Sniper's Honor: A Bob Lee Swagger Novel Read online

  Salid did not, even if he smiled contritely, trying to make some sort of human contact with the little adding machine in a fat man’s body that sat across from him in his office at the Town Hall, beneath some rather gaudy Reich banners.

  “Now,” Groedl said, “I want you to go back to your quarters and have a nice rest.”

  “Sir, our quarters are not—”

  “I know, I know. But that will be changed. You and your men need more space, more comfort, as an indication of your importance to the overall aims of our policy. For you, the Andrewski Palace.”

  This was an aristocratic manse dating from half a dozen or so centuries ago, a vast, crenellated, walled castle built not to withstand war but to withstand envy, in its way as destructive as war. A line of Polish dukes had lived there, controlling all of South Ukraine. Some may have lived there as penniless and pathetic wards of the state after the revolution, until The Boss hauled them off to the camps during his occupation of 1939 to 1941, ending the six-hundred-year-old Andrewski line in the form of a ninety-three-pound zek. But the Russians hadn’t controlled the palace long enough to destroy its grandeur, and it remained the showplace of Stanislav.

  “I know, I know,” continued Dr. Groedl, “the Andrewski Palace is currently occupied by parachutists, a specialist unit once a part of the 2nd Parachute Infantry Division, now in Normandy, called Regiment 21. It no longer exists. Its survivors are called Battlegroup Von Drehle. They have uniforms and helmets like no others. Not Waffen-SS, not even army. Rather, Luftwaffe. A thorn in my side. They’re much favored by that damned Von Bink. These fellows are out on some sort of job now, but when they return, I will order Von Bink to requarter them in a field adjacent to Fourteenth Panzergrenadier. Digging their own latrines and pitching their own tents and unspooling their own K-wire will do them some good, I think. Meanwhile, Police Battalion goes into Duke Andrewski’s house and is to enjoy the comfort it offers. They will need the rest for the days ahead.”

  “That is very good news, Dr. Groedl.”

  There was, it could not be denied, something rather impressive about Dr. Groedl. Max Weber called it charisma, a certain aura that all who came in contact with him felt and responded to. It was his utter seriousness, his utter belief, his uncanny gift for memorizing vast amounts of data. When he spoke, it was as if he were inviting you into an elite circle who knew vastly more than others. It was said that when he taught economics in Munich in the twenties, a young artist named Schicklgruber used to hear his lectures and leave, inspired. Later, that young man was able to reward the professor with a position of power in the government and crusade he had begun.

  “Tomorrow, I am giving a dinner party in my suite at the hotel. Seven P.M. You have dress uniform?” he said to Salid.

  “Of course.”

  “Seven P.M., bathed, shaved, dress uniform. Meet the generals and the department heads who control what is left of German Ukraine. Impress them, they will give you everything, put you at the head of every line. Tomorrow night I will introduce you to an officer, and if you charm him, those three panzerwagens will be permanently assigned to Police Battalion, no waiting, no explanation, no competing interests in the dispatch pool. They are simply yours, with endless fuel and ammunition, so that you may operate with impunity.”

  “Excellent, sir.”

  “And the day after, it is time to expand the base line. I want you back to those five villages along the Yaremche Road, and this time I want twenty hostages shot in each. That should get their attention and their obedience. I want you to make them look extinction in the eye. Their genes will discipline them. It is bred into them to fear and obey. We merely confirm the natural principles.”

  Altitude four thousand feet above Yaremche

  She made him repeat it, and the Teacher translated from the Ukrainian.

  “I am to move down the mountainside and, in the dark, enter the village of Yaremche. I will make my recon at dark. Three nights, no rush. I will avoid any contact. I will move silently. I will attempt to recover a rifle.”

  “What kind of rifle?” Petrova demanded.

  “One with a telescope.”

  “Finally, information. Do the Germans occupy the village? Or do they patrol through it and, if so, how often, in what strength? What is their demeanor? Are they combat-ready, as we might say, or is it a joke to them and they slack off and never get out of their heavy vehicles?”

