melt. His child. Through it all, after it all, his own: flesh, blood, brains. She flew to him and he absorbed her tininess, felt her vitality as he picked her up and hugged her passionately.
'Oh, you sweet thing!' he sang.
'You are the sweetest thing there is.'
'Oh, Daddy. They say you shot the bad man!'
He laughed.
'You never mind that. How are you? How's Mommy?'
'I'm fine, I'm fine. It was scary. He came into the basement with a gun.'
'Well, he won't bother you no nevermore, all right?'
She clung to him. Sally fixed him with her usual gimlet eye.
'Bob Swagger,' she said, 'you are a mean and ornery piece of work, and you aren't much of a husband or a father, but by God, you do have a gift for the heroic.'
'I can see you're still my biggest fan, Sally,' he said.
'Well, anyhow, thanks for hanging around.'
'It sure was interesting. How are you?'
'My back hurts,' he said.
'So does my leg and my eye.
I am plenty hungry. And there're too goddamned many young people out there. I hate young people. How is she?'
'She's fine. We're all fine. Nobody was hurt. But only just barely. Another tenth of a second and he would have pulled that trigger.'
'Well, to hell with him if he can't take a joke.'
'I'll leave you two alone.'
'See if you can get one of these Harvard kids to fix some coffee.'
'They probably don't do coffee, and there isn't a Starbucks around, but I'll see what I can manage.'
And so he sat with his baby daughter in the kitchen and caught up on the news and told her about the superficiality of his wounds and made a promise he hoped he'd now be able to keep: to return with her and her mother to Arizona, and resume the good life they had together.
In half an hour a young man came to him.
'Mr. Swagger?'
'Yes?'
'We're going to have to debrief your wife now. She's asked that you be present.'
'All right.'
'She's very insistent. She won't talk unless you're there.'
'Sure, she's spooked.'
'This way, sir.'
Sally came back to take care of Nikki.
'Sweetie,' he said to his daughter, 'I'm going to go with these people to talk to Mommy. You stay here with Aunt Sally.'
'Daddy!'
She gave him a last hug, and he now saw how deeply she'd been traumatized. The war had come to her: she'd seen what few Americans ever saw anymore--combat death, the power of the bullet on flesh.
'Sweetie, I'll be back. Then this'll be over. It'll be fine, you'll see.'
They took him upstairs. The Agency team had set up in a bedroom, pushing aside the bed and dresser and installing a sofa from the living room and a group of chairs.
Cleverly, they weren't arranged before the sofa, as if to seat an audience, but rather in a semicircle, as if in a group counseling session. Tape-recording equipment had been installed, and computer terminals.
The room was crowded and hushed, but finally, he saw her. He walked through the milling analysts and agents, and found her, sitting alone on the sofa. She looked composed now, though her arm was still locked in its cast.
She'd insisted on dressing and wore some jeans and a sweatshirt and her boots. She had a can of Diet Coke.
'Well, hello there,' he said. ' 'Well, hello yourself,' she said with a smile.
'You're okay, they say.'
'Well, it's a little bothersome when a Russian comes into your house and points a gun at you and then your husband blows half his head away. I'm damn lucky to have a husband who could do such a thing.'
'Oh, I'm such a big hero. Sweetie, I just pulled a trigger.'
