The Red Horseman (13 page)

“Let me get this straight, Admiral. You
want me to call Hayden Land right now,
at two-twenty in the morning, and ask him to come to the
Post to call you in the morning?”

Mike Gatler’s voice was remarkably
clear-the miracle of modern communications
technology-and the amazement and disbelief seemed about
to leak out of the telephone. Apparently Yocke’s
call had roused him from a sound sleep.

“No, sir. Tell him you want to meet him at
the guard’s shack in front of the river entrance to the
Pentagon at 8 A.m. There you ask him to call
me at this number in Moscow as soon as he can.
He can use a phone in your office or a pay
phone. This is important, Mr. Gatler-no
other telephones. Have him call me here at this
number in Moscow. Have you got that?”

“Put Yocke back on the line.”

Jake handed the telephone to the reporter, who
mumbled into the instrument and listened intently. After a
bit he said, “Admiral Grafton came over
to the hotel this morning and asked for this favor …
No …

he hasn’t said. He won’t say … Yes.”

Yocke turned and eyed the two naval officers.
“Gotcha,” he told the telephone. “I understand
… how did you like my story about-was He
bit it off and replaced the instrument on its
cradle.

“I’m not to call him again at home in the middle
of the night unless I’m dead. And I’m supposed
to guarantee you absolute confidentiality.” He
sat down beside Jake Grafton on the bed.
“You’ll be deep background, never quoted or even
referred to. I’m supposed to wring you out like a
sponge.”

Jake Grafton grinned. He had a good grin
under a nose that was a size too big for his face.
When he grinned his gray eyes twinkled. “Think
Gatler will do it?”

“Yeah. The one thing you gotta have in the news
game is curiosity-Mike Gatler is chock
full of it. He’s a helluva newspaperman.
I don’t know if Hayden Land will agree to see
him, but I guarantee Mike will try.”

“He’ll see him a right. If Gatler uses
my name. Now let’s go get some food. I’m
starved.”

“Don’t they feed you guys at the embassy?”

“Stove isn’t working right,” Jake muttered and
led the way through the door.

“Hayden Land, Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff,” Yocke said cheerfully as he
trailed the naval officers down the hall. “This is
big, huh?”

“So how long you guys been in Moscow?”
Yocke asked after they had gone through the buffet line
and were picking at the watery scrambled eggs and
sampling the fatty sausage. They had a table in the
middle of the room and were surrounded by businessmen and here
and there pairs of tourists. Over near the buffet
line sat eight Japanese businessmen drinking
orange juice and coffee and eating grapes.

For twenty U.s. dollars a head. The
Russians, Jake Grafton decided, have
capitalism all figured out. Charge every nickel
the traffic will bear until they quit coming, then drop
the price just enough to get them back.

“Couple days.”

“So what do you think?”

“I think a twenty-dollar breakfast is one
hell of a way to start a morning,” Jake replied.
He managed to choke down his first bite of fatty,
greasy sausage and shoved the rest of it to the side of
his plate. He tentatively sipped the coffee.
It was hot and black, thank God!

“Twenty and ten percent tip,” Yocke
said cheerfully.

“Twenty-two American smackeroos to get
past that squat lady at the door.”

“These bastards bypassed capitalism and went
straight into highway robbery,” Toad mumbled as he
stared at the mess on the plate in front of him.
“No wonder Marx was appalled. Twenty-two
fucking dollars!

Jeeezus!”

Jake looked slowly around at the huge,
splendid room in which they sat with the businessmen and
tourists, eating nervously. There were just no
Russian restaurants that served food a Western
stomach could tolerate-none.

“This place is a boom town, like San
Francisco during the gold rush.

There’s no price competition right now.” He
shrugged. “Maybe it’ll come.”

Yocke tried to change the subject. “What are
you guys here for?”

Jake Grafton eyed the reporter and this time his
gray eyes didn’t twinkle. “Give it up,
Jack.”

“You gotta admit, Admiral, this whole thing
is curious as hell. The embassy has
gotta have enough communications gear to put you in touch with
Slick Willie Clinton snarfing gut bombs in
a McDonald’s. Yocke shrugged, then leaned
back in his chair and assumed his philosophical
attitude: “This whole darn country is curious.
Everything is failing apart, nothing works right, yet
everybody you meet is a literature expert, a
music scholar, or an authority on
eighteenth-century Russian poetry. Not a
solitary one of them owns a screwdriver or a
pair of pliers or even knows what they’re for. So
the commodes don’t work, the light bulbs are burned
out, the furnace in the basement crapped out last
year, the pipes are busted–and they sit amid the
rubble and talk about the nuances in Dostoyevski, the
genius of Tolstoy. The whole place is a
nuthouse, one giant pyscho ward, some
psychiatrist’s wet dream.”

