Sniper's Honor

by Stephen Hunter

  He realized what had happened. They’d lured her, knowing she’d take a long, impossible shot, knowing she’d give up her life for just a chance, a one-in-a-million long shot, of bringing it off. That was Groedl’s plan, that was his game.

  They used the sniper’s honor against the sniper.

  No sense getting upset about it now, was there? What the hell, it was seventy years ago. Then why did he feel so much old Bob at this moment? He had the killing fever.

  * * *

  Reilly sat alone in the backseat of the cab that was hauling her to Ivano. She, too, thought and thought and only came up with more questions. But then the phone in her purse rang. She snatched it up and answered. “Swagger?”

  “Swagger? Who the hell is Swagger?” asked Marty, the foreign editor of The Washington Post, from his office at Fifteenth and K.

  “Sorry, Marty, I was expecting a call from a friend.”

  “What time is it there?”

  “Near three A.M.”

  “You keep long hours. It’s eight here. But I’m glad I didn’t wake you. We need a backgrounder for the website, maybe tomorrow’s late editions.”

  “What?” said Reilly, thinking what every reporter thinks in such a situation, which is: Oh, shit.

  “Remember Strelnikov? You interviewed him, remember? He’s just been appointed minister of trade by Putin.”

  She knew that was big because this Strelnikov was hard right, very nationalist, much feared and hated by so-called liberal factions in Moscow. He was one of those billionaires who decided to get into politics, maybe the Michael Bloomberg of Russia. But this was a surprisingly meaningless position for him to take, so nobody was getting it.

  “Can you give us a thousand off the top on Strelnikov? Who he is, where he comes from, what he does, all that suff you already know?”

  “Absolutely,” she said. “I’m in transit right now, but I’ll be in shortly, and I’ll file in a couple of hours.”

  She was secretly pleased. The best anodyne to anxiety, she knew, was work. She could bury herself in the arcana of the hopelessly preposterous Strelnikov, billionaire, poseur, fraud, and phony, one of those bizarre rich guys all reporters hated because they were allowed to turn narcissism into reality by virtue of their bucks. It took her mind off of Bob on the run.

  * * *

  Swagger pulled over in the dark—sun starting to creep up against the horizon, advancing itself with a trace of glow—and dialed.

  “Da?”

  “Swagger for Stronski.”

  The phone went dead. Five minutes later it rang.

  “What’s up?” asked Stronski.

  Bob explained his situation.

  Stronski said, “Dump the car. They have the numbers on the car, they’re looking for the car. Dump it in a village, take the next out-of-town bus that arrives. The car is death, but you may be all right if you separate from it now.”

  “You think these guys are wired in to the police and all the cops are looking for the car?”

  “It’s Ukraine, pal. Anything’s possible.”

  “Okay, I got it.”

  “I’m going to set up an escape for you. You need to get the hell out of town, and I mean it, Swagger. Like the last time.”

  “But like the last time, I still have shit to do. Have to get back to Yaremche and look it over. Can you have me picked up there?”

  “I’ll work on it. But don’t doodle around. Serious boys are after you.”

  “So who?” said Bob, thinking, The gangs, the cops, some oligarch’s henchmen?

  “I hear a certain fellow picked up five or six freelance tough guys on an out-of-town job. I was checking on it with police sources, and it just came through that the group went to Ukraine with big suitcases.”

  “Who?” said Swagger.

  “You’re going to love this. I know who the certain fellow works for. I know who’s behind this, who’s bankrolling it.”

  “Who?”

  “The Americans.”

  CHAPTER 30

  New Quarters, Battlegroup Von Drehle

  Outside Stanislav

  MID-JULY 1944

  It’s not war per se,” said Wili Bober. “Nor is it the prospect of death or maiming. Or a life spent in a Russian prisoner-of-war camp on the far side of the Arctic Circle. No, none of that bothers me. It’s the latrines.”

  “War would definitely be more fun without latrines,” said Von Drehle.

