The Third Bullet

vodka express to the amazement of the servants, watching the slow progress of shadow across the far meadow, awaiting a call on my satellite phone that will inform me whether my current threat is finished or has grown more complicated, but I do know that at that time I had a photo of Alek.

That face was soon to be burned into the consciousness of the world. I expect it will never be forgotten. At the time, who could know, who could anticipate? What I saw was American working-class sui generis, remarkable in its unremarkablity. It was an old shot taken by a newspaper when our self- proclaimed Communist hero (Ma, call the papers!) returned from Russia to proclaim the glories of Marxism but the folly of communism (only a Trot could appreciate the nuances; it’s unlikely Alek did). The camera reveals truths, things that Alek did not know about himself and would not learn. The thickness of his nose, his most prominent facial landmark, revealed or at least represented his pugnacity. He had a thickness to him in many respects, both physically and mentally, a kind of fixation on a goal or object from which he could not be stirred. His eyes were beady and small and squinty, and any Hollywood casting director would see him as a Villain No. 2, a minion who administered the beatings or the knifings but had no grasp of Mr. Big’s vision and simply took it on trust. He had a small mouth that gave him an unattractive piscean quality, his face somehow “pointed” as it reached its end point in the surly orifice surrounded by thin lips. His receding hairline and overbroad forehead seemed to suggest the same motif, and all of these features together created a typology, as amplified by the perpetual shroud or grimace of annoyance he wore. He looked exactly as he was: surly, obstreperous, self-indulgent, charmless. You knew he would be tricky to deal with, to command; he would be a resenter, a creep (a wife beater!), a natural traitor, an obdurate whiner, a too-quick-to-measure quitter. I don’t know if he was a little monster because he looked like a little monster or he looked like a little monster and so he became one. I doubt if any of his three thousand chroniclers do either.

In any event, I stared at that picture, committing its nuances to memory. Sometimes a man in life can look so unlike his photo, you can hardly believe one is the record of the other. I sensed with Alek this would not be a problem and that when I saw him first in the flesh, I would recognize him right away. I can remember lying in bed, listening to Peggy’s even breathing, to the night rush of wind, and knowing that my boys were down the hall as secure as possible with futures fixed before them, and thinking of little Alek, pawn and creep, lynchpin and sucker, upon whom the weight of my plan would pivot, and I hoped he was up to it.

That was when I realized, that very night, he wasn’t.

It turned on shooting.

Alek was a “trained marine marksman” – whatever that meant, and I suspect, in those dreary peacetime years, not much – yet he had missed a target, according to news reports, who sat at a desk forty feet away, with a rifle that had a telescopic sight! Good God, even I could have made that shot! I realized that shooting wasn’t just shooting. He had done his rifle work in the marines with that old warhorse, the M1 Garand rifle, a heavy, steady, accurate semi-automatic that had served from the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli with distinction. He could not have had a Garand rifle at his disposal in Texas for his try at the general. He’d called his gun “An Eye-Tie [?] Mannlicher-Carcano six-five,” a circumlocution so baffling that our poor typist had no idea that “Eye-tie” was argot for “Italian.” If it was Italian, it was probably some piece of surplus junk with a squishy trigger and a vino- swilling peasant’s intrinsic precision, which is to say none at all, and that would be his weapon of choice, and ours too, as it was linked to him by paperwork, witnesses, and circumstance, for the job I had in mind. Then there was the larger issue of incompetence. He had failed at everything he’d ever tried, and this meant part of him expected failure, and the expectation became the father of the event. Could I trust him? Could I risk my whole career and good name, to say nothing of a long stay in a Texas penitentiary, on this idiot? It had to be clean, smooth, crisp, efficient, professional, not a bumbling, staggering mass of twitches and mistakes.

I don’t think I slept a bit that night, or the next either, and I began to doubt the wisdom of a course that depended on first-class work by an idiot.

That’s how Lon came into it, and because of Lon’s presence, it made a whole universe of other possibilities real and unleashed my imagination in ways that astonished even me.

CHAPTER 14

Swagger summarized his findings for Nick at a meet in a Dallas coffee shop.

“He’s not tracking you?” asked Memphis.

“Maybe he hasn’t made the leap. Maybe he doesn’t know who I am. Maybe I’m off his radar so far.”

“Maybe he doesn’t exist.”

“Then who’s trying to kill me?”

“Bob, you’ve made a lot of enemies. It could be anyone, right? I’m just playing devil’s advocate here.”

“The same hired killer got James Aptapton.”

“Fair enough. You got him, I got a feather in my cap, we took a bad actor off the street forever. Nice transaction all around.”

“Any word on this Krulov? The oligarch who’s supposedly in with the Izmaylovskaya mob?”

“Yes and no. It turns out that through his many companies, Comrade Krulov has many official contacts with American corporations, such as Ford Motor Company, McDonald’s, 3M, Procter and Gamble, and on and on. To investigate, we’d have to get Justice Department approval and convene a task force with subpoena powers and begin a massive effort. Do you think we have enough to take it to Justice?”

Swagger knew the answer. “Of course not. What about, I can never remember the name, Yecksovich?”

“I-x-ovich.”

“That guy. Owns a gun company. Weird name, you’d notice that name.”

“The name turns out to be a nickname, means nothing. His father was named Aleksandr, and when he was a kid – the father, I mean – his little brother had trouble pronouncing it, so he called big brother ‘K-s,’ pronounced ‘Ix.’ Ix stuck, the guy goes through life as Ix, he grows up, has a kid, and since he was a successful goon, he gave his son the patronymic Russian middle name of Ixovich, that’s all. Dimitry Ixovich Spazny. Spazny is hard-core KGB, in line when Yeltsin dumps communism and gets all kinds of breaks and becomes a billionaire. I have his businesses, and he’s invested all over the world like the rest, and as with Krulov, I’d need a federal task force to begin to make a dent in his affairs.”

“That’s not going to happen?”

“Afraid not. It’s just me, an SAIC on the outs with D.C., and you, a contract undercover. I can finesse some backup and nurse you through the system with as little exposure as possible. I can’t fund you. I can’t make a major issue of you. If that happens, our wiggle room goes away, and already I’m getting odd looks from my second, who’s not sure what’s going on. What’s your next move?”

“I have to make contact with Richard Monk again. One way or another, he’s a sure conduit to whoever’s pulling strings. I can play him and see what happens.”

“The Swagger investigation method: shake the tree until hired killers come out. Hope you can kill them first. Then learn what they knew. Never fails. Loud, dangerous, but sure.”

“I agree with you and my wife and daughter. I am too old for this shit. But I don’t seem to have another choice. Except maybe to go away and let old Hugh alone.”

“You could never do that. Even if he tries to kill you again.”

- - - -

Richard was just sitting there. His usual breakfast – Egg McMuffin, hash browns, coffee, and OJ – and suddenly, there Jack Brophy was. He slid in next to Richard with a cup of coffee.

“Hey, Richard,” he said. “Long time no see, friend.” He shook Richard’s hand, and Richard sort of choked, had to swallow, and said, “Jack, I’m glad you’re all right. The way you disappeared.”

“Oh, that,” Bob said. “Family crisis. Had to take care of some unexpected issues.”

“Jack,” Richard said, “there was a shooting. On the night you left, near the street where you disappeared. A man was killed. Trying to kill someone else, they say. Somehow I worried you were involved.”

“Me?” said Swagger. “No sir, I’m a rabbit. I love the guns, but only when I’m shooting at some faraway fuzzy animal or on a nice, safe firing range.”

Swagger laid some stuff on Richard about how he’d done some experimenting back in Idaho, and he was