Desperate Measures (42 page)

“The man in my apartment,” Pittman said.

Gable nodded. “We bribed a policeman to let our own man take his place and wait there.”

Sloane’s cheeks became alarmingly flushed. “You’re telling him too much.”

“Not at all,” Gable said. “If we’re to accomplish anything, we have to be candid. Correct, Mr. Pittman?”

“That’s why I’m here. To be candid. To find a way out of this.”

“Precisely.”

“What I don’t understand,” Pittman said, “is why you needed to blame
anyone
for Jonathan Millgate’s death. He was old. He was sick. He was on oxygen. If you’d taken away his life-support system, let
him die, and then hooked him up to the support system again, his death would have seemed natural. No one would have been the
wiser.”

“That’s what
I
wanted,” Sloane insisted, his cheeks even redder.

“And at the start, you were right,” Gable said patiently. “Try to remember the sequence. As Jonathan’s health dwindled, he
became more afraid of dying. He’d been flirting with religion for the past several years. That priest, that damnable priest.
I never understood Jonathan’s attitude toward Father Dandridge. The priest hounded us during the Vietnam years. He organized
demonstrations and called press conferences to criticize every policy we made about Vietnam. It was because of Father Dandridge
that Jonathan left public life. The priest’s interference made it impossible for Jonathan to function effectively in the government.
And yet two decades later, Jonathan asked the priest to be his personal confessor.”

“Father Dandridge felt that Jonathan Millgate needed a confessor who wouldn’t be intimidated by him, a spiritual adviser who
would stand up to him about ultimate matters,” Pittman said.

Gable’s gaze turned cold. “Ultimate matters. I forgot that you spoke to the priest briefly.”

“I was there when you had him killed.”

“He shouldn’t have gotten involved. He shouldn’t have made trouble.”

“He would never have revealed what he heard in confession,” Pittman said.

“So
you
claim. But in my career, I have known diplomats who conveyed all sorts of confidential information to trusted associates,
only to have that information repeated back to them by third parties. God only knows what Jonathan had already confessed to
the priest, but I know for certain that what he
intended
to tell the priest on his deathbed would have been ruinous. I was visiting him in the hospital, and all he could do was keep
telling me that he had to see Father Dandridge. He had to clear his conscience. He had to save his soul.” Gable said the last
word with contempt. “Then the Justice Department leaked its report that it was investigating rumors about a covert plan to
buy nuclear weapons from the former USSR. Jonathan was implicated as having acted as an intermediary.”

“Intermediary? Stop hiding behind words. What you mean is, Millgate was functioning as an
arms dealer
,” Pittman said with disgust. “The
worst
kind of arms. What possible reason could justify—?”

“The safety of the world,” Gable said indignantly.

“Yeah, right. That’s the excuse you and your buddies always came up with. The safety of the world. It doesn’t matter how self-serving
the idea is, you always justify yourselves by saying it’s good for everybody.”

“Are you so naïve as to think that the fall of communism and the dissolution of the USSR mean the end of a threat from that
region?”

“Of course not,” Pittman answered. “The bloodbath in Bosnia shows that any damned thing can happen over there. After decades
of being repressed, the provinces of the former USSR might
all
go in the opposite extreme. Soon they might
all
be out of control.”

“With access to nuclear weapons about which neither the former government nor the disbanding military is responsible.” Gable
gestured for emphasis. “If a
new
government, a
rogue
government comes into power, there’s a very real danger that those nuclear weapons will be used to allow that new government
to
consolidate
its power. What’s unscrupulous about trying to stop that from happening?”

