by Lee Child
I said, ‘Even if you’re right, why assume Americans were involved on that particular night? Presumably your mother didn’t see it happen. Why not assume your father and your uncle were captured directly by the mujahideen?’
‘Because their rifle was never found. And my mother’s position was never fired on at night by a sniper. My father had twenty rounds in his magazine, and he was carrying twenty spare. If the mujahideen had captured him directly, then they would have used his rifle against us. They would have killed forty of our men, or tried to, and then they would have run out of ammunition and abandoned the gun. My mother’s company would have found it eventually. There was a lot of back-and-forth skirmishing. Our side overran their positions, and vice versa. It was like a crazy circular chase. The mujahideen were intelligent. They had a habit of doubling back to positions we had previously written off as abandoned. But over a period of time our people saw all their places. They would have found the VAL, empty and rusting, maybe in use as a fence post. They accounted for all their other captured weapons that way. But not that VAL. The only logical conclusion is that it was carried straight to America, by Americans.’
I said nothing.
Lila Hoth said, ‘I’m telling you the truth.’
I said, ‘I once saw a VAL Silent Sniper.’
‘You told me that already.’
‘I saw it in 1994,’ I said. ‘We were told it had just been captured. Eleven whole years after you claim it was. There was a big urgent panic, because of its capabilities. The army wouldn’t wait eleven years to get in a panic.’
‘Yes, it would,’ she said. ‘To unveil the rifle immediately alter its capture might have started World War Three. It would have been a direct admission that your soldiers were in direct face to face contact with ours, without any declaration of hostilities. Illegal at the very least, and completely disastrous in geopolitical terms. America would have lost the moral high ground. Support inside the Soviet Union would have been strengthened. The fall of communism would have been delayed, perhaps for years.’
I said nothing.
She said, ‘Tell me, what happened in your army, in 1994, after the big urgent panic?’
I paused, in the same way that Svetlana Roth had. I recalled the historical details. They were surprising. I checked and rechecked. Then I said, ‘Not very much happened, actually.’
‘No new body armour? No new camouflage? No tactical reaction of any kind?’
‘No.’
‘Is that logical, even for an army?’
‘Not especially.’
‘When was the last equipment upgrade before that?’
I paused again. Sought more historical details. Recalled the PASGT, introduced to much excitement and fanfare and acclaim during my early years in uniform. The Personal Armor System, Ground Troops. A brand new Kevlar helmet, rated to withstand all manner of assault by small arms fire. A thick new body-armour vest, to be worn either over or under the battledress blouse, rated safe even against long guns. Specifically, as I recalled, rated safe against incoming nine-millimetre rounds. Plus new camouflage patterns, carefully designed to work better, and available in two flavours, woodland and desert. The Marines got a third option, blue and grey, for urban environments.
I said nothing.
Lila Roth asked, ‘When was the upgrade?’
I said, ‘In the late eighties.’
‘Even with a big urgent panic, how long does it take to design and manufacture an upgrade like that?’
I said, ‘A few years.’
‘So let’s review what we know. In the late eighties you received upgraded equipment, explicitly designed for better personal protection. Do you think it is possible that was the result of direct stimulus derived from an unrevealed source in 1983?’
I didn’t answer.
* * *
We all sat quiet for a moment. A silent and discreet waiter came by and offered us tea. He recited a long list of exotic blends. Lila asked for a flavour I had never heard of, and then she translated for her mother, who asked for the same thing. I asked for regular coffee, black. The waiter inclined his head about a quarter of an inch, as if the Four Seasons was willing to accommodate all and any requests, however appallingly proletarian they might be. I waited until the guy had retreated again and asked, ‘How did you figure out who you are looking for?’
Lila said, ‘My mother’s generation expected to fight a land war with you in Europe, and they expected to win. Their ideology was pure, and yours wasn’t. After a swift and certain victory, they expected to take many of you prisoner, possibly millions of you. In that phase, part of a political commissar’s duties would have been to classify enemy combatants, to cull the ideologically unretrievable from the herd. To aid them in that task, they were made familiar with the structure of your military.’
