The Red Horseman jg-5

by Stephen Coonts

  But there was no other way.

  When Toad came to the room this morning Jake sent him to get a car. “You’ll drive it,” Jake told him. “Bring the blanket off your bed.” He put on his short-sleeved white uniform shirt and examined the ribbons and wings insignia in the mirror. All okay.

  Three blocks away from the embassy Jake told Toad to stop. They searched the car as traffic whizzed by and the exhaust fumes wafted about them. Not much wind today, drat it.

  They opened the hood and examined everything as a crowd of pedestrians gathered, probably attracted by their white uniforms. The two naval officers ignored the curious Russians. It took them five minutes to identify all the wires of the electrical system to their satisfaction. They opened the trunk and lifted out the spare tire and scrutinized every square inch and cranny. Toad put the blanket on the pavement and wormed under the car while Jake opened his pocket-knife and took off the door panels. He probed the seat cushions and sliced open the roof liner. They peeled back the carpet on the floor.

  Nothing.

  When they started the car again they sat staring at the traffic zipping by and the onlookers on the sidewalk, who were drifting away one by one.

  “You’d think if there was a bug in this thing we’d find it,” Toad said with disgust in his voice.

  “Maybe.” You could never prove a negative to a certainty. All you could do was try to determine the probability.

  “Miserable goddamn country,” Toad growled.

  After a few moments Jake said, “If anything happens to me, I’d like you to do me a favor.”

  Toad waited.

  “Kill Herb Tenney.”

  “That,” Toad said with heat, “will be a real pleasure.”

  “Better be quick about it. I’ve got a feeling that if I die you’re going to be knocking on the pearly gate very soon thereafter.”

  Toad put the car into gear and pulled away from the curb.

  * * *

  They parked in front of the Hotel Metropolitan amid the taxicabs, right around the corner from Red Square.

  Jake left Toad with the car and went inside. “I wish to speak with one of your guests, an American named Jack Yocke.” And since the man nodded politely, Jake added, “Pashah’lsta.” Please.

  “Yaw-key?”

  “That’s right.” Jake spelled it.

  As the desk attendant consulted his files Jake surveyed the lobby. He had visited the embassy public affairs office earlier that morning and had gotten the name of Yocke’s hotel from the file. He had looked it up himself so the clerk would not see what name he wanted. He felt foolish, paranoid.

  “Here it is,” the desk man said, straightening from the files. “I will telephone him.” The clerk looked natty in a dark suit and tie. Apparently these folks were going after those hard dollars with a vengeance. Jake nodded and went over to one of the plush chairs on the other side of the room to wait. Several of the tourists in line at the counters stared at him. A white uniform certainly had an effect.

  Three minutes later the elevator door opened and Jack Yocke stepped out. He was visibly surprised when he saw Jake Grafton. He came over smiling and stopped in front of Jake with his hands held out to his sides.

  “Clean and sober, Admiral. In the flesh.” He shook Jake’s outstretched hand. “How goes the war effort?”

  “Off the record?”

  Yocke laughed. “You’re the last man on earth I expected to see around here.”

  “I came to see Lenin. I hear they’re selling the body to some outfit in Arizona.”

  “Yep. Gonna put the old boy on display right near the London Bridge in Lake Havasu City. Five bucks a head. Old ladies from Moline in stretch polyester and tennis shoes will be filing by the coffin whispering, ‘Well, I never!’”

  “Toad’s out in the car. How about coming outside for a minute or two for a chat?”

  You had to hand it to Yocke. He didn’t even blink. “Sure,” he said.

  “So how’s the foreign correspondent gig going?” Toad asked Yocke when they were seated in the car.

  “I don’t know how I’m holding up,” Yocke said sadly. “Every day three or four beautiful women, not less than a quart of vodka, meals fit for a czar or local party chief, a ballet or—”

  “We’ve got a little problem,” Jake said firmly, interrupting the litany, “that we thought you might be able to help with. It’s an I’ll-never-tell type of problem.”

  “No story?”

  “Not even a whisper.”

  Yocke snorted. “Do you know how damn tough it is to get a story in this Cyrillic borsch house? I’ve had exactly one, yesterday, when someone snuffed Yegor Kolokoltsev.”

  “We heard about that. Five gunmen in Soviet Square?”

