“They miss you over there,” Peter chimed in.
“You two are not here, by any chance, to talk me into coming back to work, are you?”
“Furthest thing from my mind,” said Charlie. Peter studied Ike, assessing the possibilities, letting his computer mind sort through the stack of cards marked Schwartz, Isaac. At last, the flint in his eyes softened.
“No. Lord knows we could use you, but no, you are a public figure now and, well, I’m afraid we couldn’t use you even if you wanted to return.”
“There, you see? We don’t want you, predictable or not, so just relax, drink your gin and we three old warhorses will tell lies to each other about the good old days.”
“I still want to know why you think I’m so predictable.”
“You miss my point, Ike. You were good. The predictable bit defines your personality—the way you read at a human level, not a professional level. For example, I am your friend. We go back fifteen years. I know a lot about you. You didn’t tell me all of it. I know it because of the way you are—the kind of person you are. Before you left, I knew where you lived, what you did for fun, and I guessed that if I could talk Conrad Anton into escorting a beautiful blonde lady to my house, I could fix you up with someone.”
“You’re not going to tell me that you set it up so that Eloise and I—?”
“Not that simple. No, but I knew Eloise and I knew you and I knew you two were a fit. The rest was all chemistry or late-blooming adolescence or something. I had nothing to do with that.”
“I’m that easy?”
“Right down to the gin and tonic, Ike. You didn’t ask for that, did you? I just gave it to you. You never noticed.
“Now Peter, here…Peter is a different case entirely. He has those little flinty eyes that tell you nothing. Everybody knows you, but what do we know about Peter? Where does he live, what does he drink? Is he a Redskins fan? A Democrat? Does he hunt, read, or fool around? You two worked together for seven or eight years and I bet you cannot even tell me Peter’s middle name—it’s Carmichael, by the way. It’s not that he’s secretive, you know. It’s just that when you’re done talking, you discover that you’ve told Peter a lot about yourself, but you haven’t found out anything about him. That’s what makes him so good at what he does, I guess.”
“Part of the job, Charlie. You can’t do what I do and be obvious.”
“Just my point. We need another round, Bloody Mary for me, gin and tonic for Ike, and what are you drinking, Peter?”
“Scotch, rocks, splash.”
“See what I mean, Ike. He got his own and I never noticed, never have.”
Charlie went to the kitchen to pour drinks. Peter turned to Ike and said, “It’s true, you know.”
“What’s true, Peter? That you’re anonymous, I’m predictable, or you drink Scotch?”
“No, never mind that bullshit. That’s just Charlie. He doesn’t have enough to do at the office, so after he’s worked the crossword puzzle and had his three-hour coffee break, he turns what’s left of his mind to jelly thinking about the rest of us. But it’s true we miss you back at the Agency. When you walked out, you left the European section with nothing.”
“There were others there—good men, young, eager, ambitious—still believing.”
“Oh, they’ll be all right. But they’re not you.”
“You’ll survive.”
Charlie returned, passed out the drinks, and, fixing Ike with a steady look, asked, “Peter telling you how Europe’s gone to hell in a handcart since you left?”
“Something like that.”
“Well, that’s a funny thing, you know. We took a terrible beating in the press when the operation, that last one you were in on, failed. Lord love a duck, we couldn’t hold the damned arms guy in and the next thing we knew, it was all over—Russians leaked we were providing arms to the Arabs. God, when the Israelis got hold of that one, there was no explaining anything to anybody. Biggest load of egg on our face since Castro’s beard. But you were out of it then. Off hiding.”
“I heard about it,” said Ike. “Took a perverse pleasure in it for a while. But it didn’t start when I left. We were having problems all along.”
“Yeah, but you’d find out about the screw-ups and fix them, or pull out.”
“Pull out is what we did, Charlie.”
“Yeah. Well, anyway, Ike, it was a bitch.”
The three sat silent for a moment, each lost in his own thoughts. Finally, Charlie asked, “Ike, how did you know the operation was blown?” Charlie still slouched on the sofa, but his eyes had narrowed, come alert, and his voice had changed subtly. He was serious now.
“I told Peter when I got back. I made a couple of phone calls and Kamarov said something. That clinched it.”
“You could do that, Ike? Just check around and find out that easy?”
“It wasn’t easy, but yes, I could do it if I had to.”
“That’s amazing. Don’t you think that’s amazing, Peter?”
“No, Ike worked the continent for twelve years. You get to know things, people. You do favors, look the other way, and after a while, you have a network.”
“Uh huh,” Charlie grunted, and then added, “you have anyone else in the field that can do that for you?”
“Oh, one or two, maybe, it’s hard to say.”
“Jeez, Peter, I thought you’d know that for sure. Hell’s bells, anyone that good can save you a mess of trouble going into an operation.”
“Yes, well, you rest assured, Mr. Special Assistant to the director, the soldiers in the trenches know what they’re doing.”
Peter’s tone was lighthearted, but Ike thought he detected an agitated undercurrent.
