by Lee Child
“Thousands. Hundreds and hundreds of Good Conduct Medals alone.”
“How many Silver Stars?”
“Not so many.”
“If any,” I said. “Not much was happening early in 1983. How many DSMs were handed out? How many DSCs? I bet they were as rare as hens’ teeth early in 1983.”
Elspeth Sansom moved in her chair and looked at me and said, “I don’t understand.”
I turned toward her but Sansom raised a hand and cut me off. He answered for me. There were no secrets between them. No wariness. He said, “It’s a kind of back door. Direct information is completely unavailable, but indirect information is out there. If someone knew that a Delta mission had taken place and succeeded, and when, then whoever got the biggest unexplained medal that month probably led it. Wouldn’t work in wartime, because big medals would be too common. But in peacetime, when nothing else is going on, a big award would stick out like a sore thumb.”
“We invaded Grenada in 1983,” Elspeth said. “Delta was there.”
“October,” Sansom said. “Which would add some background noise later in the year. But the first nine months were pretty quiet.”
Elspeth Sansom looked away. She didn’t know what her husband had been doing during the first nine months of 1983. Perhaps she never would. She said, “So who is asking?”
I said, “An old battleaxe called Svetlana Hoth, who claims to have been a Red Army political commissar. No real details, but she says she knew an American soldier named John in Berlin in 1983. She says he was very kind to her. And the only way that inquiring about it through Susan Mark makes any sense is if there was a mission involved and the guy named John led it and got a medal for it. The FBI found a note in Susan’s car. Someone had fed her the regulation and the section and the paragraph to tell her exactly where to look.”
Elspeth glanced at Sansom, involuntarily, with a question in her face that she knew would never be answered: Did you get a medal for something you did in Berlin in 1983? Sansom didn’t respond. So I tried. I asked him straight out, “Were you on a mission in Berlin in 1983?”
Sansom said, “You know I can’t tell you that.” Then he seemed to lose patience with me, and he said, “You seem like a smart guy. Think about it. What possible kind of operation could Delta have been running in Berlin in 1983, for God’s sake?”
I said, “I don’t know. As I recall, you guys worked very hard to stop people like me knowing what you were doing. And I don’t really care, anyway. I’m trying to do you a favor here. That’s all. One brother officer to another. Because my guess is something is going to come back and bite you in the ass and I thought you might appreciate a warning.”
Sansom calmed down pretty fast. He breathed in and out a couple of times and said, “I do appreciate the warning. And I’m sure you understand that I’m not really allowed to deny anything. Because logically, denying something is the same as confirming something else. If I deny Berlin and every other place I wasn’t, then eventually by a process of elimination you could work out where I was. But I’ll go out on a limb just a little, because I think we’re all on the same side here. So listen up, soldier. I was not in Berlin at any point in 1983. I never met any Russian women in 1983. I don’t think I was very kind to anyone, the whole year long. There were a lot of guys in the army called John. Berlin was a popular destination for sightseeing. This person you have been talking to is looking for someone else. It’s as simple as that.”
Sansom’s little speech hung in the air for a moment. We all sipped our drinks and sat quiet. Then Elspeth Sansom checked her watch and her husband saw her do it and said, “You’ll have to excuse us now. Today we have some really serious begging to do. Springfield will be happy to see you out.” Which I thought was an odd proposal. It was a public hotel. It was my space as much as Sansom’s. I could find my own way out, and I was entitled to. I wasn’t going to steal the spoons, and even if I did, they weren’t Sansom’s spoons. But then I figured he wanted to set up a little quiet time for Springfield and me, in a lonely corridor somewhere. For further discussion, perhaps, or for a message. So I stood up and headed for the door. Didn’t shake hands or say goodbye. It didn’t seem to be that kind of a parting.
Springfield followed me to the lobby. He didn’t speak. He seemed to be rehearsing something. I stopped and waited and he caught up to me and said, “You really need to leave this whole thing alone.”
I asked, “Why, if he wasn’t even there?”
“Because to prove that he wasn’t there you’ll start asking where he was instead. Better that you never know.”
I nodded. “This is personal to you too, isn’t it? Because you were right there with him. You went wherever he went.”
He nodded back. “Just let it go. You really can’t afford to turn over the wrong rock.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’ll be erased, if you do. You won’t exist anymore. You’ll just disappear, physically and bureaucratically. That can happen now, you know. This is a whole new world. I’d like to say I would help with the process, but I wouldn’t get the chance. Not even close. Because a whole bunch of other people would come for you first. I would be so far back in line that even your birth certificate would be blank before I got anywhere near you.”
“What other people?”
He didn’t answer.
“Government?”
He didn’t answer.
“Those federal guys?”
He didn’t answer. Just turned back and headed for the elevators. I stepped out to the Seventh Avenue sidewalk and Leonid’s phone started ringing in my pocket again.
Chapter 35
I stood on Seventh Avenue with my back to the traffic and answered Leonid’s phone. I heard Lila Hoth’s voice, soft in my ear. Precise diction, quaint phrasing. She said, “Reacher?”
I said, “Yes.”
She said, “I need to see you, quite urgently.”
