David Morrell - Desperate Measures
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- Название:Desperate Measures
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Something in the priest’s voice made Pittman hesitate.
“I give you my word,” Father Dandridge said. “You have nothing to fear from me.”
Pittman’s stomach cramped. “How did you know…?”
“Who you are?” Father Dandridge gestured, inadvertently drawing Pittman’s attention to his scarred left hand. “Jonathan Millgate and I had a special relationship. It shouldn’t be surprising that I would have read every newspaper article and watched every television report I could find to learn more about what happened to him. I have studied your photograph many times. I recognized you immediately.”
Pittman couldn’t seem to get enough air. “It’s important that you believe this. I didn’t kill him.”
“Important to me or you?”
“I tried to save him, not harm him.” Pittman was suddenly conscious of the amplifying echo in the small room. He glanced nervously toward the archway that led to the altar.
Father Dandridge gazed in that direction, as well. The church was almost empty. A few elderly men and women remained kneeling, their heads bowed in prayer.
“No one seems to have heard you,” Father Dandridge said. “But the next Mass is scheduled to begin in half an hour. The church will soon be full.” He pointed toward two men who entered at the back of the church.
“Is there somewhere we can talk?”
“I ask you again, do you want confession?”
“What I want is what you promised at the end of the Mass. Peace.”
Father Dandridge intensified his gaze, then nodded. “Come with me.
8
The priest led the way toward a door at the back of the sacristy. When he opened it, Pittman was amazed to look out toward a garden, its well-kept appearance in contrast with the decay at the front of the church. Neatly mowed grass was flanked by blooming lilacs, their fragrance wafting through the open door. The rectangular area was enclosed by a high brick wall.
Father Dandridge motioned for Pittman to precede him.
When Pittman didn’t respond, the priest looked amused. “Suspicious of me? You don’t want to turn your back on me? How could I possibly hurt you?”
“Lately, people have been finding ways.” Keeping his hand on the.45 hidden in his overcoat pocket, Pittman glanced back through the arch toward the church, which was rapidly being filled. He followed the priest into the garden and shut the door.
The morning sun was warm and brilliant, emphasizing the jagged white scar on Father Dandridge’s chin. The priest sat on a metal bench. The sound of the city’s traffic seemed far away.
“Why should I believe that you didn’t kill Jonathan Millgate?”
“Because if I did, I ought to be on the run. Why would I come to you?”
Father Dandridge raised his shoulders. “Perhaps you’re as deranged as the news reports say. Perhaps you intend to kill me, as well.”
“No. I need your help.”
“And how could I possibly help you? Why would I want to help you?”
“In the news reports, Millgate’s people claim they took him from the hospital to protect him from me, but that’s not true,” Pittman insisted. “The real reason they took him is they didn’t want to expose him to reporters after the story broke about his supposed connection with trying to buy nuclear weapons from the former Soviet Union.”
“Even if you can prove what you say…”
“I can.”
“… it’s irrelevant to whether or not you killed him.”
“It’s very relevant. Look, I followed him from the hospital, yes. But I wasn’t stalking him. I wanted to find out why he’d been taken. At the estate in Scarsdale, the nurse and doctor who were supposed to be caring for him left him alone. He became disconnected from his life-support system. I managed to get into his room and help him.”
“But a witness claims it happened the other way around, that you cut off his oxygen and caused him to have a fatal heart attack.”
“A nurse came in when I was putting the oxygen prongs into Millgate’s nostrils. She heard Millgate tell me something. I think that’s what all of this is about. His people were afraid of reporters asking him questions. But I’m a reporter, and what Millgate told me may have been exactly what they didn’t want anybody to know. They tried to stop me, but I got away, and…”
Father Dandridge added, “So they decided to cut off Jonathan Millgate’s life-support system, to let him die to prevent him from ever telling anyone else. Then they blamed his death on you so that even if you tried to use what you were told, you wouldn’t be believed.”
“That’s right,” Pittman said, amazed. “That’s the theory I’m trying to prove. How did-?”
“When you hear enough confessions, you become proficient at anticipating.”
“This isn’t confession!”
“What did Jonathan Millgate say to you?”
Pittman’s energy dwindled, discouragement overcoming him. He rubbed the back of his neck. “That’s the problem. It doesn’t seem that important. In a way, it doesn’t even make sense. But later a man tried to kill me at my apartment because of what Millgate had told me.”
“Now you tell me .”
“A man’s name.” Pittman shook his head in confusion. “And something about snow.”
“A name?”
“Duncan Grollier.”
Father Dandridge concentrated, assessing Pittman. “Jonathan Millgate was perhaps the most despicable man I have ever met.”
“ What? But you said that the two of you were friends.”
Father Dandridge smiled bitterly. “No. I said that he and I had a special relationship. I could never be his friend. But I could pity him as much as I loathed his actions. I could try to save his soul. You see, I was his confessor.”
Pittman straightened with surprise.
“When you saw me in the sacristy, you couldn’t help noticing my scars.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…”
“It’s quite all right. There’s no need to worry about my feelings. I’m proud of these scars. I earned them in combat. During the Vietnam War. I was a chaplain in I Corps. A base I was assigned to-close to the demilitarized zone-came under siege. Bad weather kept reinforcements from being brought in. We were under constant mortar bombardment. Of course, as a noncombatant, I wasn’t allowed to use a weapon, but I could care for the wounded. I could crawl with food and water and ammunition. I could give dying men the last sacrament. The scar on my chin is from shrapnel. The scars on my hand are from a fire I helped to put out. When I say I’m proud of these scars, it’s because they remind me of what a privilege it was to serve beside such brave men. Of two hundred, only fifty survived by the time reinforcements were able to come. None of those who died was older than twenty-one. And I blame Jonathan Millgate for those deaths, just as I blame him for the entire forty-seven thousand men who died in battle in that war. A hundred and fifty thousand men were wounded. Thousands of other lives were destroyed because of the psychological effects of the war. And why? Because Millgate and his four colleagues”-the priest twisted his lips in contempt-“the so-called grand counselors-advised the President and the nation that the domino theory was something worth dying for, that if we didn’t keep the Communists out of Vietnam, the rest of Southeast Asia would fall to them. A quarter of a century later, communism is a crumbling philosophy, and Southeast Asia is becoming ever more capitalistic, even though South Vietnam was taken over by the Communists. The war made no difference. But Jonathan Millgate and the other grand counselors became obscenely rich because of their relationship with the arms industry that inevitably profited from the war the grand counselors insisted was necessary.”
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