  The two sat over rude holes in a rude bench over a rude ditch not a hundred meters from their new empire, itself quite rude. It consisted of six tents in a muddy field, each with room for four men. In the squalid heat of July in Ukraine, the tents were unendurable, even with the flaps pinned up. Many of the jägers preferred to sleep outside during the hot nights.

  They ate at the mess of the 14th Panzergrenadier, whose vast tank maintenance facility they abutted. Such was the reward for the heroes of the Bridge at Chortkiv. At every minute of every day, the roar of Panzers and Panthers could be heard while Division Workshop struggled to keep as many of the machines in play as possible, which meant the beasts turned over their engines once every few hours to keep the hot-weather-thinned oil in circulation. All well and good for the war effort, but the practical consequence was the constant torrent of exhaust fumes at the 21 Para village.

  “I thought we were heroes,” said Wili. “You have at least, what, fifteen or twenty Iron Crosses? You may even be a major.”

  “Have to look into the major issue,” said Karl. “I do miss the glorious bathrooms of the Andrewski Palace. I miss the sheets, the decor, the sense of order. This is like a Hitler Youth camp in 1936. Next they’ll have us singing ‘Horst Wessel.’ ”

  “You should have shot that little Arabian bugger,” said Wili.

  “Think of the paperwork,” said Karl.

  “Speaking of paperwork, I think I’m done with today’s operation. I mention it because I seem to lack paperwork.”

  Without looking, Karl handed over the latest Signal. Wili paged through it quickly and came up with an article called “National Socialism: Its Spiritual Essence.”

  “This will do the trick,” he said, and ripped the pages out. He got through the engagement quite nicely, then enjoyed applying a heroic photo of The Leader to his posterior. He reassembled kit and stepped down from his throne and pushed beyond a sheet hung for privacy. Ouch, bad news. A Kübelwagen had just entered the compound bearing an earnest 14th Panzergrenadier lieutenant. The young man had stopped for directions, and a couple of lounging Green Devils pointed him to Karl, who was emerging from the latrines.

  “Major,” said the young man, stepping from the vehicle that had just delivered him. He threw up a completely unenthusiastic “Heil Hitler” salute that looked like a broken-winged sparrow fluttering its bad feathers at a predator, and Karl responded with his normal impression of a drunken clown waving at a lady in the stands whom he wanted to boff. So much for Nazi ceremony in the regular military.

  “So you are a major,” said Wili.

  “Apparently,” said Karl. “Yes, Lieutenant, what can I do for you?”

  “Sir, the general requires your presence. Tomorrow at 1400.”

  “Say,” said Wili to the youngster, “you don’t happen to have any copies of Signal lying about? We need it for the inspiration.”

  CHAPTER 31

  Lviv

  Bus Station

  THE PRESENT

  His spleen hurt, his head hurt, his lips were dry, he was out of breath. That was bus travel in Ukraine. The ancient vehicle, finding a last few potholes to further test its shocks against, turned in to the—well, “station” wasn’t quite the right word. “Station” connotes order, discipline, coherence, a system. Here, the boarding and deboarding process appeared to take place in some kind of Darwinian sink where the buses just butted and bluffed and brazened their way close to the building until they could go no farther. Consequently, the yard was a riot of buses as they jammed this way and that at odd angles
, the whole thing mad and fraught. It looked like a bus station after the end of civilization.

  The driver nosed his way in, honking and cursing and maneuvering heroically until at last there was no farther to go. End of ride. He turned the thing off—the last dying breath of low-wattage air-conditioning died without a whisper—and cranked open the doors to let his passengers out into the melee.

  Late last night, Bob had dumped the car in a copse of trees outside of a town whose name he could not remember, much less spell. He’d hidden in the same trees until full light, then moseyed into town, trying to look inconspicuous in his jeans and gray polo shirt. He’d seen a batch of people waiting in the square and joined them. When a bus came, he got aboard. The driver demanded payment, as this was no longer socialism, and Bob, ever the ugly American, shoved a wad of bills at him, watched him harvest them, and had no idea one way or the other if he’d been robbed blind or given a generous discount. Then the three hours of torture began.

