42

Everything happened in rapid, crisp movements that were marks of professionals. Other blacks entered; the house was surrounded. Munro St Claire was held by the table. Peter was pulled away, a strip of cloth strapped tightly over his shoulder wound. A man was dispatched to the gates to await the local police with the proper explanation of why the alarm went off.

Daniel Sutherland nodded, turned, and walked back into the darkness of the hallway. Again, without warning, the inconceivable happened. The man holding Bravo released him and stepped away; sounds of explosions filled the room.

Munro St. Claire was impaled against the wall, riddled by gunfire, his body host to a fusillade of bullets. He slumped to the floor, his wide eyes dead and unbelieving.

“Oh, my God.…” Chancellor heard the terrified words, unaware that they were his. Aware only of the horror he had witnessed.

In seconds Sutherland returned from the dark hallway. His eyes were sad, his erect bearing somehow burdened with grief.

He spoke softly as he looked down at the fallen St Claire. “You would never have understood. Nor would the others. Those files must not be destroyed. They must be used to right a great many wrongs.” The judge raised his eyes and looked at Peter. “We gave Jacob a more proper burial than you accorded him. His death will be announced in time. As will the others.”

“You’ve killed them all,” whispered Chancellor.

“Yes,” replied Sutherland. “Banner two nights ago, and Paris last night.”

“You’ll be caught.”

“Mrs. Montelán believes her husband has been sent to the Far East by the State Department. We have men at State; the proper documents will be recorded, and Montelán will be reported killed by terrorists. It’s not so unusual these days. Wells had a fatal automobile accident on a wet country road off the highway. You were of considerable help in his case. His car was found in the morning.”

Sutherland spoke matter-of-factly, as if killing and violence were perfectly natural phenomena, neither unusual nor to be dwelt upon.

“You have men at the State Department?” said Peter, bewildered. “Then you were able to trace the sterile house in Saint Michaels.”

“We could and did.”

“But you didn’t have to. You had O’Brien.”

“I don’t think you should try to deceive us, Mr. Chancellor. We’re not in the pages of a book. We’re all real here.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know precisely what I mean. We never had O’Brien. We had others. Not him.”

“Not him.…” Chancellor could only repeat Sutherland’s words.

“A resourceful man, Mr. O’Brien,” continued Sutherland. “A very brave man. He fired into the fuel tanks, setting the boats on fire, then risked his life to lead us away from your car. Courage matching ingenuity, an estimable combination.”

Peter could not repress the sound of the sharp intake of breath that escaped from his throat. O’Brien had not betrayed them!

Sutherland was talking, but the words had no meaning. Nothing had meaning any longer.

“What did you say?” asked Peter, looking around at the scrubbed, clean faces of the blacks. There were five men now, each with a weapon in his hand.

“I said as gently as possible that your death can’t be avoided.”

“Why didn’t you kill me before?”

“In the beginning we tried to. Then I reconsidered. You’d begun your manuscript. We had to prove you were mad. People have read what you’ve written; we have no way of knowing how many. You’ve come remarkably close to the truth. We couldn’t allow that. The country must believe those files were destroyed. You wrote otherwise. Fortunately, your behavior has been questioned, and there are some who think you’ve gone out of your mind. You sustained head injuries in an accident that nearly killed you. You lost a loved one, and your recovery has been abnormally slow. Your paranoid sense of conspiracy is displayed in each of your books, progressively more acute. The final proof of your instability—”

“Final proof?” interrupted Peter, dazed by Sutherland’s argument.

“Yes,” continued the judge. “The final proof of your instability would come when you swore I was dead. Needless to say, my reaction would be one of amusement I had met you once, the memory of that meeting dim. It wasn’t particularly memorable. You’d be dismissed as a maniac.”

“A maniac,” Peter said. “The bureau had ‘maniacs.’ Hoover’s inheritors. They worked with you.”

“Three did. They didn’t understand it was to be a short-lived association. We had the same objective: Hoover’s files. What they did not know was that we had half of them, the half that weren’t destroyed. We wanted known fanatics who would be caught and killed, the entire files presumably having disappeared with their deaths. Their other function was to drive you to the precipice. If they killed you, it was on their heads. You were a harmless meddler, but they took you seriously.”

