Stephen Hunter - Time to Hunt

“So what happened to Fitzpatrick?”

“Disappeared. Gone. We have no idea. He was never serviced out of an embassy, never had a cut-out, any of the classic ploys of the craft. We never cut into his phone network. He was entirely a singleton. We don’t know who serviced him. We don’t even know what he looks like. We never got a photo. But it is provocative that suddenly all this is active again. Why would that be? Your picture goes in the paper and suddenly they’re out to kill you?”

“But my picture has been in the paper before. It’s been on the cover of Time and Newsweek . They couldn’t miss that. So what’s different this time?”

“That’s a great question, Sergeant. I can’t answer it. I even have a team of analysts working on it back at Langley and so far they have come up with nothing. It makes no sense. And to make it more complicated, Fitzpatrick may not even be working for the Russians, or for the old Soviet communist regime, which is still there, believe me. He may be working against it now. It’s a tough call, I’ll tell you, but I guarantee it’s simple underneath. Mole. Penetration of the Agency. The notification of your existence, something coming active over there, your elimination to prevent — what? I don’t know.”

Something didn’t quite add up. There was some little thing here that didn’t connect.

“You look puzzled,” said Bonson.

“I can’t figure it out,” said Bob. “I’m getting a little alarm. Don’t know what it is. Something you said—”

Photograph .

“You don’t know what Fitzpatrick looks like?”

“No. No photos. That’s how good he was.”

What is wrong?

“Why aren’t there any photos?”

“We never got close enough. We were never there. We were always behind him. It took too long, I told you. I was trying to set up a—”

Photograph .

“There is a photograph.”

“I don’t—”

“The FBI has a photograph. The FBI was there.”

“We’re not on the same page. The FBI was where?”

“At the farm. The farm in Germantown in 1971. Trig had told Donny where it was. My wife went out there with Donny the night he was trying to decide whether or not to give up Crowe. He was looking for Trig for guidance. She saw Fitzpatrick. She said the FBI was there, and when she and Donny left, they got their picture. They were on the hill above the farm. They were about to bust Trig.”

“The FBI was not there. The FBI was back in Washington with Lieutenant Commander Bonson trying to figure out where the hell everybody had gone to.”

“There were agents there. They got a picture of Donny and Julie leaving the farm. She told me that less than a week ago.”

“It wasn’t the FBI.”

“Could it have been some other security agency, moving in on Trig, unaware of the—”

“No. It didn’t work that way. We were together.”

“Who was there?”

“Call your wife. Find out.”

He pushed the phone toward Bob, who took out the small piece of paper on which he had written the number of the ranch house in Custer County.

He dialed, listened as the phone rang. It was midafternoon out there.

After three rings, he heard, “Hello?”

“Sally?”

“Oh, the husband. The missing husband. Where the hell have you been? She is in great discomfort and you have not called in days.”

“I’m sorry, I’ve been involved in some stuff.”

“Bob, this is your family . Don’t you understand that?”

“I understand that. I’m just about to come home and spell you and everything will be happy. She did separate from me, you remember.”

“You still have responsibilities,” she said. “You are not on vacation.”

“I am trying to take care of things. How’s Nikki?”

“She’s fine. It’s snowing. They say there’s going to be a bad snowfall, one of those late spring things.”

“It’s June, for God’s sake.”

“They do things by their own rules in Idaho.”

“I guess so. Is Julie able to come to the phone? It’s important.”

“I’ll see if she’s awake.”

He waited and the minutes passed.

At last another extension clicked on, and his wife said, “Bob?”

“Yes. How are you?”

“I’m all right. I’m still in a cast, but at least I’m out of that awful traction.”

“Traction sucks.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m in Washington right now, working on this thing.”

“God, Bob. No wonder my lawyer couldn’t find you.”

“I’ll be home soon. I just have this thing to deal with.”

She was silent.

“I had to ask you something.”

“What?”

“You told me that when you and Donny left that farm, you were photographed, right? Some guys were in the hills, monitoring the situation, and they got a photo.”

“Yes.”

“You’re sure?”

“Of course I’m sure. Why would I make something like that up?”

“Well, you might have it mixed up with something else.”

“It was very straightforward. Donny knew where the farm was; we drove out there. We found Trig and some big blond guy he said was Irish. We left after Donny talked to Trig. We got to our car, got in, and this guy came out of nowhere and took our picture. That’s it.”

“Hmmm,” he said. He put the phone down. “She says yes, definitely, there was a picture taken.”

“What did the guy look like?”

Bob asked her.

“Guy in a suit. Heavy-set, blunt, I guess. I didn’t get a good look. It was dark, remember? Cops. FBI agents.”

“Just cops,” Bob said.

“Don’t you see,” said Bonson. “Some kind of Soviet security team. Covering for Fitzpatrick.”

Yes, Bob thought. That made sense.

“And that was everybody that was out there?” he asked.

“Well … Peter, Peter Farris.”

“Peter?” Bob asked. Peter? Something rang in his head from far away.

“I don’t know that he was there.”

“Who was Peter?” he asked, struggling to remember. He thought he could recall Donny mentioning a Peter somewhere some time or other and had a bad feeling.

“He was one of my friends in the movement. He thought he was in love with me. He may have followed us out there.”

“You don’t know?”

“He disappeared that night. His body was found several months later. I wrote Donny about it.”

“Okay,” said Bob, “I’ll call you as soon as I get back, and we can work this out however you want. You’re safe in all this snow?”

“We may be snowed in for a few days, it’s so isolated. But that’s okay; we have plenty of food and fuel. Sally’s here. It’s not a problem. I feel very safe.”

“Okay,” he said.

“Good-bye,” she said.

“That was a dead end,” he said, after hanging up.

Peter, he thought. Peter is dead. Peter disappeared that night. Yet something taunted him. He remembered other words, spoken directly to him: It’s not about you this time .

“Well, it’s another good bit of circumstantial that the Russians had committed to a major operation, and they were running high-level security on it.”

Then a thought just sort of fluttered through Bob’s mind.

“It is odd,” he noted, “that of all the people that went to that farm — Trig, a kid named Peter Farris, Donny — they’re all dead. In fact, they all died within a few months of that night.”

“Everybody except your wife.”

“Yeah. And—”

Except my wife, he thought.

Except my wife .

Bob stopped, caught up suddenly. Something snapped into perfect focus. It wasn’t there, then it was; there was no coming into being, no sense of emergence: it was just indisputably there, big as life.