Summitt

Chapter Thirty-Eight

In mid-June, some eight weeks after Earl Thomson’s aborted trial, Selby sat in Senator Lester’s private office, which adjoined a conference room furnished with a bar, a burnished walnut table and a dozen leather armchairs.

Summer was well advanced in the capital. The Potomac was swollen and shimmered with heat and the leaves of the trees on the banks were a lush, dark green, moist with an oily humidity-

In an hour or so the avenues would be circled with streams of traffic, but now Selby could see the famous lighted monuments of the city, the great marble heads and figures of the nation’s founders gleaming through the darkness.

In the small kitchen beside a reception room, Victoria Kim made tea and heated breakfast rolls. She could hear a murmur from the executive suite, the senator and Selby’s muted voices.

Their work was almost done, the debriefings over; Miss Kim had already confirmed Selby’s return ticket to Philadelphia. For several days he had been meeting with operative agencies and committees, giving them accounts of his conversations with his brother, Jennifer Easton, George Thomson and various personnel at Summitt City.

Simon Correll’s death, given its circumstances, had created a worldwide stir; the news media had covered the story with obsessive intensity. A plant manager, Clem Stoltzer, arriving in the Summitt mall after the slayings, had theorized that the security guard, one Henry Ledge, had attacked Correll without provocation, apparently suffering from a psychotic seizure. Police and ballistic experts testified only that both men had died in an exchange of gunfire from a Beretta Model 951 and a .45 army automatic, both guns found at the scene. There were no witnesses.

A federal investigation of Summitt City’s connections to Camp Saliaris and the Chemical Corps was underway with a panel of general officers. A civilian overview was provided by retired congressmen and public officials. These inquiries were coordinated with a probe at East Chester, Pennsylvania, into the criminal conspiracy indictments stemming from Earl Thomson’s confession to the charges brought against him by the People of Pennsylvania.

Civic and political leaders from many nations had commented respectfully on the death of Simon Correll. His Excellency, the Suffragan Bishop Waring, spoke to reporters from his new station, the Abbey of St. Georges in Brussels. The bishop said, “It was my privilege to know Mr. Correll and his family for many years. He was a man of the world, a master of complex enterprises, but with a sense of poetry and imagination. In the words of two great Americans, Mr. Correll ‘understood profoundly that injustice anywhere threatened justice everywhere’... and that ‘in the councils of nations as well as the human heart, the concept of God must be a verb, not merely a noun.’ ”

The participants in the cover-up at East Chester fell like a row of dominoes. Earl Thomson had involved his beloved mother and Miguel Santos. Oliver Jessup incriminated Lieutenant Eberle and Captain Slocum. Slocum, after plea-bargaining futilely with DA Jonathan Lamb, had surrendered the tapes which proved at least one degree of Counselor Allan Davic’s complicity. Davic was suspended immediately by the bar associations of Pennsylvania and New York. Slocum was indicted for perjury and misprison of felonies — specifically for lying about the substance of his first interrogation of Earl Thomson and of withholding information relating to Casper Gideen’s murder by Lieutenant Gus Eberle, and the felonious assaults by Earl Thomson on Shana Selby.

Goldie Boy Jessup contended in shouting, biblical rhetoric that he had been “possessed” by both Captain Slocum and Lieutenant Eberle. He had been forced to accept their “false gods.” He had lied and accepted bribes only to save his life for the further service of the Lord Jesus.

On the federal level, the investigation of the Chemical Corps’ illegal fiduciary connections with the Correll Group were complicated by the fact that General Adam Taggart, after destroying certain military files and all his personal papers, had seated himself at his desk and taken his life with his service revolver.

“That was a plus, of course,” Senator Lester had confided to Selby. “Simplified things considerably.”

The general’s son had not been extradited by Jonathan Lamb. The U.S. Army had by then placed its own legal hold on the officer... Derek Taggart was arrested in Germany and ordered to face a court-martial for conduct described in the Articles of War as detrimental to the “integrity, good reputation and best interests of the service.” It developed that the young German carpenter with whom Ace Taggart lived off-base had been picked up by the German police for trafficking in drugs to the military and using the Frankfurt quarters he shared with Taggart as the “drop” for these operations.

The federal panel established that General Taggart, through Camp Saliaris, had for years been misappropriating massive amounts of U.S. Army chemicals and classified scientific information. Informed speculation held that this was the true reason the general had taken his life; his soldier’s pride simply could not and would not face the exposure of his long and personally profitable links to the Correll Group.

Jonathan Lamb, however, did not need an indictment against Captain Ace Taggart to buttress his charges against Slocum, Eberle and the other conspirators. He had more than enough evidence to convict them all.