“You are going to kill me. You wouldn’t tell me these things if you weren’t.” Peter made the observation calmly, almost clinically.

“I’m not without feeling. I don’t wish to take your life; I derive no pleasure from it. But I have to. The least I can do is try to satisfy your curiosity. And I do have an offer to make.”

“What offer?”

“The girl’s life. There’s no reason for Miss MacAndrew to die. Whatever she thinks she knows will have been told her by a writer who recognized his own madness and killed himself. The pathology is classic for creative people. Depression sets in when the lines of reality are blurred.”

Peter wondered at his own calm. “Thank you. You put me in company I’m not sure I deserve. What’s the exchange? I’ll do anything you say.”

“Where’s O’Brien?”

“What?…” Chancellor drew out the word, bewildered.

“Where’s O’Brien? Did you speak with him while you were with Ramirez? He can’t go to the bureau or the police. We’d know about it if he did. Where is he?”

Peter watched Sutherland’s eyes closely. Look to the fiction, he thought. Something was better than nothing, no matter how remote the possibilities. And there was a possibility.

“If I tell you, what guarantees do I have that you’ll let her live?”

“Ultimately, none. Only my word.”

“Your word? You’re the one who’s crazy! Accept the word of the man who betrayed his friends, betrayed Inver Brass?”

“There’s no inconsistency. Inver Brass was formed to give extraordinary aid to the country in times of desperate need—to all the men and women of this country, because this nation was for all its people. What has become apparent is that the country is not for all its people. It never will be. It must be forced to include those it would prefer to overlook. The nation has betrayed me, Mr. Chancellor. And millions like me. That fact does not alter who I am. It may change what I am, but not my values. My word is one of them. You have it.”

Peter’s mind raced, remembering, selecting. O’Brien had only one place to go after the Chesapeake marina, one place where they had not been followed. The motel in Ocean City. It would be there he would wait—a day at least for Alison and Peter to make contact. Quinn had nowhere else to go.

Look to the fiction; there is nothing else left.

In Counterstrike! a telephone call was made to enlist help in an escape. The method was simple: A false message was given, logical to those who overheard it but virtually meaningless to the receiver. In it was hidden a clue to a specific location. It was up to the receiver to figure out where.

“A trade, then,” said Peter. “O’Brien for MacAndrew’s daughter.”

“That does not include Major Brown. He’s not part of the exchange. He’s our property.”

“You know about him?”

“Of course. From the data-processing center in McLean. Within minutes of the Chasǒng records being pulled, we were aware of it”

“I see. You’re going to kill him?”

“That depends. We don’t know him. It may well be he’ll be assigned to a base hospital thousands of miles away. We do not indiscriminately take life.”

You’ll kill him, thought Chancellor. Once you know him, you’ll kill him.

“You’re telling me you know where Brown and Alison are,” said Peter.

“We do. In Arundel Village. We have a man there, outside the hotel.”

“I want her driven into Washington where I can speak with her.”

“Demands, Mr. Chancellor?”

“If you want O’Brien.”

“She won’t be harmed. You have my word.”

“Let’s call it the initial proof that you’ll keep it For God’s sake, don’t push me. I don’t want to die. I’m frightened.” Peter kept his voice low; it was not difficult to be convincing.

“What guarantee do I have?” asked the judge. “How will you deliver O’Brien?”

“We’ll have to get to a telephone. This one’s dead, but you know that. I only have a number and a room. I have no idea where.” Chancellor raised his arm to look at his watch. The movement caused a sharp pain in his wounded shoulder. “O’Brien should be there for another twenty to thirty minutes. After that he’s to call me.”

“What’s the telephone number?”

“That won’t do you any good; he’s fifty miles away. He knows my voice. He worked out a code for me to use and one of several places to meet during specific times.” Peter’s mind raced as he spoke. Several nights ago O’Brien had used a fictitious pay telephone on Wisconsin Avenue as a cover for a second location, a second phone booth, where Peter was to go to take his call. There was a pay phone at a gas station outside of Salisbury. Quinn and Alison had been there with him when he’d called Morgan in New York. O’Brien would remember that booth.

