Sniper's Honor(58)
CHAPTER 27
Outskirts of Kolomiya
THE PRESENT
The old curator allowed them to keep the plate. If it brought glory to a partisan and refocused attention on Bak’s brigade, he was all for it. He wrapped it in tissue, then in brown paper, taped and tied.
They shook hands and hugged, and it was all very nice, and Bob and Kathy made to leave, but the old man’s wife pulled him aside and spoke rapidly in Ukrainian. He turned back to them, his mood more somber. “Do you have enemies?” he asked in Russian.
“It’s a long story,” Reilly said. “But yes, it seems someone doesn’t wish us to look into this matter.”
“My wife says that a car came along the road recently, but once past the house, it pulled to the side of the road and turned its lights off. No one got out. It is still there. Puzzling, if not unprecedented. We see very little traffic here, especially after dark.”
“Ask him if he has a gun,” Swagger said.
The old woman knew the word in English and was shaking her head before she even got the sentence out.
“They want to know if they should call the police.”
Bob thought.
“I think that’ll just confuse matters. Okay, thank him, we’ll go to the car, let me think this one through.”
* * *
They walked to the car nonchalantly through the quiet Russian night. Lots of stars filled the dark sky in pinwheels and tendrils, a gentle breeze pushed the leaves this way and that, not much illumination around, humidity in the summer air, bird sounds of no specific place or species.
“I’m scared,” she said. “Maybe we should just call the cops.”
“Here’s how it will work. We’ll pull out, see if they follow. If they do, I’ll gun the engine, break contact, and let you off somewhere downtown. You take the plate. You head to the train station, catch the first train to Ivano, then check in to another hotel. Don’t go back to the Nadia. Meanwhile, I’ll cruise and see if I can pick them up. It shouldn’t be too hard. I’ll see what their intentions are. I’ll lead them way out of town. Then somehow I’ll dump them. I’ll give you a call and we’ll figure out what to do next based on where I end up. These games take patience, so if I don’t call right away, don’t worry.”
“Bob, I can’t let you do that,” she said. “It’s not right. This is my story.”
“Kathy, these games are tough enough to run if you’re only looking out for yourself. I can’t be worried about you under those circumstances and operate, too. This is best. Trust me. I know this part of the forest.”
They got in, started the engine, and backed out.
“If anything happens, you go to the floor in a little ball. Not sure how this is going to play out, but you’re probably safest there. Get your legs crumpled up facing outward. I think you’d rather get shot there than your head.”
“You’ve done this before?”
“In a gunfight, every time is the first time.”
“That’s reassuring.”
They drove at a moderate pace from pool of light to pool of light under the occasional streetlamp, slaloming around the more vivid potholes, missing a few for some hard riding.
“He’s back there, all right. Lights off, but he’s just a little too close, so I can see him in the edge of the overhead lamps. Like I said, sloppy.”
They rounded a corner, came to a stoplight. It was another two miles into downtown Kolomiya.
“If he’s coming, he’s coming now,” said Bob.
The light changed. Another few blocks passed, and ahead, the more intense illumination of the center city blocked out the sky.
“His lights just went on,” said Swagger.
“Oh, great,” she said. “Tell me this isn’t happening.”
“Unfortunately it is. Now, please. Get down. It’s going to guns.”
She squirmed to the floor just as the Mercedes behind them closed the gap and then spurted around them, pedal to the metal, to pass and maybe shoot from the left. His shocks squealed as he accelerated, and the Mercedes rocked back on its tires under the speed-up and roared by the Chevy and, from the passenger side, the muzzle of an AK-74 emerged.
Moscow
The Krulov Investigation
Will French, Reporter
Arkhiv Prezidiuma Rossiyyskoy Federatsii—Nope.
Gosudarsrtvennyy Arkhiv Rossisvkoy Federatsii—Nada.
Rossiyskiy Gosudarsstvennyy Arkhiv Literaturi i Iskusstva—Nothing.
Rossiyskiv Gosudarstvennyy Voennyy Arkhiv—Zilch.
Tsentr Khraneniya i Izucheniya Dokumentalnikh Kollektsiy—Whiff.
Tsenstralnyy Muzey Vooruzhyonnykh Sil—Nyet.
Not a damn thing. Where had he gone?