Desperate Measures

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.”

2

Shortly after dawn, feeling a chill in the air, seeing vapor come out of his mouth, Pittman parked next to a pay phone outside a coffee shop. Sparse traffic sounded eerie as he got out of the car, Jill following, and stepped into the booth. After studying the list of telephone numbers that he had used last night, he put coins in the box and pressed numbers.

A male voice, with the haughty obsequiousness of a servant to the powerful and rich, answered after two rings. “Mr. Gable’s residence.”

“Put him on.”

“Who may I say is calling, sir?”

“You’re supposed to say it’s too early to disturb him.”

“I beg your pardon, sir?”

“It’s barely six in the morning, but you didn’t take long to answer the phone. It’s like you’ve been on duty for quite a while. Are things a little frantic over there?”

“I really don’t know what you’re implying, sir. If you wish to speak with Mr. Gable, you’re going to have to tell me who you are.”

“The man he’s been trying to have killed.”

The line became silent.

“Go ahead,” Pittman said. “Let him know.”

“As you wish, sir.”

Pittman waited, looking at Jill, whose lovely face normally glowed with health but now was wan from stress and fatigue.

Thirty seconds later, a man’s voice, aged and frail, like wind through dead leaves, came on the line. “Eustace Gable here.”

“Matthew Pittman.”

Again the line became silent.

“Yes?” Gable sounded as if he was having trouble breathing. “I’ve been reading about you in the newspapers.”

“You don’t seem surprised that I’m calling.”

“At my age, I’m not surprised by anything,” Gable said. “However, I don’t understand the way you identified yourself to my assistant.”

“I can see where it might be confusing, depending on how many other people you’re trying to have killed.”

Gable stifled a cough. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Not over the phone at least. I can understand that. It’s what I’d expect from a diplomat famous for conducting secret meetings. All the same, I do think we ought to talk, don’t you?”

“Perhaps. But how, if not on the phone?”

“In person.”

“Oh? Given that you murdered my friend and colleague, I’m not certain that I’d feel safe in your presence.”

“The feeling’s mutual. But as you know, I didn’t murder him. You did.”

“Honestly, Mr. Pittman. First you fantasize that I’m trying to have you killed. Now you’re fantasizing that I killed my friend.”

“No one else is on this line, so you can save the disinformation.”