“They must have something going for them,” Jake said as
he smeared jam inside a croissant. “They
kicked the hell out of Hitler. They’re tough,
resilient people. They’re survivors.”

Jack Yocke rubbed his head and thought about it.
He was having trouble getting the right perspective,
having trouble seeing the human beings hidden
behind the body armor they all wore. “Maybe,” he
muttered.

“Maybe.”

“So what stories have you been working on while
you’ve been here?” Toad Tarkington asked this question.

“Been wandering around trying to get a feel for the
place, for the people. They’re desperate. It’s a
scary situation. The people seem to just have no hope. And the
Commies are playing to their fears. The
anti-Semitism is right out in the open and it’s
ugly.”

Toad glanced at Jake Grafton, who was
looking out the window at the street, now bathed in weak
sunshine, as Jack Yocke rambled on about the more
prominent Communists and their stump rantings. When the
reporter finally paused Jake asked, “How
ugly?”

“What?”

“How ugly is the anti-Semitism?”

“They’re prosecuting Jews for hooliganism,
profiteering and hoarding.

Throwing them into jail. Everyone is doing it but the
only people being prosecuted are Jews charged before they
changed the law. The persecution is even more
blatant outside of Moscow, out in those
little provincial towns nobody ever heard of where
old Communists are still running the show. To hear some
of the Commies tell it, they never had a chance to run this
country right because 1he Jews screwed up everything.

It’s Hitler’s big lie one more time.”

“It worked before,” Jake murmured.

He looked at his watch. Almost eleven. Five
or six hours to wait.

Maybe Toad could spend the afternoon with Yocke and
he could get some sleep in Yocke’s bed. He
managed only an hour or two’s sleep last
night. Jet lag. He felt hot and dirty and
tired. Or maybe he had caught a dose of that
desperation that everyone here seemed to be infected with.

And this would be a good time to call Richard Harper,
his private computer hacker, to ask if he had
made any progress finding the money.

If someone was buying nuclear weapons, then someone
was getting paid.

But what will you do when you know?

Hayden Land was the first black man to hold the
top job in the American military. A highly
intelligent soldier and top-notch political
operator, he also had the ability to think very straight
when everyone else was panicking. This
quality had served him well during the Gulf War
several years ago when his sound leadership made him
a national hero.

Those in the know in national politics even mentioned
him as possible presidential timber in 19%,
when presumably he would be retired.

Jake Grafton had worked for Land in the past, so
the general’s calmness on the telephone was no
surprise. Hayden Land never lost his cool.

“What did you want to talk about, Admiral?”

“Sir, I understand General Brown died a few
days ago.

I wonder if you have the autopsy results.”

“Well, I don’t even know if an autopsy
will be performed,” General Land said. “I thought he
died at home of a heart attack.”

“One more question, sir. Have you seen a report from
General Brown about listening devices being found in the
DIA office spaces?”

Silence. It dragged for several seconds.
“No. Is there such a report?”

“The day I left to come over here General Brown
said he was going to write one. We found the bugs a
day or so before. Both he and I suspected they were
planted and monitored by our friends at
Langley, suspected for some very good reasons, but
we had no rock-solid proof.

One of the things my aide and I had discussed where it
could be overheard by those bugs was the death a year or so
ago of Nigel Keren, the British publisher.
We thought we had some indications that someone from
Langley might have killed him with binary poison.”

Jake paused for a moment. Land said nothing.

“Are you still with me, sit?”

“I’m here.”

“General Brown’s death might also have been
caused by binary poison.

Since he apparently didn’t write that
report of those listening devices, I suggest you
ensure that there will be an autopsy, a damn good
one.”

“Just what were you and General Brown working on,
Admiral?”

“We were discussing Nigel Keren, how he died,
who might have killed him.

I don’t want to go any further into that on this
telephone, sir. The KGB is probably
eavesdropping. Still, this telephone was preferable
to using the embassy communications systems. And I
request that you don’t use the telephones
in your office, car or home to discuss this matter.”

More silence, then a slow, “I think I see what
you’re driving at.”

“I don’t know what is going on, General, but
something is and I’m on the edge of it. So I need
some help.”

“What?” That one-word response was pure
Hayden Land. No beating around the bush, no questioning of
his subordinate’s assessment of the situation or
demands for further information, just a straight, quick trip
to the heart of the matter.