“It’s two fifteen. Where could you meet at this hour?” Sutherland stood motionless, his voice wary.

“A gas station near Salisbury; I’m to confirm it. He’ll want me to describe the car I’m driving. And I don’t think hell show himself if he sees people in the car with me. You’ll have to conceal yourselves.”

“It’s not a problem. What are the words of the code?” asked the judge. “The precise words.”

“They don’t mean anything. He was reading a newspaper.”

“What are they?”

“The senator called a last-minute quorum on the defense expenditures.’ ”

Chancellor winced and reached across his chest to hold his wounded shoulder. The gesture diminished any importance Peter might have given to the meaning of the code. They were merely words chosen at random from a newspaper.

“We’ll use the ambassador’s car,” said Sutherland finally. “You’ll drive the last few miles. Until then you’ll ride in the back with me. Two of my men will accompany us. When you take the wheel, they’ll conceal themselves. I’m sure you’ll cooperate fully.”

“I expect your cooperation, too. I want your man away from Arundel. I want Alison driven to Washington. Brown can do that; you can go after him later. How far’s the nearest telephone?”

“On the table, Mr. Chancellor. Or will be in a matter of minutes.” The judge turned to the muscular black on his left He spoke quietly in an unfamiliar language.

It was the language shouted at the Chesapeake marina. Shouted in defiance at the moment of death. The language Varak had not understood.

The slender black man nodded and ran quickly into the hallway and out the front door.

“The telephone will be reconnected,” Sutherland explained. “The wires were not severed, only placed on an intermediate circuit that does not break the terminal line.” The judge paused, then continued. “I spoke in Ashanti. It was the language of the African Gold Coast in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It’s not easy to learn; there’s no language like it We can converse anywhere, among anyone; relay instructions, issue orders without being understood.”

Sutherland turned to the two men across the room. Again he spoke in the strange-sounding Ashanti. The two blacks put their weapons in their belts and walked rapidly to St. Claire’s dead body. They picked it up and carried it out.

The telephone rang once. “It’s fixed,” Sutherland said. “Call O’Brien. Our man is listening on the line. If you say anything unacceptable, the connection will be broken, the woman killed.”

Peter walked to the telephone. St. Claire’s blood formed jagged blots and streaks on the wall next to the table. He could feel it beneath the soles of his shoes. He picked up the phone.

He dialed the number of the motel in Ocean City and asked the switchboard for Upper South Suite. The room phone rang; the wait was unbearable; O’Brien wasn’t there!

Then he heard the click and a quiet “Yes?”

“Quinn?”

“Peter! My God, where are you? I’ve been—”

“There’s no time!” interrupted Chancellor, speaking in uncharacteristic anger in the hope that O’Brien would look for a message in his words. “You asked for a goddamned code, so I’m giving it to you. The senator called a last-minute quorum over the defense expenditures.’ Wasn’t that it? If it isn’t, it’s close enough.”

“What the hell—?”

“I want to meet as soon as possible!” Again the interruption was abrasive, discourteous, on the edge of contempt So out of character, so inconsistent. “It’s between two and three in the morning. According to your schedule that’s the gas station on the road to Salisbury. I’ll be driving a light-colored Continental. A silver Mark IV. Be sure you’re alone!”

There was a brief silence on the line. Peter stared at the blood-soaked wallpaper and closed his eyes, his face turned away from Sutherland. When he heard Quinn’s words, he felt like crying. Tears of relief. “All right,” said O’Brien, his voice as hostile as Chancellor’s. “A Mark IV. I’ll be there. And for your information, a code isn’t stupid. By using it I know you’re not under pressure. And with you, you son of a bitch, that’s rare. See you in an hour.”

O’Brien hung up. He had understood. Quinn’s final words confirmed it. They were as out of character as his own. The false message had carried the right meaning.

Peter faced the judge. “Now it’s your turn. Call Arundel.”

Sutherland sat beside him in the back seat of the Continental, the two blacks in front They sped south over country roads, across the Choptank River, past signs that proclaimed the townships of Bethlehem, Preston, and Hurlock. Toward Salisbury. The judge had kept his word. Alison was in Washington; she’d arrive at the Hay-Adams long before they reached Salisbury. Peter would telephone her from a roadside booth once O’Brien was taken. It was to be his good-bye, his death to follow, mercifully quick, at an unexpected moment—that, too, was part of the agreement.

