Time to Hunt

by Stephen Hunter

  There was little to be done about the back wound. It had penetrated his camouflage and grazed the flesh of his back, scoring both burn and bruise. But other than disinfectant, only time and painkillers would make it go away.

  A cop wanted to take a statement, but Bonson pulled rank and declared the ranch a federal crime site, until corroborating FBI agents could chopper in within the hour from Boise. In the cellar, a state police crime team worked the body of the dead sniper, hit twice, once through the left lung, once in the back of the head.

  “Great shooting,” said a cop. “You want to take a look at your handiwork?”

  But Swagger had no desire to see the fallen man. What good would it do? He felt nothing except that he’d seen enough corpses.

  “I’d rather see my daughter and my wife,” he said.

  “Well, your wife is being treated by our medical people. We’ve got to debrief her as soon as possible. Mrs. Memphis is with Nikki.”

  “Can I go?”

  “They’re in the kitchen.”

  He walked through a strange house full of strangers. People talked on radios, and computers had been set up. A squad of uninteresting young people hung about, talking shop, clearly agitated at the prospect of a big treat. He remembered when Agency people were all ex-FBI men, beefy cop types, who carried Swedish Ks and liked to talk about “pegging gooks.” These boys and girls looked like they belonged in prep school, but they sure made themselves at home, with the instant insouciance of the young.

  He walked through them, and they parted, and he could feel their wonder. What would they make of him: his kind of war was so far from their kind it probably made no sense.

  He found Sally in the kitchen, and next to her, there was his baby girl. These were the moments worth living for. Now he knew why he bothered to survive Vietnam.

  “Hi, baby!”

  “Oh, Daddy,” she said, her eyes widening with deep pleasure. He felt a warmth in his heart so intense he might melt. His child. Through it all, after it all, his own: flesh, blood, brains. She flew to him and he absorbed her tininess, felt her vitality as he picked her up and hugged her passionately.

  “Oh, you sweet thing!” he sang. “You are the sweetest thing there is.”

  “Oh, Daddy. They say you shot the bad man!”

  He laughed.

  “You never mind that. How are you? How’s Mommy?”

  “I’m fine, I’m fine. It was scary. He came into the basement with a gun.”

  “Well, he won’t bother you no nevermore, all right?”

  She clung to him. Sally fixed him with her usual gimlet eye.

  “Bob Swagger,” she said, “you are a mean and ornery piece of work, and you aren’t much of a husband or a father, but by God, you do have a gift for the heroic.”

  “I can see you’re still my biggest fan, Sally,” he said. “Well, anyhow, thanks for hanging around.”

  “It sure was interesting. How are you?”

  “My back hurts,” he said. “So does my leg and my eye. I am plenty hungry. And there’re too goddamned many young people out there. I hate young people. How is she?”

  “She’s fine. We’re all fine. Nobody was hurt. But only just barely. Another tenth of a second and he would have pulled that trigger.”

  “Well, to hell with him if he can’t take a joke.”

  “I’ll leave you two alone.”

  “See if you can get one of these Harvard kids to fix some coffee.”

  “They probably don’t do coffee, and there isn’t a Starbucks around, but I’ll see what I can manage.”

  And so he sat with his baby daughter in the kitchen and caught up on the news and told her about the superficiality of his wounds and made a promise he hoped he’d now be able to keep: to return with her and her mother to Arizona, and resume the good life they had together.

  In half an hour a young man came to him. “Mr. Swagger?”

  “Yes?”

  “We’re going to have to debrief your wife now. She’s asked that you be present.”

  “All right.”

  “She’s very insistent. She won’t talk unless you’re there.”

  “Sure, she’s spooked.”

  “This way, sir.”

  Sally came back to take care of Nikki.

  “Sweetie,” he said to his daughter, “I’m going to go with these people to talk to Mommy. You stay here with Aunt Sally.”

  “Daddy!”

  She gave him a last hug, and he now saw how deeply she’d been traumatized. The war had come to her: she’d seen what few Americans ever saw anymore—combat death, the power of the bullet on flesh.

