Desperate Measures

10

The echo of faltering footsteps on a stone floor alerted Pittman. He straightened, turned from the window, hoped that no one else had seen what he had, and directed his full attention to Eustace Gable, who entered the room, looking considerably frailer and older than when he had left. Ashen, the grand counselor regarded the single sheet of fax paper that he had brought from his office.

“How did you obtain this?” the old man asked.

Pittman didn’t answer.

Gable assumed as imperious a stance as he could manage. “Answer me. How did you obtain this?”

Not knowing the substance of the message, knowing only that it was what he had asked Mrs. Page, using her contacts at the Washington Post, to send to him, Pittman hoped that he sounded convincingly casual. “Surely you haven’t forgotten that lately my assignment has been obituaries.” Pittman stood, approached Gable, and attempted to take the fax from Gable’s rigid grip.

Gable resisted.

Damn it, if I don’t get a chance to read this… Pittman thought in hidden panic.

Unexpectedly, Gable released his grasp.

As if he’d seen it numerous times, Pittman glanced offhandedly down at the text. It was from the obituary page of the Boston Globe, December 23, 1952. The death notice for Duncan Kline.

Pittman’s temples throbbed, sickening him. “I’m sure it was a difficult matter for you to decide-whether to arrange for a small discreet notice about Duncan Kline’s passing or whether to allow the larger obituary that one might expect for a remarkable teacher who had taught many remarkable students. In the first case, Duncan Kline’s former colleagues and students might have been suspicious about the indignity of giving him only a few words. They might have sought out more information. But in the second case, they might have unwittingly learned too much if the circumstances of his death were elaborated. As it is, you struck a prudent compromise.”

The room became deathly silent. Thinking with furious speed, Pittman imagined Bradford Denning struggling higher up the slope. The old man would not yet be close enough to be a danger. But Pittman had been disturbed by his resolve. He remembered how Denning had pressed his left hand to his pained chest while his right hand clutched his pistol.

“The obituary tells you nothing,” Gable said. “It’s been a matter of public record for more than forty years. If there was anything incriminating in it, someone would have discovered it long ago.”

Pittman raised his voice. “But only if someone knew what to look for.” The faster his heart rushed, the more his lungs felt starved for oxygen. His reporter’s instincts had seized him, propelling his thoughts, thrusting them against one another, linking what he already knew with what he had just now discovered, making startling connections.

“Duncan Kline died in 1952,” Pittman said. “That was the year he suddenly appeared at the State Department, demanding to see all of you. July. Eisenhower had won the Republican nomination for President. All of you were busy ruining the reputations of your competitors while you prepared to jump ship from a Democratic administration to one that you were sure would be Republican. Your conservative, anti-Soviet attitudes were in tune with the times. The future was yours. Then Kline showed up, and he scared the hell out of you, didn’t he?”

As yet, Pittman had no idea why the grand counselors had been afraid of Kline, but the intensity with which they listened to Pittman’s insistence that they had indeed been afraid of Kline gave Pittman the incentive to follow that line of argument.

“You thought you’d buried him in your past,” Pittman said. “But suddenly there he was, making a very public appearance, and yes, he scared the hell out of you. In fact, he scared you so much that in the midst of your determined efforts to convince Eisenhower and his people to bring you on board, you took time out-all of you-to go to a reunion at Grollier. That was in December. Kline must have put a lot of pressure on you since July, when he showed up at the State Department. Finally you had no choice. You all went back to the reunion at Grollier because it was natural for Kline to be there, as well. It wouldn’t have seemed unusual for you and Kline to be seen together. While you tried to settle your differences without attracting attention.”

Pittman’s nervous system was in overdrive as he studied Winston Sloane’s reactions, the old man’s facial muscles tightening in a stressful acknowledgment of what Pittman was saying. For his part, Eustace Gable’s expression provided no indication as to whether Pittman was guessing correctly.