“For example—” Charlie ignored Hotchkiss’ remark—“could Ike here have stopped that mess from happening if he’d checked first?”
“Maybe, maybe not. It’s hard to say. But that one was over a long time ago and Ike doesn’t want to talk about it.”
“Yes, I could have, Charlie,” Ike interrupted, “but no one asked. All I got was a call from Peter to meet someone and bang.”
“Peter called you?”
Charlie knew very well what happened. He read the reports. What game was he playing, Ike wondered.
“Yes. Peter called.”
“Ike, I’ve never understood what happened that day and Lord knows I couldn’t get you to talk about it. But it’s just the three of us here—old buddies. I think it’s time you got it out and over with once and for all.”
“Not much to tell. We went to the meet, Eloise and I, and it went sour.”
“Why in God’s name did you take her, Ike? Nobody understands that. Why Eloise?”
“Why? Because Peter said ‘a walk in the park,’ because Peter said the drop had to identify me somehow, because Peter told me to. Why did I listen is the question.”
“Peter said this?”
“Yes.”
“Is that right, Peter? I read the reports and I didn’t see anything in them about Eloise. There’s lots of correspondence up and down the line about why Agent Schwartz took his wife on an operation, but I don’t recall anything in there about the control telling him to.”
“It was a suggestion.” Hotchkiss looked uncomfortable. “We were rushed and I thought it’d be okay, and Ike went along.”
“And you left it out of the report, slipped by it in the inquiries, so that you wouldn’t look bad after the fact, right? No sense in compounding a tragedy.”
“I…yes, something like that. Sorry, Ike, but you’d left and I figured the best thing to do was to let it die.”
“So, let’s see…you and Eloise went at Peter’s request, and then what?”
“Charlie, I’ve been over this before. It’s pointless.”
&n
bsp; “Maybe, but there are some things that still puzzle me, just can’t leave them alone. What happened next?”
“Forget it, there’s nothing to tell.”
“I want to hear it, Ike.” Charlie’s voice had a steely quality Ike had never heard before. He did not just want information. He was giving orders. Ike studied his face, tried to read his eyes. Charlie was onto something and he wanted Ike’s help. “Play along with me,” the eyes said. “It’s important.”
Ike began to describe the scene, the placement of the table, cups, saucers, the pot of chocolate, the man, and the shots.
“Wait a minute, Ike. How many shots?”
“Two.”
“From a what?”
“An AK47 or SKS, more likely an SKS with a scope.”
“You can tell that from the sound?”
“On those two, yes. Most rifles sound pretty much alike, but those two have a very distinctive crack. In Vietnam, some of the Marine snipers used them instead of the M-16. But they always told the rest of their platoon or patrol where they were, afraid one of their guys would put a mortar round down their pants, just on the basis of the rifle’s sound.”
“So there are two shots. One hit Eloise, one hit the other guy and…what hit the coffee pot?”
“Chocolate pot. First one, I guess, and it ricocheted off and hit Eloise.”
“Wait a minute, Ike. Let me understand this. One, the pot blows up. Two, you see Eloise is shot. Where?”
“Just left of the midline, second intercostal space, clean.”
Something did not fit. Ike remembered the feeling he had before, after he told Ruth. But that had to be the way it happened. Two shots. Ike got up and walked to the French doors that opened out on a tiny balcony, putting distance between him, Charlie, and the awful snake-like thoughts that started to slither into his mind. He looked back. Charlie’s eyes were closed. He raised his forearm and he held up one finger, then two, shook his head, and then a third.
Chapter Thirty-three
Ike stood on the postage-stamp sized balcony and stared out over the treetops toward the National Cathedral. June in the District. He took a couple of deep breaths of humidity-laden air and turned back toward the room. Charlie sat up and looked at him from the couch. Peter stared at a small print on the wall, eyebrows knotted in concentration.
“Ike, come back. We are almost there.”
Almost where? Ike did not know if he wanted to go “there,” wherever it might be. It could involve some pain, and he had managed for the past three, no, three and a half years without it. Why risk it now? He did not need this. He walked back into the living room and poured himself another drink, a weak one.
“Picture perfect, you might say. Eloise is shot. She is sitting on your left. You’re at the corner, so she’s facing the east-west street and the Russian is across from you, catty-corner to the north-south that intersects at your back, right?”
“Right. Charlie?”
“Not now, Ike, I’m on a roll. So that means the shot came from across the street. It hits the pot and ricochets up and kills Eloise. Then a second shot gets the Russian, who falls at your feet. It won’t work.”
“What do you mean, it won’t work?”
“Peter, tell him why it won’t work.”
“Me? Charlie, you are the one who can’t see it. The shooter misses, reloads, fires and hits—it’s in the report.”
“Charlie, it had to be that way—Kamarov said the man was new, nervous. He missed.” Ike sat rigid in his chair, hands clenched into fists, the muscles in his neck like cords. He felt something ugly hanging in the air.
“Kamarov said. You didn’t tell me about that.”
“Well, it was after, later. He said he was sorry and he wanted me to know they didn’t plan it that way and he was sorry.”
