Sniper's Honor

by Stephen Hunter

“It’s something rinky-dink in the Pentagon. Office of Defense Procurement Review. The dope they got from Krulov was slipstreamed into Agency product, that’s how they got it into policy play. It still works that way.”

  “Then in ’56, someone separates Krulov from his head. Right? It’s all over. But is it?”

  “He had a son,” said Jerry. “Guy named Strelnikov, mother’s remarried name, still the son of Krulov. Who got high in the government, became a billionare when Communism fell, and is now getting back into government.”

  “And he’s your guy.”

  “I don’t know when Strelnikov went active for us. Mid-’60s, early ’70s, maybe. But I see why now. If it comes out his dad was a Nazi spy, they will look at him hard, and he’s finished. He never gets anywhere. He’s a bus conductor for life. I didn’t get that part. I thought it was idealism.”

  “It was leverage. So this whole thing is about protect your asset. Here’s what you geniuses never got. Strelnikov, like his father before him, because of his father before him, still wants to destroy the Jews. He was never a Communist, he was never a Nazi. He was only a genocide guy. He wants to live up to his dad’s heroism, be the man at the tip of the spear in the war against the Jews. He was really still working for RHSA fifty years after RHSA was dust and burned steel. You didn’t care, you even helped him, because the stuff he was giving you was so good. You made a deal with a guy, but you never looked at him carefully enough to realize he was the devil. And now he’s about to become trade minister. Now he’s even more vulnerable to the revelation that Daddy was a spy, which will lead to the fact that he’s a spy, and it all goes back to Basil’s need to bury Mili’s heroism to protect his own ass. She won the war, and yet she’s the one you birds are betraying.”

  “Why does he want to be trade minister?” Reilly asked.

  “They don’t know. It has them worried,” said Jerry. “It’s not in the main target area. The econ stuff he’ll get us is great, but they think it’s a loss of opportunity. They don’t want econ, they want strategic. But nobody could talk him out of it, and that’s what he’s going to do. Maybe it’ll pay off long-term. I can tell you, nobody’s going to get off the Strelnikov train yet.”

  “Oh yeah. Well, I’ll tell you what you don’t know yet,” said Swagger. “Wake up, Agent Jerry, and see how the game is played. When she blows his cover in the Post, their intel people are going to pull Strelnikov’s ass in hard and fast. And they are going to take him apart. Every deal, every communication, every meeting, they’ll pull it out of him. You haven’t just lost an asset, you’ve turned a gold mine over to SRV. I’ll bet he’s got a package all set against this possibility, to keep him out of prison. He’s got tons of stuff on you guys, and all the good he’s done you goes away, and everything he’s figured out about your other sources, he gives that up. That’s the mess that’s about to land on you feet-first.”

  Jerry said nothing.

  “Too bad your leg’s all busted up,” said Bob. “Otherwise, you might have gotten the hit on Strelnikov. Sounds like fun to me.”

  CHAPTER 52

  The Carpathians

  The Yaremche Road

  JULY 1944

  It was another soggy morning at Ginger’s Womb. It looked like rain, with low clouds sealing in humidity, sweat rising quickly to the skin and just as quickly dampening the combat smocks of the parachutists. Fortunately there wasn’t much to do. Karl had his sentry rotation running efficiently; all the guns were cleaned, Blu-Oiled, locked, and loaded; Wili had gone over the Flammenwerfer-41 and made sure that a trigger pull sent a lick of hungry flame dancing forty meters through the air; all the Teller mines were laid, all the wire strung and camouflaged in greenery; both the machine guns were locked into their tripods for defensive fire in the heavy mode, but all the pins lubricated, so when the time came, they could be yanked free and turned into something more flexible in a second; all the ammo belts were rolled and stored, all the ammo to reload the FG-42 mags if necessary torn from boxes and collected in crates; all the grenades were out, all the pins examined so they wouldn’t hang up on some burr of metal when needed; all the canteens were filled; and all the latrine duties were taken care of.

  “All right,” Karl yelled, “bayonet practice.”