“Duncan Kline had retired from teaching,” Pittman continued. “He was living in Boston, but this obituary says he died at a cottage he owned in the Berkshire Hills. I don’t need to remind you they’re in western Massachusetts, just south of Vermont. In December. Why the hell would an elderly man who lived in Boston want to be at a cottage in the mountains during winter? Under the circumstances, the best reason I can think of is that he made the relatively short drive to the cottage after he attended the reunion at Grollier. Because his business with all of you wasn’t finished. Because you needed an isolated place where he and you could continue discussing your differences.”

Pittman stopped, needing to control his breathing, hoping that his inward frenzy wasn’t betraying him. As frightened as he was, he felt elated that neither Gable nor Sloane contradicted what he had said. Imagining Bradford Denning climbing the slope outside, not daring to risk a glance toward the window to see how close Denning had staggered to the mansion, Pittman shifted toward a wall of bookshelves at the side of the room, desperate to prevent his audience from facing the window and seeing what was happening outside.

Pittman pointed toward a section of the obituary he held. “Duncan Kline was English. He came to the United States in the early 1920s, after teaching for a time at Cambridge.”

Pittman’s stomach tensed as he made another connection. British. If only I’d known earlier that Kline was British, that he came from Cambridge.

“I’m sure it must have been quite a coup for an Anglophile school like Grollier to have acquired an instructor from Cambridge as one of its faculty members. Ironic, isn’t it? Over the years, Grollier’s students have gone on to be congressmen, senators, governors, even a President, not to mention distinguished diplomats such as yourselves. But for all its effect on the American political system, the school’s philosophical ties have always been to Britain and Europe. I’ve seen the transcripts of the seminars you took from him. Kline’s specialty was history. Political science.”

Winston Sloane’s face turned gray.

Pittman continued. “So a political theorist from Cambridge bonded with five special students and trained them for their exceptional diplomatic careers. The five of you provided the philosophical underpinnings for almost every administration since Truman. The theories Duncan Kline instilled in you-”

“No! When we were young maybe,” Winston Sloane objected. “But we never carried through on Duncan’s theories!”

“Winston, enough!” Gable said.

“But listen to what he’s saying! This is exactly what we feared! He’ll destroy our reputations! We were never Communists!”

And that was it. What Pittman had fervently hoped, that one of the grand counselors would unwittingly volunteer information, had finally happened. The word Communists seemed to echo eerily. At once the room became disturbingly silent just as everyone in it seemed frozen in place.

Slowly Eustace Gable took out his handkerchief. He coughed into it in pain. Winston Sloane peered down at his gnarled hands, evidently ashamed of his lapse, realizing how severely he’d declined from having once been a great negotiator renowned for keeping his counsel.

For his part, Webley showed no reaction. He just kept pointing the.45 at Pittman.

Gable cleared his throat and put away his handkerchief. Despite his problems of health and age, he looked so dignified that he might have been conducting a meeting in the White House. “Complete your thought, Mr. Pittman.”

“In 1917, the Russian Revolution electrified anti-Establishment British intellectuals. Liberal faculty members at British universities, especially at Cambridge, became enchanted with socialist theory. The eventual results of that enchantment were the British spy rings-former students who’d been recruited by their professors at Cambridge-working for the Soviets to undermine England and the United States. Guy Burgess. Donald Maclean. Kim Philby. In fact, now that I think of it, Burgess and Maclean defected to Russia in 1951. Philby was suspected of having warned them that they were about to be arrested as spies. The next year, Duncan Kline made his threatening appearance outside your offices at the State Department. I guess you could say that he was more advanced than Philby and the others. After all, Philby had been converted in the thirties, whereas Kline had become a Communist sympathizer a decade earlier, in the twenties. He must have been an exceptional seducer-sexually, politically. And after all, you and your friends were so young, so impressionable. You graduated from Grollier in 1933. You attended college, some of you at Harvard, others at Yale. Meanwhile, the Depression worsened. Kline’s Communist theories presumably continued to be fascinating to you, given the chaos of the country. But eventually you stayed loyal to the capitalist tradition. Did it finally occur to you that if you followed Kline’s theories and undermined the Establishment, you’d be undermining yourselves, inasmuch as you were the next leaders of the Establishment?”

Pittman stared at Gable and Sloane, but neither man responded.

