Desperate Measures

SEVEN
1

No matter how desperately Pittman wanted to, he couldn’t sleep. The shock of learning about Standish’s suicide kept him and Jill awake, watching CNN for further details until after 2:00 A.M. A summary of Standish’s long, distinguished career was punctuated by photographs of him and the other grand counselors, first as robust, steely-eyed, ambitious-looking young men, later as elderly icons of diplomacy standing with bolt-straight dignity despite their frail bodies, some of them bald, others with wispy white hair, their faces wrinkled, skin drooping from their necks, but their eyes communicating as much ambition as ever.

When it became clear that the report wouldn’t be updated until the morning, Pittman reluctantly turned off the television. In the darkness of the hotel room, he lay tensely in bed, his eyes open, directed toward the murky ceiling. Beside him, Jill’s eventual slow, shallow breathing made him think that at least she had finally managed to shut off her mind and get some rest. But Pittman couldn’t stop the announcer’s words from echoing through his frantic memory: “… died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.”

The suicide was totally alien to Pittman’s expectation. He strained to analyze the implications. The grand counselors had killed one of their own, Jonathan Millgate, in an effort to keep him from revealing information about them. The cover-up, which had involved using Pittman as a scapegoat, had gotten so out of hand that another grand counselor, Anthony Lloyd, had died from a stroke. Now a third grand counselor, Victor Standish, had shot himself, presumably because of fear. Earlier, Denning had said gleefully, “Three dead. Two to go.” But Pittman didn’t share Denning’s manic enthusiasm. True, Pittman was encouraged that a fissure of weakness had developed in what he had assumed was an armorlike resolution among the grand counselors. But if the tension was affecting them so extremely, there was every danger that the remaining two grand counselors, Eustace Gable and Winston Sloane, would succumb to age and desperation.

Damn it, Pittman thought, I have to do something. Soon.

When he and Jill had arrived in Washington that evening, one of his primary emotions had been rage, the urge to get even with the grand counselors for what they had done to him. But his encounter with Bradford Denning had made him realize the consequences of rage. The emotion had so distorted Denning’s approach to life that he had wasted his life. Indeed, tonight he had worked himself into such a frenzy that his rage had nearly killed him.

As Pittman continued to lie wearily, rigidly on the bed in the dark hotel room, it occurred to him that Denning’s rage and the grand counselors’ fear were mirror images, that Denning and the grand counselors were unwittingly destroying themselves because of their obsession with the past.

But not me, Pittman thought. What I’m doing isn’t a disguised version of a death wish. It isn’t a version of the suicide I attempted a week ago. Indeed he was struck by the irony that suicide, which had seemed reasonable and inevitable to him, now was shocking when someone else committed it. I want to live. Oh God, how I want to live. I never believed I’d feel that way again.

Pittman’s thoughts were suddenly interrupted as he felt Jill move beside him. Surprising him, she sat up. He was able to see her shadowy silhouette in the darkness.

“What did you say?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

“Sure you did. You were mumbling.”

“Mumbling?… I thought you were asleep.”

“I thought you were asleep.”

“Can’t.”

“Me, either. What were you mumbling? Something about you want to live.”

“I must have been thinking out loud.”

“Well, I applaud your motive. In a week, you’ve certainly come a long way from putting a pistol into your mouth to wanting to live.”

“I was thinking about Denning.”

“Yes. We ought to phone the hospital and find out how he is.”

“I was thinking how thrilled he was to know that three of the grand counselors were dead.”

“That’s what put him in the hospital.”

“Exactly. And there’s no guarantee that the two remaining grand counselors won’t wind up in the hospital or worse because of this also. I was thinking that I might as well be dead if Eustace Gable and Winston Sloane don’t survive. Because, in that case, I won’t have any way to prove that I’m innocent. Everything’s happening so fast. I don’t know if I’ve got enough time. I have to…”

“What?”

“I used to be a reporter. It’s what I do best-interviewing people. I think it’s the only way to save us.”