Free The Road to Gandolfo by Robert Ludlum

“How?”
    “ ‘Medical records.’ That’s the hard evidence. Psychiatric and physical. ‘Stress collapse’ is only the beginning.The Defense Department will issue a statement that says, in essence, you were purposely placed in ambivalent situations so they could ascertain the development. ‘Schizoid progression,’ I think it’s called. Conflicting objectives like the Indochina stuff. Also those pictures of you pissing on the mission’s roof have a very complicated psychiatric explanation.”
    “I’ve got a
better
one. I was goddamned angry! Wait’ll I give my version.”
    “You won’t get a chance to tell it. If the game plan becomes an issue, the President plans to go on the air, praise your past, show your current medical records—with heartbreaking reluctance, of course—and ask the country to pray for you.”
    “Couldn’t happen.” The general shook his head confidentially. “
No
one believes a president anymore.”
    “Maybe not, but he’s got the buttons. Not his own, maybe, but enough others. You’ll be strapped down in a Nike silo, if he says so.” Sam saw that there was a metal mirror in the small cubicle that housed the toilet. He walked toward the door.
    “But why should he
do
it? Why would anyone
let
him do it?” Hawkins’s cigar was held limply in his hand.
    Devereaux looked at the size and hue of the shiner over his left eye. “Because we need gas,” he replied.
    “Huh?” Hawkins dropped his cigar on the rug. Obviously without thinking, he stepped on it, grinding it into the surface. “Gas?”
    “It’s too complicated. Never mind.” Sam pressed the sensitive flesh around his eye with his fingers. He hadn’t had a mouse in over fifteen years; he wondered how long it would take for the swelling to recede. “Just accept the situation for what it is and make the best deal you can. You haven’t got much choice.”
    “You mean I’m supposed to lie down and
take
it?”
    Devereaux walked out of the toilet, stopped and sighed. “I’d say the immediate objective was to keep you from lying down in Mongolia. For some four thousand-plus years. If you cooperate, maybe I can pull it off.”
    “Out of China?”
    “Yes.”
    “How much cooperation? With the gooks
and
Washington?” Hawkins’s squint was very pronounced.
    “A lot. All the way down the pike.”
    “Out of the army?”
    “No point in staying. Is there, really?”
    “Goddamn!”
    “I agree. But where does it get you? There’s a big world out of that uniform. Enjoy it.”
    Hawkins crossed back to the desk in angry silence. He picked up one of the photographs, shrugged and dropped it. He reached into his pocket for a fresh cigar. “Goddamn, boy, you’re not thinking again. You’re a lawyer, maybe, but like you say, you’re no soldier. A field commander sucks in a hostile patrol, he doesn’t feed it, he cuts it down. Nobody’s going to let me enjoy. They’ll put me in that Nike silo you mentioned. To keep me from talking.”
    Devereaux exhaled a long breath through his lips. “It’s just possible I can build a shield acceptable to all parties. After you went down the pike over
here
. Full confession, public apology, the works.”
    “Goddamn!”
    “Mongolia, General.…”
    Hawkins bit into the cigar; the bullet between his teeth, thought Sam.
    “What’s a ‘shield’?”
    “Off the top of my head, I figure a letter to the secretary of the army, accompanied by a tape of your reading it—verified by voice print. In the letter,
and
the tape, you state that in moments of complete lucidity you’re aware of your illness—et cetera, et cetera.”
    Hawkins stared at Devereaux. “You’re out of your mind!”
    “There are a lot of Nike silos in the Dakotas.”
    “Jesus!”
    “It’s not as bad as it sounds. The letter and the tape will be buried in the Pentagon. Used only if you publicly make waves. Both to be returned, say, in five years. How about it?”
    Hawkins reached into his pocket for a book of