The Red Horseman jg-5

by Stephen Coonts

  He always got depressed at first in foreign cities — culture shock, he supposed. Tonight the empty streets and the dark blocks of miserable flats reflected a people devoid of hope. It was a sadness that shook Jake Grafton to the marrow.

  Inevitably his mind turned to the eighty-five million. Murder on that scale must have a profound effect on those left behind — an effect beyond anything encompassed by grief or tragedy. To live with evil on such a scale was beyond Jake Grafton’s comprehension. These people were all guilty, all of them; those who gave the orders and those who pulled the triggers and those who buried them and those who pretended it never happened.

  Where does responsibility stop? Is it an exclusive property of these miserable, impoverished people crowded into these miserable, mean buildings, fighting for survival?

  Jake Grafton thought not. He rode through the summer twilight streets looking at the new sights with old, tired eyes.

  6

  Herb Tenney arrived at the breakfast table as the orange juice and coffee were served.

  “Morning, Admiral. Commander.” He nodded at each of them in turn and gave his order to the waiter.

  “Your first time in Moscow?” Tenney asked as Jake Grafton turned his attention back to his coffee cup.

  “Uh-huh.”

  Tenney launched into a discourse on the city that sounded suspiciously like the text from a guidebook. He looked rested and fresh after a good night’s sleep, which wasn’t the way Jake felt. He had gotten only one more hour of sleep after the excursion last night. This morning he felt tired, listless.

  Tenney poured himself a cup of coffee without missing a beat in his monologue. He added a dollop of cream to the mixture and half a spoonful of sugar, then agitated the liquid with a spoon. He paused in his discourse and took a sip.

  “Ahh, nothing like coffee in the morning. Anyway, Peter the Great built…”

  Jake stared at the black liquid in the cup in front of him. He had already had a sip and the slightly acid taste lingered still in his mouth. Would there be a taste to binary poison? What had that report said?

  Tenney took another sip of his coffee, then added another smidgen of sugar and languidly stirred with his spoon while he rambled on about the city of the czars.

  When the waiter slid a plate of bacon and eggs in front of him, Jake Grafton could only stare at it.

  “Something wrong, Admiral?”

  Tenney was looking at him solicitously.

  Jake Grafton gritted his teeth. Then his face relaxed into a smile. “Jet lag.”

  “Takes a while to get over,” Tenney said. “The main thing is to sleep when you’re sleepy and not try to fool Mother Nature.”

  Jake Grafton slid his chair back. “I wouldn’t dream of it,” he said, then glanced at Toad. “Come up to my room when you’re finished here.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  General Nicolai Yakolev, the Russian Army chief of staff, was a short, ugly man with bushy eyebrows, a huge veined nose, a lantern jaw, and ears that stuck out like jug handles. The wonder was that he could see anything at all with the eyebrows and clifflike nose obstructing his vision. Still, once you ignored nature’s decorations you caught a glimpse of lively blue eyes.

  Yakolev squeezed Jake’s right hand with a vise grip, then shook hands with Herb Tenney as Jake flexed his right hand several times to restore the circulation and watched that impressive, ugly face.

  “Bad news, she rides a fast horse,” the Russian said in easily understandable English.

  “So I’ve heard,” Jake Grafton replied and looked curiously around the room, a vast cavern with ceilings at least eighteen feet high. Mirrors, chandeliers, a massive wooden desk atop a colorful Persian carpet, walls covered with books and several oil paintings — apparently Communists were as fond of perks as Democrats and Republicans. They were on the second floor of the Kremlin Arsenal, a two-story yellow building inside the walls.

  “Nice room,” he commented.

  The general smiled. “So, Admiral, what did the American government really send you here to do?”

  “Watch you take tactical nuclear warheads apart, General.”

  “Sounds very boring.”

  “I’m also supposed to count them.”

  “Ah, one… two… three… four…” Yakolev laughed. “And you, Mr. Tenney?”

  “I’m with the State Department, sir. Here to assist the admiral.”

  Yakolev nodded and shifted his eyes to Jake. “Is that true?” he asked.