“I think you’re opportunists,” Pittman said. “If communism had taken control of the United States, you’d have insinuated yourselves into the highest levels of the new system. But once the Second World War started, communism lost its limited appeal here. The Soviets appeared to be as huge a threat as the Nazis. So you insinuated yourselves into the upper echelons of the State Department. There, you not only jettisoned your former Communist attitudes; you also gained more power by eliminating your competitors, claiming that they were Communist sympathizers.” Pittman thought nervously of Bradford Denning clutching his pistol, struggling up the slope past fir trees, toward the mansion. “In the anti-Communist McCarthy hysteria of the early fifties, you built your careers on the sabotaged careers of other diplomats. Then Duncan Kline showed up and threatened to ruin everything. What did he do? Hold you up for blackmail? Unless you paid him to be quiet, he’d reveal that you were as vulnerable as the men you accused of being Communists, is that it?”

The room became so still that Pittman could feel blood pounding behind his eardrums.

Eustace Gable forlornly shook his wizened head. His tone was a blend of discouragement and disappointment. “You know far more than I expected.” The old man exhaled wearily. “You’ve demonstrated remarkable journalistic skills. That’s why I permitted you to come here-so that I could judge the extent of your knowledge. But you’re wrong.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Duncan didn’t attempt to blackmail us. He didn’t want money,” Gable said.

“Then what did he want?”

“For us to be true to the principles he’d taught us. He was appalled that we’d formulated such stern government policies against the Soviet Union. He wanted us to undo those policies and recommend cooperation between the two countries. It was nonsense, of course. The Soviets had been made out to be such monsters that there wasn’t any way to change America’s official attitude toward them. Any politician or diplomat who tried would be committing professional suicide. No, the only way to build a career was to be more anti-Soviet than anyone else.”

“And after all, your careers mattered more than anything,” Pittman said.

“Of course. You can’t accomplish anything if you’re out of the loop.”

“So you balanced Duncan Kline against your careers and…”

“Killed him,” Gable said.

Pittman tensed, his instincts warning him. It wasn’t Gable’s habit to reveal information. Why was he doing so now? To hide his unease, Pittman frowned toward the obituary he held. “It says here that Duncan Kline died from exposure during a winter storm.” Dear God, Pittman thought. He finally understood. Involuntarily, he murmured, “The snow.”

“That’s right, Mr. Pittman. The snow. Duncan was an alcoholic. When we met him at his cabin, he refused to be budged by our arguments. He insisted that if we didn’t soften our policy toward the Soviet Union, he would expose us as former Communist sympathizers. A blizzard was forecast. It was late afternoon, but the snow was falling thickly enough already that we couldn’t see the lake behind Duncan’s cabin. He’d been drinking to excess before we arrived at the cabin. He drank heavily all the while we tried to reason with him. I suspect that if he’d been sober, we might have had more patience with him. As it was, we used the alcohol to kill him. We encouraged him to keep drinking, pretending to drink with him, waiting for him to collapse. Or so we hoped. I have to give Duncan credit. After a while, even as drunk as he was, he finally suspected that something was wrong. He stopped drinking. No amount of encouragement would persuade him to swallow the scotch we poured for him. In the end, we had to force him. And I have to give Duncan credit for something else-all those years of rowing had made him extremely strong. Drunk and in his sixties, he put up quite a struggle. But he wasn’t any match for the five of us. You helped hold his arms, didn’t you, Winston? We poured the scotch down his throat. Oh yes, we did. He vomited. But we kept pouring.”

Pittman listened, repelled. The scene that Gable described reminded Pittman of the way in which Gable had murdered his wife.

“At last, after he was unconscious, we picked him up, carried him outside, and left him in a snowbank,” Gable said. “His former students and faculty members knew how extreme his alcohol problem was. They thought that the reference to exposure was discreet, since privately many of them were able to learn the true nature of his death. Or what they thought was the true nature-that he’d wandered drunkenly outside in his shirt sleeves and passed out in the snowstorm. No one ever discovered that we had helped Duncan along. We removed all evidence that we’d been in the cabin. We got in our cars and drove away. The snow filled our tire tracks. A relative of his became worried when Duncan didn’t return to Boston after the reunion at Grollier. The state police were sent to the cabin, where they saw Duncan’s car, searched, and found his bare foot sticking out from under a snowdrift. An animal had tugged off his shoe and eaten his toes.”