  He was pleased, at least, that Lviv turned out to be the bus destination, remembering the pleasant old-town evening of a few days before. Plan: find a hotel room, pay cash, call Reilly, set up a meet in Yaremche, call Stronski, arrange that quick exit, get to Yaremche, and then get out of town. It seemed simple enough. He waited as the pile-up to exit cleared, then eventually stepped free and enjoyed a breath of fresh air, however laced with exhaust fumes. Meanwhile, honking and shouting, shoving, rushing, dodging, broken-field running, various funny walks, and lots of old ladies prevailed in the labyrinth between the buses as passengers from his own and all other buses attempted to negotiate a way out without getting crushed by entering or exiting vehicles. Bob took his time, not shoving, not shouting, trusting that any direction was as good as another and basically going the way of least resistance, and that was when he got shot.

  It felt like someone whacked him hard in the side with a near-molten fireplace poker. But there was no sound, even if, ahead of him, he saw a pop of debris as a bullet hole erupted into the skin of bus.

  He knew in a speed that has no place in time that someone behind him had taken a bad shot with a suppressed pistol and missed center mass. He jigged right, then left, speeding up, turned hard left at the next bus, chose another path, jigged left and then right, moving too quickly for a one-handed shooter to stay with him. He tried to lose himself in the chaos of the labyrinth and its crowd.

  Someone was trying to kill him. He realized the guy had been off on his first shot because he’d fired from the hip. Presumably he carried the pistol against his leg, hidden under a coat, had seen the target clear, and rushed a shot.

  Swagger had no idea who. He turned back as people filtered this way and that, none of them suspicious at all, just the usual glut of Ukraine working folk, scraggly students with backpacks, a few survivors of the tsarist epoch, and some febrile young kids who couldn’t keep their hands out of each other’s pants. His side burned but did not bleed a lot, and though it hurt, he knew that until it bruised, it wouldn’t impinge his movement. Getting shot wasn’t the biggest of deals to him; it had happened before.

  He turned, turned again, simply trying to stay afoot. Ahead the bus riot seemed to be thinning, and he thought he could get a cab and get far away. But it occurred to him: I cannot escape. If I escape, he, whoever, finds me as he found me here, and this time prepares better for his shot, and I am down and he is gone.

  I have to find him and drop his ass.

  Old Bob, maybe real Bob, maybe even the only Bob, took over the brain. He felt his vision clarify and deepen, his muscles fill with killing strength, his will focus to one point and one point alone. He liked it when the world vanished, there was no civilization, no bullshit about rank or caste or what was expected and how you had to act. It was just him, the other guy, and a jungle that happened to be constructed of buses. He liked it that way just fine.

  He turned and headed back into the crowd and began to work his way more or less randomly through the corridors between the vehicles. One pulled out suddenly. A horn blasted. A mother pushing a carriage squawked at a driver who cursed back. Swagger thought he might die beneath bus tires, never mind the efforts of his assassin.

  He forged ahead, trying desperately to read each passerby for sign: hands hidden, or someone walking at a kind of oblique angle to conceal the pistol from witnesses, or a heavy coat on a hot day. At the same time he had to do this with Zenlike chill, without seeming effort, because if he eyeballed too noticeably, it would alert the shooter, who would take him from afar.

  Come on, buster, he thought. Come on, go for me. We’ll see how good you are.

  He felt his eyes dilate even wider, his breath come in cool spurts, his muscles go to tense. He walked on the balls of his feet, knowing it gave him a little advantage on first power step. He was in full warrior brain, total Condition Green, ready to go at any second.

  This way, that way, that way, this way.

  Was the guy looking under buses, looking for Bob’s New Balances as the tell? Was the guy behind him, slowly closing in? Swagger cranked around, but nobody seemed to be moving fast with any purpose, nobody had a white face and tense lips, all giveaways for a hunter on a job.