  Jake mulled it for about two seconds, then said, “He’s here to keep an eye on me all right, but he’s CIA.”

  “Ahhh, a political officer, a commissar. I’ve known a few of them in my time. But as you gentlemen know, our zampolits are at the moment unemployed. The world changes. So, please, Mr. Tenney, since I am at the disadvantage, I ask you to let the admiral and me converse alone. Then no harm will be done if we inadvertently make any little political mistakes.”

  Tenney glanced at Grafton, then rose and left the room.

  Jake got a glimpse of twinkling eyes behind Yakolev’s bushy brows, then the general turned his attention to a file that lay before him. “Your dossier,” he said, indicating the file. “The GRU is very thorough, one of their few virtues.”

  He flipped from page to page. “Let us see. You had combat experience in Vietnam, the usual tours aboard numerous aircraft carriers, command of two air wings… Ah, here is a summary of a regrettable incident in the Mediterranean that we thought would surely end your career — and that involved nuclear weapons, I believe.”

  “I can neither confirm nor deny that.”

  The general laughed, a hearty roar. “Very funny, Admiral. You make a little joke, and I like that. We Russians laugh to make the pain endurable. But I tell you frankly, if you expect to work with me, you and I must learn to tell each other the unpleasant truths.” He wagged a finger at Jake. “Regardless of what our politicians say or the lies they tell, you and I must treat each other as professionals. We must work together as colleagues. No lies. All truth. Only truth. You comprehend?”

  Jake studied the Soviet general in front of him. He held out his hand. “May I see the dossier?”

  “It is in Russian.”

  Jake nodded.

  The general closed the file and passed it across the desk. Jake opened it on his lap. It was thick, contained maybe thirty pages of material. Most of the pages were indeed in Russian, some typewritten, others in script. There was a front page of the New York Times with his photo and another photo taken on a street somewhere several years ago. He had been in civilian clothes then. Also in the files were several photocopies of newspaper and magazine articles about the A-12 Avenger stealth attack plane for which he had been the project manager, before full-scale production was canceled. One of the articles was from Aviation Week and Space Technology: a magazine commonly referred to as Aviation Leak by the American military. The file also contained a photo of Toad Tarkington. Jake closed the file and passed it back.

  “I don’t read Russian.”

  “I know. That fact is in the dossier.”

  “You speak excellent English.”

  “I spent several years in Washington and two in London. But that was years ago, when I was just a colonel.”

  “This is my third trip to the Soviet Union — Russia.” This of course was a lie. It was Jake’s first trip.

  The general merely nodded and lit a cigarette. The heavy smoke wafted gently across the desk and Jake got a dose. It stank.

  Jake looked around the room again. Hard to believe, after all those years of reading intelligence reports about the Soviet military, all those years of planning to fight them, here he was in the inner sanctum talking to a Soviet — now Russian — four-star. And the subject was nuclear weapons. The whole thing had an air of unreality. He felt like an actor in a bad play devoid of logic. Life without reason— that’s the definition of insanity, isn’t it?

  Jake Grafton scanned the room yet again, rubbed
his hands over the solid arms of his chair, reached out to touch the polished wood of the desk.

  But are these guys on the level? Do they really intend to destroy their tactical nukes? Or is this whole thing some kind of weird chess game with nuclear pieces, something out of one of those wretched thrillers about crazed Communists out to checkmate all their opponents and take over the planet?

  “Do you play chess?” Jake Grafton asked the general behind the desk, who was watching him through the drifting smoke.

  “Yes,” Yakolev said, “but not very well.” His lips twisted. This was his grin. After the lie came the grin. Very American, like a used-car salesman.

  Jake Grafton grinned back. “I looked at your dossier in the Pentagon a week or so ago. It says you like to fuck little boys.”

  The lips twisted again. “I like you, Grafton. Da!”

  Jake cleared his throat. “We know your politicians are”—he was going to say “less than accurate” but thought better of it—“lying about the degree of control they have — the army has — over these weapons. I am here to evaluate the extent of your problems and make a report to my superiors. And to offer suggestions if you are receptive.”