“And almost forty years later, Jonathan Millgate began having nightmares about what you’d done,” Pittman said.

“Jonathan was always the most delicate among us,” Gable said. “Strange. During the Vietnam War, he could recommend destroying villages suspected of ties with the Communists. He knew full well that everyone in those villages would be killed, and yet he never lost a moment’s sleep over them. But about that time, his favorite dog had to be destroyed because it was suffering from kidney disease. He wept about that dog for a week. He had it buried, with a stone marker, in his backyard. I once saw him out there talking to the gravestone, and that was two years after the fact. I think that he could have adjusted to what we did to Duncan, a bloodless death, falling ever deeply asleep with snow for a pillow, the corpse preserved in the cold, if only the animal hadn’t eaten Duncan’s toes. The mutilation took control of Jonathan’s imagination. Yes, he did have nightmares, although I assumed that after a time the nightmares stopped. However, a few years ago, I was surprised, to say the least, when he began referring to them again. The Soviet Union had collapsed. Instead of being jubilant, Jonathan reacted by saying that the fall of communism only proved that Duncan’s death had been needless. The logic eluded me. But the threat didn’t. When Jonathan began pouring his tortured soul out to Father Dandridge, I felt very threatened indeed.”

“So you killed him, and here we are,” Pittman said, “trying to come to terms with your secrets. Was it really worth it, everything you did to me, the people who died because of the cover-up? You’re elderly. You’re infirm. The odds are that you would have died long before the investigation led to a trial.”

Gable rubbed his emaciated chin and assessed Pittman with eyes that seemed a thousand years old. “You still don’t understand. With all that you’ve been through and with all that we’ve discussed this afternoon, you still somehow fail to understand. Of course I’d be dead before the matter even got as far as a grand jury. I don’t care about being punished. Indeed, as far as I’m concerned, I did nothing for which I deserve to be punished. What I care about is my reputation. I won’t have a lifetime of devoted public service dragged into the gutter and judged by commoners because I eliminated a child molester, a drunkard, and a Communist. Duncan Kline was evil. As a youth, I didn’t think so, of course. I admired him. But eventually I realized how despicable he was. His death was no loss to humanity. My reputation is worth a hundred thousand Duncan Klines. The good I have done for this country is a legacy that I refuse to allow to be smeared because of a desperate act of necessity that protected my career.”

“Your career.”

“Precisely,” Gable said. “Nothing else matters. I’m afraid that I brought you here under false pretenses. The million dollars, the two passports, I regret to say that I never intended to provide them. I wanted to discover what you knew. Quite a lot, it turns out. But without proof, it’s all theory. You’re hardly a threat to my security. But you are very much a threat to my reputation. Winston’s behavior this afternoon shows that he, too, is a threat to my reputation. He can’t guard his tongue. Fortunately both problems have a common solution. Mr. Webley.”

“Yes, sir.”

Webley proceeded toward Pittman and stopped behind him. Pittman’s bowels turned cold when he heard the hammer on his.45 being cocked.

“No!”

The barrel of the.45 suddenly appeared beside him. The shot assaulted his eardrums. Across the room, Winston Sloane gasped, jerking back, blood erupting from his chest and from behind him, spattering the sofa upon which he sat. The old man shuddered, then collapsed as if he were made of brittle sticks that could no longer support one another. His head drooped, tilting his balance, sending his body sprawling onto the floor. Pittman was sure he heard bones scraping together.

The shocked expression on Pittman’s face communicated the question he was too horrified to ask. Why?

“I told you, I need to eliminate problems,” Gable said. “Mr. Webley.”

The gunman stepped from behind Pittman and walked toward the entrance to the room. He stopped, turned, set the.45 on a table, and pulled a different pistol from beneath his suit coat.

“Perhaps you’re beginning to understand,” Gable told Pittman.