Chancellor turned to the judge. The huge black head reflected racing flashes of light and shadow.

“How did you get the files?” Peter asked.

“M through Z, Mr. Chancellor,” said Sutherland. “That’s what we have. A through L were destroyed by Inver Brass. I could only get half.”

“I’m going to die; that’s not easy for me to say. I’d like to know how you got them.”

The judge looked at Peter, his dark eyes magnified in the dim light. “There’s no harm in telling you. It wasn’t difficult. As you know, Varak assumed Longworth’s name. The real Alan Longworth is exactly what I told you he was in my office several months ago: one of Hoover’s closest associates, persuaded to work against Hoover. His reward was to spend the rest of his life in the Hawaiian Islands, his wants supplied, beyond the reach of those who might try to kill him. Hoover was told he died of natural causes: a disease. In fact, a memorial service was held for Longworth. Hoover himself gave the eulogy.”

Chancellor thought of the outline for his novel The fiction was again the reality.

A medical deception is mounted.… The report is forwarded to Hoover: The agent is riddled with duodenal cancer. It has spread beyond surgery; his life expectancy is no more than a few months at best. Hoover has no alternative. He releases the man, believing the agent is going home to die.…

“Hoover never questioned Longworth’s death?” asked Peter.

“There was no reason to,” replied Sutherland. “The surgeon’s report was sent to him. It left no doubts.” The fiction. The reality.

The judge continued. “I brought Alan Longworth back to life. From Hawaii For one day. It was most dramatic. A man returned from the dead for only a single day, but it was a day J. Edgar Hoover nearly stopped the wheels of government; his fury was intense. And his fear.” A slow smile came to Sutherland; it could be seen in the swiftly moving shadows. He went on, staring straight ahead. “Longworth told Hoover the truth as far as he knew it, as much as we told him. He was psychologically ready to do this, so deep was his own guilt. Hoover had been his mentor—in a way his god—and he had been forced to betray him. There was a conspiracy to murder him, Longworth told Hoover. For his private files. The conspirators were unknown men inside and outside the bureau. Men with access to every code, every release of a vault in an emergency. Hoover panicked, as we knew he would panic. Phone calls were made all over Washington—including one to Ramirez, incidentally—and Hoover learned nothing. There was only one person he felt he could trust: his closest friend, Clyde Tolson. He began systematically removing the files to Tolson’s house—to his basement, to be precise. But he fell behind the schedule we had projected; not all the files were removed. We couldn’t press him; we couldn’t take the risk of doing that. We could get inside Tolson’s home. We had enough. We have enough. Files M through Z will give us the leverage we never had before.”

“For what?”

“To shape the concerns of government,” said Sutherland emphatically.

“What happened to Longworth?”

“You killed him, Mr. Chancellor. MacAndrew pulled the trigger, but you killed him. You sent MacAndrew after him.”

“And your people killed MacAndrew.”

“We had no choice. He’d learned too much. He had to die, at any rate. Although he wasn’t responsible, he was the symbol of Chasǒng. Hundreds of black soldiers murdered, led to their deaths by their own commanders. The most heinous crime of which man is capable.”

“Racial murder,” said Peter quietly.

“A form of genocide. The most despicable form,” said Sutherland, his eyes filled with hatred. “For convenience. To stop one man from learning the truth because that truth would expose a network of crimes—experiments—that civilized men should never have sanctioned but did.”

Chancellor let the moment pass. The silence was electric. “The phone calls. The killing. Why? What did Phyllis Maxwell or Bromley or Rawlins have to do with Chasǒng? Or O’Brien, for that matter? Why did you go after them?”

