Sniper's Honor

CHAPTER 31

His spleen hurt, his head hurt, his lips were dry, he was out of breath. That was bus travel in Ukraine. The ancient vehicle, finding a last few potholes to further test its shocks against, turned in to the — well, “station” wasn’t quite the right word. “Station” connotes order, discipline, coherence, a system. Here, the boarding and deboarding process appeared to take place in some kind of Darwinian sink where the buses just butted and bluffed and brazened their way close to the building until they could go no farther. Consequently, the yard was a riot of buses as they jammed this way and that at odd angles, the whole thing mad and fraught. It looked like a bus station after the end of civilization.

The driver nosed his way in, honking and cursing and maneuvering heroically until at last there was no farther to go. End of ride. He turned the thing off — the last dying breath of low-wattage air-conditioning died without a whisper — and cranked open the doors to let his passengers out into the melee.

Late last night, Bob had dumped the car in a copse of trees outside of a town whose name he could not remember, much less spell. He’d hidden in the same trees until full light, then moseyed into town, trying to look inconspicuous in his jeans and gray polo shirt. He’d seen a batch of people waiting in the square and joined them. When a bus came, he got aboard. The driver demanded payment, as this was no longer socialism, and Bob, ever the ugly American, shoved a wad of bills at him, watched him harvest them, and had no idea one way or the other if he’d been robbed blind or given a generous discount. Then the three hours of torture began.

He was pleased, at least, that Lviv turned out to be the bus destination, remembering the pleasant old-town evening of a few days before. Plan: find a hotel room, pay cash, call Reilly, set up a meet in Yaremche, call Stronski, arrange that quick exit, get to Yaremche, and then get out of town. It seemed simple enough. He waited as the pile-up to exit cleared, then eventually stepped free and enjoyed a breath of fresh air, however laced with exhaust fumes. Meanwhile, honking and shouting, shoving, rushing, dodging, broken-field running, various funny walks, and lots of old ladies prevailed in the labyrinth between the buses as passengers from his own and all other buses attempted to negotiate a way out without getting crushed by entering or exiting vehicles. Bob took his time, not shoving, not shouting, trusting that any direction was as good as another and basically going the way of least resistance, and that was when he got shot.

It felt like someone whacked him hard in the side with a near-molten fireplace poker. But there was no sound, even if, ahead of him, he saw a pop of debris as a bullet hole erupted into the skin of bus.

He knew in a speed that has no place in time that someone behind him had taken a bad shot with a suppressed pistol and missed center mass. He jigged right, then left, speeding up, turned hard left at the next bus, chose another path, jigged left and then right, moving too quickly for a one-handed shooter to stay with him. He tried to lose himself in the chaos of the labyrinth and its crowd.

Someone was trying to kill him. He realized the guy had been off on his first shot because he’d fired from the hip. Presumably he carried the pistol against his leg, hidden under a coat, had seen the target clear, and rushed a shot.

Swagger had no idea who. He turned back as people filtered this way and that, none of them suspicious at all, just the usual glut of Ukraine working folk, scraggly students with backpacks, a few survivors of the tsarist epoch, and some febrile young kids who couldn’t keep their hands out of each other’s pants. His side burned but did not bleed a lot, and though it hurt, he knew that until it bruised, it wouldn’t impinge his movement. Getting shot wasn’t the biggest of deals to him; it had happened before.

He turned, turned again, simply trying to stay afoot. Ahead the bus riot seemed to be thinning, and he thought he could get a cab and get far away. But it occurred to him: I cannot escape. If I escape, he, whoever, finds me as he found me here, and this time prepares better for his shot, and I am down and he is gone.

I have to find him and drop his ass.

Old Bob, maybe real Bob, maybe even the only Bob, took over the brain. He felt his vision clarify and deepen, his muscles fill with killing strength, his will focus to one point and one point alone. He liked it when the world vanished, there was no civilization, no bullshit about rank or caste or what was expected and how you had to act. It was just him, the other guy, and a jungle that happened to be constructed of buses. He liked it that way just fine.

He turned and headed back into the crowd and began to work his way more or less randomly through the corridors between the vehicles. One pulled out suddenly. A horn blasted. A mother pushing a carriage squawked at a driver who cursed back. Swagger thought he might die beneath bus tires, never mind the efforts of his assassin.

He forged ahead, trying desperately to read each passerby for sign: hands hidden, or someone walking at a kind of oblique angle to conceal the pistol from witnesses, or a heavy coat on a hot day. At the same time he had to do this with Zenlike chill, without seeming effort, because if he eyeballed too noticeably, it would alert the shooter, who would take him from afar.

Come on, buster, he thought. Come on, go for me. We’ll see how good you are.

He felt his eyes dilate even wider, his breath come in cool spurts, his muscles go to tense. He walked on the balls of his feet, knowing it gave him a little advantage on first power step. He was in full warrior brain, total Condition Green, ready to go at any second.

This way, that way, that way, this way.

Was the guy looking under buses, looking for Bob’s New Balances as the tell? Was the guy behind him, slowly closing in? Swagger cranked around, but nobody seemed to be moving fast with any purpose, nobody had a white face and tense lips, all giveaways for a hunter on a job.

He turned again, roaming more or less randomly, waited as a little knot of people cleared, then edged through and found himself between two buses as, up ahead, three old ladies picked their way along, one on a walker.

He kept his head down, moving slowly, ready to yield when he reached them.

