The Red Horseman (14 page)

“Thank you.”

Blue Suit gestured to the table, then pulled up
a chair and sat down to watch. He took out a
cigarette and [it it.

Jake took the briefcase while Toad started
on the shoes.

The briefcase was plastic, with a plastic handle.
It was unlocked, so he opened it and removed the
contents, a legal pad, paper and pencils.

Nothing else was inside. He examined the pens,
cheap ballpoints, then disassembled them.

The padded handle of the briefcase showed wear but
seemed innocuous.

Jake used his penknife to cut it open.

Nothing. Then he used the knife to slice out the
padding that coated the interior of the case.

Their escort left the room for a moment, then
returned with pliers, a screwdriver and a
magnifying glass. Jake used the screwdriver
to take off the tiny metal feet of the case.

Finally he turned his attention to the shoes. The
laces, the heels, everything was examined closely and
minutely with the magnifying glass.

When Toad began looking at the case,
Jake turned his attention to the clothes-trousers,
shirt, underwear, socks, tie, jacket and coat.
He felt every seam and probed every questionable thickness with his
pocketknife.

The suit wore a label from Woodward and
Lothrop, a well known department store in the
Washington, D.c., area.

Jake shopped there himself on occasion. The belt was
cut from a single piece of cowhide and had a
hand-tooled hunting scene on it. The buckle was a
simple metal one. A Christmas or birthday
present, probably.

After scrutinizing every inch of it as carefully as he
could with the glass, he began leafing through the contents of the
prisoner’s pockets, which were contained in a cardboard
box. A couple of keys, a wallet, a handful of
loose ruble notes and American dollar bills,
a fingernail clipper, a piece of broken
shoelace, an odd white button that looked as if
it was off a dress shirt, a key very similar to the
one in Jake’s pocket that probably opened Herb
Tenney’s room at Fort Apache-that was the crop.

Toad watched him examine everything under the
magnifying glass, then helped him spread the
contents of the wallet on one end of the table.

Driver’s license, credit cards, a library
card, a folded Far Side cartoon torn from a
newspaper, several hundred American dollars in
currency, a receipt from a laundry in
Virginia.

Toad perched on the edge of the table. “Agent
007 always had a pocketful of goodies. I’m
disappointed in our boy.”

“What should be here and isn’t?”

Toad glanced at the Russian. “What do you
mean?”

“Is there anything you would expect to find him
carrying around that isn’t here?”

Toad surveyed the little pile, then shook his
head. “I can’t think of anything. Except maybe
an appointment or memo book with some phone
numbers. A bottle of invisible ink, a suicide
pill, I don’t know.”

“All his phone numbers are in his head.”

Jake picked up the keys, held them where the
Russian could see them, then stuck them in his
pocket.

“Let’s go do the car,” he told Blue Suit
as he handed back the magnifying glass and hand
tools. “We’ll keep the keys and bring
them back in a few hours.”

The man nodded and pulled the door open.

Back at Fort Apache one of the keys opened the
door to room 402. The room number was right on the
key. Jake Grafton turned on the lights.

“Go find Spiro Dalworth. I want
screwdrivers, pliers, a magnifying glass, a
big sharp knife from the kitchen. My pocketknife
is too small.” comallyes, sir.” Toad left.

Jake went into the bathroom and picked up all the
toilet articles. He spread them out on a table
and examined each of them.

The problem was that he didn’t know what form the
binary poison would be in, if it were here at all.
A liquid would be the easiest to administer but the
hardest to transport. Pills or powder would be
easier to carry and almost as efficient. But any
water-soluble solid would do, he thought, so even an
object like a button or a pencil eraser might
be the object he sought.

Now he sat looking at some tablets. A small
plastic aspirin bottle with a child-proof lid contained
the usual small white pills. He counted them.
All of them had the word aspirin impressed into the
surface. On one side. No, wait a
minute. Some had the word on both sides. Huh!
He separated the pills into two piles. Eight
one-side-only and six both-sides, fourteen
tablets total.

He put them back into the bottle and slipped the
bottle into his pocket.

When Toad and Lieutenant Dalworth arrived,
he put them to searching. “I want to see any
pills or powder or liquid you can find. Anything
that might form a hidden container. Look carefully.”