Miguel Santos, for instance, had changed his testimony with almost desperate relief. In his second version of what happened the night Shana Selby was raped, he stated that Earl Thomson had arrived home alone at approximately eleven o’clock, his clothing soaked and mud-stained. He had forced Santos to help him dispose of the red Porsche, threatening to have him both fired and deported to Cuba if he refused. They had dumped the car later that same night into a deserted, water-filled quarry near Wahasset. Confronted with subpoenaed bank records, Santos reluctantly amplified his statement and admitted that Thomson had given him twenty thousand dollars for this cooperation.

Mrs. Adele Thomson had perjured herself and supported her son’s alibi for reasons which could only be speculated on... she had retreated into a state of real or affected shock since her fatal shooting of her husband, and had been judged by a competency board as unfit to stand trial at that time.

A court order, secured by Ferdinand Bittermank, had given the federal government possession of the film cassette Harry Selby recovered from Komoto’s shop in Philadelphia. This evidence was of only presumptive value now, since the film stock had shredded and dissolved while being reassembled by government technicians.

“It was an amateur’s job from start to finish,” the senator had told Selby. “Thomson used a second-grade stock, for some reason, didn’t understand the technical aspects of splicing and lighting and so forth.”

The content of the film as described by Selby and Wilger was not required in any event, since the film itself was not pertinent to the specifics of Jonathan Lamb’s indictments.

The People’s case against the principal conspirators was without loopholes. Only Judge Desmond Flood and Mr. Dominic Lorso had so far escaped the wide cast of the nets of justice. But everyone else variously faced disbarment, fines, loss of pension, deportation and prison terms... Counselor Davic, Captain Slocum and Lieutenant Eberle, the Reverend Oliver Jessup, Miguel Santos. And Earl Thomson.

Thomson’s confession was a vindictive document, with a tone of contemptuous satisfaction in its detailed accusations against those who had lied and schemed and suborned for him.

Ferdinand Bittermank attended the federal committee hearings with Selby and Lester. A strongly built man with a cold face, Bittermank had been assigned to complete the government’s investigation of the Correll Group network outside the United States. It was through Bittermank’s orders that the photographic technicians at the CIA had attempted to “save” and “restore” the Summitt film but the stock had been grainy and disintegrating, and many of the images so blurred and unfocused (as Selby himself had seen), that it would have been difficult to prove anything conclusive from the shredding foot-age.

Earl Thomson, speaking through his court-appointed attorney, had denied all knowledge of the film, as had Derek Taggart.

Bittermank’s position was that Summitt City was now a closed issue, that the Correll Group had been checked and contained at this point in the United States.

Operating with extensive but confidential instructions, Bittermank had instituted an investigation of the Correll Group’s commitments with foreign governments — in particular Belgium and the Netherlands, Africa and South America.

“His authority supercedes everyone’s in this area,” Lester told Selby.

“Summitt City, as Bittermank sees it,” Lester continued, “is at present nullified, dysfunctional, isolated, any or all three. In Bittermank’s own words; ‘We’re vaccinated against it.’ By which he means his technicians have clamped a surveillance bell over it. They’ve got the name of the Correll Group’s basic chemical formula.”

Bittermank’s people had picked up oblique references to the various Ancilia strains from taped conversations between General Taggart and Simon Correll, abstracted from one of the last “Snow Virgin recordings.” Still, the technicians hadn’t identified the compound other than by name and couldn’t determine what residue or discernible effects the Ancilia substance left or might leave with its subjects.

Under the umbrella of a government health inspection program, Bittermank’s team had examined a significant sample of the population at Summitt. However, they had found no traces of any determinant elements in bodily organs, liver, kidneys, blood stream and so forth. They had hypothesized then that since the Ancilia strain might be a mimetic synthesis of the human brain’s own chemical secretions, electro-brain scans couldn’t be expected to detect it either.

As indeed they had not.

Lester said, “The effect of this chemical compound on the people at Summitt hasn’t shown up in lab tests, and doesn’t seem to be a weighable or measurable entity. But I’m goddamn sure, Selby, from what you told me, that the Correll Group did achieve an effective control over the minds and emotions of the inhabitants of Summitt City. Still, that mental straitjacketing apparently can’t be tracked by sensors, chemical dyes, or presented on graphs. And Bittermank’s people, tops in their fields, haven’t even been able to pinpoint the source of the infusion element, whether it’s the water supply or an atmospheric inhalation from the fern and foliage irrigation system which is part of every building, home and office in Summitt, except — significantly, I’d say — those occupied by company managers, security personnel and the Correll living quarters.

“Ferdinand Bittermank,” Lester went on, “has carte blanche to investigate the potential international influence of the Correll Group. But even though I’ve been officially doubleparked on this, Selby, I still took my own personal look at Summitt, based on what you and I learned.”