The judge answered rapidly. The victims mentioned were not of consequence. “Chasǒng was not involved. Phyllis Maxwell had uncovered information we wished to use ourselves; it led to the Oval Office. Bromley deserved no less. He had the courage to take on the Pentagon, but he crippled an urban-renewal project in Detroit that would have benefited thousands of destitute slum dwellers. Black people, Mr. Chancellor. He sold out to criminal elements who provided him with information that augmented his headline-gathering crusade against the military. At the expense of black people! Rawlins was the most dangerous example of the false New South. He gave lip service to emerging ‘new values’ and privately in committee thwarted every congressional attempt to give teeth to the laws. And he abused black women, don’t forget that. The parents of those children can’t”

Sutherland had finished.

“What about O’Brien?” Peter asked. “Why do you want him now?”

“Once again, you’re responsible. He’s the only one who pieced together the theft of the remaining files. If that were all, he might have lived. His silence could be counted on; he had no viable proof. However, no longer. He knows Venice’s identity. You gave it to him.”

Peter looked away. He was surrounded by death; he was the precursor of death.

“Why you?” asked Peter softly. “Of all men, why you?

“Because I can,” replied Sutherland, his eyes on the road ahead.

“That’s not an answer.”

“It’s taken me a lifetime to understand what the young see every day of their lives. I was too filled with doubts; it’s not complicated at all. This nation has forsaken its black citizens. The black man must no longer interfere. America is bored with his dreams; the black man’s attainments are suspect. It was fashionable to support him while he was an achieving oddity, but not when he becomes a challenge and moves into the neighborhood.”

“You weren’t forsaken.”

“The extraordinary man never is. I say that with no sense of false pride. My gifts were from God, and they were extraordinary. But what of the ordinary man? The ordinary woman, the ordinary child, who grow up to be less than ordinary because they’re marked at birth? No change of name can alter that stigma; no certificate can lighten the skin. I’m no revolutionary in the accepted sense, Mr. Chancellor. I know very well that such a course would result in a holocaust unknown to the Jews. Quite simply, the numbers and the hardware are against us. I’m merely using the tools of the society in which we live. Fear. The most common weapon known to man. It has no prejudice; it respects no racial barriers. That’s what those files represent—nothing more, nothing less. We can do so much with them, influence so much legislation, enact so many laws, give teeth to statutes that are violated daily. That’s what those files can accomplish. I seek no violence that would certainly ensure our annihilation. I want none of that. I seek only what rightfully belongs to us, what’s been withheld from us. And providence has given me the weapon. I intend to lead the ordinary black man out of his sorrow and embarrassment.”

“But you do use violence. You kill.”

“Only those who would take our lives!” Sutherland’s voice thundered; it filled the car. “As our lives were taken! Only those who would interfere!”

Sutherland’s explosion caused Peter to react in kind, with his own intensity, his own anger. “An eye for an eye? Is that where you’re at? Is that what you came away with after a lifetime of law? For Christ’s sake, not you! Why?”

Sutherland turned in the seat, his eyes furious. “I’ll tell you why. It wasn’t the judgment of a lifetime. It was the result of a brief half hour five years ago. I had rendered a decision that was not particularly popular with the Justice Department. It prohibited further abuses of Miranda and upheld the conviction of a well-known superintendent of police.”

“I remember,” said Peter, and he did. It had been called the Sutherland decision, an anathema to the law-and-order crowd. Had any other judge but Sutherland rendered it, it would have been appealed to the Supreme Court.

“I received a call from J. Edgar Hoover, requesting me to come to his office. More from curiosity than anything else, I bowed to his arrogance and accepted the invitation. During that meeting I listened to the unbelievable. On the desk of the highest law-enforcement officer in the country were spread the dossiers of every major black civil rights leader: King, Abernathy, Wilkins, Rowan, Farmer. They were volumes of filth—scurrilous rumor, unsubstantiated gossip, transcripts of telephone and electronic taps; words taken out of context made to appear inflammatory—morally, sexually, legally, philosophically! I was enraged, appalled! That it could happen in that office! Blackmail! Blatant extortion! But Hoover had been through it many times before. He let me vent my rage, and when I had finished, he viciously said that were I to continue to be an obstruction, those files would be put to use. Men and their families destroyed! The black movement crippled! At the very last, he said to me, ‘We don’t want another Chasǒng, do we, Judge Sutherland?’ ”

“Chasǒng,” said Peter, repeating the name softly. “That’s where you heard it first”

“It took me nearly two years to learn what happened at Chasǒng. When I did, I reached the decision. The children had been right all along. In their simplicity they saw what I did not see. As a people we were expendable. But then I saw what the young did not see. The answer was not indiscriminate violence and protests. It was to use the weapon Hoover used; make the system work from within. By fear!… We’ll talk no more. You should have silence. Make peace with your God.”

