Desperate Measures

by David R. Morrell

  Two of them. Headlights. Approaching along the driveway from the mansion. Pittman watched them grow larger, thought about hurrying along the road and hiding past the corner of the wall, then made a different decision and pressed himself against the wall right next to the gate.

  He heard a smooth, well-tuned, powerful engine. He heard tires on wet concrete. He heard a buzz and then a whir. The gate’s motor had been activated by remote control. The gate was swinging open toward the inside of the estate, its sturdy wheels scraping on concrete.

  The engine sounded louder. The headlights flashed through the open gate. Sooner than Pittman expected, the dark Oldsmobile that had escorted the ambulance surged through the opening, turned to the left in the direction the taxi had taken to go back to the city, and sped into the night.

  Pittman was tempted to remain motionless until the car’s lights disappeared down the road. But he had something more immediate to occupy him, for abruptly he heard another buzz, another whir. The gate was closing—faster than he expected—and he sprinted to get through the opening before it was blocked.

  The sturdy gate brushed past his coat. The lock snapped into place. The night became silent again.

  18

  Pittman found that he was holding his breath. Despite the expansive grounds ahead of him, he felt a spasm of claustrophobia. The darkness seemed to smother him. At once the cold drizzle sharpened his senses, bracing him. He inhaled and glanced around, reassured that no threat emerged from the shadows.

  You expected guards?

  No, but…

  Dogs maybe?

  Right.

  Wouldn’t they have followed the car? Wouldn’t you have seen them by now?

  Maybe. Maybe not. They might be trained not to follow cars.

  So what’s the worst that can happen? If there are dogs, they’ll find you and corner you and bark until somebody comes. You’ll be charged with trespassing. That’s no big deal for a guy who’s planning to kill himself eight days from now.

  But what if the dogs are trained to attack?

  This isn’t a top secret military installation. It’s a Scarsdale estate. Relax. And anyway, so what if the dogs are trained to attack? Do you think being killed by a couple of Dobermans would be any worse than shooting yourself with a .45?

  Yes.

  What standards you have.

  Chilled by the rain, Pittman moved forward. At first he was tempted to approach the mansion through the cover of the trees. But then he decided there wasn’t any need—the night and the gloomy weather provided him with sufficient cover. Following the murky driveway, he came around a shadowy curve and discovered that he was closer to the mansion than he expected.

  Next to a sheltering fir tree, he studied his destination. The building was high, wide, made of brick, with numerous gables and chimneys. There were several lights in windows on the ground floor, less on the second story. From this angle, he could see a five-stall garage on the left. The garage had a sundeck on top, with two sets of French doors leading off the deck into a second-story room that was lit, although Pittman couldn’t see what was in there. Mostly what attracted his attention was the private ambulance, parked, its lights off, apparently empty, in front of the stone steps that led up to the mansion’s large front door.

  Now what? Pittman thought.

  He shrugged. With eight days to live, what difference did it make? In an odd way, he felt liberated. After all, what did he have to lose? Knowing when he was going to die gave him a feeling of immunity.

  He stepped from the fir tree and concentrated to maintain his balance on wet, slippery grass as he crept down a dark slope toward the mansion. Moving cautiously toward the lights of the mansion, taking advantage of shrubs, a fountain, a gazebo to give him cover, he came closer to the illuminated windows. The drenched grass had soaked his shoes and socks, chilling his feet, but he was too involved in studying the windows to care. Curtains had been drawn, forcing him to cross the driveway where it ran parallel to the front of the mansion. He felt exposed by the drizzle-shrouded glare of arc lights as he darted toward bushes beneath the front windows.

  Moisture dripped from the branches onto his overcoat. Again in shadows, he crouched tensely, moved through an opening in the bushes on the left side of the front doors, then warily straightened, able to see through a gap in the curtains at one window. He saw a portion of a luxuriously appointed oak-paneled living room. The room didn’t seem occupied. Quietly he shifted toward the next window, moving closer to the front door.

