Then from the motorized dummy would come the recorded words of the inaugural speech. When this first was used, Gusev would fire on the lines "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country." The later speeches lacked that sort of dramatic high point. In fact, none of them were very good at all.
At the proper moment, Gusev, barely a speck in the distance, would fire. He always hit the dummy. Military men were always the most impressed.
Then Gusev would come in to a thousand yards, and while the spectators' eyes could barely make him out, Gusev would put a bullet right into the heart of the dummy, or a second, replacement dummy if the first was badly damaged.
And then at five hundred yards, where security men were unafraid of simple handguns, Gusev provided the piece de resistance.
A photograph of the current President of the United States was taped to the head of the statue, and faster than they could follow, Gusev would whip out a handgun and shoot out the photograph's eyes, two quick shots. Then the exact scale photograph of the head would be passed around to the important visitors: They would look at the eyes and nod. Some smiled. Others said:
"If we have to. If we have to."
There were other demonstrations. Shots gotten off in a crowded room, a press conference, and the ultimate display. Firing three bullets in succession at the same spot on a sheet of bullet-proof glass, so that the first weakened the glass, the second penetrated, and the third went singing through the hole-all into a car moving 12.8 miles an hour, the speed of a presidential limousine touring an American city.
Gusev knew he was good, but he never entertained airs of being anything special. He came from a remote Tatar village in Kazakhstan, where everyone was an extraordinary shot. Throughout Russia there were enclaves of very special people who never dealt with the outside world and consequently inbred their weaknesses and strengths. Almost all Tatars were crack shots, as good with guns now as they had been with bows and arrows in the days of Tamerlane.
Gusev was just a little bit better than the rest of the townsmen. To the Russians in Moscow, he was magnificent. And he noticed that during a time of crisis with America he would be called on more often to show what he could do. He would hear the important people say things like, "If worse comes to worst, we can always use Gusev."
But the shooting was only one small part of his training, just two hours a day. The other ten hours of training went into speaking and living as an American, quite a feat for a young Tatar who had since birth spoken only a dialect peculiar to the Mongolian archers of the Russian steppe from n.o. 1200 to 1400.
At first he learned words for food, but after twenty-five years of speaking English every day and being corrected every day, working at it ten hours a day, Gusev Balbek could pass on the telephone for an American, and from almost any part of the country to boot.
Unfortunately, four-foot-eight-inch-tall men with slanted eyes and skin that looked as though it had been stretched taut over tent poles for a dozen Mongolian winters tended to have difficulty passing themselves off as Alabama sharecroppers or Boston policemen.
Learning from the Americans the fine art of excusing deficiencies, the Russians merely used the famous American trick of labeling.
"Yes, we acknowledge certain visual complications," said the commander of the program.
"Everyone in America is going to notice this man."
"America is multiracial. There should be no problem."
"But once he shoots the President, how will he escape? Everyone will remember a four-foot-eight-inch man with skin like yak hide. They'll catch him. He'll kill many, but then they'll catch him and they'll know he's Russian. We want to be able to assassinate the American President; we don't want to pay for it. Otherwise we'd start a war right away. "
"We'll save him for situations so crucial that we are willing to be caught. We'll save him for crisis management. A crisis-management tool."
And thus Gusev Balbek was kept practicing for twenty-five years, a tool that probably would never be used. Until the morning he was shown a picture of a very round-eyed, sad-looking man.
"This is Vassily Rabinewitz. Kill him."
"But he's not the President," said Gusev.
"No. He's more dangerous."
"But I thought I was going to kill a president. I have been waiting twenty-five years to kill an American president, practicing two hours a day on marksmanship and ten on American language and customs, and now when I finally am told to do what I have prepared more than a score of years to do, my target is named Rabinowitz. Vassily Rabinowitz. Is he some dissident?"
"He's your target. Don't think because you have been learning to live like an American you are an American. You're a Russian."
"When one starts to think for oneself it is hard to stop, comrade," said Gusev, who in every American election performed a practice vote, making decisions just like Americans.
"When one is Gusev Balbek from a Tatar town in Kazakhstan, one shoots Vassily Rabinowitz from fifteen hundred yards. At that distance you won't have to look into his eyes."