Terrified, Pittman wanted to run, but Webley blocked the way out. The instant Pittman moved, he knew he’d be killed. His only defense was to keep talking. “You expect the police to believe that I came in here, pulled a gun, shot Sloane, and then was shot by your bodyguard?”

“Of course. The.45 belongs to you, after all. Mr. Webley will wipe his fingerprints from it, place the weapon in your hand, and fire it so that nitrate powder is on your fingers. The physical evidence will match what we insist happened.”

“But the plan won’t work.”

“Nonsense. Your motive has already been established.”

“That’s not what I mean.” Pittman’s voice was hoarse with fear. He stared at the pistol Webley aimed at him. “The plan won’t work because this conversation is being overheard and recorded.”

Gable’s wrinkle-rimmed eyes narrowed, creating more wrinkles. “What?”

“You were right to be suspicious,” Pittman said. “I did come here wearing a microphone.”

“Mr. Webley?”

“You saw me search him thoroughly. He’s clean. There’s no microphone.”

“Then shoot him!”

“Wait.” Pittman’s knees shook so badly that he didn’t know if he could support himself. “Listen to me. When you searched me, you missed something.”

“I said shoot him, Mr. Webley!”

But Webley hesitated.

“My gun,” Pittman said. “The.45. Before I came here, I went to a man I interviewed five years ago. He’s a specialist in security, in electronic eavesdropping. He didn’t recognize me, and he didn’t ask any questions when I said I wanted to buy a miniature microphone-transmitter that could be concealed in the handle of a.45. I knew the gun was the first thing you’d take from me. I was counting on the fact that you’d be so pleased to get it away from me, you wouldn’t stop to realize it might be another kind of threat. You checked my pen, Webley. But you didn’t think to check the gun.”

Webley grabbed the.45 off the table and pressed the button that released the pistol’s ammunition magazine from its handle.

Pittman kept talking, nauseous from fear. “I have a friend waiting in a van parked in the area. It’s loaded with electronic equipment. She’s been recording everything we said. She’s also been rebroadcasting the conversation, directing it to the Fairfax police. Her signal is designed to block out normal police transmissions. For the last hour, the only thing the police station and all the police cars in Fairfax have been able to hear is our conversation. Mr. Gable, you just told several hundred police officers that you killed Duncan Kline, Jonathan Millgate, Burt Forsyth, and Father Dandridge. If I’d had time, I’d have gotten you to admit that you also killed your wife.”

“Webley!” Gable’s outrage made his aged voice amazingly strong.

“Jesus, he’s right. Here it is.” Webley looked pale as he held up a bullet-shaped object that was obviously intended for another purpose.

“Damn you!” Gable shouted at Pittman.

“I’ll wait in line, thanks. You’re damned already.”

“Kill him!” Gable roared toward Webley.

“But…”

“Do what I say!”

“Mr. Gable, there’s no point,” Webley said.

“Isn’t there? No one subjects me to ridicule.” Spittle erupted from Gable’s mouth. “He’s ruined my reputation.” Gable’s face assumed the color of a dirty sidewalk.

As Webley continued to hesitate, Gable stalked toward him, took the gun from his hand, aimed at Pittman…

“No!” Pittman screamed.

… and fired.

The bullet struck Pittman’s chest. He groaned in anguish as he felt its slamming impact. It lifted him off his feet at the same time that it jolted him backward. In excruciating pain, he struck the floor, cracking his head, graying out for a moment, regaining consciousness, struggling to breathe.

From where he lay, his chest heaving spastically, he watched in panic as Gable coughed, faltered, then lurched toward him.

Gable’s shriveled face towered above him. The pistol was aimed toward Pittman’s forehead.

Paralyzed from shock, Pittman couldn’t even scream in protest as Gable’s finger tightened on the trigger.

The roar of the gunshot made Pittman flinch. But it didn’t come from the pistol in Gable’s hand. Rather, it came from behind Pittman, from the direction of the wall-length window as glass shattered and gunshots kept roaring, Gable’s face bursting into crimson, his chest shuddering, obscene red flower patterns appearing on it. Five shots. Six. Gable lurched against a chair. The pistol fell from his hand, clattering onto the floor. A bullet struck his windpipe, blood gushing, and suddenly Gable no longer had the stature of a diplomat, but the gangly awkwardness of a corpse toppling onto the floor.