So Jake told him. The two officers talked
for another twenty minutes before they spent a few
minutes discussing what they were going to tell the
Washington Post to explain this curious method of
communication.

Their answer-nothing at this time.

Jake straightened his uniform and put his shoes
back on and locked the door behind him.

He found Toad Tarkington and Jack Yocke
in the bar drinking espresso and gobbling pretzels.
They both stood as Jake walked toward them.

“Thanks a lot, Jack,” Jake said.

“He called you?”

“Yes.”

“One word?” Yocke looked incredulous. “That’s
all you’re going to give me?”

Jake grinned. He extended his hand and the
reporter took it.

As Toad and Jake were walking toward the main
entrance, Yocke called, “You owe me a steak when
I get back to Washington.”

Jake lifted his hand in acknowledgment.

Out in the car Toad asked, “Are you thinking what
I’m thinking about that Yegor Somebody killing?”

“Not the Russians’ style, you told Yocke.
You can’t hand Yocke a bone like that with meat on it,
Toad-he’s too smart.”

“Yeah. I’m sorry.”

“The whole thing looks like a classic
in-your-face Mossad hit. Like Paris, Rome,
Frankfurt, and a dozen others you could name. The
KGB makes you disappear, the Mossad makes you
a wire-service example.”

“Maybe the Russians are changing tactics.”

was Maybe.”

“Then again . .

For a while Grafton rode silently, looking
out the window. Then he said, “Say the Mossad
decided to wipe a struggling young Hitler
protege and dropped a hint to someone in the Yeltsin
government. Maybe some of Yeltsin’s
lieutenants thought the idea up. Whatever. Someone
thought that Kolokoltsev’s departure to Communist
heaven wouldn’t be an unmitigated disaster and called
the cops off.

That much is obvious, yet there’s no way in the
world to prove a damn thing on anybody. None of
these clowns are ever going to breathe a word. Yocke is
wasting his time asking embarrassing questions through an
interpreter who is trying to keep from wetting his
pants. All he’ll do is irritate people who
don’t like to be irritated.”

Tarkington grunted. He was thinking about General
Brown, smacked like a fly. “Are you just
speculating about the Mossad, Admiral, or was that
a power think?”

Jake Grafton growled irritably. “I
don’t know a damn thing.”

“I don’t like any of this.”

“Write a letter home to mama,” Jake told
him.

At least Judith Farrell is somewhere in
Maryland, Toad told himself.

She’s mowing grass and watching
baseball games on television and going to the theater
on Friday nights. But even as he trotted that
idea out for inspection he threw it back-he
didn’t believe it. He had seen her in action
once, eliminating a terrorist in a Naples
hotel. That memory came flooding back and he
felt slightly ill.

“The Russians have their own rules,” Jake
Grafton said.

“The language is different, the heritage is
different, the mores are different, they don’t think
like we do. It’s hard to believe this is the same
planet we live on.”

Jake Grafton had listened for over twenty
years to stories about all-male Russian dinners
and vodka celebrations.

They were always thirdhand or fourthhand, and the parties
described sounded rather like something one might find in a
college fraternity house on a Saturday night
after the big football game.

And that, he thought ruefully, would be a good way
to describe the festive atmosphere of which he was a
reluctant part.

The problem was quite simple-he hadn’t had this much
to drink in years.

He was sweating profusely and feeling slightly
dizzy.

Across the table from him Nicolai Yakolev was
telling another Russian joke, one about a high
party official and a simple country girl. He had
to tell it loud to be heard over the noise of the
piano.

Jake had told a few of these jokes himself
earlier in the evening, before the level of the fluid in the
vodka bottle had gone down very far. He had never
been very good with jokes–comcdn’t remember them long
enough to find someone to tell them to-but he did recall
several of those crude riddles that had been popular
years ago, the so-called Polish jokes. So he
transformed the bumblers into Communists and delighted the
general and his guests with questions such as, How many
Communists does it take to screw in a light
bulb? Twelve-one to stand on the chair and hold the
bulb, eleven to turn the chair.

Before dinner he had had a chance to meet the allied
officers one on one.

Lieutenant Colonel West of the Queen’s
Own Highlanders was a deeply tanned trim man,
about five feet six inches, with dark hair longer
than U.s. military regulations
allowed. He seemed quite relaxed with the Russians and
Jake heard him murmur a few phrases in the
language.

“Delighted to see you, Admiral,” West said
when they shook hands. “Met you one time in Singapore
years ago.

No reason you should remember. Think you were a
commander then.”

Jake seemed to think he did recall the man.
“A party with the Aussies?”

“Righto. About ten years ago. Jolly good show,
that.”