  Jake Grafton paused as he eyed the Russian general. “My superiors want the Yeltsin government to succeed in the revolution that Gorbachev began. They do not want the Communists to regain power, nor do they want to see the Soviet Union balkanized unless there is no other way. Baldly, they want to see a stable government in this country that has the support of the populace, a government that indeed is trying to improve the lot of its citizens.”

  “They are humanitarians,” General Yakolev said lightly.

  “Don’t ever think that,” Jake Grafton shot back. “They are damn worried men. Their primary concern is nuclear weapons. They do not want to see nuclear, chemical or biological weapons technology exported. They desperately want you to establish a viable democracy here, but first and foremost — the most important factor — your government must keep absolute control of all the nuclear weapons that exist on your soil.”

  “Yeltsin is not in control of anything right now. He is at the center but the storm revolves around him. How I say it? — he is like one of your cowboys on a crazy bronco horse. He is still on the saddle but the horse goes his own way. Understand?”

  “I will give you the frank, blunt truth, General. I will not repeat the platitudes of the politicians. The Americans will deal with whoever has these weapons, be it a Communist dictator, fascist demagogue, religious fanatic, or a criminal gang leader. Whoever. And I suspect the same is true of the British, the Germans, the French — all the Western democracies. But their liaison officers can tell you that themselves.”

  Yakolev came around the desk and pulled a chair closer to Grafton. He sat. “You and I can work together. We are both military men, both patriots. I serve Mother Russia. You understand?”

  Jake nodded.

  “I am not blind. Russia must join the world. This planet is too small to sustain an isolated society of three hundred million people. We have tried dictatorship and it failed; now we must try democracy. But I lay out the truth for your inspection: no matter who rules the Kremlin, I serve Russia.”

  Russia the grand abstraction, Jake thought ruefully. Well, every nation is an abstraction if you stop to think about it. He irritably dismissed the thought and asked, “And the army? Whom does the army serve?” When the Russian was slow to answer, Jake sharpened the question: “Will the army obey your orders?”

  General Nicolai Yakolev spit out the word, “Yes.”

  That, Jake Grafton suspected, was the biggest and baldest lie so far. And mouthed like a pro. And yet… “These weapons distort everything,” he said.

  “I know.”

  “While they exist, you serve only them,” Jake said.

  “Control all the nuclear weapons that exist, you said. I noted your choice of words, Admiral.”

  “They must be destroyed,” Jake Grafton said, “before they destroy you. You asked for truth. There it is.”

  The Russian leaned toward Jake. “You are a soldier, not a politician. I like that. I think we can do business. Come.”

  He led Jake to a table under a huge oil painting that should have been in a museum. There was a large map on the table. The Russian general pointed and explained where the weapons were and what might be done with the plutonium after the warheads were disassembled. Through the tall windows Jake could see the soft summer sun sifting down, gently bathing everything in a surreal light.

  An hour later the men were back at the general’s desk drinking strong, black tea in tall glasses with metal holders. At the general’s suggestion Jake had stirred in juice from a slice of lemon and a spoonful of something that looked like blackberry jam.

  “Perhaps you could tell me a little about yourself, General,” Jake Grafton said, jerking his thumb at the dossier.

  The Russian laughed. “All the time, effort, and expense that goes into compiling dossiers, and you know what yours tells me? That you are a professional officer. Nothing else. And that I knew before I opened it.

  “But it is me you want to know about, even after reading my dossier in the Pentagon. Dossiers are the same the world over. I am old, seventy years. I fought in the Great War. I was young enough to enjoy killing Nazis. In Berlin I saw Hitler’s bunker, helped search it. I saw the patio where they burned his body, his and Eva Braun’s. I walked through the rubble. All Europe was rubble then, my friend. I tell you that.”

  So Yakolev had once been a shooter, a warrior. Maybe down deep under the wrinkles and gray hair he still was. Most of the top men in the world’s military organizations weren’t: they were bureaucrats and cocktail party politicians.

