by James Thayer
Gray nodded. He told Sergeant Able the little he knew about the killings of the Chinaman and Donald Bledsoe.
"Wish I could help you, Owen, but I've never heard of red shells." He put his collection back in the case and the Winchester on the wall. "That all you want to know?"
"That's it."
"How come you flew all the way down to Quantico to ask me one question, Owen? I mean, it's great to see you and all, but don't they have telephones in New York?"
Gray risked another glimpse at his Winchester. It was apparent that the years had recast the rifle in his mind. It was smaller and less malignant than he had remembered, a piece of equipment rather than the embodiment of evil. Gray suffered the fleeting fancy that the Winchester was deliberately disguising its true lines, trying to woo him again, an old suitor returning with a soft knock on the door, a placatory smile, and smooth promises.
"Owen, you've got the Asiatic stare." Able laughed. "The twenty-yard gaze in a ten-yard room."
Gray shook off the notion. "I'm not welcome at my office in New York. Too dangerous to be around, what with holes appearing in anybody I'm standing next to. So I had some time and I drove down in a rental car rather than fly. Brought my kids and their nanny. They're at a motel swimming pool over in Quantico."
Sergeant Able led Gray from the building. The Marines were still standing ten yards behind the firing line, an invitation to Gray to rejoin them. Able gently placed his hand in the small of Gray's back lest his visitor escape to his car. The sun beat down from overhead, seeming to flatten the land under its weight and chasing away birds and insects. The air rippled with heat.
Corporal Paley held his arms out and turned a circle. "Anything wrong with my presentation, Mr. Gray? Am I ready for the field?"
Gray generated a smile. "Your sergeant knows far better than I do."
"I mean, Sergeant Able tells us to fit ourselves out for these sessions as if we were going into the field. Have I missed anything?"
"You look great," Gray said quickly. "You'll do fine. So long, Arlen." He started for the parking lot.
Corporal Paley said, "Advice from you could someday save my life, Mr. Gray."
Gray slowly turned back. "Your dog tags."
"Yeah?"
"I heard them click together when you got up from your firing position. Wrap some tape around them."
Paley nodded, then asked, "Want to show your stuff on this range, Mr. Gray? You can use my smoke pole." He held out the M-40A1.
The spotter, Corporal Sims, added, "There's five degrees of left cranked in."
"Go ahead, Owen," Able said. "Show these young pups what us old gummers can do. The firing lane is open to the thousand-yard targets."
When Able spoke into his radio, the range master bawled over the loudspeakers, "Butt officer, clear for firing. Ready on the left. Ready on the right. Ready on the firing line."
Able took the weapon from Paley and held it closer to Gray, wiggling it by way of invitation like an angler setting a jig. With his other hand, he pointed down-range at the bull's-eye over half a mile away. "You used to own the thousand-yard line. Let's see if you still do."
"Damn it, Arlen. Haven't I made myself clear? I hate to disillusion your men, but I detest weapons. I'm through with them forever."
"What in hell?" Able stared down range.
A red disc was waving above the butt. A bullet had hit the bull's-eye. The distant sound of a rifle shot finally washed over them, softened by echoes and distance.
"Who fired that?" demanded the range master, his anger magnified by the metallic resonance of the speakers. "Take that name, Sergeant Able." Then after a moment, "There's nobody on the line. Who's shooting?"
Owen Gray knew. He spun around to search the headquarters building, then the parking lot, then the hill behind the lot. There the shooter was, amid the pines and grass and wild rhododendrons, made insubstantial by the contours and foliage of the hillside. Then he was invisible, veiled by vegetation as if claimed by the wilderness as its own, merged entirely with the trees and undergrowth.
The shooter moved again, a short mechanical motion at odds with the timberland that hid him, a motion Gray sensed was designed to alert the watchers to his location.
"There he is," Paley yelled.
The form stood out against the backdrop of greenery. A human head, maybe blond, but at too great a distance to be sure. Was that a flash of teeth, a smile? And a rifle. But then he was gone, again slipping into the disguise of the vegetation, shedding his human form to become one with the landscape.
