Long Shot

3

A message was waiting when Swanson checked into the Hotel Kämp on the Norra Esplanaden. He signed the registration, directed that his luggage be placed in his suite and went to join Lem James at a back table in the bar that overlooked the sweep of a park reaching down to the waterfront. The place did not close until one in the morning, so they had about an hour. James had already downed his first Mannerheim’s shot and had one of the icy vodka blends waiting for Kyle. The glass was filled to the very brim, a local custom that made sure everyone received an equal pour. It packed a kick.

Kyle let James also read the note, then put it back in the envelope. “Now I have an official reason for being here. I’m just a salesman peddling product to the country’s director of procurement of defense matériel.”

“You may not be through at the embassy by then,” James commented, then ordered another round of Mannerheims.

“No choice, Lem. I’m no spy. I’m a specialist, like an independent contractor, on call when needed. Otherwise, I am a businessman. The Agency and my office manager, Janna, apparently set up this meeting on the fly to give me at least a bit of legitimate cover. I will take a break from the embassy thing if necessary, go over there, do a dance and sing my song about why Finland needs to spend a bunch of money on our latest techno-gear. Then I can go back to the embassy.”

James ticked at his sore tooth with a fingernail. He had a gauze patch taped to his nose, and the cheek bruise was getting blue. It didn’t seem to bother him. “The colonel may be in the market for more upgrades than you realize. The Russians are doing unwelcome flyovers, and the bastards live almost right across the street. St. Petersburg is less than two hundred miles from where we are sitting.”

“I saw a Hornet parked out at the airport,” said Kyle.

“The Finns are repositioning a lot of military assets, although they won’t go to war against Russia. No way.” He drank off the second vodka shot, ordered a third. “Who is Janna?”

“Janna Ecklund, who runs our Excalibur office in Washington. She is a former FBI agent who keeps a Glock 19 strapped beneath her desk. She’s also with the Agency.” The thought gave him an idea. Janna was from this neck of the northern woods and might be a good backup if this thing dragged out. She also spoke Swedish and looked like an ice princess. Might fit right in.

“So what were you doing down in Rome?”

“Same thing. Trying to convince the Italians to buy more Excalibur product. We’re working on a nice polymer-encased .50-caliber bullet and some new software. They seemed interested.”

The DSS agent’s eyes narrowed. “We got word last night that an ISIS terrorist, an American, was whacked in Rome by a sniper. No suspects.”

“Is that right? Good. The asshole probably needed dying.” Kyle emptied his shot glass, flipped it upside down and pinned it hard on the napkin. “I’m going to bed, Lem.”

“I’ll pick you up out front at nine o’clock. Then I go see the dentist.”

Ivan the Terrible. Why is Ivan Strakov asking for me? Kyle barely knew the guy except for that brief, inconclusive time at the Scout/Sniper School so many years ago. Swanson puttered around with the question after hitting the cushy bed in a room in which the floorboards squeaked from the grandeur of the really old days.

Back when he gave Ivan the bad news that he was never going to make it as a sniper, Kyle had taken the young Russian sergeant out for a night to drown his sorrows. Russia was a pioneer in the sniper game; their sharpshooters had turned the German siege of Stalingrad into a nightmare for the Nazis and laid the groundwork for snipers in urban combat. A lot of those lessons were still being taught today, and Swanson had praised that long history for the disappointed Russian. Kyle explained, over about the sixth beer, that back in the rubble of that bloody, freezing siege, Strakov probably would have been hailed as a hero. He was that good, but “that good” was no longer good enough.

Ivan’s accent that night had drawn the attention of a couple of girls in the country-and-western bar. Kyle bought him a cowboy hat, which Ivan jauntily tilted forward, and the ladies taught him the Texas two-step while a pair of fiddles fueled the music. Swanson explained that being an elite sniper in the next century, which was fast approaching, meant being able to do precision fire from extremely long ranges, not just across the bombed-out tractor factory. Shots of more than a mile were going to be commonplace, and so many things could bugger up the target picture at those distances that only the best eyes and steadiest nerves need apply. Even then, computers that had not yet been invented would be needed.