  “Sweetie, I’ll be back. Then this’ll be over. It’ll be fine, you’ll see.”

  They took him upstairs. The Agency team had set up in a bedroom, pushing aside the bed and dresser and installing a sofa from the living room and a group of chairs. Cleverly, they weren’t arranged before the sofa, as if to seat an audience, but rather in a semicircle, as if in a group counseling session. Tape-recording equipment had been installed, and computer terminals.

  The room was crowded and hushed, but finally, he saw her. He walked through the milling analysts and agents, and found her, sitting alone on the sofa. She looked composed now, though her arm was still locked in its cast. She’d insisted on dressing and wore some jeans and a sweatshirt and her boots. She had a can of Diet Coke.

  “Well, hello there,” he said.

  “Well, hello yourself,” she said with a smile.

  “You’re okay, they say.”

  “Well, it’s a little bothersome when a Russian comes into your house and points a gun at you and then your husband blows half his head away. I’m damn lucky to have a husband who could do such a thing.”

  “Oh, I’m such a big hero. Sweetie, I just pulled a trigger.”

  “Oh, baby.”

  He held her tight and it was fine: his wife; he’d slept next to her for years now, the same strong, tough beautiful woman, about as good as they made them. Her smell was achingly familiar. Strawberries, she smelled of strawberries always. He first saw her in a picture wrapped in cellophane that came from a young Marine’s boonie hat. The rain was falling. There was a war. He fell in love with her then and never came close to falling out in all the years since.

  “Where did you come from?” she said. “How did you get here so fast?”

  “They didn’t tell you? Damn idiot me, I got me a new hobby. I parachuted through the storm. Pretty exciting.”

  “Oh, Bob.”

  “I never been so scared in my life. If I’d had clean underwear, I’d have pissed in the ones I was wearing. Only, I didn’t have no clean underwear.”

  “Oh, Bob—”

  “We’ll talk about all that stuff. That’s up ahead.”

  “What in hell is this all about?” she finally asked. “He came for me? That’s what these people say.”

  “Yeah. It has to do with something that happened a long time ago. I have it half figured. These geniuses think they know all the answers, or they can figure them. You up to this?”

  “Yes. I just want it over.”

  “Then we’ll get it all straightened out, I swear to you.”

  “I know.”

  “Bonson?”

  Bonson came over.

  “She’s ready.”

  “That’s terrific, Mrs. Swagger. We’ll try and make this as easy as possible. Are you comfortable? Do you want anything? Another Coke?”

  “No, I’m fine. I want my husband here, that’s all.”

  “That’s fine.”

  “Okay, people,” Bonson said in a louder voice, “we’re all set. The debriefing can begin.”

  He turned back to her.

  “I have two lead analysts who’ll run this. They’re both psychologists. Just relax, take your time. You’re under no pressure of any sort. This is not adversarial and it has no legal standing. It’s not an interrogation. In fact, we’ll probably share things with you that you are not security
-cleared to hear. But that’s all right. We want this to be easy for you, and for you not to sense reluctance or authority or power or discretion on our part. If you can, try and think of us as your friends, not your government.”

  “Should I salute?” she said.

  Bonson laughed.

  “No. Nor will we be playing the national anthem or waving any flags. It’s just a chat between friends. Now, let us set up things for you, so you have some idea of a context in which this inquiry is taking place, and why your information is so vital.”

  “Sure.”

  It began. The crowd settled, the kids obediently found chairs, and Julie sat relaxed on the couch. There were no harsh lights. One of the questioners cleared his throat, and began to speak.

  “Mrs. Swagger, for reasons as yet unclear to us, factions within Russia have sent an extremely competent professional assassin to this country to kill you. That’s extraordinarily venturesome, even for them. You probably wonder why, and so do we. So in the past seventy-two hours, we’ve been poring through old records, trying to find something that you might know that would make your death important to someone over there. May I begin by assuming you have no idea?”

