"Fenn. Yes, I used Fenn."
"How?"
"We had a bad apple named Crowe. Crowe, we knew, had contacts within the peace movement, through a young man named Trig Carter, a kind of Mick Jagger type, very popular, connected, highly thought of."
The name sounded familiar.
"Trig was bisexual. He had sex with boys. Not always, not frequently, but occasionally, late at night, after drinks or drugs. The FBI had a good workup on him. I needed someone who fit the pattern. He liked the strong, farmboy type, the football hero, blond, Western. That's why I picked Fenn."
"Jesus Christ."
"It worked, too. Fenn started hanging out with Crowe and in a few nights. Carter had glommed onto him. He was an artist, by the way. Carter."
Bob remembered a far-off moment when Donny showed him a drawing of himself and Julie on heavy paper.
It was just after they got Solaratov, or so they thought. But maybe not. It all ran together. But he remembered how the picture thrummed with life. There was some lust in it, as Bonson suggested. It was so long ago.
"Carter had a very brilliant mind, one of those fancy, well-born boys who sees through everything," Bonson continued.
"But he was just another run-of-the-mill amateur revolutionary, if I recall, until 1970 and 1971, when he burned out on the protests and took a year in England.
Oxford. That's where we think it happened. Why not?
Classical spy-hunting ground."
"What are you talking about?"
"We believed that the peace movement had been penetrated by Soviet Intelligence. We had a code intercept that suggested they were active at Oxford. We even knew he was an Irishman. Except he wasn't an Irishman. He only played one on TV."
He smiled at his little joke.
"We think this guy was sent to "Oxford to recruit Trig Carter. Not recruit, it wasn't done that crudely. No, it would have been subtler. Whoever he was, he was straight Soviet professional, one of their very best. Smart, tough, funny, a natural gift for languages, the nerves of a burglar.
He was the Lawrence of Arabia of the Soviet Union.
Man, he would have been a prize! Oh, Lord, he would have been a prize!"
"You never got him?"
"No. No, he got away. We never got a name on him or anything. We don't know what his objective was. We don't know what the operation was all about. It was my call, I fucked up. We had him somewhere in the DC area. But we never quite got him. Fenn was supposed to give us Crowe, who'd give us Carter, who'd give us the Russian.
Classic domino theory! A Soviet agent working the peace movement beat! God, what a thing that would have been!
That would have been the god damed white buffalo."
"How did he get away?"
"We lost time with Fenn, the case against Crowe wouldn't stand. We lost a day, we never nabbed Trig. We almost had him at a farm in Germantown, but by the time we found it, there was nobody there. We missed him at his mother's outside Baltimore, she wouldn't tell us a thing.
He was gone, disappeared. The next thing--" "Trig was killed. I remember Donny mentioning it. He was killed in a bomb blast."
"Under the math lab at the University of Wisconsin.
Yes, he was. And we never found hide nor hair of anybody else. Whoever he was, he got away clean."
"If he existed."
"I still believe he existed."
"What a waste!"
"Yes, and some poor graduate student working late on algorhythms got wasted too. Two dead."
"Three dead. Donny."
"Donny. I didn't send him to "Nam to die, Swagger. I sent him to "Nam because it was my duty. We were fighting a clever, subtle, brilliant enemy. We had to enforce discipline in our troops. You were an NCO, you know the responsibility. My war was much subtler, much harder, much more stressful."
"You don't look like you done so bad."
"Well, it ruined my Navy career. I was passed over. I read the writing on the wall, went to law school. I was a corporate lawyer on my way to a partnership and high six figures. But the agency took an interest in me and decided it had to have me, and so in 1979, I took an offer. I haven't looked back since. I'm still fighting the war. Swagger.
I've lost a few more Donny Fenns along the way, but that's the price you pay. You're out of it, I'm still in it."
"All right, Bonson."
"What is this all about?"
"We always heard the man who made the shot on me--on us--was a Russian."
