Sniper's Honor Page 35
“Odd, you don’t look insane. But now you’ve killed a batch of your own people, so it seems we’re both going to die.”
“Not exactly,” he said. “On that ‘your own people’ remark, I think I would disagree. But more important for now, I have a plan. It’s quite good, even if I was the one who came up with it, and my plans are usually pretty awful. It seems you’re our ticket to a perfectly good airplane, and I hate to let a good plane go to waste.”
He told her what he intended.
“It sounds risky.”
“It is. But it’s better than being worked on in a cellar by SS.”
“I understand. But let’s be practical. This isn’t the movies. You can’t just fly away.”
“Actually you can.”
“Where are we going to go?”
“I thought we’d try . . . Switzerland. They have excellent cheese.”
CHAPTER 59
Idaho
Outside Cascade
THE PRESENT
Switzerland!” Swagger said.
“And that’s what they did. They hijacked their own plane and landed in Bern. All of them. They seemed to be some kind of paratroop outfit—very small, commandos, I guess—but evidently they’d had enough of the Nazis. They took her and they went to Switzerland. Some officer figured it out.”
“Jesus Christ,” said Bob, standing on the lone prairie like a movie cowboy.
“Not only that, here’s the twist. Oh, what a twist. He married her. His name was Karl Von Drehle, some kind of aristocratic war-hero type, dashing, from the pictures. He looked a little like Errol Flynn. After they got out of internment, they decided that since Europe had tried so hard to kill them, they’d go someplace sunnier and emigrated to Australia.”
“That’s why you’re in Australia.”
“Her son Paul called me from Sydney. Everything he said checked out. I flew, I’ve been here a week with the family, looking over all the records, looking at the photos. They had four sons and a daughter. The daughter, by the way, was a big Aussie tennis star in the ’70s. And now the granddaughter is on the tour as well.”
“What happened to Mili?” said Swagger. He was almost afraid to ask. Something tight and dry in his chest.
“She died at the age of eighty-four, a few weeks after Karl, surrounded by children and grandchildren. She became a professor of math at New South Wales University, where she was much loved, if the obits are telling the truth. Everyone thought she was German; no one suspected she was Russian.”
“Ain’t that a kick in the pants,” said Bob.
He couldn’t stop imagining Mili in the circumstances she’d deserved: Mili with her kids. Mili goes out to dinner. Mili on the job. Mili in her life, a good life, a life both loved and loving.
You’re in love with her, you crazy old coot.
“Karl brought his wartime sergeant over,” Reilly continued from Australia, “and the two of them went into business. Ever hear of Volkswagen? Karl and Wili became the first Volkswagen dealers in Australia, and the second and the third and so on. He and Wili got rich. Oh, God, Swagger, after all the shit they went through, all the murder and mud and slaughter, they had such good, decent productive lives. It shows there is life after hell. It’s amazing. I cry every time I think about it. Are you crying?”
“Cowboys don’t cry,” said Swagger through some goddamned prairie grit that had come into his eyes.
Acknowledgments
My first thanks must go to my dedicatee, Kathy Lally, whom I have cleverly disguised as Kathy Reilly (while her husband, Will Englund, goes forth under the fiendishly altered nom de guerre Will French). Kathy, who currently shares the job of Moscow correspondent of my old rag The Washington Post with Will, was majordomo of my trip to Ukraine and most things Russian. Because of her, I got to depend on the kindness of friends, not strangers.
Two of those friends we nicknamed “The Two Vlads.” Volodymyr Bandrivskyy was our translator and guide, and despite the tragic history of his nation, he was a merry jokester the whole way. Volodymyr Bak (don’t have a cool name around me or I will steal it) was our historian, who had salient and necessary information at his fingertips or, if not, the next day. Both were boon companions and made the travel—especially over the liver-pulverizing Ukraine roads—a pleasure.
On the home front, Gary (“Gershon”) Goldberg was instrumental, particularly in the “Interlude in Tel Aviv” subplot. Like Vlad II, if he doesn’t know it now, he’ll know it tomorrow. Besides, he is a way-fun guy, and at certain points in any novel, a writer needs to have some way-fun. Gary is my go-to on way-fun. Through Gary, Dr. David Fowler, the medical examiner of the state of Maryland, looked at my anatomy lesson on Senior Group Leader Groedl. Gary also had his friend Larry Baker take a look at the MS, which was helpful.
My little circle of advisers also was of great help in this one: Mike Hill, Lenne Miller, Jay Carr, and Jeff Weber all issued astute advice.
In the professional gun world, Bill Smart, a great friend from Post days, connected me with the great gunscribes, writers Mike Venturino and Rocky Chandler. Rocky, a novelist himself, set me straight on the absolute necessity of zeroing at a thousand for a thousand-yard shot. Barrett Tillman, the great aviation historian, had lots of smart stuff for me. On my own, I found Martin Pegler, author of Out of Nowhere, who was of particular help with regard to the Enfield No. 4 (T) with No. 32 scope. Dan Shea, another good friend and owner of Long Mountain Outfitters in Henderson, NV, let me have a hands-on experience with three of the few remaining FG-42s.
I should also list the dozens of books, films, and websites that were so important to this effort, but I’m too lazy to copy the titles, and you probably don’t care that much anyway. I’d put them on my website except I don’t have a website. I would have read them on my Nook, Niche, Wombat, or Blazer 9, except I don’t have any of them, either. I’m just a book guy, I bought a lot of books. The Amazon bill was mind-boggling. So let me collectively thank the dozens of writers, historians, screenwriters, and directors who’ve tried to keep the memory of the horror and the scale of Ostkrieg alive. It’s too profound to be forgotten, too influential even now to be ignored, and too painful to be suppressed. This book is a humble attempt to be a part of that memory process.
Finally the publishing professionals—agent Esther Newberg, editor Sarah Knight, and publisher Jonathan Karp—oversaw and sustained the project; all manned up and did duties as required. And finally my wife, Jean Marbella, zeitgeist of Baltimore journalism, coffee- and martini-maker extraordinaire, and all-around best chum, provided a rest stop each night and a hot cuppa each morning. Couldn’t have made it to the end without ’em.
As usual, none of these fine people is responsible for errors in fact or spirit; I alone am the root cause.
© KELLY CAMPBELL
STEPHEN HUNTER is the author of nineteen novels, including I, Sniper; Point of Impact; and The Third Bullet. In 2003, he received the Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Criticism before retiring as chief film critic of The Washington Post.
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2014 by Stephen Hunter
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hunter, Stephen.
Sniper’s honor : a Bob Lee Swagger novel / Stephen Hunter.
pages cm.
1. Swagger, Bob Lee (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Women in war—Soviet Union—History—Fiction. 3. Women soldiers—Soviet Union—History—Fiction. 4. Missing in action—Fiction. 5. Women journalists—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3558.U494S54 2014
813’.54—dc23
2013042081
ISBN 978-1-4516-4021-2
ISBN 978-1-4516-4026-7 (ebook)
CONTENTS
Epigraph
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Interlude in Tel Aviv I
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Interlude in Tel Aviv II
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Interlude in Tel Aviv III
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Interlude in Tel Aviv IV
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Interlude in Jerusalem V
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Interlude in Tel Aviv VI
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Interlude in Tel Aviv VII
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Acknowledgments
About Stephen Hunter