“He was a sort of friend?”
“Yes, I suppose you could say that. We respected each other as professionals, as adversaries, and yes, I guess you could say that in that crazy world, we were friends.”
“That’s another thing. Kamarov’s disappeared.”
“What do you mean, disappeared?” Fear joined apprehension and Ike stood up.
“I mean two weeks after the shooting, he just dropped out of sight—no trace.”
“Well, maybe he was pulled back to an office job or retired or something.”
“Maybe. Peter, you have a line on him yet? It’s been three years. Has he surfaced anywhere?”
Peter stared at Charlie for a moment. He uncrossed his legs and sat forward, hands limp between his knees but eyes alert, searching. “No, but then that doesn’t mean much. We don’t put much effort in headquarters types. We keep tabs on their field people.”
“Right. Well, anyway, the nervous shooter, with the scoped SKS, hits a chocolate pot in a way that bounces the slug neat as a whistle and it gets Eloise. Sorry, Ike, but stay with me, it’s important. You want to compute the probabilities of that for me? And then, the Russian stands up, turns around, and as he’s turning right to left, he gets shot, spins on around and falls down next to you on the deck.”
“He didn’t stand up, Charlie. He just sort of crumpled out of his chair and then pitched forward on me.”
“Think, Ike, think—what’s wrong?” Charlie’s eyes pleaded with him. “You said the back of his head was blown away.…”
Ike collapsed back into his chair, nearly spilling his drink.
“Ike?”
“My God, oh dear God, Charlie, it can’t be.…”
“Has to be.”
“I’m missing something. You two care to fill me in?” Hotchkiss’ voice seemed to come from another room.
“Oh, well, it’s this way, Peter.” Charlie leaned back with a faraway look. “Ike says the Russian fell out of his chair.”
“So? What the hell does that mean?”
“It means,” Ike recited, in a soft dead voice, “that he was shot from the north-south street. The back of his head was a mess. That’s an exit wound, Peter. The entrance would be clean. Eloise was shot from the east-west street. Her wound was in her chest. She never moved. Neither of them moved. Two shooters, Peter, there were two shooters.”
“I still don’t see what that has to do with anything. So there were two shooters. They wanted to be sure they got their man. Snipers often work in pairs.”
“Kamarov said, he—singular—he was new, he was nervous, not ‘one of them,’ or ‘they,’ but he. And Kamarov is missing. He told me he did not understand. He started asking questions—I would have if I had been him—and then he disappears, no protest from the Russians, nothing. He just disappears.”
“It happens.”
“Oh yes, it happens. It happens when the poor son-of-a-bitch in the field is kept in the dark about stuff going on higher up. By the time he digs it out, he finds that knowing can screw up everyone else, so he is removed. The Russians are very direct. Kamarov knew too much, so Kamarov disappeared.”
“So there were two, and he found out and maybe he would have told you. So what, he made a mistake.”
Charlie broke in, his eyes still faraway, but his voice firm. “Not a mistake, a discovery. Remember, Ike said two shots, but we have three hits. Eloise, the Russian, and the pot.”
“A ricochet. One was a ricochet.”
“Not likely. The pot exploded, Ike said, so we cannot be sure where the shot came from, but it’s a fair bet it came from the same direction as the one that took out the Russian. And that means it would have to ricochet backward. The chances a slug, a jacketed slug, would have taken the pot, reversed direction and gone in clean are—slim to none.”
“Well, maybe there were three shots after all.”
“Could have been, but Ike remembers two and the pot going up first.”
�
��Yes, the pot, then Eloise, then a small space of time and then the Russian.”
“There. You see, Peter, it can’t be a spent bullet. It’s not likely a ricochet, so where does that leave us?”
“I don’t know, Charlie. I could use a drink though, Scotch, rocks—”
“—and splash. I remember.”
Charlie fixed another round of drinks while Peter and Ike sat in silence. Then Charlie settled himself and began.
“It’s this way. Ike hears two shots but sees three hits. Ike is good at his job and under any other circumstances, would have figured this one out. But Ike is too wrapped up in this one to see straight, to think straight—to do anything but suppress it. So we have to wait three years to get back to it—to finish the job. Three long years, Ike—we needed you, buddy, but you weren’t playing. So what happened? The fact you do not hear three shots does not mean there aren’t three shots. We have two shooters, one has a silencer, and one does not. One is shooting from close range, to correct for the silencer, and one is not. One is new and nervous and hits a chocolate pot with his first shot. The other hits the first time. One shooter is a Russian, one is not. One is aiming at the Russian double agent and the other is aiming at Eloise.”
“Eloise?” Peter rasped. “Who would want to shoot Eloise?”
“That, my friend, is the proverbial sixty-four thousand dollar question. Who indeed? She was the target, Ike. All along, she was the target. If you just put it out of your mind that you were involved in some kind of an operational screw-up, an accident, and accept what your eyes saw, you would know that to be true. Eloise was shot and the hit was textbook perfect.”
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