  The Teacher translated.

  “I know you’ll succeed,” she said.

  The Peasant seemed pleased, and he ducked out through the entrance of the cave and slipped away.

  “The chances of him obtaining a rifle with a telescope are almost negligible,” said the Teacher. “You know that.”

  “He needs an ideal, that’s all.”

  “Only the German army has them, and I’m betting within it, only specialized units. They’re not apt to leave any about. They don’t forget to put their toys away.”

  “If he can just get a half-decent, not-too-beaten-up Mosin or even a German Mauser, I believe I could make that shot from a hundred yards with open sights. It is much the same, finding the position, achieving the concentration, controlling the breathing, willing the trigger finger.”

  “The telescope gives you two hundred yards more distance, maybe two-fifty. It gives you a chance to escape. Believe me, you do not want to be caught by the SS after killing one of their leaders.”

  “And so I die. It’s a war. It happens all the time.”

  “I believe an executioner’s shot behind the ear would be the most you could hope for. That would be a happy ending. I doubt you’d find a German so inclined. The reality is likely far more unpleasant.”

  “No point of thinking so negatively,” she said. “At Kursk, even as we closed with the Tigers, we had no negative thoughts. We thought only of duty.”

  “I envy you such purity. Anyhow, it’s time to rest.”

  “Thank you, I will,” she said.

  The Teacher took her by the arm, to help her to move, and the next thing he knew, he was blinking stars from his head while feeling the press of something hard and keen-edged against the precise part of his throat where, less than a quarter inch away behind a thin screen of flesh, his jugular throbbed.

  She had turned his weight against him, dumped him swiftly to the ground, and pounced, pinning him there by force of knee jammed into his back and arm wrapped around his forehead that now held a small knife with a sharp blade against the soft, vulnerable part of his neck.

  “You know much too much for a teacher, sir,” she whispered. “You found me too damned easily for a teacher. Now, sir, tell me who you really are, or I’ll cut the big one and watch you spurt dry, kicking, in seven seconds.”

  CHAPTER 19

  Ivano-Frankivsk

  The Street

  They wanted to take him to the hospital, but it seemed pointless.

  “Tell him,” he said to Reilly for the policeman, “he didn’t hit me. Not really. He brushed against me, I spun, I lost my balance, I fell.”

  An ambulance had arrived and several witnesses had gathered.

  Reilly explained laboriously in Russian that, thankfully, the Ivano policeman understood.

  “He wants you to tell him again.”

  “It was just a sloppy driver. He thought he could beat me to the space and accelerated.” Swagger waited for her to catch up. “I caught him coming out of the corner of my eye and stepped back. The car didn’t hit me. Its side sort of pushed against me, I felt the pressure, spun, and lost my balance. He probably didn’t even know it happened.”

  It went on for a few minutes. No, they couldn’t identify the make or color of the car, no, they didn’t get a plate number. None of the witnesses cared to contribute, either, though they were curious to see how the policeman ended it with the two Americans.

  As it happened, he ended it by handing Bob a carbon of a report in Ukrainian off his tablet. It appeared to be some kind of incident record, which Bob took and
thanked him for, then watched him walk away. The small crowd also melted off into the night, looking, presumably, for other dramas to distract it.

  They walked to the hotel, a multicolored slab of building from “Communism: The Perky Years,” across the street.

  “You sure you’re okay? He hit you harder than you told the cop.”

  “Really, it’s nothing,” said Swagger. “I expect I’ll be stiff tomorrow.”

  “No mountain climbing for you.”

  “I guess not.”

  “So? Did someone just try to kill us?”

  “It’s just on the line between murder and accident.”

  “But why would anyone care about something that happened in Ukraine seventy years ago with all its survivors and witnesses gone?”

  “How would they even know we’re looking?”

  “It’s not like I’ve been discreet. It never occurred to me. I’ve just done what I always do: I call sources, I check on the various Web archives of the various Russian ministries, I talk to people, I go places.”