‘Made familiar by who?’
‘By the KGB. It was an ongoing programme. There was a lot of information available. They knew who did what. In the case elite units, they even knew names. Not just the officers, but the enlisted men too. Like a true soccer fan knows the personnel and the strengths and the weaknesses of all the other teams in the league, bench players included. For incursions into the Korengal Valley, my mother reasoned that there were only three realistic options. Either SEALs from the navy, or Recon Marines from the Corps, or Delta Force from the army. Contemporary intelligence argued against the SEALs or the Marines. There was no circumstantial evidence of their involvement. No specific information. The KGB had people throughout your organizations, and they reported nothing. But there was significant radio traffic out of Delta bases in Turkey, and out of staging posts in Oman. Our radar picked up unexplained flights. It was a logical conclusion that Delta was running the operations.’
The waiter came back with a tray. He was a tall dark guy, quite old, probably foreign. He had an air about him. The Four Seasons probably put him front and centre because of it. His bearing suggested he might once have been a tea expert in some dark-panelled place in Vienna or Salzburg. In reality he had probably been unemployed in Estonia. Maybe he had been drafted along with the rest of Svetlana’s generation. Maybe he had endured the Korengal winters along with her, somewhere down the line in an ethnic grouping of his own. He made a big show of serving the tea and arranging the lemons on a plate. My coffee came in a nice cup. He put it down in front of me with elegantly disguised disapproval. When he was gone again Lila said, ‘My mother estimated that the raid would have been led by a captain. A lieutenant would have been too junior and a major would have been too senior. The KGB had personnel lists. There were a lot of captains assigned to Delta at the time. But there had been some radio analysis. Someone had heard the name John. That narrowed the field.’
I nodded. Pictured a massive dish antenna somewhere, maybe in Armenia or Azerbaijan, a guy in a hut, headphones on, rubber cups clamped tight on his ears, sifting through the frequencies, hearing the whine and screech of scrambled channels, stumbling on a fragment of plain speech, writing the word John on a pad of coarse brown paper. A lot of stuff is snatched from the ether. Most of it is useless. A word that you understand is like a nugget of gold in a pan, or like a diamond in a rock. And a word that they understand is like a bullet in the back.
Lila said, ‘My mother knew all about your army’s medals. They were held to be important, as criteria for classifying prisoners. Badges of honour, that would become badges of dishonour immediately upon capture. She knew that the VAL rifle would be worth a major award. But which award? Remember, there had been no declaration of hostilities. And most of your major awards specify gallantry or heroism while in action against an armed enemy of the United States. Technically whoever stole the VAL from my father was not eligible for any of those awards, because technically the Soviet Union was not an enemy of the United States. Not in the military sense. Not in a formal political way. There had been no declaration of war.’
I nodded again. We had never been at war with the Soviet Union. On the contra
ry, for four long years we had been allies in a desperate struggle against a common foe. We had cooperated, extensively. The World War era Red Army greatcoat that Lila Hoth claimed to have been conceived under had almost certainly been made in America, as part of the Lend-Lease programme. We had shipped a hundred million tons of woollen and cotton goods to the Russians. Plus fifteen million pairs of leather boots, four million rubber tyres, two thousand railroad locomotives and eleven thousand freight cars, as well as all the obvious heavy metal like fifteen thousand airplanes, seven thousand tanks, and 375,000 army trucks. All free, gratis, and for nothing. Winston Churchill had called the programme the most sordid in all of history. Legends had grown up around it. The Soviets were said to have asked for condoms, and in an attempt to impress and intimidate, they had specified that they should be eighteen inches long. The U.S. had duly shipped them, the cartons stamped Size: Medium.
So went the story.
Lila asked, ‘Are you listening?’
I nodded. ‘The Superior Service Medal would have fit the bill. Or the Legion of Merit, or the Soldier’s Medal.’