  The next window’s curtains were open. He showed as little of his head as possible while he peered in. Immediately he realized that this window was part of the same living room that he’d just seen through the other window. But why would curtains in one window be closed, while the other curtains were not? He eased down out of sight, remembered the ambulance behind him in front of the mansion, and suspected that someone must have been waiting anxiously for the ambulance to arrive. When it had, that person had hurried from the room, too preoccupied to bother closing the curtains.

  But where had that person gone? A detail that Pittman had seen in the room now acquired significance. On a carved mahogany table in front of a fireplace, there had been several teacups and coffee mugs. Okay, not one person. Several. But where…?

  Pittman glanced to his right toward the mansion’s front steps. They were wide, made of stone. A light blazed above impressive double doors and revealed a closed-circuit camera aimed toward the steps and the area in front of the entrance. If there were other closed-circuit cameras, Pittman hadn’t seen them, but he had no intention of revealing himself to this one.

  The best way to proceed, he decided, was to double back, to go left instead of right, and circle the mansion in the reverse direction from the one in which he’d intended to go. The method would eventually lead him to the windows on the right side of the entrance, but without forcing him to cross the front steps.

  He turned, stayed low, close to the mansion’s wall, and shifted past the moisture-beaded shrubs, ignoring the two windows that he’d already checked. He came to a third window, the drapes on this one completely closed. After listening intently and hearing no sounds, he concluded that the room was empty and moved farther along, rounding a corner of the mansion.

  Arc lights caused the drizzle to glisten. The lights were mounted on the side of the mansion and beneath the eaves of the sundeck that topped the multistall garage. Hugging the wall, Pittman crept ten feet along the side of the mansion, then reached the large garage, where it formed a continuation of the building. There weren’t any windows, so Pittman didn’t linger. Coming to the corner of the garage, he checked around it and saw that all five garage stalls were closed.

  Past the garage, he faced the back of the house. There, fewer arc lights illuminated the grounds. But they were bright enough for Pittman to see a large, covered, drizzle-misted swimming pool, a changing room, fallow flower gardens, more shrubs and trees, and, immediately to his right, stairs that went up to the sundeck on top of the garage.

  There had been lights beyond the French doors that led from the sundeck into an upper-story room, he remembered. Deciding that he’d better inspect this area now rather than come back after checking the windows on the ground floor, he started up the wooden steps.

  19

  The sundeck was disturbingly unilluminated. Pittman didn’t understand. Crouching in the darkness on top, he wondered why the other parts of the building had outside lights, while the sundeck did not.

  The room beyond the two sets of French doors was well lit, however. Past substantial ornate metal furniture upon which cocktails and lunches would be served when the weather got warm, Pittman saw bright lamps in a wide room that had a cocktail bar along the left wall in addition to a big-screen television built into the middle of the right wall.

  At the moment, though, the room was being used for something quite different from entertainment. Leather furniture had been shifted toward the television, leaving
the center of the room available for a bed with safety railings on each side. A long table beyond it supported electronic instruments that Pittman recognized vividly from the week when Jeremy had been in intensive care: monitors that analyzed heartbeat, blood pressure, respiration rate, and blood-oxygen content. Two pumps controlled the speed with which liquid flowed from bottles on an IV stand into the right and left arm of a frail old man who lay covered with sheets on the bed. The two male attendants whom Pittman had seen at the hospital were making adjustments to the monitors. The female nurse was taking care that there weren’t any kinks in the oxygen tube that led to prongs inserted in the old man’s nostrils.

  The oxygen mask that had obscured the old man’s face when he was taken from the hospital now lay on top of a monitor on the table beyond the bed. Pittman couldn’t be totally sure from outside in the darkness, but what he had suspected at the hospital insisted more strongly: The old man bore a resemblance to Jonathan Millgate.

  The intense young man who had been in charge of getting the old man out of the hospital had a stethoscope around his neck and was listening to the old man’s chest. The somber men who had acted as bodyguards were standing in the far-left corner.

