Stephen Hunter - Time to Hunt

“Jesus,” said one of the kids, “that’s Evgeny Pashin, the next president of Russia.”

The second meeting was smaller, more informal. It was after lunch, prepared in an Air Force mess tent set up outside the house.

Surprisingly good, nourishing food, too. More to the point, someone had come up with a nice batch of Disney videos for Nikki, that is, when she got back from a sledding diversion with three state troopers.

Now, Julie and Bob sat upstairs with a much smaller contingent, the inner circle, as it were.

“Julie,” said Bonson, “we’re going to discuss the meaning of this right here, before you and your husband. That’s because I want you on the inside now, not on the outside. I’m drawing the two of you in. You’re not civilians. I want you to feel like you’re part of the team. You will, in fact, both be paid as agency consultants; we pay well, you’ll see.”

“Fine,” she said. “We could use the money.”

“Now, I’m not even going to ask you if you’re sure. I know you’re sure. But I have to say: this guy has been on TV a lot lately. Can you explain why it’s only now that you recognize him?”

“Mr. Bonson, have you ever been a mother?”

There was some laughter.

“No,” he admitted.

“Have you ever been the wife to a somewhat melancholy yet incredibly heroic man, particularly as he’s feeling his life has been taken from him by some unnecessary publicity and we had to move from one location to another?”

“No, no, I haven’t,” said Bonson.

“Well, I was both, simultaneously. Does that suggest to you why I wasn’t watching much TV?”

“Yes, it does.”

“Now, today, you take me back. You force me to think about faces. I pick several faces that are somewhat similar in structure to his. I’m working on re-creating that face in my own mind. Do you see?”

“Yes.”

“The points are all well made,” Bonson said. “Well then, let’s throw it open for general discussion. Can someone tell me what possible meaning this has?”

“Sir, I think I can explain the sequencing.”

“Go ahead,” said Bonson.

“In 1971, four people saw Pashin operating undercover in this country as this Fitzpatrick. That is, really interfaced with him in commission of his duties. Three were eliminated quickly. But they had no ID on the fourth, and as I recollect, according to official Marine Corps records, Mrs. Swagger’s first marriage to Donny Fenn was unrecorded.”

“That’s right,” said Julie. “I received no benefits. It didn’t matter to me. I didn’t want anything to do with the Marine Corps. Although I ended up marrying it.”

“But,” continued the analyst, “they have a bad picture of her, the one they got at the farm. They can’t ID it. It haunts them over the years. The decades pass. SovUn breaks up. Pashin is no longer GRU, he’s part of PAMYAT, the nationalist party. He begins his political career. He’s handsome, heroic, the brother of a martyred nationalist hero, has lots of mafia backing; he’s scaring the old-line commies, he’s within a few weeks of winning an election and control of twenty thousand nukes. Then, two months ago, a picture of Bob Lee Swagger appears in The National Star and subsequently in Time and Newsweek , who call him ‘America’s most violent man.’ If you recall: it was a picture snapped by a Star photographer of Bob coming out of church in Arizona, with his wife. Her picture appears in the national media. And it contains the information that Bob is married to his spotter’s widow. Donny’s widow, the woman who got away, who’s been haunting them all these years. The last survivor of that night on the farm. Suddenly, it becomes clear to PAMYAT and all the interests betting on Pashin that one witness from his undercover days still exists and can still put him on that farm. All right? So … from that point on, they have to take her out, and her husband’s gaudy past certainly provides a kind of pretext.”

“That’s sequencing,” said Bonson. “Fine, good, it makes sense. It’s a theory that fits. But still … why?”

“Ah, he was involved with a famous peace demonstrator in blowing up a building.”

“So?”

“Well…”

Bonson argued savagely, trying to compel the young man to a next leap. “It’s widely known he had an intelligence background. It’s known in some circumstances that the peace movement had some East Bloc involvement. Actually, that might help his candidacy in today’s Russia. I don’t understand why the same security mandates would be operational twenty-seven years later. They were protecting assets then . What can they be protecting now? Ideas, anybody?”

None of the senior people had any.

“Well, then, we’re sort of stuck, aren’t we?” said Bonson. “It’s very interesting, but we still don’t—”

“Should I explain it to you now, or do you want to yammer on a bit?” asked Bob.

“You ain’t got it yet, Bonson,” said Bob. “You still bought into the cover story. You still look at the cover story and you don’t see the real story. And all your smart boys, too.”

“Well, Sergeant,” said Bonson evenly, “then go ahead. You explain the real story.”

“I will. You missed the big news. There was a bomb explosion at the University of Wisconsin 9 May 1971 all right. A kid named Trig Carter blew himself up protesting the war in Vietnam. Maybe most of you are too young to remember it, but I do. He gave his life to peace. He was a rich kid, could have had anything, but he gave his life up for his ideals. They even wrote books about him. He may have been brave, too. I don’t know.

“But the one name you won’t find in that book or in any other books about the peace movement or the history of our country in 1971 is the name Ralph Goldstein. Anybody here recognize it?”

There was silence in the room.

“That’s the big story. Ralph Goldstein was the doctoral student who was killed that night in the University of Wisconsin Math Center. Jewish boy, twenty-seven, married, from Skokie, Illinois. Went to the University of Illinois, Chicago Circle campus, not a very impressive school compared to the fancy schools where Trig Carter went. He didn’t know nobody. He just did his work and tried to get his degree and do his research. Smart as a whip, but very obscure. Never went to no demonstrations, smoked no dope, got no free love, or nothing. I did something nobody has yet done: I went and talked to his son, now himself a very bright kid. I hope nobody don’t blow him up.”

He could feel their eyes on him. He cracked a little smile. All the pointy heads, listening to him .

“But Ralph Goldstein had published a paper in Duke Higher Mathematics Quarterly , which he called ‘Certain Higher Algorhythmic Functions of Topographical Form Reading in Orbital Applications.’ Don’t mean a thing to me. But guess what? We now got about 350 satellites in orbit watching the world because Ralph Goldstein figured out the math of it. He was only a grad student, and he himself didn’t even know it, but he’d been picked to join the staff at the Satellite Committee at the Johns Hopkins Advanced Physics Lab in Maryland, where they did all the high-power number crunching that made the satellite program possible. Okay, so what his death meant practically was it took us three extra years to get terrain-recognition birds in the air. If it matters, that’s three years where the Sovs upgraded their own satellite program, and closed a gap in the Cold War. That’s three more years that kept them in the race. Which one of you geniuses or experts can tell me which part of Soviet staff was responsible for strategic warfare?”

“GRU,” came the reply.