The Chancellor Manuscript by Robert Ludlum Read Free Book Online Page A

script. Chancellor’s CIA would become an elite corps of disaffected former intelligence specialists acting outside government channels.
    What the hell
, Aaron Sheffield had said.
It’s better dramatically. We got two types of villains, and Washington’s happy
.
    But Chancellor was furious. He knew what he was talking about. He had spoken with truly disaffected men who had worked for the agency and was appalled at what they had been called upon to do. Appalled because it was illegal and appalled because there were no alternatives. A maniac named J. Edgar Hoover had severed all intelligence conduits between the FBI and the CIA. The men of the CIA themselves would have to go after the domestic information withheld from them. Who were they going to complain to? Mitchell? Nixon?
    Most of whatever power
Counterstrike!
had was in the specific use of the agency. To eliminate it was to vitiate a great part of the book. Peter had objected strenuously, and the more angry he became, the more, it seemed, he drank. And the more he drank, the more provocative had the girl beside him become.
    Sheffield had driven them home. Peter and the girl were in the backseat, her skirt above her waist, her blouse unbuttoned, her enormous breasts exposed in racing shadows driving him wild. Drunken wild.
    And they’d gone inside together while Sheffield drove off. The girl had brought two bottles of Pernod, a gift from Aaron, and the games began in earnest. Wild games, drunken, naked games.
    Until the shooting pains in his skull stopped him, providing a few moments of clarity. He had lurched for the telephone, thumbed insanely through his notes on the bedside table for Sheffield’s number, and punched the buttons furiously.
    He had roared at Sheffield, calling him every obscenity he could think of, screaming his objections—and his guilt—at having been manipulated. There’d be
no
changes in
Counterstrike!
    As he lay there on the bed, the blond girl beside him, Chancellor remembered Sheffield’s words over the phone.
    “Easy, kid. What difference does it make to you? You don’t have script approval. We were just being polite. Get down from your sky-high perch. You’re just a lousy little homemaker-fucker like the rest of us.”
    The blond girl beside Peter on the bed was Sheffield’s wife.
    Chancellor turned to her. The vacuous eyes were brighter, but still dead. The mouth opened, and an experienced tongue slid sensuously out and then back and forth, conveying an unmistakable message.
    The well-applauded performer was ready to perform again.
    Who gave a shit? He reached for her.

3
    The man whose face was among the most recognized in the nation sat alone at table ten in the Mayflower Restaurant on Connecticut Avenue. The table was by a window, and the occupant kept glancing through the glass absently, but not without a certain vague hostility, at the passersby on the street.
    He had arrived at precisely eleven thirty-five; he would finish his lunch and depart at twelve-forty. It had been an unbroken custom for over twenty years. The hour and five minutes was the custom, not the Mayflower. The Mayflower was a recent change, since the closing of Harvey’s, several blocks away.
    The face, with its enormous jaws, drawn-out mouth, and partially thyroid eyes, had disintegrated. The jaws were sagging jowls; creased, blemished flesh overlapped the slits that had been eyes; the touched-up strands of hair attested to the ferocious ego that was intrinsic to the aggressively negative expression.
    His usual companion was not in evidence. Declininghealth and two strokes prevented his elegantly dressed presence. The soft, pampered face—struggling for masculinity—had for decades been the flower to the bristled cactus. The man about to have lunch looked across the table as if he expected to see his attractive alter ego. That he saw no one seemed to trigger a periodic tremor in his fingers and a recurrent twitching of his mouth. He seemed enveloped in