  “I was there on the fifty-yard line, six rows back. Just lucky, I guess. I’ve been upstairs writing it up for the Sunday paper, three thousand sensitive, powerful words that would melt the heart of a crack salesman. The story is what I saw and a bunch of denials from the Russian cops. No, they did not know Kolokoltsev was going to speak. No, they did not keep the police away. That’s about it. Lots of on-scene detail and a bunch of denials.”

  “So,” Jake asked curiously, “were they in on it?”

  “Something smells, that’s for sure. No police or military in the square. Five gunmen drill Kolokoltsev and all his bodyguards. They looked like they were shooting an army qualification course. Just pros punching holes in a professional manner. Then they dropped the guns and walked away. No haste, no waste.”

  “It’s the wrong feel,” Toad objected. “The Russians don’t do things that way.” He was about to add something when Grafton silenced him with a glance.

  The admiral asked Yocke, “What about that big story that you were so full of back in Washington? People stealing nukes and selling them?”

  “Can’t smoke it out. The people who were supposed to know something just laughed when I showed up with my letters of introduction and asked. All rumors. So I’m doing features and listening to would-be dictators preach anti-Semitic, fascist poison. I was just lucky to witness a rubout that would make a great movie. BFD.” Jake knew what that meant — Big Fucking Deal.

  “Jack, I need to ask a favor. Call your editor and have him deliver a message in person to General Land.”

  “This is supposed to make me laugh, right?”

  “No joke,” Jake told him. “Obviously I don’t want to use any of the telephones at the embassy, encrypted or otherwise. Nor the embassy’s message circuits. And I don’t want General Land talking on a telephone in his office, home or car.”

  “Why not?”

  “Yes or no.”

  “Want to tell me about it?”

  “No, Jack, I don’t. I just want you to say yes.”

  “Who don’t you want listening in? The overseas lines all bounce off the bird in the sky. Great connection — sounds better than the phone at home — but the people in the telephone office are undoubtedly KGB to a man. You can bet your ass they tape every call. Of course the KGB has a new name, the Foreign Intelligence Service, but a turd by any other name is still a turd. Ten dollars against a ruble they’ll be routing a transcript in Cyrillic around Dzerzhinsky Square before you get back on the sidewalk.”

  Jake said nothing.

  “So you want to be overheard, huh? By the KGB. Or you don’t care.” Yocke writhed in his seat. He glared at both of them. “You knew I’d say yes, Admiral. Now figure out what I’m going to tell my editor.”

  Jake Grafton pursed his lips. “I’m assuming that this will be a tight little secret over at the Post.”

  “Like Ted Kennedy’s spring vacation plans,” Yocke replied sourly. “You realize that if the KGB wants to know more they will pay me a visit and sweat me.”

  “If you have your health…,” Toad Tarkington said, and gave Yocke a wide grin. “Jack, I’ll never understand you. Where’s your sense of adventure? The KGB might put you against a wall and shoot you. You’ll be famous! If
they just rip out all your fingernails and throw you out of the country the Post will probably give you a raise.”

  “You macho pinhead! These Russians don’t do walls or blindfolds or last cigarettes. No melodrama. They snatch you on the street, strangle you in the car and stuff you into a hole someplace out in the woods so no one else on God’s green earth will ever know what became of you. Without muss or fuss you just cease to be. Cease to be anything! These people have ruled this country with terror for seventy years and they are real goddamn good at it. If you aren’t pissing yourself when you think about them you’re a congenital idiot. There ain’t no rules but theirs and they keep changing them all the time. This ain’t good ol’ Iowa, Frogface.”

  Toad grinned at the admiral and jerked his thumb at Yocke. “You may find this hard to believe, but I’m beginning to like this guy.”

  Yocke wasn’t paying attention. Already he was trying to figure out how to explain this to his editor. He looked at his watch. It was 2 A.M. in Washington. He would call Gatler at home again. Mike was going to be thrilled.

  “Let’s get something to eat,” Toad suggested. “For some reason I’m hungry.”

  Jake nodded.

  “Well, there’s a good hard currency restaurant with big prices up the street at the Savoy and a slightly more modest one here at the Metropolitan. It’s all Russian grub and the city water system is contaminated, unfit for human consumption. It’s Russian roulette — radioactive beef and milk and vegetables full of heavy metals — spin the cylinder and pull the trigger.” He sighed. “I know you want to treat, so you pick.”

  “Here,” Jake said. Toad killed the engine and they climbed out. “But we call your editor first.”

  * * *

  “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—” 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 all 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 falling 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 the 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 1996, 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?”