On his orders, the senator explained, a group of sociologists and psychiatrists from various national health agencies had gone to Summitt to examine the inferences which seemed to be warranted from what Wilger and Selby had reportedly seen in the Earl Thomson film.

These classified reports to Senator Lester had so far been as inconclusive as those of Bittermank’s medical diagnosticians. The psychiatrists hadn’t observed any social or exterior pathologies whatsoever among the population at Summitt City. The eccentricities, or divergencies from accepted customs they’d noted were all on a scale in the “upper limits of normal.” Nothing aberrant, incapacitating or asocial had been uncovered.

“But the fact is,” Selby reminded the senator that morning in his office, “my father was a living example of what Taggart or Correll’s people could accomplish with drugs. You told me that yourself.”

“But he was a special instance, Selby. They couldn’t be complacent about their accomplishment with Jonas Selby because they’d failed with him.”

Senator Lester’s office was brightening; a sunny sheen covered the big office windows. The white mass of the Lincoln and Washington monuments stood out radiantly against the gradually widening horizons.

Victoria Kim, in a gray sheath dress and white clogs, brought in tea and breakfast rolls and gave Selby his airlines ticket to Philadelphia. “I’ve run Clem to bring the car around,” she told him. “If you leave in half an hour, you should have plenty of time. There won’t be any traffic.”

Victoria Kim poured tea into cups patterned with copper-colored flowers. Senator Lester relaxed in his chair, stretched his arms and said, “The fact is, Selby, the attitudes of the men and women at Summitt don’t differ significantly from the national average. Our social experts, of course, hedged their conclusions with the usual on-the-other-hand disclaimers and cop-outs. But their consensus is there’s no reliable way to establish what’s normal in these areas. Or even to say that selfish concern for one’s own immediate welfare is wrong.

“People don’t want to be their brothers’ keepers these days. They flat out don’t want to. That’s a fact you can’t argue with.”

“You feel I wasted my time trying?” Selby asked him.

Lester picked up a file from his desk, scanned it briefly, then dropped it in front of Selby. “It’s spelled out clearly enough. Emotional isolation, the psychiatrists insist, is not only a typical attitude but a sane and reasonable one today in most American communities. Any compulsion to get involved is suspect. It could reflect some mental imbalance, a dangerous or antisocial refusal to accept or come to terms with the status quo. Given our personal information and what inductive reasoning we can apply to the problem, it’s still a matter of conjecture whether the population of Summitt is programmed, permanently or not. The effects of the mimic chemicals may wear off. Or the people may go on indefinitely exactly as they are. It would be difficult to tell in either case, because our experts tell me they’d probably find the same rate of indifference they found at Summitt if they’d taken their samples in St. Louis or Boston or Atlanta or anywhere else for that matter.”

“From personal experience,” Victoria Kim said, “loving one’s neighbor is fine with dead-bolts on your doors and a big Doberman trotting at your side when you’re jogging. It won’t keep you warm nights, but it can keep you alive.”

The senator’s phone rang. It was his chauffeur, Clem, on the limo phone from the congressional parking lot. “We’ll be right down,” Lester told him.

Standing, he said to Selby, “I’ll get your father’s diaries before I forget. By the way, Bittermank wanted to Xerox them for his files. I was pretty sure you wouldn’t mind so I didn’t bother checking.”

When he went into the conference room, Victoria Kim said to Selby, “You mentioned that your daughter was in summer school. Is she enjoying herself?”

“I believe so, thanks. She got behind in several classes and is working hard to catch up. We’re planning a vacation in Switzerland over the Christmas holidays. Shana’s determined to get a grip on the language.”

“No, thanks.”

“I’d better tidy things up. If you’re in Washington and need anything, you’ll call us, won’t you? You have our numbers and extensions, I believe.”

“Yes, thank you.”

She collected the tea things and left the office.

Selby had been tempted to ask her to use her sources, as she had with the Cadles, to help him locate the photographer, J. D. Parks, who had closed his office and left East Chester six weeks earlier. Parks had never billed Selby for the enlargements he’d made of Thomson’s license plates. The German janitor was no help. One morning the office was cleaned out, that was all he could tell Selby. But the old man seemed relieved that the ’Nam vet was gone. The breadcrumbs he’d left on the windowsill attracted more ants than birds. Respect for living creatures was fine, the old German grumbled, but not when it violated sanitary codes.

But it was already part of a past Selby didn’t want to examine... Dade Road, Vinegar Hill, the helicopter over Brandywine Lakes... and so he’d decided to forget it.

He looked at the morning sunshine on the Lincoln and Washington monuments. Emotional isolation...

Dorcas Brett had taken an official leave of absence after the interruption of Thomson’s trial. She had wanted to resign, but Lamb had asked her to put off any final decision until he had completed his indictments against Slocum and the others.

