Stephen Hunter - Sniper's Honor

“The Germans are gone?”

The Peasant began unpacking his sack, explaining in Ukrainian what he’d brought, though Mili could see for herself: bread, salted beef, vegetables.

Then he said something about the Germans—Mili understood the word—and the Teacher grabbed him, yelling in Russian, “How do you know the Germans have left?”

The Teacher translated the Peasant’s story: “I have been lying in brush for days. It was horrible. I made it to the outskirts of the village and took my chances with a man, and he’d lost sons to the Nazis. He volunteered to help. But he was bringing me food, and they nabbed him not a hundred meters from where I hid. They beat him and dragged him off, but I was too close to move. I had to wait that long day for them to come for me. They never did. I don’t know why.”

He went on with his story. He had lain there all night, and the next morning the Germans had sent out more patrols but also started their burning operation. They burned for days, and the Peasant watched as the flames came nearer and nearer to his hiding place. He had no idea why this burning was happening, though he knew that at nightfall he’d have to make a run for it. But at midafternoon yesterday, the German officer was called to his communications hut, and several minutes later the Germans commenced an emergency evacuation. They’d waited until two panzerwagens were loaded with troops, which headed out immediately. The stragglers all arrived, and the third panzerwagen left.

“Yes, we noted the same thing. I was almost discovered when the signal to withdraw came. I don’t know what it means,” said Mili. “Were you able to get a weapon, any weapon?”

“This, only this. No rifles about, but I’m told this fell off a German truck two years ago, early in the war, and an old lady recovered it.” He pulled his treasure from his bag.

It was an M24 hand grenade, the famous potato masher, a gray metal can affixed to a wooden shaft with a screwcap at the end, which, removed, allowed access to the twine pull-fuse inside.

“It’s no sniper rifle,” she said. “But it’s a weapon.”

The Teacher said, “Sergeant Petrova, it’s not enough. It’s just—”

“Here’s the plan,” she said. “You have a pistol. It’s small but lethal at close range. With that I’ll get close enough.”

“You have to be very close.”

“I will shoot him or one of their officers. I will shoot Germans until I run out of ammunition, then I will pull the cord on the grenade and join Dimitri and my father and brothers.”

“It seems folly to me,” said the Teacher. “You will not kill Groedl. At best, you kill a few Germans. In a war where millions have died, what’s a few more or less Germans in exchange for someone like you, with all you have to contribute?”

“I don’t have a choice.”

If she waited until the Russian offensive and turned herself in to the army, her failure at her mission might doom her. Her failure at Kursk might catch up with her. Her traitor-antagonist in Moscow might destroy her. There was no going back.

“I have to finish my job,” she said. “Survival is not the concern here.”

“All right, then,” he said, sighing. “Try this for a plan. You kill Groedl. We all escape. We are all glorious heroes. We meet every year on your dacha outside Moscow and eat caviar and drink very fine champagne and laugh ourselves sick because life with a full belly is the best revenge.”

“That’s a fairy tale,” she said.

“No, it’s not,” said the Teacher. “It can happen. It’s only a matter of guns.”

They looked at him.

“I know where there are guns,” said the Teacher. “Lots of them.”

The four P.M. Mossad meeting on EconIntel was before the director himself, as well as the section chief and several other department heads. It was organizational theater, full of balding late-middle-aged men in open collars, smoking like fiends, arguing and sniping at each other with the brio that office warfare brings out.

Finally it was Gershon’s turn.

“Brother Gold, you’ve been so quiet. You didn’t even try to devastate Cohen’s suggestion that the Japanese Red army has booked a week at a Sea of Galilee spa.”

“I’ve been to that spa,” said Gershon. “Believe me, an attack by the Japanese Red army would improve the food.”

Cohen was quick on the defense: “How would Gershon know? Linda would never let him go to the buffet. It’s nothing but yogurt and raisins for Gershon.”

“People, people,” said the director, to quell the laughter and keep Gershon and Cohen from chewing each other alive with zingers for the next twenty minutes.

“All right,” said Gershon. “I do have a situation. Not a crisis, not an emergency, not a catastrophe, but a situation.”

“Enlighten us while I eat my knishes,” said Cohen.

“Item one: an unheard-of firm buys a great deal of platinum in South Africa, surreptitiously flies it to Astrakhan on the Caspian. Item two: it turns out that this same firm, called Nordyne GmbH, out of Lausanne, Switzerland, has also quite recently acquired a defunct ceramics factory in Astrakhan, spent several million refurbishing the place, spent several hundred thousand fencing it, and has hired a Chechen security team for twenty-four-hour surveillance and protection. Bad boys, shooters, heavily armed. Ready to repel commandos.”

“Why would commandos be interested in ceramics in Astrakhan?” asked Cohen.

“Why would Jews be interested in ceramics in Astrakhan?” asked the assistant director.

“Because,” said Gershon, “that same firm has just spent yet more money, all of it, by the way, nearly untraceable so far, acquiring the following equipment from various surplus industrial manufacturing suppliers. From the Poles, a fractional distillater; from the Turks—the Turks!—a crystallization reactor; from the British, a filtration system; from the Swedes, a ten-thousand-cubic centimeter drying tunnel; and from the Germans, metal bending equipment. As well as belts, electric motors, bins, the bric-a-brac of manufacture. However, a quick check of local job-shop printing manifests turns up no links to Nordyne Ceramics, meaning no quote sheets, no catalog, no printed packaging, no advertising, and by inference, no sales force.”

“A world without salesmen,” said Cohen. “Perhaps they should get the Nobel Peace Prize!”

Laughter, and Gershon almost responded with “A salesman named Herzl put us here,” but he knew that would set off a crazed war of quips and cracks and instead took a breath.

“Another development,” said Gershon. “It seems whoever is running this plant hasn’t hired Russians but has brought in a Chechen workforce, about twenty women, related to the same bunch that handles the security. I learn this from the indefatigable Precious Metals Industry Reporter, which is worth every penny of the $4,775 yearly subscription fee I don’t pay. Consider: the Chechen women will be isolated, keep to themselves, may even live on-site, under the watch of the gunmen-boyfriends. They won’t be circulating in Astrakhan proper, and they won’t be part of familial and clan networks, so the yakkity-yak factor is eliminated. More security, cleverly thought out, but not so high-profile as to capture attention.”

“What does platinum have to do with all this?”

“If I knew, I’d tell you,” said Gershon.

“There’s not enough data to blow it up,” said the director, again to laughter. “Maybe tomorrow.”

“Platinum, I do know, is remarkable for its catalytic abilities,” said Gershon. “I have to call a chemist for more details, but it has an odd capacity, with its very presence, to change something into something else. By magic rays or something, I wish I knew. Are there any geniuses here?”