  He turned again, roaming more or less randomly, waited as a little knot of people cleared, then edged through and found himself between two buses as, up ahead, three old ladies picked their way along, one on a walker.

  He kept his head down, moving slowly, ready to yield when he reached them.

  The babushkas had dark faces under scarves and broad black peasant dresses. Each wore a shawl bunched around her shoulders, held tight by a fist, and they were—

  He hit the one in the middle with an open hand, palm-up strike to the nose, enjoying the crunch beneath the thrust even as the shock traveled up his arm to tell his head the blow had been well placed. Felt so good.

  The lady reeled back and the pistol came out, a Makarov with six inches of suppressor at the muzzle, but Swagger nabbed the wrist with his left hand and twisted it away and took another hard-palm, right-handed shot into the nose, which issued blood outflow in torrential quantities. He heard screams, shouts, had the peripheral impression of people fleeing. He kicked his opponent’s feet out from under and she went down hard, though he held the gun hand tight enough to snap the wrist, and he pivoted, stepped viciously, driving heel first into her face while controlling the gun. Then he reversed on the arm, finding leverage against the elbow, and felt it bend as it sent high-voltage pain into the fallen body. He twisted the loosened pistol out of the woman’s hand. He deftly shifted it and placed muzzle against the throat, feeling the opponent go to surrender against the pressure of the lethal instrument,

  The trigger was such a temptation. It would sound like a refrigerator door closing, and then this one would be with the angels. But he didn’t yield. He didn’t pull the trigger. He leaned over and whispered in meaningless English, “Hairy knuckles, dumb motherfucker,” then elbowed the bloody, damaged face again, feeling teeth break at the point of contact.

  He rose, turned to find people at each end of the corridor staring at him, while from one of the buses a whole load of passengers had come to the windows.

  He leaned over, grabbed the top of the woman’s blouse, and pulled it open, yanking free a brassiere stuffed with tissue to reveal a heavy, hairy male chest wearing a galaxy of tattoos. He twisted the body so that the spectators could see it. The false woman groaned in pain and put the other hand to his tormented biceps.

  “Mafia,” Swagger said, knowing the word to be universal.

  “Ahhh,” came the roar of the crowd, and he dumped the damaged shooter back to the ground and turned, and the people parted to let him past. Now they understood. Someone pointed the way, and he followed a couple of turns, saw a cab, and went to it.

  Moscow

  The Krulov Investigation

  A Not So Respectable Location

  “All right,” said Mikhail Likov of SVR, “you want something. Fine, you got money, lots
of it? I’m no traitor, but for a certain amount, ha ha, anything is possible. Capitalism, you know.”

  “No money,” said Will. “But I know you’ll get me what I want in trade for what I have to offer.”

  “What you want?”

  Mikhail downed another vodka shot. It was okay. Nothing special, but at least potato-based, unlike some of this new age shit.

  “A file. So old that it was started back when they called the outfit NKVD. So old I don’t think it’s that valuable. That’s why I’m an idiot for giving you what I’m going to give you for it.”

  They sat in a rude Moscow strip club called the Animal, so rude that a woman onstage was in a further state of undress. There were many women there trolling for business in the dark enclaves of the joint, all to the beat-beat-beat of loud, bad Russian syntho-rock. Naturally, it was Likov’s favorite place, and many SVR guys came here. They were known to the girls, who liked them so much they never gave a discount.

  Mikhail had helped Will on a few tough-to-get stories in the past, usually for a modest tip—it was for his kids, he said, but at least three of those kids, Eva the blond one, Jun the Asian, and Magda the Czech—were here tonight.

  “What’s so important about this file?”

  “That’s the funny thing. I don’t know. Maybe nothing. But I’ve been hunting in archives for three days and come up with nothing, as if it’s been erased. But whoever’s doing the erasing, I’m guessing he couldn’t erase it out of the collective memory of the KGB.”