"I can't make him out," Sergeant Able said, shading his eyes with a hand. "That's eerie. He's there, then he's not."
"Your binoculars," Gray demanded.
Bobby Sims passed the Bushnells over. Gray held them up, scanning the hill, but he saw only pines and low bushes, tufts of bluegrass, and gray stone tinged by gold moss. Branches bent and released in the wind, rustling leaves and shifting shadows. Bumblebees flitted in and out of the sun. The shooter had vanished.
Gunnery Sergeant Able whistled appreciatively. "That target he hit is a good fifteen, sixteen hundred yards from his spot on that hill. And it was a center bull's-eye. A pure unconscious shot, a professional cap bust."
Gray's eyes remained at the binoculars. He saw only the lovely east Virginia terrain.
"That was your shooter, you think?" Able asked. "The one who leaves a red shell?"
Gray nodded.
"Looks like he's following you around."
Gray lowered the binoculars. "He is."
The sergeant added quietly, "Looks like you've got a big problem."
CHAPTER SIX
"My dad was an undertaker," Pete Coates said, rubbing the ball of his right foot. His black shoe was on the path next to the bench leg. "I ever tell you that?"
Gray squinted against the sun and shook his head.
"He owned a mortuary on Atlantic over in Brooklyn. I was working up bodies when I was twelve years old. Worst thing I had to do was stitch closed the stiffs' mouths. I'd have to stuff their swollen black tongues back into their gullets, yellow dentures, dead breath, flies trying to get into their yaps. It was no lifeguard job at the country club pool, I'll guarantee you that."
"You sewed their mouths up?"
"Otherwise the jaw drops open during the memorial service. Then you end up with the beloved in the casket who is not only dead but who also looks stupid."
"My life was better before I knew that," Gray said. When a jogger passed close to the bench he pulled in his legs. The runner trailed Joy perfume behind her.
"You also sew their eyes closed. My dad would fine me half a dollar for every eyeball I punctured with the needle. I never got the hang of it, and some days I'd have no take-home at all."
A woman carrying a Saks bag walked her dachshund past the bench. The dog pulled the leash taut to sniff Coates's shoe.
Coates said, "Lady, I don't like wiener dogs smelling my wingtips."
With an imperious lift of her nose the woman pulled her dog away.
Still rubbing his foot, the detective turned back to Gray. "But worse than all that was the sore feet. You can't work on bodies sitting down, so I had aching feet all the time. I became a cop instead of a mortician. Shows what I know about anything."
"Your father still around?"
"Gone fifteen years. Every time I see a body I think of him. How far did you run today?"
"Ten miles, give or take a hundred yards. It's quite a luxury, actually, not being allowed into my office because everyone is afraid to stand near me. I've got a lot of time on my hands."
"You don't feel nervous running along, knowing there's a rifleman out there following you?"
"I'm the safest person in New York. He's had three clear chances to nail me and he hasn't. It's everybody else who should be worried."
They were in a portion of Central Park called Cedar Hill near the mid-seventies. Gray had been jogging and wore a line of perspiration across his forehead. His T-shirt
was stuck to his chest with dampness. Gray bent over to wipe his sweaty hands on his socks. Coates was wearing a narrow blue tie that was loose at the neck and a sports coat so frayed it looked as if he buffed his car with it. Their bench was in front of a granite outcropping and was surrounded by red maple, sycamore, and paper birch trees. The path fed a stream of joggers, walkers, bicyclists, and baby strollers past them. Overhead an orange and blue Japanese kite sliced through the wind. The distant sounds of a children's soccer game sounded like wind chimes.
Gray glanced over his shoulder. "This must be the only place in the park where you can't see a window or a building on Fifth or over on the West Side. We're completely enclosed by leaves and branches. Not by chance, I'd guess."
"Sitting near you out in the open might open up my mind, literally."
"You've used this bench before?"
Coates pulled a sack of Planters peanuts from his pants pocket.
"When a puke wants to talk to me, he doesn't want to do it in Brooklyn or down in Little Italy, so we meet here."
"You talk to the law-enforcement people in Virginia?"
