“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.”
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 brittle 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 toward 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 here, 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. I 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, nauseous 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.
“I’ll 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 lay, 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 Gable’s finger tightened on the trigger.
The roar of the gunshot made Pittman flinch. But it didn’t come from the pistol in Gable’s hand. Rather, it came from behind 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.