The man beside the driver studied a map with the aid of a pencil flashlight He turned his head slightly to speak with the judge in Ashanti.

Sutherland nodded and replied in the strange African tongue. He looked at Peter. “We’re within a mile and a half of the gas station. We’ll stop a quarter of a mile short of it. These men are efficient scouts. They learned the expertise of night patrol in Southeast Asia. Those patrols were usually the province of black soldiers; the casualty rates were the highest. If O’Brien’s brought anyone with him, if there’s any hint of a trap, they’ll come back, and we’ll drive away. The girl will die in front of you.”

Chancellor’s throat went dry. It’s over. He should have known. Sutherland would never settle for words over a telephone. Peter had sentenced Alison to death. He had loved two women in his life, and he had killed them both.

He thought of overpowering Sutherland when they were alone. It was something to keep him from screaming.

“How could O’Brien do that?” Peter asked. “You said he couldn’t go to anyone, that you’d know if he did.”

“On the surface it would appear impossible. He’s isolated.”

“Then, why are we stopping. Why are we wasting time?”

“I saw what O’Brien did at the marina yesterday morning. Courage and ingenuity are to be respected. It’s a simple precaution.”

The car stopped. Whatever thoughts Peter had of attacking Sutherland were dispelled quickly. The man beside the driver leaped out of the car, opened the door next to Chancellor, and grabbed his arm. A pair of handcuffs were snapped to his wrist and to the metal clasp below the window. The movement put his shoulder in agony. He winced and held his breath.

The judge climbed out of the back seat. “I leave you to your thoughts, Mr. Chancellor.”

The two young black men disappeared into the darkness.

It was the longest forty-five minutes Peter could imagine. He tried to think of the various tactics O’Brien might conceive of, but the more he thought about them, the more bleak were his conclusions. If Quinn had managed to get help, as surely he must have done, the additional men would be seen by Sutherland’s scouts. Death. If for some reason O’Brien had decided to come alone, then he would die. But at least Alison would live. There was some comfort in that.

The scouts returned, drenched with sweat They had been running hard; they’d covered a great deal of ground.

The black on the left opened the door and Sutherland climbed in. “It would appear that Mr. O’Brien keeps the rendezvous. He is sitting in an automobile with the motor running, in the center of the road where he can observe all sides. There is no one else within three miles of the station.”

Chancellor was too numb and too sick to think clearly. His last amateurish gesture had been to lead Quinn into the trap.

It’s over.

The Mark TV started. They approached the intersection; the driver braked the Continental slowly, and they came to a stop. The black on the driver’s right got out and opened Chancellor’s door. He unlocked the cuffs; Peter shook his wrist trying to restore the circulation. His wounded shoulder began to hurt again. It did not matter.

“Get behind the wheel, Mr. Chancellor. You’ll drive now. My two friends will be crouched behind you in the back seat, their guns drawn. The girl dies if you disregard instructions.”

Sutherland got out of the car with Peter, and stood by the door, facing him.

“You’re wrong. You know that, don’t you?” said Chancellor.

“You look for absolutes. As with precedents, they’re all too often imperfect, and much of the time they don’t apply. There’s no right and wrong between us. We’re products of a long-standing crisis neither of us is responsible for but both are swept up in.”

“Is that a judicial opinion?”

“No, Mr. Chancellor. It’s the opinion of a Negro. I was a Negro before I was a judge.” Sutherland turned and walked away.

Peter watched him, then climbed in behind the wheel and slammed the door. It’s over. Dear God, if you exist, let it come quickly, furiously. I have no courage.

Peter turned right at the intersection and drove down the road. The gas station was on the left, a single naked light bulb in a bracket above the pumps.

“Slow down,” came the quiet command from the back.

“What’s the difference?” said Chancellor.

“Slow down!”