  “Nothing. I’ve never talked knowingly to a Russian in my life.”

  “Yes, ma’am. But we’ve put this into a larger pattern. It seems that three other people in your circle in the year 1971 were also killed under circumstances that suggest possible Soviet or Russian involvement. One is your first husband—”

  Julie gasped involuntarily.

  “This may be painful,” Bonson said.

  Bob touched her shoulder.

  “It’s all right,” she said.

  The young man continued, “Your husband, Donny Fenn, killed in the Republic of South Vietnam 6 May 1972. Another was a young man who was active with you in the peace movement, named Peter Farris, discovered dead with a broken neck, 6 October 1971, dead for several months at the time. And the third was another peace demonstrator of some renown, named Thomas Charles ‘Trig’ Carter III, killed in a bomb blast at the University of Wisconsin 9 May 1971.”

  “I knew Peter. He was so harmless. I only met Trig once … twice, actually.”

  “Hmmmm. Can you think of a specific circumstance that united the four of you? Marine, peace demonstrators, 1971?”

  “We were all involved in one of the last big demonstrations, May Day of that year. The three of us as demonstrators, Donny as a Marine.”

  “Julie,” said Bonson, “we’re thinking less of an ideological unification here and more of a specific, geographic one. A time, a place, not an idea. And a private place, too.”

  “The farm,” she finally said.

  There was no sound.

  Finally, Bonson prompted her.

  “The farm,” he said.

  “Donny was distraught over an assignment he’d been asked to do.”

  Bob looked at Bonson and saw nothing, just the face of a smooth, professional actor in the role of concerned intelligence executive. No flicker of emotion, grief, doubt, regrets: nothing. Bonson didn’t even blink, and Julie, remembering nothing of him and his role in what had happened, went on.

  “He believed this Trig, of whom he thought so highly, might have some idea what he should do with his ethical dilemma. We went to Trig’s house in DC but he wasn’t there. Donny remembered that he was going out to a farm near Germantown. I think Peter may have followed us. Peter thought he was in love with me.”

  “What did you see on that farm?” asked the young analyst.

  She laughed.

  “Nothing. Nothing at all. What can have been so important about it?”

  “We’d like to know.”

  “There was a man. An Irishman named Fitzpatrick. He and Trig were loading fertilizer into a van. It was very late at night.”

  “How clearly did you see him?”

  “Very. I was just out of the light, maybe fifteen, twenty-five feet away. I don’t think he ever saw me. Donny, for some reason, wanted me to stay back. So he and Trig and this Fitzpatrick talked for a few minutes. Then Fitzpatrick left. Then Donny and Trig talked some more and finally hugged. Then we left. There was some kind of agent in the hills. He got our picture—Donny’s and mine—as we drove away. Donny’s mostly. I was ducking. And that’s it.”

  “That’s it.”

  “Do you remember Fitzpatrick?”

  “I suppose.”

  “Do you think you’d be able to describe—”

  “No,” said Bonson. “Go straight to the pictures.”

  “Mrs. Swagger, we’d like to have you look at some pictures. They’re pictures of a variety of politicians, espionage agents, lawyers, scientists, military, mostly in the old Eastern Bloc, but some are genuinely Irish, some English, some French. They’re all in their forties or fifties, so you’ll have to imagine them as they’d have been in 1971.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Just take your time.”

  One of the kids walked across the room and handed her a sheaf of photographs. She flipped through them slowly, stopping now and then to sip on her Coke can.

  “Could I have another Coke?” she asked at one time.

  Somebody raced out.

  Bob watched as the gray, firm faces slid by, men possibly his own age or older, most of them dynamic in appearance, with square, ruddy faces, lots of hair, the unmistakable imprint of success.

  They were hunting for a mole, he realized. They thought that somehow—was this Bonson’s madness?—this Fitzpatrick had implanted someone in the fabric of the West, prosperous and powerful, but that his heart still belonged to the East, or what remained of it. If they could solve the mystery of Fitzpatrick, they could solve the mystery of the mole.