  The announcement was greeted with laughter, not only because the FG-42s had a spike bayonet that was stored under and pivoted outward from beneath the barrel and was largely considered useless by everyone, but also because nobody had practiced bayonet skills since 1939. No one in living memory had killed an Ivan with a bayonet, though if he thought about it, Karl could recall an episode in Italy when the spear of the blade was used to prong open a can of American tomatoes. “I’ll teach this tomato the meaning of German steel!” he remembered Wili Bober saying sternly as he pierced the thing.

  At 0930, when Karl had his first pipeful going well and had settled in for the tonic of more melancholy over the death of Ziemssen in Mann’s great novel, a shadow interrupted what dim light fell from the cloudy sky, and he looked up to see his signalman.

  “Zeppelin Leader on the radio. Wants you and you alone. Sounds all fucked up, even for an Arab.”

  “He waited until I got my pipe going nicely, I know it,” Karl said, raising, stretching, willing his way through all the scrapes, abrasions, pulled muscles, strained muscles, tired muscles that always visited after a combat engagement, and went to the Commo Tent, where he took up earphones and spoke into the microphone. “Hello, hello, Oskar Leader here, go ahead.”

  Over the earphone, he heard disturbance—chaos, screams, noises, hard to say exactly what. At the same time, just by chance, he saw a column of smoke rising from behind the foothills in a valley approximately where the village of Yaremche should be.

  “Are your people in position, Herr Major?” Salid, the junior officer, hadn’t even bothered to go through the officer-officer-brotherhood bullshit of radio protocol.

  “Yes, Captain, though I wasn’t aware I reported to you.”

  “Von Drehle, she did it. She got him. The damned bitch made the shot.”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t—”

  “The White Witch shot Senior Group Leader Groedl through the throat ten minutes ago.”

  “Is he dead?”

  “She practically blew his head off. Half his neck is gone.”

  “Good Christ. Is that why the town is burning? I can see the smoke.”

  “These fucking Russians must be taught. Never mind that, I have my dog teams out—”

  “I thought you had burned out all the cover so that she couldn’t hit—”

  “I don’t know how. She must have shot from a thousand yards. I don’t know, it doesn’t matter, we have the dog teams out, and I have the rest of my men in panzerwagens, and we will now travel to the road up to your position. Please put all your men on interception duty. This woman must be caught.”

  “Wasn’t your explicit responsibility to protect—”

  “I don’t report to you, either, Von Drehle. Now, I know the SS lieutenant general has had a chat with you, so if you value your men and dream of a postwar future, you will give this assignment your total commitment. I would put all my men out there in the net; this woman is obviously a tricky bitch, and I hope you are up to handling her.”

  “I will do my duty, yes, as I am a soldier until peace is declared, Captain.”

  “You radio me this channel the second you learn something or there has been a development.”

  “Is that an order?”

  “Goddammit, Von Drehle, don’t play games with me. I speak for the lieutenant general, the entire SS, the SA, so when I tell you to do something, that is the authority I bring to the conversation, and if you doubt that, you radio Muntz yourself for a clarification. End transmit.”

  “End transmit, Ali Baba,” said Karl to a dead microphone.

  He rose. By now a few men had gathered outside.

  “Well,” he said, “the Russian woman sniper they call the White Witch has c
ast a magic spell on Dr. Groedl. She magically turned him into a corpse. That means I want you in the woods on picket duty, all of you, because I have been informed that she has been flushed by dogs and may be in transit to our picnic area. She has to be taken alive.”

  “In the meantime, suppose the Russians attack and we are out there looking for a girl?” Deneker asked.

  “I don’t set these priorities, but they have been set. And you can grumble all you want, but you have a stake in the outcome, too. I have been told by Brigadeführer Muntz that if we do capture her, once she is turned over to the SS, we are formally released from the hold-at-all-costs mandate. We can blow Ginger and get out of here. Next stop, Hungary. I’m told he’ll send us off on two weeks’ leave and have us reassigned to the Western Front with the rest of Two Fallschirmjäger. You may still die, but it won’t be by a Russian bullet, just a shiny American one from Hollywood or someplace like that. So do your goddamned duties. And if anyone sees Bober out there, send him in to me. Now do it, quick quick quick.”

  An hour or so passed. The men in the woods on picket rotated so they didn’t get too bored. Wili Bober arrived, and Karl briefed him on the situation.

