I, Sniper

29

Late night DC, traffic down, the city full of shadows, even parking available, most of the food joints that depended on lunch trade closed, few pedestrians. David Banjax found a space on the street, wandered around the buildings along Fifteenth Street between M and K, noted that the one on the southeast corner belonged to the competition. It was some seventies monstrosity, characteristic of the horrors of Big Paper architecture the world over. The places, even his own, all looked like midrange insurance agencies, both inside and out these days. At any rate, he kidded himself that they were working late at the Washington Post, maybe trying to keep up with him and the Sniper scandal. But they never would. He was so far ahead.

He walked around the corner, past a Radio Shack and a Korean lunch joint, and turned into a parking lot entrance, a wide, descending driveway, in the corner building, which adjoined the Post. It was deserted but not dark, and he wound down the spiral two levels, past a helter-skelter of the medium-price sedans that reporters and copy editors preferred, until he finally reached the bottom. He didn’t like it: no escapes, not that there should be any danger. Still, his breath came hard, the air tasted icy, his lungs felt too small. He licked dry lips with a dry tongue. Are you sure this is how Bob Woodward got his start?

In a row of cars ahead of him, headlights winked on and off. He made his way to that vehicle, a Kia, clearly a rental, and made out the figure of a man in the front seat, behind the wheel. David nodded, the figure nodded back, but at that moment, across the way, an elevator door opened, a blade of light penetrated the dimness, and a couple of people walked out, laughing. David dropped between cars and waited as the two made it to a nearby car-“He actually thought ‘disinterested’ meant ‘uninterested’! He must be in his fifties! How stupid is that?” he heard-climbed in, started up, and pulled out. Copyreaders! The same everywhere!

When the car had disappeared, David approached the mystery vehicle and noted with both approval and a chortle that the man was wearing a fedora and a pair of Wayfarer sunglasses. He opened the off-side front door and heard a voice say, “Rear, please, that side. I will look at you in the mirror. You do not look back; keep your eyes down.”

Now the convening literary master seemed to be John le Carré. It was turning into a spy novel. Wasn’t this the part where the pawn gets murdered by a silenced.22? Or does the pawn miraculously escape the assassination, go on the run, and somehow still bring down the government and put the bad CIA cell in prison and win the Pulitzer Prize and write a best seller, all in 350 pages.

He obeyed.

“This is a little melodramatic, isn’t it?”

“Look, pal, I don’t need snark. I know you people like wisecracks, but stow the fucking wisecracks and be dead literal and we will get along a lot better. This isn’t a fucking movie.”

“I understand.”

“Throw the tape recorder in the front seat.”

“I-”

“Throw the tape recorder in the front seat.”

Banjax threw the tape recorder in the front seat.

“Now throw the other tape recorder in the front seat.”

“Hey, I-”

“Throw the other tape recorder in the front seat.”

Banjax threw the other tape recorder in the front seat.

“I may have to prove this meeting took place, you know.”

“I didn’t turn ’ em off. I ’ll return ’ em if I conclude you’re straight and that I didn’t give something away I didn’t mean to give away.”

“Okay. Sensible. Now what have you got for me? And who are you?”

“Who I am is not relevant. I may be this, I may be that. I may be a courier or a controller or a rogue. You will never know. But I have a gift for you, as I said I did. It’s amazing how successful you’re about to be on my generosity.”

“I’m sure you’re getting something out of it. Nothing’s free in this town.”

“Hmm, fast learner,” the spy guy said. Then, with a kind of practiced insouciance, as if he’d done this many times, he tossed a manila envelope over the seat to the rear, and it landed exactly in the space next to Banjax. Banjax noted the man was wearing gloves.

“Okay,” he said. “Should I open?”

“Not here. What you have is Xeroxes of internal FN documents, from their South Carolina headquarters, recording their courtship of, their involvement with, their bribes to, their payoffs to, and finally their comments on Nick Memphis, FBI.”

“How the hell-”

“We’re good. We’re not amateurs. You are not dealing with self-dramatizing whistle-blowers who are trying to get a segment on 60 Minutes. You get to go on 60 Minutes, not us.”

“How can I authenticate? I have to authenticate.”

“That’s your problem. Our mole didn’t have time to get affidavits.”

“Well, there’s a time thing here. I-”

“Jesus. Let’s see, you might use Freedom of Information to get FN’s original cover letter to the FBI seeking submission paperwork for the sniper rifle contract trials. Then run a typefont comparison. Or I’ll tell you what, since time is a factor, find someone in the Bureau to leak those documents to you to shortcut the FOI process. You pick ’em, not us; that’s your guarantee of integrity. Run the typefont comparison. If you get a match, you’ve proven that the FN official submission and the internal memorandum came from the same printer.”

“There’s only one printer in South Carolina?”

“In the FN USA headquarters, yeah. How big do you think it is? We’re talking a gun company, not IBM.”

“Okay,” said Banjax, who had no picture in his mind for a thing called a “gun company.”

“So you’ve made your guy. Hello, Mr. Pulitzer Prize. Why, good morning, Miss Senior Editor, Big New York Publisher. Do you know who I’m talking about?”

“Yes, I know. Woodward’s-”

“David is a smart boy.”

“You said you had a photo.”

“I do. But it’s not in the package.”

“Why not? If you’ve got it-”

“I want you to authenticate this thing first. Then you contact me by, hmm, I don’t know, wearing an orange toilet seat around your neck to work one day. That’ll be a spy-type tip-off.”

“I’m out of orange toilet seats. Will pink do?”

“Wear a hat one day. Guys your age never wear hats. It can be a baseball cap, a stocking cap, I don’t care, a Sherlock Holmes cap. Wear it, we’ll note it, and you’ll get the photo by courier that afternoon, your bureau. If you’re not an idiot, you’ll figure out that the photo has to be vetted by top photo professionals, to make sure it’s legit. Can your failing newspaper afford that?”

“If I can get it before they turn the bureau into a bowling alley, yes.”

“Otherwise it goes to Drudge.”

“I hear you.”

“David, fast, fast, fast now. We can work fast. Can you dead-tree folks stay with us?”

“Yes, I can.”

“Good. Now take your tape recorders-no lookee, see?-and get out of here. Go stand in the corner while I drive away. No peeking. And welcome to the big leagues, Woodstein.”