Dalworth looked puzzled, but he asked no
questions.

An hour later they decided that everything had been
examined by all three of them.

“Mr. Dalworth, thank you for your help.
We’ll sort of straighten everything out and lock the
door when we leave.

Of course, I’ll appreciate it if you would
keep this little adventure to yourself.”

Dalworth’s eyes went to Tbad, then back
to Jake. “I don’t suppose this would be a good
place to ask questions.”

You’re very perceptive, Spiro,” Toad said.

When the door closed behind him and Toad had
checked to make sure that Mr. Dalworth
didn’t have his ear against it, Jake removed the
aspirin bottle from his pocket and spread out the
tablets on the desk. “Take a look at these,
Toad.”

Tarkington used the magnifying glass. “Well,
they look like aspirin, but I dunno.”

“I have some aspirin on the bathroom sink in my
room.

Will you get them, please.”

They filled a tumbler with water and dropped one of
Jake’s aspirin in it. In twenty seconds the
tablet had dissolved to a mound of white powder. After
thirty seconds had passed they swirled it and the
powder covered the bottom of the glass. After a
minute it was still there.

Now Jake took one of the tablets with the double-sided
label and dropped it into a fresh glass of water.
It too dissolved rapidly, but without leaving the powder
residue. The entire tablet went into solution.

“Thank God for the scientific method,” Toad
muttered.

“When I was a kid I got a microscope one
year for Christmas.”

Jake saved six tablets from his bottle and
dumped the rest down the toilet. Those six
he put in Herb Tenney’s bottle. Herb’s
five remaining pills went into Jake’s bottle.

As they folded clothes and replaced them in the
suitcase and dresser, Toad said, “He’s going
to know someone was in here.”

, I suspect so.”

“Dalworth may blab.”

“He might.”

“You 11 sure you got this figured out,
CAG”…”…ATIONO.

Toad touched Jake’s arm. “You’re betting
both our lives, you know.”

Jake just looked at him. “I’m aware of that,”
he said finally. “If you have any ideas I’m always
open to suggestions.”

Toad went back to straightening the closet. After
a moment he said, “I suggest we shoot friend
Tenney and find a hole to stuff him and his aspirin
bottle into.”

When Jake didn’t respond, Toad added in
a tight little voice, “Of course you have carefully
calculated all the possible reasons why there were
two less of those pills marked on both sides
than there were of the other kind.” His voice was
sarcastic. “No doubt you’ve weighed it,
pondered on it, considered every possible aspect and come
to some intricate, subtle conclusion that a mere
junior officer mortal like me couldn’t possibly
appreciate.”

“What do you want me to say?” Jake replied
patiently.

“That Herb probably took two for a toothache?
We both know he probably fed them to us. Us and
half the people in this embassy.”

“We really oughta take this guy out into the forest and
make him dig his own hole. I kid you not.”
comKGB Headquarters must have really gotten to you.”

“Yes, sir. It sure as hell did. I
admit it. I about vomited all over that fucking
general’s desk.”

“Hurry up. Let’s get this done. We have
to get back for the afternoon briefing.”

“How do you know,” Toad asked, “that those are all
the binary pills Herb has access to?”

“I don’t.”

“He could have some in’his desk in the CIA
office, he could have some stashed in any hidey-hole
he thought handy. He can just ask Langley for more.”

“What a deep thinker you are! Let’s hope he
doesn’t find out we took a few.”

“What if he runs short? What if he’s
embarked on a major urban renewal
project?”

“You ask too many questions.”

“You and I are going to end up dead,” Toad said
sourly.

“Sooner or later,” Grafton replied.
What was there to say? Herb and his colleagues must have
killed General Brown so that he wouldn’t make
waves. The job was only half done as long as
Jake and Toad were wandering around upright.

“The whole fucking CIA can go to fucking hell for
all I care,” Tarkington said crossly. When he
got no reply, he muttered something to himself that
Grafton didn’t catch.

BUTYRSKAYA PRISON LOOKED LIKE
SOMETHING FROM A Kafka nightmare, Jack
Yocke decided, and jotted the thought on a blank
page of his notebook as he sat in the waiting
room.

