Sniper's Honor

CHAPTER 19

They wanted to take him to the hospital, but it seemed pointless.

“Tell him,” he said to Reilly for the policeman, “he didn’t hit me. Not really. He brushed against me, I spun, I lost my balance, I fell.”

An ambulance had arrived and several witnesses had gathered.

Reilly explained laboriously in Russian that, thankfully, the Ivano policeman understood.

“He wants you to tell him again.”

“It was just a sloppy driver. He thought he could beat me to the space and accelerated.” Swagger waited for her to catch up. “I caught him coming out of the corner of my eye and stepped back. The car didn’t hit me. Its side sort of pushed against me, I felt the pressure, spun, and lost my balance. He probably didn’t even know it happened.”

It went on for a few minutes. No, they couldn’t identify the make or color of the car, no, they didn’t get a plate number. None of the witnesses cared to contribute, either, though they were curious to see how the policeman ended it with the two Americans.

As it happened, he ended it by handing Bob a carbon of a report in Ukrainian off his tablet. It appeared to be some kind of incident record, which Bob took and thanked him for, then watched him walk away. The small crowd also melted off into the night, looking, presumably, for other dramas to distract it.

They walked to the hotel, a multicolored slab of building from “Communism: The Perky Years,” across the street.

“You sure you’re okay? He hit you harder than you told the cop.”

“Really, it’s nothing,” said Swagger. “I expect I’ll be stiff tomorrow.”

“No mountain climbing for you.”

“I guess not.”

“So? Did someone just try to kill us?”

“It’s just on the line between murder and accident.”

“But why would anyone care about something that happened in Ukraine seventy years ago with all its survivors and witnesses gone?”

“How would they even know we’re looking?”

“It’s not like I’ve been discreet. It never occurred to me. I’ve just done what I always do: I call sources, I check on the various Web archives of the various Russian ministries, I talk to people, I go places.”

Bob pondered. “Well,” he finally said, “we may have spilled somebody’s vodka. Let’s call Stronski.”

Stronski was a former Spetsnaz sniper, a brother of the high grass and the long stalk. He’d done a lot of messy things in Afghanistan and Chechyna. The last time Swagger had been to Moscow, he and Stronski, put together by an American firearms journalist, had bonded immediately. Stronski made his living in highly questionable activities, but as Swagger now said, “Sometimes it was better to have a gangster on our side.”

They sat down at a table in the hotel’s outdoor bar, and Reilly fished out her notebook, found the number, and dialed it, then handed it to Swagger.

“Da?”

“Swagger for Stronski. He knows me.”

The phone went dead.

Two minutes later it rang.

“Son of a bitch! Swagger, what you doing? You old bastard, last time I see you, the Izzys were shooting at us in the garden of Stalins.”

“That was a fun day,” said Swagger. He went on to tell as quickly as he could why he was where he was and why he was calling now.

“I’ll be there tomorrow,” said Stronski. “Stay in, don’t go anywhere. Don’t give the bastards another chance.”

“Nah, not worth your time. We’re not even sure it’s a game. Here’s what I need. Ask around. If someone’s trying to whack me way down here in Ukraine, he’d have left tracks. Calls, associates pushed through via connections, that sort of thing. Someone hiring a freelancer. If there’s any real business going on, let me know.”

“This number if I get anything?”

“Affirmative.”

“Also, allow me, I make some arrangements. Nice to have some way of getting out of there fast.”

“We’re just asking questions about stuff that happened seventy years ago.”

“Pal, look at the cemeteries. The flowers are fresh. Every day, they remember. In this part of the forest, the past never goes away. It’s forever.”