“The way you put it, nothing. But I’ve been a reporter too long not to be able to read between the lines.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The Justice Department’s accusation was specific: Jonathan Millgate was implicated in
buying
nuclear weapons. Not paying to have them destroyed in Russia, nothing wrong about that, but
buying
them. What the hell was he going to do with them once he owned them? Bring them all the way to the United States to have
them destroyed? Sounds a lot more expensive than it needs to be, not to mention dangerous, all those warheads being moved
around. And who’s paying for these nuclear weapons, anyhow? The U.S. government? Not damned likely. It would be political
suicide for anyone in the government to get involved in such an outrageous scheme. So you’ve got two problems: how to pay
for the weapons and what to do with the weapons once you own them. Those problems bothered me ever since I heard that Millgate
was under suspicion. And then the solution came to me. Of course. The way you get rid of the nuclear weapons enables you to
pay for them in the first place—
you sell them to someone else
.”

Gable squinted. “I’m impressed, Mr. Pittman.”

“The compliment doesn’t sound sincere.”

“But I
am
impressed. You see to the heart of the issue. You understand the brilliance of the operation.”

“Brilliance?” Pittman asked in disbelief.

“The threat of the nuclear weapons in the former USSR is eliminated,” Gable said righteously. “At the same time, it’s possible
to maintain the balance of power in other troubled regions. For example, it’s no secret that North Korea has been working
furiously to develop a nuclear capability. What do you think will happen when its nuclear weapons are functional? It’ll control
Southeast Asia. But if
South
Korea also gains nuclear capability, there’ll be a stalemate. They’ll balance each other.”

“Wrong. They’ll destroy each other. And maybe get the rest of the world involved,” Pittman said.

“Not necessarily.” The emotional strain of the conversation was having an evident effect on Gable. His breathing was more
labored, his posture less erect. He lowered his voice. “To save the world, sometimes risks have to be taken.”

“And bank accounts fattened? You hypocrite. You and your friends pretended to be selfless public servants, and all along,
from the forties onward, from the postwar anti-Soviet policy to the Iran-Contra arms-dealing scandal, you’ve been making a
fortune in kickbacks from the weapons industry. How much money did you earn arranging to use American funds to arm Iraq so
it would act as a counterweight against Iran? And then we went to war against Iraq, and you received kickbacks from the arms
industry because you recommended that war.”

Anger made Gable regain his rigid posture. “I refuse to discuss the nuances of foreign policy with a mere reporter. You are
not privy to classified information. You are not in a position to judge the delicacy of various negotiations that I have successfully
concluded for the good of the United States and the world.”

“Right. The old excuse. There’s always secret information that justifies becoming rich by starting more wars and selling more
weapons.”

“These matters are beyond your understanding,” Gable said. “You are here for one purpose only—to try to settle our differences,
to undo the disastrous effects of your blundering into matters that do not concern you. After the leak implicating Jonathan
in the purchase of Russia’s nuclear weapons, it was only a matter of hours, perhaps minutes, before reporters would have shown
up at the hospital in hopes that Jonathan would be strong enough to make a statement. We had to get Jonathan out of the hospital
to keep him from telling reporters what he intended to tell the priest. You were there when my men took him from the hospital.
You followed them to Scarsdale. Damn it, what were you doing in his room? If only you hadn’t gone into his room.”

“His IV tubes had slipped out. His oxygen prongs weren’t attached to him. He was having some kind of seizure. I was sure he
was going to die.”

“That was the idea,” Gable said with barely subdued irritation. “My colleagues and I said good-bye to him. Everyone except
his nurse and doctor left the room. They removed his life supports. Then
they
left. He was supposed to die. But
you
had to get into the room and reattach the supports. And he finally had a chance to confess. If the nurse hadn’t come back
into the room at that moment, we never would have known that Jonathan had betrayed us.”

“If only we’d stopped right there,” Sloane said.