“We are like the pilots who pursued the speed of sound with early jet planes back after World War Two,” Swanson explained.

“The Great Patriotic War,” Ivan corrected, pouring another mug of beer.

“Yeah. Whatever. Anyway, the sound barrier was out there somewhere and most experts believed that nothing could break that invisible wall. Bullshit, of course, because bullets were supersonic all the time. Eventually, an American pilot named Chuck Yeager broke Mach 1, and the so-called barrier vanished.”

“We Russians did it first. Yuri Pobedonostsev!” Ivan hoisted his beer mug in salute.

“Point is, my friend, that there was no barrier. Same thing applies to modern shooting. We don’t know the outer limit, but we snipers keep searching for it through the mud and the sand and the jungles. That unknown fact can get a man killed.”

“Or a woman could get killed, too. Some of our greatest snipers were women.” The Russian’s dark eyes were growing misty and emotional, and he burst out in verse, with a sweep of his bottle in salute to his lost military future:

“That was by Alexandr Blok,” he explained, and settled into a pout.

Kyle drained his own beer. “Stop that. Stay on the topic.” Get a Russian drunk and they were as bad as the Irish for mixing mournful poetry with booze. “Look across the room, up at the stage, Ivan. You see that guy playing the acoustic guitar in the band?”

“I do, most certainly. My eyes are perfect. Fucking doctors.”

“How many strings are on it?”

The Russian stared, with his hat tilted. Their table was better than fifty feet away, there was smoke streaming in the air and distracting movement everywhere. “He has six strings, of course.”

“Twelve, pal. It’s a twelve-string guitar. You couldn’t tell the difference.”

Ivan stood up, angry. “You play tricks with me. You say I am good enough for Stalingrad, but you fail me because of guitar strings? My superiors in the exchange program will insist that you give me a passing mark!”

Kyle shrugged. “Sit back down, Ivan. I’m probably saving your life. You don’t want to be out in the bush and give such an edge to an enemy sniper. I know you’re a smart guy, a brave man and a good soldier, but I have to protect the brand of ‘Sniper.’ If I pass you, then I open the door to having to pass others who do not even have your level of professionalism. I cannot bend for political correctness.”

“I have spent my life defending my Motherland, Gunnery Sergeant Swanson.” He plopped down heavily, his disappointment alleviated once again as he watched a sturdy blonde in denim and boots at the bar, who was watching him right back.

“Then find a way to do that in another field, Ivan. Every sniper has to stop at some point, and this is the end of the line for you. Mine eventually will come, too.”

“What will I do, then?”

Kyle scratched an ear and shrugged his shoulders. “You are really good at computers, and could probably move into private industry and double or triple your salary. I can’t even suggest that I know all of your skills. Right now, I think you need to go ask that girl at the bar to dance and have another beer.”

Ivan Strakov lurched wobbly to his feet. “That is the best thing you have said all night, Gunnery Sergeant. You are my friend, eh? My good friend!”

“You bet,” said Kyle. And they had not seen each other since.

Swanson was out of the hotel door at 6:30 a.m. for a morning run. He had never been to Helsinki before and looked forward to watching the city come awake. It was a good way to get to know a new place, he thought, and although it might not work in cities like Mosul or Kabul, a civilized place would reveal a lot about itself to a visitor who just bothered to look.

A few minutes later, while he was stretching out in the Esplanadi Park that sloped down to the water, Swanson realized he was already too late. It was the fourth day of April, and although spring had not arrived, the snow was gone from the city and was being replaced by patches of green. The grass was coming alive. The Finns were already out in force — joggers, runners, walkers, cyclists and convoys of men, women, boys and girls who zoomed along the pavement on rubber-tired skis to stay in shape for next winter’s cross-country treks out in the deep forests. Fitness was a priority. He loped off, staying in the slow lane along the sidewalks and boulevards so as not to be run over by some Flying Finn.

