White Star

by James Thayer

  "The notes of that interrogation were captured by Patton's Third Army. They are still in a Pentagon library. I memorized them."

  "What's an over-tree shot?" Coates asked.

  "The sniper fires over an intervening tree or building. The target invariably thinks the shooter's hide is in the tree or building, so they concentrate their return fire on it. Mr. Trusov invented that ruse."

  Adrian translated Gray's answer into Russian for the old man's benefit. The old man bowed his head modestly.

  Gray said, "But my favorite—"

  "Favorite what?" she cut in. "Favorite way of killing someone? Like your favorite pizza topping?"

  Gray snapped, "If I want moralizing, I'll dial Pat Robertson's eight hundred number." Then to the old man, "My favorite of yours was the pine needles."

  Scowling, Adrian turned Gray's words to Russian.

  "Da, da, da," the old man chortled.

  Gray explained in English for Coates's benefit, "Mr. Trusov could often smell an enemy's breath at a hundred yards."

  " 'It was the goddamn sauerkraut,' " Adrian translated as Trusov spoke.

  "So Mr. Trusov suspected the enemy might also be able to detect his breath."

  " 'Beet soup. That's all we had to eat and it has an odor that carries.' "

  "So before a mission he would chew pine needles. I learned that from him. Needles will kill any breath."

  Adrian Wade's Russian came so easily that she would finish her translated sentence only a second or two after the speaker did. She continued with Trusov's words, " 'And I learned it from my father.' "

  "Your father?" Gray asked. "I don't know about him."

  " 'Sure you do, if you are a student of the art,' " Adrian rendered it into English. " 'You just don't know his name. The Red Army never released his name.' "

  The pride in the old man's words was evident to Gray even in Russian.

  " 'My father was the rifleman who froze the front at Tannenberg in the Great War.' "

  Gray was astonished. "August 29 and 30, 1914, General Samsonov's Russian 2nd Army. The Red Devil?"

  Trusov laughed. He patted his knee and a puff of dust rose from the yellow bathrobe to swirl in the sunlight.

  Adrian translated, " 'Yes, the Germans called him the Red Devil. Tannenberg was a disaster for our army, but my father and his rifle stalled a part of the German pincer for almost eighteen hours, allowing thousands of Russian soldiers to escape east. He killed thirty-four of Ludendorff's soldiers in that eighteen hours alone. The Germans didn't dare lift their heads above the road embankments. He was the first in my family to leave a red shell.'"

  "Did he survive the war?" Gray asked.

  " 'He later rose to the rank of colonel, but one day in 1938 he disappeared from his office along with every other officer in the Kiev Military District above the rank of major.'" Trusov leaned forward to the television table to lift a podstakannik, a silver-handled glass containing tea. He sipped loudly, then continued," 'He was a good teacher, and I learned the sniper's craft from him.'"

  Coates dipped into the caviar again and asked with a full mouth, "When is the last time you fired a rifle, Mr. Trusov?"

  After the translation, the old man pursed his lips, then said with Adrian translating," 'I suppose it's been two decades. The government didn't allow citizens to own firearms unless they were hunters, and I've never found any pleasure at shooting at animals. No sport to it. They can't shoot back.' "

  Adrian shook her head at the last sentence.

  The Russian continued: " 'I passed along the torch long ago.'"

  Coates had been reaching for yet another blini, and his hand stopped abruptly. "You passed along the torch? To whom?"

  More translation, then another proud beam from the old man. " 'To my boy Nikolai. He also served in the army.'"

  Coates glanced at Adrian Wade. "Know anything about Mr. Trusov's son?"

  "Nobody I spoke with ever mentioned him," she replied, her words quick in defense of herself. "But I wouldn't be surprised. The Red Army is like an onion, and maybe I wasn't allowed to peel it back far enough. Perhaps even the instructors at the Spetsnaz school had never heard of him."

  "Could there be other sniper schools in Russia?" Gray asked. "Another group with its own instructors and history?"

  "Not that I know about," she answered. "But maybe. The Red Army is famous for redundancy. Perhaps Kulikov and Rokossosky never heard of it either."

  The old man dipped a finger into the tin and brought a dab of caviar to his lips. Several black eggs caught in the corner of his mouth, and only after a moment did he find them with his tongue. He began speaking again, and Adrian translated.

