"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 . . - " l
"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.
I I
"That's right, Mr. Pittman. The snow. Duncan was an alcoholic. When
we met him at his cabin, he refused to be budged byour 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 snowbanks"
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 drunkenlyoutside 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. "
"Aod 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 more 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 w itheyes 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."
br /> 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 btittle 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 to ward 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 hvli
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. 1
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, nauseated 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.
111'11 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 Jay, 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 Gables
finger tightened on the trigger.
roar of the gunshot made Pittman flinch. But it didn't from the pistol
in Gable's hand. Rather, it came from 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
walls became louder, speeding nearer.
Bracing himself against a chair, Pittman peered down, ftimbling 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