Senate Square, the cathedrals, Parliament House, monuments, government buildings, the libraries and government buildings, and boats in the harbor all spun quietly by, and all of them seemed extraordinarily clean and scrubbed. Early-bird workers in fashionable clothes were arriving on trams to get their offices open by eight, and vendors and customers were already busy in the Hietalahti flea market. Four miles later he was back where he started, bent over, hands on knees, catching deep breaths of cool air, and he understood that what he had witnessed were outward manifestations of contentment in the capital city of Finland.

He found a newsstand and bought a copy of the International New York Times, then found a sidewalk café and sat outside beneath an umbrella. A young woman with thick golden hair that fell over her shoulders appeared as soon as he was seated. “May I suggest a light breakfast, sir?” The English was perfect.

Kyle looked at her. Tall and athletic. “How did you know I spoke English?”

“You look like an American and you’re reading an English-language newspaper. Almost everyone here speaks it, and Swedish, which is really our national language.” Her smile was as bright as the morning. “Finnish, too, obviously. It can be confusing. Since you are apparently a tourist, let me suggest a warm bowl of rolled oat porridge with butter, cheese and fruit, and a large mug of light-roast coffee.”

“I like my coffee strong,” he countered.

“Try this first. The water from the mountains makes it a local favorite. We should know. We drink more coffee than anybody on the planet.”

“Seattle might challenge that.”

“Seattle would lose.”

“OK. I’ll give it a try.” She went away and Kyle leafed through the big pages of the newspaper. It seemed almost archaic in the world of technology, but there was just something about handling the paper, reading long stories without having to jump around through a lot of Web sites, and even getting smudges of ink on his fingertips that gave a newspaper the familiar feeling that Swanson enjoyed.

Nothing on the front page interested him, since it was mostly about politics. Another bomb in Baghdad. Inside, there was a five-paragraph wire story about a terrorist being killed in Rome. Front-to-back, no mention of Ivan the Terrible. The breakfast came and the waitress had been right about the coffee. The porridge tasted like grits and berries. She had pink sunshine on her cheeks, edging away the winter paleness.

A scan of his cell phone gave him no more fresh information than he had gotten from the newspaper. Janna Ecklund had e-mailed the day’s schedule for the Washington office of Excalibur, and she wanted to know how long he would be in Finland. He answered with a brief response that he would know more after the meeting at the Defence Ministry. In other words, he had no idea. The business-related chatter was needed to keep the cover tight.

Then he still had some spare time before meeting Big Lem, so he had another coffee and thought about Finland some more. Why is he here? The nation was more complex than it appeared on the surface. The lessons of history had been very hard, but the people had put together a country that reflected who they were. Although they were not warlike, they were fierce fighters. The Nazis had found that out the hard way in World War II when they ran into the Finns in the mountains, as had the invading Swedes hundreds of years earlier, and the Russians later on. Even today, there was mandatory conscription of two years for every Finnish man, but peace had worked better than war in this isolated part of the world. There was a social democracy with a cradle-to-grave welfare structure that was uniquely Finnish. The citizenry was protected, educated, safe and secure. Laziness was not rewarded, however, and the country had a thriving economy. Camelot in the snow.

So, Swanson thought, it seemed to have been sort of silly of him to carry a concealed weapon and his credentials on his sunny morning outing, but that was who he was. And just because no bunch of terrorists was running around throwing bombs, and there was no noticeable street crime, did not mean that danger was on holiday. In fact, Swanson had the sense that everyone in this city was intent on wringing every drop of happiness they could get out of this warm new season, before it was too late.

He paid the breakfast bill, left the newspaper folded for some other reader, and headed back to the hotel, where he halted on the first step, turned and waited for the two people who had been following him to catch up.