"So? They had advisers over there in all the branches.
Nothing remarkable."
"It was said this guy flew in special. Your own people were involved, because they wanted the rifle he had, an SVD Dragunov. We didn't have one until then."
"I suppose. That's not my area. I can check records.
What does this have to do with today?"
"Okay, so four days ago, someone makes a great shot on an old cowboy in Idaho. Blows him so far out of the saddle hardly nothing left. Seven hundred-odd meters, crosswind. He wings a woman with him."
"So?"
"So," Bob said, "the woman was my wife. The old man should have been me. Luckily, it wasn't. But ... he was trying for me. I examined the shooting site. I don't know much, but I know shooting, and I'll tell you this Johnny was world-class and he employed Soviet shooting doctrine, which I recognize. Maybe it's not, but it sure seems like the same guy is on my track now as was on it then."
Bonson listened carefully, his eyes narrowing.
"What do you make of this?" he said.
"Donny knew something. Or they thought he did.
Same difference. So they have to take him out. They think the war will do it, but he's a good Marine and it looks like he's going to come out all right. So they have to take him.
They send in this special man, mount this special operation--"
"Weren't you some kind of hero? Weren't you especially targeted?"
"I can only think what I done in Kham Due alerted them to Donny's whereabouts. It made good cover, too.
The Russians wouldn't care a shit about how many NVA some hillbilly dusted in a war that was already won. We always thought they requested the sniper, no, now I think the Russians insisted on the sniper."
"Hmmm," said Bonson.
"That's very interesting."
"Then a little while ago, I got famous."
"Yes, I know."
"I thought you might."
"Go on."
"I get famous and they get to worrying. Whatever it was he knew, maybe he would have told me. So ... they have to get me. It's that simple."
"Hmmm," said Bonson again. His face seemed to reassemble itself into a different configuration. His eyes narrowed and focused on something far away as behind them, his mind whirred through possibilities. Then he looked back to Swagger.
"And you don't know what it is?"
"No idea. Nothing."
"Hmmmmm," said Bonson again.
"But what I don't get--there is no more Soviet Union.
There is no more KGB. They're gone, they're finished. So what the fuck does it matter now? I mean, the regime that tried to kill me and did kill Donny, it's gone."
Bonson nodded.
"Well," he finally said, "the truth is, we really don't know what's going on in Russia. But don't think the old Soviet KGB apparatus has just gone away. It's still there, calling itself Russian now instead of Soviet, and still representing a state with twenty-thousand nuclear weapons and the delivery systems to blow the world to hell and gone. What is going on is a political tussle over who makes the decisions--the old-line Soviets, the secret communists?
Or a new nationalist party, called PAMYAT, run by a guy named Evgeny Pashin. There's an election coming, by the way."
"So I heard."
"That election will have a lot to do with whose Russia it will be in the next twenty-five years and what happens to those twenty-thousand nukes--and to us. It's very complicated, rather dangerous, and it's not at all impro
bable that there's some kind of Russian interest in this business you've spoken of."
Bob's eyes narrowed as he considered this.
"You're thinking. I can tell. What do you intend to do?
That is, if I don't swear out charges for breaking and entering?"
"You won't," said Bob.
"Well, to find out what happened to Donny, I guess I have to find out what happened to Trig. I guess I'll follow that trail. I have to solve this if I have any chance of nailing this guy who's hunting me. If I keep moving, keep him away from my family, it may work out."
"This is very interesting to me, Swagger. I want to follow up on this. I can get you people. A team. Backup, shooters, security people. The best."
"No. I work alone. I'm the sniper."
"Look, Swagger, I'm going to give you a phone number.
If you get in trouble, if you learn something, if you get in a jam with the law, if anything happens, you call that phone and the person will say "Duty Officer' and you say, ah, think up a code word."
"Sierra-Bravo-Four."
