spoken bitterly between his tears. “How could he have told you?”
“What are you talking about!?”
“Only one man knew. St. Claire … Munro St. Claire. I thought he had such greatness, such honor.” Bromley broke down and wept uncontrollably.
Peter released him, unable to control his own shock. Munro St. Claire. A name out of the past, but always a part of the present The man responsible for all that had happened since the days of rejection and indecision at Park Forest.
All?
Oh, my God.…
Venice you know.… Bravo, too but not Bravo! Never Bravo! Stefan Varak.
Such greatness, such honor. Paul Bromley.
The fifth man. Bravo.
Munro St. Claire.
Clouds swirled in Chancellor’s mind; the pain returned to his temples. He watched, helpless, unable to move, unable to stop him, as the old man rushed to the metal door between the cars and pulled it back. And then there was the crash of another door and a terrible rush of wind above the amplified sounds of the wheels hammering against the tracks below.
There was a scream of anguish, or of courage—whatever, it was of death. Bromley had hurled himself into the night.
And there was no peace for Peter Chancellor.
Munro St. Claire.
Bravo.