The Third Bullet (65 page)

“I— What, what are you—”

“Your rank and outfit, goddammit.”

“Major, Royal Marines, 42 Commando.”

“Major, get that bird in here fast. Pop your evac smoke and get these men out of here. One’s dead for sure, maybe another, maybe not. Get them to goddamn emergency in Hartford fast, and save them. That’s your last job as commanding officer.”

“I shot you,” said the major.

“In the fucking hip. I been shot there so many times I didn’t even notice. It bounced off. Now get these guys out of here, save some lives.”

“Why?” said the major. “I don’t get it.”

“I only want one more head on my wall. And it ain’t yours.”

I heard the fight. It was brief, violent, and as such
things always are, ugly. Gunfire, shouts, bits of panicked radio-speak, screams, something that sounded like a physical tussle, and then the radio went dead. That silence that follows a disconnect. The airwaves located and destroyed, communication lost.

I shook my head.

He did it, I realized. He’d beaten them somehow.

I hated Swagger even as I loved him. God, was he an operator. Could he have prevailed again, against those odds? The man wouldn’t die. Was he Achilles, dipped in the potion of immortality but for a heel that no archer had found?

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

S
wagger threw the phone off into the trees somewhere.

Account closed, he thought.

He took a look around saw nothing but green. He tried to think of his next step but had some trouble concentrating. He looked at the wound in his battered hip. More blood than he’d expected. Maybe the bullet had ticked downward into the flesh instead of off into the air.

He didn’t have any first aid or clotting agent. He peeled off his jacket and wadded it against the blood flow, but it quickly absorbed its limit, went magenta and heavy-damp, and proved useless.

Better get to the goddamn road so they can find me, he thought.

But downhill with a bad wound bleeding hard was not easy, particularly as he could feel the leg numbing out on him, and in time it ceased to work in coordination with the other leg, and there came a moment when he lost it, toppled forward, put a bruise into his spine, ripped the hell out of his arms rolling through brambles, felt his shirt rip, and hit a rock solid with his head, which was already concussed from the clout he’d delivered on the 42 Commando major.

He got himself up and put his hand on the wound. It wasn’t gushing copiously, but he could feel the steady, warm liquefaction finding ways around his fingers. He got a little farther down and noticed that a sudden chill had come into the air, as well as a fog that eroded the edges of his vision.

He staggered over a hump and hit the road. He couldn’t remember which way was which and realized it didn’t matter. He’d never make it back to the house, and what was there except those two guys
whose names he didn’t remember and he knew they weren’t worth a damn.

He began to shiver. Damn, so fucking cold.

He looked for a splash of sun to warm him up and saw an opening in the canopy a few yards ahead that admitted the light. He limped to it, falling once, then got to it and, of his own volition, decided to stop fighting gravity and let himself tumble into the dust.

It was warmer. In time, he saw someone approaching him. He tried to rise, but the man waved him back down as he rushed to him. Bob saw that it was his father, Earl.

“Dad!” he cried.

“Well, Bob Lee, damn, it’s good to see you, boy.”

Earl came to him and knelt down. Earl wore the uniform of the Arkansas state police, 1955, as he had on the last day of his life, and it was razor-sharp, in perfect duty condition, as it was always for Earl. He had the strong, kind, wise face of a hero, and he was everything a boy could love in a father.

“Dad, God, I’ve missed you, I missed you so much.”

“Now there’ll be plenty of time for a nice long visit, you’ll tell me all the things you’ve seen.”

“Dad, you—”

“Bob Lee, you just relax. I’m so proud of my son, you have made me so proud.”

“I tried so hard, Dad, I didn’t want to ever let you down and—”

“He’s coming back, he’s coming back.”

Swagger blinked, and it wasn’t his dad’s face but some crew-cut young man’s.

Bob coughed, realizing that the guy had just jacked a charge through him with an external defibrillator.

“Hit him again?” another medic asked.

“No, no, he’s good, the lactate is going in fine, the adrenaline is taking effect, he’s breathing again, his pulse is rising.”

Swagger breathed, feeling clean air come into his lungs.

“Jesus Christ, you scared us,” said Nick Memphis.

As Swagger’s eyes cleared and the fog thinned, he lifted his head a bit and saw an ambulance, a batch of state police cars, a lot of police activity along the road, and above him, in the hands of another young man, a bottle of intravenous fluids feeding life through a brown tube into his arm. He lay on a stretcher; his hip was strongly bandaged and bound, but some numbing agent quelled the pain.

“Okay, STAT, let’s move this man to the chopper and get him to Trauma. I’m staying on him to monitor vital signs.”

“I’m riding too,” said Nick, and he turned to Bob and said, “Baby, you were gone, you were in negative heartbeat, but we got you back, don’t ask me how.”

“I saw my dad, Nick,” said Bob.

“And you will again,” said Nick, “but I hope not for a long time.”

Readers should be assured that I’ve made a good-faith effort to play fair by the data established in
The Warren Commission Report
,
Case Closed
by Gerald Posner, and
Reclaiming History
by Vincent Bugliosi. Lee Harvey Oswald is always where those volumes say he was, and he always does what they say he did. All “conspiratorial business” takes place in times uncovered by any of the foregoing works. In my effort to construct a legitimate alternate narrative to the WC, I alter no known facts in order to make my argument tighter. I do reserve the novelist’s right to reinterpret motive and reason.