  " 'My boy walked in my footsteps in Afghanistan.' "

  "He was a sniper, Mr. Trusov?" Gray asked.

  " 'Seventy-eight confirmed kills in Afghanistan,' " Adrian translated. " 'Lots of turbans got ruined, thanks to my boy. If the army had kept him there, we wouldn't have lost Afghanistan, and maybe the Soviet Union wouldn't have collapsed.' "

  He laughed heartily, which shook his frame like a leaf in a wind. " 'He left a red shell at his firing sites, too. Three generations of red shells.' "

  With that revelation, Adrian Wade found Gray's eyes. She smiled narrowly. The sun was edging lower in the sky, and rays reflected off the room's bright work—the antique key escutcheons, the brass hinges, the gilt on the mirror, the brass knockers on a dresser, and Adrian's silver brooch. The sun picked up the dust in the room, and a fine sheet of it lay over everything.

  The old man added, " 'I don't have any grandchildren, so the family tradition will end with Nikolai.' " He lifted a finger toward Owen Gray. "Nikolai is about your age. Handsome boy, too, like you. His hair is lighter, though. I don't know where he got his blond hair. When I had hair, it was brown. Same with his mother.' "

  "What's he doing now?" Gray asked.

  The Russian squinted his eyes at the mantel clock. Adrian turned his answer to English. " 'I imagine he is getting ready for dinner.' "

  Gray smiled. "I mean, where is he now?"

  " 'I don't know,' " Adrian translated. " 'I haven't seen him since yesterday.' " Then she blurted in Russian, "You mean he's here in the United States?"

  Trusov replied and Adrian turned it to English, " 'He received an emergency visitor's visa and escorted me here for the surgery. He's having a good time in New York, too, from what he tells me.' "

  Gray mulled over this news. Nikolai Trusov. Did the name mean anything to him? The detective was staring at Gray, doubtless wondering the same thing. Gray didn't think so.

  "Does your son know me, Mr. Trusov?" Gray asked.

  The old man scooped the last of the caviar onto a finger, dropping a few eggs onto his plate.

  He spoke and Adrian interpreted, " 'Nikolai didn't know anybody in the United States. Either did I. But I've met a lot of nice people, though. My surgeons and nurses. You three. You people aren't as bad as Khrushchev said.' "

  "When do you expect Nikolai to visit you again?" the detective asked.

  He chewed the caviar. Adrian echoed his words," 'He comes and goes. Brings me sausage and this caviar and yobla. He is a dutiful son.'"

  When the old man hesitated, Adrian nodded encouragement. Finally Victor Trusov continued. " 'My boy, I love him very much. But' "—he paused and a few seconds passed before he went on—" 'but there is something missing from him. My father and I were snipers because of war. Nikolai is a sniper because that is all he can be. It is the center of him.' "

  Coates said, "We'll swamp the streets around here with my people. Nikolai won't be coming and going anymore, not until we talk to him."

  Adrian Wade thanked the old sniper. Gray said he was honored to have met him. They all moved toward the door.

  Adrian turned back and asked in Russian, then in English, "Mr. Trusov, do you ever catch flies out of the air?"

  The old fellow narrowed his eyes at her. He finally said, and Adrian translated," 'Why would I do that?' "

 
She looked at Gray with both censure and triumph.

  " 'But there was a time during the war when I caught bats. They were all I had to eat.' "

  As she translated, Adrian looked back and forth between the two snipers. " 'Not many people can seize a bat right out of the air.' "

  Adrian Wade's glare swept into Gray. Reassessing him or dismissing him, Gray couldn't tell which. She said her goodbye in Russian, then left the room. Coates followed.

  Gray gave the sniper the thumbs-up salute. Trusov returned it.

  "I know you can't understand me, Mr. Trusov"—Gray laughed as he crossed to the door—"but I owe you one for the bat story."

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Gunnery Sergeant Arlen Able poured two fingers of Jim Beam into the range master's glass, then into his own. "Can you believe I was ever that young, Bud? I look like I'm twelve."

  Sergeant Bud Blackman held up the photograph. "You and Gray look like you should be carrying squirt guns, not real guns."