"The Prince William County sheriff told me he had two dozen men looking for the shooter's tracks, led by a bloodhound named Old Blue."
Taking a peanut, Gray said, "They're all named Old Blue."
"They followed his trail for a quarter mile as the shooter rounded the hill, but the trail ended at a roadside where he must have gotten into a car."
Gray smiled at a parade of ten preschoolers as they slowly passed the bench, each child tightly grasping a loop in a long rope that kept them together. A young woman led the troop and another brought up the rear.
Gray's hand moved so quickly the detective started. It was an abrupt blur that ended in a fist.
Gray held his balled hand at eye level and asked, "Can you do that?"
"Do what?"
"Catch a fly in midflight like I just did?"
"You caught it just now?" Coates regarded him narrowly. "Is this one of your boy John's jokes?"
"I always thought snipers were made, not born," Gray said. "I'm not so sure now."
"What do you do with the fly now that you've caught it?"
"Maybe I was destined to be a sniper. I had no choice."
"Am I missing something?" Coates dug for another nut. "What's catching a fly have to do with being a sniper?"
"My point is that I can snatch a dragonfly or a mosquito or a fly out of the air every time I try. I never realized before my talk with Arlen Able yesterday that few other people can. How could I have missed it?"
"Each and every time?" Coates stared at Gray's fist. "No way. Nobody can do that, and I've got a beer that says you can't either."
Gray smiled. He slowly opened his hand. The fly remained motionless on his palm for an instant, then shot angrily into the air toward the sun, a flicker of vanishing iridescence. But Gray was faster. He had to partly rise from the bench, his hand in the fly's wake. Gray's hand snapped shut. He lowered himself again to the bench.
He held his fist up to Coates's nose. "It's in here again. You owe me a beer."
"That's the goddamnedest thing I've ever seen."
"There is a Homeric quality to it, you have to admit," Gray said.
"Mr. Gray?" The new voice came from the south, ten yards away at a bend in the path. "Are you Owen Gray?"
Gray jerked to the voice, wincing as if he had been caught smoking in the boys' lavatory. He quickly released the insect.
A woman in a rumpled maroon business suit and carrying an attaché case stared at him. "After watching this little exhibition, I'm praying you aren't Owen Gray."
"Then I've got some bad news for you," Gray said.
"And you are Pete Coates?" She took a few tentative steps forward. "Two grown men? Playing with bugs?"
"He's a policeman." Gray pointed at Coates. "He made me do it." He smiled but she wouldn't return it.
She circled in front of the bench as if afraid to approach them. "I worked my tail off in Moscow. An emergency, I was told. I haven't slept or had a good meal in a week. Then I fly five thousand miles into JFK, call your office to locate you and Detective Coates, and race here in a cab."
"I'm honored, truly," Gray said. "Who are you?"
"And then I find you out in a park catching insects." She watched them both with cold surmise. Then for an instant it appeared she might laugh. But she mastered herself. Her hair was crow-black. Her eyes were a glacial blue. "I'm Adrian Wade."
Coates quickly rose from the bench. "You're the ace Don Shearson at the FBI told me about."
"Shearson contacted me after it was determined your sniper's shell was Russian. I work for the Security Section of the State Department in Moscow."
Rising to his feet, Gray offered his hand. A twist of distaste crossed her face.
"You don't need to look like a martyr shaking my hand," Gray said lightly. "The fly is gone."
"It's not the fly," she replied, lowering her briefcase to the path. "It's your Marine Corps file. I've read it."
Coates said hurriedly, "Don said Adrian has learned as much about the Russian criminal investigative system as has ever been allowed an American."
"Maybe you should've also learned about tact," Gray said.
Earlier in his life Gray had decided he had seen too much and done too much to tolerate ball-busters, men or women who try to dominate by their willingness to inflict their self-importance on others. His usual tactic was to remain silent, looking slightly bored, only occasionally nodding in a woolly way, contributing nothing and refusing to engage in the exercise until the ball-buster realized Gray was happily off somewhere more pleasant. Gray's boss, Frank Luca, never did get it, thinking Gray's silences a mark of understanding and agreement and therefore immense intelligence.