  Bob pondered. “Well,” he finally said, “we may have spilled somebody’s vodka. Let’s call Stronski.”

  Stronski was a former Spetsnaz sniper, a brother of the high grass and the long stalk. He’d done a lot of messy things in Afghanistan and Chechyna. The last time Swagger had been to Moscow, he and Stronski, put together by an American firearms journalist, had bonded immediately. Stronski made his living in highly questionable activities, but as Swagger now said, “Sometimes it was better to have a gangster on our side.”

  They sat down at a table in the hotel’s outdoor bar, and Reilly fished out her notebook, found the number, and dialed it, then handed it to Swagger.

  “Da?”

  “Swagger for Stronski. He knows me.”

  The phone went dead.

  Two minutes later it rang.

  “Son of a bitch! Swagger, what you doing? You old bastard, last time I see you, the Izzys were shooting at us in the garden of Stalins.”

  “That was a fun day,” said Swagger. He went on to tell as quickly as he could why he was where he was and why he was calling now.

  “I’ll be there tomorrow,” said Stronski. “Stay in, don’t go anywhere. Don’t give the bastards another chance.”

  “Nah, not worth your time. We’re not even sure it’s a game. Here’s what I need. Ask around. If someone’s trying to whack me way down here in Ukraine, he’d have left tracks. Calls, associates pushed through via connections, that sort of thing. Someone hiring a freelancer. If there’s any real business going on, let me know.”

  “This number if I get anything?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “Also, allow me, I make some arrangements. Nice to have some way of getting out of there fast.”

  “We’re just asking questions about stuff that happened seventy years ago.”

  “Pal, look at the cemeteries. The flowers are fresh. Every day, they remember. In this part of the forest, the past never goes away. It’s forever.”

  CHAPTER 20

  The Cave

  Above Yaremche

  JULY 1944

  Please don’t cut me,” said the trapped man.

  “Explain or bleed,” demanded Petrova.

  “Look, I’ll show you how cooperative I can be.” He squirmed, and his arm emerged from underneath him and tossed something a few inches away. It was a small automatic pistol. “Loaded and ready. I could have shot you. I give you the gun.”

  Holding the knife harder against the pulsing blue line in his throat, she reached for and seized the pistol, some Hungarian miniaturized thing, managed to secure it against her leg and one-handedly pry back the slide just enough to make sure the brass of a shell glinted from the chamber.

  “Try it. Shoot it off. You’ll see.”

  She backed off, let him up. “Hands on head. Hands come off head, I shoot. Legs crossed. Legs uncross, I shoot.”

  “Understood. Now I—”

  “Cut the shit, Teacher. Too much of it already. You found me where the Germans couldn’t. You read the imprint of the tracks and concluded correctly that a panzerwagen left them. That’s advanced scouting, unlikely in a schoolteacher. Who are you? Or better, who do you work for?”

  “Myself,” he said. “I am no agent. I have no affiliation. That is not to say I don’t have a secret. I have a very deadly secret. It would kill me in days anywhere I was.”

  “And what is the secret? Tell me or die now, not in days. I cannot afford to make a mistake. Too much is at stake.”

  “In the middle of the biggest pogrom in history, I am a Jew.”

  “A Jew?”

  “Yes, absolutely. My papers do not say it because they are not mine. My name does not reflect it because it is false. No one alive knows except you. Bak himself did not know.”

  “Go on.”

  “I am from Lviv, where the Germans did their big killing. My family, my relatives, my mother, my father, all gone. I was able to evade. I knew a man in town, a teacher of the Russian orthodox religion. It happened that we somehow resembled each other, being scrawny types with bad eyesight and no particular physical distinctions or assets and the beard further blurring the issue. While all the slaughter was going on, I made it to his house by scampering like a rat through the sewers, after cutting off my yellow star. He and his family had gone somewhere so as not to hear the gunshots of the action, and so I broke in, rummaged through his bureaus, and found an identity document. With that prize, I escaped. I lived by my wits, gradually moving west to the Carpathians, where I heard of Bak and his army. I managed, after several adventures and several near-misses, to join them, under the name on the document. There was no mechanism for him to check on the authenticity of the document. The war, you know.”

