Gray willed his lungs to work, and he asked, "Where was Trusov in Vietnam?"
"He spent most of his five months in Vietnam at an NVA camp near Chu Lai until he left the camp to travel south."
Gray closed his eyes.
"He bragged to his 1st Brigade friends that he was the finest marksman in the world, and there was only one way to prove it. He told them he was going to hunt you down. And so one day in November 1970 he took off, knowing you were operating somewhere in Elephant Valley."
"The man I killed was an American."
She shook her head. "Nikolai Trusov was wearing a U.S. Marine Corps field uniform and backpack. He had gotten it from the NVA, who must've taken it off a dead American. He wore it to confuse you, knowing that at the very least you would hesitate a moment. That's all Trusov thought he needed to defeat you, a moment of indecision on your part."
Gray opened his eyes. Adrian was no longer smiling. He said, "Even if what you say is all true, I killed the man in Elephant Valley."
"As hard as it is to admit for a sharpshooter like you, your bullet was high and wide."
"He was dead. I saw him."
"You put a trench in his head. It knocked him senseless and he bled profusely. You saw a mask of blood over his face, but you weren't looking at a fatal injury. And you've said yourself you only saw the downed target through your binoculars. You never walked to the enemy soldier to check him out."
Gray was staring at the scree behind Adrian, seeing nothing. He stammered, "You.. you have no idea… "
A small wind brushed her damp hair. "I've been unable to discover who found the wounded Trusov in the valley, or when, but we can presume it was an NVA or Viet Cong patrol. But General Kulikov, rushing after a diplomatic post, connected me with the 1st Brigade medical officer who first treated Trusov after he was carried back into the Chu Lai camp. The medical officer is now a professor of medicine at Moscow University. He told me that the bullet had exposed Trusov's brain, left it open to the air. He put a dressing on it, and Trusov was returned to the Soviet Union several days later, still out cold. At some later date he regained consciousness, and later still a metal plate was put in his head."
The revelations seemed to have deboned Gray. He was limp and sagging. He whispered, "For all this time… "
"Your ninety-seventh kill wasn't a kill, and he wasn't an American."
Gray was still staring over her shoulder. Her news was seeping into him, impossible to absorb all at once. The central fact of his existence for most of his adult life — the anchor secured to his mind and heart and soul — had just vanished. It left a vacuum, and for the moment he was incapable of filling it with amazement or elation or gratitude.
"So you are back down to ninety-six." Her grin was back in place.
He shook his head. "Ninety-seven. Mrs. Orlando."
"I'm sorry," she said in a diminished tone. "But poor Mrs. Orlando's death was different. You were tricked by an expert. You didn't kill Mrs. Orlando. Nikolai Trusov murdered her. You only pulled the trigger. You might as well blame the rifle's manufacturer as yourself."
"I know all the rationalizations already," Gray said.
"Much of your burden has been that you ran away in Elephant Valley."
"That's so nicely put."
"But it's true," she persisted. "You've railed against yourself all these years not so much because you fired quickly and you thought an American soldier died by your hand but because you ran and never reported it to anybody and left a family wondering. It was a bit of cowardice, and it has worked inside you like a worm ever since."
Gray rubbed his temple.
"Nobody goes through life without an unflattering glimpse of himself or herself. You've had yours. You can fairly ascribe it to pressure of the field or youthful inexperience. But at the very least, the hard fact of killing the American is gone, just disappeared."
He abruptly grinned. "It has, hasn't it?"
Her news was sinking in. He felt lighter, as if gravity were exempting him. And giddy.
She smiled in recognition of her effect. "Am I good or what?"
"I never doubted it." He breathed the sweet air. "God, you have no idea…"
"So now all you have to worry about is Trusov."
"Why has he waited all this time to come after me, do you think?" Gray asked.
She shrugged. "Most of the time he was in the army or in a prison and couldn't come. Before that, who knows? Maybe the desire for revenge and to prove himself against you took a long time to eat away at him. Or maybe he wasn't crazy enough yet."
Gray nodded, lost in thought, his eyes on the distant rim of the bowl.
She waved at the valley below them. "What are you doing way up here?"
"I'm learning the terrain. Or relearning it, as I played a lot here as a kid."
She stood up, stepping over his legs, staying well away from the rifle. "I'm going back to the cabin." She turned for her descent. Stones skidded down the steep hill in front of her. She sidestepped down. A redtail hawk drifted over the bowl's ridge, black against the sky.
After several moments Gray put the binoculars to his eyes to watch her. Watch her move. Watch her black hair and her hips and shoulders.
She must have known he was watching her, because she suddenly turned to look back at him and smile and wave. Gray flushed. She knew him better than he had supposed. She disappeared in the grove of trees at the mouth of the valley.
He tapped the sniper rifle's stock and said, "I'm more comfortable with you than with her."
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
"What are you making?" Andy Ellison asked.
"A surprise."
"For whom?"
"For the people chasing us." Trusov poured nails onto a plate in front of him.
"Are you making a bomb?" Ellison nervously chewed on a lip. He was wearing a Janis Joplin T-shirt and denim cutoffs. A string with one ceramic bead was around his neck.
"Something like that."
"Don't you think that's a little… a little violent?"
Trusov shrugged. He used a knife to cut a stick of dynamite in half, then snipped off a length of duct tape to close off the dynamite's open ends.
"Where'd you get all this stuff?" the hippie asked, pointing to the table and then to the green duffel bag on the floor next to Trusov's left leg.
"I find things. I'm good at finding things."
"I mean, a person just doesn't find dynamite."
"He does if he looks in a build house." Trusov inserted a Madoz detonator into the half-stick.
"Build house?" Ellison hesitated, then understood. "The phrase is 'construction shack.' "
Trusov nodded. "I have always been a good traveler. I change my clothes, I change my routes, I change my carrying bag. I pick things up as I go. I watch the ground in front of me, and every fifty paces I check over my shoulder." He placed the dynamite and detonator onto the plate, then placed several more handfuls of nails on top of them. "I'm never caught, not while I'm still moving."
They were sitting in the kitchen of a two-story house on the outskirts of Butte. The vacationing owners — the tiny placard under the doorbell identified them as the Robinsons — had stopped their newspapers, but it had taken the paperboy two days to figure it out. Trusov had found two old newspapers on the front step. He had broken in by a side window. The kitchen floor was of black-and-white tile. Pots and strings of garlic and dried red peppers hung from a frame above the stove. Trusov had spread a newspaper below his work on the table. Near the duffel bag on the floor were several five-gallon cans of gasoline and a box of plastic garbage bags. Ellison hadn't asked him about the gasoline. The rifle leaned against the wall behind Trusov. Ellison had glimpsed several other rifles in the duffel bag. The blinds were drawn throughout the house.