Gray had been slow to realize that he brought from his military service anything but torment, but his unwillingness to suffer unsufferables came from that time. As was his refusal to measure himself by others' opinions. So vast was the difference in experience between Gray and almost everyone else that he distrusted others' judgments about him. They hadn't looked through the scope. They didn't know and would never know.
"Adrian is a real Moscow gumshoe," Coates forged ahead. "At Shearson's request she took a crack at our puzzle of the red shell. But we weren't expecting you to show up here."
She sat at the far end of the bench at a distance that implied Gray and Coates had bad smells. A jogger with the bouncing lope of a beginner passed by.
Adrian Wade's smile was wintry. "After reading about your military service in Vietnam, Mr. Gray, I had expected to meet a Jack the Ripper but with better technology. Instead I find a goof on a bench. I'm relieved."
Gray rose from the bench. His voice was deliberately dry and bored. "Pete, you can brief me later on whatever Ms. Wade has to say. Suddenly I feel like I can run another ten miles."
She smiled with the magnanimity of superior knowledge. "Then you'll miss hearing the name of the sniper who leaves a red shell."
Gray's mouth moved, trying to find the right words. Nothing came, so he returned to his spot on the bench, defeated.
"The name is Trusov," she announced.
"Trusov?" Gray exclaimed. "World War Two's Victor Trusov? He left a red shell? I never heard that before."
She went on, "I spent the week speaking with members of three Russian police organizations, one civilian and two military. I must have set a world record for enduring patent lies, evasive answers, and protect-your-butt responses."
"And flat-out lewd propositions, I'll bet," Coates said flatteringly.
"Thirteen by my conservative estimate." She turned to give her smile only to the detective. "Russian men view western women as both naive and generous."
Gray had no doubt about the number of propositions. Adrian Wade was a startling combination of pure colors. Her hair was so black it reflected light like obsidian. The bangs were swept to one side with apparent unconcern but the result was a s
tylish rake. The rest of her hair ended at her shoulders, tucked in a way that flowed alongside her head as she moved. The contrast between her sable hair and the white skin of her face was almost shocking, and made her resemble a Victorian brooch. Her eyes were so blue they seemed lit from within. Her lips were painted a blood red, a bold color that set off marble-white teeth. She used her smile, it seemed to Gray. One instant it was street smart, then it was cryptic and beguiling.
"Stop staring at me, Mr. Gray." Her words percussed like a sledge on a railroad spike.
Gray scratched his nose, feeling ridiculous. Another jogger passed, this one wearing a shirt with a print of the Jolly Green Giant and a logo, "Visualize World Peas."
Adrian Wade said, "I spent most of my time at the Red Army's Armed Forces Inspectorate, whose territory covers crimes by Russian soldiers. Their building is near the Khodinka end of Leningrad Prospekt."
"I've never been to Moscow," Coates said.
"The Khodinka is the huge expanse of land in the middle of the city. It has a little-used airstrip that is connected to the Kremlin by a once-secret Metro tunnel. Other than an occasional flight by a Russian leader, the Khodinka is used only for practice for the Red Square military parades. The Inspectorate's building is on the Prospekt within sight of the Khodinka. My visit there produced amazement from a Red Army captain that I should be asking such questions. I got no higher and no further."
"But you persisted," Coates encouraged. "Don Shearson said you could be like a dog with a bone."
"That afternoon I received a call at my apartment. Then a black Zil limousine picked me up at the American compound to return me to the Inspectorate. This time I met with Major General Georgi Kulikov, chief of the Inspectorate. He and his superiors had apparently decided that if there is indeed a renegade Russian soldier shooting Americans they'd better do all they can to try to catch him. Doors began to open."
A panhandler dressed in a pea jacket, tattered black Keds, and a Navy wool watch cap encrusted with grime stopped in front of the bench. He bubbled a few vowels through black, broken teeth and held out his hand. Coates waved him away, but the beggar moved closer, pushing his open hand almost under Adrian Wade's chin. Coates flashed his gold badge. The panhandler grunted and shuffled on.