“The one we won.”
“I suppose we did.”
“What happened to the Russian?”
“Well, our intelligence people found out a way to turn the information against him. I don’t know much about it, but he’s dead. They had it on CNN. You could see the burned bodies in the back of the Jeep.”
“That nasty boy?”
“That one.”
“And the man who was trying to kill you?”
“Well, he wasn’t trying to kill me. He was trying to kill my wife. He was stopped,” Bob said. “And he ain’t never coming back.”
“Were you responsible?”
Bob just nodded.
“Do you know what you are? Sergeant, you’re a sacred killer. All societies need them. All civilizations need them. It is to the eternal shame and the current damnation of this country that it refuses anymore to acknowledge them and thinks it can get by without respecting them. So let an old bat speak a truth: you are the necessary man. Without you it all goes away.”
Bob said nothing. Speculation on his place in the nature of things was not his style.
The old lady sensed this, and asked for an accounting of the politics of the affair, the details of history. He gave it, succinctly enough.
“Odd, isn’t it? As you’ve explained it, after it’s all counted up and all the accounts are settled, the one party to it all that could be said to benefit is the old Russian communist apparatus. It’s kept them from going under another few years. And who can tell what that’ll mean? The cruel irony of history, I suppose.”
“I wouldn’t know about that, ma’am. They were very happy, the intelligence people, that they were able to stop this fellow Pashin. He was their real target. My wife was his, but he was ours, and we got him first.”
“Well, anyway: you’ve provided a measure of serenity to my life. My son wasn’t a fool; he was overmatched by professionals, who’ve been punished. Justice isn’t much, but it helps the nights go easier.”
“Yes, ma’am. I agree.”
“Sometimes you don’t even get that, so one must be very grateful for what one does get.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Now … I know you weren’t working for me, you were never my employee. But the one power I still have in the world is to satisfy myself through my checkbook. I would very much enjoy getting it out now and writing a nice big, fat one.”
“Thank you,” he said. “That’s not necessary.”
“Are you sure?”
“I am.”
“Soon there’ll be college expenses.”
“Not for a while. We’re doing fine.”
“Oh, I hope I haven’t spoiled things by bringing up money.”
“No, ma’am.”
“Well, then—”
“There is one thing, though.”
“Name it.”
“The painting.”
“The painting?”
“The eagle after the fight. I don’t know a thing about art and I don’t know a thing about birds, but I’d be honored to have that. It has some meaning to me.”
“You felt your breast stir when you saw it?”
“Well, something like that.”
“Then you shall have it. Come with me, Sergeant Swagger.”
She led him forthrightly out of the room, commanded the old butler to get a “torch” — a flashlight — and led Bob in the butler’s uncertain illumination to the studio. Their breaths plumed in the frosty air. She opened the door, found a switch and the birds flashed to life, still and majestic.
“These are worth quite a lot of money to connoisseurs of the macabre, I expect,” she said. “But the eagle … it’s so atypical, and also unsigned. Would you want a certificate of authenticity? It might seem pointless now, but when your daughter goes to school, it could mean the difference between buying one year at Radcliffe or four years.”
“No, ma’am,” he said, walking to the painting. “I just want it for what it is.”
He stood before it, and felt its pain, its distraught, logy mind, its survivor’s despair.
“I wonder how he got so much into it,” she said.
He unscrewed the painting from the easel, where it had been clamped since May of 1971. It was unframed, but the canvas was tacked stoutly to a wood backing.
“I hope you’ll let me pay for the framing,” said the old woman. “That at least I can do.”
“I’ll send you the bill,” he said.
He wrapped the painting carefully in some rags, making certain not to disturb the elegant depth of the crusted pigment, and put the whole package delicately under an arm.
“All set,” he said.
“Sergeant Swagger, again, I can’t thank you enough. You’ve made my dotage appreciably better, to no real gain of your own.”
“Oh, I gained, Mrs. Carter. I gained.”
he team watched him from far off, through night-vision binoculars. It had been a long stakeout until he showed, longer still since he was in there. Where had he been all afternoon? Still, it didn’t matter. Now it was going to happen.
Swagger turned his truck around, pulled out, drove down the lane, and by the time he got back to Falls Road, the number-one van had moved into position, not behind his turn, as amateurs will do, but before it, letting him overtake them, and falling into position from behind that way, without attracting notice.
Swagger pulled around the van, scooted ahead and settled into an unhurried pace.
“Blue One, this is Blue Two,” said the observer into his microphone. “Ah, we have him picked up very nicely, no problems. I have Blue Three behind me, you want to run this by management?”
“Blue Two, management just got here.”
“You stay on him, Blue Two, but don’t rush it,” came the impatient voice any of them knew as Bonson’s. “Play in the other van if you think you’re in danger of being burned. Don’t be too aggressive. Give me an update—”
“Whoa, isn’t this interesting, Blue One. He didn’t do the beltway. He just stayed on Falls Road on the way into Baltimore.”
“Doesn’t that become Eighty-three?” asked Bonson.
“Yes, sir, it does. Goes straight downtown.”
“But his motel is out at B-W.”
“That’s the credit card data. He had something with him, some kind of package. Maybe he’s going to do something with it.”
“Got you, Blue Two, you just stay on him.”
They watched as Bob drove unconsciously into downtown Baltimore on the limited access highway that plunges into that city’s heart. He passed Television Hill with its giant antennae, and the train station, then the Sun, and finally the road drifted off its abutments to street level and became a lesser boulevard called President Street just east of downtown.
“He’s turning left,” said Blue Two. “It’s, uh, Fleet Street.”
“The map says he’s headed towards Fells Point.”
“What the hell is he doing there? Is he starring in a John Waters movie?”
“Cut the joking on the net,” said Bonson. “You stay with him. I’m coming in; be in town very shortly.”