Stephen Hunter - I, Sniper

The Constable revelations rocked the nation, as might be imagined, and the story of the trials and the sentencing, the appeals, the retrials, and an account of the whole surrealistic Fellini movie that came in its wake-the television shows, the circus of sensational journalism, blogism, essayism, talking headism, and schadenfreudeism-is best left for elsewhere.

For those involved, however, the trials and interviews and think pieces et al were really signifiers of nothing. It was just the assholes in the world catching up to what the people on the point of the spear had already done in their names. All that media crap wasn’t much for real endings. But there were real endings, possibly too many to choose from.

One came after the first trial and halfway through the second, when in all the ruckus, Nick Memphis found Special Agent Ron Fields sitting in the Nyackett, Massachusetts, courthouse cafeteria, waiting to testify. He had not been able to catch the fellow alone since the day it all went down.

“Hi ya,” he said, slipping in across from the big guy.

“Hi, Nick,” Fields said. “You got my note. Thanks for the commendation. It looks like I will get the sniper program,” Fields said.

“I hope so,” said Nick. “You deserve it.”

“Ah, Nick,” said Fields with his sloppy grin, “I’m just a dumbbell gunfighter and gofer. I’m best suited for Quantico and teaching SWAT. That Starling, she’s the bright one. She’ll be a star.”

“I bet you’re right on that one,” Nick said. “I wrote her up too.”

“Great.”

“But I’m glad you mentioned her. I wanted to ask you something.”

“Sure, Nick. But don’t expect subtlety. I’m the grind-it-up type.”

“You know what they’re saying?”

“Hmm,” said Fields. “Well, I’ve heard some stuff.”

“As I understand the story, it goes something like this. There’s this young special agent who’s pissed at the hosing her boss is getting in the press. And guess what, the fiancé of this young agent happens to work for a certain outfit located in Langley, V-A. He’s in photo intelligence. Anyhow, when this agent’s boss is in trouble and everyone’s calling him a crook, she and boyfriend come to the rescue. Boyfriend uses agency tech to dummy up a photo; this is, of course, after both put their heads together and figure out what a certain great newspaper knows nothing about. But first, they snitch a document out of an unguarded file, retype it on their own processor and replace it. Then they pass a reporter a document typed on the same word processor, and for a while, it looks as if the reporter has got a real scoop on his hands. Well, I’m telling the story all wrong, out of sequence, but you can figure it out, I’ll bet. The famous newspaper goes to press with its picture and gets slaughtered . Just gets massacred. Pretty damn funny, if you ask me. And the campaign the newspaper was running curls up and dies, and old Nick goes back to work, same as it ever was, and we even end up putting a bad guy away and who knows what might have happened if the guy in charge didn’t have this naive faith in some outlier named Bob Lee Swagger. Boy, would we be in a different world, I’ll tell you.”

“I’ve heard that story, yeah,” said Fields. “As I said, she’s a smart one. And that reputation should help her in her career. People look at her and say, don’t mess with Starling. It’s a ticket up.”

“It is. And try as I might, I can’t see that a crime has been committed. I mean other than misuse of government resources, but that’s not my bailiwick. If someone chooses to play a prank on a newspaper, what crime has been committed?”

“I can’t think of one either, Nick.”

“So, I’m going to let that drop. That’s my decision. But I look at Fields and I think, I’ll run it by him, just get his take on it; he’s a salty old dog.”

“The salty old dog says, sometimes it’s best to let things drop.”

Nick smiled.

“Then it’s dropped. She’ll be a star. You get Sniper SWAT at Quantico. Maybe I get assistant director.”

“If there’s any justice-”

“And the important thing is the bad guys go down or away. Let’s not forget that.”

“Never forget that. It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy.”

“Cool,” said Nick, rising. “Okay, that’s a big help. I’ll let you concentrate on your testimony now. I’ve got to get back to DC and-Oh,” he said, “one other thing.”

“Sure, Nick.”

“How do you suppose she got it down?”

Fields smiled but his eyes showed bafflement.

“What’re you-”

“You know, my picture. The fake photo used info from a real picture. It was hanging on my glory wall. Sally and I in Hawaii on vacation, about four years ago. They needed a real photo so their computers could transfer and manipulate the information. That’s why it seemed familiar.”

“Gee, I hadn’t thought of that,” said Fields. “I mean, I guess she just wandered into your office one day and slipped it off the wall.”

“I suppose,” said Nick. “But she’s only five-two. She can’t reach any higher than six feet, much less manipulate something. That photo was in the top row, close to seven feet off the ground. And my office has a glass wall. So she’d have to do it in plain sight of the office, and she’d have to move a chair over to get up to it, and she’d have to have another photo to hang in its place, and all that would take time and anyone would notice it.”

“I guess she did it after hours.”

“But she’s only an SA. Special agents aren’t allowed in after hours unless they’re with an assistant special agent in charge; of course an ASAIC can come in anytime.”

“Huh,” said Fields. “Interesting. So you’re saying-”

“I’m not saying anything. The facts are saying that if someone took down that pic and replaced it with something else, it was done after hours, meaning by an ASAIC or higher, six-two or taller. Know anybody like that? Oh, and he’d have to be familiar with that wall.”

“Maybe she-”

“Maybe. But I did some checking. It’s interesting, yeah, her fiancé’s a CIA guy and might have had access to that lab. But did you know there’s a guy on Taskforce Sniper who partnered up early with a guy named Jerry Lally? Five years, a few gunfights, that sort of thing. And of course Jerry took a leave of absence, went back to school, got a master’s in chem and a PhD in physics and came back to work science for us. He’s now head of our photo interp. And let’s not forget that although CIA has the best photo lab in Washington, we have the second-best photo lab in Washington. Really, not one floor and a hundred feet from our office. And whoever did this little thing, he really knew our building forward and back, much better, I’m guessing, than a new special agent. No, this guy’d be an old salty dog.”

“Pretty interesting,” said Fields.

“And see, here’s the funny thing. Everybody thinks this guy is a big, lovable, loyal lunkhead, but if you look at his tests, his IQ maxes out, as do all his other tests. See, everybody thinks he’s a jovial door kicker, but maybe he’s the smartest of them all, smarter than his own boss, because he figures getting known as an egghead isn’t going to get him Sniper at Quantico.”

“Nick, you have some imagination. You ought to write a book.”

“Nah,” said Nick. “Nobody’d believe it. As I say, it’s dropped now.”

Then a bailiff came and called Fields as next to testify, and he rose, and Nick reached out to shake his hand and said, “You are the best, big guy, the very best,” and Fields smiled and was off.

Here’s another possible ending: a notice that appeared on page A-2 of a recent issue of the Times in the Corrections Box.