  “Yet in safety, you continued with your deception.”

  “Nowhere on earth, it seems, are Jews welcomed anymore. These Ukraines, particularly of the rural proletariat who form the bulk of Bak’s group, are no friend of the Jews. Many have joined Nazi legions and become the Jews’ worst persecutors, at Nazi bidding but based on their own brutal nature. I did not care to make myself known to them. Brave men, yes, as you can see in our friend the Peasant, who does not know or even suspect. He has no idea I am circumcised. Not an easy deception to bring off, I might add.”

  She considered, then said, “I need more convincing. You still know too much, are too keen, quick, observant, like a trained intelligence operator. I can tell, I’ve been around them.”

  “You note that which is my greatest gift and my greatest curse. Yes, it turns out, I am gifted. Because I was smart, weak, not obviously a warrior type, Bak assigned me as his own intelligence officer’s aide. He was NKVD, highly professional, and I learned much from him. At the same time, I had what might be called a ‘feel’ for the work. I come from a fur-trading family. We didn’t trap, we didn’t sell, we were the middlemen playing both ends against each other while keeping both in the dark. Believe me, it’s a business of bluff and feint, fast reactions, quick recognition of the real, timing, timing, and oh yes, timing. Perfect training for intelligence, and I learned quickly. It happened that this officer was killed in a bridge raid, and Bak trusted me in his service, and so I became his new intelligence officer. And that is what you encounter when you see through me, not an NKVD agenda or a GRU loyalty. You’re just seeing a frightened Jew.”

  “I suppose I could believe that story,” she said. “It’s crazy enough to sound real. No one would dare make up such nonsense.”

  “I’m trying to serve, that’s all. To do my little bit.”

  She threw the pistol down, but he did not take it up.

  “All right,” she said, “employ this ‘gift’ you claim to possess. Impress me with an insight.”

  “I know through late radio reports from Red Army intelligence that the unit that ambushed us was the Police Battalion of Thirteenth SS Mountain, known as Scimitar. Specialists in anti-partisan warfare, especially in forest and mou
ntain climes. Run by a monster named Salid, an Arab, no less, who learned his trade killing naked Jews in pits for an outfit called Einsatzgruppen D. We puzzled over the significance, and now I see it. They weren’t here by coincidence. They were brought in a week ago. Specifically to catch you. What that means is the Germans knew before Bak did that you were coming.”

  “They knew before I did.”

  “Yes. And how could they know if no one here, including Bak and myself, knew you were coming? They also knew that a specialist unit with advanced skills was appropriate to the ambush. They didn’t trust the local lunks.”

  She knew the answer. She just couldn’t say it.

  He did. “You were betrayed from Moscow.”

  “I understand that.”

  “Yes, and it means, very simply, at the highest of levels, one of us works for them. Whoever, this person, or so I infer, knew that the monster Groedl was a favorite of Hitler and that Hitler’s irrationality would demand that Groedl be protected at all costs. Which led to special efforts to ambush not Bak, who is of little consequence, but you.”

  “I think I have suspected all of this,” she said.

  “Perhaps so. But have you considered that your escape is now a major threat to whomever the traitor is? You are the living proof that he exists, and he is trapped in a very small pond. That means the Germans will make a concentrated, labor-intensive effort to capture you. They need you alive to take you to Berlin and work on you and see what you know and to whom you have communicated your suspicions. You are enemy of the Reich number one. But it gets much worse. You are also the traitor’s enemy number one. He will use his power to destroy from his end, via Russian means, to crush you. He will use NKVD, GRU, and SMERSH.”

  “Dear God,” she said.

  “You see now, as both sides conspire to kill you, that you have already in your young life managed an impressive accomplishment.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You are the most hunted woman on the face of the earth. You have managed to get the two most violent governments in human history obsessed and totally committed, out of state necessity, to your destruction. That takes talent.”