Stephen Hunter - I, Sniper

Would he be formally terminated with cause? It might happen. More likely, he’d be demoted to some make-work job-hmm, had they closed out the who-really-fathered-Bristol-Palin’s-baby investigation?-while the Office of Professional Responsibility put together a case against him; then he’d be advised of a hearing, he’d have to hire a lawyer, there’d be some back-and-forth, and what would happen would happen.

A shadow fell across the table.

He looked up.

“I figured it would be you. At least it’s not Banjax,” he said.

“Hi, Nick. I’m hoping you won’t chase me away. We should talk,” said Bill Fedders.

“Sure, Bill,” said Nick. “Sit yourself down. Waiter, waiter, bring Mr. Fedders a drink, whatever he wants, on my tab.”

“Well, aren’t we feeling generous,” Fedders said. “Better let me put it on my tab. It’s the least I can do.”

Fedders ordered a vodka martini, dry, Grey Goose, and explained that by “dry” he meant that the olive should be allowed to read the label on the vermouth and that was it for vermouth.

Nick thought it was actually kind of funny but suspected that it was a treasured Feddersism, famous all over DC. He was hearing it late because normally he was so distant from the fabulous Fedders orbit.

“So, Nick,” said Bob.

“So, Bill,” said Nick.

Fedders’s drink came and Fedders toasted, “Nick, to you. I always liked you. None of this was because anybody disliked you. You’re a hell of a guy, Nick, and a hell of an agent.”

“Hear, hear,” said Nick, drinking to himself.

“It’s not too late, Nick. You can call the director, tell him in the time off your thinking has clarified on the case and you are one hundred percent behind resolution now and moving onward. Get that report issued, hang the case-closed tag on it, and sit back and relax. Then maybe some of the forces that seem to be conspiring to destroy you could conspire to help you.”

“You can make it happen that fast?” said Nick. “You can stop the Times in mid hue and cry-or maybe that’s full hue and only half cry-and turn it around to help me?”

“Well, Nick, you overestimate my power, sure. But I can make some things happen. I’ve been in this old town since the first Roosevelt. I used to date Alice Longworth, in fact. I’ve got a few favors owed me; I’ve sure done enough in my time.”

“Impressive, Bill, I give you that. Impressive.”

“Nick, really, what’s the problem? The Big Guy doesn’t want to spend the last years of his life reading how he hired aliens to murder his ex-wife because she was sleeping with some kid with too much mousse in his hair. Can you blame him? Once all you guys go to case-closed, the report is the record, the verdict, the official version. Nobody will have access to the evidence. No more nutcase articles, nobody getting rich on craptastic books and DVDs, no movie versions, no Rushes to Judgment . The whole circus dries up and dies.”

“Wow, again, you can do that?”

“My pleasant voice, suave charm, brilliant instincts, and, oh yes, Tom Constable’s six billion bucks. Money talks loud. He just wants this goddamn thing to go away.”

“I’d think he’d want the guilty party drawn and quartered.”

“Nick, I can’t argue the case with you, but the crazy marine sniper thing made absolute sense to Tom and he bought it totally. Maybe he’s deluding himself, because he also saw how quickly and neatly it ended things.”

“Or maybe he did pay somebody to kill her and frame Hitchcock. Or maybe killing her wasn’t even the point, maybe it was killing one of the others, like that, what was his name, the comic, Mitch Greene.”

“Nick, believe me, nobody would go to that much trouble to kill Mitch Greene.”

“Well, I’m sure you’re right about it, but I can’t see hanging it up until we’ve worked out all the possibilities, not just the most obvious ones. That’s my obligation as a law enforcement officer. I can’t walk away from that, no matter what.”

“Nick, really, the news isn’t good. Not tomorrow, but in a few days, the Times has another bombshell. It’s bad, Nick. I don’t think even your most ardent supporters in the Bureau will stand behind you after this one. I can’t tell you what it is, but it’ll leave a crater the size of Manhattan.”

So that was it. That’s why Bill was here, to deliver the news in person. Nick had no doubt that at some level Fedders was genuine in his affection for Nick and was probably going to some kind of extra exertion out of some kind of twisted nobility to deliver the news in person.

“You know, it’s all crap,” Nick said. “I never did a thing for FN, took one red cent, one lousy meatball. I didn’t even know they’d bought Winchester. I have no brief for the Model 70 over the 700. I don’t know anything about firearms acquisitions; that’s handled at Quantico. I missed most of the meetings for the Sniper Rifle Committee.”

“Nick, the evidence says different, and it’s a hard one to talk your way out of. I’d get good counsel, if I were you, and I’ll tell you what he’ll say. He’ll say, ‘Let me cut a deal. You sign off on something else, maybe behavior detrimental to the Bureau, have a suspension, and when you come back, they’ll move you someplace out of the mainstream. That way you keep your pension and it all looks rosy and cosy.’ That’s good advice, Nick. Don’t try to play hardball with this thing. It’s too big. It’ll squash you. The more you fight it, the worse off you are.”

“See, Bill, here’s the funny thing. If you want to go after me, that’s fine. I’m a big boy, I’m in a hot-seat job, it’s what I wanted, it was the risk I ran to pay for my ambition. I can go down; it’s the way of the wicked world. But you guys went after Swagger. Let me tell you, it takes a powerful kind of fool to go after Swagger. He never did anything but his duty, hard and straight, no bullshit, and he dodged enough lead in his time to sink an aircraft carrier. He did it for something he thought of as his country, and his country is a lot better off because of the risks he took and the wounds he bore and the responsibilities he embraced. Now you make him out to be some kind of cracker Svengali manipulating me into stupidity. I will tell you this: I’ve seen smart boys try to throw the rope around Swagger before and it always turns out the same. They think they’re hunting him, and it turns out he’s hunting them.”

“Nick, it’s nothing personal. It’s just-”

“So when I talk to you, Bill, the truth is, one way or the other, it’s like I’m talking to something that’s already been hit and just doesn’t know it yet. You and your rich boss and all the thugs he’s hired? Baby, you’re walking into bullet city.”

They took him downstairs into a blank white room with a heavy lock. It was one of those zones of permanent noon. Two TV cameras monitored it, mounted on brackets in the corner. It had an antiseptic quality to it, and a drain in the floor, in the center of the cheesy linoleum. The lights were harsh and shadowless. A sink hung off one padded wall. He knew what it was for.

The search came first: it was hard and professional, a bunch of clapping and probing and rubbing. Jimmy, one of the hulking, muscle-knotted gym rat contractors, even peeled a bandage back on one of his fingers, looking to make sure it covered a bloody wound, and only picking at the scab to draw a drop of blood convinced him it was real enough. “Cut ourselves wanking, have we now?” he asked, as he squashed the thing back in place. Raymond, the scrawny one, went to it on his boots, probing the lasts for hidden blades or whatever, finding nothing.

Then they threw him in a chair, the four of them, three hulking men in desert tan battle dress and Raymond, who he now realized was Carl’s doppelgänger during the week of shootings. Of course, there had to be a guy of Carl’s size and coloring who, in grubby clothes with a three-day beard and a ballcap pulled low over the eyes, could pass as any grizzled loner.