“We’re after a man,” the colonel said. “He’s a very special man, a very sly man. We think we’re going to get a shot at him. We’re after the Soviet sniper who has hit many great shots in his time, among them the fourteen-hundred-yard job that blew out your hip and the spine shot on Donny Fenn.”
It was amazing, Dr. Dobbler was thinking. His self-control was astonishing. No gasp, no double take, as if it didn’t matter. Swagger simply took it in, and went on, his concentration unmodified, his glare unblinking. No signs of excitation as were common to the species in moments of conflict. No rapid breathing, no facial coloration, no lip-licking, muscular tension. No excitation! No wonder he had been such an extraordinary soldier in battle.
Dobbler wondered how rare this was. Was it as rare, say, as the ability to hit a major league fastball, a gift given to about a hundred babies a year? Or was it extraordinarily rare, such as the ability to hit a major league fastball for an average of.350 or better, which arrives to a baby once in a generation or so? Dobbler knew he’d come across something rare and it gave him a thrill. It scared him, too.
Bob was leaning forward.
“You don’t give a shit about Donny Fenn. There’s only two of us left in the world that remember that young man. And you don’t give a shit about my bad pin.”
“You know what, Swagger? You’re right. I don’t give a shit about Donny Fenn. And I don’t care about your hip. But I care about this Russian. Because he’s back. He’s hunting again.”
Nick put fifty cents in and after a bit, somewhere inside the machine there was a shifting and a clunking, and after another bit, a can of diet Coke rolled down a chute and banged into the bin. He pulled it out, peeled the pop top back and took a long, bracing swig.
“Damn,” said Hap Fencl, “fifty cents. In our building the goddamn things cost seventy-five.”
But Nick didn’t respond.
“I can’t think why a guy would want to be next to a Coke machine,” he finally said. “Hell, two Coke machines, two Pepsi machines, an ice machine, and a machine that drops bags of stale peanuts.” He gestured to the little arsenal of vending equipment clustered in the alcove just outside room 58.
“Maybe the guy had a sweet tooth. Never wanted to be away from the machine.”
“No, it’s the last room you’d take, you got guys dropping quarters or rattling through the ice all night long. It doesn’t make a lot of sense.”
“Nick, he thought he was being followed maybe. So, he wants a room where there’s a lot of action outside in the hallways, figuring it might scare the hitters off. These guys, though – nothing would have scared them off.”
“Yeah, but – ”
“Hey, Nick, you’re not thinking straight. You’ve seen a dozen of these things, not quite so bloody. It’s a straight drug-trade wipeout, the Colombians or the Peruvians or whatever sending the word out that they are not to be disobeyed or nasty things happen. This guy got caught snitching; went underground; they caught him and whacked his butt good. Okay?”
Nick nodded. Still, it bothered him.
Why me, he thought. Why would this guy call me of all people on the day my wife dies.
He emptied the Coke can in one wet, sweet swig.
“Here he is, Mr. Swagger,” said the colonel. “The man who shot Donny Fenn. And who crippled you.”
Bob looked at the face that the colonel had brought to the television screen with the snap of a remote control. He tried to see some special thing there, something that said shooter, something that said sniper. What he saw was a lean hard face, a face that had no nonsense in it. The eyes were slotted and dark, like gun slits; the cheekbones were streamlined knobs; the hair a tight military sheen. There was a streak of the Orient in him in the slight flare of his cheekbones – he looked like a Mongol.
“Solaratov, T. We think that’s his name. But nobody knows what the T stands for.”
Bob just grunted, because he didn’t know what else was available.
“T. Solaratov, as photographed from quite a distance away by an agent code-named Flowerpot in Kabul, Afghanistan, in 1988. Our last picture of him, and our best. He’s fifty-four years old, in peak condition. Runs twelve miles a day. He was in Afghanistan advising Spetsnaz units on sniper deployment. He’s an expert on sniper deployment; he’s hunted men all over the world. Whenever the Soviets needed a shot to be taken, he took it for them. How many men have you killed, Sergeant?”
Bob hated this question. It was nobody’s business; it didn’t matter.
“All right,” said the colonel, “you can be strong and silent. But the official records say eighty-seven and I’d bet you hit lots more. Lots.”
Bob knew what the figure was. He sometimes pretended he didn’t but he knew, exactly.
“We figure Comrade T. Solaratov has sent over three hundred fifty suckers on to a better world. Head shots, mostly, his trademark. No pussy center-of-body shit for this boy.”
Bob grunted. That was serious shooting.
Nick flashed his ID on the woman and in a few seconds, he was led in to see Mr. Hillary Dwight, vice president, the Coca-Cola Bottling Company of New Orleans, in charge of vending sales. Mr. Dwight was a florid man in a white tropical suit who perhaps drank so much pure Coke that it had affected his ample waistline. But he had a monk’s shrewd, devotional eyes and an office so neat it spoke of a tidy, precision-oriented mind.
“So what is it I can do for you, Mr. Memphis?” he asked. “I hope one of my drivers hasn’t gone and done something wrong. Those boys have access to all sorts of institutions and, frankly, the quality of personnel just isn’t quite what it once was.”
“No, sir,” said Nick. “No, it’s just a little mystery I’m trying to get a handle on. We have a fellow who got himself killed in a motel room out near the airport – ”
“Good heavens,” said Dwight.
“But before he got killed, he specifically asked for the room near the Coke machines. You have two Coke machines just outside and Pepsi-Cola has two. There was also a Handy-Candy Dispensing Machine for candy bars and nuts and the like. Now, what are the properties of a Coke machine that might make a man who suspects he’s being trailed by killers seek out their presence? Or am I barking up a wrong tree entirely?”
“Hmmm.” Dwight’s plump face knitted up densely with the process of thought.
“What was the motel?”
Nick told him.
He stood, spun to face a desktop computer terminal and tickety-ticked in some instructions. Nick watched as obediently, in electro-yellow, the program rose before him. The fat man studied it.
“Well now, Mr. Memphis, you see we’re in the process of replacing our Vendo-Dyne 1500 series with the more advanced Vendo-Dyne 1800. You’ve seen them. They talk to you. You can put dollar bills into them and get change. A very sophisticated piece of machinery. And powerful, too.”
Nick nodded, enjoying the arcana of Coke Culture. That was one of the many things about his job he liked so much: it took you into new worlds all the time.
“Ah, yes. Yes, we’d just serviced that place and, yes-siree, we’d replaced the fifteen hundreds with eighteen hundreds just last month. A great advantage is size. The eighteen hundreds hold two thousand cans while the fifteen hundreds only hold five hundred. Means we don’t have to service them nearly as much, and we can pass the savings on to the consumer.”