"Sierra-Bravo-Four. You say "Sierra-Bravo-Four' and you will get my attention immediately and you will be stunned at what I can do for you and how fast. All right?"
"Fair enough."
"Swagger, it's too bad about Fenn. The game can be rough."
Bob didn't say anything.
"Now go on, get out of here."
"I should beat the shit out of you for what you did to Donny. He was too good to use that way."
"I did my job. I was a professional. That's all there is to it. And if you ever do strike me, I will use the full authority of the law to punish you. You don't have the right to go around hitting people. But if you do, Swagger, remember: not the face. Never the face. I have meetings."
CHAPTER thirty-seven.
Bob wondered what it would be like to be born in a house like this one. It was not really in Baltimore, but north of Baltimore, out in what they called the Valley, good horse country, full of rolling hills, well packed with lush green vegetation, and marked with fine old houses that spoke not merely of wealth but of generations of wealth.
But no houses as fine as this house. It was at the end of a road, which was at the end of another road, which was at the end of still another road. It had a dark roof and many complexities, and was red brick swaddled in vine, with all the trim white, freshly painted. Beyond it lay acres of rolling paradise, mostly apple orchards, but the house itself, tall and dignified and a century old, could have been another form of paradise. The oak trees surrounding it threw down a network of shadows. A cul-de-sac announced a final destination outside it, and off to the right were formal gardens, now somewhat overgrown.
Bob parked the rented Chevy, adjusted the knot on his tie and walked to the door. He knocked. After a while the door opened and a black face, ancient as slavery, peeked out.
"Yes, sir?"
"Sir, I am here to talk to Mrs. Carter. I spoke to her on the phone. She invited me out."
"Mr. Stagger?"
"Swagger."
"Yes, come in."
He stepped into the last century, hushed, now threadbare.
It smelled of mildew and old tapestries, a museum without a sign in front of it or a guidebook. He was escorted through silent corridors and empty rooms with elegant, dusty furniture and under the haunted gaze of illustrious predecessors until he reached the sunroom, where the old lady sat in a wicker chair, looking out fiercely on her estate. Beyond, from this vantage, the windows displayed a view of a formal garden and a long, sloping path down through the apple trees.
"Mrs. Carter, ma'am?"
The old woman looked up and gave him a quick, bright once-over, then gestured him to the wicker sofa.
She was about seventy, her skin very dark with too much Florida tan, her eyes very penetrating. Her hair was a duck tail of iron gray. She wore slacks and a sweater and had a drink in her hand.
"Mr. Swagger. Now, you wish to talk about my son. I have invited you here. Your explanation of why you wanted this discussion was frankly rather vaporous. But you sounded determined. Do you care about my son?"
"Well, ma'am, yes, I do. About what happened to him."
"Are you a writer, Mr. Swagger? He has been mentioned in several dreadful books and even got a whole chapter in one of them. Awful stuff. I hope you are not a writer."
"No, ma'am, I'm not. I have read those books."
"You look like a police officer. Are you a police officer or a private detective? Is this some paternity suit? Some snotty twenty-five-year-old now says Trig was his father and he wants the bucks? Well, let me tell. you, those bucks aren't going to anybody except the American Heart Association, Mr. Swagger, so you can forget that idea right now."
"No, ma'am. I'm not here about money."
"You're a soldier, then. I can see it in your bearing."
"I was a Marine for many years, yes, ma'am. We would never say soldier. We were Marines."
"My husband--Trig's father--fought with Merrill in Burma. The Marauders, they called them. It was very rigorous.
His health broke, he saw and did terrible things. It was very unpleasant."
"Wars are unpleasant things, ma'am."
"Yes, I know. I take it you fought in the one my only son gave up his idiotic life to end?"
"Yes, ma'am, I was there."
"Were you in the actual fighting?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Were you a hero?"
"No, ma'am."
"I'm sure you're merely being modest. So why are you here, if you're not writing a book?"