  “So, catch this woman and we can get home in time for Christmas, eh?” Wili said. “I guess blowing up the bridge, plus all the other jobs, the seven Russian strong points, the railroad yards, the T-34 refueling yard, and several other things weren’t worth it, but this gal sniper wins us the class prize.”

  “Wili, I can’t figure out how their minds work. Why this one is so important to them and they didn’t even notice the bridge is pretty mysterious to me, too. It must be some spy shit or something.”

  “I guess for once, the game is working to our advantage.”

  “I want to get you out of here before the SS sends you to Dachau. You’ve been daring them to for years. Sending people to Dachau seems to be the order of the day ever since that guy blew up the Austrian.”

  At that moment both involuntarily flinched. Screaming came across the sky.

  They turned and, from their vantage point four thousand feet up, could see the exhaust flames of seventy-two Katyushas rising from a point of the horizon, a fleet of radiant darts sent howling to the accompaniment of the banshee scream each emitted as it rose, and in the next second the whole horizon seemed to light up as the sound of thousands of the things hurling airborne filled the sky.

  “Here they come,” said Karl. “Vacation’s over.”

  “They’re still a long way away,” said Wili.

  “We’ll be engaged by nightfall, if I don’t miss my guess. Through Yaremche and straight down the Yaremche road to Ginger. And if they get here, this is where we stay.”

  “I hope the boys catch the White Witch. She’s our only chance.”

  “I better talk to my new boss, the great and wise Captain Salid.”

  Karl ducked into the commo tent, interrupted the signalman reading The Brothers Karamazov in the original Russian, and waited as the appropriate connections and protocols were made.

  “Zeppelin Leader here, hello, hello.”

  “Hello, hello, Zeppelin Leader.”

  “Von Drehle?”

  “Affirmative. As you have no doubt noticed, the Russians are coming. I have no idea how long they will take, but I wanted to inform you that if I have to, I will recall my men to defend my position. A maximum effort for one girl is militarily unjustifiable.”

  “That woman must be caught!” said the voice on the radio.

  “Catching her does none of us any good if we can’t get her anyplace because the Russians control this position. Surely you understand something that elementary.”

  “Von Drehle, the Reich has set its priorities. The woman contains secrets of utmost importance. Whether a few Red tanks get through a gap in the mountains is largely meaningless. I will call the brigadeführer and he will set you straight.”

  “I expect the old boy is rather busy now. He’s got a battle to fight. All of us have a battle to fight except, it seems, you.”

  “I am fighting the real battle. Keep your men on picket duty until otherwise informed. I speak for the brigadeführer.”

  But something caught Karl’s eye. He looked hard and then spoke into the phone. “Well, Captain, it’s everybody’s lucky day. We just broke the bank at Monte Carlo.”

  Five figures had just emerged from the woods across the road. They were two Green Devils and three captives with their hands clasped behind their heads. One was a woman.

  “You have them?” said the captain, and Karl could feel his excitement from miles away.

  “A woman and two men. From here the woman looks to be something out of a French glamour magazine, except you don’t know what a French glamour magazine is.”

  “Keep them alive. All of them. They are everything.”

  CHAPTER 53

  The Carpathians

  Natasha’s Womb

  THE PRESENT

  They could see the helicopter orbiting the crossroad before the narrow passageway that had to be Natasha’s Womb. All the housekeeping had been taken care of, the Stens ditched—“Damn good piece when it counted” was Swagger’s verdict—the phone call to Jerry’s backup team, via Jerry’s own phone, which was then quickly abandoned. Swagger took care of the Enfield No. 4 (T), meaning somehow to get it to the partisan museum.

  So now it was a matter of a few minutes. And then Reilly’s phone buzzed. She fished it out of the bag, read the number, and said, “D.C.”

  “No rush,” said Bob. “The chopper ain’t going nowhere without us.”

  “Hello,” she said, and then, “Hi, Michael. Oh, actually very well. Long story, when I see you, I’ll tell you. I do, yes. Very interesting, and it seems to me you’d want to be involved. Oh, really? Oh, great, yes, yes, let’s hear what you have.”

