“How are you, Brian?” Pittman asked cheerily “How have you been doing since I saw you last?”
In the background, Pittman heard an infant crying harshly, not the usual baby cry, but a hurt cry, a sick cry. Pittman remembered it well from when Jeremy had been an infant.
“Uh-oh, sounds like you’ve been up all night.” Pittman entered.
“Hey, you can’t-”
Pittman shut the door and locked it. “You don’t seem very happy to see me, Brian.”
“The last time you were here, I got in so much trouble with… If Gladys was here…”
“But she isn’t. We waited until she left.”
Jill was preoccupied by the cries from the baby. “Boy or girl?”
“Boy.”
“He doesn’t sound well. Has he got a fever?”
“I think so,” Brian said.
“You didn’t check his temperature?” Jill asked.
“I didn’t have time. I was too busy getting him clean after he threw up.”
“Seems like you could use some help. Where’s your thermometer? Let me see the baby supplies you got.”
Pittman raised his hands. “Almost forgot, Brian. This is my friend Jill.”
“Hello, Brian. I’m a nurse. I used to work in pediatrics. I’ll take good care of your son. The thermometer?”
“On his bedside table.” Brian pointed.
As Jill went toward a room to the left of the kitchen, Pittman said, “See, it’s your lucky day.”
“Yeah, I feel lucky all to hell. Look, you’ve got to stop coming here. The police are searching for you.”
“No kidding.”
“I can’t get involved in this. I can’t-”
“I won’t come around again. I swear, Brian. Scout’s honor.”
“That’s what you said the last time.”
“Ah, but I didn’t swear on Scout’s honor.”
Brian groaned. “If the police find out…”
“I’m a dangerous criminal. Tell them I terrified you so much, you had to help me.”
“The newspapers say you killed a priest and a man in somebody’s apartment and… I’m losing count.”
“Not my fault. All easily explainable.”
“You still don’t get it. I don’t want to know anything you’re doing. I’d be an accessory.”
“Then we’re in agreement. I don’t want you to know what I’m doing, either. But if you refuse to help me, if I get caught, I’ll convince the police that you are an accessory,” Pittman lied.
“Don’t think like that. I’d go to prison again.”
“And imagine what Gladys would say. On the other hand, I never turn against my friends, Brian. The quicker we do this, the quicker I’m out of here. I want you to give me a crash course in hacking.”
Jill leaned out from the baby’s room. “His fever’s a hundred and one.”
“Is that bad?” Brian asked nervously.
“It isn’t good. But I think I can lower it. By the way, Brian, those children’s aspirins are a no-no for a baby’s fever. They can cause a serious condition called Reye’s syndrome. Have you got any Tylenol?”
“See?” Pittman said. “In good hands. Now come on, Brian, pay us for the house call. Show me how to do a little hacking. Or we’ll hang around the house until Gladys comes home.”
Brian turned pale. “What programs do you want to get into?”
“Unlisted telephone numbers, and the addresses that go with them.”
“What city?”
“I don’t want to tell you, Brian. You’re going to have to show me how to get in without knowing what city I want. Then you’re going to sit in a corner while I play with your computer.”
“I feel like crying.”
8
“Will the baby be all right?” Pittman drove from the apartment building.
“As long as Brian keeps giving him a children’s dose of Tylenol on schedule. And liquids. A sponge bath doesn’t hurt. I told him to get the baby to a doctor if the fever gets worse or the vomiting persists. Cute kid. I think he’ll be okay.”
“And maybe Brian will get some sleep tonight.”
“Unless Gladys decides to make trouble. Did he let you have what you wanted?”
Pittman held up a sheet of paper. “I learned from the mistake we made with the guy from the alumni association. Don’t let anybody know our next move. Brian showed me how to get unlisted phone numbers and addresses. But he doesn’t know whose or what city.”
“Washington.”
Pittman nodded.
“The grand counselors.”
Pittman nodded again.
“Long drive.”
“We can’t fly. You’d have to use a check or a credit card to buy our tickets. Your name would get in the computer. The police will be looking for it. We’ve got to keep driving.”
“You really know how to show a girl a good time. I think I’ll pull a blanket over my head and assume a fetal position.”
“Good idea. Get some more rest.”
“You, too. We’ll need it if we’re going to try to get close to the grand counselors.”
“Not just yet.”
“But I thought you said we were going to Washington.”
“Right. But I need to see somebody else there.”
“Who?”
“A man I interviewed a long time ago.”
9
It was after dark when they reached Washington’s Beltway, headed south on I-95, then west on 50 to Massachusetts Avenue. Despite his exhaustion, Pittman managed to drive skillfully through the dense traffic.
“You seem to know your way around the city,” Jill said.
“When I was working on the national affairs desk, I spent a lot of time down here.” Pittman rounded Dupont Circle and took P Street west into Georgetown.
“Reminds me of Beacon Hill,” Jill said.
“I suppose.” Pittman glanced at the narrow wooded street. The paving was cobblestone. Ahead, it changed to red brick. Federal and Victorian mansions were squeezed next to one another. “Never been here?”
“Never been to any place in Washington. New York was about as far from my parents as I felt I needed to get.”
“Georgetown’s the oldest and wealthiest district in the city.”
“The remaining grand counselors live here?”
Pittman shook his head. “This is too ordinary for them. They live on estates in Virginia.”
“Then who did you come here to see?”
“A man who hates them.” Pittman headed south on Wisconsin Avenue. Headlights and streetlights made him squint. “The guy I’ve been trying to phone every time we stopped along the road. Bradford Denning. He’s elderly now, but in his prime, he was a career diplomat. A mover and shaker in the State Department during the Truman administration. According to him, he would eventually have become secretary of state.”
“What happened that he didn’t?”
“The grand counselors. They didn’t like him being in competition with them, so they got him out of their way.”
“How on earth did they manage that?”
“To hear Denning tell it-this was during the McCarthy witch-hunt era-they spread persistent rumors that Denning was soft on communism.”
“In the early fifties, that would have ruined a diplomat.”
“It certainly ruined Denning. He found it impossible to undo the damage, was given less and less responsibility in the State Department, and finally had to resign. He claims that his isn’t the only career the grand counselors ruined by claiming that somebody was a Communist sympathizer. The grand counselors then ingratiated themselves with the incoming Eisenhower administration, replaced the diplomats they’d attacked, and went on to control the highest diplomatic offices. That lasted until 1960 when the Democrats regained the White House with Kennedy. Kennedy wanted to work with friends and family rather than career diplomats. For three years, the grand counselors stood on the sidelines. But after Kennedy was assassinated, Johnson, who had disliked Kennedy, was eager to assert himself by getting Kennedy’s people out of the State Department and the White House staff. He welcomed the grand counselors back into diplomatic power. For the second time in their careers, they had managed the trick of being accepted by different political parties. In fact, by then they seemed to transcend the two-party system, so that when Nixon and the Republicans came back into power at the end of the sixties, the grand counselors had no difficulty in continuing to maintain their influence. So it went. In periods of intense international strain, various later Presidents continued to ask for their advice.”