“We
couldn’t
,” Gable said. “Because as far as we knew,
this
man”—Gable pointed toward Pittman—“saw our first attempt to kill Jonathan. And
this
man”—Gable pointed harder toward Pittman—“had information that could ruin us. One of our security team riding in the escort
car noticed a taxi following the ambulance. As soon as he reached the estate and told me about the taxi, I sent him to locate
it before it disappeared from the area. The driver’s passenger was gone. But the driver could identify the passenger because
of a check that the passenger had written to cover the expense of the ride. Imagine our concern, Mr. Pittman, when we researched
your background and discovered that you were a reporter. What were we to do? Allow you to write a story about our attempt
to kill our friend and about the information he revealed to you? Certainly not. But we did have another option. Our investigation
revealed that you’d harassed Jonathan seven years ago, that you were currently having an emotional collapse. It wasn’t any
effort to make it seem that
you
killed Jonathan. We had the check you’d given to the taxi driver. We had your fingerprints on the door to Jonathan’s room
and on his life-support equipment. In a twisted personal vendetta, you killed Jonathan, then continued with your plans to
kill yourself.”

“And when your men caught me, they were going to help me along.”

Gable spread his hands. “Unless the police caught you first, in which case I had the resources to arrange for you to commit
suicide in jail.”

“You’re awfully confident that you can manipulate the system to make it do anything you want.”

“I’m a diplomat. I helped
design
the system. I guarantee that the plan would have worked.”

“Then why didn’t it?”

Gable glanced at the floor.

“Well?” Pittman asked.

“I congratulate you. You’re far more resourceful than your profile led me to believe. If you weren’t so resourceful, I wouldn’t
have agreed to this conversation, I assure you. For a man determined to commit suicide, you have a remarkable talent for survival.”

“You see, I changed my mind.”

Gable looked puzzled.

“I don’t want to kill myself any longer. Because of you.”

“Explain.”

“What you did to me made me so afraid that I had to ask myself, If I was so eager to die, why was I running? Why not let you
do the job for me? I rationalized by telling myself that I wanted my death to be my idea, not yours. But the truth is, you
forced me to reconsider where I was in my life. I love my dead son. I miss him desperately. But you distracted me enough that
I think I can accept my grief now rather than fight it.”

Gable studied him as if he had no understanding of the emotions Pittman referred to. At last, he sighed. “It would have been
so much easier if my men had been able to shoot you when you were running from the Scarsdale estate.”

Sloane fidgeted. “First Jonathan. Then Anthony. Now Victor. No more. I want this settled. I want it stopped.”

“That’s why we’re here,” Gable said. “To settle things.”

Throughout, the man known as Mr. Webley stood against the wall to Pittman’s right, watching the group, holding Pittman’s .45.

“For a negotiation to be successful,” Gable said, “each side must have something to gain. So tell me, Mr. Pittman, what do
we
gain in exchange for the million dollars and the two passports that
you
gain?”

“Security. Peace of mind.”

“All very well. Desirable conditions. But vague. How
exactly
are you going to give us security and peace of mind?”

“By disappearing.”

“Be specific.”

“I’ll make it look as if I carried through on my intention to commit suicide. I’ll do it in such a way that my body can’t
be identified.”

“Again, be specific.”

“I thought perhaps I’d arrange for your men to trap me on one of your yachts. I’d blow it and myself up. My body would never
be found. Presumably sharks and other scavengers would have eaten what was left of me. Of course, I wouldn’t actually have
been on the yacht. But your men, having watched the explosion from another yacht, would testify that they’d seen me go aboard.”

Sloane’s voice trembled with enthusiasm. “It might work.”

“One of my yachts?” Gable squinted. “You imagine expensive ways to disappear.”

“Another factor that makes it convincing. Given the magnitude of your property loss, the police wouldn’t think that you were
involved.”

“He has a point,” Sloane said quickly.

Gable scowled at his fellow grand counselor, then redirected his calculating gaze at Pittman. “Forgive my colleague’s outbursts.
He’s forgotten one of the primary rules of negotiation. Never let your opponent know your actual opinion of his argument.”

“I thought we were here to be candid,” Pittman said.

“Then why haven’t you yourself been completely open? You expect me to believe that after you pretend to commit suicide you’ll
disappear forever and we’ll have nothing to fear from you.”

“That’s right,” Pittman lied.

“What guarantees do we have?”

“I told you. I want to live. I don’t want to be hunted anymore. I want to be left alone.”