Now he remembered. Jocko West, a
specialist on guerrilla, warfare, terrorism and
jungle survival. “You seem to have picked up a
little of the local lingo, Colonel.”

West leaned closer and lowered his voice.
“Afghanistan, sir. A bit irregular, I
dare say. Sort of a busman’s holiday.

These lads were the oppo.” He sighed. “Well,
the world turns, eh?”

The Frenchman was Colonel Reynaud,
impeccably uniformed. He spent dinner chatting with
two Russian officers in French. Prior
to dinner, when he and Jake were introduced,
he used English, which he spoke with a delicious
accent. “A pleas-aire, Admiral Grafton.”

“How did you manage to wrangle a trip
to Moscow in the summertime, Colonel?”

“I am a student of Napoleon, sir, you
comprehend?

Think, had Napoleon arrived in the summer,
perhaps history would have been so different, without these
Communists. I came to see where it went wrong for
him, for France. So I will do a little of work, a little
of the seeing of the sights.”

“The people at my embassy told me you are an
expert on nuclear weapons.”

Reynaud smiled. “Alas, that is true. I
study the big boom. In a way it is
unmilitary, n’est-ce pas? The nuclear weapons
will make la guerre so short, it will not be la
guerre. They leave us without honor. It is not
pretty.”

Jake managed to shake hands with Colonel
Rheinhart, the German, and Colonel Galvano,
the Italian, but he didn’t get to visit with them
until after dinner. They both impressed him as
extremely competent officers of great ability.
Rheinhart was the smaller of the two, a man
whom the American embassy said had a doctorate
in physics from the University of Heidelberg.

” ‘Herr Colonel, or should I address you as
Herr Doctor?”

The German laughed easily. One got the
impression that Rheinhart would be a valuable officer
in anyone’s army.

Galvano was not as easy to read, perhaps because Jake
had difficulty understanding his English. Still, he
looked fit and highly intelligent, as all four
of the colonels did. Their nations had sent the best
they had, Jake concluded, and that best was very good
indeed.

As he surveyed these officers at dinner he had
wondered about his own selection. He was certainly not
a weapons expert or diplomat. Could he get the
job done? Looking at the foreign officers, he had
his doubts.

Then his eyes came to rest on Herb Tenney and the
doubts evaporated. He had met a few slick
bastards in his career and he thought he knew how
to handle them, or at least get them sidetracked where
they wouldn’t do anyone any harm. He reached for his
glass and had it almost to his lips when he
remembered General Albert Sidney
Brown. His hand shook slightly. He lowered the
glass to the table without spilling any of the liquid.

Two hours after dinner General Yakolev still
seemed fairly sober considering how much he had had
to drinkat least two for every one of Jake’s. He was
sweating and having some trouble forming his English words,
yet he looked pretty steady nonetheless.

A miracle.

Right now Jake Grafton felt like he was going
to be sick.

He excused himself and made for the rest room, where
he found Toad Tarkington.

What in hell do they put in that Russian
moonshine anyway?” Toad demanded. “It tastes
like Tabasco sauce.”

Jake upchucked into a commode, then used his
handkerchief to swab his face with cold water. His
hands were shaking. Fear or vodka?

con’allyou okay?” he asked Toad.

“About three sheets to the wind, CAG. I’m
ready to blow this pop stand anytime you say.”

con’A red hot night in Po City, huh?”

“I’m ready to go back-ship.”

“Give me another fifteen minutes or so. In
the meantime get out there and mix and mingle.”

Jake led General Yakolev over to a corner
where they wouldn’t be so easily overheard. “General,
you impress me as a professional soldier.”

Yakolev didn’t reply to that. His smile
seemed frozen.

God, his eyes seemed completely hidden behind those
brows!

con’I think you have brains and balls,” Jake
added.

“The balls yes, but the brains? I have doubts.
Others have doubts also.”

was I have a little problem that I need some help with,
Jake said as he fought the feeling that he wasn’t
handling this right. Why had he drunk those last two
shots of vodka?

This just wasn’t going to work! He turned away with a
sense of defeat, then turned back. What the hey,
give it a shot. “I’d like to ask a favor.”

Yakolev made a gesture that might have meant
anything.

I’ve had too much of your vodka. I’m having
a little trouble saying this right. But I honestly need a
favor.”

The general looked as foreign as an Iranian
ayatollah.

Jake pushed out the words. “I want you to have a
man arrested tomorrow.”

Now he could see Yakolev’s eyes. They were
locked on his own. “Let’s go into my office,” the
Russian said. “It’s quiet there.”

