Desperate Measures

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