A hit of vodka calmed me, and I had to appraise my situation realistically. He could know nothing else. He would be stopped by the firewall of the person I’d become. He’d have to set about finding me. Good luck on that, because Niles Gardner, long dead, had built a perfect identity, and it would withstand any attempt at penetration.
I lay back, watching the sun yield its hold on the day slowly. It stayed light so long now, which had the odd effect of elongating life. I felt like these extra hours were a gift to me; they stood for the fact that I would go on and on and on, that in the end, if through longevity as much as genius, I would prevail.
My phone rang.
What? I reached for it, noting that it was not my cell but my satellite. Richard! Maybe Richard had a report.
I pressed the talk button. “Richard?”
“No, he ain’t here. He’s hiding in the basement.”
“Swagger!” I could tell by his laconic voice, its dryness, its ur-text of Southern cadence, its lack of need to dominate, its irony, its detachment.
“Yes sir. We meet at last,” he said. “By the way, if you want to talk to your commando team, they ain’t here neither. The survivors are in the emergency ward.”
“Dammit, you are a resourceful man,” I said. “Woe unto him who tries to outthink Bob Lee Swagger.”
“I ain’t no genius, Mr. Meachum. I just show up and pay attention.”
“How? I have to know. Tell me my mistake, goddammit.”
“It was that forgery in the Abercrombie files. Had me snookered completely. Then I realized, if Abercrombie sent your cousin a rifle in a new caliber and asked for a story, Lon would have written the story. He had to keep the bargain. Part of his noblesse oblige, or whatever you fancy donkeys call it. But he didn’t write no piece on reloading the .264, and I ought to know, as I read every word he ever wrote.”
Lon! It was Lon’s decency reaching out of the grave to bring me down! I almost had to laugh. That is what I loved about Lon, and that is what betrayed me.
I was speechless. Finally, I realized I had only one question to ask. It was the only one that mattered.
“Why? Why does it matter to you, Swagger? Tell me. Did you love JFK, the myth? Do you wish you’d been a trusted knight of Camelot? Did you have a crush on Jackie? Did the brave little boy and girl at the funeral break your heart? Why, Swagger, why?”
“A young man in service to our country was murdered on November 22, 1963. He was handsome and beloved. Everyone who saw him admired him and trusted his judgment. In all eyes, he was a hero. He was slaughtered in the street without a chance. A bullet blew up his brain. He left a hole in society, children who weep today, everyone who knew him. Possibly you have heard of him.”
“His name was John F. Kennedy.”
“No, it wasn’t. He was not the president of the United States, John F. Kennedy, about whom I give not a shit. The man I speak of was a Dallas police officer named J. D. Tippit, and like my father, he was doing his duty until someone killed him for it. So that is who I am. I am not a national avenger, I am not Captain America, I don’t give a crap about Camelot. I am the dead policeman’s son, and I did what I did to find out who really shot Officer Tippit. I am the dead policeman’s boy.”
“Swagger, you are a bastard. I know you think you’ve won. But you haven’t. You have no idea where I am, who I am, what my circumstances are. Are you going to indict a dead man? Hugh Meachum is dust and ashes scattered across the countryside outside Hartford. He is a beloved hero, and if you try to bring him down, you will unleash unbelievable trouble on yourself. Meanwhile, I will keep going on and on and on, and you have no idea if I’m a mile from you right now or sitting at the North Pole under the nom de guerre S. Claus.”
“Not so fast, Mr. Meachum. Maybe you ain’t as tricky as you think. Your pal Niles Gardner shared your enthusiasm for this Nabokov, the Russian writer. Niles liked cross-language puns, wordplay, games, that sort of thing. He had one other thing in common. Like his hero, he suffered from a condition known as synesthesia. Because of some confusion in the brain pathways, he sees some numbers in color. He saw the number nine in color, red. That’s why he had a pistol on his desk called a Mauser Red Nine. And when he came to cook up the last and best and deepest fake life for his pal and fellow Nabokov lover, Hugh Meachum, he paid a gamesman’s tribute to his connection to Nabokov, to yours, and to Nabokov himself, by using synesthesia as the key. You were born from synesthesia. You’re the child, the son, of the Red Nine, Mr. Meachum.”
“Thin, Swagger. So thin. It tells you nothing.”
“I ain’t done yet. His smartest trick was the code that wasn’t a code. It was what it was, in plain sight if you could see it. You don’t even get it, do you?”
“This is nonsense,” I said. “You’ve gone insane.”
“He hung a name on you that gave it up if you could see it clearly. The name began with I-X, Mr. Meachum. Cross-lingual pun. I-X, from English into Latin. I-X, Mr. Meachum, meaning nine. You are the son of the Red Nine. Your new name is Dimitri Ixovich Spazny. Niles really loaded the Nabokov mayonnaise on this sandwich. The old butterfly catcher would be so impressed.”
Niles! I thought. All these years later, tripping me up with his cleverness.
“When it came time for you to ‘die,’ you slipped into Russia and took up again as Dimitri Ixovich Spazny, of KGB, with all the contacts and the timing exactly right. You even own the gun company that manufactured the nine-millimeter I used in the fight in Moscow. As Yeltsin’s pal and money guy, you also own, what, electricity, newspaper, taxicabs, the Izmaylovskaya mob, radio, the air, most of the water, half of Belgium, three quarters of Hong Kong, and what else?”
“By the time you move on me, I’ll be someone else,” I said, though my heart was hammering in my chest. “You’re not fast enough. Brains are meaningless without speed.”
“Then how come I know you’re wearing tan cargo pants and a green shirt? How come I know you’re resting on a chaise longue, in sunglasses, with a yellow tablet in your hand? How come I know you’re drinking vodka? How come I know you’re on your back porch, looking down across a mile of grass framed on either side by pine forest? How come I know there’s a river a mile off?”
I swallowed – or should I say, I swallow. I had not seen that one coming. It hit me blindside. I suck for air, while in my stunned panic, I look for a spotter who is clearly, at this very second, eyeballing me through binoculars.
“You’re lying on the chaise at your dacha down Ulysse Nardin Boulevard behind a thirty-foot green steel wall, in an area patrolled by an MVD special battalion. You’re a mile from the Moscow River. The sun is setting there, Mr. Meachum, but the days are long, and it’s light enough for a sniper.”
Stronski! Stronski is out there somewhere.
“He’s on the trigger now. A KSVK twelve-seven.”
No understanding, no context, no empathy, no regret. Just the sniper’s bullet. It was the ultimate application of the New Criticism.
“See you in hell, then, Sergeant.”
“I’ll be along soon,” Swagger said, and hung up.
And so: yes, it’s come to this. So be it. I’ve had a good life, maybe a great one. I loved my wife and never cheated on her, I loved my sons and saw them grow into fine men and fathers. I love my country and tried to serve it well. I fought its wars–
Never mind. With seconds left, it’s time to face whatever’s next with a clean breast. Talk about an unreliable narrator! Talk about a murderer with a fancy prose style! I killed Jimmy Costello. I blew his action and cover to the RCMP, and I knew he couldn’t let himself be taken alive. I regret it and always will, but what if, in a few years, he – I just couldn’t help myself.
And I killed Lon. I knew by the last move that Swagger was strong and my team was weak, and I bullied and forced Lon to go on that last, absurd mission, and he finally relented and died.
I regret both. Failures of nerve and character. I am so sorry. I deserve whatever it is I’m about to get and I hope
CHAPTER 24