The babushkas had dark faces under scarves and broad black peasant dresses. Each wore a shawl bunched around her shoulders, held tight by a fist, and they were—

He hit the one in the middle with an open hand, palm-up strike to the nose, enjoying the crunch beneath the thrust even as the shock traveled up his arm to tell his head the blow had been well placed. Felt so good.

The lady reeled back and the pistol came out, a Makarov with six inches of suppressor at the muzzle, but Swagger nabbed the wrist with his left hand and twisted it away and took another hard-palm, right-handed shot into the nose, which issued blood outflow in torrential quantities. He heard screams, shouts, had the peripheral impression of people fleeing. He kicked his opponent’s feet out from under and she went down hard, though he held the gun hand tight enough to snap the wrist, and he pivoted, stepped viciously, driving heel first into her face while controlling the gun. Then he reversed on the arm, finding leverage against the elbow, and felt it bend as it sent high-voltage pain into the fallen body. He twisted the loosened pistol out of the woman’s hand. He deftly shifted it and placed muzzle against the throat, feeling the opponent go to surrender against the pressure of the lethal instrument,

The trigger was such a temptation. It would sound like a refrigerator door closing, and then this one would be with the angels. But he didn’t yield. He didn’t pull the trigger. He leaned over and whispered in meaningless English, “Hairy knuckles, dumb motherfucker,” then elbowed the bloody, damaged face again, feeling teeth break at the point of contact.

He rose, turned to find people at each end of the corridor staring at him, while from one of the buses a whole load of passengers had come to the windows.

He leaned over, grabbed the top of the woman’s blouse, and pulled it open, yanking free a brassiere stuffed with tissue to reveal a heavy, hairy male chest wearing a galaxy of tattoos. He twisted the body so that the spectators could see it. The false woman groaned in pain and put the other hand to his tormented biceps.

“Mafia,” Swagger said, knowing the word to be universal.

“Ahhh,” came the roar of the crowd, and he dumped the damaged shooter back to the ground and turned, and the people parted to let him past. Now they understood. Someone pointed the way, and he followed a couple of turns, saw a cab, and went to it.

“All right,” said Mikhail Likov of SVR, “you want something. Fine, you got money, lots of it? I’m no traitor, but for a certain amount, ha ha, anything is possible. Capitalism, you know.”

“No money,” said Will. “But I know you’ll get me what I want in trade for what I have to offer.”

“What you want?”

Mikhail downed another vodka shot. It was okay. Nothing special, but at least potato-based, unlike some of this new age shit.

“A file. So old that it was started back when they called the outfit NKVD. So old I don’t think it’s that valuable. That’s why I’m an idiot for giving you what I’m going to give you for it.”

They sat in a rude Moscow strip club called the Animal, so rude that a woman onstage was in a further state of undress. There were many women there trolling for business in the dark enclaves of the joint, all to the beat-beat-beat of loud, bad Russian syntho-rock. Naturally, it was Likov’s favorite place, and many SVR guys came here. They were known to the girls, who liked them so much they never gave a discount.

Mikhail had helped Will on a few tough-to-get stories in the past, usually for a modest tip — it was for his kids, he said, but at least three of those kids, Eva the blond one, Jun the Asian, and Magda the Czech — were here tonight.

“What’s so important about this file?”

“That’s the funny thing. I don’t know. Maybe nothing. But I’ve been hunting in archives for three days and come up with nothing, as if it’s been erased. But whoever’s doing the erasing, I’m guessing he couldn’t erase it out of the collective memory of the KGB.”

“They had standards, those boys,” said Mikhail. More vodka. Eye contact, Jun. She seemed to be available. He winked. She came by and sat on his lap. She licked his ear and whispered something he found quite interesting, then she stood up and undulated away, trailing come-hither glances, perfume, and jiggly ripeness everywhere.

“Pretty girl,” said Will. “I see why you like her.”

“Now and then I contribute to her college fund,” Mikhail said, finding his own joke hilarious. Will did not, because he had looted his own daughter’s college fund for tonight’s fun, but he pretended like he did.

“This file, anyone I know?”

“Doubtful.”

“If he’s a big man, he should be in the archives of the other places,” said Mikhail.

“See, that’s the deal. Someone erased him, I think.”

“Lots of erasing goes on in Russia,” said Mikhail. “People make some money, then they erase themselves and start a new life. Happens all the time. Some stories I could tell you.”

“I’m only interested in one man’s story,” said Will.

“So what’s the offer?”

Will held his hand up. Jun came over. She smiled at Mikhail. Mikhail smiled back, then noted that Will’s hand was still in the air. Magda, the Czech, came over. She smiled at Mikhail. The she licked the inside of Jun’s ear, and Jun ground her pelvis once or twice into Magda’s hip. But wait. The hand was still up. Eva inserted herself between Magda and Jun. She put a tongue in each gal’s ear, one and then the other. All three of them smiled at Mikhail.

“You’ve made an arrangement, I see,” said Mikhail. “Will you be joining me?”

“Ah, I think you can find your way without my guidance,” said Will, thinking, God, I hope I can get this party past the Post’s expense account mavens, or daughter number two is going to Prince George’s Community College next year.

“What file?” said Mikhail, rising.

Will already had it written down: “Basil Krulov, Stalin’s assistant, 1942 to 1954, disappeared sometime in mid ’50s.”

Mikhail didn’t even look at it. “I’ll have it for you day after tomorrow.”

The girls led him away.

“Better make that day after the day after tomorrow,” he called back.