Anna Chutesov was furious. She almost swept the contents of the ambassador's desk into the ambassador's face. Who had made this decision? What moron had made this decision?
"We had worked out that you would take everything we know to the proper Americans and together we would work toward eliminating the danger of this man. How could you decide on your own to kill him? I was in charge."
"It was decided we couldn't let America get hold of him. We have to kill him."
"What would they do with him? Why on earth would the Americans want him? What did he ever do for us except cure the headaches and sexual problems of the Politburo?"
Anna's face flamed. She knew how this dolt had gotten the ambassadorship. He was the only ranking member of the Foreign Bureau who could remember names, or wanted to. He was the one who could wake up in the morning not having drunk himself to sleep the night before.
When the Foreign Bureau found someone who didn't drink himself to sleep every night, that man had a job for life. Ambassador Nomowitz had been in the job a quarter of a century and was now dean of all ambassadors in Washington.
"Comrade Chutesov, I understand you have the highest authority here in America. But the highest levels ordered Rabinowitz assassinated before America got him."
"But don't they understand no one has him? That's the problem. He has them. No government can control him. He controls them. How can you control a man who makes you believe he is the most important person in your life? How? How is this done?"
"We have an extraordinary marksman. I was privileged to see him once. He is now near Fort Pickens, Arkansas, where we have located Rabinowitz. And we have made brilliant arrangements for smuggling him into position. I must say it is our proudest moment."
"Enjoy it until it blows up in your face. At best it won't work. That is at best."
"I won't even ask why," said Nomowitz to the beautiful, angry woman. He had heard she hated men, but that was from a notorious womanizer. Any woman who would not sleep with that man the very hour they first met was considered a man hater. But he could see why any man would wish to sleep with this beautiful woman. "But I will ask if you really do hate men, as they say."
"What would you think of a gender that doesn't care if the world blows up tomorrow but does wonder who I spread my legs for?"
"You do hate men."
"I just despise idiots."
"Oh, then you don't hate men," said Nomowitz, and didn't know why Anna Chutesov left his office laughing softly. She left word with the secretary for the ambassador to phone her when his solution failed.
Any fool would have figured out what was dangerous about operating alone in this situation. For if the sniper should kill Rabinowitz, who did the ambassador think the Americans would believe was dead? A Russian Jewish immigrant? No, Russia would be held responsible for killing the most important person in the lives of hundreds of Americans, whoever that most important person was.
What a wonderful way to start a purposeless war. The only way both countries had a real chance to stop this was to put their cards on the table, realize this man's powers were a danger to them both, and then, eliminating the chance of a war, eliminate Rabinowitz. If they really understood what was going on, they might be able to enlist Rabinowitz in a cause for good. However, that was too risky for the intelligence levels of two governments overwhelmingly staffed by men.
All Anna Chutesov could possibly hope for was that her side of the idiot equation was not using an assassin who could be traced back to Russia.
Gusev Balbek arrived at Fort Pickens on a stretcher. Horizontal, no one could tell this soldier was four-foot-eight and therefore below the minimum height for service. "Legs were shot off in Nam," he said. He said it with a Western twang. Having been wounded and not wanting to talk about it sounded so much better in Western American. If he were a New York American, he would have to talk about it as the central fact of the universe, his and everyone else's.
If he were a California American he would have to show how he boogied on his stumps because he was too drugged out to know they were gone, and if he were from Boston he would have to go around contending the world was filled with giant freaks.
A Westerner could just keep his mouth shut after a few terse words.
He was amazed at how thoroughly his Russia had penetrated America. Customs agents whisked his phony passport through. He got special service on planes. He was used to American luxury. He had practiced living with it ten hours a day for the last twenty-five years. So when the sort of meal any Russian would give his eyeteeth for came to him in his first-class cabin, he sent it back because it was not hot enough.
In such a way did a four-foot-eight-inch sharpshooter with skin like a yak-skin tent make his way into Fort Pickens, Arkansas, where, on a high hill overlooking a maneuver area beneath him, his own private weapons were waiting for him.