“I don’t guess they have much baseball where you come from, mister.”
Halovic looked away from the TV to find the bartender looking at him. He shagged and smiled politely, clearly puzzled by what he had been watching. “That is true. In Germany we play football what you call soccer. It is a fast game and very simple. But this” he nodded toward the set “this baseball of yours is so difficult. So complicated.”
“It’s not all that tough, actually.” The bartender grinned and held out his hand. “My name’s Ricky Smith, by the way.”
Halovic shook hands with the younger man and introduced himself. “Karl Gruning. From Leipzig.”
“Pleased to meet you.” Smith nodded toward the television again. “You want me to explain the finer points of the game?”
“I would be very grateful,” Halovic lied smoothly. He sat back on his stool and sipped at his beer, content to let the bartender’s gibberish about double plays, foul balls, and the rest wash over him.
The afternoon and early evening passed quietly. Halovic studied the men coming into the bar, noting faces and even names when he could hear them. Most wore work clothes, faded blue jeans or coveralls. Some had obviously come straight from their jobs or farms. While there were men in their twenties and thirties, the bulk of them were older.
By six-thirty there were ten or twelve men inside the Bon Air all familiar to each other. Most came up and greeted the bartender, who in turn introduced the German tourist, “Karl.”
Halovic answered their questions easily, describing Germany and the journey he planned across America. But he was always quick to turn the conversation back to baseball or to firearms and sport shooting.
One of the men talking to him paused to light a cigarette and then spoke around it. “I heard it’s real tough to buy guns overseas. That true?”
Halovic nodded. “That is so. The authorities, they do not like citizens to own weapons. Even for hunting or sport. It is strictly forbidden in many places.”
The man and several of his companions shook their heads in disgust. One muttered something about “goddamn guy’mints.”
Their heads turned toward the TV as a sudden roar burst from the televised crowd. The man with the cigarette whistled and nudged the others. “Well, I’ll be damned! Will you look at that! A grand slam! That boy hit a goddamn grand slam!”
Halovic carefully concealed his contempt. These people were like children easily distracted and amused by trivialities. No wonder they were held in thrall by the rich and powerful in this country’s cities and suburbs. Perhaps it was time to begin shaping the conversation to suit his purpose in coming to this backwater town.
He waited until the cameras cut away from the stadium and back to the network studio for a recap of the other games played that day. The commentator was a black man.
After listening to the sports anchor rattle off meaningless statistics for a few moments, Halovic suddenly remarked sharply, “Ah, get him out of here. I don’t want to see him.”
One of the older men seated nearby shook his head slowly. “He ain’t that bad, Karl. You should hear ”
“No, no, I don’t care if he is good or bad,” Halovic countered. He grimaced. “I am just tired of all the blacks I see on television all the time. It’s worse here even than in Germany.”
Without pausing, he launched into a bitter fusillade against “the Turks, Arabs, and Africans who infest Germany’s streets and steal jobs from true Germans.”
As he spoke, Halovic carefully noted the reaction from the group. The four men he’d been talking with all frowned slightly or showed neutral reactions. When he finished, there was a small embarrassed silence. To his chagrin, nobody took the bait he’d laid out, and someone quickly changed the subject to the latest movies and TV shows.
Dinnertime came and Halovic ordered a barbecue sandwich. The crowd thinned only slightly during the dinner hour, then grew again until the Bon Air was comfortably filled.
The group sitting near him changed as men drifted in and out, and he took advantage of that to occasionally throw out a biting reference to the problems caused by blacks in America, comparing them to similar situations in Europe. He also complained about the interracial marriages and about black people’s “low intelligence and tendency toward crime.”
Most ignored his remarks, or changed the subject, or simply left quickly. A few argued the points with him, or even agreed to some extent. Despite that, none of them reacted in the way that he had hoped.
By ten o’clock Halovic was beginning to feel the effects of the beer he’d been drinking, even at his limited rate. His eyes smarted from the tobacco smoke and the stuffy air, so he made his excuses, paid his bill, and left.
The walk back through town to his dingy motel room helped ease some of his frustration but not all of it. Although he had known that this part of General Taleh’s master plan would take time and some risk to implement, he was all too aware of the days slipping past.
Halovic rose early the next morning. He exercised in his room, showered, and changed into jeans and a short-sleeved shirt. It was just after dawn when he stepped out into the muggy air.
Already aware of the sweat beginning to soak the back of his shirt, he crossed the highway and walked back to the diner he’d spotted the night before. There were three waitresses working that morning, one of whom was black. He was careful not to sit at one of her tables and he took pains to make his disdain for her known.
After a light breakfast he returned to his room, grabbed the Remington.30–06 rifle Yassine had procured for him earlier at a northern Virginia gun shop, and pocketed a large handful of cartridges. Before heading to his car, he also loaded a small 9mm pistol and tucked it away into a holster concealed in the small of his back. In Halovic’s experience, it never hurt to have a hidden edge.
The Walker’s Landing Rod and Gun Club lay right next to the James River, three miles west of town and down a winding country lane. A faded sign by the side of the road directed him to the clubhouse, an old concrete-block building topped by a rusting aluminum roof. Several other vehicles were already parked out front, and he could hear the steady pop-pop-pop of small-arms fire from off behind a row of trees.
With his rifle tucked under his arm, Halovic walked into the clubhouse to pay the five-dollar fee it would take to make him a member for the day. He paused just beyond the door to let his eyes adjust to the interior light.
Display cases containing rifles, pistols, shotguns, fishing rods, and other sports gear filled half the tiny shop. The rest seemed full of a hodgepodge of U.S. Army surplus clothing and military collectibles: World War II Wehrmacht helmets, fur-lined Soviet tanker’s hats, knives, bayonets, and boxes full of decorations, service ribbons, and unit patches from a dozen different countries.
How ridiculous, Halovic thought icily, these Americans play so hard at being warriors. And yet, how little they understand about real war.
He stepped up to the counter with his five dollars already out and ready.
The proprietor, a large, bearded fellow wearing a white T-shirt with a fish on the front, took his money with a smile and passed him a photocopied sheet. “Those are our range safety instructions,” he explained. “They’re pretty basic. No booze, no automatic weapons, and no explosive targets are allowed here at the club.
“Now, when somebody yells ‘clear,’ it means they want to retrieve their targets. When you hear that, you immediately cease fire and put your weapon down. And then you yell ‘clear’ back so they know you heard ‘em. Once everybody’s stopped shooting, you’re free to go out and check your own targets. Okay?”
Halovic nodded his understanding.
The other man eyed his rifle appreciatively. “That’s a nice piece. Brand-new?”
“It is.” Halovic patted the stock fondly. “I bought it just last week. A real beauty, eh?”
“Uh-huh. You need any ammo today? I’ve got a good special running on boxes of .30–06.”
Halovic nodded again. He didn’t really need more ammunition, but it made little sense to risk antagonising this man. “One box, please. And a map of the area, if you have such a thing.”
While the big, bearded man rang up his purchases, he used the opportunity to study his surroundings a little more closely. The owner and most of his customers were white, but one black couple was also there, perusing the racks of handguns and hunting rifles. Halovic took pains to shoot several hard looks at them, some of which, he noted, were spotted by others in the shop.
