Stephen Hunter - Time to Hunt

“Sure.”

It began. The crowd settled, the kids obediently found chairs, and Julie sat relaxed on the couch. There were no harsh lights. One of the questioners cleared his throat, and began to speak.

“Mrs. Swagger, for reasons as yet unclear to us, factions within Russia have sent an extremely competent professional assassin to this country to kill you. That’s extraordinarily venturesome, even for them. You probably wonder why, and so do we. So in the past seventy-two hours, we’ve been poring through old records, trying to find something that you might know that would make your death important to someone over there. May I begin by assuming you have no idea?”

“Nothing. I’ve never talked knowingly to a Russian in my life.”

“Yes, ma’am. But we’ve put this into a larger pattern. It seems that three other people in your circle in the year 1971 were also killed under circumstances that suggest possible Soviet or Russian involvement. One is your first husband—”

Julie gasped involuntarily.

“This may be painful,” Bonson said.

Bob touched her shoulder.

“It’s all right,” she said.

The young man continued, “Your husband, Donny Fenn, killed in the Republic of South Vietnam 6 May 1972. Another was a young man who was active with you in the peace movement, named Peter Farris, discovered dead with a broken neck, 6 October 1971, dead for several months at the time. And the third was another peace demonstrator of some renown, named Thomas Charles ‘Trig’ Carter III, killed in a bomb blast at the University of Wisconsin 9 May 1971.”

“I knew Peter. He was so harmless. I only met Trig once … twice, actually.”

“Hmmmm. Can you think of a specific circumstance that united the four of you? Marine, peace demonstrators, 1971?”

“We were all involved in one of the last big demonstrations, May Day of that year. The three of us as demonstrators, Donny as a Marine.”

“Julie,” said Bonson, “we’re thinking less of an ideological unification here and more of a specific, geographic one. A time, a place, not an idea. And a private place, too.”

“The farm,” she finally said.

There was no sound.

Finally, Bonson prompted her.

“The farm,” he said.

“Donny was distraught over an assignment he’d been asked to do.”

Bob looked at Bonson and saw nothing, just the face of a smooth, professional actor in the role of concerned intelligence executive. No flicker of emotion, grief, doubt, regrets: nothing. Bonson didn’t even blink, and Julie, remembering nothing of him and his role in what had happened, went on.

“He believed this Trig, of whom he thought so highly, might have some idea what he should do with his ethical dilemma. We went to Trig’s house in DC but he wasn’t there. Donny remembered that he was going out to a farm near Germantown. I think Peter may have followed us. Peter thought he was in love with me.”

“What did you see on that farm?” asked the young analyst.

She laughed.

“Nothing. Nothing at all. What can have been so important about it?”

“We’d like to know.”

“There was a man. An Irishman named Fitzpatrick. He and Trig were loading fertilizer into a van. It was very late at night.”

“How clearly did you see him?”

“Very. I was just out of the light, maybe fifteen, twenty-five feet away. I don’t think he ever saw me. Donny, for some reason, wanted me to stay back. So he and Trig and this Fitzpatrick talked for a few minutes. Then Fitzpatrick left. Then Donny and Trig talked some more and finally hugged. Then we left. There was some kind of agent in the hills. He got our picture — Donny’s and mine — as we drove away. Donny’s mostly. I was ducking. And that’s it.”

“That’s it.”

“Do you remember Fitzpatrick?”

“I suppose.”

“Do you think you’d be able to describe—”

“No,” said Bonson. “Go straight to the pictures.”

“Mrs. Swagger, we’d like to have you look at some pictures. They’re pictures of a variety of politicians, espionage agents, lawyers, scientists, military, mostly in the old Eastern Bloc, but some are genuinely Irish, some English, some French. They’re all in their forties or fifties, so you’ll have to imagine them as they’d have been in 1971.”

“Yes,” she said.

“Just take your time.”

One of the kids walked across the room and handed her a sheaf of photographs. She flipped through them slowly, stopping now and then to sip on her Coke can.

“Could I have another Coke?” she asked at one time.

Somebody raced out.

Bob watched as the gray, firm faces slid by, men possibly his own age or older, most of them dynamic in appearance, with square, ruddy faces, lots of hair, the unmistakable imprint of success.

They were hunting for a mole, he realized. They thought that somehow — was this Bonson’s madness? — this Fitzpatrick had implanted someone in the fabric of the West, prosperous and powerful, but that his heart still belonged to the East, or what remained of it. If they could solve the mystery of Fitzpatrick, they could solve the mystery of the mole.

Bob felt an odd twist of bitterness. That war, the cold one, it really had nothing to do with the little hot dirty one that had consumed so many men he had known and so wantonly destroyed his generation. Who’ll stop the rain? It wasn’t even about the rain.

“No,” she said. “He’s not here, I’m sorry.”

“Okay, let’s go to the citizens.”

Another file of photos was provided.

“Take your time,” said one of the debriefers. “Remember, he’ll be heavier, balder, he may have facial hair, he—”

“Mel, I think Julie understands that,” said Bonson.

Julie was quiet. She flipped through the pictures, now and then pausing. But another pile disappeared without a moment of recognition. Another pile was brought, this time designated “security nationals.”

She had a possible, but paused, and then it too went to the discards, though into a separate category of “almosts.”

But then, finally, there were no more pictures.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

The disappointment in the room was palpable.

“Okay,” Bonson finally said. “Let’s knock off for a while. Julie, why don’t you take a break? Maybe a walk, stretch your legs. We’ll have to do it the hard way.”

“What does that mean?” she asked. “Drugs? Torture?”

“No, we’ll get you together with a forensic artist. He’ll draft a drawing from your instructions. We’ll get our computers to run a much wider comparison on a much wider database. Mel, be sure to get the ‘almosts’ too. Have Mr. Jefferson factor those in too. That’ll get us another bunch of candidates. We’ve got food. Would you care for some lunch or a nap or something?”

“I’m fine. I think I’d like to check on my daughter.”

She and Bob walked downstairs and found Nikki — asleep. She was stretched across Sally’s lap, snoozing gently, pinning Sally with her fragile weight.

“I can’t even get up,” said Sally.

“I’ll take her.”

“No, that’s okay. These child geniuses got the cable running. The remote even works now. It didn’t. See.”

She held up the little device and punched a few buttons and the picture flicked across the channels: Lifetime, CNN, Idaho Public TV, HBO, the Discovery Channel, ESPN, CNN Headline N—

“My God,” said Julie. “Oh, my God.”

“What?” Bob said, and from around the house, others looked in, came to check.

“That’s him,” said Julie. “My God, yes, fatter now, healthier; yes, that’s him. That’s Fitzpatrick!” She was pointing at the television, where a powerful, dynamic man was giving an impromptu news conference in a European city.