The Master Sniper by Stephen Hunter Page A

after a polite moment or two.
    Now, standing in the outer office, about to lose her, Leets felt the beginning of a headache. The headaches always ended in rage.
    Christ, what a hole! All that peeling paint and those blinky, low-watt bulbs that almost looked like candles. It smelled like a basement up here, and was always chilly, and all the other people seemed pallid and underfed and would not look at him in his uniform.
    “Thanks for walking me over, Jim,” she said. “I appreciate it. I really do.” She smiled, and stepped away.
    “Susan.” He grabbed her arm. “Susan, not tonight. Come on, we’ll do the town.”
    “Thanks, Jim, but we had our fun.”
    He didn’t mind losing her to Phil—he knew he would in the end anyway—but he hated losing her to this.
    “Please,” he said.
    “I can’t. I’ve got to go.”
    “It’s just—”
    “Just Jews, Leets,” she said. “Me too.” She smiled. “Believe it or not.”
    “I believe, I believe,” he protested. But he did not believe. She was just an American girl, who’d invented her membership in this fossil race.
    “No, you don’t,” she said. “But sometimes, I love you anyway.”
    And she disappeared behind the door.
    The next morning, in the office, Leets’s headache still banged away. He stood looking across the gray skyline.
    And where was Roger? Late as usual, he came crashing in, uniform a mess.
    “Had trouble finding a
cab,”
he said. He’d once pointed out that he was probably the only enlisted man in any army who took a cab to World War II each morning.
    “Sorry,” he continued.
    Leets said nothing. He stared grumpily out the window.
    “Guess who I met last night? Go on. Guess, Captain.”
    Leets complained instead. “Rog, you didn’t sweep up last night. This place isn’t the Savoy, but it doesn’t have to look like Hell’s Kitchen either.”
    “Hemingway.”
    “You could at least empty the wastebaskets once in a while.”
    “Hemingway. The writer. Over from Paris, from the Ritz. Met him at a party.”
    “The writer?”
    “Himself. In the flesh. Big guy, mustache, steel glasses. You should have seen him pour the booze down.”
    “You travel in flashy circles.”
    “Only the best. I go to all the good parties. Don’t let my stripes keep me out of anything. After Bill Fielding, he’s about the most famous man in the world.”
    The door flew open; Tony Outhwaithe swirled in as if the star of the play.
    “Captain Leets, send this boy out to hit balls against a wall or something,” he commanded.
    “Roger, out.”
    Roger was off in a flash. “I’ll be at the squash club, you need me.”
    Tony turned to Leets. “The news is bad. Bad for you. Rather good for me.” He smiled with great satisfaction.
    “You love to top me, don’t you?” Leets said.
    “Yes, but there are tops and tops, and this is a true top.”
    Leets braced; was he being shipped to Burma to hunt Japs in jungles?
    “Are you still banging away on that assassin matter?”
    “Sort of. Not getting any—”
    “Excellent. I can now prove you wrong. New data.”
    “What?” Leets sat up, his heart beginning to excite a bit.
    “My, interested so soon.”
    “What?”
    “All right. Last night I happened to run into a donnish sort from PWE. Know what that is?”
    “Your Political Warfare Executive. Sort of like—”
    “Yes. Anyway, it seems he can identify your phantom acronym. WVHA.”
    “Yeah?”
    “Yes.” Tony was richly satisfied. He was enjoying every minute of all this. “It has nothing to do with us. It doesn’t even concern the war. It’s not related to intelligence or espionage or the racket at all. You’re out of luck, I’m afraid.”
    “What is it?” Leets demanded. Why was his heart going, why did he have so much trouble breathing?
    “It’s a part of the administrative section of dear old SS.
Wirtschafts- und Verwaltungshauptamt
Obscure, easy to miss among the more flamboyant organizations in Twelveland.”
    Leets translated