The last night Selby had spent with her, she had confessed she felt fragmented, as if pieces of herself were scattered everywhere. “I’m more part of your life and Shana’s than I am of my own. I can’t define myself with any accuracy, and I’d like time to try. I want to talk to my father. That’s strange, because I haven’t needed him for years. As much as I loathed Earl Thomson, I felt he belonged in a hospital instead of prison. Even my anger couldn’t convince me otherwise.”

She pulled herself gently away from him and sat on the edge of the bed. The dim moonlight glinted on her black hair falling in a mass around her neat, white shoulders.

“I’ve got a need to please. I’ve said that before, and it’s in conflict usually with a basic need for privacy, or of wanting to be alone. I don’t know...” She had turned and smiled at him. “The thing is, I don’t know if I need to be needed, Harry. Or even wanted to be. Maybe I’m afraid of that for some reason...”

Senator Lester came out of the conference room now with Jonas Selby’s diaries and notebooks wrapped in brown paper and tied neatly with knotted cord. They walked together to the elevators and took a car down to the lobby. Selby carried his father’s diaries under his arm, which seemed, in a sense, to complete the circle... they were, after all, what had taken him down to Summitt City in the first place, such a long time ago.

Clem stood beside Lester’s limousine in the congressional parking area. He said, “Morning, Mr. Selby,” and stowed the diaries and Selby’s overnight bag in the trunk.

The sun was higher now, streaming brilliantly across the Lincoln and Washington monuments. Senator Lester looked beyond Selby to these symbols of the American experience and said with a smile, “I don’t intend to pull a Fourth of July speech from my pocket, but we stopped Simon Correll and their conglomerate in their tracks in this country and I’m proud of it. The Congress of the United States is not totally composed of ninnies and frauds and opportunists. Of course it won’t put to shame the memory of the Platos and Justice Marshalls and Holmeses of the world either. Congressmen, most of us, despite our rhetoric, aren’t passionately concerned about saving whales and condors and exotic spiders, although we do get spastic and apoplectic about gun control and abortions and prayers in schools. But with all our pious speechmaking and expensive junkets we’re the best representative assembly of free men in the world and I’m proud of the job we do and the country we serve.”

“With all due respect,” Selby said, “if that’s not a Fourth of July speech, it’s a fairly reasonable facsimile. Would you please spell out just what you’re trying to tell me?”

“Simply that there are things you and I have got to take on faith, Selby. In certain areas — and Summitt City is one of them — no one, I repeat, no one, is ever sure of more than about eighty percent of the truth. It’s guessing at the remaining twenty percent that creates conspiracy theories, which can be as dangerous and addictive as heroin, I can tell you.”

“Faith is fine,” Selby said, “it moves mountains, but so can doubt, as I think some Frenchman said.”

“Selby, speculation feeds on itself. I’ll grant you it takes faith, a lot of it, to buy the fact that the most sophisticated film labs in the world, I mean the CIA’s, managed to screw up the film you and Wilger turned over to them. But what’s the alternative? Reckless, subjective evaluation, that’s all I can see.” The senator patted Selby’s arm, a sympathetic gesture. “All this guesswork and anxiety simply reflects a compulsion to make some sense and order out of situations that are naturally painful and inconclusive. Selby, I personally know intelligent people who’ve gone to their graves convinced there was not just a second gunman, but a half dozen at Dallas the day Jack Kennedy was assassinated. They just wouldn’t be convinced otherwise. They wanted some comforting illusion of conspiracy rather than the truth.”

“Or they wanted that other twenty percent,” Selby said. “Maybe that’s the reason they went to their graves.”

Senator Lester shook his head firmly. “I’m not going to leave you on that morbid note. You did what you set out to do on your level, you broke that lying conspiracy of Thomson s, and you probably saved that lovely child of yours a future of heartache. Dammit, Selby, accept that. I’m proud I was able to help. As a matter of fact,” he went on, removing his wallet and taking a card from it, “we could make a good team. Here s a number where you can always reach me. I know Vickie gave you the office number and extensions, but this is a priority line. Connects directly to any meeting I’m in, regardless of circumstances.”

He closed the car door and smiled at Selby through the open rear window. “Have a good flight, Selby. When you’re in Switzerland with a glass of something warm after a day on the slopes, think of me. Take care of yourself, Harry, and God bless.”

They shook hands and the senator stepped back and Clem raised the rear window from his front control panel.

Selby turned and glanced around as the car swung out of the congressional parking lot. The senator stood with the warm sun on his face, his head thrown back and staring, Selby decided, with an expectant and defiant challenge at the monuments along the mall, the great and sternly righteous figures of his nation’s founders.