“About what?”
“I think my mother might be in danger. Myself also, possibly.”
“From what?”
“Three men were downstairs, asking questions at the desk. While we were out. I think our rooms have been searched, too.”
“What three men?”
“I don’t know who they were. Apparently they wouldn’t say.”
“Why talk to me about it?”
“Because they were asking about you too. Please come and see us.”
I asked, “You’re not upset about Leonid?”
She said, “Under the circumstances, no. I think that was just an unfortunate misunderstanding. Please come.”
I didn’t answer.
She said, “I would very much appreciate your help.” She spoke politely, appealingly, a little submissively, even diffidently, like a supplicant. But not with standing all of that something extra in her voice made me fully aware that she was so beautiful that the last time any guy had said no to her was probably a decade in the past. She sounded vaguely commanding, like everything was already a done deal, like to ask was to get. Just let it go, Springfield had said, and of course I should have listened to him. But instead I told Lila Hoth, “I’ll meet you in your hotel lobby, fifteen minutes from now.” I thought that avoiding her suite would be enough of a safeguard, against whatever complications might ensue. Then I closed the phone and headed straight for the Sheraton’s taxi line.
The Four Seasons’s lobby was divided into a number of separate areas on two separate levels. I found Lila Hoth and her mother at a corner table in a dim paneled space that seemed to be a tea room during the day and might have been a bar by night. They were alone. Leonid wasn’t there. I checked carefully all around and saw no one else worth worrying about. No unexplained men in mid-priced suits, nobody lingering over the morning newspaper. No apparent surveillance at all. So I slid into a seat, next to Lila, across from her mother. Lila was wearing a black skirt and a white shirt. Like a cocktail waitress, except that the fabrics and the cut and the fit were like no
thing a cocktail waitress could afford. Her eyes were twin points of light in the gloom, as blue as a tropical sea. Svetlana was in another shapeless housedress, this time muddy maroon. Her eyes were dull. She nodded uncomprehendingly as I sat down. Lila extended her hand and shook mine quite formally. The contrast between the two women was enormous, in every way. In terms of age and looks, obviously, but also in terms of energy, vivacity, manners, and disposition.
I settled in and Lila got straight to the point. She asked, “Did you bring the memory stick?”
I said, “No,” although I had. It was in my pocket, with my toothbrush and Leonid’s phone.
“Where is it?”
“Somewhere else.”
“Somewhere safe?”
“Completely.”
She asked, “Why did those men come here?”
I said, “Because you’re poking around in something that’s still a secret.”
“But the press officer at the Human Resources Command was enthusiastic about it.”
“That’s because you lied to him.”
“I’m sorry?”
“You told him it was about Berlin. But it wasn’t. Berlin in 1983 was no kind of fun, but it was stable. It was a Cold War tableau, frozen in time. Maybe there was a little back and forth between the CIA and the KGB and the Brits and the Stasi, but there was no real U.S. Army involvement. For our guys it was just a tourist destination. Take the train, see the Wall. Great bars, and great hookers. Probably ten thousand guys called John passed through, but they didn’t do anything except spend money and catch the clap. Certainly they didn’t fight and they didn’t win medals. So tracking one of them down would be next to impossible. Maybe HRC was prepared to waste a little time, just in case something good came of it. But from the beginning it was a ridiculous task. So you can’t have gotten a positive outcome from Susan Mark. She can’t have told you anything about Berlin that made it worth coming over here. Just not possible.”
“So why did we come?”
“Because during those first few phone calls you softened her up and you made her your friend and then when you judged the time was right you told her what you really wanted. And exactly how to find it. For her ears only. Not Berlin. Something else entirely.”
An unguarded person with nothing to hide would have responded instantly and openly. Probably with outrage, possibly with hurt feelings. An amateur bluffer would have faked it, with bluster and noise. Lila Hoth just sat quiet for a beat. Her eyes showed the same kind of fast response as John Sansom’s had, back in his room in the O. Henry Hotel. Rethink, redeploy, reorganize, all in a brief couple of seconds.
She said, “It’s very complicated.”
I didn’t answer.
She said, “But it’s entirely innocent.”
I said, “Tell that to Susan Mark.”
She inclined her head. The same gesture I had seen before. Courteous, delicate, and a little contrite. She said, “I asked Susan for help. She agreed, quite willingly. Clearly her actions created difficulties for her with other parties. So, yes, I suppose I was the indirect cause of her troubles. But not the direct cause. And I regret what happened, very, very much. Please believe me, if I had known beforehand, I would have said no to my mother.”
Svetlana Hoth nodded and smiled.
I said, “What other parties?”
Lila Hoth said, “Her own government, I think. Your government.”
“Why? What did your mother really want?”
Lila said she needed to explain the background first.
Chapter 36
Lila Hoth had been just seven years old when the Soviet Union had fallen apart, so she spoke with a kind of historical detachment. She had the same kind of distance from former realities that I had from the Jim Crow years in America. She told me that the Red Army had deployed political commissars very widely. Every infantry company had one. She said that command and discipline were shared uneasily between the commissar and a field officer. She said that rivalry was common and bitter, not necessarily between the two as individuals, but between tactical common sense and ideological purity. She made sure I understood the general background, and then she moved on to specifics.