  The general shook his head. “I was very young then. And that is the only fact about me that would be of interest. The rest is obvious. I survived. I survived!”

  Ahh, Jake mused, at what cost? How many men have you sold out, General, how many lies have you told, how much of your honor can possibly be left after you clawed and scratched and gouged your way to the top of this squirming snake pile of criminal psychopaths? The scars must be there…unless you have become one of them, a man without conscience, a man to whom the end justifies whatever it takes to get there. If so…

  The general rumbled on. “But no stories. Old men tell too many stories, stories of a dead past that are of little interest to the young, who think their own problems unique.”

  “And I am too young,” Jake Grafton said.

  General Yakolev’s eyes searched his face. “Perhaps. Your youth…” He shook his head. “You Americans turn out your officers to fatten in the pasture so very early, just when they grow old enough to have a bit of wisdom, just when they are old enough to understand all the things that they are not, all the things that they can never be, will never be. Just when they are old enough.”

  Jake sipped his tea. It wasn’t like American tea, weak and insipid. He liked it.

  “What do you know of Russia?”

  Jake drank the last of the tea and set the cup in its saucer. “The usual, which is not much…the bare essentials, twenty years of reading intelligence briefs, a few books.”

  “Tolstoy?”

  “A little. Chekov I liked. Andreyev’s The Seven Who Were Hanged was too Russian.” Oops! He should not have said that! “Solzhenitsyn…” What could he say about Solzhenitsyn’s descriptions of hell on earth? They had horrified Jake Grafton, painted communism as one of the foulest evils ever perpetrated by man upon man. “I have read him,” he finished lamely.

  “Hmmm,” said Yakolev, his face a mask. “Dinner tomorrow night, yes? The military observers from Britain, Germany, France and Italy will also be here. You know them, yes?”

  “No, sir. I’ve never met them.”

  “I will send my car for you at the embassy. About eight.”

  “May I bring my aide, sir?”

  “If you like. We will take the time to learn to know each other bette
r. I will be interested to learn where you draw the line between Russian and too Russian.”

  Jake was led back through the long cold hallways with their dim lights and dark oil paintings that could barely be seen. Herb Tenney was standing near the door, waiting. Outside the summer sun of the Kremlin grounds made Jake squint. The contrast between inside and outside hit him hard. He held his hat on his head as he climbed into the car.

  * * *

  Culture shock, Jack Yocke decided. He felt depressed, alone, listless. He could count on one hand the number of people he had met who spoke English. The constant fumbling with the paperback Russian-English dictionary frustrated him. The heavy, fatty mystery meat and greasy vegetables were clogging his bowels. Culture shock, he told himself, hoping that sooner or later he would adjust.

  How good it would be to be back in the Post newsroom, talking on the phone to someone who spoke American, understanding the nuances of what wasn’t said as readily as he captured the intent of what was. Oh, for a bacon and egg breakfast, with eggs from a lovely American chicken and crisp fried bacon from a handsome American pig! To go across the street to the Madison coffee shop for a hot pastrami on rye! And an American beer, a tall cold American beer in a frosty glass with foam spilling over the top.

  He was gloomily contemplating the difference between American beer and the Russian horse piss product when the motorcade came around the corner into view. Three vehicles. Black. Limos.

  He was stuck off to one side of the platform where the speakers were going to address the rally. Perhaps a thousand people, mostly men and babushkas, milled around the square and luxuriated in the sun, rolling up sleeves to brown their white arms, drinking juice from glass bottles. The few children were messily eating ice cream bars sold by a sidewalk vendor, who was doing a land office business today. Apparently the vendors, for the city sidewalks seemed crammed with them, were something new, fledgling capitalists trying the new way right here beside a Communist rally. The irony of it made Yocke smile.

  The paper’s Russian stringer translator was sucking on a foul cigarette and chatting in Russian with his counterpart from the New York Times. The Times reporter was on the other side of these two and busy scribbling notes, no doubt literate political insights that would form the heart of an incisive think piece. Damn the Times!