Bob remembered a far-off moment when Donny showed him a drawing of himself and Julie on heavy paper.
It was just after they got Solaratov, or so they thought. But maybe not. It all ran together. But he remembered how the picture thrummed with life. There was some lust in it, as Bonson suggested. It was so long ago.
'Carter had a very brilliant mind, one of those fancy, well-born boys who sees through everything,' Bonson continued.
'But he was just another run-of-the-mill amateur revolutionary, if I recall, until 1970 and 1971, when he burned out on the protests and took a year in England.
Oxford. That's where we think it happened. Why not?
Classical spy-hunting ground.'
'What are you talking about?'
'We believed that the peace movement had been penetrated by Soviet Intelligence. We had a code intercept that suggested they were active at Oxford. We even knew he was an Irishman. Except he wasn't an Irishman. He only played one on TV.'
He smiled at his little joke.
'We think this guy was sent to 'Oxford to recruit Trig Carter. Not recruit, it wasn't done that crudely. No, it would have been subtler. Whoever he was, he was straight Soviet professional, one of their very best. Smart, tough, funny, a natural gift for languages, the nerves of a burglar.
He was the Lawrence of Arabia of the Soviet Union.
Man, he would have been a prize! Oh, Lord, he would have been a prize!'
'You never got him?'
'No. No, he got away. We never got a name on him or anything. We don't know what his objective was. We don't know what the operation was all about. It was my call, I fucked up. We had him somewhere in the DC area. But we never quite got him. Fenn was supposed to give us Crowe, who'd give us Carter, who'd give us the Russian.
Classic domino theory! A Soviet agent working the peace movement beat! God, what a thing that would have been!
That would have been the god damed white buffalo.'
'How did he get away?'
'We lost time with Fenn, the case against Crowe wouldn't stand. We lost a day, we never nabbed Trig. We almost had him at a farm in Germantown, but by the time we found it, there was nobody there. We missed him at his mother's outside Baltimore, she wouldn't tell us a thing.
He was gone, disappeared. The next thing--' 'Trig was killed. I remember Donny mentioning it. He was killed in a bomb blast.'
'Under the math lab at the University of Wisconsin.
Yes, he was. And we never found hide nor hair of anybody else. Whoever he was, he got away clean.'
'If he existed.'
'I still believe he existed.'
'What a waste!'
'Yes, and some poor graduate student working late on algorhythms got wasted too. Two dead.'
'Three dead. Donny.'
'Donny. I didn't send him to 'Nam to die, Swagger. I sent him to 'Nam because it was my duty. We were fighting a clever, subtle, brilliant enemy. We had to enforce discipline in our troops. You were an NCO, you know the responsibility. My war was much subtler, much harder, much more stressful.'
'You don't look like you done so bad.'
'Well, it ruined my Navy career. I was passed over. I read the writing on the wall, went to law school. I was a corporate lawyer on my way to a partnership and high six figures. But the agency took an interest in me and decided it had to have me, and so in 1979, I took an offer. I haven't looked back since. I'm still fighting the war. Swagger.
I've lost a few more Donny Fenns along the way, but that's the price you pay. You're out of it, I'm still in it.'
'All right, Bonson.'
'What is this all about?'
'We always heard the man who made the shot on me--on us--was a Russian.'
'So? They had advisers over there in all the branches.
Nothing remarkable.'
'It was said this guy flew in special. Your own people were involved, because they wanted the rifle he had, an SVD Dragunov. We didn't have one until then.'
'I suppose. That's not my area. I can check records.
What does this have to do with today?'
