He liked watching Adrian Wade, Gray admitted to himself. She moved with the grace of an athlete, even on the unstable slope and even though she was breathing heavily in this oxygen-weak altitude. She reached the loose scree just below his hide and used her hands to climb the last yards up to him, pumping her legs as the rocks gave way.
She gasped. "I don't suppose you could have met me halfway."
"I was eating my lunch." He flicked away the apple stem.
She climbed onto the ridge and collapsed on the soft soil and gravel. Her chest heaved as she worked the thin air. She leaned back on her elbows. Her face glimmered with sweat. She dragged a sleeve across her forehead. Gray lifted a canteen from his pack and handed it to her. Her pistol was a bulge under her coat.
She drank greedily, then said, "I thought I was in good shape."
"You were running like you had turpentine on your butt. What's going on?"
After a moment her breathing eased. She smiled and said majestically, "I have your answer."
Gray scratched his neck where a deerfly had bitten him. "I have more questions than you have answers, I'll bet."
She laughed gaily and shook her head. "I'm good, you know that? Man, I'm good."
Gray couldn't help but smile along with her. "You are busting your buttons."
"Owen, you are going to grovel with thanks before me. You've spent years and years wandering around in the dark, your hand out in front of you to ward off unseen dangers, and now I'm going to lead you to the light." She tilted her head back and laughed again, a victorious chortle.
The sun played with her hair. He had not seen the flecks of red and gold in it before, but the harsh high-altitude light found tiny glints of color among the ebony. And the light made the shock-white skin of her face translucent, revealing delicate blue lines beneath. Her mouth was curved and lush and red. Perspiration made her face shine as if in the afterglow of passion.
Her mouth came together to say something but Gray beat her to it. "I know. I'm staring. I'll stop."
Her eyes were amused. "Go ahead and stare." Then another laugh. "I'm going to blow you off this ledge with my news."
"Stop crowing and tell me."
"I don't want you to think it came easily."
"You're still crowing."
Surrounded by computer and communication equipment, Adrian Wade had spent hour after hour in her corner of the cabin's living room. Last night Pete Coates and Gray sat at the table under the antler chandelier sipping coffee and watching her. She seldom rose from her seat in front of the monitor, and when she did it was to insert or retrieve a document from a fax machine. She would stare, then pound the keyboard, then stare again, gritting her teeth, drumming the table, occasionally leafing through the pages of several three-ring binders. Or she would speak into the telephone, sometimes in English but usually in Russian. Gray once delivered coffee to her, but it remained untouched on the desk until it was cold. Once in a while she would say something aloud but only to herself, and Gray doubted she was aware she was speaking. Things like "Good for Captain Mason. I've got the patch through." And, "I didn't even think Donetsk had telephones." And, "His assistant owes me one, so I'll try him." Coates and Gray would look at each other and shrug, not having the slightest idea what she was talking about. Her voice and manner changed from one phone call to the next. At times she was as hard as a labor negotiator. On other calls her voice had the dulcet tones of a diplomat. Sometimes she wheedled and entreated and cajoled, then abruptly became angry, then smoothly placating. It was an entertaining performance, even though Gray and Coates could not understand most of what she said. Last night she had been at her station when Coates and Gray had turned in, and she was there when they got up in the morning. Gray did not know if she had slept.
She demanded, "Give me a date between 1947 and half a year ago."
"A game? I don't feel like playing games."
"Any date."
Gray pinched the bridge of his nose. "April 5, 1956."
"Nikolai Trusov has six weeks remaining in the third form at the Korsko Preliminary School in the village of Valosk, south of Moscow. He is wearing a cast on his forearm because of a fall from a tree."
"December 6, 1975."
"Trusov is in Olympic training at the Central Army Sports Club facility near Pervouralsk in the Ural Mountains. He is skiing forty miles a day, is on a rifle range two hours a day, and is undergoing an hour of weight training each day."
"August 12, 1987."
"Trusov is operating near Safir Chir, a town in the Panjshir Valley about seventy-five miles north by northwest of Kabul. He is attached to the 1st Recon Company, 2nd Motor-Rifle Regiment, 15th Motor-Rifle Division."
"I'm impressed," Gray admitted.
"I've known all this for two or three days. But there was a hole in my Nikolai Trusov calendar, and try as I might, I couldn't fill it in."
"What dates?"
"July through November 1970. General Kulikov and his staff in Moscow appeared to be working hard, but they couldn't find anything. I began to wonder about the dedication Kulikov was bringing to his investigation. Armies around the world produce mountains of records, and half of any army is employed generating documents about the other half. A chronicle of those five months of Nikolai Trusov's military career had to exist somewhere."
"So what did you do?"
"I goosed Kulikov." She leaned back further on her elbows, and her back touched the scree. It rattled and shifted, and a small stone slipped onto her shoulder. She flicked it aside. "At my request, FBI Assistant Director Robert Olin spoke with the Russian Republic's Vice President Felix Ogarkov, whose main job is lobbying western governments for aid for Russia. Olin spoke of how our government would view favorably in its foreign aid considerations any further and diligent assistance General Kulikov might give to the investigation of Trusov. This was yesterday morning. As I understand it, Ogarkov immediately alerted General Kulikov that should Kulikov help in procuring American aid, a diplomatic position might open up somewhere for him, maybe a consulship in the U. S. or Europe."
"It worked?"
"Kulikov dug his heels into his horse, I think. He found what I was looking for. In the late 1960s a training brigade was formed from troops in the Moscow Military District. So secret was the new brigade that rather than being somewhere in the chain of command under General Polynin, who was head of all ground forces, the brigade was under General Bukharin, chief of the Main Political Directorate."
"A training brigade that was secret? That's unusual, isn't it?"
She let the question hang for a few seconds before delivering the hook. "The 1st Special Training Brigade was sent to Vietnam. The Pentagon has long known that Soviet pilots trained North Vietnamese pilots. And now it seems that the Soviets were training soldiers, also. Nikolai Trusov taught marksmanship and fieldcraft. And he did some shooting, maybe in Vietnam. The general found out that Trusov already had eleven kills before he went to Afghanistan. Polynin said the files weren't complete, and he doesn't know the nature of the kills, but they are recorded. So with Trusov's seventy-eight kills in Afghanistan, he's up to eighty-nine."
A cable seemed to tighten around Gray's chest. "He was in Vietnam?"
Another smile. "He trained NVA and Viet Cong snipers. General Kulikov has now spoken to three other sniper instructors in the 1st Brigade. They all have clear memories of Nikolai Trusov, and they all remember his last day of active service in Vietnam."
Owen Gray stopped breathing.
She said, "The 1st Brigade instructors all knew of you, Owen. White Star was famous and feared. You and the other American snipers were the reason the 1st Brigade went to Vietnam. You had shown the devastating effect of a lone man and a high-powered rifle, and the Vietnamese were determined to counter you with their own snipers. So in came the Russian instructors."