  The photograph dated from 1969 and showed Arlen Able and Owen Gray kneeling on a dusty patch of ground, each holding a rifle, the butts resting on their thighs and the barrels pointing to the sky. Both were wearing olive T-shirts, field pants, and boots. Their heads were shaved to the skin along the sides and burr cut on top. Both Marines' smiles were broad and engaging. Their eyes were slanted with amusement and their heads were cocked at the camera in confident angles. These were the guileless, hopeful faces of youth, faces that belonged in a high school album.

  "Don't let the dummy grins fool you, Bud." Able sipped his drink. "We were already proven headhunters."

  Sergeant Blackman had been in the range tower during Owen Gray's visit. Blackman swirled the whiskey, staring at the snapshot. He had seen it before. Early in any friendship Arlen Able trotted out his photograph of himself kneeling next to the legend. Blackman had a miser's face, with a pinched mouth and suspicious slits for eyes. He had started going bald early in life, and rather than tolerate a horseshoe of hair he shaved his entire scalp every morning. He was wearing field khaki. His cap and binoculars were on the desk. "He must've left it all behind in Vietnam. He looked like any other lawyer."

  "I ever tell you he saved my life?" Able asked.

  "No, but I can't believe there isn't a story left about Owen Gray you haven't told me."

  "Maybe I never mentioned it because it makes me look a little goofy," Able said. "Owen was even a better tracker than a shooter, if you can believe it."

  "We're all good trackers," Blackman said, taking another small swallow of Jim Beam and breathing in a soothing draft of air through his teeth. "It's part of our training."

  Able shook his head. "I don't mean like you and I can track. Owen had a sixth sense about it. Sometimes the ground and the vegetation seemed to be speaking to him. Before he joined the Marines, he and his old man would often be asked by the county sheriff in Idaho to track lost hunters and climbers. Rescued quite a few over the years. He rescued me, too. One day in October 1969 near Tu Lun hill I took a mortar blast to the face."

  "That explains a lot of things." Blackman chuckled.

  "You laugh because it wasn't you, goddamnit. When a shell blew me down, I got right back up, climbed out of the hole, and moseyed into the field."

  "You were ordered forward?" Blackman asked.

  "No, hell no. I was blacked out on my feet. Concussed. To this day I have no memory of it. I got up—shells landing all around, machine gun fire overhead—and strolled into the forest. None of my mates saw me. It wasn't until dawn, after the firefight ended, that I was reported missing."

  "I gather you weren't killed by the enemy." Blackman helped himself to another shot.

  "Nobody could follow me, because I had wandered into NVA territory. I could've been out there picking daisies for all I remember. But Owen Gray figures out two things: one, that I'm addled, and two, where he can find me."

  "I'll bite. How'd he figure them out?"

  Sergeant Able leaned back in his chair and lifted his feet to the desktop. "He knows nobody goes into the field in a firefight without a lot of equipment. Not just a sniper rifle, because a sniper rifle is as worthless as tits on a goat in a firefight. No, if I'd been going anywhere with all my senses I'd have been carrying heavy armament and a pack and kit. But my footprint tells him my hands are empty and there's nothing on my back."

  "I'll bite again."

  Able said with satisfaction, "A person carrying some weight rolls his foot out on the big toe side as he walks. My register didn't show that. Plus, a walker carrying equipment takes shorter strides and has light heel pressure and a deep toe pushoff. I wasn't leaving any of these signs, so Owen knew I was out there damn near naked."

  "Which meant you were acting wacko."

  "Concussed, not wacko." Able added a splash of Jim Beam to his glass. The desk lamp was the only illumination in the office except for the tiny infrared light in the corner, which blinked on and off irregularly, detecting the sergeants' motions. The bloody remains of sunset were visible through the bars of the west windows. "Owen knew that if I survived my stupid walk I'd wander to a certain spot in the Vietnam wilderness. He met me there."

  "He must've been guessing."

  Able shook his head. "He knew that I would gradually circle to the right."

  "How?"

  "Right-handed people take a slightly larger step with their left foot. They walk in a big clockwise loop. By my bootprints Owen determined how fast I was ambling along, how tired I was, and then determined when I'd get to the half circle point. He met me there."

  Blackman protested, "He couldn't have known precisely where you'd show up."