‘Not big enough:
‘Thanks. I won all three.’
‘Capturing the VAL was a really big coup. A sensation. It was a completely unknown weapon. Its acquisition would have been rewarded with a really big medal.’
‘But which one?’
‘My mother concluded it would be the Distinguished Service Medal. That one is big, but different The applicable standard is exceptionally meritorious service to the United States Government in a duty of great responsibility. It is completely independent of formal declared combat activities. It is normally awarded to politically pliable Brigadier Generals and above. My mother was under orders to execute all holders of the DSM immediately. Below the rank of Brigadier General it is awarded only very rarely. But it’s the only significant medal a Delta captain could have won that night in the Korengal Valley.’
I nodded. I agreed. I figured Svetlana Hoth was a pretty good analyst. Clearly she had been well trained, and well informed. The KGB had done a decent job. I said, ‘So you went looking for a guy called John who had been a Delta captain and won a DSM, both in March of 1983.’
Lila nodded. ‘And to be certain, the DSM had to come without a citation.’
‘And you made Susan Mark help.’
‘I didn’t make her. She was happy to help.’
‘Why?’
‘Because she was upset by my mother’s story.’
Svetlana Hoth smiled and nodded.
Lila said, ‘And she was a little upset by my story, too. I’m a fatherless child, the same as her.’
I asked, ‘How did John Sansom’s name come up even before Susan reported back? I don’t believe that it was from a bunch of New York private eyes sitting around reading the newspaper and making jokes.’
‘It’s a very rare combination,’ Lila said. ‘John, Delta, DSM, but never a one-star general. We noticed it in the Herald Tribune, when his Senate ambitions were announced. We were in London. You can buy that paper all over the world. It’s a version of the New York Times. John Sansom might well be the only man in your army’s history who matches those criteria four for four. But we wanted to be absolutely sure. We needed final confirmation.’
‘Before what? What do you want to do to the guy?’
Lila Hoth looked surprised.
‘Do?’ she said. ‘We don’t want to do anything. We just want to talk to him, that’s all. We want to ask him, why? Why would he do that, to two other human beings?’
THIRTY-EIGHT
Lila Hoth finished her tea, and put her cup down on her saucer. Bone china clinked politely on bone china. She asked, ‘Will you go get Susan’s information for me?’
I didn’t answer.
She said, ‘My mother has waited a long time.’
I asked, ‘Why has she?’
‘Time, chance, means, opportunity. Money, mostly, I suppose. Her horizons have been very narrow, until recently.’
I asked, ‘Why was your husband killed?’
‘My husband?’
‘Back in Moscow.’
Lila paused, and said, ‘It was the times.’
‘Same for your mother’s husband.’
‘No. I told you, if Sansom had shot him in the head, like what happened to my husband, or stabbed him in the brain, or broken his neck or whatever else Delta soldiers were taught to do, it would have been different. But he didn’t. He was cruel instead. Inhuman. My father couldn’t even roll to his rifle, because they had stolen his rifle.’
I said nothing.
She said, ‘You want a man like that in your Senate?’
‘As opposed to what?’
‘Will you give me Susan’s confirmation?’
‘No point,’ I said.
‘Why not?’
‘Because you wouldn’t get anywhere near John Sansom. If any of what you say actually happened, then it’s a secret, and it’s going to stay a secret for a very long time. And secrets are protected, especially now. There are already two federal agencies at work on this. You just had three guys asking questions. At best, you’ll be deported. Your feet won’t touch the ground, all the way back to the airport. They’ll put you on the plane in handcuffs. In coach. The Brits will pull you off the plane at the other end and you’ll spend the rest of your life under surveillance.’
Svetlana Hoth stared into space.
I said, ‘And at worst, you’ll just disappear. Right here. One minute you’ll be on the street, and then you won’t be. You’ll be rotting in Guantanamo, or you’ll be on your way to Syria or Egypt so they can kill you there.’
