“This will do the trick,” he said, and ripped the pages out. He got through the engagement quite nicely, then enjoyed applying a heroic photo of The Leader to his posterior. He reassembled kit and stepped down from his throne and pushed beyond a sheet hung for privacy. Ouch, bad news. A Kübelwagen had just entered the compound bearing an earnest 14th Panzergrenadier lieutenant. The young man had stopped for directions, and a couple of lounging Green Devils pointed him to Karl, who was emerging from the latrines.
“Major,” said the young man, stepping from the vehicle that had just delivered him. He threw up a completely unenthusiastic “Heil Hitler” salute that looked like a broken-winged sparrow fluttering its bad feathers at a predator, and Karl responded with his normal impression of a drunken clown waving at a lady in the stands whom he wanted to boff. So much for Nazi ceremony in the regular military.
“So you are a major,” said Wili.
“Apparently,” said Karl. “Yes, Lieutenant, what can I do for you?”
“Sir, the general requires your presence. Tomorrow at 1400.”
“Say,” said Wili to the youngster, “you don’t happen to have any copies of Signal lying about? We need it for the inspiration.”
CHAPTER 31
His spleen hurt, his head hurt, his lips were dry, he was out of breath. That was bus travel in Ukraine. The ancient vehicle, finding a last few potholes to further test its shocks against, turned in to the — well, “station” wasn’t quite the right word. “Station” connotes order, discipline, coherence, a system. Here, the boarding and deboarding process appeared to take place in some kind of Darwinian sink where the buses just butted and bluffed and brazened their way close to the building until they could go no farther. Consequently, the yard was a riot of buses as they jammed this way and that at odd angles, the whole thing mad and fraught. It looked like a bus station after the end of civilization.
The driver nosed his way in, honking and cursing and maneuvering heroically until at last there was no farther to go. End of ride. He turned the thing off — the last dying breath of low-wattage air-conditioning died without a whisper — and cranked open the doors to let his passengers out into the melee.
Late last night, Bob had dumped the car in a copse of trees outside of a town whose name he could not remember, much less spell. He’d hidden in the same trees until full light, then moseyed into town, trying to look inconspicuous in his jeans and gray polo shirt. He’d seen a batch of people waiting in the square and joined them. When a bus came, he got aboard. The driver demanded payment, as this was no longer socialism, and Bob, ever the ugly American, shoved a wad of bills at him, watched him harvest them, and had no idea one way or the other if he’d been robbed blind or given a generous discount. Then the three hours of torture began.
He was pleased, at least, that Lviv turned out to be the bus destination, remembering the pleasant old-town evening of a few days before. Plan: find a hotel room, pay cash, call Reilly, set up a meet in Yaremche, call Stronski, arrange that quick exit, get to Yaremche, and then get out of town. It seemed simple enough. He waited as the pile-up to exit cleared, then eventually stepped free and enjoyed a breath of fresh air, however laced with exhaust fumes. Meanwhile, honking and shouting, shoving, rushing, dodging, broken-field running, various funny walks, and lots of old ladies prevailed in the labyrinth between the buses as passengers from his own and all other buses attempted to negotiate a way out without getting crushed by entering or exiting vehicles. Bob took his time, not shoving, not shouting, trusting that any direction was as good as another and basically going the way of least resistance, and that was when he got shot.
It felt like someone whacked him hard in the side with a near-molten fireplace poker. But there was no sound, even if, ahead of him, he saw a pop of debris as a bullet hole erupted into the skin of bus.
He knew in a speed that has no place in time that someone behind him had taken a bad shot with a suppressed pistol and missed center mass. He jigged right, then left, speeding up, turned hard left at the next bus, chose another path, jigged left and then right, moving too quickly for a one-handed shooter to stay with him. He tried to lose himself in the chaos of the labyrinth and its crowd.
Someone was trying to kill him. He realized the guy had been off on his first shot because he’d fired from the hip. Presumably he carried the pistol against his leg, hidden under a coat, had seen the target clear, and rushed a shot.
Swagger had no idea who. He turned back as people filtered this way and that, none of them suspicious at all, just the usual glut of Ukraine working folk, scraggly students with backpacks, a few survivors of the tsarist epoch, and some febrile young kids who couldn’t keep their hands out of each other’s pants. His side burned but did not bleed a lot, and though it hurt, he knew that until it bruised, it wouldn’t impinge his movement. Getting shot wasn’t the biggest of deals to him; it had happened before.
He turned, turned again, simply trying to stay afoot. Ahead the bus riot seemed to be thinning, and he thought he could get a cab and get far away. But it occurred to him: I cannot escape. If I escape, he, whoever, finds me as he found me here, and this time prepares better for his shot, and I am down and he is gone.
I have to find him and drop his ass.
Old Bob, maybe real Bob, maybe even the only Bob, took over the brain. He felt his vision clarify and deepen, his muscles fill with killing strength, his will focus to one point and one point alone. He liked it when the world vanished, there was no civilization, no bullshit about rank or caste or what was expected and how you had to act. It was just him, the other guy, and a jungle that happened to be constructed of buses. He liked it that way just fine.
He turned and headed back into the crowd and began to work his way more or less randomly through the corridors between the vehicles. One pulled out suddenly. A horn blasted. A mother pushing a carriage squawked at a driver who cursed back. Swagger thought he might die beneath bus tires, never mind the efforts of his assassin.
He forged ahead, trying desperately to read each passerby for sign: hands hidden, or someone walking at a kind of oblique angle to conceal the pistol from witnesses, or a heavy coat on a hot day. At the same time he had to do this with Zenlike chill, without seeming effort, because if he eyeballed too noticeably, it would alert the shooter, who would take him from afar.
Come on, buster, he thought. Come on, go for me. We’ll see how good you are.
He felt his eyes dilate even wider, his breath come in cool spurts, his muscles go to tense. He walked on the balls of his feet, knowing it gave him a little advantage on first power step. He was in full warrior brain, total Condition Green, ready to go at any second.
This way, that way, that way, this way.
Was the guy looking under buses, looking for Bob’s New Balances as the tell? Was the guy behind him, slowly closing in? Swagger cranked around, but nobody seemed to be moving fast with any purpose, nobody had a white face and tense lips, all giveaways for a hunter on a job.
He turned again, roaming more or less randomly, waited as a little knot of people cleared, then edged through and found himself between two buses as, up ahead, three old ladies picked their way along, one on a walker.
He kept his head down, moving slowly, ready to yield when he reached them.
The babushkas had dark faces under scarves and broad black peasant dresses. Each wore a shawl bunched around her shoulders, held tight by a fist, and they were—