Tillman had left the military several years earlier, but everything about him shouted army noncom. He still cut his hair as if he was ready for the parade ground—closely shaved sidewalls topped by a bold stripe of dark, crew-cut hair. Or maybe it was his carriage—the coiled anger that looked as if it might erupt at any moment. Whatever it was, something about him seemed out of place here.
“You’re fine,” Gideon said. “It’s probably just because they don’t know you.”
While they were speaking, a floppy-haired twenty-something breezed in the door with a squash racket under his arm. He gave Tillman a brief look like he was something from the zoo.
“What?” Tillman said softly, giving the young man a glare of sleepy-eyed malice. “Something wrong?”
The young man gave him a wincing smile: “I don’t know what your problem is but . . .” He gave Tillman a slow, condescending shrug.
Tillman rose to a half crouch, ready to pounce on the young man. Gideon put his hand on Tillman’s thigh. The young man backed away nervously, clutching his squash racquet, as if he might have to use it as a shield.
Gideon managed to steer Tillman up to the Tiger Bar before anything happened. But he could see things were already heading in the wrong direction.
Tillman had always claimed allegiancedes¡€† to the blue-collar world, professing a dislike that ranged from mistrust to outright hatred of anybody who had occasion to wear a necktie at anything other than a wedding or a funeral—bureaucrats, bankers, lawyers, doctors, college professors. Bringing Tillman to the Princeton Club was pretty much like waving a red flag in front of a bull.
Tillman finished his first glass of single malt in a single swallow as he started in on one of his standard diatribes. Pointy-headed liberals and media pundits were destroying the country by refusing to support our troops, while the UN kept sucking up to terrorists and Third World dictators. It went on and on. He quoted Earl Parker liberally. “You know Uncle Earl always says . . .” or “Just last week Uncle Earl told me . . .” Not that there wasn’t some truth to what he was saying. But Tillman never allowed even the possibility that sometimes it took more courage to talk than to fight. He seemed to think there was no human problem that couldn’t be solved by force.
Gideon had intended to start the conversation by telling Tillman about his upcoming appointment at the UN. But Tillman wouldn’t let his brother get a word in edgewise.
By the time he started working on his fourth Glenfiddich, Tillman’s voice had gotten loud and ugly. People were eyeing him, wondering who this loudmouthed jerk with the military haircut was. It only seemed to make Tillman louder and angrier and more insulting.
Finally Gideon had had enough. It was time to change the direction of their conversation. “Wait a second,” Gideon said, holding his hands up. “Take a break from your lecture and let me talk for a minute. I have some good news.”
“I already know your good news,” Tillman said, giving the final words a sarcastic twist. “You got a job working for those pansies at the UN.”
Gideon felt his eyebrows rise in surprise. “How did you know that?”
Tillman hesitated before answering, “I heard about it.”
Which is when it dawned on him: Uncle Earl. It had to be. Only Uncle Earl was well connected enough to have known about the job offer before Gideon had even had a chance to tell anybody about it.
Gideon had known for several years that there was some kind of professional connection between Tillman and Uncle Earl. He knew that Uncle Earl had been instrumental in recruiting him from the military to covert operations. But he couldn’t quite bring himself to believe that Uncle Earl would actually send him to talk Gideon out of a job he’d created for himself, the culmination of his life’s work.
“Uncle Earl sent you,” Gideon said incredulously.
“He didn’t send me,” Tillman insisted.
“Yes, he did. He sent you to talk me out of taking this job.”
Tillman held his brother’s accusatory glare before he finally spoke. “He thought maybe I could talk some sense into you, make you see that you’re about to become—” Tillman broke off suddenly, as if stopping himself from crossing some red line that he knew he could never step back from. But it was too late.
“What?” Gideon said, feeling a flush of molten anger rising into his cheeks. “That I&alk¡€†#8217;m about to become a traitor to my country? A dupe? A tool of terrorists? Go ahead. Say it.”
Tillman locked eyes on Gideon. His eyes slowly narrowed.
“Seriously, Tillman,” Gideon said. “Did he honestly think sending you here was going to change my mind? You two are so profoundly wrong about—”
“You don’t know anything, Gideon,” Tillman interrupted. “And what you think you know is more dangerous than you can even imagine. All this high-minded talk of yours? It’s all bullshit. Six days ago a friend of mine bled to death while I held him, trying to keep his guts from falling out in his lap. For what? To protect you and the rest of these Princeton phonies? We’re fighting the same bunch of thugs and monsters that drove airplanes into the Twin Towers, while you and your friends are selling out this country by making excuses for evil and trying to figure out why they hate us.”
The manager beelined toward Gideon and Tillman, a tight smile on his face. “Perhaps the gentlemen would be more comfortable if—”
Gideon stood, blocking the manager from getting any closer, knowing full well that if he did, Tillman would put him in the hospital. “We’re okay here.” The manager nodded tightly and retreated.
Gideon turned toward Tillman, who eyed him for a hard moment, then bumped past him as he half-stumbled toward the door. Gideon followed him outside onto Forty-third Street, where his brother wheeled around in a silent challenge, as if to say, We’re past words, so let’s just settle this man to man. Which was when Gideon realized that he wanted to tear out Tillman’s throat, wanted to tear the flesh and muscle from his neck with his bare hands. And that urge to kill his own brother had sobered him instantly.
“You’re not the only person who’s taken risks in his life,” Gideon shouted in Tillman’s face. “You can disagree with me all you want. But I’m not gonna stand here and let you lecture me like I’m some kind of fool. You’ve taken your stand. Fine. So have I. It’s a principled stand, something I believe in. And if you can’t respect that, then go back to your jungles and your deserts and watch your buddies die to your heart’s content. But don’t put their deaths on me. Because I believe there’s another way.”
With that he turned his back on his brother and walked away.
It was the last time they’d spoken.
What Gideon hadn’t gotten the chance to tell Tillman was that he was about to put his own life on the line, embarking on his first major political mediation in his new capacity. It was a program he’d developed from his doctoral thesis and had been refining ever since. He was going into a mountainous and war-torn province where he would have little or no personal security—no gun, no air force, no navy, no world power at his back—armed only with the trust he’d developed with members of the warring parties. If he succeeded, he’d save the lives of countless innocent civilians. If he failed, he might look like a fool to his peers and maybe derail what had once been a promising career. Or worse, he could end up beheaded, his wallet and watch stripped, and his teeth pulled out for the gold fillings—another hapless do-gooder left dead in an unmarked ditch.
But Gnal¡€†ideon never got to tell Tillman any of that because of the widening abyss defined by their political differences—which Gideon had since come to realize weren’t nearly as important as the fact that they were brothers. Tillman had sacrificed a lot in his life, had chosen for himself a path that was arduous, dangerous, and frequently unrewarding. The lesson Tillman had taken from their rough childhood had been that you had to confront, to battle, to fight. And Gideon had benefitted from his brother’s protection, no question about it, and he should have cut his brother a little more slack.