The man folds his soft pink fingers. “It is not as though you are going to the National Matches at Camp Perry.”
Evan notes the reference, tailored for him, a North American buyer. He lifts a wary eye from the scope, regards the little man in his ridiculous suit and pocket square.
The Estonian adjusts his tie, dips his baby-smooth chin toward the rifle. “And besides,” he says, “three million dead Germans can’t be wrong.”
“Alvar?” A weak feminine voice turns Evan’s head.
A beautiful young girl, maybe fifteen, stands in the office doorway, naked save for a ratty blanket drawn across her shoulders. Her eyes sunken and rimmed black. Bones pronounced beneath her skin. Behind her, Evan spots a filthy mattress on the floor and a metal cup and plate.
“I’m hungry,” she says.
Evan catches her meaning through his grasp of Russian, though he presumes she is speaking Ukrainian. He makes a note to add this linguistic arrow to his Indo-European quiver.
The Estonian seethes, an abrupt break in his middle-management demeanor. “Back in your fucking bedroom. I told you never to come out when I am conducting business.”
She doesn’t so much retreat as fade back into the office.
Evan hefts the rifle, as if he will be paying by the ounce. He flicks his head toward the closed door. “Looks like she keeps you busy.”
Alvar grins, showing tobacco-stained teeth. “You have no idea, my friend.”
To the side a pallet stacked with crates of frag grenades peeks out from beneath a draped curtain. The Estonian notices Evan noticing them.
“My friend, 1997 has proven good to me,” he says. “It is the Wild West here now. Orders coming in faster than I can fill them. High quantity now. These are the kinds of movers who move nations.”
“For which side?” Evan asks.
The man laughs. “There are no sides. Only money.”
At this prompt a wad of bills changes hands.
Seventy-two hours later, Evan finds himself in the sewer beneath a thoroughfare, stooped in the dripping humidity, Mosin-Nagant in hand. He stands on the concrete platform above a river of sludge, waiting. The eye-level drainage grate set into the curb grants him a good head-on vantage down the length of the boulevard. In the distance, squawks from mounted speakers and the roar of an erupting crowd. The parade drawing nearer.
Various coded dispatches from Jack have filled in some of the blanks. The target: a hawkish foreign minister gaining power by the day, vocal about nuclear development. Breathing the swamplike air, Evan waits. A cheer emanates from the street above him. He lifts the rifle, the tip inches from the mouth of the curb inlet, and clarifies his view, allowing the scope to become his world.
Children held aloft on shoulders laugh and clap. On the banked curve of visible street, sawhorses hold back the masses. Miniature flags flicker before faces like swarming insects.
The front of the processional, a phalanx of armored SUVs, turns into view several hundred meters away. The vehicles head up the stretch of asphalt toward Evan. His view is slightly offset from each windshield as it flashes in the muted midday sun.
Evan aligns himself with the rifle to reduce recoil and allow for quick repeatability if he has to cycle a second shot. He calculates the mechanical offset — the one-and-seven-eighths measurement between the crosshairs and bore axis. Then he adjusts the intersection point for ninety meters, the spot where the vehicle spacing is optimal for the angle he requires. His field of view will diminish the closer the car gets. If the target passes the mark, his shot will grow more difficult by the meter. It must be ninety meters — no more, no less.
He sets himself in position. Aside from the breath cooling his pursed lips, he is still.
At once, looming large in the scope, is the target. A tall, balding man with a dignified bearing, lean in a dark suit, surrounded by various generals in full regalia and his wife in a flowy aubergine dress. Waving to the crowd, they are clustered in an open boat of a vehicle that brings to mind the Popemobile.
One hundred ten meters.
One hundred.
There is a problem.
The foreign minister’s wife turns to face the opposite side of the street, completely blocking Evan’s view. Her head right in front of her husband’s.
Ninety-five meters.
Panic. In a split second, Evan falls apart and regroups.
If he has to go through her, it’s better to penetrate the eye socket so there’s only one chance for the skull to deflect the round. Evan lays the crosshairs directly on her pupil.
Ninety-three.
He takes the slack out of the two-stage trigger, breathes breath number one.
He is looking directly into her eye, into her. Mascara on the curled lashes, joy crinkling the upper lid. She is not part of the mission. Should he disregard her as collateral damage? In the corridors of his mind, Evan listens for Jack but hears nothing aside from the hiss of passing tires and the frenzied stir of the crowd.
Second breath. Exhale. The final half breath before the shot.
If he waits any longer, a host of new problems will present themselves.
A one-millimeter movement of his finger pad gets it done.
Inconveniently, Jack’s voice announces itself now, a whisper in his ear: The hard part isn’t turning you into a killer. The hard part is keeping you human.
The vehicle coasts forward. It is on the X. The dark dot of her pupil, the minister’s head pulling back, aligning perfectly behind her. Now.
And then they are past.
Evan discards the half breath. Sweat stings his eyes. His mind races, recalculating, adjusting intersection points, dialing back the magnification, faces zooming and shrinking as he fights to hold the mission together in the circle of the scope. As he’s feared, his field of view diminishes, complications stacking on top of complications.
He breathes. Focuses.
Slack out of the trigger. Mag dialing back, back. There will be a moment, one moment, to get it done right and clean, and when it presents itself, he will be ready.
The generals shuffle around the wife, smiling beneath mustaches, the minister’s face popping in and out of view, there and then gone. Seventy-five meters now, the preceding vehicle squeezing the angle tighter and tighter, diminishing it to a slice.
The universe is reduced to the tunnel of the scope. There is nothing else, not even breath. The wife turns, her sturdy bosom filling the vantage, the minister drifting again behind her. Evan waits for her arm to rise for another wave to the crowd, and at last it does, a sheet of cloth draped wing-like beneath her arm. The minister is invisible behind it, but Evan has tracked his movement, anticipates how far to lead him.
He exhales slow and steady, then pulls. The bullet punches through the gauzy cloth an inch and a half below the wife’s straightened elbow.
Evan’s hands move of their own volition, manipulating the bolt for a follow-up shot, the shell spinning free and clattering at his feet. But there will be no need for a second bullet. The foreign minister leans propped against two of the generals, his eyes vacant, one cheek dimpled by a hole the size of a thumb. His wife’s mouth is stretched wide and trembling in a scream, but Evan can hear nothing over the eruption of the crowd.