  Bob felt an odd twist of bitterness. That war, the cold one, it really had nothing to do with the little hot dirty one that had consumed so many men he had known and so wantonly destroyed his generation. Who’ll stop the rain? It wasn’t even about the rain.

  “No,” she said. “He’s not here, I’m sorry.”

  “Okay, let’s go to the citizens.”

  Another file of photos was provided.

  “Take your time,” said one of the debriefers. “Remember, he’ll be heavier, balder, he may have facial hair, he—”

  “Mel, I think Julie understands that,” said Bonson.

  Julie was quiet. She flipped through the pictures, now and then pausing. But another pile disappeared without a moment of recognition. Another pile was brought, this time designated “security nationals.”

  She had a possible, but paused, and then it too went to the discards, though into a separate category of “almosts.”

  But then, finally, there were no more pictures.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  The disappointment in the room was palpable.

  “Okay,” Bonson finally said. “Let’s knock off for a while. Julie, why don’t you take a break? Maybe a walk, stretch your legs. We’ll have to do it the hard way.”

  “What does that mean?” she asked. “Drugs? Torture?”

  “No, we’ll get you together with a forensic artist. He’ll draft a drawing from your instructions. We’ll get our computers to run a much wider comparison on a much wider database. Mel, be sure to get the ‘almosts’ too. Have Mr. Jefferson factor those in too. That’ll get us another bunch of candidates. We’ve got food. Would you care for some lunch or a nap or something?”

  “I’m fine. I think I’d like to check on my daughter.”

  She and Bob walked downstairs and found Nikki—asleep. She was stretched across Sally’s lap, snoozing gently, pinning Sally with her fragile weight.

  “I can’t even get up,” said Sally.

  “I’ll take her.”

  “No, that’s okay. These child geniuses got the cable running. The remote even works now. It didn’t. See.”

  She held up the little device and punched a few buttons and the picture flicked across the channels: Lifetime, CNN, Idaho
Public TV, HBO, the Discovery Channel, ESPN, CNN Headline N—

  “My God,” said Julie. “Oh, my God.”

  “What?” Bob said, and from around the house, others looked in, came to check.

  “That’s him,” said Julie. “My God, yes, fatter now, healthier; yes, that’s him. That’s Fitzpatrick!” She was pointing at the television, where a powerful, dynamic man was giving an impromptu news conference in a European city.

  “Jesus,” said one of the kids, “that’s Evgeny Pashin, the next president of Russia.”

  The second meeting was smaller, more informal. It was after lunch, prepared in an Air Force mess tent set up outside the house.

  Surprisingly good, nourishing food, too. More to the point, someone had come up with a nice batch of Disney videos for Nikki, that is, when she got back from a sledding diversion with three state troopers.

  Now, Julie and Bob sat upstairs with a much smaller contingent, the inner circle, as it were.

  “Julie,” said Bonson, “we’re going to discuss the meaning of this right here, before you and your husband. That’s because I want you on the inside now, not on the outside. I’m drawing the two of you in. You’re not civilians. I want you to feel like you’re part of the team. You will, in fact, both be paid as agency consultants; we pay well, you’ll see.”

  “Fine,” she said. “We could use the money.”

  “Now, I’m not even going to ask you if you’re sure. I know you’re sure. But I have to say: this guy has been on TV a lot lately. Can you explain why it’s only now that you recognize him?”

  “Mr. Bonson, have you ever been a mother?”

  There was some laughter.

  “No,” he admitted.

  “Have you ever been the wife to a somewhat melancholy yet incredibly heroic man, particularly as he’s feeling his life has been taken from him by some unnecessary publicity and we had to move from one location to another?”

  “No, no, I haven’t,” said Bonson.

  “Well, I was both, simultaneously. Does that suggest to you why I wasn’t watching much TV?” “Yes, it does.”

  “Now, today, you take me back. You force me to think about faces. I pick several faces that are somewhat similar in structure to his. I’m working on re-creating that face in my own mind. Do you see?”