Sniper's Honor(77)
Then it came into focus. He recalled that beyond the hill whose slope overlooked the waterfall and whose foliage had been half burned away, to the southwest, there was the golden wall of another slope, so far off it was hazy in the distance.
It had to be a thousand yards out.
You could not hit a man at a thousand yards with a Mosin-Nagant.
You could only do it with a—
Bob had to laugh. Now, there was a funny idea. Somehow Petrova manages to get her hands on—
It was impossible.
Wasn’t it?
He thought a second and went to his e-mail on his iPhone. “You up? Need talk urgent. Can you call me at—” and he listed Reilly’s satellite number. A few seconds later, her phone rang. He took it. “Swagger.”
“Well, hello, chum. How’s the Yank?” It was his friend J. T. “Jimmy” Guthrie, the sniper historian from the UK.
“Hi, Jimmy, how’re you doing?”
“I’m swell. I assume you’re calling because you’re going to come to our Sniper Match at Bisley. The fellows will be so excited.”
“No, no, it’s something else. I need to rent your brain.”
“It’s yours for a penny. If you haven’t got a penny, then a ha’penny will do.”
“Last we talked, you were working on a book on the World War II British sniper rifle.”
“My favorite, the Enfield No. 4 (T) with the No. 32 scope. A classic.”
“Still working at it?”
“Chop chop, tap tap, got to keep churning them out, it’s what I do.”
“Can you verify any one-shot cold-bore hits with it at over a thousand yards?”
“Several times. In Italy, in northern France, and in Twelveland itself, near war’s end. The No. 4 (T) was the ace of sniper rifles.”
“Any other shots that long that you know of by other rifles?”
“Haven’t come across anything on record in Europe. The No. 4 (T) had a most helpful ballistic eccentricity. Out to 250 yards, it was quite ordinary. But British and Canadian snipers soon learned that there was something about the .303 Radford Arsenal 176-grain bullet, the No. 4 (T) as bedded and with scope mounted by the geniuses at Holland and Holland, and maybe the superb optics of the No. 32 telescopic sight, which, although it was only 3.5-power, had lenses that offered unusual clarity out to long distances. Somehow if the .303 deviated from trajectory, by a property to this day not understood, the in-flight bullets somehow adjusted, trimmed, I don’t know, ‘fixed’ themselves. So if they came back to the original trajectory and stayed spot-on, the result was unusually proficient long-range accuracy.”
“Is there any way one of those rifles could have showed up in the Carpathian Ukraine in July ’44? It don’t make no sense because we’re five hundred miles or so from the nearest British troops, which would probably be in Italy. Does it make any sense at all?”
“Not a lick,” said Jimmy. “Not a whisper. Which doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. I have the Holland and Holland records, I have the British army records, I even have some still-classified stuff from clandestine hugger-mugger done by something called the Special Operations Executive, whose charge was to set Europe ablaze. Possibly they could have set Ukraine ablaze while they were at it.”
“Can you check? Sooner would be better than later.”
“Yes, well, I’ve got the stuff here and I’ll get on it straight away. By the way, I’m doing a chum a favor, I’m hoping he’ll do one in response.”
“You got it. I’ll be at the match, when, October, was that it?”
“Swell! Yes, it would mean a lot to the boys. Okay, I’ll get cracking.”
Moscow
The Aquarium
The Krulov Investigation
Will sat on the floor of the KGB file depository on the ninth floor of the Lubyanka. The ordeal before him at least got his mind off the mysterious adventures his wife was having in Ukraine and his sense of longing for a nice quiet night in the apartment. Wearing a surgical mask and tight rubber gloves, plus a sweater because the room was kept so cold, he paged through the lengthy mass of Krulov papers, reading by flashlight because the light in the vast green room packed with files was so poor. He had to hurry, as Likov could guarantee him only six hours. Anything else and there could be trouble.
He paged through, scanning the well-typed onionskin, reading the Russian swiftly, and thanking his torturers at the Monterey Language School, who had beaten Russian into him and Kathy fifteen years ago. He confirmed much that he already knew about Basil Krulov: four years in Munich, ’29–’33, in Munich with references to NKVD file Archangel 78-B11256 (Arkady Krulov), presumably documentation on his father, who was the supposed trade representative of the Russian Export Ministry but was really coordinating with the German communists and trade union s as they were jockeying for power with the boys in the twisted-cross hats. The boy attended German Realschule, as they call it, vigorous German high school, very fine education. Learned German quickly, which is commensurate with a high IQ. Then he enrolled at University of Munich and was there for two years before Hitler came to power and kicked all the Reds out, even the diplomatic ones. God, NKVD was thorough: they even had his syllabus and grades at that university. Will guessed it was part of German pedantry; they never throw anything out, the syllabuses, the report cards, the notes to Mom about dunking Peggy Sue’s pigtails in the inkwell, the Dueling Society scars. Yes, the boy was brilliant, all 1’s, meaning A’s, and Will’s eyes ran quickly over the ancient information dredged out of a dead world. Then he noticed something that made him blink twice.