  But other people were in the large room, as well. Pittman hadn’t seen them at the hospital, although he definitely had seen them before—in old photographs and in television documentaries about the politics of the Vietnam War. Four men. Distinguished-looking. Dressed in conservative custom-made dark three-piece suits. Old but bearing a resemblance to images of their younger selves.

  Three wore spectacles. One had a white mustache. Two were bald, while the other two had wispy white hair. All had stern, pinched, wrinkled faces and drooping skin on their necks. Their expressions severe, they stood in a row, as if they were on a dais or part of a diplomatic receiving line. Their combined former titles included ambassador to the USSR, ambassador to the United Nations, ambassador to Great Britain, ambassador to Saudi Arabia, ambassador to West Germany, ambassador to NATO, secretary of state, secretary of defense, national security adviser. Indeed, several of these positions had been held by all of these men at various times, just as they had all at various times belonged to the National Security Council. They had never been elected to public office, and yet in their appointed roles they had exerted more influence than any but the most highly placed politicians. Their names were Eustace Gable, Anthony Lloyd, Victor Standish, and Winston Sloane. They were the legendary diplomats upon whom Presidents from Truman to Clinton, Republican and Democrat, had frequently relied for advice, their shrewdness having earned them the nickname “the grand counselors.” Four of them. Which suggested that the old man in the bed was, in fact, the fifth grand counselor: Jonathan Millgate.

  20

  The intense young man with the stethoscope said something that Pittman couldn’t hear. The nurse said something in response. Then the two male attendants spoke. Again Pittman was too far away to make out what they were saying. The man with the stethoscope turned toward the grand counselors and seemed to explain something. One of the elderly diplomats, a gaunt-cheeked man with a white mustache, Winston Sloane, nodded wearily. Another, his narrow face pinched with wrinkles, Eustace Gable, asked a question. The man with the stethoscope answered. A third elderly diplomat, Anthony Lloyd, tapped his cane on the floor in a gesture of frustration. Although their faces were pale, their ancient eyes were fiery. With a final comment, Eustace Gable left the room. His associates solemnly followed.

  The nurse approached the draperies. When she pulled a cord on the side, the draperies moved, then stopped. She pulled harder, but something prevented her from closing them all the way. From the deck, Pittman studied the room with increasing confusion. The four bodyguards went after the counselors, as did the two ambulance attendants, leaving only the man with the stethoscope and the female nurse. The latter dimmed the room’s lights, and now Pittman understood why there weren’t any arc lamps illuminating the sundeck. The group didn’t want the glare of the outside lights intruding on the room after it was put into comparative darkness. The red lights on the monitors were almost as bright as the muted glow of the lamps. In the dusky atmosphere, the patient was being encouraged to rest. But that was about all Pittman did understand, and as he crouched in the darkness beside the metal deck furniture, he wiped rain from his face, shivered from the cold, and asked himself what he should do.

  You proved your suspicion. That was Jonathan Millgate they took from the hospital. You don’t know why, but you do know where they took him, and that’s all you can do for now. It’s time to go. You’ll get pneumonia if you stay in this rain much longer.

  That final thought made Pittman smile with bitterness. You almost killed yourself tonight, and now you’re worried about catching pneumonia? Not yet. Your time isn’t up for another eight days.

  And it won’t be pneumonia that kills you.

  He watched the man with the stethoscope leave the dusky room. As the nurse continued inspecting Millgate’s monitors and tubes, Pittman turned toward the stairs that led down from the sundeck. He heard a noise that paralyzed him.

  21

  It came from directly below him, a combination of a drone and a rumble. The roof of the sundeck vibrated beneath Pittman’s wet shoes.

  One of the motorized garage doors was being opened. Pittman’s heartbeat quickened. He crouched lower, making certain that he wouldn’t be a silhouette against the roofline. Nonetheless, he was able to see light spill from the garage, revealing raindrops on dark puddles as the door opened higher, then stopped, its motor becoming silent.