  "He listened for me. Someone wandering lost in the wilderness makes a lot of noise."

  "What'd he do? Put his ear to a stump like Sacajawea?"

  "He used an anti-sapper parabolic listening dish. He took the dish to where his calculations suggested I'd appear. When he heard me thrashing around in the bush from about a quarter mile away, he came and retrieved me."

  Sergeant Blackman threw back the last of his Jim Beam. "If Gray's so smart, why didn't he wait until you had walked in the full circle right back to your foxhole?"

  "That would've doubled the time I was out there wandering, and the place was infested with NVA."

  "Gray would've saved himself a lot of trouble," Blackman said.

  "And he might've missed me. It has something to do with the margin of error of the angles."

  "I would've just sat on an old artillery shell, sipped some Tiger Beer, and hoped you showed up, having walked a full circle."

  Sergeant Able wagged his head with resignation. "Bud, arguing with you is like wiping my butt with a hoop. It's endless."

  Blackman laughed.

  Able lowered the bottle into a lower drawer, then rose from his chair. "I'll see you tomorrow bright and early."

  Blackman stepped toward the door. "Bright and early is what the Marine Corps is all about."

  Pulling his ring of keys from a pocket, Sergeant Able snapped off the desk lamp. The room was shadowy, with only the last shards of daylight coming through the windows. He stepped toward the burglar alarm pad. The code was the last four numbers of his service serial number.

  Able spun to the hollow sound of a blow, a dull and sickening report followed by a soft groan. A whirling blur swept in through the door, a man dressed in black and moving so quickly in the half light that his image would not fully form in Abie's mind. The club swept down again, and Able heard Blackman's other collarbone break, sounding like a lath snapped over a knee.

  Bud Blackman collapsed back into the room. He landed hard on the floor, an arm bent under his body and his legs buckled under him.

  It was a baseball bat. And it soared high as the intruder rushed into the room toward Able. The dark demon under the bat was hidden behind a veil of dark clothes and dusky light and swift motion. Abie's service 9-mm was in his drawer. He stumbled toward it in the dark but made only a few steps before the intruder wa
s on him. Able reflexively raised a hand, a futile gesture against the bat that slammed into his nose.

  Able was enveloped in agony. His knees swayed and he started to sag. He blacked out before he hit the floor.

  Owen Gray knew fifteen patterns on the speed bag, and he could blend them together in a lovely swirling and surging routine. The Everlast leather bag and his mitts were blurs producing a loud pounding rhythm as the bag struck the backboard. Knuckles, backs of his hands, palms, elbows, even his chin, all were used to whip the bag around on its universal joint. The leather mitts were designed for the work, with only a thin padding at the knuckles and with lead bars sewn into the palms to weight the fists.

  He might not be much of a boxer, but Gray had mastered the subsidiary skill of bag punching. He worked on the bag with a savage precision. Perspiration slid down his arms and flipped into the air around the reeling bag.

  "This is your health club?" the tittering voice asked from the gym door.

  Gray lowered his fists and turned to see Mrs. Orlando escorting the twins into the gym. She rolled her eyes to the ceiling, showing an acre of white. "Looks like nothing but convicts in here."

  Mrs. Orlando was wearing a flowing dress decorated with dozens of tiny red prints of Che Guevara's bearded face. She carried a string purse. Her necklace tinkled lightly as she guided Julie and Carolyn to the bench. "Don't you girls talk to anyone here except maybe your father."

  Gray called his thanks to her. She retreated the way she had come, shaking her head all the while. She disappeared through the door.

  The oldest twin—Carolyn by five minutes—wore a bulky sweater of a dozen colors and black tights, while Julie had on jeans and a red denim jacket. They never dressed in identical clothes. They turned to watch two boxers spar in the ring.

  Gray had asked Mrs. Orlando to bring the girls to the gym because except for their apartment there were few venues where Gray could spend time with his family. With the sniper at large, there were no walks along Bay Ridge avenues, no visits to parks, no shopping trips, no escorting them to school, nothing out of doors, and nothing indoors near windows with distant views. Sam Owl's windows looked across a narrow alley to a brown brick wall. That morning at breakfast Gray had offered to show them the speed bag if they would meet him at his gym, then had to explain what a speed bag was.