"Your son's death is somehow tied up with something that hasn't yet been answered. It's also tied up, I think, with the death of that young man I mentioned earlier, another Marine. I just have a glimmer of it, I don't get it yet. I was hoping you could tell me what you knew, that maybe in that way there could be some understanding."
"You said on the phone you didn't think my son killed himself. You think he was murdered."
"Yes."
"Why?"
"I don't yet know."
"Do you have any evidence?"
"Circumstantial. There seems to be some level of intelligence involvement in this situation. He may have seen something or someone. But it seems clear to me that there were spooks involved."
"So my son wasn't a moron who blew himself up for nothing except the piety of the left and the sniggering contempt of the right?"
"That would be my theory, yes, ma'am."
"What would be more of your theory? Where is this heading?"
"Possibly he was used as a dupe. Possibly he was murdered, his body left in the ruins to make it look like it was a protest thing. His body would make that almost certain."
She looked hard at him.
"You're not a crank, are you? You look sensible, but you're not some awful man with a radio show or a newsletter or a conspiracy theory?"
"No, ma'am."
"And if you do come to understand this, what would you do with that understanding?"
"Use it to stay alive. A man is trying to kill me. I think he's also a Spock. If I'm to stop him, I have to figure out why he's after me."
"It sounds very dangerous and romantic."
"It's a pretty crappy way to live."
"Well, if you went into most houses in America and laid out that story, you'd be dismissed in a second. But my husband spent twenty-eight years in the diplomatic corps, and I knew spooks, Mr. Swagger. They were malicious little people who were capable of anything to advance their own ends. Theirs, ours, anyone's. So I know what spooks do. And if the spooks of the world killed my son, then the world should know that."
"Yes, ma'am," said Bob.
"Michael," she called, "tell Amanda Mr. Swagger is staying for lunch. I will show him around the house and then afterwards he and I will have a long talk. If anybody comes looking to kill him, please tell the gentleman we are not to be disturbed."
"Yes, ma'am," said the butler.
&n
bsp; It is exactly as it was," she said, "on that last day."
He looked around. The studio had been built out back, in what had once been servants' quarters. The house was small, but its walls had been ripped out, leaving one huge raw room with red brick walls, a gigantic window that looked down across the orchards. It still smelled of oil paint and turpentine. Dirty brushes stood in old paint cans on a bench, the floor was spotted with paint drops and dust. Three or four canvases lay against the wall, evidently finished, one more was still on the easel.
"The FBI went through this, I guess?" Bob asked.
"They did, rather offhandedly. I mean, after all, he was dead by that time."
"Yes, ma'am."
"Come look at this one. It's his last. It's very interesting."
She took Bob to a painting clamped rigidly on an easel.
"Rather trite," she said.
"Yet I suppose it was the correct project for him to express his anxieties."
It was, unbelievably, a bald eagle, with the classic white head, brown, majestic body stout with power, anchored to a tree limb by clenching talons. Bob looked at it, trying to see what was so different, so alive, so painful.
Then he had it: this wasn't a symbol at all, but a bird, a living creature. It had obviously just survived some ordeal, and the gleam in its eyes wasn't the predator's gleam, the winner's smug beam of superiority, but the survivor's dazed, traumatic shock. It was called the thousand-yard stare in the Corps, the look that stole into the eyes after the last frontal had been repulsed with bayonets and entrenching tools. Bob saw that the talons which gripped this tree branch were dark with blood and that the bird's feathers, low on its stout body, were spotted with blood.
He bent closer, looked more carefully. It was amazing how subtly Trig got all the components: the slight sense of the blood spots being heavier, moist against the fluff of the other feathers.
He looked at the bird's single visible eye: it seemed haunted by horrors unforgotten, its iris an incredibly detailed mix of smaller color pigments that were different in color yet formed a whole, a living whole. Bob could sense the muscles twitching under its netting of feathers, and the breath coming heavily to it after much exertion.
"That boy was in one hell of a fight," he said.
"Yes, he was."
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