Stephen Hunter - The Third Bullet

Anyway, I tried to put my anger aside and pursue my true goal in Dallas, to look around at a cocktail lounge called the Patio a few miles north of downtown, in another dreary suburban neighborhood. The place had little appeal to me, but it was said to be a favorite of General Walker’s, where he loved to sit on the outdoor platform and drink margaritas, whatever they were, with his staff. He was slated to give a speech at SMU November 25, and having spent some time with the Dallas Times Herald, I knew it was likely that he and his “boys” (a few years later, though I was out of the country at the time, he earned the quotation marks around “boys”) would head there for the hooch. It didn’t take much time for me to figure where to put Alek so that he couldn’t miss, although he would, and where to put whomever was shooting backup so he wouldn’t miss. Yes, I had a pretty good idea who that would be, but that lay in the future at least a week.

I made notes to myself, considered angles, heights, and so forth, tracked getaway routes, and although the planning of sniper assassinations wasn’t one of my strong points, I satisfied myself that late on a Monday evening, with vehicular and pedestrian traffic low, Alek could easily cut through the alleyway across the street, hide his rifle, then cut through backyards to a pickup spot. Meanwhile, if needed, our real shooter would have undisturbed escape by vehicle; all that would take place in the four minutes that in those days was the norm for Dallas Police Department response, again according to the Times Herald. I felt we could probably do it in two with practice, maybe even one. Within a day or so, everything would be back to normal in cowtown, and a certain nasty piece of work would trouble nobody, least of all the United States of America, again.

I think I should say that committing to this murder made the next murder seem not so great a reach. In Clandestine Services, we had a culture of leader killing. We had done it before; we would do it again. As I have said, a few weeks earlier, the APC had clanked into Tan Son Nhut with its bloody cargo aboard, and everybody was convinced the killer had done the right thing and was willing to assume the mantle of murderer for the sake of his country. There were others, a red puppet in Africa, a series of strongmen in Guatemala, an appalling boss in the ever-troublesome Dominican. Des FitzGerald was, by rumor at least, currently planning the removal by violence of Fidel Castro. That’s who we were; that’s what we did. There wasn’t all this weepy nonsense about the sanctity of life, the preciousness of each human soul. Someone had to do the man’s work, and we were the men who did it, took pride in it, felt righteous about it. Orwell never said it, I am told, but whoever did must have worked for Clandestine Services in the fifties and sixties: “People sleep warm in their beds at night because rough men do violence on their behalf.” We were the rough men, although we had very smooth manners.

That night he got off the bus and started down North Beckley again, and I pulled up.

“Good evening, Alek,” I said. “Possibly some vodka tonight? Agent Hotsy’s son has another game.”

He looked either way, then jumped in, and off I sped.

He didn’t wait for me. “I’ll do it. I’ll help any way I can. It’s my duty, I’ll do it.”

“Congratulations, Alek,” I said, “three complete sentences without a grammatical error. You’re learning quickly.”

“This time,” he said, “there won’t be not any mistakes.”

“There goes the record,” I said.

“Anyhow,” I went on, “let us move beyond grammar. I take it you have understood what I have not yet stated but only inferred, and what it is I require of you. I mean not just your heart and mind and body, your faith in revolution and the righteousness of our way, but what in the practical sense it is I want you to do.”

“I do.”

“I have to hear you say it, Comrade.”

He took a big breath, and broke eye contact. He knew he was leaving shore, sailing off again on uncharted waters to what he hoped would be his destiny.

“I will this time succeed. I will shoot and kill General Edwin Walker, for crimes against peace and the revolution. I can do it. I can be the assassin. There won’t be any mistakes.”

“No, there won’t be any mistakes. Because this time I have drawn up a plan, an approach route, an escape route. We will time things to the second, we will measure the distance, we will know that there are no impediments to shooting. Our intelligence will be sound, our preparations thorough. We will do this professionally.”

“Yes sir.”

“Now, tell me, Alek, why is it we’re doing this?”

“What? Why? Because you asked me.”

“Forget that part. I mean politically, strategically, morally, what is the purpose? This is murder we’re talking here. It’s not to be done lightly, on a whim, or for shabby psychological needs.”

“He’s a bad man. He needs to die. That’s all.”

“And that’s enough for you?”

“It is. It isn’t for you?”

“Not for authorization. In my memo to authority, I argued that General Walker applied rightist pressure to President Kennedy, and Kennedy wasn’t politically able to stand up to it after failures at the Bay of Pigs, Vienna, and the Cuban Missile Crisis.”

“I thought America won that. I was angry.”

“Propaganda. Khrushchev traded him Russian missiles in Cuba for American missiles in Turkey. We won, as our missiles were far less valuable than yours. Kennedy knows this and is spoiling for a fight, and General Walker is shoving him into it. Wherever he chooses to fight, it will be a mistake. Possibly the Republic of South Vietnam, possibly Cuba, possibly somewhere in South America, perhaps even Europe. Walker’s popularity squeezes Kennedy, and something tragic for both our peoples happens, because of Walker’s insanity and Kennedy’s weakness. So we take Walker out of the equation. By taking one life, perhaps we save many.”

“I agree, I agree,” said Alek, his face lit with inner zeal. Again I thought I saw a tear.

Why did I do this? It is odd. I’m not sure I know. Alek was an easy mark; I could have gotten him to wear ladies’ clothes in Times Square, shouting “Long live Russia,” if I had wanted to. I think I was arguing with myself and using him as a surrogate. I wanted to hear the arguments said out loud, and I thought in some way, I might speak from my subconscious and say something more honest than I intended. I might learn something of my own true motives, as opposed to the policy mumbo jumbo by which I justified the killing, knowing that policy is malleable and that it could be used to justify anything. I suppose I was also preparing for upcoming seductions, knowing I would have to convince the man who would act as backup shooter to do so, and he was far smarter than Alek and might have come up with unexpected counterarguments.

In another sense, I felt I owed it to him. He was the expendable one, the sacrifice. If it happened, he would be left to burn to death in the Texas electric chair, screaming of red agents who’d given him orders straight from SMERSH. I doubted if the officials who executed him could keep a straight face during the operation. I wanted to give him at least an idea of where it fit in in the grand scheme of things and the belief that he had somehow made a contribution. It might help get him through the long night before they turned the switch.

“In a few days, I will contact you again. At that meeting I will present you with a plan and a map. I want you prepared; do not get in any arguments, do not read any papers, do not trouble your mind with new information. I want your mind unagitated. Since you’re a fighter and a yapper, I know that’s hard for you, but do your best for me. I want you ready to read and commit to memory, do you see? You have to concentrate for me, because you cannot possess the plan on paper. If things should go wrong, you cannot be found with a plan written in Russian. It would cause problems. Security, do you see?”