Paul Vidich - The Mercenary

A brief, eerie quiet settled on the patch of earth. One dead, three wounded. The suddenness of the assault and its consequences were frozen in a moment of time. Then the entire world seemed to rise up in mad confusion. The desolate border crossing came alive with the hysterical wail of sirens, frantically shouted orders, and the loud clip of boots and grunted commands. Two more arc lamps converged on the small area, helping to illuminate what had happened in the cocooning fog and obscuring rain.

Garin was at Natalya’s side. She had slumped to one knee and held her side with a limp hand. Her face had lost color, her eyes were dim, and the pleasant sleep of death hung over her weakened body. He saw confusion in her eyes and a cold, leaden pallor on her cheeks. All around them was chaos, urgent voices in the suffocating fog. She struggled to speak through choking breaths.

“Quiet,” he said. He looked calmly into her eyes. “You’ll get us both killed.”

Natalya bled into her hands, and she went to lie down.

“Stand up,” he said, and then shouted, “Get up!”

Garin lifted her into his arms, grunting at the weight. Their eyes met. She tried to speak again, but her voice was soft, and he didn’t understand what she was trying to say.

“Don’t give up,” he said encouragingly. “You’ll make it.”

She was heavy in his arms, but he found a way to manage, and he walked toward the safety of the Czech border. He glanced back, mumbling the prayer that always came to him in moments of danger. He moved at a steady pace, drawing in short breaths. His eyes blinked to clear the blurring rain from his vision, and he focused on the short distance to safety.

Garin shouted for help over the growing clamor provoked by the carnage; his body trembled against his will. He saw her eyes begin to close and snapped, “Stay awake.”

At that moment, Garin seemed to sense a change in the danger, and he glanced over his shoulder at the mist-shrouded watchtower, but even as he did, he had begun to quicken his pace toward the waiting Americans. Garin shut out the siren’s piercing wail and the chorus of hostile voices. He shaped his mind to the smallness of his world—the woman in his arms and the several steps to safety.

The Soviet sniper’s first shot caught Garin in the thigh and seemed to thrust him forward; the second struck him in the shoulder, snapping his head back. He stumbled, somehow managing to take two more steps, but then he collapsed, dropping to the pavement and releasing Natalya from his arms. One more bullet in the rapid sequence tore into his skull, shattering it and covering Natalya in brain matter. She saw the grievous wound and struggled to crawl away from his body.

Mueller’s mouth had opened in the hope that Garin would make it the last few steps to safety, but now his face was grim with horror.

The shooting stopped when the American sharpshooter found his target through the shifting mist, aligned the cross hairs of his scope, and fired a bullet into the Soviet sniper’s forehead.

GEORGE MUELLER STOOD IN FRONT of the wall of Vermont marble and looked out at the small crowd gathered under the reaching height of Headquarters’ vaulted lobby. It was the Agency’s annual ceremony honoring intelligence officers who had died in the line of duty. The subdued group consisted of families of the fallen, Agency staff, a few reporters, and the outgoing Director of Central Intelligence. Mueller, the newly appointed acting director, adjusted his reading glasses and looked at the somber gathering. It was a cold space of stone and glass that was warmed by the emotions of the people looking up at him, each with a private memory. They were there to grieve for the new black star chiseled into the wall of marble.

Mueller paused, acknowledging several familiar faces, and as he did, his eyes passed over the Agency’s symbol set in stone in the lobby floor—a vigilant eagle perched on a crimson shield with radiating compass points. He adjusted his speaker’s notes and consciously glanced behind at the marble wall. There was a slender, waist-high glass case attached to the marble, and sealed inside, like a reliquary, a leather parchment portfolio with the names of the fallen quilled in ink followed by a date. In a few cases, old missions continued to be classified and the entry had no name, only an asterisk. That was the case with the newest entry: * April 14, 1985. Uzhgorod Border Crossing.

“We owe each of these men a great debt,” Mueller said, opening his remarks. “We honor their sacrifice and remember the role they played in the defense of our freedoms. And today is no different, except that it is the first of these occasions held in the aftermath of the Soviet Union’s downfall. Many of the men and women represented on the wall behind me gave their lives in the service of our great struggle against totalitarianism, and we honor each of them today, but it is also fitting on this day that we make a place for a man whose actions, as much as the contributions of any single officer, helped defeat the Soviet Union.”

Mueller looked at the faces in the first row, acknowledging Rositske, Ronnie Moffat, Petrov and his wife, and three former directors of the Agency.

“Those who knew him respected him,” Mueller said. “The man we are adding to the wall today, like most men, was imperfect. He could drink too much, he disobeyed orders, he forgot details, and he was bored by what he thought were the political nuances of our work. But given the opportunity, he ran crazy—and in retrospect, almost mind-boggling—risks. Although he was dedicated to our mission, he was not one of us. But he became one of us. He cared for people, cared for this country, and he risked his life so that others might live.”

Mueller read his prepared remarks, which he had typed himself, and he kept his eyes on the people he knew, but he was nevertheless conscious of a late arrival. When she entered and took a seat in the last row, alone, he took note, pausing briefly. One or two in the front row, seeing his momentary distraction, turned around to see what had caught Mueller’s attention.

Thin, willowy, with a disagreeable expression, the woman claimed the last seat. Natalya had arrived late to go unseen, but her arrival had the opposite effect. Had she been in a 1950s Hollywood film, she would have been played by a young Alida Valli, who, not without vinegar in life, in film made a specialty of sullen, romantic women. Natalya wore dark glasses and folded her hands comfortably on her lap.

Mueller returned to his script.

“SO WHO WAS he?” a young reporter asked Mueller.

His remarks over, Mueller was standing in the corner of the lobby where drinks and refreshments had been set out on a long serving table covered in white linen. The young woman with an eager smile had her notebook open and her pen poised to take down his response. Mueller was uncomfortable with journalists under any circumstance, and her badgering was out of place at the somber event and reminded him why he distrusted journalists even more than politicians, who at least had manners. But he was cornered.

Perhaps it was the reporter’s innocent question, or perhaps his doubts were stirred by the event’s gravity, or perhaps it was the passage of time that allowed him to make sense of what had happened, and this reporter, who he’d never met, happened to appear with her question when he was ready to share the thoughts he’d formed after reading the diary found on Garin’s body. Mueller ate the olive from his gin martini and led the reporter to one side, away from the subdued crowd.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Elizabeth Runyon.”