The Russian interpreter sitting on the bench
across from him was as nervous as a pickpocket at a
policeman’s ball.

He gnawed on a fingernail already into the quick, then
stared at the sliver of nail still remaining.
He pushed on the raw quick experimentally and
grimaced. He crossed and recrossed his feet and
stared morosely at the filthy paint on the wall
and the dirty floor. He carefully avoided looking
at any of the other people slumped on the wooden benches.

Yocke wondered about this desire to avoid even
eye contact. After sweeping each of the other eight people
in the room, his gaze returned to the uncomfortable
interpreter, Gregor Something, Gregor followed
by five or six Slavic syllables that sounded
to Yocke’s American ear like a pig grunting.
Two days ago Gregor jackrabbited away from
Soviet Square, yet the following morning he
showed up at Yocke’s hotel as if nothing had
happened.

Still glowing with the virtuous warmth of his new-found
heroism and curiously eager to make this gutless
wonder squirm a little, Yocke asked, “Why did
you run?”

“My wife was ill.”

Gregor didn’t blink or blush, didn’t
look away, even when Yocke sneered.

To be able to lie outrageously and shamelessly was
an asset, Jack Yocke told himself, one that would
of course stand Gregor in good stead here in
this workers” paradise of poverty and desperation, but it
would also be a cheerful bullet for his rdsumblef even in
brighter climes, such as the U.s. of A. Across the
pond in the land of the free and home of the brave he
could lie like a dog to clients and customers, cheat on
his spouse, steal from his employer, write creative
fiction for the IRS, and in the unlikely event he
ever got caught he could fool the lie detector and
skip away with a happy smile. This multilingual
grunter would fit right in, as red, white and blue as
a telephone solicitor hyping penny stocks
to shut-in geriatrics. Once he got his
fastball high and tight he could even become a
politician.

This morning in the waiting room of Butyrskaya
Yocke asked Gregor, “Have you ever thought of
emigrating to America?”

“My wife’s cousin lives in Brooklyn.”

Yocke stared.

“Brooklyn, New York.”

“I’m trying to recall if I ever heard of
Brooklyn. It’s out west, isn’t it? With
cowboys and Indians and tumbleweeds?”

“Perhaps,” Gregor said softly. “I don’t
know. My wife’s cousin drives a taxi
and earns many dollars. He likes America.”
He shrugged.

“America is a great country.”

“He drives a Chevrolet. Only five
years old.” He glanced at the other people in the room
to see who was listening. One or two had glanced up
at the sound of a foreign language, but now all but
one had retreated into their self-imposed isolation.

“Umm,” said Jack Yocke, looking hard at
the young man who was looking at them. He had longish
hair and an air of quiet desperation. His gaze
wavered, then fell away.

“Petrol is cheap there, my wife’s cousin
says. Every day he drives many many miles. All
the streets are paved.”

A door opened and a man passed through the waiting
room. Jack Yocke caught a whiff of the
prison smell. He had smelled it before in the
jails of Washington, a devil’s brew of urine,
body odor and fear. Yocke delicately inhaled
a thimbleful as Gregor regaled his listener with the
adventures of his wife’s cousin in his Chevy on the
paved boulevards of Brooklyn.

Two minutes after Yocke reached saturation, a
man came through one of the doorways and
spoke to Gregor, then led the way along endless
dingy corridors. The warden’s corner office was
big and had a carpet. A dial phone straight out
of the 1930’s sat on the wooden desk.

The warden came around the desk to shake hands, then
trotted back around the desk and arranged himself in his
chair. He was a sloppy fat man with a heavy
five-o’clock shadow that made his skin look dingy
gray.

Gregor and the warden nattered a while in
Russian, then Gregor turned to Yocke. “He
welcomes the correspondent for the American
newspaper Post to Butyrskaya.”

“Thank him for taking the time to see me.” Of
course Yocke had an appointment, arranged by an
official with the Yeltsin government, but he was willing
to pretend this was a social call.

More Russian.

“Ask your questions.”

“I am here today at the request of the editor of my
newspaper, the most influential newspaper in the
United States.