The following day was overcast and gloomy when the
contingent of foreign military observers gathered in the
large room adjacent to General Yakolev’s
office where they amid had dined the night before. None
of them looked the worse for wear, Jake thought as he
surveyed them through eyes that felt like dirty marbles.
He tried to slow the rate of blinking and swallowing,
but he couldn’t seem to affect it much.

The six aspirin had helped. At least he
felt human again.

Last night around midnight he had cursed himself
for being a damn fool.

After he and Yakolev had closeted themselves in the
general’s office, the old Russian had produced
another vodka bottle from his desk drawer.

The last thing Jake remembered was a promise from
the general that he would talk to the Foreign
Intelligence Service, a name that gave the general
a good laugh. Jake had laughed like hell too because
he was drunk.

Stinking drunk. God, how long had it been
since he got so stinking, puking, deathly drunk?
Fifteen … no, almost seventeen years. Make
that eighteen.

Toad had driven him back to the embassy. He
had passed out by then. He woke up in the bathroom
hanging over the commode.

This morning he tried to pay attention as the
Russian Army briefing officers used maps and
charts to explain how the tactical warheads were being
shipped to the disassembly site at an army base
on the eastern side of the Volga river.

Herb Tenney was supposed to be here, but he
wasn’t.

Jake and Toad had skipped breakfast and
driven to the Kremlin in their own car, one of the black
Fords the embassy used. Toad said Herb was coming
on his own.

The briefing was an hour old when a soldier
slipped into the room and handed General Yakolev a
note. He read it, then interrupted the briefers and
suggested a pause. He motioned to Jake.

“As you requested, your friend has been arrested.”

“Where is he?” comKGB Headquarters. The
soldier waiting outside will drive you
there.”

KGB Headquarters on Dzerzhinsky Square
was an imposing yellow building-the Russians
seemed fond of yellow on public buildings.
No doubt it made a nice contrast with the red flags
that had hung everywhere in the not too distant past. Still,
even with the cheerful yellow facade the building seemed
to dominate the naked pedestal and traffic in the
square below.

The driver steered the car to an entrance in the back
and showed a document to the uniformed gate guard.
Parked in the semidarkness under the building under the
scrutiny of several armed soldiers, the driver
remained behind the wheel of the car.

Jake and Toad were escorted through endless dark
corridors by a slovenly man in an ill-fitting
blue suit. The corridors had a smell, a
light, foul odor. Jake was trying to place it when
they went around a corner and there they were-the cells.
They were small, dark. Some of them contained men. At
least they looked like men, shadowy figures in the
back of the cells who turned their backs on the
visitors.

Terror. He had smelled terror, some evil
mixture of sweat, stale urine, feces,
vomit and fear. Looking at the forms of the men behind the
bars and trying to see their faces, Jake Grafton
felt his stomach turn.

He was perspiring when the guard opened a door at
the end of the corridor, and unexpectedly they were in
an office. There was a man in uniform behind the desk,
the green uniform of the Soviet army, only this one
wasn’t in the army. He was a KGB general. He
didn’t rise from behind his desk, although he did look
up. The escort left the room and closed the door
behind him.

con’Admiral Grafton.”

“Yes.”

“I am General Shmarov. Jake Grafton just
nodded and looked slowly around the room. A large
framed print of Lenin on the wall, which had once
been green and was now merely earth-tone dirty.

There was a window behind the general and it was even
dirtier than the walls. Three padded chairs in
poor condition. The desk. A telephone.

And the KGB general.

Shmarov’s bald head gleamed. Even with his mouth
shut you could see that his teeth were crooked. Now he
spoke again and Jake caught the gleam of gold.
“General Yakolev asked for a favor, so
I was glad to help.”

Grafton couldn’t think of a thing to say.

“Nicolai Alexandrovich is a friend.
“Thanks,” Jake managed.

“Here is the passport.” The Russian held
it out and Jake took it. It was a U.s.
diplomatic passport. He flipped it open.
Herbert Peter Tenney. Jake thumbed the
pages, which were festooned with entry and exit stamps.
Tenney certainly got around. He passed it back
to the general.

“Now if you’ll just check it to see if it’s
genuine.”

“But of course.” A flash of gold.

The door opened and the escort in the blue suit was
there waiting.

Shmarov nodded his head. Grafton returned the
nod and wheeled to follow the escort. Toad
trailed along behind.

The room where the two Americans ended up
contained only a table and a few chairs. On the table
were clothes and shoes, a coat, a briefcase.

“His things,” Blue Suit said, and gestured.

“Everything?” Toad asked.

“Everything. He is being X-rayed.
To see that nothing inside, then back to cell.”