Стивен Хантер - Game of Snipers

“So she is legitimate, though you wouldn’t be offended if we double-checked?”

“Help yourself.”

“But her legitimacy doesn’t prove her information is legitimate. Perhaps this is another Juba game, conjured by some Iranian Ministry of Intelligence genius. I could name several. The brilliance of it would be discovering the woman on one of her trips, feeding her false information artfully disguised as the truth. Her belief — and she would have a need to believe, a need to achieve some justice for the poor lost boy — might be exactly the tool they’d put to use in order to achieve some sort of leverage over us.”

“Sure. I guess,” said Bob. “But it seems more likely that if they knew about her, they’d put a bullet in her head instead of going to all this trouble.”

“And, other than being a nuisance, she is not under active CIA control or even in their awareness?”

“I don’t know anybody there like I once did. But the mess that place is in now — again, it seems unlikely. Maybe this genius could play a game using her uniqueness, but right now everybody in the Agency seems really pissed off.”

Gold nodded.

Finally, he said, “Why don’t you let me run some checks. I’ll call you in a day or two. Please enjoy our town. I will put everything on a Mossad account.”

“That’s very kind, but to keep myself untouched by financial interests, I prefer to pay my own way. I can afford it. Why should I just leave it to my kids?”

Gold’s eyes crinkled briefly. “Ha. Why indeed?”

For two days, he enjoyed the sights and flavors of Tel Aviv, admiring the scenery, the women, the live-for-today ethos that seemed to animate the place. It had a gay living-on-the-bull’s-eye quality to it, familiar from Saigon toward the end. They probably felt the same in Troy. He developed a liking for pomegranate juice and soda taken on the hotel veranda with the Med a blue pool in one direction and, in the other, scrub mountains sustaining what appeared to be thousands of apartments, all of this in splendid sunshine. Only occasionally did the percussion of what might have been an explosion jar his eardrums. Sometimes, but not always, sirens. He felt his face darkening in the rays from above, and his own step turning jaunty.

On the third night, his phone rang. It was not Gershon.

“You will be picked up tomorrow at nine,” the voice informed him, then vanished.

And indeed at 9 a black Citroën pulled up, driven by a boy.

“Mr. Swagger?”

“Yep.”

“If you please …”

The car wound through town and eventually made it to the suburbs, where, after a bit, it seemed to set a course toward a black cube of a building, looking all sci-fi in the light, gleamless, obdurate, implacable. He knew it was Mossad headquarters, a six-story glass block whose dark surface evoked the idea of being watched from the inside while remaining impenetrable from the outside.

Security was thorough, his documents vetted, his body scanned, even the labels on his clothes checked. The boy stayed with him the whole way, ultimately depositing him on the sixth floor in a shabby conference room, where he was awaited by what appeared to be a committee.

Gold didn’t bother to introduce him to them or them to him. Names were irrelevant. The men were as somber as Gold, some bearded, some not. All had the game written on faces that might not have smiled in the past few years. Each of them had a folder in hand, and Gold seemed to be in charge.

“Sergeant Swagger, my colleagues and I will put certain questions before you. We do so in the interest of efficiency and probity. In some cases, you may think they are hostile. You might be right. I’ve asked my colleagues to divide themselves between advocacy and prosecution. No disrespect is meant, so please take nothing personally. Especially from Cohen.”

“Who’s Cohen?” asked Bob.

“I’m Cohen,” said a small man with bright, combative eyes and a disorganized goatee.

“For some reason, our Director tolerates Cohen and his poor attempts at humor. Perhaps it’s a lesson for us as to what not to become. Anyway: Cohen?”

“Are you fucking Mrs. McDowell?” asked Cohen.

Swagger knew trouble when he saw it.

“No,” he said.

“Have you ever dreamed of her naked?”

“Are you kidding?”

“Does she have large or small breasts?”

“I have no idea.”

“Would you consider her a sensual woman?”

“Do you find grief sensual?”

“How many men have you killed?”

“Ah. Too many. I didn’t count. None that couldn’t and wouldn’t have killed me.”

“Do you enjoy killing?”

“I enjoy the craft of shooting. It’s what I was put here to do.”

“Are you a gun nut?”

“I have respected them and they have served me. My family heritage is battle with the gun, for the sake of society, but also — and I have thought hard about this and can admit finally — it fulfills me. As I say, it’s what I do, and if I am not doing it, something is missing from my life. But I don’t have sex with them.”

“Still, this whole thing could be a fantasy to get yourself in another gunfight, yes?”

“I often wonder about that. It’s possible. But in all the things I’ve done since the Marine Corps, I was on the track of righting some wrong, usually recalling the sacrifice of someone like me who had been forgotten.”

“Are you a psychopathic killer?”

“I am not psycho. I just have always found guns interesting and appreciate their capabilities, which, like my own, are at their highest peak when circumstances are at their most extreme. I have no need to kill. But I never dream about it.”

Questions came and went. There seemed no pattern to them. It was like receiving fire from all points of the compass. As promised, Cohen was the most annoying.

“Do you consider sniping an act of murder or an act of war?”

“War. I have only taken out armed men. I take no pleasure in the kill, and I’ve made no money from it. I make my money taking care of ailing horses. I love horses. My wife is a good business manager, I have a reputation, and so we have prospered. I don’t need money, I have all I will ever need.”

“What moved you about Mrs. McDowell?”

“Her pain. Some people close to me have died in violent action. They were, all of them, too good to pass that way, but sometimes, by whimsy or evil, it happens. So I felt that.”

“Do you think that could have clouded your judgment?”

“No. She was real. Her pain was real. Her courage is real. Her facts are true.”

“Why are you here?”

“I was afraid if she didn’t see progress, she’d commit suicide. I realized that we had reached a point— she had reached a point — where to proceed, we needed the support of state actors. Resources beyond our means, access to information beyond our scope. We just weren’t big enough to do it no more. And every time she went over there, she risked her life. The next trip would have left her floating upside down in a river.”

“It sounds more like you are hiring us, not us hiring you.”

“I want Juba. For me, that’s what this is about.”

“If we decide to work with you,” said Gold, “there is a precondition you must accept. That is, in our employ you will regard Juba as our property. Our goal is not to put a bullet in his head. That does limited good and would only satisfy in an Old Testament sense—”

“And nobody here believes in the Old Testament,” said Cohen, and this time there was some laughter.

“Our goal,” said Gold, “is to have a series of chats with him. We need to unravel his life. He harbors many mysteries and will settle many issues. Assuming our success at that enterprise, we will try him, then imprison him. He will live the remainder of his life in an Israeli prison. If you shoot him without cause, we will try you for murder. Though oceans of our blood have been spilled, we are not, as a culture, particularly bloodthirsty. We are justice thirsty. Do you understand?”