Svetlana Hoth had been a political commissar assigned to an infantry company. Her company had gone to Afghanistan soon after the Soviet invasion of 1979. Initial combat operations had been satisfactory for the infantry. Then they had turned disastrous. Attritional losses had become heavy and constant. At first there had been denial. Then Moscow had reacted, belatedly. The order of battle had been reorganized. Companies had been merged. Tactical common sense had suggested retrenchment. Ideology had required renewed offensives. Morale had required unity of ethnicity and geographical origin. Companies had been reconstituted to include sniper teams. Expert marksmen were brought in, with their companion spotters. Thus pairs of ragged men used to living off the land had arrived.
Svetlana’s sniper was her husband.
His spotter was Svetlana’s younger brother.
The situation had improved, both in military and in personal terms. Svetlana’s and other family and regional groupings had spent down time together very happily. Companies had dug in and settled down and achieved acceptable safety and security. Offensive requirements were satisfied by regular nighttime sniper operations. The results were excellent. Soviet snipers had long been the best in the world. The Afghan mujahideen had no answer to them. Late in 1981 Moscow had reinforced a winning hand by shipping new weapons. A new-model rifle had been issued. It was recently developed and still top secret. It was called the VAL Silent Sniper.
I nodded. Said, “I saw one once.”
Lila Hoth smiled, briefly, with a hint of shyness. And with a hint of national pride, perhaps, for a country that no longer existed. Probably just a shadow of the pride her mother had felt, way back when. Because the VAL was a great weapon. It was a very accurate silenced semi-automatic rifle. It fired a heavy nine-millimeter bullet at a subsonic velocity, and could defeat all types of contemporary body armor and thin-skinned military vehicles at ranges out to about four hundred yards. It came with a choice of powerful day telescopes or electronic night scopes. It was a nightmare, from an opponent’s point of view. You could be killed with no warning at all, silently, suddenly, and randomly, asleep in bed in a tent, in the latrines, eating, dressing, walking around, in the light, in the dark.
I said, “It was a fine piece.”
Lila Hoth smiled again. But then the smile faded. The bad news started. The stable situation lasted a year, and then it ended. The Soviet infantry’s inevitable military reward for good performance was to be handed ever more dangerous tasks. The same the world over, the same throughout history. You don’t get a pat on the back and a ride home. You get a map instead. Svetlana’s company was one of many ordered to push north and east up the Korengal Valley. The valley was six miles long. It was the only navigable route out of Pakistan. The Hindu Kush mountains reared up on the far left, impossibly barren and high, and the Abas Ghar range blocked the right flank. The six-mile trail in between was a major mujahideen supply line out of the North West Frontier, and it had to be cut.
Lila said, “The British wrote the book over a hundred years ago, about operations in Afghanistan. Because of their empire. They said, when contemplating an offensive, the very first thing you must plan is your inevitable retreat. And they said, you must save the last bullet for yourself, because you do not want to be taken alive, especially by the women. The company commanders had read that book. The political commissars had been told not to. They had been told that the British had failed only because of their political un-soundness. Soviet ideology was pure, and therefore success was guaranteed. With that delusion our very own Vietnam began.”
The push up the Korengal Valley had been backed by air and artillery power and had succeeded for the first three miles. A fourth had been won yard by yard against opposition that had seemed ferocious to the grunts but strangely muted to the officers.
The officers were right.
It was a trap.
The mujahideen waited until Soviet supply lines were stretched four miles long and then they dropped the hammer. Helicopter resupply was largely interdicted by a constant barrage of U.S.-supplied shoulder-launched ground-to-air missiles. Coordinated attacks pinched off the salient at its origin. Late in 1982 thousands of Red Army troops were essentially abandoned in a long thin chain of inadequate and improvised encampments. The winter weather was awful. Freezing blasts of wind howled constantly along the pass between the mountain ranges. And there were evergreen holly bushes everywhere. Pretty and picturesque in the right context, but not for soldiers forced to work among them. They were gratingly noisy in the wind and they limited mobility and they tore skin and shredded uniforms.
Then harassment raids had started.
Prisoners had been taken, in ones and twos.
Their fate was appalling.
Lila quoted lines that the old British writer Rudyard Kipling had put in a doom-laden poem about failed offensives and groaning abandoned battlefield casualties and cruel Afghan tribeswomen with knives: When you’re wounded on Afghanistan’s plains, and the women come out to cut up what remains, just roll to your rifle and blow out your brains, and go to your God like a soldier. Then she said what had been true even at the zenith of the British Empire’s power was still true, and worse. Soviet infantrymen would go missing and hours later in the dark the winter wind would carry the sound of their screaming, from unseen enemy camps close by. The screaming would start at a desperate pitch and move slowly and surely upward into insane banshee wailing. Sometimes it would last ten or twelve hours. Most corpses were never recovered. But sometimes bodies would be returned, missing hands and feet, or whole limbs, or heads, or ears, or eyes, or noses, or penises.