  In the unnerving quiet, varied only by the hiss of the drizzle, Pittman suddenly heard the scrape of footsteps on concrete, the creak of car doors being opened, the echo of voices.

  “… priest,” an elderly man’s brittle voice said, taut with emotion.

  “Don’t worry,” a second elderly voice said. “I told you the priest never arrived. Jonathan never spoke to him.”

  “Even so.”

  “It’s been taken care of,” the second aged voice emphasized, reminding Pittman of the rattle of dead leaves. “It’s safe now. Secure.”

  “But the reporters…”

  “Have no idea where Jonathan is. Everything is under control. The best thing we can do is separate and get back to a pretense of normalcy.”

  Throughout, Pittman heard the sound of people getting into a vehicle. Now he heard the thunk of car doors being closed, the sudden roar of an engine.

  Headlights blazed. A dark limousine surged out of the garage and sped along the murky driveway, past trees and shrubs and toward the gate that led from the estate.

  Pittman’s bent legs cramped. He began to stand, then flinched when he heard further voices.

  “The taxi,” another aged voice said.

  “If you’re correct that we were followed…” This voice was crusty, yet filled with phlegm.

  Pittman couldn’t make out the rest of the sentence. What he heard instead was a louder rumbling drone as a second garage door rose. Other lights gleamed into the drizzle-misted night.

  When the noise of the garage door stopped, Pittman strained to listen, hoping that the voices would continue.

  “… a coincidence. A late commuter coming from Manhattan.”

  “But in a taxi?”

  “Perhaps the trains don’t run this late. There might be several explanations. Until we know for certain, I refuse to become alarmed.”

  “But we saw the headlights go past the gate as we drove toward the house.”

  “You heard me send Harold to look into the matter. If it was the same taxi, it had less than a minute’s head start before Harold went after it. And if the taxi came from Manhattan, it would be one of few, if any, in the area at this hour. Its city of origin would be marked on the vehicle. I’m certain that Harold would intercept it well before it reached the thruway.”

  “You’ll keep me informed.”

  “Of course. Relax. Look at how your hands are s
haking. Be calm, my friend. You didn’t use to worry this much.”

  “I didn’t have as much to lose.”

  “Nor did we all.”

  “Good night, Eustace.”

  “Goodnight, Anthony.”

  Despite the worry in their voices, the tone of the old men was strikingly affectionate.

  Car doors thunked shut. An engine roared. Another dark limousine sped from the garage and along the murky driveway.

  22

  From above, crouching in the darkness of the sundeck, Pittman watched the taillights recede, then disappear, the sound of the limousines fading into the silence of the night. With a final droning rumble, all the garage doors descended, cutting off the lights inside. The gloom in the area intensified.

  Pittman slowly straightened. His legs were stiff. His calves prickled as blood resumed its flow through arteries that had been constricted. He turned toward the French doors for a final look at Jonathan Millgate helpless in his bed, surrounded by monitors, bottles, and tubes.

  Pittman’s pulse faltered.

  Through the gaps in the draperies, what he saw seemed magnified by the glass panes in the French doors. At the same time, he felt as if he watched helplessly from a great distance. The nurse had left the room, leaving Millgate alone. She had shut the door. Millgate had not been asleep, contrary to what she evidently believed. Instead, he was attempting to raise himself.

  Millgate’s features were twisted, agitated. The oxygen prongs had slipped from his nostrils. His IV tubes had become disengaged from the needle in each of his arms. He pawed with both hands, trying to grasp the railings on his bed with sufficient strength to raise himself. But he wasn’t succeeding. His face had become an alarming red. His chest heaved. Abruptly he slumped back, gasping.

  Even at a distance, through the barrier of the French doors, Pittman thought he heard Millgate’s strident effort to breathe. Before Pittman realized, he stepped closer to the window. The warning buzzer on the heart monitor should have alerted the nurse, he thought in dismay. She should have hurried back by now.