Desperate Measures

“Mr. Pittman,” Gable said, “if you have substantive information to share with us, do so. Otherwise, I’m afraid that Mr. Webley will have to ensure that you never share anything with anyone again.”

Continuing to squint, Pittman turned to Gable.

“You’re sweating,” the grand counselor said. “Look at your forehead. It’s pouring off you. Surely you’re not nervous. In a negotiation, you should never allow your emotions to show. Certainly I never do.”

“It’s the temperature in this room. It’s too hot in here.” Pittman wiped his forehead.

“My doctor has given me instructions that the temperature must be kept at eighty. To remedy a mild health problem of mine. Take off your sport coat if the temperature is making you uncomfortable. You’re wearing a sweater also.”

“I’m fine.” Pittman refocused his attention, concentrating on the view through the window. The man in the golf cart had disappeared behind the wall at the bottom of the slope. “That fax, the one that arrived a few minutes ago.”

“What about it?” Gable asked.

Pittman looked directly into Gable’s steel gray eyes. “It was for me.”

Gable didn’t respond immediately. “For you?”

“What does he mean?” Winston Sloane asked.

Ignoring his colleague, Gable told Pittman, “That’s absurd. Why would anyone send a fax to you here? How could anyone do that? The fax number is confidential.”

“The same as your telephone number is confidential,” Pittman said. “But I arranged for your daughter to phone you last night. And for Jill to phone your confidential number, Winston. And then we phoned Victor Standish’s confidential number. Too late in that case. He’d already blown his brains out. Because he couldn’t stand hiding the secret you shared. But if I had no trouble using my contacts to learn those numbers, I assure you it was just as easy for me to find out your fax number. The message is Duncan Kline’s obituary. I’m sure we’ll all find it interesting.”

Gable frowned with suspicion. “Mr. Webley, see that my visitor remains exactly where he is while I get the fax message from my office.”

Webley raised Pittman’s.45. “Don’t worry. He isn’t going anywhere.”

Pittman watched Gable stand with difficulty and proceed from the room. His back as regally straight as he could make it, Gable disappeared down a corridor.

9

Pittman was uncomfortably aware of more sweat slicking his brow. His anxiety, combined with the heat in the room, made him nauseous. Avoiding Webley’s intense gaze and Sloane’s nervous expression, Pittman turned again toward the wall-length window. It took him a moment to adjust his vision to the painful glare of the sun. The fir trees were even more beautiful. The green of the spring grass was made exquisite by his terror. In the distance, golfers passed trees near a pond.

Abruptly a motion caught Pittman’s attention. At the bottom of the slope on Gable’s estate. Close to the wall. This side of the wall. The man who’d driven the golf cart toward the opposite side of the wall was now in view, climbing the slope toward Gable’s mansion. Pittman didn’t know how he had gotten over the wall, but it was the same man, Pittman could tell, because the man in the golf cart had worn a white cap and a red windbreaker, the same as this man. Despite the sheltering cap, it was now possible to see that the man was elderly. But he moved with slow determination, climbing, holding something in his right hand. And as he trudged higher, beginning to show the physical cost of his effort, just before pine trees obscured him, Pittman realized with hastily subdued shock that he recognized the grimacing elderly man. Pittman had bought a drink for him last night. He’d followed him to Mrs. Page’s mansion. He’d taken him to a hospital when the elderly man collapsed. Bradford Denning. This morning, Denning had snuck from the hospital’s cardiac ward, and now he looked totally deranged as he stumbled into view again, leaving the fir trees, struggling higher toward the house. With equal shock, Pittman distinguished the object in Denning’s right hand-a pistol held rigidly to his side.

No! Pittman thought. If Gable sees him, if Webley notices, they’ll decide that I’ve tricked them, that I can’t be trusted, that everything’s out of control. The moment they realize Denning’s armed, they’ll shoot him. And then they’ll finish me.

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