The barrel of a gun was shoved into the base of his skull. He pressed the brake of the Mark IV and coasted toward the station. He approached the rear of O’Brien’s car; it had to be Quinn’s. The vapor from exhaust curled in the night air, the headlights illuminating the distant country road beyond.

Peter was alarmed. The lights from the Mark IV shone directly into the rear window of O’Brien’s car. It was empty.

“He’s not there,” whispered Chancellor.

“He’s below the seat,” said the low voice on his right.

“Get out and walk to the car,” said the other man.

Peter turned off the motor, opened the door, and stepped out on the road. He closed his eyes briefly, wondering if a gun would fire at him the instant Quinn appeared. He was not fooled. Sutherland would spare Alison, but there’d be no conversation over the telephone. The judge would take no such risk.

But O’Brien did not get out of the automobile.

“Quinn,” called Chancellor. There was no answer.

What are you doing, O’Brien? It’s over!

Nothing.

Peter walked toward the car, his temples throbbing, the pain in his throat agonizing. The sound of the idling engine mingled with the night noises; a breeze swirled dry leaves across the roadway. Any second now, Quinn would show himself; gunshots would follow. Would he hear them as his life ended? He approached the driver’s window.

There was no one there.

“Chancellor! Get down!”

The scream came from out of the darkness. The sudden roar of a powerful motor filled the night Blinding headlights shot out from the left, from the gas station! A car came racing out of the dim light, speeding directly at the silver Mark IV. The driver’s door swung open; a figure lunged out, rolling on the pavement.

The impact came, a thunderous collision, the crunching of metal, the shattering of glass, the screams of the two men inside … all came at once, and at once Peter knew the last fury he had hoped for had arrived.

Gunshots followed, as he knew they would. He closed his eyes and gripped the hard surface of the road; the searing, icelike pain would come. The darkness would come.

The firing continued; Chancellor rolled his face to the side. It came from Quinn O’Brien!

Peter raised his head. Smoke and dust billowed in the air. In front of him he saw O’Brien throw himself into the side of the idling car; he was only feet from Chancellor. The agent crouched, both hands extended over the trunk, his pistol leveled.

“Get over here!” he roared to Peter.

Chancellor lunged forward, knees and hands pounding the tar beneath, until he reached the automobile.

He saw O’Brien hesitate, then raise his head and take careful aim.

The explosion came. The gas tank of the Continental erupted. Peter crouched in front of Quinn. Through a blanket of flames one of Sutherland’s scouts lurched out of the burning car, firing at the source of O’Brien’s gunshots.

But the man could be seen clearly in the light of the spreading fires; flames had ignited his clothes. O’Brien aimed again. There was a scream; the scout fell to the ground behind the burning automobile.

“Quinn!” yelled Peter. “How?”

“I understood you! When you used ‘senator’ in your code, you meant it was our last hope. You meant there was a crisis. You said I had to be alone; that meant you weren’t But you were in one car, that car, so I needed two. One a decoy!” O’Brien shouted as he inched forward around Chancellor toward the hood.

“A decoy?”

“A diversion! I paid a guy to follow me and leave his car. If I could hit and run, we had a chance. What the hell, there was nothing left!” He raised his gun over the hood and leveled it.

“Nothing left …” Peter echoed the phrase, suddenly aware of its ultimate truth.

Quinn fired three shots in rapid succession. Chancellor’s mind went blank for a moment, then was brought back to the madness by a second explosion from the Continental.

O’Brien spun around toward Chancellor. “Get inside!” he yelled. “Let’s get out of here!”

Peter rose to his feet; he grabbed O’Brien’s jacket, stopping him. “Quinn! Quinn, wait! There are no others! Just him! Back in the road. He’s alone!”

“Who?”

“Sutherland. It’s Daniel Sutherland.”

O’Brien’s wild eyes stared at Peter for a brief instant. “Get in,” he commanded. He swung the idling car around in a U-turn and sped toward the intersection.

In the distance the headlights showed the immense figure of Daniel Sutherland, standing in the middle of the road. The black giant had seen what had happened. He raised his hand to his head.

There was a final gunshot.

Sutherland fell.

Venice was dead. Inver Brass was gone.