Lila Hoth didn’t speak.
‘My advice?’ I said. ‘Forget all about it. Your father and your uncle were killed in a war. They weren’t the first, and they won’t be the last. Shit happens.’
‘We just want to ask him why.’
‘You already know why. There had been no declaration of hostilities, therefore he couldn’t kill your guys. It’s about the rules of engagement. There’s a heavy-duty briefing before every mission.’
‘So he let someone else do it for him.’
‘It was the times. Like you said, it might have started World War Three. It was in everyone’s interest to avoid that.’
‘Have you looked at the file? Did Susan really have the confirmation? Just tell me, yes or no. I won’t do anything without actually seeing it. I can’t.’
‘You won’t do anything, period.’
‘It wasn’t right.’
‘Invading Afghanistan in the first place wasn’t right. You should have stayed home.’
‘Then so should you, from all the places you went.’
‘No argument from me.’
‘What about freedom of information?’
‘What about it?’
‘America is a country of laws.’
‘True. But do you know what the laws actually say now? You should read the Herald Tribune more carefully.’
‘Are you going to help us?’
‘I’ll ask the concierge to call you a cab to the airport.’
‘Is that all?’
‘That’s the best help anyone could give you.’
‘Is there anything I can do to change your mind?’
I didn’t answer.
‘Anything at all?’
‘No,’ I said.
We all went quiet after that. The tea expert brought the check.
It was in a padded leather wallet. Lila Roth signed it. She said, ‘Sansom should be called to account.’
‘If it was him,’ I said. ‘If it was anybody.’ I took Leonid’s phone out of my pocket and dumped it on the table. I pushed my chair back and got ready to leave.
Lila said, ‘Please keep the phone.’
I said, ‘Why?’
‘Because my mother and I are staying. Just a few more days. And I would really like to be able to call you, if I wanted to.’ She wasn’t coy in the way she said it. Not coquet
tish. No lowered eyelids, no batted lashes. No hand on my arm, no attempt to seduce, no attempt to change my mind. It was just a plain statement, neutrally delivered.
Then she said, ‘Even if you’re not a friend,’ and I heard the tiniest bat-squeak of a threat in her voice. Just a faint far-off chime of menace, a hint of danger, barely audible behind the words, accompanied by a perceptible chill in her amazing blue eyes. Like a warm summer sea changing to sunlit winter ice. Same colour, different temperature.
Or maybe she was just sad, or anxious, or determined.
I looked at her with a level gaze and put the phone back in my pocket and stood up and walked away. There were plenty of cabs on 57th Street, but none of them was empty. So I walked. The Sheraton was three blocks west and five blocks south. Twenty minutes, max. I figured I could get there before Sansom finished his lunch.
THIRTY-NINE
I didn’t get to the Sheraton before Sansom finished his lunch, partly because the sidewalks were clogged with people moving slowly in the heat, and partly because it had been a short lunch. Which I guessed made sense. Sansom’s Wall Street audience wanted to spend maximum time making money and minimum time giving it away. I didn’t make it on to the same Amtrak as him, either. I missed a D.C. train by five minutes, which meant I trailed him back to the capital a whole hour and a half in arrears.
* * *
The same guard was on duty at the Cannon Building’s door. He didn’t recognize me. But he let me in anyway, mainly because of the Constitution. Because of the First Amendment in the Bill of Rights. Congress shall make no law abridging the right of the people to petition the Government. My pocket junk inched through an X-ray machine and I stepped through a metal detector and was patted down even though I knew the light had flashed green. There was a gaggle of House pages inside the lobby and one of them called ahead and then walked me to Sansom’s quarters. The corridors were wide and generous and confusing. The individual offices seemed small but handsome. Maybe they had once been large and handsome, but now they were broken up into reception anterooms and multiple inner spaces, partly for senior staff to use, I guessed, and partly to make eventual labyrinthine access to the big guy seem more of a gift than it really was.