Free The Chancellor Manuscript by Robert Ludlum Page A

One completed,” was the relayed reply over the line.
    Varak nodded. The man in front of him snapped the unseen switch in his fingers.
    Four stories below, in a concrete room, a third man watched a panel of dark squares built into the wall. He heard the whistle from the open telephone that lay within arm’s reach on the steel table beside him.
    Suddenly a bell shattered the stillness of the enclosure. A red light in the center of the panel shone brightly.
    The man pushed the square beneath the bright red light.
    Silence.
    A uniformed guard burst through the corridor door, his eyes wild.
    “We’re testing,” said the man in front of the panel, calmly replacing the telephone. “I told you that.”
    “Christ!”
exploded the guard, inhaling deeply. “You nightcrawlers will give me a heart attack.”
    “Don’t let us do that,” said the man, smiling.
    Varak watched Salter open the door of the closet beyond the flags and switch on the light inside. Both telephones were back in their cradles; there would be one more call. From Varak to Bravo.
    Not Genesis. Genesis was dead.
    The man was Bravo now. He would be told the job was done.
    Several feet in front of the row of flags were two webbed metal baskets on wheels. They were a familiar sight in the bureau’s hallways, through which scores like them moved mountains of paper from one office to another. In a few minutes they would be filled with hundreds, perhaps several thousand, dossiers and taken downstairs past a senior agent named Parke to a waiting limousine. The files of John Edgar Hoover would be consigned to a blast furnace.
    And a growing Fourth Reich would be crippled.
    “Varak!
Quick!”
    The shout came from the closet beyond the flags. Varak raced inside.
    The steel vault was open, the locks on the cabinets sprung. The four drawers were pulled out.
    The two drawers on the left were thick with papers, bulging. Files
A
through
L
were intact.
    The two drawers on the right were empty. The metal dividers fell against each other, holding nothing.
    Files
M
through
Z
were missing. One half of Hoover’s cabinets of filth was gone.

4
    Chancellor lay in the hot sun and read the
Los Angeles Times
. The headlines seemed almost unreal, as if the event were not really possible, rooted somehow in fantasy.
    The man at last was dead. J. Edgar Hoover had died insignificantly in his bed, the way millions of old men die. Without drama, without consequence. Just the failure of the heart to keep pace with the years. But with that death a relief swept over the country; it was apparent even in the newspaper copy reporting the death.
    The statements issued by Congress and the administration were, as could be expected, sanctimonious and dripping with obsequious praise, but even in these well-chosen words the tears of the crocodiles could be clearly seen. The relief was everywhere.
    Chancellor folded the paper and shoved it into the sand to anchor it. He did not want to read any more.
    Far more to the point, he did not want to write, either. Oh, Christ! When would he want to? Would he ever want to? If there were such a thing as a Sybaritic vegetable, he would be it.
    What made it ironic was that he was getting rich. Joshua Harris had called from New York a half hour ago to report that another payment had been made by the studio on schedule.
    Peter was making a great deal of money for doing absolutely nothing. Since the episode with Sheffield’s wife he had not bothered to go to the studio or call anyone concerned with
Counterstrike!
    Not to worry. You wrote a winner, sweetheart
.
    So be it.
    He raised his wrist and looked at his watch. It was almost eight thirty; the morning at Malibu had come quickly. The air was moist, the sun too bright, the sand already too hot. Slowly he got to his feet. He’d go inside and sit in an air-conditioned room and have a drink.
    Why not? What was the old phrase?
I
never drink before five in the afternoon. Thank God, it’s five o’clock