  She listened intently for several minutes, nodding. The smile on her face did not change at all, but at the same time it changed totally. The smile ceased to be a reflection of mood and became some kind of external edifice, supporting the face, which, three layers beneath the skin, in the deep subcutaneous tissue, went taut and hurt. She went from a smiling woman to a woman with a smiling mask on.

  “Yes, yes, well, we knew it all along, and it’s the best ending under the circumstances. Yes, we’ll be back in Moscow in eight hours, I’ll call you, we’ll set something up. I agree, very good news, oh no, I had help, believe me, I had help. It wasn’t all me, not by a long shot. Okay, talk soon.”

  She turned to Swagger and issued a total blaze of a smile, radiantly insincere. “Okay, all set. Let’s go.”

  They walked to the Womb, where at last the chopper could put down.

  Swagger said, “I’d say you seen a ghost, but not even a ghost would smack you as hard as whatever just did.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Not bad news, not really. Good news, you’d say.”

  “You don’t believe that any more than you’ve made me believe it.”

  “I had held out hope. And so had you. It was a one-in-a-million chance. But now it’s gone.”

  “Okay, tell me.”

  “Long boring background: in 1976, someone was interviewing Jewish survivors of the war. He never got around to writing the book. All of the transcripts went to the Holocaust Museum archives in D.C., where they were read and indexed. One of them was a recording of a guy who’d survived not only the concentration-camp system but then the gulags.”

  “The Holocaust Museum in D.C.? How does that come into it?”

  “Another long story, along the lines of old newspaper friend who married the national editor of The Washington Post, who becomes an executive at the Holocaust Museum. Small world, no? But absolutely true. So I called him. That is, my friend’s husband, a few weeks ago, to see if the museum had anything in its archives about Groedl. That was finally the response.”

  “Okay,” said Bob. “I copy.”

  “So this interviewer, remember, recorded a gulag survivor who’d been in Sib
eria. In the barracks was a man known to have fought with the partisans. The two became friends. Maybe both were Jews, though that’s not said anywhere. So our man passed on to the interviewer what the ex-partisan had told him about being in the forest with a woman Russian sniper, who had killed a big Nazi criminal.”

  “Any verification?”

  “He said Ukraine, July 1944. I didn’t tell that to Michael, that’s independently from the interviewee, circa 1976, recounting what he’d been told in 1954. Because someone guessed it was Groedl, a copy of this part of the interview went into the Groedl file, which is why Michael’s people found it.”

  “That’s the first outside verification that Mili wasted Groedl.”

  “There’s more to the story.”

  “You better hurry and tell me.”

  “He knew what happened to Mili.”

  CHAPTER 54

  The Carpathians

  Ginger’s Womb

  JULY 1944

  Von Drehle walked over and examined the captives. They were scrawny, filthy, exhausted, shiny with sweat.

  The two men were uninteresting. A fellow in glasses, mid-thirties, with perhaps too much intelligence in his eyes that he tried to mask. A Jew, possibly. The other, big, one of those hearty Ukrainian peasant types.

  “Karl, the skinny one had this,” Deneker said, handing over a small Hungarian pistol.

  Karl dumped the magazine, which was full, then pulled back the slide, so the chambered cartridge popped out. “Sir,” he said in Russian, “this could get you into a lot of trouble.” He tossed the magazine one way, the pistol the other, into the trees. “Okay, I want to talk to the legendary White Witch now,” he said.

  The men led the two males off to the trenches for some food. Karl gestured the woman to the grass margin by the road and indicated for her to sit. Yes, goddammit, she was a beauty. From somewhere in his forgotten education—Flaubert: “Beauty can cut like a knife.”

  She had cheekbones like doorknobs, which pulled her cheeks taut, almost concave. The lips, however, were full, if grim. The nose had an aquiline perfection, but nothing matched her eyes, which were as blue as summer lakes and as big as winter oceans. They, too, were grim, but somehow calm and capable of holding a stare without revealing a thing. But one knew that the irises could dilate into expressiveness, even warmth, in split seconds. Her eyebrows were dark in contrast to her tanned but still-soft skin; the tawny-dark tendrils of hair hanging down across her forehead achieved not messiness but perfection. Whatever happened to this woman’s hair, it would always seem perfect.