Through gaps in the window that had been shattered by gunshots, Pittman heard Denning shout in triumph.

Denning’s grotesquely manic face was framed by a jagged hole in the window. The old man’s skin seemed to have shrunk, clinging to his cheekbones, making his face like a grinning skull.

Hearing a noise from the other side of the room, Pittman twisted in pain and saw Webley stand from behind a chair, where he had taken cover. He raised the.45, aiming toward Denning.

The pistol that had fallen from Gable’s hand lay on the floor next to Pittman. Sweating, wanting to vomit, mustering resolve, Pittman reached, grasped the weapon, and fired repeatedly at Webley, too dazed to know if he was hitting his target, merely pulling the trigger again and again, jerking from the recoil, concentrating not to lose his grip on the pistol, and then the gun wouldn’t fire anymore, and it was too heavy to be held any longer anyhow, and Pittman dropped it, his chest seized by agonizing pain.

He waited for Webley to retaliate. No response. He listened for a sound from Webley’s direction. Nothing. He fought to raise himself, squinting past Gable’s corpse, still seeing no sign of Webley.

What difference does it make? Pittman thought. If I didn’t kill him, I’m finished.

But he had to know. He squirmed higher, clutching a chair, peering over it, seeing Webley lying motionless in a pool of blood.

Pittman’s painful elation lasted only a second as he heard a groan from beyond the shattered window. His chest protesting from the effort, he turned and saw Denning clutch his own chest. The old man’s elated grin had become a scowl. His eyes, which a moment ago had been bright with victory, were now dark with terror and bewilderment. He dropped his pistol. He sagged against the windowsill. He slumped from view.

By the time Pittman staggered to the window, Denning was already dead, collapsed in a flower garden, his eyes and mouth open, his arms and legs trembling, then no longer trembling, assuming a terrible stillness.

Pittman shook his head.

In the distance, he heard a siren. Another siren quickly joined it. The wails became louder, speeding nearer.

Bracing himself against a chair, Pittman peered down, fumbling to open his sport coat. The bullet that had struck his chest protruded partly from his sweater. When Gable had commented that the two garments were the reason Pittman reacted badly to the eighty-degree temperature in the room, Pittman had been afraid that Gable would become suspicious about the sweater. After all, the sweater was the reason Pittman had needed to contact someone else he had once interviewed before he came to the mansion to confront Gable.

The person he’d gone to see was a security expert. The sweater was a bullet-resistant vest whose state-of-the-art design made it look like ordinary clothing.

I’m the sum of all the people I ever interviewed, Pittman thought morosely as he stared again out the shattered window toward Denning’s corpse.

He turned away. The effort of breathing made him wince. The security expert had explained that the woven fibers of the bullet-resistant vest could stop most projectiles but that it offered no protection against the force of their impact. Bruises and injured ribs were sometimes unavoidable.

I believe it, Pittman thought, holding himself. I feel like I’ve been kicked by a horse.

The sirens, joined by others, sped nearer and louder.

Pittman staggered across the living room, passing Gable’s corpse, then Sloane’s, then Webley’s. The stench of cordite and death was cloying. He had to get outside. He had to breathe fresh air. He stumbled along the stone-floored hallway, his legs weak from the effects of fear. As he reached for the main door, he heard tires squealing on the paved driveway outside. He opened the door and lurched onto the terrace, breathing sweet, cool air. Policemen scrambled from cruisers. Weapons drawn, they didn’t bother slamming their car doors. They were too busy racing toward Pittman. He lifted his arms, not wanting them to think he was a threat. But then he saw Jill among them, racing even harder to reach him, shouting his name, and he knew that for now at least he didn’t have to be afraid. He held her, clinging to her, oblivious to the pressure against his injured chest. She was sobbing, and he held her tighter, never wanting to let her go.

“I love you. I was so afraid that I’d lose you,” she said.

“Not today.” Pittman kissed her. “Thank God, not today.”